MAN-LIKE MACHINES: art / enlightenment / the future


	DOUBTING THOMAS, or Thomas, Thomas – Thomas, I’m You A short screenplay by George Dalphin CHARACTERS: THOMAS BURRIS – thirty-ish. BETSY APPLETON – thirty-ish, future President of the Moon. OLD MAN – Thomas from the future. 1 INT. BEDROOM – NIGHT THOMAS and BETSY, a young couple, are asleep in their dark bedroom. The MOON is visible through the WINDOW, which suddenly is jerked open by a mostly-naked OLD MAN outside, his near-nudity masked by the shadows of night. As the OLD MAN climbs in the window, into the bedroom, his single garment – a belt with an array of little glowing lights on it – is briefly revealed, and very lightly illuminates the room. He is also carrying a small bag with similar lights on it. BETSY stirs, and the OLD MAN freezes, but she does not wake, so he carefully begins to pick up clothes from the floor and to PUT THEM ON. Once dressed, he tip-toes to their bedroom door and opens it slowly, entering the main area of their apartment. As the OLD MAN sneaks out the door and tries to close it behind himself, THOMAS stirs and slightly wakes, looking up, and stopping the OLD MAN from completely shutting the door behind himself. 2 INT. APARTMENT MAIN AREA – NIGHT The OLD MAN eyes the door to the bedroom for a long moment, then does a quick scan of the apartment around him. He opens a little latch on the bag he has with him, turning off one of the lights on it, then opens it and takes out a little futuristic- and yet basic-looking flashlight, which he shines around the apartment as he begins to skulk around. The OLD MAN scans the books on the shelves, picking one or two out and looking through them with brief grins, but then putting them back. He sifts through a box of mixtapes. Next he inspects the CDs and DVDs, but does not take anything out. He picks up Betsy’s purse and sifts through it with some interest, opens her wallet and pulls out some cash and looks at her cards but puts them back. HERCULES B, Thomas and Betsy’s cat, comes up and sniffs the OLD MAN and then nuzzles against him. The OLD MAN pets HERCULES B’s face. 3 INT. BEDROOM – NIGHT THOMAS, half-awake and listening groggily to the world around him, hears another rustle from main room. BETSY, lying next to him, suddenly opens her eyes and looks right at THOMAS. BETSY That’s the third thing I’ve heard that I’m pretty sure isn’t Hercules B. THOMAS I don’t want to believe it – but I vaguely remember being awakened by, like, a lumbering figure of some sort. BETSY Do you have to go to the bathroom? She grins, trying to be cute about her attempt to get him to check it out. THOMAS Not whatsoever. THOMAS grins back, not really concerned yet. BETSY What if someone is actually in our apartment right now? Some ‘lumbering figure’ ... 2 INT. APARTMENT MAIN AREA – NIGHT The OLD MAN drops something in the kitchen, making a slight crash sound. 3 INT. BEDROOM – NIGHT THOMAS and BETSY stare wide-eyed at each other in response to the sound. THOMAS I could pee, all of a sudden. I suppose. I’ll go pee. 4 INT. APARTMENT MAIN AREA – NIGHT Looking through Thomas’s cluttered desk, he takes some sheets of jotted notes and rips pages from books with writing on them and then takes all of Thomas’s cards out of his wallet and puts them in his bag. Then, at the sound of a creak, he freezes where he is standing and turns off the flashlight, looking frozen over at the door to the bedroom… ...from which THOMAS emerges hesitantly in a pair of pants, looking around and rubbing his eyes to wake them. THOMAS Hello? Herc? (beat) No … intruders? Show and explain yourself, and I promise I will show you some degree of mercy … THOMAS sees HERCULES B and points to him. THOMAS Hercules B, it would be you. He goes over and pets HERCULES B, and while doing so idly looks around the apartment, which is when he notices with adrenaline that the DOOR TO THE BATHROOM IS CLOSED, and the light is on. THOMAS Oh my god. Oh shit. Oh shit, Hercules. THOMAS, staying the whole time so that he faces the bathroom, moves across the apartment to the kitchen, where he gets his gun from a drawer. He very slowly moves from the kitchen to the bathroom door, and then opens it… …revealing the OLD MAN wearing Thomas’s clothes, cowering in careful quietness in the small bathroom. The OLD MAN slightly hisses in surprise when THOMAS opens the door quickly upon him. THOMAS Mother of Jesus! Ahhh!!! THOMAS points the gun at the OLD MAN at first, but then holds it a little looser as the situation slowly seeps back into his consciousness around the adrenaline. OLD MAN It’s okay. Thomas, Thomas … Thomas, I’m you. THOMAS grins for just a split second, and then twitches between crazed fear and a little corner of a