MAG174 - The Great Beast • The Magnus Archives Transcripts Archive Archive A (Extremely Unofficial)

[EXT. VAST DOMAIN]

[TAPE CLICKS ON.]

[There is a great howling in the background. A great gale of wind, shrieking its way towards us, punctuated every now and then with a thunderous boom. It’s still distant. For now.]

[The Archivist’s static fades quickly in, and:]

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

The shadow falls over everything Mehreen has ever known.

When it had first covered her home, bathing the street beyond the window in unexpected shade, she had thought it an eclipse. There wasn’t supposed to be one then, she is sure of that, although, if pressed, she could not have told you what day it is today.

Before the shadow fell, she is sure that the sun was shining brightly, although, if pressed, she could not have pictured it.

And the humid heat of a lingering summer had left the world sleepy and unprepared, although, if pressed, she remembers the heat but not the season.

All told, the time before the sky was covered is hazy to her, but she knows there was one: A time before something blocked out the Sun.

It moves in shifts as if it is willed, clearly some part of a greater whole. A foot? A hand? Perhaps a single finger. To look up is to see only the smallest fraction of it covering the sky, and half of Mehreen’s mind screams at her to get back, to get further away, to get to a distance where perhaps she could see the whole of it. A position where the idea of comprehending what she is looking at isn’t some – bitter joke.

But the other half of her mind whispers the truth: That it is already so far away that to see it in its entirety is impossible. And if she did, she could not understand it.

[A boom, slightly closer than before. They’re beginning to take on a science-fiction-esque air; there’s a bit of synth or scattering in the boom, now.]

But there is another certainty within her, another piece of terrible knowledge that bubbles up unbidden from somewhere in Mehreen’s soul that is no longer hers: It is coming closer.

It is descending on her home and everything that she has ever known. And when it arrives, it will not even notice that it has destroyed her. That it has so casually wiped from the world everything that she will ever know or love.

It will crush her home. It will crush her family and her city and her world. The shadow is over everything.

Mehreen gathers her mother, who sits in the kitchen over a pot of sour-smelling tea, berating her that they should have left earlier. She gathers her husband, who snorts in derision and tells her that he’s heard that there isn’t really any danger at all. She gathers her daughter, who asks with wide eyes and the voice of nervous innocence where they are going. What’s going on?

Mehreen cannot quite make out their faces as she bundles them into the car, old and shuddering as it coughs into life. Does she remember having a child? A spouse? Does she remember her mother having such a cruel sneer?

It doesn’t matter. They are here now, and she has to save them. She cannot leave them to the growing shadow and the thing coming ever-closer.

[Boom.]

She starts to drive. The streets are empty, the blank-faced strangers around them frozen, staring into the sky in still and silent expectation.

There is no traffic, nothing to stop the laboured grinding of the elderly car as it careens down the street, hunting desperately for the edge of the shadow.

Mehreen knows if she can just escape it, find where it ends and the sunlight hits the earth, they can be free. They will not be beneath it when the vast being arrives.

But there is no hope in her for it, no glimmer of optimism as they hurtle down street after street. Only the crushing dread, the leaden knowledge that they started too late, that they’re not fast enough, that the shadow reaches a thousand miles in every direction, and they could drive for a month.

Have they been driving that long? How many miles have they traveled now? And still they would never get away, never cross that line from below the shadow into open, sunlit air.

[Boom.]

The world gets darker, and the thing moves closer. It will be upon them any moment now. The car grinds and crunches somewhere in its engine and rolls to a stop.

Mehreen grabs her daughter, now crying with fear and confusion, and begins to run.

Where is she running to? It will be upon them all soon, wiping out everything they were or are or will be, rendering their lives an unremembered blip, crushed beneath its unstoppable significance.

It is right above them, and it will. Not. Stop.

How long has she been running? Minutes? Days? Her unfamiliar daughter laughs cruelly, carried in Mehreen’s exhausted arms. They cannot escape the shadow as their doom gets forever closer.

Far, infinitely far above her, Edward holds his grip tight. His fingers are white with strain, and his own arms burn and ache deeper than he thought possible.

He is interlocked, woven into an unending tapestry of suffering, contorted bodies. The shape that they create is a mystery to him, but as it moves he can feel his own muscles twist and stretch with those he holds onto, together shifting and pulling and lifting the bulk of the thing of which he is only the tiniest part.

Where the impulses come from, he does not know, traveling through the impossible colossus, rippling down through the people that form its bulk. Moving as one.

He does not know where in the thing he is, but suspects that it is not too far from the edge, for sometimes he can see something he might almost believe to be sky.

Some part of it hits the ground, –

[Boom. Much closer than before.]

– however distantly below him that may be.

[The wind is shrieking up here – we are in the midst of it, as compared to Mehreen.]

A foot, perhaps, or a limb of some sort.

[And it is at this point that it becomes clear that those booms we’re hearing? They’re this great beast’s “footsteps.”]

The shuddering impact of it resonates up through the bodies that surround him, and all at once they cry out in pain. He can hear bones snap and tendons rip as the force of the step sharply shifts the twisted arrangement of human misery.

Edward’s own neck is spun, pushed by the shoulder of the woman crushed in behind him, and turned so far to the side that he is sure another millimeter – and it would break entirely.

For hours he holds that position, dreading every moment that the next motion of the thing they construct will break him like thin porcelain.

And then it comes: Not another stepping impact, for those are rare and ponderous, but the agonized pull of the whole trying to lift itself. Every muscle in every body tenses all at once, and Edward finds himself moving, pushed and squeezed and gasping for space and – free.

