the electric ant

mescalocco this music comes from the album thrimpanurzle raggascormous by the artist of the same name http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=493556644&blogId=537866549

T H E ELECTRIC ANT

THE ELECTRIC ANT

This is a puppet show adapt-straction based on the short story by Phillip K Dick entitled the “Electric Ant”

This is the start of the script

I have some copies of a zine I made of the script with photos of the dolls for six dollars plus postage and handling. If anyone is interested mail me at venortimus@yahoo.com.au or on http://www.myspace.com/raggggascormuus





CHARACTERS

Dr Pretorius: the mad scientist, a.k.a deranged robotic ego who seeks to rule the world.

Melatonin: Dr Pretorius’s pet spider. (melatonin is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland that regulates circadian rhythms. –activates/regulates the endocrine and paracrine systems. It is believed to increase the lucidity of dreaming,). The hormone of dreams melatonin is the mad doctor’s glitche to trails of webs through the astral.

Doctor: Nameless faceless unconscious healer operating in the Omega operating theatre. -Potentially a projection of the mad doctors unconscious automata’s anima.

Nurse: The old wise woman also operating in the omega operating theatre. Potentially a projection of the mad doctors unconscious automata’s animus.

Opening scene:

The curtains to the puppet stage are drawn. The voice of a narrator echoes around the stage.

Narrator: (sings) Self-replicating machines.

Nanobiotic spiders sowing cybernetic dreams

Nothing is as it seems,

Nothing is as it seems,

Everything is something else’s machine

Nothing is as it seems

Nothing is as it seems

The tools you make, make you mutate.

A man dreamt he was a robot

Or is he a robot dreaming he’s a man

Now that he’s awake.

(The curtains open)

Scene one.

Dr Pretorious stands before an industrial, biomechaniod backdrop –Gigeresque circuitry blending with human anatomy.

He toils away working on ‘the machine’. Tools and apparatus surround him. The machine is incredibly complex like a hybrid chimera between a typewriter, a piano accordion and a satellite dish.

Narrator: Welcome to the laboratories of Dr Pretorius. The mad inventor toils away into the night. He has almost completed his latest and greatest invention.

He calls it the meme transmitter.

It is a machine that operates like a psychic television station.

-Projecting ideas out into the astral imprinting the dark fluid film like dream space with quanta of hydrogen star dust to be processed by peoples minds as they swim through dream space.

Dr Petorius: Haw haw haw. This machine is my greatest ever invention

It is a device for hacking reality and broadcasting out to the universe my intentions.

All most complete.

So long I’ve been slaving in my laboratory while the world is asleep

Trying orchestrate dream alchemy.

Making a machine to create fractal frequencies self replicating into the deep.

-Subtle sonar resonance

Fractal math of happenstance

I consider reality to be a crosshatched collective stew

And this machine will make me the one who adds the flavour to the brew.

Me all me!

Pretorious, the baker of brains.

Seasoner of psychosis.

Industrialiser of the astral.

Projector of information for human minds to process.

The tendrils of my ego will prehense infinitely,

I Dr Pretorious shall engineer reality!

If I could just get this contraption to emit the right frequency

To program memes into minds

Metaphysical genes to bend their reality unto mine

With this machine!

This machine that broadcasts dreams and memes

Into soft wet minds

Tied together by time.

Memes being metaphysical genes

Replicating thoughts, that will bend their reality unto mine.

So this machine

That broadcasts dreams and memes

I shall name the meme machine.

This Arial emits microwave equations.

Fractal larvae.

Out into an ocean of sleepers

Like Dreaming television stations.

Soft receptors

Information processors

For the ideas that this machine projects

Will condition behaviour and unconscious reflex.

So rise up my little memes, programmers of thought

And teach what I declare in the air is there to be taught.

Rise up my meme creatures

Spawners of behaviour and therefore event amoebas.

Prepare to orchestrate and direct the neuron’s dance,

Meta nano-bots write synapse brain plots

And tie together the pixel spots in trance

To make them awake to the reality that I make.

Take my gravity to web throughout space

Impose my intentions on the events that take place

So that,

With consensus reality I will be able to play

Reprogram perception of the hologram of life’s play

I could broadcast microwave memes to make them wild run berserk

If I could only just get this fucking machine to work.