smile, with confusion in his eyes. He points the gun straight at the OLD MAN. OLD MAN Thomas, I’m you from the future. THOMAS Hold still, Old Man. Gimme a second with this. You break into my apartment and start giving crazy explanations – you can agree that it’s within my right to take a moment with this gun pointed right at you while I sort of wake up and get my bearings and figure out what’s really … what … here, okay? Can we just take a second here? The OLD MAN, sizing up THOMAS’s state during the course of his rant, takes the gun right out of Thomas’s hand without much of a struggle. Only just as it is leaving his fingers do they realize they’ve lost the gun, and then THOMAS grapples loosely for it with dismay. THOMAS Oh geez – fucking, I can’t believe I did … I just let you do that. The OLD MAN points the gun at THOMAS’s chest and THOMAS begins to back out of the bathroom slowly. THOMAS Don’t kill me, man – you’ll never be born. THOMAS laughs at his own absurdity at making jokes at a time like this, with a whimper. OLD MAN Look – sit down. Calm down. And listen to me for a second here. Because I really am you from the future. THOMAS sits down on the couch with his hands up. THOMAS Hey man, you’ve got the gun now, so your version’s canon. OLD MAN Look, I’m not going to shoot you, so how about I don’t even aim it at you, and neither of us aim it at each other, but instead … we talk? The OLD MAN sets the gun down on the kitchen counter and pulls a loose chair up in front of THOMAS on the couch. He sits backwards in the chair and stares at THOMAS. THOMAS I see you have a time-travel belt, then? Is that your … time travel bag? And you’re wearing my clothes. But those aren’t my clothes that have lasted forty years and were brought from the future, genius – those are my clothes from my floor today. I looked for those pants to put on when I came out here. That’s where they are. You put on my pants. THOMAS then laughs softly to himself in realization. THOMAS Nice thinking, putting on my clothes to make me believe you’re me from the future. That is at least level-two insane planning. I’m mildly impressed. The OLD MAN, getting more and more impatient with Thomas’ disbelief, pulls up the sleeve of the shirt he borrowed from Thomas, revealing a small birthmark. At first, THOMAS is quieted with confusion, then shock, then disbelief, then being creeped out. THOMAS Who are you? How do you know me? How did you know about my birthmark? THOMAS eyes the kitchen, where the gun is, then eyes the OLD MAN in front of him. BETSY appears at the bedroom doorway, peering around the edge as little as she can. BETSY Thomas? Is everything okay? OLD MAN Everything’s okay, Betsy. Go back to sleep. THOMAS and BETSY look at each other with shock, then at the OLD MAN. THOMAS He says he’s me from the future. BETSY And he has your birthmark! I saw that! That’s crazy! THOMAS He’s not me from the future, Bets. OLD MAN What do I have to do to convince you? Do I have to show you my balls? BETSY He knows about your balls! How could he know that? That’s insane! (beat) Thomas, he … he must be telling the truth. Look at that belt he’s wearing. THOMAS Yeah, he claims it’s his time travel belt. And that’s his time travel bag, I think. BETSY He’s got some of your clothes on, too! How nuts! THOMAS I’m pretty sure he put those on after climbing in our window, not that he still owns these same clothes and they came with him from the future. (beat) Were you naked when you arrived? Did you arrive here naked? (beat) Can clothes really not travel through time with you? Is this Terminator time-travel rules, then? OLD MAN Partially, if you really want to know. With this thing I’ve got, yeah, clothes can’t go with you. I could have brought some in the bag, but I needed room. THOMAS For our stuff? BETSY Some of it would technically be his, if he’s you. The OLD MAN facially agrees with this, and shrugs. THOMAS laughs. OLD MAN But, no – for this. The OLD MAN opens his bag and removes a crazy light-emitting head-piece of some sort, showing it in his hands to Thomas and Betsy. OLD MAN I need you, Thomas, to do me a favor. The future needs you to … do me a favor. BETSY What is that? The OLD MAN looks over at BETSY and indicates her with a nod. OLD MAN But I can’t tell you about it in front of her. She needs to leave the room or something. BETSY frowns at this and looks over at THOMAS, waiting to hear his response. THOMAS Why can’t she be here? OLD MAN You’re being visited by a future version of yourself – I’m you from the future, man! Listen to yourself … by listening to me! BETSY throws up her hands and heads over to the bedroom door. BETSY Will the bedroom suit you, if I just go back in the bedroom? I don’t have to leave the