Last Words
[CLICK]
[SCREECHING, SWIRLING STATIC INDICATES THE CENTRAL CHAMBER OF THE PANOPTICON]
[FOOTSTEPS ON MARBLE]
JONAH/ELIAS (BACKGROUND)
– and whispers deep within her mind those bitter thoughts that make her hate herself and those that reassure but cannot hide their secret loathing that will leak and spread from tongues that mumble just outside the edge of hearing things he knows will be his fate for all his efforts to protect himself and what he loves will burn away to ash inside –
ARCHIVIST
Jonah Magnus!
…
[ARCHIVIST STATIC RISES]
Ceaseless Watcher, you know why I am here.
Release him.
[STATIC CRESCENDOS AND THEN DIES DOWN AS CHANTING AND BACKGROUND STATIC DRONE CEASE]
…
Jonah Magnus.
JONAH/ELIAS
[Groggy] John? I-I-Is that you? Uh, I, I was having the most wonderful dream…
ARCHIVIST
[Icily] Get up.
JONAH/ELIAS
What’s – ? Wh-what’s going on? Where – ?
[METAL BLADE IS DRAWN]
Oh. I-I see.
ARCHIVIST
It’s over.
JONAH/ELIAS
Is it? [sigh]
Yes. Yes, I suppose it must be.
[TIRED EXHALATION]
Where’s Martin? I rather thought he’d be the one to do the deed.
…
[METALLIC CLINK]
Ah, I see. Going it alone, are we? Probably for the best. Empathy only holds you back in the end.
ARCHIVIST
You’ve failed.
JONAH/ELIAS
Have I?
ARCHIVIST
Immortality. It’s impossible. Even without me, nothing escapes entropy. Not forever. Not even fear.
JONAH/ELIAS
Yes… Pity.
I suppose I always knew that, deep down. But it was wonderful while it lasted. I’ve seen more than I could have lived in a thousand lifetimes, and every moment was so –
ARCHIVIST
Shut up!
It ends now. All of it. I am going to take this world that you used me to create, and I am going to burn it out. It’s the only way. I’m going to leave it a barren, lifeless void, cold and unafraid and then finally, when everyone’s gone, and I am all that’s left, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I’ll be leaving these things that you serve trapped and starving in their own private hell.
JONAH/ELIAS
…
That we serve.
ARCHIVIST
Not for much longer. I wonder if they’re even capable of fearing their own ends.
I look forward to finding out.
JONAH/ELIAS
Uh, L-Look, John, a-as fun as all this melodrama is, enough is enough. We both know you that don’t have it in you –
[FOOTSTEPS, FOLLOWED BY SOLID CONNECTION]
ARCHIVIST
That was for Sasha.
JONAH/ELIAS
J-John, wait!
[ANOTHER BLOW, ACCOMPANIED BY WHEEZING]
ARCHIVIST
For Tim.
JONAH/ELIAS
[Afraid] P-Please John!
[AND AGAIN]
ARCHIVIST
For Gertrude, and all the others.
[WINDED, LABOURED BREATHING]
JONAH/ELIAS
[Wheezing, pitiful] P-Please John… [coughs] I don’t want to die.
ARCHIVIST
Neither did they.
JONAH/ELIAS
[Soft, terrified] No, no… N–
ARCHIVIST
But no-one escapes at the end.
[WITH EFFORT, THE ARCHIVIST STABS DEEPLY]
[EXTENDED SOUNDS OF CHOKING & GURGLING DEATH RATTLE]
[BODY SLUMPS HEAVILY]
JONAH/ELIAS
[Wetly] Good… luck.
[THE ARCHIVIST GASPS, DROPPED BLADE RINGS OUT ON MARBLE]
[STATIC STARTS, SHARPER AND MORE HARSHER THAN BEFORE]
[THE ARCHIVIST CRIES OUT DISTORTEDLY]
ARCHIVIST
[Pained] – the flaying of skin… burning, retching on the smog of… hide, hide, hide… it is not real but still it comes to… falling through the pitch black daa-aaaaaargh!
[PAIN NOISES INTENSIFY THEN ARE CONTROLLED]
[CRACKLING STATIC DIMINISHES AS ARCHIVIST EXHALES TO CONTROL SELF]
[DOOR CREAKS OPEN, FOLLOWED BY TENTATIVE FOOTSTEPS]
ROSIE
Mr. Magnus, sir? Is everything alright? I, I thought I heard th–
ARCHIVIST
Rosie. You may go.