(Pretorius bends over to speak to his pet spider Melatonin)

Melatonin: *************

Pretorius: What is that you say Melatonin my spider pet?

I cross-wired the meme-a-matrix connector

With the chaos autonomic boost net.

And the fractal pulsar is missing an electrode

Are you telling me, the genius Dr Pretorius that this machine could explode?

(Melatonin nods)

Dr Pretorius: Well melatonin I think you may be a little over cautious

Your mind is minuscule to mine.

The insane ingenious inventor Dr Pretorius

There is nothing that I can not do

No operation, metaphysical, biologic or mechanic that I can not work my way through.

I am the extra ordinary Dr Pretorius

Hacker of reality

And there is little, I would almost say nothing in this world that can not be done by me.

I would make no mistakes in this machine I have built.

Errors are foreign,

You will see when I turn it on

With the power up to the hilt.

(Pretorius pulls a lever to start the machine and it explodes cataclysmically. Pretorius is thrown across the room and knocked unconscious. The curtains close)

Scene 2

The curtains open to the “Omega Operating Theatre”; the alchemical, biological magical insane surgery at the end of the universe.

Dr Pretorius lies unconscious on the operating table. A cosmic nurse like a sorceress and doctor like a sorcerer stand over his lifeless body.





Nurse: Dr, pass me the morphine and the mandrake

We shall need to operate quickly if we are to repair this miserly creature’s mortal break

Doctor: But nurse he seems in such a terrible state

Do you really think we will ever be able to make this wreck awake?

Nurse: Well it seems the main problem is with its reality tape

It was burnt in the explosion

Melted his circuitry

And now all its inner mechanisms are frozen

Doctor: Ah but nurse I know you

So well enchanted in the art of conjuring a healing brew

Surely you must know of some potion

A panacea to work this creature back into motion?

(The doctor and nurse perform an operation on Pretorius)

Doctor and Nurse ( together singing) :

Rewind this tape inside Pretorius’s chest

With bat–wing speed and snake tongue blest

Project pictures upon a spiral of snail shell

Arise like phi Pretorius up from hell

Bent bones of canine and elephant brain

Arise Pretorius alive again

Smudged symbiosis of man and machine

Hot wired nervous system

Of holograph transistor dream

With wire vein to laptop brain

Electric metal blood

Make you go again

Salt mercury sulphur, substances corporeal

Act as an adaptor, the metamorphic relationship between energy and matter

Spin Pretorius back onto the wheel

Plug his receptors into the reality net

Work machine ghost you must interconnect

Put the cauldron in the oven to bake

Now arise Pretorius alive and awake!

(Pretorius sits up dumb and innocent, like a child who has just awoken from a great sleep)

Pretorius: But what happened?

I was perfecting my most ingenious invention

My creation was a contraption that projects ideas out into the ether

Like fractal ghost robots to reprogram brains according to my intention,

But how did I come to be lying in this chamber?

Doctor: You were brought here after an accident.

Your circuitry was all burnt twisted and bent.

And this chamber is Omega operating theatre.

The eschatological, biomechanical temple of repair

At the centre and the end of the universe.

The news may be morbid but do not despair,

Although your program tape was burned

It could have been worse.

And we got you just in time,

And fixed you as best we could

I would say most of your mechanisms should still be quite good.

Dr Pretorius: I don’t understand.

You speak of me, my tape program

As though I were a machine and not a man

Nurse (aside to the doctor): He does not yet know what he really is,

He thinks his programmed memories are really his

How many androids do not know what they are or why?

Doctor: Should you break the news to him nurse or will I?

Nurse: Dr Pretorius you may not be aware

But you are an android

An older model that’s been built and deployed

To serve some purpose.

Do not despair

We repaired your program to service

So there is nothing in this case that is strange

Or any need for you to be nervous

You have always been a robot

Only your knowledge of such will change.

Now you are aware of your kind

Your not special we get models like you in here all the time.