apartment, do I? OLD MAN It would be best if you left the apartment. THOMAS Look, man, me or not, this is our apartment. You can’t climb in here and tell us to get out. The bedroom will be enough space. You can whisper your secrets if need be. OLD MAN Alright. But this is important – you can’t know the things I am about to tell him. History is in the balance. BETSY I’ll put on headphones. But if you need me, Thomas, scream at the top of your lungs. BETSY creeps back into the bedroom with a suspicious glance over her shoulder at the last moment. THOMAS [whispering] You’re obviously not me. OLD MAN [whispering] Stop being obstinate and just listen to me for a second, okay? I’m you, or at least I was you … a hundred and eleven years ago. The OLD MAN eyes THOMAS dramatically for a moment, hoping to get some sort of recognition. THOMAS No more … high-drama … pausing, Old Man. Gimme your spiel. OLD MAN A hundred and eleven years from now … look, things are just different. Things have changed, okay? I know you may have your eye on various things you’re thinking of doing with your life right now, but let me tell you – none of it happens. You go completely off course at one point, and … well … The OLD MAN seems exasperated even recalling the events. THOMAS What happens, when? OLD MAN That doesn’t matter to me. I’m not trying to change anything. You see, that’s the other part of the way this time belt works. This is the real past, or at least it’s a real past, but anything I do here – my very presence and talking to you and you learning about time travel and all such stuff – won’t change a thing in my time. In fact, when I return to my time – and I’m the only one who can, so don’t get any ideas about trying to steal this thing – but when I return to my time, it’ll be just a couple seconds after I left. Just enough time to build the memories of my experience into my brain. Because what’s happening now … it’s difficult to explain. THOMAS It’s Two-thousand-Nine. OLD MAN I know what time it is! I came here specifically. THOMAS Yeah, why here and now? Why wait a hundred and eleven years and then come back to today? Not that I believe your insane story. But I enjoy it for the moment, until I’m done and get you to leave or call the cops. OLD MAN Any day this year or so would have worked, to be honest. Today was the first day in a window of time when the Earth was in pretty much the same spot in its revolution around the sun as I was at the time. That’s a significant part of the calculation. THOMAS Interesting. And now – you’re me? I turn into you? OLD MAN You would have if I had never appeared from the future today. The moment I appeared in your time, your reality veered from mine. So in a sense, I’m not actually you. I’m the you that wasn’t visited in this manner. You’re the me that was visited by himself in the future and will no doubt live a completely different life than I have. And let me tell you – go for it. If you don’t look like this by sixty, you’re doing alright. But really there’s no way to know how this will affect your timeline. THOMAS Which you don’t give a shit about because it doesn’t mean anything to yours. You can just play around in the past and be king and stuff. The OLD MAN shrugs. OLD MAN If I had the time to dick around. I’m not here to mess with your time. I wish you all the best. I gotta have some empathy for you – you’re me. I’m you. You know me. I’m not an asshole. THOMAS You do seem sketchier than I am now. And so you’re how old? You don’t even look sixty. OLD MAN Longevity; nobody dies anymore. THOMAS Nobody dies!? OLD MAN Not from natural causes. There’s still accidents and murder, but … far less, when the culture is not one of impending death. No one’s died naturally in forty, fifty years. THOMAS See, I was actually beginning to believe you when you were going into the details of time travel and multidimensionality and shit, but … I think now you should leave. You’re upsetting my girlfriend. OLD MAN Please, Thomas, give me one more minute. It’s her that this is about … THOMAS gets a serious look on his face. THOMAS What are you talking about? Have you been stalking us or something? Who are you? OLD MAN I’m Thomas Eric Burris, born Nineteen-Seventy-Eight to Dwight and Nadine Burris in Wilmington, Delaware. Good friend to James Randolph and Justin Hearst. Umm … what else would you remember? Give me something only I know … THOMAS I’m not gonna continue enabling this conversation, man – you gotta go. THOMAS gets up casually and begins to walk past the OLD MAN, in the direction of the kitchen. OLD MAN [whispering furiously] She’s President of the Moon! She’s President of the Moon, and I need you to just do me a quick favor, and it will change history and