The screen goes black.
A VOICE FROM THE AUDIENCE: What?
ANOTHER VOICE: Power's off.
ANOTHER VOICE: Must be the blizzard. A line down somewhere.
Total darkness. Confused noise from outside the room. Yelling. Shots are fired.
A VOICE FROM THE AUDIENCE: What's going on?
VOICES, FROM OUTSIDE THE ROOM: Lockdown! Lockdown!
A VOICE FROM THE AUDIENCE: Who's in charge here?
Three more shots.
A VOICE, FROM INSIDE THE ROOM: Don't move! Quiet! Keep your heads down! Stay right where you are.
A black wool hand claps over Freddie's eyes, then a hood slips over his head and he's lifted out of his seat. "What the fuck?" he yells. "Let go!"
"You're goin' overboard," says a voice. "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!"
"It's a prison riot." The voice of Tony. "Keep calm. Don't provoke them. Hit the button on your pager. Wait--"
"What pager?" The voice of Sebert. "It's gone!"
"Wait! Wait!" shouts Freddie. "Let go! Why are you pinching me? Ow!" His voice recedes toward the back of the room.
"Freddie!" The voice of Sal, shouting. "What're you doing? He's my son! I'll kill you! Bring him back!"
"Shut up." A voice in the darkness. "A plague upon this howling! Heads on the desk, hands clasped behind your neck! Now!"
Door opening, closing.
"They're taking him hostage!" Sal yells. "Freddie!"
A shot. "They've killed him!" wails Sal.
"You're coming with us," says a voice. "On your feet. Now. You too."
Scuffling sounds. "I can't see!" Sal, panicking.
"You'll pay for this!" Tony, his voice cold and level.
Sound of roaring waves and wind, rising to a crescendo. The voices are drowned out. Enormous thunderclap. Confused shouts: "We split!" "Mercy on us!" "We split, we split, we split!"
--
Freddie lurches along in the dark, his arms held forcibly behind his back; there's someone on either side, propelling him. "You're making a mistake," he says. "Can't we talk about this? My dad's the Minister of--" A hand clamps across his mouth, outside the hood.
"Yeah, we know who your dad is. Justice Minister. A pox on him! May the red plague rid him! He's a dead duck by now."
"Dead as shit."
"Right. He's done and dusted."
Freddie tries to speak, but his mouth is blocked by cloth.
Sound of a door opening. Freddie is pushed inside. A hand on each shoulder forces him into a sitting position.
Sound of the door closing. Can he remove the hood? He can: his hands are free. Off comes the headgear.
He's in a prison cell, lit by a single bulb. He's sitting on one of the bunks, on a scratchy gray woollen blanket. The walls are decorated with amateurish cardboard palm trees, seashells, a squid. There's a box of plastic Lego blocks in the corner. An awful painting of the seashore, with some kind of horrible mermaid on it. Pinup pose, enormous tits, green seaweed hair. NYMPH O'THE SEA is printed underneath it.
What is this? It's a riot, they've killed his dad, they're holding him as a bargaining chip? In a room full of paper palm trees and Lego? What?
More importantly, has he pissed himself? Barely not, for which he's grateful. Good thing there's a toilet. He's just finished emptying his bladder into it when a musical selection begins playing through a tiny speaker: there it is, up near the sprinkler on the ceiling. Two singers, or are there three?
Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Lies, lies, lies, lies,
Suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer,
Rich, rich, rich, rich,
Strange, strange, strange, strange...
Drums, flute sounds. Cripes, thinks Freddie. The song from The Tempest. Is this some kind of weird joke? Are they going to play this thing on an endless tape loop 24/7 to drive him crazy? He's heard of that, it wrecks the mind. Are they trying to break down his morale? But why?
The music fades, the door opens, and Anne-Marie Greenland slips into the room, still in her luscious off-one-shoulder Miranda dress. She beckons him over into a corner, motions him to stoop so she can whisper into his ear.
"Sorry about this," she says. "Are you okay?"
"Yes, but--"
"Shh! This place is bugged," she whispers. "Mic's up by the lightbulb. Do what I say and you won't get hurt."
"What is this?" says Freddie. "Is it a riot? Where's my dad? Did they kill him?"