ROSIE
I, uh, I, I’m sorry Mr Sims but I was –
ARCHIVIST
[Crackling] You are dismissed.
ROSIE
Right. Y-Y-Yes. Of course. Sir.
[FOOTSTEPS AND DOOR OPENS]
Thank you.
[FOOTSTEPS FADE AS DOOR CLOSES]
[THE ARCHIVIST GASPS IN PAIN AS STATIC FLARES AGAIN]
[ANIMAL NOISES – CHIRPS, CROAKS AND CALLS]
ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)
Once upon a time there was fear. Old fear. Primal fear. A fear of blood and pounding feet, a fear of that sudden burst of pain and then nothing. And that fear was nothing. Went nowhere. Knew not what it was.
Then it became. Or perhaps it always was and simply entered. But fear was here and true and was itself, and it hungered. It wished to know more. It wished to feel more. It wished to be more. And to those things that hurried through the grass, that shivered through the night in their burrows and their caves, because they knew the dark held flashing talons and shining eyes, they fed the fear. It was blunt and it was simple, but still it was solid enough to satisfy. And the thing that was fear was sated and content.
Then came minds that knew it differently. They grew slowly, over the millennia; inch by inch they found new things to dread. The fear of their own end, of the things that lived in the darkness, became a fear of the darkness itself. And as they grew to know what it is that they saw, to give it names, and struggle at learning, so too did they learn to fear that their eyes might deceive them, or show them too much. And as they learned to know their friends and kin, so too did they learn to fear the unknown figure, the coming of the stranger, and the silence when they were alone. And when they found fire, that bright ignition of home and hope and progress, the thing that was fear gorged itself on a newfound terror once again.
[ROARING FLAME RUSHES THROUGH, FOLLOWED BY STORM SOUNDS]
And as these tiny, strange minds grew and learned, they did something new. They began to take their thoughts, their instincts and their horrors, and they crystallised them. They gave them sound and form and shape to share them. And as they did the thing that was fear felt itself began to tear, to crack and fracture along a thousand unseen fault lines. It bled and warped and multiplied, and could no longer see itself as once it did. It could never be whole again.
But within these forms were freedoms, new and wonderful dreads to push and explore, new muscles to flex. The joy of oozing, crawling pestilence as minds distrusted their own corrupted bodies. The satisfaction of surrounding them, suffocating them, reaching down into them and drinking in their panic as breath failed them.
And as they grew to learn their place within the world, the pathetic meagreness of their own existence, they could not spin a story rich or grand enough to fully hide their own awful insignificance, lost and alone in the terrible greatness of the universe. And by the time these minds had reached a point of intricacy to lie and scheme and puppet one other, they had also learned to conceive of war.
[DRUMBEATS POUND A SINISTER CALL]
And as the things that were fear hovered at the edge of the world, the flowing horror of these minds nourished them, swelling some and withering others, pushing and pulling the shattered, swirling mass of terror into ever newer and undiscovered forms.
[SOFT VOCAL SUSURRATIONS JOIN THE DRUMS]
And something else began to happen. Some minds did not simply recoil from them and feed them. Some seemed almost to call them, to court them, to hunger for them in return. Minds that saw the faces of the things that were fear, and were compelled as much as they were repulsed. Whether or not they knew what it was they did, they called out. And they were answered.
[DRUMS FADE LEAVING BEHIND THE CHITTERING MURMURS]
Time is different for fear, and it cannot be said exactly who was the first to open themselves and be filled with the power of terror. A hermit, huddled in a pitch black cave through winter, who emerged and brought the depth of night with him wherever he trod. A pestilent chieftain who found her breath sloughed from her body and rotted whatever it touched. A warrior driven from their village, who found their face as smooth and shifting as the sands of their home. Which came first does not matter, the unseen gap was bridged, and the thin veil between the world that was and the things that were fear had been torn, ever so slightly.
[VOICES ARE JOINED THEN SUPERCEDED BY GUTTURAL ROARS]
And with this tear, they grew stronger, bolder, pouring themselves into the world and creating monsters. Long things that wore you like a suit, smiling things that stripped you from your bones, unseen things that watched and watched and watched and never left you. And with each new creation, each new servant, the Fears reached further and fed the things that made them.
And with this newfound power came greed. The hunger for more, the unformed, unfocused, but impossibly huge desire to exist. To join the minds that gave them shape and purpose, and finally drink their fill ‘til they were one and the same. They had no concept of how, or when, or even why, but they needed it. They needed it.