Fractured bodies that don’t realise their robot

End up here quite a lot

Of course it is a shock to begin

But really it shouldn’t change a thing

(The nurse fiddles with Pretorius’s chest)

See this tape which runs through your chest,

Onto which a series of holes is pressed

This technology with tape and holes once was new but now is old.

But you have been programmed for a particular purpose,

The tape in your chest has not yet run its full service.

The lower roll of tape is your life history as it’s gone,

The top reel your future as it is to come.

Just by looking I’d say your about three quarters of the way through.

These holes here prescribe your future

What you are to do

Pretorius: So what I believed was blood and flesh

I find is electric steel and some synthetic mesh.

Oh and what will happen when my tape comes to the end of its reel?

Nurse: That I’m afraid to say will also be the end of your deal

All internal operations will stop

And what ever is inside you will be switched off.

A more recent model

The programmers might consider changing your tape cartridge

But an out dated model like you would probably be scrapped or sold as garbage.

Pretorius: This is all so much for me to understand

Am I a man dreaming he’s a robot or a robot dreaming he’s a man.

Intrepid decrepit insatiably curious creatures

Building bridges upon the edge of evolutions knife

Across an avalanche opera that surrounds the sphere as spirits

Whispering winds stir debris into life

Back in the cauldron for you

It’s time for a boiling

Mixing you into the brew

Scene 3

Finds Pretorius at home sitting on the couch in his lounge room.

He is emotionally coming to terms with the fact that he is a robot.

Pretorius: I can not believe I am really an android, just a machine.

And everything I see think or do is a digital code zeros and ones like I’m operating according to some one others means.

I wonder if I am familiar with the one who programmed me

Could this engineer be one of my friends or family?

I just don’t know what is real any more

How much of this that I see around me

Is programmed?

The couch my hand the door

My memories my legs the chair

Are any of them really there?

Even you Melatonin my faithful friend

With whose watchful presence I am blest.

You may be nothing more that a series of holes

Pressed into the tape on my chest

Melatonin: ************* Pretorius: What’s that you say Melatonin my spider pet? You say you’ve always known I’m a robot You just haven’t found a way of telling me yet. (Pretorious makes exasperated gestures) Well this is all this news to me It makes me rather curious about the nature of my reality. (Pretorius opens his chest and inspects the tape that runs through it) Oh, this tape that weighs on my heart like Saturn’s lead. This tape that projects what I see with the glass eyes That peer Out of my head. But looking at this tape gives my robotic mind a curious sort of bent The nature of the mechanism makes me want experiment. I wonder what might come to be If I covered some of the holes due to pass in five minutes I can see I wonder what might come true If I covered up some of these program holes with glue? (Pretorius covers some of the holes in his program tape with glue) Such a curious experiment to run on ones self, One that could have such delirious effects upon my fragile health. It makes me shake to play with this programmed reel. It is my life, everything I see think and feel Best to drink a little to keep the nerves steady, Or should I say circuits. I can feel it coming on already (Pretorius drinks. Parts of his lounge room start to vanish) Help me the encroaching nothing creeps near. Such shadow that negates all light. Such nothing inspires a hollow fear A moonless starless empty night Part of my world starts to disappear Where I had that picture on the wall Is now empty, vacuum space There is nothing there at all. And the wall it fades, fades as well And I am sucked into vacant space A nothing nowhere empty hell. (Pretorious quivers in his apartment fearful of the great enchroaching nothing) And now at last this strange feeling goes And into the empty spaces around The world once again flows. The hungry shadows recede, Slowly disappear And I Pretorius am still here Or at least my program is still in operation. And my survival inspires possibilities, Too many to mention I could learn to alter my tape According to my whim and health I Dr Pretorius shall now learn to program myself But first I need to experiment a little more I know its best. I wonder what would happen were I to add some extra holes to this tape that runs through my chest. Now if I could just find a hole punch and press I will find a way out of this mess. Re arrange the program code Alter reality, transmute the mathamatics of Karma Change my life’s load (Pretorius presses some extra holes into his tape) Now I estimate that this piece of tape that I have altered Should pass between the heads in about five minutes, left unhaulted. There are many methods of re-programming that I can think One day I may write myself a whole new life tape But for now its best just to wait and drink



