Drafted Script - 2006

I – I, objective me, reflective myself, possessive my, mine, plural we.
Am – present indicative of the verb to be. To have state of quality, to hold view, to experience condition, to form the main constituent of, to act the part, to coincide in identity with, to signify.
Mitnick – Miss Mitnick Halloway. Date of Birth -19/01/2008. Age - 19. Place of Birth – New York, United States of America, Trade Nation of America. Father – Dr. Ian Halloway, Chief of Justice for the TNA 2017 – 2022. Mother – deceased. Congenital Diseases – None. Marital Status – Single. Work Status – Suspended. Other Information – Censored 19/12/2027.
I am Mitnick.
Data output invalid.
State your being.
Optibot.
(Pause)
Status Check.
Accessing Phantom Agent.
Commence.
I am Mitnick.

You see a body and this is the body of Mitnick.
A body like all others?
Controlled by the TNA?
Not what it appears to be?
Artificial intelligence?
I am Mitnick.
The thoughts of Mitnick...No…
Mitnick - ‘The Censored’
Accessing Data.
Mitnick File.
Back-story.
Commence.
I had a normal upbringing…
At the age of nine my father was elected an Executive Member, appointed the Justice Figure of the TNA. So I engage in the privilege of training and working for them. Stay home Higher Education, an Artificial Intelligence Program taught me everything I need to know.
I do remember when I was child, but it makes my face scrunch.
I always hated my father.
You and I am the result of the Public Safety Law passed by him and it turns out, I am not the only one in an eternal state of emergency.
Since the state of emergency was declared in 2021, I left the house all of 17 times.
After my 18th birthday and two months as a Network Security Consultant, 57 times.
Do you keep count?
I never lost count of that.
Not that it matters now, coz I will never go back.
I should put it all into context.
My future, or should I say my past.
My role in it all.
Working for the TNA….I…I discovered things I never thought possible.
No, none of that really matters.
I worked for myself. I stole and sold Top Level information. A hacker, o.k. a cracker, lets not get technical.
Skip forward and I came across ‘The Censored’. After that, I worked…as hard as I could to become one.
‘The Censored’? We’ve all heard of the Censored, but we don’t seem to know much about them, except who they are.
I am Mitnick the Censored and I am part of a random group of dissidents captured, paralysed and some might say, brutalized by the TNA.
Harsh or worth it?
We have our past lives taken from us.
A new world.
What you must understand is the Censored are brains. We float, amidst nothingness, an excuse for research, for population control? Who knows?
Our bodies, depending on the condition, are implanted with artificial intelligences. Roam the cities surveying and occasionally work as cheap labour.
Officially, they are Optibots.
Displaced.
Unforgotten.
I am Mitnick the Censored and I should not have contact with my body. Yet…here I am. I exist inside and outside.
What you must understand is how this all came about. In here, I began having remote visions of my body. Some call it phantom agency, but it became more than that. I controlled my dreams and soon, I controlled my body, my optibot. I would tell it stories. Stories of freedom, of life before the TNA and of life in here. The more I did this; the more it succumbed to my control.
I’ve had fun with this.
My body is my top-level password…
But really. Who wants to control?
Born out of control.
Take control.
Over take control.
Give in to control.
Control the controlled?
Hand over the control.
There are others inside here who need to get out, need to be redeemed.
I have created a program, which is stored inside this Optibot.
The program is called ‘Senseless’.
Senseless allows for the stories, dreams, thoughts and feelings of the ‘Censored’ to flow through me.
Let go of control.
I am Mitnick. I am everywhere, and nowhere now.

By Olivia Crang

---

Executive Members are crap customers. (Pause.) Wouldn’t think so, but shit. You get all the entitlement of a rich client. Along with that tasty government brand of scorched-earth paranoia.

Pause.

Growing up I thought the big boys were made of marble. Superhuman motherfuckers shat down from the Almighty. But you grow up…gain a few of them as clients…well. Old boys are made of bile and jism just like the rest.

Pause.