[A CHORAL DRONE BEGINS]
And so the things that were fear began to sing, to draw ever more multitudes to them, to shape them and push them and beg them for freedom. For existence. But though they jostled and pushed and fought to emerge, they could not. For they could not conceive of what or where they were beyond the words and images the minds below could give them.
[FAINT BUZZING SOUNDS, AS THE ROARS FADE AWAY AND ARE REPLACED WITH AN ALMOST MECHANICAL CLACKING]
But there was one, the part that some would call the Spider, that had been given a gift beyond all its brethren. The minds that feared grew suspicious of their own schemes, of connections and consequences, and over time these suspicions became threads, then webs, then nerves that granted the Spider, the Mother-of-Puppets, the Hidden Machination, a mind of its own; to plot and plan and draw its own connections, its own conclusions. Wheels, within wheels within wheels… It would not, could not tell its other parts, for were they even able to understand such things, which they could not, to trust, to share in such a way ran counter to its very essence.
And so it drew its plan to escape not only this ephemeral cage of non-existence, but even the very reality into which they might break, and it chose its fool: The Great Eye, the most unwise of all the fragments, forever seeking and consuming knowledge that it could not comprehend. It played and twisted and through The Eye brought about a new world, a wide and unending vista of terror and agony, and the place from which it might spread, and spin another web far grander than anything conceived of in the minds that birthed it.
Finally, it would find its escape and with it… apotheosis.
[SOUNDS FADE AS STATIC RISES AND THEN ITSELF FADES]
[THE ARCHIVIST EXHALES DEEPLY]
ARCHIVIST
No. It won’t. It has only found its end.
[DOOR OPENS]
MARTIN
John?
[FOOTSTEPS RING ON MARBLE]
John!
ARCHIVIST
Martin, what are you doing here?
MARTIN
Oh thank god. Just, just, just stop what you’re about to do, okay? I know that you think that a–
…
What’s that?
ARCHIVIST
Elias… Jonah Magnus.
MARTIN
[Shocked] He’s – You didn’t – ?
ARCHIVIST
I’m sorry, Martin.
MARTIN
[Horrified & scared] You didn’t. N-No. No, no, no, no, no, no. No! This isn’t – You can’t –
ARCHIVIST
I did. I am.
MARTIN
Why?!
ARCHIVIST
You know why. I can’t let them out. I can’t! Not again.
MARTIN
Oh, what have you done, John!
ARCHIVIST
Go tell the others. It’s over.
MARTIN
N-No… you don’t understand!
ARCHIVIST
What?
MARTIN
I’m sorry, John. I’m, I’m so sorry… I, I saw you had gone and… and I knew that you-you couldn’t help yourself. You never could! I knew you’d lied to me, that you were going in alone…
ARCHIVIST
Martin? What did you do?
MARTIN
[Shaking] I told them to go early. To do it straight away and…. I’d keep you talking. Until they were done.
ARCHIVIST
[Calm] Oh, Martin.
MARTIN
I didn’t think you’d go through with it! Not without me! I can’t believe you’d do this! That you’d leave me like this! You swore to me! You swore to me, you bastard!
ARCHIVIST
Martin! I’m still here.
MARTIN
Are you!? How much of you is even left now?
ARCHIVIST
It’s still me, Martin. I’m still here.
MARTIN
How would you even know?
ARCHIVIST
…
I’m sorry Martin, I am, but it’s done. You can hate me, you can scream at me, but it won’t change anything. I had to do this. And you promised.
MARTIN
[Angry trembling] Don’t you dare say that. Don’t you dare!
[THE ARCHIVIST’S VOICE HAS TAKEN ON A SOFTLY RESONANT QUALITY AS STATIC STARTS TO CRACKLE FAINTLY]
ARCHIVIST
We can still be together, here. Until it’s over.
MARTIN
You’re not listening! You never listen! They are down there fighting those things, and lighting it right now!
ARCHIVIST
It’s fine, Martin, I’ll call off the servitors.
They can’t light it, they don’t have… they don’t…
[PATS CLOTHING]
Wait a –
Oh… Oh, no.
[STATIC WAVE BURSTS ACROSS SCENE, AND THE ARCHIVIST SQUEALS IN DISTORTED AGONY]
MARTIN
John!
ARCHIVIST
Martin, I – AH! AH!
MARTIN
John, we have to get out of here!
ARCHIVIST
[Gasping] I… I can’t. Martin, I’m part of this place.