Without warning, he finds himself in open air, forced out of the thing like a shoot pushing up through the soil. He takes in a deep breath, his protesting limbs now limp and almost useless, and collapses upon a ground that looks up at him in envy.

No. Not a ground. For it is only now that Edward realizes how thin the air is, how cold it is without the warmth of uncountable bodies on all sides.

Behind him he can see the shifting sea of people stretching out forever, but in front of him, a few hundred meters away, there is what appears to be… an edge.

In a place where time has meaning it might be said it takes Edward hours, days to drag himself over the writhing floor. But eventually he finds himself laying upon that horizon, willing himself to look out, over, and down, see where he is. If there is any place to which he might escape.

So finally, he looks.

[The howling begins to build up again, up into:]

[Boom.]

[The wind keeps whipping around as Edward looks.]

His stomach drops, and his arms seize as he looks upon a hundred miles of slowly-moving humanity down to a stark and barren ground far below. It is so far down that if he climbed for a year he would not reach the end of it.

His tears fall down and away into the open sky. His teeth lock in fear and he begins to try and move backwards, away from the precipice.

But there is a movement. A shift in the people below him as the great beast stretches a part of itself.

A wave of spasming limbs passes beneath Edward, and in a moment he is flung, upwards and away, out into the empty air below.

He is falling. He cannot breathe as the air is forced from his lungs and the razor-cold wind lashes at his skin.

He is falling. The beast he was once a part of is a blur beside him as he plummets, human forms lost in the strange, moving texture.

He is falling, and he is so small and so afraid he wonders if he will ever hit the ground.

He does not want to die smeared over that flat and hateful wasteland far below, and he flails, limbs throwing themselves violently around, trying to catch a hold of something, anything to save himself.

Edward feels a hand grip his. The stop is sudden, violent, wrenching his shoulder from its socket with a wet pop. He screams in pain but also in relief as he hangs there, suspended above his fate.

Despite his dread, it takes only a moment for him to make his decision. He reaches out with his other arm and feels it gripped by another hand as slowly, inexorably, he allows himself to be pulled back into the great, suffering colossus.

Far below, there is another impact –

[Boom.]

[The wind howls. It almost sounds like crying.]

As if something were being stepped on.

[His static creeps back in, just enough to:]

[TAPE CLICKS OFF.]

[EXT. VAST DOMAIN]

[TAPE CLICKS ON.]

[A sigh.]

MARTIN

Is it much further?

[The Archivist gives a little heh of an amused exhale, and there’s a grin to his voice when he responds.]

ARCHIVIST

Yes.

[Martin sighs, a bit over-dramatically.]

ARCHIVIST

(still amused) I’m not entirely sure what you were expecting; it’s the Vast. The clue is in the name.

MARTIN

(long-suffering) Yes, alright.

ARCHIVIST

Just be glad that this is one of the domains that actually has ground to walk on.

MARTIN

Whatever.

[Another boom-step.]

MARTIN

S-So how far are we from the other side? And – And don’t say time and space don’t work here; that’s a cop-out and you know it.

[The Archivist sighs.]

(a bit in shock, in response to Martin’s cut-off question) Uh… apparently!

SIMON FAIRCHILD

Hello!

[He makes a big show of brushing off the rubble or whatever else has gathered around him on impact.]

SIMON

Hello, dreadfully sorry!

[Just as before, he sounds like a stereotype – all proper and manners, in a delightfully overeager way. Somehow, though, it’s not affected – there’s definite mirth there, too.]

[He continues to brush off the debris, recovering his breath as he does so.]

SIMON

I’m sorry? I’m not sure I follow.

MARTIN

All those lies you told me – you helped to do this; you turned the world into your, your – playground.

SIMON

Um, not to be a pedant, but if you recall, I was actually doing a favor for Peter. And if Peter had won, none of this would have happened. Also, not to make excuses, but they weren’t exactly lies. Just – oversimplifications of complicated truths.

Uh –

Byeee!

[And with a whoosh, he’s gone.]

MARTIN

Wait, really?

HELEN

I was rather looking forward to watching an old man metaphysically explode. Honestly, I feel a bit cheated. The others were exceptional fun.

ARCHIVIST

What.

HELEN

How are we still having this intensely boring conversation? I honestly thought that actually ending the world would be enough to stop you whining, but no!

You’re the most powerful person in a world where the worst consequences imaginable have already happened! Absolute power, with zero responsibility!!

What more can you possibly need to just enjoy yourself a tiny bit?

[Junior punctuates her words with another step.]

[The Archivist and Martin don’t respond.]

HELEN

Fine! Guess I’ll just leave then! Hang out inside myself until you get angry again and accidentally have some fun.

ARCHIVIST

It’s not. Fun.

[Helen just laughs.]

HELEN

And here I thought you’d forgotten how to make jokes.

[Her door creaks as she leaves, then shuts.]

[The Archivist sighs.]

ARCHIVIST

I-I, I’m sorry, Martin. After meeting the child, I thought – I’d been – (sudden burst) I really hoped things would be simpler, you know? A nice straightforward apocalypse.

MARTIN

(also sighing) No, (exhale) I’m sorry. Cheerleading you when you’re on a magical murder spree probably wasn’t – a great idea.

ARCHIVIST

I started it.

[Pause.]

MARTIN

Good point! (small laugh) I’ll keep my apology, then.

[Movement and fabric sounds – a hug? Holding each other?]

[A small, happy hm and exhale from Martin.]

Hang on, you’re still down to kill Elias, right? Uh – Jonah. Whatever.

ARCHIVIST

I’m still going to confront him. I don’t know if it is something I’m even – capable of, but if I can and I have to, I will.