"I don't know," she says. "There's someone in here who's crazy. Crazy as a full-moon dog. Thinks he's Prospero. No, I mean really. He's re-enacting The Tempest, and you're Ferdinand."
"No shit," says Freddie. "That is fucking--"
"Shhh! What you need to do is stick to the script. I've brought your lines, they're highlighted in the playbook. Here, just do the speeches, over by the light fixture so he can hear you. Otherwise he might lose it. He's prone to tantrums."
"Are you in on this? Why would you--"
"I'm just trying to help you," says Anne-Marie.
"Like, who is this guy?" says Freddie. "Oh, thanks, by the way. I hope you won't get in trouble."
"No more than usual," says Anne-Marie. "He's a lunatic, that's the important thing right now. You need to humor him. Start here."
Freddie reads:
"My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up, My father's loss, the weakness that I feel, The wreck of all my friends, are but light to me, Might I but through my prison once a day Behold this maid. All corners else o' th'earth Let liberty make use of--space enough
Have I in such a prison."
"That's not bad," says Anne-Marie. "Maybe with more feeling. Pretend you're falling in love with me."
"But," says Freddie. "Maybe I am falling in love with you. O you wonder!"
"Well done," says Anne-Marie. "Keep it up."
"No, seriously," says Freddie. "Have you got, like, a boyfriend?"
Anne-Marie gives a small giggle. "Is that your idea of asking me whether I'm a virgin? Which is what he does in the play, right?"
"This isn't the play. So, boyfriend or not?"
"Not," she says. Level gaze. "Really not."
"So would you mind if I did fall in love with you?"
"I don't think so," says Anne-Marie.
"Because I think I really am!" He takes hold of her two arms.
"Careful," she whispers. She detaches his hands. "Now we need to get back to the lines." She moves them over to the lightbulb, clasps her hands, gazes at him with adoration, projects her voice. "Nothing natural I ever saw so noble!"
"Foolish wench!" booms a voice from the speaker. "To the most of men this is a Caliban!"
"What did I tell you?" Anne-Marie whispers. "Crazy as a coot! By the way, can you play chess?"
Justice Minister O'Nally, Heritage Minister Price, Veterans Affairs Minister Stanley, and Lonnie Gordon of Gordon Strategy find themselves being frog-marched in an undignified manner down what seems to be a corridor. They can't see where they're going: it's pitch-dark, except for some glimmering white marks on the floor.
Who's frog-marching them? They can't tell: the figures are all in black. Around them winds whistle, waves roar, and thunder crashes, so they can't hear themselves speak. What would they be saying if they could hear? Would they be cursing, pleading, bemoaning their fate? All of the above, thinks Felix, listening to the din through his headphones.
The procession turns a corner. It turns another corner. Then a third corner. Are they going back the way they came?
The storm sounds increase. Then, suddenly, silence.
There's the sound of a door opening; they are shoved through it. Dark in here too, wherever here is. Then the overhead light goes on: they're in a four-bunk jail cell, two up, tw
o down. The walls are decorated with silhouettes of cactuses, cut from brown wrapping paper.
They look at one another. Ashen-faced, shaken. "At least we're alive," says Lonnie. "We should be grateful for that!"
"Right," says Tony, rolling his eyes. Sebert Stanley tries the door: it's locked. He smooths down his small head, then looks out through the barred window that gives onto the corridor.
"It's dark out there," he says.
"I heard them shoot. They've shot Freddie," Sal says. He sits down despondently on one of the lower bunks. "I heard it. I heard the shot. It's the end of my life!" He's hugging himself, swaying the upper part of his body from side to side.
"Oh, I'm sure they haven't," says Lonnie. "Why would they do that?"
"Because they're animals!" Sal almost shouts. "They should all be in cages! They should all be fucking dead!"
"Instead of being indulged with literacy programs," says Tony in his cool voice. "For instance."
"They could have been shooting someone else," says Lonnie. "Or just, well, shooting. I think we should look on the bright side. Until we know for sure."
"Why?" says Sal. "There is no bright side! I've lost Freddie! I've lost my boy!" He buries his head in his hands. There are muffled noises that might be sobs.
"What happens next?" Sebert says to Tony in a low voice.
