A Scanner Darkly

Luckman:
What if they come in through the back door or the bathroom window like that infamous Beatles song?

Luckman:
This proves you got somebody out to get you real bad Bob. I just hope that the house is still there when you get back.

Fred:
Yeah I didn't think of that.

Barris:
I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Luckman:
You wouldn't! Christ! They may have broken in and ripped off all we got. All Bob's got anyhow. What if they stomp the animals?

Barris:
Don't worry about it. I left a little surprise for 'em.

Fred:
What?

Barris:
Yes. Anyone entering the house while we were gone today will receive a little surprise. A little something I perfected earlier this morning.

Fred:
What kind of surprise? It's my house Jim, you should ask me before you start wiring up my house.

Barris:
Why would you get so uptight about protecting your house from intruders? Why would you care?

Fred:
I'm just saying it's my house, that's all. You can't start going around booby trapping my house.

Barris:
Okay, okay! I mean jeez. Or as the Germans would say "leise" which translates to "be cool". Just be cool.

Donna:
Hey you guys.

Donna:
[screams when Luckman and Barris pull out their weapons at her] F***! Jesus! [they lower their weapons] What the f*** is wrong with you? I came in like the note said. It doesn't say when you were gonna get back, so I just, just sat around for a while, and ended up crashing.

Luckman:
Love your sweater.

Donna:
Just don't touch me! Man you guys were making so much noise. Woke me up.

Barris:
You are constitutionally incapable of not shuttingthef***up!

Luckman:
Bring it!

Barris:
Shutthef***up!

Luckman:
You're the only person in the known universe who's never heard of the Heimlich maneuver?

Barris:
Alright, I'm gonna give you a little feedback since you seem to be proceeding through life like a cat without whiskers perpetually caught behind the refrigerator. Your life and watching you live it is like a gag-reel of ineffective bodily functions. I swear to god that a toddler has a better understanding of the intricacies of chew-swallow-digest-don't kill yourself on your TV dinner! And yet you've managed to turn this near death f***up of yours into a moral referendum on me!

Luckman:
You are a monster!

Barris:
You are a billy goat!

Fred:
I'd say Arctor is doomed if he's up to something. And I have a hunch from what you're saying that he is.

Fred:
Hey Donna, do you like cats?

Donna:
Drippy little things, moving along, about a foot above the ground.

Fred:
Above? You mean ON the ground?

Donna:
Just dripping, behind furniture. Little spring flowers with blue in them might come up first.

Fred:
Yeah...

Donna:
What if someone stomps on them and they're all gone?

Fred:
It's like you know me. You can read me.

[last lines]

Fred:
I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself, in one blue field.

[picks up a blue flower]

Fred:
A present for my friends... at Thanksgiving.

Barris:
Total total total totally total total... total providence.

Barris:
Gentlemen, you are about to witness for approximately 61 cents of ordinary household materials, the perfect home-made silencer.

Freck:
Barris, the neighbors are gonna hear.

Luckman:
Nah. They only call in murders in this neighborhood.

Barris:
Plus, freckle-deck, it's a SILENCER. They're not gonna hear anything.

Freck:
Well, I'm pretty f***ing sure they're illegal.

Barris:
In this day and age, the type of society we find ourselves living in, every person of worth needs to have a gun at all times to protect themselves. And we're off, un [points gun at Freck] , deux [points gun at Luckman] , trois? [points gun to his own head] . [Then points gun in the air and shoots. It goes off loudly]

Freck:
That sure is some silencer.

Barris:
Yes, uh, what it did was augment the sound rather than dampen it. But I almost have it. I believe I have it in principle anyway.

Luckman:
Oh well, the good news is that regardless of what you do next time, it'll be a silencer to us because we're now DEAF!

Fred:
What does a scanner see? Into the head? Into the heart? Does it see into me? Clearly? Or darkly?

Fred:
[voiceover] Crazy job they gave me. But if I wasn't doing it, someone else would be. And they might get it wrong. They might set Arctor up, plant drugs on him and collect a reward. Better it be me, despite the disadvantages. Just protecting everyone from Barris is justification in itself. What the hell am I talking about? I must be nuts. I know Bob Arctor. He's a good person. He's up to nothing. At least nothing too bad. In fact, he works for the Orange County Sheriff's office covertly, which is probably why Barris is after him. But that wouldn't explain why the Orange County Sheriff's office is after him. Something big is definitely going down in this house. This rundown, rubble-filled house with its weed patch yard and cat box that never gets emptied. What a waste of a truly good house. So much could be done with it. A family and children could live here. It was designed for that. Such a waste. They ought to confiscate it and put it to better use. I'm supposed to act like they aren't here. Assuming there's a "they" at all. It may just be my imagination. Whatever it is that's watching, it's not human, unlike little dark eyed Donna. It doesn't ever blink. What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. I'll only wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too.

