Ext: The baybee park by the Intensifying Heart Club, summer. 

DADDY is taking the baybee for a walk in a stroller. He is sitting on a bench, enjoying an ice cream, and the baybee is sleeping peacefully. FRANK is lying face down in the grass, twitching and shivering in a state of bliss.

DADDY

Quite a lovely day to take SALINA and ANGÉL’s baybee for a stroll, wouldn’t you agree, my good chap?

 

FRANK

Quite so indeed, fellow.

 

DADDY

Let’s discuss the plan once more. I will use this baybee to distract the Committee-

 

FRANK

While I fetch the deathlist and the mystical gloves from the freezer unit hidden in SALINA’s old apartment. No need to worry, ANGÉL is truly on our side now. This cannot be denied. He has been instructed and prepared with the special oils.

 

DADDY

Forgive me, sir, I cannot help but be concerned that THE MAYOR will still intervene somehow. If our plans go unrealized again, it might be quite a sorry situation.

Editor’s note: Their plans, which have been in the works for fifteen seasons and we THE GOD DAMNED AUDIENCE still don’t have a clue what they entail…

 

FRANK

Have you ever thought about the genre of science fiction?

 

DADDY

What? I might have at some point.

 

FRANK

Consider how the future scenarios presented in works of science fiction tend to be characterized by a fragmented and confusing past having been transformed into something clean, neat; quite a sense of order and togetherness. Not to say that society doesn’t have conflicts, but on a surface level. Shining space vessels which rarely malfunction, an orderly society with every role filled and a working structure.

 

DADDY

I see.

 

FRANK

Of course there are exceptions, but I am referring to the type of science fiction where there is a sense of overarching order.

 

DADDY

My goodness.

 

FRANK

Now, there are as I see it two interpretations, or schools of thought if you will, as to why this is often the case. You could look at it as an extension of our wish to see something different from our current society: the implicit pros, as it were, of getting to live, if only in your imagination, in a culture where the darkness and filth has been dealt with or at least hidden. You can see the appeal of this, can’t you?

 

DADDY

Heavens to Betsy, I think I can.

Editor’s note: I can’t follow this conversation for much longer.

 

FRANK

The part of us that wants there to be a sensible reason for the choices made in our fiction would want this to be the case, right?

 

DADDY

Oh yes.

 

FRANK

But here is where it gets rivetingly interesting, my dear old friend and colleague.

 

DADDY

I can’t wait to hear more, gov’nor.

Editor’s note: I can wait for quite a while.

 

FRANK

What if this tendency in science fiction isn’t quite governed by an intrinsic desire to see a future dream fulfilled, but rather by some inherent factors in the act of writing fiction itself? It could be said that fiction differs from reality in a few key ways. For instance, and most importantly for our purposes, fiction is determined by an author whereas reality is not.

Editor’s note: Unless you believe in God.

 

FRANK

Yes, but I do not as God does not exist.

Editor’s note: Please keep the characters from replying to my notes, Chad. It’s inappropriate and rude.

 

FRANK

In any case, it could be said to be the case that the very nature of fiction, the arrangement of events, people and circumstance into a defined sequence of action that expresses some purpose of the author’s, hews close to that clean order of certain science fiction. Everything in its place, a regimented society with clearly defined roles, and so forth.

 

DADDY

Well I’ll be buggered.

Editor’s note: I’ll be buggered BY THE HIGHER-UPS AT THE STUDIO if this conversation goes on for the rest of the episode!

 

FRANK

Stop interrupting.

Editor’s note: I will not!

 

FRANK

Ignore him. As I was saying,

Editor’s note: I can’t believe this. You’re killing me, Chad.

 

FRANK

There are fundemental similarities between the construction of reality as we experience it and certain modes of fiction or philosophy – and key dissimilarities, as well.

Editor’s note: You’re gonna get us in trouble with the higher-ups at the studio again, dude. What happened to this story?

 

FRANK

Compare this to the works of Jorge Luis Borges, for instance. The idealistic language of the people of Tlön.

Editor’s note: Haven’t you already made enough trouble? It’s one thing to get away with a couple literary references in the story, that’s the kind of thing an editor can let pass.

 

FRANK

In what sense can the construction of reality as we can experience it influence the way we parse a piece of fiction? And can we ever claim understanding from within that closed system?

Editor’s note: It’s easy for you  –  you can just hand in your scripts, say goodbye and then sneak away to one of your back alley coffee saloons. But I’m stuck here in the office and I’m having to try to justify this shit! Do you realize how uncomfortable I feel?

 

FRANK

Could it even be said that the entire field of literary critisism, bound as it is within the confines of language and our narrow view of the construction of reality, might be bunk?

Editor’s note: My parents are even considering cutting me out of their will because of your selfish actions.

 

FRANK

Bunk meaning in this case nothing so much as scribbles that are inherently meaningless because they are part of a closed system and every part of the whole is subsumed into a post-semiotic rationalism that includes reality as a totality.

Editor’s note: Can this script at least be over soon?

 

FRANK

In fact, we may conclude that our paltry fictions can be as distant from the construction of reality as we are from our stumbling literary critisism. Since this is the case,

Editor’s note: I give up. I’m gonna come back to this tomorrow. In the meantime, I need to see what became of that baybee. That was my sister’s baybee, wasn’t it? I was supposed to look after it, but I was distracted by Frank’s monologue. That baybee must be wandering around somewhere still, in the long shadowed corridors of this mansion. I need to find out what that baybee could have seen in the many mirrors. And then, I’m gonna have a long conversation with my parents about responsibility, my job as a telenovela editor, and the will. I’ll be damned if I’m cut out of my God-promised inheritance because I’m stuck in this dead-end job. This isn’t over yet, Chad Fabuloso D’Annunzio…

(CONT)