"We wait," says Tony. "Not that we have much choice."
"He better pull himself together. This is embarrassing," says Sebert. "Let's hope the proper authorities get here soon." He leans against the wall, examines his fingers.
"Whoever they are," says Tony. He's pacing the room, ten steps one way, ten steps the other. "If they've really shot his kid, heads will roll."
"Cheer up, Minister O'Nally," says Lonnie to Sal. "It could be worse! We're uninjured, we're in a nice warm room, we--"
"He's going to go on like that for hours," says Tony to Sebert, sotto voce. "He'll bore us to death, as usual."
"If I were redesigning the prison system," Lonnie continues, "I'd try giving the inmates more freedom, not less. They could vote on things, they could make their own decisions. Design their own menus, for instance; that could be a useful skill they could develop."
"Dream on," says Tony. "They'd poison the soup, first chance."
"Please," says Sal. "At a time like this! No more talking!"
"I was just trying to take your mind off it," says Lonnie, aggrieved.
"I'm tired," says Sal. His voice is thick, muzzy. He stretches out on the bunk.
"Funny thing," says Lonnie. "I'm drowsy too. Might as well get some rest while there's time." He lies down on the other bottom bunk. Now the two of them are fast asleep.
"Something odd about this," says Sebert. "I'm not tired at all."
"Nor I," says Tony. He checks the two sleepers. "Out cold. That being the case"--he lowers his voice--"how do you see your leadership prospects? As of now?"
"Sal's ahead in the polls," says Sebert. "Not sure how I can even the odds."
"You know I'm backing you," says Tony.
"Yeah. Thanks," says Sebert. "Appreciate it."
"And if Sal weren't in the race, it would be you, right?"
"Right. What's your point?"
"When someone gets in my way," says Tony, "I just remove them. That's how I got my own leg up. I kicked Felix Phillips out of my path, back when I was at the Makeshiweg Festival. That was the first solid rung on my ladder."
"Okay, I get that," says Sebert. "But I can't just remove Sal. There's nothing on him, no secret scandals, no leverage. Believe me, I've turned over the stones, I've looked everywhere. Nothing that can be proven, anyway. And now, if his son's been killed in this riot--think of the sympathy vote!"
"That's a key word," says Tony. "Riot."
"What are you getting at?"
"What happens in riots? People die, who knows how?"
"I don't grasp--are you saying--" Sebert is fiddling with his tiny earlobe, twisting it this way and that.
"Let me spell it out," says Tony. "A couple of hundred years ago we would take advantage of the chaos and dispose of Sal, and blame it on the rioters. Oh, and we'd have to dispose of Lonnie too: no witnesses. But today, character assassination will double the effect."
"Such as?"
"What do you want in a leader?" says Tony. "Leadership. We can describe--reluctantly, of course--how Sal went all to jelly in a crisis. Before he died. They drowned him in the toilet. A tough-on-crime Minister of Justice, at their mercy. Kind of thing they'd do."
"But he didn't," says Sebert. "Go all to jelly. Or not entirely. And they didn't drown him in the toilet."
"Suppose we were the only survivors," says Tony. "Who would know?"
"You're not honestly suggesting this?" says Sebert, alarmed.
"Consider it as a theory," says Tony, fixing Sebert with a direct stare. "A thought experiment."
"Okay, I get it, a thought experiment," says Sebert. "In the thought experiment, what about Lonnie?" He's wavering. "We can't just--"
"In the thought experiment, Lonnie would have a heart attack," says Tony. "He's overdue for one. We could use, for instance, this thought-experiment pillow. Any questions about smothering, we'd say the rioters did it. Shame, but what can you expect, considering who they are? They're impulsive, they've got no anger-management skills. It's their nature to do things like that."
"That's some thought experiment," says Sebert.
--
"Did we record all of that?" says Felix behind the main-room folding screen. "It's much better than I could have hoped for!" Tony's running true to course. He must have been pondering such a betrayal for some time, and now chance has handed him an opening. This might turn fatal.
"Clear as a bell," says 8Handz. "Video and audio both."
"Excellent," says Felix. "Time to move it along before they snuff old Lonnie with the pillow. Hit the button, play the wakeup call. What've you chosen?" He's left the choice of magic-island music up to 8Handz, as Prospero seems to have done with Ariel, though he's supplied the requested selection of MP3s.