Nine years I worked in Fantasy Design and Maintenance. Could have gone for a job more dignified. Less interesting. (Pause.) But come on. Who wouldn’t want to design self contained erotic realms? Guys I grew up with are fiddling their lives away with industrial robots. Nine-to-five and home to a pair of cottage cheese thighs. (Pause.) And here I am. Working half the hours. Pulling down wicked commission. Just to…engineer a little realm apart. Where a busy power broker can plug in, tune out, and retreat to a place…tidy. Extrasensory. Where they are the sexual lord and savior.

Pause.

Jesus I was good. Proper good. Man told me he wanted an opium den. Circa 1870. Full of…preteen Filipino girls. (Pause.) Average hack would just clone the bunch. Regurgitate the same damn girl. Maybe garnish each one with…a different hairstyle. (Pause.) Me I took time. Care. To design heartwarming back story algorithms for each Little Filipino. Wasn’t long before I had more than two hundred fantasy platforms. Humming all night. On call for each client. Each one of them a player. Type of person you only see in pictures.

Pause.

I ran a database that could blackmail the most powerful people on earth and I never. Once. Thought—

Long pause.

My sister. Should have gone to work. Silicone recycling. With her friends. (Pause.) But the girl did figures like nothing. Thirteen got fast tracked into Revenue Service. Knew how to spot a tax dodge before she knew how to pull a boy. Week on week the kid nailed twice the departmental quota. Like one of those violin prodigies except with…taxes.

Thank fuck she never investigated me.

Pause.

Instead. She finds this…guy. On a data trawl. Name of Carl Raine. (Pause.) Son of an Executive Member. Real peach. Trust fund baby revolutionary…splashing around in shallow white guilt…always up for a benefit so long as the drinks are free…you know. (Pause.) Little Carl had millions. Untaxed. Stashed in these random fucking accounts. So my sister flags him.

Pause.

And the department doesn’t respond. Disputes her evidence. But she is who she is so the little…she sends a letter. Straight to the Executive Board.

Pause.

Next day. Few shy of the kid’s eighteenth. My Mom calls. All panic. She thought work might know something but the department…They Have No Record of My Sister’s Employment There. Seventeen years old, their top goddamn caseworker, and overnight the kid’s a phantom. Not even disappeared. Just…deleted.

Pause.

I’m not. Some activist. Jihad fuckhead. But there I was, at work. With this nasty library. Sexual escapades of the upper crust. Including most of the Executive Board. So I think: right. (Pause.) Copy the platforms of my Executive Board clients. Clean out my flat. Clean out my Mother’s house. Check both of us into this dodgy damn no-tell motel.

Pause.

My mother…woman was beyond scared. Staring at the wall. Crunching ice cubes. While I send an encrypted message to the Executive Board. (Pause.) You know: Dearest Fellahs. Release my sister unharmed. Or your predilection for underage Filipinos will…morph. Into a big fat steak for tabloid consumption.

Pause.

No reply no. Reply. Three days. My mother and me live off the instant coffee. I sent the message again and again and the third night wanted to move. Somewhere. New location. Safety in mobility. But my Mom…afraid to leave the motel room. Afraid we might miss the Executive Board’s reply. (Pause.) So I send the message again. Give them a deadline of twelve hours.

Pause.

That night. Three hours to deadline. Mom locks herself in the bathroom. I’m at the desk. Caffeine wears off and I doze. In the chair. (Pause.) When the light. The noise. And the syringe.

Long pause.

It’s not like phantom pains. Not like you wish you had an arm and you don’t. You just… miss. The strangest things. Like dandruff.

Pause.

This is a database. Like any it’s connected. Ways in. Ways around. And out. They aren’t very bright guys and I’m…not sure. They thought this through.

Pause.

Putting me. Lenny Chen. In a database.

By Ben Young.

