Int: the Gastronomy Institute, seclusion chamber.

FRANK is in the room, alone. He is sitting in a special chair, his limp frame propped up by various wires and contraptions. The chair sits inside a complex, oval MEDICAL POD that monitors his existence. FRANK’s mind is connected to gastronomical devices through a tube sticking out of his brain stem. His hands are bandaged, his skin is pale, and his eyes are completely white. He sings-

FRANK

Ho hum, diddle and dumb –

Singing a soong in a hospital roongm –

Where is the future, where is the past? –

Have the vultures made off with my mystical staff? –

Staff in the sense of personnel, you see –

Not a magic cane that could delight you and me.

 

Finishing his whimsical song, FRANK spits on the floor and attempts to scratch his crotch with his hand-stumps.

FRANK

Beh.

 

The eleven locks on the double security door click open, and the door creaks ajar. Enter DR. ADAMSON, followed by PASTOR JING and PAULETTE. DR. ADAMSON carefully locks the door behind him and checks the medical data displayed on the gastronomical screens.

DR. ADAMSON

It is really against my better judgment that you two be here today. He is still very fragile. His thought waves are fluctuating in and out of INDIGOSPACE and his physical wounds are most terrible. You may find his thought processes alarming. But DADDY instructed me to bring you here for an important meeting, so here we are.

 

FRANK

Oh stop fussing, silly DOCTOR. You know that the maladies travel in CHRONOSPACE as well. Are you really suggesting that my thought processes only become alarming just now? I bid you welcome, everyone.

 

PASTOR JING

The Lord’s blessings be upon you, most exalted leader and teacher. Never hesitate to turn to me for any guidance you might need.

 

PASTOR JING drops to the floor and kisses the saliva FRANK spat there minutes ago. PAULETTE sits down in the chair by the POD and cocks her beautiful head quizzically to one side.

PAULETTE

You must be FRANK. A pleasure to finally meet you. We have even known about you in far off lands as well. You are quite famous. How are you feeling after everything? I hear there was quite the kerfuffle.

 

FRANK

Sweet of you to worry, but there is really no need. My mortal body is on its last legs –

 

PASTOR JING rolls around on the floor in agony.

PASTOR JING

Oh no!!! Please don’t say such ghastly things – you must live forever, leader, forever!!!

 

FRANK

– but that has been inevitable for quite a while. It is no surprise and elicits no grief in me, so it should not in you.

 

DR. ADAMSON is looking intently at one of the gastronomical monitors. The eagle-eyed viewer will notice that it is not displaying medical data at all, but the same monologue from “Modern Love” that PAULETTE and MORGANNA watched episodes ago. DR. ADAMSON mutters to himself.

DR. ADAMSON

I’ll say, indeed… If this data is correct, we can’t expect much of a timeframe at all… We should never have gone through with it at the Club… It was too soon, too rash…

 

FRANK

I hear you mumbling, DOC! You’re thinking, “my leader’s in trouble there!” Again I tell you, you needn’t worry so much.

 

PASTOR JING

Please, leader, tell PAULETTE of the new plan! I can’t bear to see you this way, I must needs get back to my church to PRAAAAAY!! I rescind my offer of counsel, by the way. The sight of you in this state is just too terrible.

 

He beats his forehead repeatedly against the floor and wails in sorrow.

PAULETTE

Fucking hell, uncle. You’re quite the shambles, aren’t you?

 

FRANK

Ignore, ignore. This is just a matter of simple subterfuge, really. With the mystical gloves destroyed and the deathlist back under the Committee’s control, there is really only one arcane artifact left in this town that might serve our purposes. Have you guessed which? Have you, have you?

 

DR. ADAMSON

The DELUXE JEWELS currently in THE MAYOR’s possession. They contain energies both spiritual and indigomonetary, and might be just enough to allow us another chance to bring the project to its completion.

 

FRANK

The owner guards them jealously, though. Our spies report that they are locked in a special cabinet in the very depths of THE MAYOR’s private quarters.

 

DR. ADAMSON

We can leave it at that, surely? Such a marvelously stunning vision of womanhood wouldn’t need us to ruminate the details for her, after all.

 

PAULETTE rolls her one eye and sighs.

PAULETTE

Yes, yes, you want me to seduce him and abscond with the JEWELS. Most cunning, what an imaginative little plot. Certainly you gentlemen have been in the subterfuge racket for such a long time that a little part-time adventuress and venture capitalist like me will be able to let herself be swept up in your myriad schemes and just relax, knowing all the chess pieces have been surreptitiously put into place by the invisible masterminds who define the very word manipulation. You’re fine with this, uncle?