"Metallica. 'Ride the Lightning.' It's really loud."
"That's my tricksy spirit!" says Felix.
--
"My God!" says Sal, sitting bolt upright, wide awake. "What's that infernal racket?"
"What's going on?" says Lonnie, rubbing his eyes.
"I heard a roaring," says Tony. "The rioters--they must be on the rampage again! Stand ready! Grab a pillow, hold it in front of you in case they shoot!"
"My head feels funny," says Sal. "Like, a hangover. I didn't hear a thing."
"I only heard a kind of buzzing," says Lonnie.
The door swings open. The lights in the corridor outside go on.
"Now what?" says Tony.
"It's a trap," says Sal.
Lonnie goes cautiously to the doorway, peers out. "Nobody there," he says.
--
"Now for the solemn music," says Felix to 8Handz. "Beaming from the Green Room. Is the fruit bowl still in there, with the grapes?"
"Should be. Checking," says 8Handz, peering at the screen. "Yup, I see it."
"Well done, Goblins," says Felix. "I hope the trapdoor under it is in working order."
"We double-checked it. So, for this I picked a Leonard Cohen tune," says 8Handz. " 'Bird on a Wire.' Slowed to half-time. I recorded it myself on the keyboard."
"Highly appropriate," says Felix.
"I used the cello, with a sort of Theremin backup," says 8Handz. "The woo woo sound."
"Woo woo is good," says Felix. "I'm looking forward. Hit the button."
--
"It's coming from down the hallway," says Sebert.
"Is that 'Bird on a Wire'?" says Tony.
"They're having us on," says Sal.
" 'I have tried in my way to be free,' " says Lonnie. "Maybe it's a message, from someone trying to help us. We might as well go and see. Otherwise we'll just sit in here."
"Why not?" says Sebert, nibbling
on his index finger.
"Let them go first," Tony whispers to him. "In case of bullets."
--
"They're out the door," says 8Handz. "All four of them. The video in the hall's not too good, but look, there they are. Going along the hall. Into the Green Room."
"I feel guilty about putting Lonnie through all this," says Felix, "but there's nothing to be done. Anyway, he's been keeping bad company. Did they plant the little speaker on him?"
"Yeah," says 8Handz. "It's on his collar, it's working. When you need it turned on, scroll to here and hit Return."
On the screen, they watch the four men as they approach the Green Room door. To either side of it, taped to the wall, there's a cutout--a T-rex, a space creature--ushering them in.
"Excellent dumb discourse," Felix murmurs to himself.
"What is this, a kindergarten?" says Sebert. "First palm trees, now this!"
"Who's running this place?" says Sal. "There needs to be some changes!" He feels his forehead. "Is that a dinosaur? I feel weird. I think I've got a fever." But they all go in through the doorway.
"What's this?" says Tony. "It's like a theatre green room! There's even a freaking fruit bowl! Though it's only grapes. There ought to be some crackers and cheese, on a plate."
"What lovely music!" says Lonnie. "Is that from The Magic Flute?"
"Whatever. I'm hungry," says Sal. He's swaying on his feet.
"We might as well eat as not eat," says Sebert. "Have a grape."
"Don't touch the grapes," says a small voice next to Lonnie's ear. It's a man's voice, one he almost recognizes.
"What?" says Lonnie. "Who is this?" He touches his collar, feels the little speaker. Then he stands back while the other three munch.
"These taste odd," says Sal. "We shouldn't eat them."
"We already ate them," says Sebert.
"I feel strange," says Tony. "I need to sit down."
--
"That's enough grapes," says Felix. "It seems to be working. Do you know what was in that stuff? That I injected? "
"Little of this, little of that," says 8Handz. "Eye of newt. Ketamine. Salvia. Mushrooms. Awesome stuff, if they put it together right. Quick as a twink they'll be buzzed out of their minds. It's fast-acting, but it doesn't last long. I wouldn't mind having a hit of it right now myself."
"Cue the thunder," says Felix.
--
There's a roar, a blackout. Then the lights come on: the fruit bowl has vanished. On the wall there's a terrifying shadow: a huge bird, its wings opening and closing.