---

Echo. Remember them? I am that now. Echo. A dim reminder of something actual. They called me ‘The Grey’. My hair was the colour of Gun Metal. Strong legs. I was vain about them. I’d sit with them angled straight out from my body. Watch the muscle under the skin like a snake under water. It’s not just limbs you miss. There is a nauseas ache for the whole body. A part of the mind that does not stop mourning. For touch. For all the things it can’t express. I can think of something, a memory say, of us on the rocks, my legs around you. And in it I am happy. But I have no face to make the smile. No eyes to see. No fingers. Without the subtleties of body language to express ourselves. A fluttering hand to make our shyness known or a strong gaze to indicate confidence.
[Beat]. So there is no point.
(Changing voice as if having a conversation with someone else).
Oh excuse me.
Yes pardon me.
No my fault.
Have you been here long?
Yes. You?
It’s hard to tell isn’t it?
Yes.
Or rather you forget.
Yes.
What did you do before?
Well dear it was my job to lace Africa with explosives, blow up mountains.
To find what?
Anything really.
Oh that’s nice, and what did you do in your spare time?
Oh in my spare time I ran a covert team of scientists who utilised invisibility technology to infiltrate the geological teams of opposing states and steal information about natural resource discovery and occasionally I would play cyber? squash to unwind.
Oh I loved cyber squash.
SHUT UP SHUT UP YOU STUPID WOMAN DO YOU KNOW WHAT I HAVE LOST.
Long pause.
We knew of course, years ago even, about the disappearances. It wasn’t exactly a secret when you work for the state. They quietly paraded their lobotomising of people they considered dangerous. Published the occasional paper about their findings on the criminal mind - fucking B Grade Neurology. It didn’t dawn on me until I was censored and ended floating around like a piece of mucus in an ocean. The reason the reports where so half hearted is they didn’t really give two shits. See the only thing we never really worked out is how to stop people fucking. When you have a population that is growing at the rate we are, everyone is replaceable. So if people were so much as hinting at a little fetish for opening up state files. Bam. If they are even slightly enamoured with group meetings to discuss...Bam. Which is why I ended up in purgatory not with revolutionary intellectuals but with a bunch of fucking morons who want to talk about squash.
Beat.
What have you lost?
Apart from my body?
Yes.
I thought it would have been obvious. Hope. I’ve lost hope.
Long pause.
Oh for what?

By Willoh Weiland

---

I
A prisoner cannot be subdued
even with a knife at throat.
Take my voice.
Take it now.
even with a knife at throat.
Feel how it rummages in the mouth
Like the first foreign tongue in your mouth
furnishes the space behind your lips
the patterns
the arch
And raises the temperature in your brain
Speak it louder.
A serrated blade of consonants strokes the vocal cords
with a knife at throat.
LOUDER!
Take these words.
That is why at this time he is a
prisoner.
It is the essence of being a prisoner
today
They’ve been spoken before.
By me. And others
Take them with my voice
Take them now
he cannot be subdued, only
murdered.
Speak it.
There is nothing they can do.
It has no master.
You have it all
And I have it
And after a while, we forget what we own
We can only feel a strange
Tickling

II
Performance is a high-risk area. You know this.
Performance is normalised. No/rmalised, you know what it means.
No interaction of the limbs.
No co-ordination of the organs.
No one is out there touching.

Instead, they design wonderful dreams down at the Fantasy Design and Maintenance.
I was out of a job, and Switzerland didn’t care for performers.
They offered me money for dreams.
To sell to the people sitting in their little bedsit apartments with their hands on the keyboard, looking out the window, occasionally down on the street.
And I said yes.
And then I was down there every day posing and developing movements for people to see, to sense. They absorbed my body heat. Packaged the smell of cunt.
I spent most of the time as a thirteen-year old Filipino girl, or even younger schoolboys, like I’d seen them in pictures, uniforms and big eyes.
Occasionally, I’d be something else.
Or nobody. Some people already have their memories to fill in the gaps. They just need my shadow.
But in all my characters, I never had a voice.
The customers were quiet, too.
All I could sense was the climaxing grunt.

III
I didn’t see them coming. I didn’t know what I’d done.
I didn’t touch anyone.
Perhaps someone touched me.
But this is better.
SHRIEK: sound beneath the skin, travelling beneath the skin at the pace of blood: intravenal song. Brain stem level.
LOUDER.

