Starshift

Experimental piece in the Grand Guignol style. Intended to be stageable for almost nothing with any type of cast

Starshift

By Ged

Cast:

(casting is intended to be neutral. Any actor can play any part)

A

B

Scene 1

A All systems secure, all probes recovered and stowed, all scopes retracted and locked. We are green for starshift.

B Copy that. Starshift in 3, 2, 1… we have starshift. We are 8.3 light years from original location. Pulsar positioning will take a couple of… no, wait, there we are, we are on target. SSC 54583b, yellow dwarf, one known planet, a cold Jupiter. Exoscan suggests rocky planet in the Goldilocks. Judging by the size of the primary we’re on the edge of the shift envelope, maybe half a billion clicks out.

A We are go planet detection. Aligning scopes and dropping drones, give it what, a week? Ten days?

B And here we go again. Waiting time. You heard the new survey ships are fully automated?

A You tell me that every three systems. And I’m going to tell you that there’s no way they’ll ever automate the survey ships. The first time they try they’re going to drop into a system that’s got actual real life aliens in it.

B Man that’d be sweet.

A The old ships used to be-

B -I know the tales, I have seen the original survey ships

A They were so sure. So sure they were going to meet someone. They carried diplomats and linguists, heck they even had trade goods.

B And weapons. And what did they find?

A Pond scum. Lots and lots of pond scum.

B The Grand Galactic Survey. Two hundred and eighty years, over a hundred ships. Roughly what, ten systems per ship per year, and what have we got to show for it?

A and B Pond scum

A But I guarantee, soon as you automate these babies they’ll run smack into an advanced civilisation.

B All the more reason to do it, break the monotony.

A They may not be friendly

B They’ll still be better than pond scum

Scene 2

A You’ve been staring at it for four hours. It’s a photograph. They don’t change.

B Keep thinking I might have missed something

A After four hours of staring? Don’t get your hopes up, it could still be geological

B No way. See there? Up there, top left corner?

A I see it

B That is a runway. That’s not just a runway. The drone reports gravity around one point one Earth’s, so it’s effectively the same as Earth, so unless they’re launching like, Zeppelins or something, something that long? That’s an intercontinental runway.

A But we have no radio. There is nothing coming off that planet. No radio, no tv, no radar, nothing coming off that whole world. It’s kind of difficult to do intercontinental air travel when you don’t have radio and radar.

B Maybe they got telepathy. We’re assuming. We shouldn’t assume. 

A Then what we should do is shift back to Earth and call this in.

B Come on, this is our discovery, this is going to go down in history. You want to give this away? This image is off a probe in high orbit, it’s what, two metres to the pixel? Ok this could be geological, but the probe made its low approach about twenty minutes ago That’ll resolve down to forty centimetres to the pixel. That should give us a clear enough view to tell us what we’re really dealing with.

A You’re like a kid before Christmas. Data was coming in when I looked.

B And you didn’t tell me?

A It needs to buffer. It should be done by now.

B Loading to main view.

A Son of a-

B It’s a city. There’s nothing else that can be. That’s a city. We’ve found aliens.

A Then where are they?

Scene 3

B We take the ship over-

A We shift back to Earth and report it in

B And miss out on our own discovery? Come on, don’t you want to make history? Don’t you want to be immortal?

A How can I be immortal when I’m dead?

B How can you be dead? What’s going to kill you? You said yourself there’s nothing there.

A And you said yourself they could have secret mind rays

B I said telepathy, that’s a bit of a jump. And the probe’s been over what, four times now. No variation in the ground scans. Nothing’s moving down there. Dead planet. Everyone’s dead.

A Oh then it’s definitely safe. Something killed an entire planet. Nothing to worry about.

B They were aliens. And we’re in orbit. No artificial satellites detected, no moons to speak of, they didn’t have space travel.

A But they did have something that wiped out their whole species.

B We don’t know that, they could be lurking underground.

A They could have surface to space missiles.

B They didn’t have space travel.

A D****t

B I’m going to win this argument. You know how I know that? Because you’re on my side. You want to own this as much as I do. We take the ship over, we burn the fuel, we put ourselves in an elliptical orbit with the perigee right over the city. We take this baby right to the edge of the atmosphere and we point the main scope straight down. That big a mirror that close to target we’ll get it down to five centimetres a pixel easy. You’ll be able to read their writing. On billboards at least. And then we can shift for Earth.

A Son of a

B We doing it?

A Take her over there. Burn the fuel. Let’s see what we got.

B Now you’re talking.

Scene 4

A How low have you set this thing?

B We’re fine, you’ll hear a bit of whistling.

A You’re taking us into the atmosphere? Drag that severe we’re going to need a burn

B So we’ll burn

A Fuel

B History. Ok here it comes

A Son of a - we are trembling. Get this thing into a higher orbit or I will

B Fine, fine. This is all going in the history cubes you know.

A I don’t care. Higher orbit. Now.

B There, no more whistling. Let’s see what we got.

A Wow. That’s

B That’s below four centimetres to the pixel. Make the most of it, next time round it’ll be nearer six.

A Worth it not to burn the ship.

B This place is huge. If they live at human densities that’s like ten million people right there.

A I don’t think they did, I’m not seeing skyscrapers anywhere, and I’m definitely not seeing town towers.

B Maybe they went underground. Maybe that’s where they are.

A Look at those buildings. They’re barely wrecked. What, you’re-

B What is it?

A Those white specks.

B What about them?

A Zoom in, far as it’ll go.

B Oh crap

A They didn’t look too different to us

B Those are skulls? They’re everywhere.