make me rich and important! Don’t you want that for yourself? After all the random mistakes I’ve made that I could never have seen coming – don’t you want this for yourself? You haven’t even listened to what I need you to do! THOMAS picks up the gun from the counter and does not aim it at the OLD MAN, but does bounce his arm a bit with the weight of it as he steps back out toward the OLD MAN in the chair. THOMAS Just leave, man. President of the Moon? Okay, what’s two times an iguana? OLD MAN Fruit. BETSY pokes her head out the bedroom doorway. BETSY Thomas – everything going okay? Are you okay? THOMAS is frozen by the OLD MAN’s response, and after a moment of weirdness, he finally, without looking away from the OLD MAN, replies. THOMAS Everything’s cool, Bets. We still need just a minute. BETSY, after a brief hesitation after THOMAS’s weird moment, ducks back into the bedroom and shuts the door. INT. BEDROOM – NIGHT BETSY sits on the bed with a frustrated looseness. BETSY [whispering] There’s no way. She lights a cigarette and pulls an ashtray close. BETSY He would travel back in time and visit himself. She grins to herself after thinking about that for a moment. BETSY I’m gonna tell him that. She smokes for a second in silent thought, then shakes her head and exhales smoke. BETSY How could he have known about Thomas’s balls? Is that something you just say – “Am I gonna have to show you my balls?” It isn’t. Is it? INT. APARTMENT MAIN AREA – NIGHT THOMAS stands against the wall, slightly leaning against it, the gun still in his other hand, staring down in thought. He looks back up at the OLD MAN and gestures with the gun (obviously not thinking about it as a gun at the moment). THOMAS Are you seriously me from the future? How can that work? OLD MAN I’m you, from the future. It works by going back, rather than to my actual past, which would be just barely impossible, instead to a moment a hair’s breadth temporally lateral to my actual past, just where there’s me with a time device from the future there as well as what I actually experienced, and then wherever that takes it. And then when I return, I just return to my old future, the moment I left. THOMAS interrupts the old man with stuttered shouts, holding his hand to his head as he briefly overloads. THOMAS Pretend I didn’t ask you, okay – fruit means nothing – would you just leave!? – you’re not psychic and you’re not from the future – how can you do this to me now!? OLD MAN (cont’d) It’s like a time tether, so you don’t get lost in the branches. They tried that kind of time travel for a while, but it was a clusterfuck – they just wouldn’t come back. Supposedly lost in the web of alternate futures they caused simply by appearing in the past. Lifetimes spent trying to undo all that one’s done in a series of just-barely-before-the-last-time attempts to change everything back. You can imagine. But anyway – that’s not a problem now that it works. It’s more like just visiting your past. For all it affects me, for instance, this kind of trip would most of the time be no different than a virtual experience in a sensorium of some sort. But I … got this bag. THOMAS Oh, right, your time bag! For god’s sake – get out of our apartment! OLD MAN Okay, let me just put it right out there. This will record your full mental experience, and I need you to wear it for the next two days. The OLD MAN hands the head device to THOMAS, who takes it reluctantly. THOMAS It records … my full experience? Bullshit. How? OLD MAN Motherfucker, I’m from the future. This thing brought me here through time! THOMAS reluctantly tries to balance it atop his head. THOMAS Okay, so … how exactly am I supposed to explain this thing on my head? You want to record two days of people asking me about the thing on my head and acting weird around me? OLD MAN You wear a goddamn hat! THOMAS throws the hat-device onto the floor. THOMAS I’m not wearing your peep-helmet! The OLD MAN picks it up with a look of only slight frustration. OLD MAN You’d be hard-pressed to damage this, luckily for you, without a very focused explosive of some kind. THOMAS waves the gun around as he gesticulates wildly. THOMAS What, like this gun? Do I have to shoot your glowing hat to get you to leave? Is that where I store my vital essence in the future? (beat) What exactly is it you want to record over the next couple of days? What, according to you, happens to her, or to me? Though - I clearly live … OLD MAN Nothing that will seem traumatic or significant in any way to either of you at the time. But a hundred and eleven years from now, in Twenty-One Twenty-One … I’m sure you can imagine … memes evolve … certain things, activities, or habits of people in your period of history may have