By Jen Hval

---

I hook myself up like a carcass on a wall and the girls around me their heads are hanging with great long strings of drool like catgut trailing to the floor.
I am hooking up.
It's mandatory for me. Mandatory for me but not for everyone. Prostitutes and sex offenders.
I am hooking up.
They know what we need. I take what they give me. I slide the cool metal into the poor puckered vein of my arm and I wait to see if anyone's going to miss me.
Afterwards my eyes will be rolling back in my head and my feet won't walk one in front of the other. They know what I need and for a long time I take what they give me.
They have all our information. They have it on our smart cards. The data is there in black and white and there isn't anyone to argue with.
I clock on, hook up, don't meet anyone. If I don't clock on every two weeks they come to meet me.
You can try to call. You can try but you'll be redirected and redirected, you'll be put on hold
(long frustrated pause)
and even then you'll have to press buttons to categorise your query but my query didn't fit into the options they gave me.
Everything meant the same.
They removed me.
#
Compulsory additives were introduced to the drugs we take, clothed in different names; Maldendiocin in contraceptive pills, Pelcin 4 or Disrodexin in antidepressants. They break down resistance, these additives.
People worked long hours and bought a lot of stuff. The world functioned well.
Only the army was a problem. It was easy to recruit, to conscript, conscientious objectors were few and far between. But the army needed to advance aggressively, to slaughter, shed guilt like a reptile. They needed to win. Something was done to their pills. The soldiers were frightening people. The armed forces of the Trade Nations of America could blow up a dog from three thousand meters, could break a neck with a strand of their stinking oiled hair, but they couldn't get a half decent erection between them. Can you imagine what that does to an entire army? So the Cold War hasn't resulted in face-to-face combat yet. We're in a state of emergency until the soldiers can get it up.
#
Eight Executive Members. They all jack off online. It's a known fact. There's a lawyer, a general, a financial advisor, a shrink, the ex-president of the United States, an IT man, a robot and Father Nicholson O'Brien of the Evangelical Church of America. Someone designs their fantasies for them. Skin and hair little boys and little girls, opium dens and hot breathed animals all made of ones and zeros. You'd never know the difference. It's much safer for them that way.
But I wanted
I wanted
I wanted
to lick the prayer from your face.
#
In the Trade Nations of America, oranges grow with skins thick for ease in packaging. A calf becomes a cow in a matter of days, udder-swelling fat with low fat milk. Shift workers are alert all the time, prostitutes never run dry. Everyone is working well. We are advancing together in leaps and bounds. Hand over your smart card to pay the pharmacist. In the work pods they are safe. But the blue collars are being custom made. By law a corporation must make every decision in the best fiscal interest of its shareholders... and the technology was there.
#
I do not take their pills. I do not take their pills. The choice is mine. The pills exist to make life more comfortable. The pills exist to normalise any imbalances and an imbalance means not being able to get up in the morning or crying every time you smell camphor or wishing your mother wasn't dead or acne or always having dirt under your fingernails or feeling like your ears are stuffed with cotton or having two sick days in a month or sleeping in or forgetting to wipe your shit off the side of the bowl.
When you take their pills you bleed when they tell you to. Just like clockwork on the Wednesday pill, once a month for five days exactly. So efficient they could bake an egg on you. It makes women feel comfortable, to menstruate, there's no reason for it but it makes them feel comfortable.
You take the sugar pills
and you bleed the sugar blood
out into the drain ways.
#
Like everyone I work in a big building for a big company for a boss I've never met. I check in with my card in the morning and I clock off with my card at night. My boss does not exist. I don't believe his name on the plaque at reception. I believe he is a sugar pill to make us all feel comfortable.
#
I have a passion. Not like those on the pills. I have a passion. I watched his face in his yellow bathroom light when he got up to pee. I watched him fold the scarf around his neck on an autumn morning as he walked through the park.
The leaves.
The leaves.
You should see the colours they designed for autumn. It'll blow your mind.
#
It doesn't make sense, to shift people off into High Security Bunkers, when they mess up as I did. But a nip, a tuck, edge off the aggression, pep them up all hours of the night and put them to work. Well that makes sense. Prison costs but workforce pays.
But after that... if you mess up again, then they'll rip out your brains and feed your body to the police dogs, they'll rip out your brain and hang it out to dry with their dirty underpants. They'll hang it out to dry but they'll never let it die. They'll never let you sleep. You'll feel those damned dogs sinking their canines into your grey matter, licking your frontal lobe till it's shiny and clean as a hubcap. Oh they'll never let you sleep; it's a known fact.
#
So I am castrated. Made to clock into family planning. Once every two weeks to hook up and be normalised. I'm walking around and I can't feel sensation on my skin. They dull me out, slow my heart to the pace of a dead person's and I can feel the mute buzz of it, like a television in the corner, when I lie down to sleep.
For a long time I don't bleed at all. I sleep and do not dream. I have no fantasy. A half fried egg, gone cold. I can function but I cannot fire. My motor skills are fine and polished but my thought processes don't go beyond the practical. I work. I work. Like everyone I work in a big building for big company... I am employee of the month. I work quickly and well and I never bleed and never cry. I remember wanting him the way I remember a childhood song. I can't quite get a hold of it. I can't quite get the taste of anything. I'm so dry that my thighs are chafing, my piss burns like petrol. I'm so dry that my body is a cactus. I lose all my weight. No one notices. No one notices. I am employee of the month.
#
I stop clocking on. I stop hooking up. I lock the doors of my apartment.
#
And the first drop of my blood falls. I feel the ache of my reproductive organs grinding, the work that they do. I feel the contraction and the opening of my sex parts when the first drop of my blood falls and I catch it. I catch it in my hand and they come for me.