A Maybe some got to shelters, but it looks like most-

B Died in the streets.

A Hold on, let me zoom out a moment, I want to check something.

B Where are we going?

A Well they built cities that looked like ours, so if they had similar tastes in cities then there should be. There it is

B A park

A A park, and in that park a lake. And around that lake

B Son of a

A It’s covered. I think they’re piled up.

B They’re in the water. How many are there?

A You said yourself, even if they built low, over a million easy.

B There’s thousands. Thousands of them came here and died. What was it, some kind of rabies? They were trying to get to water?

A Rabies hates water, but it could be some kind of disease, I mean what else would do this? They’re dotted all over the park, but they’re concentrated round and in the lake. Hold on

B Where are we going now? You’re making me dizzy.

A Top left, right? Top left corner. There it is.

B The airport.

A And skulls. Oh so many skulls. They’re piled around - those just look like ordinary planes.

B They blocked them. They were so desperate to get on board that they stopped them taking off. And they all died. They weren’t ill were they?

A No. No, they weren’t. They were trying to escape from something.

Scene 5

A You are insane

B The ship’s launch can make planetfall

A Just. Barely. And the ship can’t. If anything goes wrong down there you are on your own.

B If anything goes wrong you shift back to Earth and tell them I stole the launch. They come and rescue me

A And you’re fired and you lose nearly four years’ bonus

B But I’m in the history cubes forever man. Come on, you’ve got to get with the bigger picture here.

A I see the picture fine, and it’s got me meeting your family at your funeral. I don’t want that look from your folks, I really don’t.

B I’ll be fine

A You know technically I can give you orders. We haven’t been that kind of ship but I can give you orders and I am ordering you right now do not go down there.

B I hear and obey mon capitan. You should put that in the log. You’ve got a captain’s log, right?

A I’ve got a diary.

B Well make sure you put that in your diary.

A But you are not to take that launch down. Promise me.

B Your wish is my command

A Ok then.

Scene 6

A Son of a-. Ship, show location ship’s launch. Of course it is, of course. You idiot. Ship to ground, respond. Now. I repeat - ship to ground respond. That is a direct order. Priority one. Do not try to jerk me around. I know you can hear me. Get on your mic now.

B Hey relax. It’s fine down here. It’s a little heavy and it’s very, very quiet, but I am standing in an alien city. The first human ever to do that. I am history.

A There’s another sense of that. Return to ship immediately.

B Yeah, we might have a problem with that.

A Report problem

B It took a little more fuel than I expected to land, then I hit some debris and had to fly on for a while. I wasn’t really planning on doing any of that.

A You’re saying you don’t have enough fuel to achieve orbit?

B Unless you can send me some?

A I’d love to. I’ll use the ship’s launch. Oh no, wait.

B Hey, it’s cool. I got rations, stuff around here looks edible. Probably. I mean it’s green, that’s a start, right? You’ll shift back to Earth, they’ll send a rescue ship. How long will I have to hold out, a couple of days? 

A Then they’ll arrest you for stealing the launch.

B Totally worth it.

A You’re an idiot

B But I’m an idiot in the history cubes. Standing in an alien city.

A Well the sooner I’m gone the sooner I’m back and the sooner your sorry carcass gets rescued. I’m pulling the probes back so we will lose comms relay soon.

B Much appreciated, but seriously, I’m fine. It’s kind of eerie down here. So quiet. There’s so many bodies. They’ve been pulled apart.

A What would do that?

B I don’t know, but whatever did made a really good job of it. It doesn’t look like whatever happened happened all that long ago. These guys have been picked clean.

A You might want to get to shelter by the way, probe’s picking up dark clouds to your north.

B Really? I don’t see anything.

A It’s on the scope, moving fast too.

B Yes, well, there’s plenty of shelter. I might find the swankiest hotel in town and bed down there for a couple of days. What do you think their swanky hotels looked like? We losing comms soon?

A I’m trying to keep a probe over you as long as possible. Seriously you can’t see that? It’s blotting out everything.

B Clear skies. This place is just like Earth. Hey, I can hear something.

A What?

B Weird, really faint, like a hum and a rustling noise. Could that be rain? 

A Hard to say I’m looking at this from a probe cam. It’s not the highest-

B What? You seen something?

A Oh hell. Oh hell.

B What? Come on, don't scare me.

A That’s not a cloud. It’s too small and the edge is following the street grid. What cloud follows streets?

B Then what is it?

A How would I know? I’m sending the probe lower.

B If you burn up a probe that is both our bonuses gone

A Yours is gone anyway. How far are you from the launch?

B Couple of streets. I’ve been exploring

A Get back to it, now. Run.

B Seriously, calm, how am I going to get rescued if you collapse with a-

A Run. Now.

B Fine. I’m running. Happy? I’m running

A If you can still talk you’re not running fast enough.

B What-

A It’s not a cloud. Oh hell it’s not a cloud. They tipped their world out of balance and gave something an opportunity, and that something took that opportunity.

B What-

A Keep running. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. They’re heading straight for you. It’s you they’re coming for. You’re not going to make it. They’ve eaten all the easy food and what are they doing now, feeding on each other? It’s what their Earth equivalent does. 

B Come on seriously. What is it? If I’m not going to make it, should I hide?

A There’s no point. There isn’t time. They must have heard you land, but they’re so close now they’ll have the scent of you. If the rats here are anything like the rats on Earth they’ll find you. They can fit through the narrowest crack, the tiniest hole. And there are millions of them.

B There’s got to be something. It’s getting louder. It’s getting louder-

A I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

B (Screams.)

==END==