become so distant from where you are now as a society as to have become … taboo. (beat) Quite … taboo. THOMAS Like what are we talking about here? The OLD MAN frowns and shakes his head, waves the question away with his hand. THOMAS No, what is it that we do today that’s – what, like littering or something? Or is it something … like, something sexual? THOMAS struggles through asking the weird old man if it is something sexual, but the OLD MAN just shakes his head. OLD MAN It’s neither of those. (beat) It doesn’t matter what it is. It just matters that I get it on tape … THOMAS Because she’s President of the Moon, and … and what, you want to ruin her or something? Do she and I become political enemies in the future in some way? Are you, I should ask, are we … married? OLD MAN You and she fizzle out over just a little more than two years. THOMAS Nice. That’s really nice to hear, old man from the future … (beat) … slash … creepy old man who’s, like, been stalking me and obsessing over details like recreating my birthmark, and … or … did you, like, get ahold of my medical records at some point, or something? Is that how you know … (beat) No, okay, fuck, you’re me from the future. And Betsy and I fizzle out? That’s so sad. OLD MAN Yeah, you never really see each other again after that. But you go on to have a series of girlfriends after that, of course, all of whom are fabulous people as well. THOMAS eyes the OLD MAN. THOMAS And so you, me, now, in your time, you’re, like, deeply in love? The OLD MAN gives THOMAS a long silent facial expression, then nods… OLD MAN I … love … I am not in love … (beat) Look, I’m in love with the significance of moments in human history and the ability to make the difference between one future and another and I, you, are/am in that position right now, as you and I speak. Because once I return to my time with that recording of you and her and – ahem – you know … THOMAS shakes his head to express that he does not know. OLD MAN … I will use it to historically ruin her. THOMAS So in your time, as we speak, she’s President of the Moon. OLD MAN And it’s important that she be President, that she have been President. But now it’s important that she fall. I can’t begin to disturb you with the complicated interplanetary-political details. You’ve got to trust yourself! (beat) She’s been listening to us this whole time. Damn it. I got too loud again. THOMAS What do you mean, ‘again’? BETSY peaks her head around the doorframe and steps cautiously out into the room, seeing that now THOMAS is standing over the OLD MAN, and has the gun. BETSY Thomas – you have your gun out … what’s going on? OLD MAN Nothing. It won’t work. I knew she was listening. Forget it. If you’ll pardon me. Your timeline has become corrupted for my purposes. I’m just gonna have to try again. My bag, please, Thomas? The OLD MAN starts to get up but THOMAS thrusts the gun back up at him, startling him. THOMAS No, you sit down, Old Me. I’m just gonna see what you’ve got in this bag to make sure you’re not stealing from your past self whose timeline won’t matter to yours … THOMAS puts his hand into the bag and begins to push it open and look into it, to which the OLD MAN protests, but over which THOMAS continues to speak. OLD MAN No! That’s mine! It will break your hand off into a baby dimension – don’t do it! No! Damn it – don’t – don’t reach in there. Stop! THOMAS (cont’d) … which wouldn’t really be a bad idea in a funny way, when I think about it, if it didn’t matter because you wouldn’t have lost money in your past, but in a weird way identity-wise it would be your money and – aha! Yes, here we go – would you look at that! Money! And … credit cards. And … cigarettes? Okay … OLD MAN They’re prohibitively illegal in my time … come on, man – they’re practically free these days, right? THOMAS No, you don’t get to take any of my stuff. You’ve already … clearly ruined my life, somehow. Bets, he says that after like two years, we fizzle out. So … he’s not me, and he can fuck off and forget about leaving with his fancy time bag. OLD MAN Give me that bag! THOMAS No. You leave without it, through the door or through the window, or through time. OLD MAN Give it to me! THOMAS Never. OLD MAN Never doesn’t exist. The OLD MAN suddenly grabs for the bag and grabs onto it, and he and THOMAS grapple with the bag together, pulling each other back and forth, while simultaneously grappling with the gun in THOMAS’s other hand … … until suddenly the OLD MAN vanishes from THOMAS’s grip, and the gun goes off, firing into the ceiling. THOMAS stumbles back for a moment, looking to either side for the OLD MAN. THOMAS He’s gone! At that, BETSY shrieks. BETSY He must have gone back to his time! He must have had