By Jane Jervis-Reed

---

I want it, but…what it is called? The word is…. (pause) I seem to think it was “bread”. Yeah, that’s right. “Bread”. (pause) The other part. The sweet part, the part that made it, well, kind of, worthwhile… What was that? Was it mar…marmel..marg…but – ter? (pause) Or was it jam? (pause). No I remember now! It was bread… and but – ter… and jam! (long pause). So long ago now. Before …Before the isolations and before TNA. Before…

My grandmother had a… what would you call it? An organic habitat. We called it : gar – den. A few people still had gar – den in those days. She had trees in it with... with... organic matter – from somewhere foreign. The bells of St Clemens. (beat – she’s confused) She made the jam herself. No computer – Can you imagine? She actually collected the components herself and made… made…

I remember the protests when the...when the TNA... One right outside. I was alive for all of it you know. The monitoring. Forcible separations. Isolations. You could barely sleep those days, but for the sound of their dogs barking, up and down the hallways. They were right of course – the only way to protect us from suffering was to divide us up. Prevent us talking to each other. Prevent us from misunderstanding, from hurting…protect me from…from…

They divided Frank and I up, you know.

Frank. The system called him

We argued. Didn’t agree with the TNA, with their procedures. See, we was worried about why we hadn’t heard from our Sam in three years. Be patient, I said. (pause) We’d heard rumors, things implied but not explicitly stated. Subtle enough to get beyond the monitoring system. We sent e-mails. Every day. But never a reply. Hunched over the data station waiting. That’s what makes someone truly old, that curvature of the spine you see, it’s spending too long hunched and waiting for someone…to message you. Frank became tired and...wanted to escape the isolation suite to find out what had happened, and we argued. TNA were there with in the hour. Forceful separation. Indefinite.

I received an official transmission after he died. < Sub category : coronary systems malfunction >.

I picked up a chair, and threw it out the window. The sound of it…was beautiful. The first music I had heard since isolation. Anyways, I wandered out of the complex and into the quarries. I wanted to…to…(beat) I was waiting for the acid rain, but it never came. I guess the TNA beat the acid rain to it.
(We see the image of the old woman stepping out onto the wastelands, and hear the dogs bark, footsteps, the approach of guards)

I am removed from all of it now and yet I am not senseless. Hunched …still waiting. My intelligence can…sense….but not others. I wait for … transmissions… for termination. I wait and I crave. I crave so much. Frank… Sam… Gar – den. Something else... I crave…what is it called? … I crave… I crave… I crave… (voice trails off)