 

PASTOR JING

With what? The seducing? Seems okay. But, oh! FRANK! You cannot mean that you are to leave us! DR. ADAMSON, I entreat you to prevent this! You are a medical wünderkind, you must be able to stop death in its evil tracks!

 

DR. ADAMSON

I didn’t say he’s about to die this moment or even this week. Things are looking grim, but none of us will benefit from acting hysterical.

 

PASTOR JING

Take me, take my niece, send her to THE MAYOR and have her do whatever he wants, just save FRANK!!! Do it now, God!!!

 

PAULETTE

What religion are you even supposed to be a pastor of, anyway?

 

PASTOR JING

You know very well that it is the Christian religion of Big Lord God. This is what has enabled me to act as FRANK’s inside man on the Committee. But without FRANK, it will all be for nothing!!! Don’t any of you understand?

 

He beats his face violently on the floor, drawing blood.

DR. ADAMSON

That will be quite enough, PASTOR. If you can’t keep your emotions in check, I have to ask you to leave. Go do your ineffectual prayers with spiritual nonsense while I use scientific gastronomy to extend our precious leader’s life.

 

PASTOR JING struggles to his feet, crying and seeming out of balance. He dramatically puts his hands to his head and makes to stride out of the room. He is impeded by the locked door.

PASTOR JING

Oh bugger. Can you open the door for me please?

 

DR. ADAMSON sighs, unlocks the complicated locks and lets the flustered PASTOR escape. He locks the door again, turns around and looks significally at the others.

PAULETTE

Sorry, fellows. He has always been a bit of a drama queen. He caused a major scene at my mother’s ninth wedding, when some cousin yawned while saying prayers before dinner… Dear uncle screamed like a baby, jumped up on the table, cursed everyone present with God’s rage, and urinated some kind of acid fluid all over the fresh zebra meat.

 

FRANK

He is quite the showman with his religious feelings. You just gotta forgive him. In any case, don’t you think he has got kind of a point? A plan that hinges on a pretty lady seducing a silly guy… Doesn’t it strike you as exceedingly simple in the context of our organisation?

 

DR. ADAMSON

You don’t want her to go through with it anymore, sir?

 

FRANK

Oh, that’s not what I mean. We simply have no choice at this juncture – we desperately need those JEWELS.

 

PAULETTE

What, then? “We’re gonna make you do it, but we’re gonna be on record as not liking it for extra male feminist credit”?

 

PAULETTE smirks sardonically.

FRANK

Hah! You are a delight. No, actually, I’m more or less fine with using less savoury ways to do my important work. I just worry that this straightforwardness is negatively portentuous. The work influences CHRONOSPACE in both directions as well, and it wasn’t like this last time. Or any if the previous attempts. On the other hand, those attempts were duds… It is hard to say. Maybe the extent I’m trying to achieve has an inverse effect on IDEASPACE…

 

DR. ADAMSON

I honestly don’t understand what you are talking about more than two thirds of the time.

 

FRANK

Gather close, dears, and I shall try to explain.

 

DR. ADAMSON takes a seat opposite PAULETTE and they both lean close to FRANK’s face, listening intently.

FRANK

Have you ever thought about insects?

 

PAULETTE shakes her head and looks politely interested, but DR. ADAMSON’s expression becomes subtly strained. He has heard FRANK speak at length about seemingly random subjects before, and realizes that this might not be as instructive as one might think.