Luckman:
Well! So much for our great trip to San Diego Bob, I told you we should have gone to San Francisco.

Barris:
What like going to San Francisco would not have caused this problem with the engine?

Luckman:
Yeah because when you're going north, it screws this way, and when you're going south it screws that way!

Barris:
If we were in Australia!

Fred:
[voiceover] What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better, because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again.

Barris:
There's only one thing we can do to thwart the plot of these albino shape-shifting lizard B*TCHES!

Barris:
YOU are a bug bite squared.

Luckman:
What kind of bug?

Barris:
'Bout to get f***ed up b*tch beetle.

Fred:
Whatever it is that's watching... it isn't human.

Barris:
I could be mur... dered.

Barris:
This is a world getting progressively worse. Can we not agree on that?

Barris:
[turns to waitress] What's on the dessert menu?

Medical Deputy #2:
Damage has taken place to the normally dominant left hemisphere, and the right hemisphere is attempting to compensate.

Fred:
The two hemisphere in my brain... are competing?

Medical Deputy #2, Medical Deputy #1:
[in unison] Yes.

Medical Deputy #1:
You know, Fred, if you keep your sense of humor like you do, you just might make it.

Fred:
Make it? Make what? The team? The chick? Make good? Make do? Make out? Make sense? Make money? Make time? Define your terms. The Latin for 'make' is facere, which always reminds me of f***ere, which is Latin for 'to f***', and I have been getting jack sh*t in that department as of late.

Barris:
If I'd known it was harmless...

Luckman, Fred, Barris:
[together] I would have killed it myself!

Luckman:
You are a MONSTER!

Barris:
You're... a billy goat.

Fred:
So there is no sheep here, is there? [pause] Was I close?

Barris:
I think I know, they were probably working on it, these Gypsy grifters with improper tools, no technical knowledge, no understanding of reverse engineering, and when they attempted to reassemble it they panicked, they got scared, and they left nine orphan gears there just laying on the floor, theyre probably still there on the floor of the garage.

Luckman:
Lets just go rescue the orphan gears dude!

Fred:
D... Substance D. "D" is dumbness, and despair, desertion-desertion of you from your friends, your friends from you, everyone from everyone. Isolation and loneliness... and hating and suspecting each other, "D" is finally death. Slow death from the head down. Well... that's it.

[Freck turns on the radio]

Freck Suicide Narrator:
Charles Freck, becoming progressively more and more depressed by what was happening around him, decided, finally, to off himself. There was no problem in the circles where he hung out in putting an end to yourself. You just bought a large quantity of downers and took them with some cheap wine. The planning part had to do with the artifacts he wanted found on him by later archeologists. He had spent several days deciding, much longer than he had spent deciding to kill himself. He would be found lying on his back, on his bed, with a copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and an unfinished letter to Exxon, protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card. That way, he would indite the system, and achieve something by his death, over and above what the death itself achieved. At the last moment, he changed his mind on a decisive issue and decided to drink the pills with a connoisseur wine, instead of Ripple or Thunderbird. So he set off on one last drive, over to Tiny's Liquors, which specialized in fine wines, and bought a bottle of 2001 Azalea Springs Merlot, which set him back almost seventy dollars. Back home again, he uncorked the wine, let it breathe, drank a few glasses of it, tried to think of something meaningful but could not, and then, with a glass of Merlot, gulped down all the pills at once. However, he had been burned. Instead of quietly suffocating, Charles Freck began to hallucinate. The next thing he knew, a creature from between dimensions was standing beside his bed, looking down at him disapprovingly.

Freck:
You gonna read me my sins?

[Creature nods]

Freck:
Eh, it's gonna take a hundred thousand hours.

Creature:
Your sins will be read to you ceaselessly, in shifts, throughout eternity. The list will never end.

Creature:
[starts reading] "The Sins of Freck"

Freck Suicide Narrator:
Charles Freck wished he could take back the last half hour of his life.

Creature:
[Creature continues to read] "... theft of fingernail clippers..." "... you did knowingly and with malice..." "... punched your baby sister, Evelyn..." "... December, theft of Christmas presents..." "... one billion lies..."

Freck Suicide Narrator:
One thousand years later, they had reached the sixth grade, the year he had discovered masturbation.

Creature:
[Creature continues to read] "... November fourteenth, Percodan... Vicodin... Cocaine..."

Freck Suicide Narrator:
Charles Freck thought, "At least I got a good wine."

Bob Arctor:
The pain, so unexpected and undeserved had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn't hate the cabinet door, I hated my life... My house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change; nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing.

[first lines]

Freck:
[on the phone] I looked them up. They're aphids. They're in my hair, on my skin, in my lungs. And the pain, Barris, it's unreasonable. They're all over the place. Oh, they've completely gotten Millie too.