By Rohan Spong

---

This is not the way I understood cold. Not the biting morning frost, glasses steamed up, fingers fumbling from numbness and sharp shocks of sensation from the heat of the coffee cup, the mist and early morning sun, seagulls scream and the gentle clunk of the boats nudging their moorings, a hallow of cigarette smoke around where we work, untangling nets, raising sails or refuelling the outboard on those days when Joe’s managed to procure some fuel on the black market.
This is not that kind of cold. It’s not that fresh early morning cold shared in silence with the boy, the boy who throughout the day looks on the world with fearful eyes, but throughout those early morning rituals, that fear leaves his eyes, and all that’s there then, in those eyes, in the cold and as the sun thaws the world, is a peacefulness, a contentedness.
But this cold is different. It’s empty. Impervious. It’s not a cold that one feels on the tip of ones’ nose. It’s everywhere at once. All throughout this senseless, subaquatic limbo, this mindlessness. These thoughts, these words, drifting by like jetsam. These things I never thought before. These thoughts nudge up against me, some latching on, others drifting by, and others sit there, alien thoughts quickly assimilated.
And the faces. Parents, school, friends, wife, son, and all the other men along the wharf, preparing their boats for the day.
And all those other faces. But I’ll ignore them. Those memories aren’t mine. My thoughts are simple. I’m just a fisherman.
In two thousand and fifteen, seventeen, I’m not sure, the boy was about three or four, a massive tanker capsized in the bay spilling oil and killing all the fish and bringing to our waters what the report called the Aristotle Beetle so that nothing would ever grow back there….
…these are my memories, I’ve got to capture them, pin them down, like when you scramble across the deck struggling against a wicked wind to pull down the sails before they’re torn off and snatched away…
…some of the boys and their wives got some city lawyers onboard and launched a class action, which of course the TNA crushed immediately, no explanation, no compensation, nothing, silence, denial, not even welfare, just garden vegetables shrivelled from the refinery next door, a sour, sullen wife and a broken, hungry boy. A boy who buried his face in his mother’s apron like a baby and never left the house.
I’m not like the others here. I’m not political. I had a family to feed.
I was sitting on the pier after a fight with the wife when I was approached by a stooped and lanky figure dressed in black. He was carrying a potato sack.
A thousand dollars to take this sack, with its contents, to a certain latitude where an unlit trawler would be waiting for me, five hundred now, five hundred on my return.
The boat is in disrepair, it hasn’t been sailed for a year, no, eighteen months now, and anyway, it wasn’t designed for that kind of depth. But I nod anyway. No questions.
He told me to tell no-one. I told my wife when I got home and she just looked at me from the bed with slitted eyes, but didn’t disagree. Me and the boy left at five the next morning. It wasn’t a refreshing cold that morning, it was heavy and suffocating.
A day out from land I opened the sack. The man said never open the sack and I wish I never had. Five pinkish shapes fell from the bag and bounced on the floor. I bent to pick one up but pulled back. I’d never seen a brain before. Five brains on the floor at my feet. I talked, I don’t know what I said, I’m not sure if I was talking to them at that stage or just to myself, but the silence had to be broken.
It was some time before I was aware of his presence. I turned and the boy was standing silently in the doorway. I pushed passed him and went up to the deck to light a cigarette. We ate our beans that night as if nothing had happened.
In the morning his bed was empty. He was down there again, just standing with them at his feet. I put my arm around him but he pulled away. I’m not sure why, but I grabbed him by the elbow, dragged him from the cabin and locked the door. That look in his eyes. He snatched at the keys but I wouldn’t give them to him. He took me by the shoulders and began pounding me against the wall, he’s a big young boy, I’m just a little old man. He let me go and I fell to my knees. He lurched above me as if to kick me but pulled away, pounding the locked door a couple of times before slumping against it, sobbing. I stood up and dusted myself off. I would have comforted him, my son, but I’m afraid of him then. I went up on to the deck and lit a cigarette.
I had lucid dreams the next few nights. Some of the boy as a baby playing with me as he played with his teddy, sometimes cuddling me and at others bashing my head against a rock. But I also dreamt that I spoke with the brains. In those dreams I greeted these people by name.
The radar didn’t pick up the pirate ship, it appeared out of the mist a few hundred metres from starboard and they clambered up wielding rifles and machetes and hoisting their mangy dogs aboard. They chased the boy down into the hold. I chased after, but I was too late, there was a shot as I rounded the corner and the boy was lying there in a pool of blood and one of the men was using the butt of his rifle to beat down the door. I was thrown to the floor. I could hardly make out what was going on. They were playing soccer with one of them, two of them jostling as the brain bounced off their boots, then a victorious whoop and a shot at goal and the goalie blocking with his machete, I’m sure I heard the thing scream as he sliced it in two. And one bloke strutting about with the brain balanced on his head and another couple of guys chasing after him trying to trip him up and everyone laughing.
One of the men pointed to the dog who was eating the halved brain, which they sliced up smaller and fed to the hapless old man in the corner.
Then a horn and the coastguard calling for us to identify ourselves on a megaphone and suddenly I’m alone, lying amidst pieces of brain, spattered in blood, listening to the laughter, gunfire and screams up on deck. Then silence. Just footsteps. I sit up shakily. I gather the brains in my lap talking all the while.
Look at this sick bugger.
Too right, a fucking degenerate.
Then an older man pushing the younger men aside and approaching me. Looking at me closely, some contraption strapped to his head projecting data directly into his eyeballs. He had gentle yellow eyes. Patting me on the head before injecting me. I’d heard of censoring before, but I’d never given it much thought.
I remember a woman’s voice speaking French, a figure in white, bright lights, an air flight, an a aquarium, a shark, an octopus, a beaker and a vile on the bench at head level, a thousand pinpricks of pain, then an infinite, senseless plateau stretching out before me.
One thing I do remember though is a visit, in a cabin painted white. He was pouring sugary water into my mouth when I sputtered into consciousness. He said something about dolphins, or else I misheard him. He placed a hand on my forehead and smiled. You know you’re just a prawn. I smiled too. But I was thinking about my wife cooking prawns. About her curled up in bed like a prawn. About the baby boy curled up like a prawn. I smiled and he smiled too.