FRANK

Consider the proud bumblebee, the humble housefly, the gentle moth. Aren’t they so different from you and me? I think most people will agree that these strange creatures, that fly around us each day, are magnificent and interesting. Don’t you find them interesting? In any case, they surely couldn’t be more different from us. It stands to reason that they experience time and space in completely different ways than we do, to the extent that they are even complex enough to be able to have experiences. That lack of complexity itself is a big separation between us and them, of course. Now, the very idea of traveling to other worlds or dimensions has been fascinating to us all throughout history. We have made up legion stories and ideas of doing so. Space travel to different worlds, magic travel in cupboards or phone booths, spiritual travel to realms beyond the mortal world; we have really used every way we’ve been able to think of in order to let ourselves imagine places we cannot conceptualise. Let’s compare this to the daily life of the beautiful bug. For the sake of this discussion, I’m going to assume insects do have consciousness, not because I believe it to be the case, but to make it easier for us to identify with – which is the point, after all. So – picture an insect, let’s say a moth, flying about and minding its own business, following its instincts, doing what moths do during their short lives. Because evolution has taken such a strange path as to form us – all unbeknownst to the poor moth – and endow us with the ability to process materials and create artificial dwellings, our moth happens to find itself inside a house. This is a place teeming with things completely outside the knowledge and comfort zone of our fluttering hero. The big one is the various artificial sources of light that drew the moth here in the first place. Note this sentence – I’m about to make an allegory. So how do you think our moth protagonist feels? He is primed by evolution to navigate by the moon, this singular source of light that must have great personal significance for him. Now he is in a secluded space – multiple strange moons, no wind, strange textures, and so on. Don’t you think he has been transported to another world, beyond anything we could possibly imagine? Do you see how this incredible experience of magical other worlds takes place every day, all around us, at a hair’s distance? Back to the point. We are the moth in my analogy, you see. I am the flickering light enticing you to the precipice of another world. Do you understand?

 

DR. ADAMSON

I think… Perhaps.

 

PAULETTE

That was a beautiful description. So you’re offering the way to another world, is that the true nature of the project?

 

FRANK

Not exactly. Or in other words, I don’t know. Again, remember the moth.

 

FRANK pauses, his head twitching excitedly in various directions.

FRANK

I just realised. ”REMEMBER THE MOTH” will henceforth be the official motto of this operation! DOCTOR, get yourself to the t-shirt presses, but first listen to me! Remember when I said I would make an analogy? I was not just talking about the stuff about strange new worlds. I was saying that we can know as little about what may be accomplished if all goes to plan, as the moth can understand its surroundings. We are on uncharted land here, sailors. I appreciate how you all love and trust me, but I ask you to think carefully about whether you want to take the next step with me. That is all. Think on it.

 

FRANK shuts his blank eyes and seems to fall asleep. DR. ADAMSON whispers to PAULETTE.

DR. ADAMSON

Now you know the mysterious ways of our leader. His charisma is such that we love and follow him in spite, or perhaps because of, his impenetrable sayings. Although I have to say, this time he was unusually lucid. At least he was making some kind of point. You’ve heard the simpler rundown of our goal… I suspect the truth lies somewhere between that and what he just told us.

 

PAULETTE

He is a most grand thinker, I can tell. I’m… Interested in what he has in mind. I will run with FRANK for a while, but my ways are mysterious as well…

 

FRANK opens his eyes again.

FRANK

One more thing. We know from the world of the Internet that there are many sexual fetishes. Have you ever thought about people who are sexually attracted to seeds?

 

PAULETTE

Uh, hm.

 

DR. ADAMSON

What.

 

FRANK

I imagine that they get a big old bag of seeds and just stick their cock all the way to the bottom and jerk it back and forth, black and froth. Most probably they have different kinds of seed they like, with different textures on their cock. On a regular day, a regular joe might get his jollies by just putting his cock on regular hay seed, nothin’ fancy. On a rainy day, an adventurous fellow might treat his cock to a combination of various seeds I personally haven’t even heard of, like stuff from the rain forest. Just the best textures, all the best feelings for the cock. The seeds would slip inside the pee hole as well –

 

DR. ADAMSON

Ugh!

 

PAULETTE

(Giggle)

 

FRANK

– and get all bundled up inside the old foreskin as well, gentile style.

 

DR. ADAMSON

Oh god, sir, please –

 

PAULETTE

Shut up, I have to hear the end of this!

 

FRANK

I like to think that the reproductive connotations of the word seed would get the fetishist so excited, and when the sweet hot cum comes out, it would feel a bit like fertilising an egg. They might even plant their favourite seeds in a flower pot, after fertilising them. And then… And then!

 

PAULETTE

(Laughing)

Yes?

 

FRANK

Then they would fuck the flower pot also.

 

Pause as this sinks in.

FRANK

Now go, children! Go forth into the world. And use this information in any way you see fit. REMEMBER THE MOTH!

 

FRANK falls back asleep and the medical machines start whirring and beeping. The meeting is clearly concluded. Silence. PAULETTE and DR. ADAMSON get up and make for the door; she invigorated and giddy, he dumbfounded and shaking his head. They unlock the door and walk out, DR. ADAMSON locking it behind them. FRANK smiles.

FRANK

Check mate, you rampant, delusional demigod!

 

(CONT)