Cop:
You have the right to remain silent until [pause] and uh, and anything you say can and will be used against you [pause] when you uh, when [pause] aww f*** this sh*t!

Bob Arctor:
That f***ing Barris, you know how he works. He doesn't kill anybody, but he hangs around until the situation arises where they die. Then he just sits there, he sort of sets them up in the first place while he stays out of it.

Fred:
I'm not going to tell you first what I do as undercover officer engaged in tracking down dealers and the source of their illegal drugs in the streets of our cities ad corridors of our schools here in Orange County. I'm going to tell you what I'm afraid of.

Freck:
What do you think about the New Path?

Barris:
While it doesn't matter what I think, I kinda have to tip my hat to any entity that can bring so much integrity to evil. I mean, imagine this: a seemingly voluntary, privatized gulag which has managed to eliminate the meddling middlemen of public accountability and free will and wrap it up in a little bow and give it to the public like a gift. I mean, come on this is... [he makes exploding sounds and gestures]... this is awe-inspiring stuff.

Freck:
I heard you have to go cold turkey.

Barris:
Cold turkey doesn't even apply to Substance D. Unlike the legacy of inherited predisposition to addictive behaviors or substances, this needs no genetic assistance. There's no weekend warriors on the D. You're either on it... or you haven't tried it.

Freck:
Well, I like it.

Barris:
Yeah. How many caps do you take per day?

Freck:
Hmmm... very difficult to determine. But not that many.

Barris:
Well, like the old-school pharmacopoeia, a tolerance develops, you know. These visions of bugs, they're just garden-variety psychosis, but a clear indication that you've hurdled over the initial fun and euphoric phase and passed on... to the next phase. News from the guinea pig grapevine suggests that whatever it is, we won't know until it's way too late, you see? You see that we're all canaries in the coal mine on this one?

Freck:
Mm. I do think I have another source. That Donna chick.

Barris:
Bob's girl?

Freck:
Yeah.

Barris:
Yeah, "his girl," although I know for a fact he never gets in her pants.

Freck:
Really?

Barris:
Yeah.

Freck:
But he... talks like he does.

Barris:
Oh, yeah. That's Bob Arctor. He talks like he does many things. It's not the same, my friend, it's not the same thing. Donna has an aversion to bodily contact. I mean, junkies lose their interest in sex, you realize, due to organs swelling up from vasoconstriction. And I have observed in her an inordinate failure of sexual arousal not just toward Bob Arctor, but to... other males as well.

Freck:
I can't believe she doesn't put out.

Barris:
Well, she would... if she were handled right. For instance, I could show you how to sleep with her for less than three dollars.

Freck:
I don't wanna sleep with her. I wanna buy from her.

Barris:
Donna does coke, all right?

Freck:
Three dollars doesn't get you a line of coke.

Barris:
Ah-ah. That's where you're wrong, pal.

Fred:
I'm not going to tell you first what I do as undercover officer engaged in tracking down dealers and the source of their illegal drugs in the streets of our cities and the corridors of our schools here in Orange County. I'm going to tell you what I'm afraid of.

Freck:
[twitching horribly] Okay, if you guys are gonna kill eac hother, I'm s-splitting! It's getting very f***ed up over here!

Fred:
Freck, the most dangerous kind of person is the one who's afraid of his own shadow.

Freck:
What is that supposed to mean?

Barris:
It means, Freckles, that if you take too much of that stuff, not only are you going to start seeing and feeling buggy bugs all over yourself but you're also gonna start talking like...

[makes quacking sounds]

Barris:
And no one can understand you.

Fred:
What did you say, Barris? I didn't understand you.

[Barris softly quacks to Fred and then louder at Freck]

Freck:
You guys are f***ed up!

Barris:
[imitating Frecks in a raspy twitching voice] Oh no. It is you ga ga goo that are f*** upted up!

[Freck leaves and Luckman throws a rock to the ground]

Luckman:
Go Freck yourself!

Barris:
[in a high pitched voice] "Don't take the car, you'll kill yourselves! Ye gogh gogh gogh gogh!"

Mike:
I believe God's M.O. is to transmute evil into good and if He's active here, he's doing that now. Although our eyes can't perceive it. The whole process is hidden beneath the surface of our reality. It will only be revealed later. And even then, the people of the future, our children's children, will never truly know this awful time that we have gone through and the losses we took. Maybe some footnote in a minor history book, a brief mention with no list of the fallen.

Street Prophet:
Man was not meant to live like this! [Beaten down by cops and bundled into a van]

Medical Officer #1:
Don't worry, we can take care of this loser.

Donna:
It's easy to win.

End Captions:
The Enemy was their mistake in playing.