some kind of safety mechanism in case he got in a bind, or something. THOMAS Or maybe he had it timed to take him back at a certain time, or something, yeah. Crazy. (beat) Is his bag still here? BETSY grabs the time bag from the floor with a hesitant grin. She looks inside, then pulls out some of THOMAS’s credit cards. BETSY Was he stealing from us? THOMAS Let me have a look at that thing. Look at those lights. THOMAS reaches for the bag, but BETSY holds onto it and continues removing items of theirs from it. BETSY Hang on, I’m checking it out right now. I’m getting all your things out. Do you think the bag will go back to the future too? Or is it just stuck here? We should put something in it, in case it goes back all of a sudden in the next few moments! Quick! THOMAS Like what, what do you want to send to an alternate future where you’re President of the Moon? BETSY I’m President of the Moon? Was this some kind of urgent Moon mission that you just didn’t believe yourself enough to help yourself do in the future? Did you just fuck us? THOMAS No – you saw the guy, he was a mess! He was a joke! He was not from the future. BETSY But he disappeared! He disappeared right while you were fighting him! THOMAS Yeah, I don’t know what the guy pulled there – but he was … wily and … squirrely and … he must have just slipped really fast out of my grip and then, like, slipped past you and back out the window or something without us noticing, or something. BETSY Yeah right. You saw that shit. He was too from the future. What was it he wanted you to do? THOMAS He didn’t want you to know. BETSY Are you really not gonna tell me the thing the crazy old man didn’t want me to know? Or is it because it was some secret mission he gave you from the future that … are you actually working on his mission now and just can’t let me in on it!? Oh my god – is that what this is? Can you just not tell me, but you do have some kind of mission from the future and I’m the President of the Moon? You don’t have to tell me! I mean … I don’t know – if it matters for the mission or something, that I not know … BETSY works herself up quickly into a passionate excitement. THOMAS No … but if we decide to believe the disappearing burglar, then we know that people start living forever within our lifetimes, and that time travel ends up being possible in what seems like a potentially really fun manner, and you have the potential to be President of the Moon, and that hopefully that doesn’t demand the same circumstances as the ones that turn me into such a weird, sketchy old dick who looks nothing like me. THOMAS tries to embrace BETSY during the course of his brief monologue, but she slows his approach. BETSY So what was it that I couldn’t hear exactly? THOMAS is quiet for a moment. THOMAS You’re dead. (beat) In the future. … He was from a hundred and eleven years in the future, so, I mean, who knows what that means really – you could still live to be like a hundred a twenty and … but either way, he just … he wanted me to use that device there to secretly record being with you so that he could … you know, re-experience it somehow. I guess that device records your full sensory experience somehow. BETSY breaks away from THOMAS’s embrace and picks up the little head device and looks at it with confusion for a moment, then she looks up at THOMAS with the beginnings of tears in her eyes and a little smile. BETSY That’s so fucking romantic. It’s, like, disgusting. (beat) Let’s do it! Let’s record our life over the next couple of days, and then put it in the bag. Maybe he’ll get it somehow. Maybe the bag will recognize that we’ve done what he wanted us to do. Awww. (beat) It must have been so hard to see me for him, all young and beautiful again. It’s so romantic. We should record some from my perspective too – wouldn’t that be even more romantic somehow? THOMAS I don’t really think it’s a good idea. I don’t know about that thing. I don’t trust it, and I don’t trust that dude. BETSY But Thomas that was you! I’m gonna wear it first, okay? And then you can wear it for a couple of days after me, and then we’ll put it back in the bag and just see what happens. BETSY puts the device on her head and goes to the mirror. She frowns at it. BETSY How does it work? THOMAS He didn’t get a chance to show me, and I wouldn’t fuck with it, because it obviously does shit with your brain or something, somehow. Seriously, baby – take it off. It makes me nervous. BETSY Look – I care about you, and I’m touched by the alternate future-you’s gesture to the two of us even if you aren’t … THOMAS Betsy, come on, seriously – you’re playing with alternate-reality interplanetary-body politics that you can’t understand … FADE OUT on MOON out window.