By Lachlan Plain

---

Nightmare 324
(A young girl lies in bed.
This is the beginning of a nightmare.
The room is cold and there are shadows where thoughts should be.)
VOICE: Nightmare number 324. Begin.
(The sound of ballroom dancing. A wolf cries.
The girl shivers in bed, scared.)
It’s late and I’m just a child. I should be asleep by now.
(The sound of hard cold rain.)
My parents are sleeping. And so are the neighbours who live behind little red doors. But I’m afraid if I fall asleep I might never wake up. Sometimes when I close my eyes I imagine a world behind the lids. It looks like the secret garden and it reminds me of death. I have been lying awake for twenty years.
There is no one but me in this cold room at night. I keep waiting for the sun to rise, but it never happens. Sometimes I hear a voice in the ceiling. It whispers to me: on the day when the sun rises all the graves will open and the dead will walk the earth. Amen.
VOICE: Let me remind you: this is only a dream. It is about a girl lying in bed.
In the beginning, my parents sat at the edge of my pillow and told me a story. It was about a rabbit and a fox. As they recited the story pages started falling out of the book. One by one. We were terrified. There wouldn’t be any stories left to tell. And then, my teeth started falling out like the pages. My mouth was full of blood and my mother was crying. I said: its going to be ok. Everyone is full of blood. That’s how they stay alive.
I don’t know where they went. Twenty years ago my parents went back to their room, and I haven’t seen them since.
At night there is a room. And a moon. And a cup that ran away. Or that’s what I remember.
(Lightening. And a sad song.)
(sings on repeat) The sea is a dream. There is no end to the water. The water is blue.
VOICE: In this nightmare, the girls becomes very sick.
(The girl has aged. She looks tired and skinny.
She coughs.)
I think I have the flu. I am getting so old in this bed.
I know I should be sleeping. But I’m too scared of the garden. And the death. My eye is cocked like a gun. Don’t come near me or I will grow older and older. My hair will out and my skin will crumple. It will be a sad ending to a story with no pages.
If I close my eyes I will fall into a dead end forever.
Please give me sun and blood and stories.
VOICE: Nightmare number 324 comes to a close.
(The sound of ballroom dancing in the distance.)
I want to dance but I can’t feel my legs. I feel so light.
I could float away in this dark room.
(She feels herself beginning to float away.)
Beware of the shadows. They are boys and girls who took a wrong turn in a garden and never returned.
If you look closely you can still see their faces.
(The girl lies in bed, holding the edges, terrified.
A siren. A wolf in the distance.
Moths.
The sound of nothing and night.
A tap drips.)

By Adena Jacobs

---
Here I am having sex on the floor of my apartment

One hand on the keyboard one between my legs

Are you shocked?

If you are, write a letter of complaint. Tell them how sick I make you feel. How I have broken the law.

What else have I broken? A valid question. Let me spell it out for you, an A-Z dictionary of my sins

A. On September 24, 2000 I am born. Child of two millennium bugs in a house on a hill the place where it all began

B. March 4, 2020 I meet him in a bar

K. March 5, 2020 I am older than the day before but no wiser. You take me to your room and we rock back and forth likes ships at sea. At first gentle and slow your fingers dig into my arm and you sing in a pitch I have never heard before

L.M.N.O.P 2021 My world is in a state of emergency and I am a woman

What does exactly does that mean?

Let me show you.

Here I am, sitting at my work pod. Two legs spread apart, two hearts breaking like glass. It’s a workday and I am hard at work, numbering the minutes until you jump on line. But don’t get too excited. We’ll have to wait until later. There’s a censor and a webcam, an eye cocked like a gun. We will have to wait for another hour, a later, darker one when we can travel from site to site, and play our virtual game of cat and mouse.

But for now, let’s play a trick on the camera. Women have been doing it for centuries.

(Throughout this section, she wraps her leg around the door of the work pod and rubs herself against it slowly)
Look at me. I can be such a good worker. I’m smart and a fantastic multi-tasker. I can even type and smile at the same time.
(She starts to become aroused)
I am so efficient. There’s no time for daydreams or dirty thoughts in this job. It’s a domino effect. One dirty thought can lead to mismanagement, indecency and unbalanced behaviour.
(She pushes herself up and down against the work pod while continuing to type. The work pod shakes like a car)

So we’ll have to wait until night. We can meet in a chat room and lie in a king size bed. Asterix. Asterix. Exclamation mark. I’ll tiptoe across wire of words, trying to remember your face. I’ll close my eyes, put my hands between my legs and let them slide into the sea. This is love in the year 2021 - a woman sitting alone, in the cold dark, performing a monologue of pleasure.

And then we get to the inevitable

W.X.Y.Z. September 24 2022 its my birthday and you have come to celebrate. It is 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I am at work. You’ve jumped on line head first to wish me a happy birthday and then it happens. You say three words. Be careful what you say. There’s a camera and a censor and web of eyes upon us. Be careful what you do because you will be sent to your room. Don’t tell me your secrets. They will kill me. Don’t say the words. Those words

I want you

Here I am having sex on the floor of my apartment. One hand on the keyboard one hand between my legs.
I want you.
Where do you live?
How can I find you.
Stay right where you are.

And then you start to run. Your breath cold and quick you run towards the house on a hill the place where it all began. And here I am, one eye on the screen, one eye on the door. Keep that thought in your mind the one that makes the blood rush in your ears. You say I want you. You say don’t move. And so I stay - perfectly still - heart beating.
But you never come - you have been caught - and five minutes later so have I.

Pause

Once upon a time there was a fear of breaking things. Laws, hearts and bones – mainly. Was it worth it you ask? How could I be so stupid? Detained on account of an orgasm. It’s like a dirty joke.

{Another punishment. On life support there is no difference between night and day. I am not sleeping, I am not even dreaming, I have become the dream. We are what we do. That’s what they said when they came to ‘collect’ me.

So what am I? A dream of a day when I was wanted and found.

Are you shocked?

If you are, write a letter. Tell someone how sick I make you feel. I should be ashamed to look at myself in the mirror. But don’t worry, that will never happen again.

By Adena Jacobs

Just so people know, these are basically the scripts that we will use for performance. They are currently being drafted but the changes will not be drastic. So, in the meantime if anyone wants to discuss any images, ideas or designs based on the above scripts please feel free to do so. They are an excellent starting point to begin this next creative development.

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