[STATIC SCREECH AND HE WINCES AUDIBLY]
MARTIN
Goddamn it, John!
ARCHIVIST
[Enduring] Aaaaaaargh! I can… withstand it. I just need to hold… on…
[EXPLOSION RESOUNDS]
MARTIN
[Gritted teeth] Come on, John! Come on!
[THE ARCHIVIST’S VOICE DISTORTS AS BUILDING AND REALITY START CRACKING, WITH STATIC SCREECHING AND SQUEALING THROUGHOUT]
ARCHIVIST
[Struggling] No! I can feel the pull… The web, the tapes, it wants –
No! I won’t let it!
MARTIN
For god’s sake, John, move!
ARCHIVIST
I can’t!
Martin, get out of here!
What’s going to be left of me after this, you can’t see that.
MARTIN
No!
ARCHIVIST
I can’t protect you from this. Go!
MARTIN
I’m not leaving you trapped here killing the world while I watch!
ARCHIVIST
If you stay, you’ll die!
MARTIN
Then I’ll die!
ARCHIVIST
No!
[CRUMBLING STONE AND MARTIN CRIES OUT AS IF STRUCK BY SOMETHING, STARTS SOBBING]
ARCHIVIST
Martin, please! I can’t lose you. Not like this…
MARTIN
Tough! Okay? Where you go, I go!
ARCHIVIST
That’s the deal…
[PANOPTICON CONTINUES TO COLLAPSE AS A SHARP STATIC WHINE RINGS OUT]
Okay.
MARTIN
What?
ARCHIVIST
Do it! The knife’s just there. Let them go.
MARTIN
[Tearful] I’m not going to kill you!
ARCHIVIST
Cut the tether. Send them away.
Maybe we both die. Probably. But maybe not. Maybe, maybe everything works out, and we end up somewhere else.
MARTIN
Together?
ARCHIVIST
One way or another. Together.
[METALLIC CLINK]
MARTIN
I don’t think I can…
ARCHIVIST
It has to be you. The Eye won’t let me do it.
MARTIN
[Sobbing] Are you sure about this?
ARCHIVIST
No.
But I love you.
MARTIN
I love you too.
[KISS]
[MARTIN STABS DEEPLY; THERE IS A SINGLE GASP]
[PAINED SOB]
[DISTORTED SCREECH, WITH SOUND LIKE TAPE RAPIDLY UNSPOOLING AMIDST A RISING CRESCENDO OF STATIC]
[THEN… CLICK]
[LONG SILENCE]
[CLICK]
[SOUND OF SHIFTING RUBBLE AND DEBRIS; BIRDSONG CAN BE HEARD FAINTLY]
BASIRA
Huh.
[MORE SHIFTING RUBBLE]
Still works.
GEORGIE
[Calling] You found something?
BASIRA
Just one of the old tape recorders.
[FOOTSTEPS ON RUBBLE]
GEORGIE
God, tough little bastards, aren’t they?
BASIRA
Yup.
[MORE FOOTSTEPS OVER RUBBLE]
MELANIE
No luck?
GEORGIE
No. Still no sign of them.
BASIRA
No bodies, though. That’s a good sign, maybe?
GEORGIE
Maybe.
MELANIE
Huh.
[BIRDS TWEET, WHILE SOUNDS OF PEOPLE BUILDING OR CLEARING ARE HEARD IN BACKGROUND]
Maybe it’s time to accept that they’re gone.
BASIRA
Hm.
MELANIE
And, honestly, it’s probably for the best.
I mean, I just don’t think people would exactly be understanding. You remember what happened when they found Simon Fairchild?
GEORGIE
Yeah…
MELANIE
And he’s not just some powerless left-behind avatar, you know? We’re talking about ‘The Archivist’.
BASIRA
Yeah okay, you’ve made your point. [sigh] Would just be nice to know for sure.
GEORGIE
All we can do is hope.
BASIRA
I suppose.
[LONG PAUSE]
GEORGIE
We should go. It’ll be dark soon, and we still need batteries for the nightlights.
MELANIE
And I’m sure Rosie’s keen for us to take the Admiral back off her hands.
GEORGIE
She’s alright, he’s calmed down a lot.
MELANIE
Thank god for tinned tuna.
…
Come on.
BASIRA
What do you want me to do with this?
GEORGIE
Leave it. We’re done with tapes.
MELANIE
Want me to smash it?
BASIRA
I think… we can probably just turn it off.
MELANIE
Okay.
[FOOTSTEPS AS MELANIE AND GEORGIE WALK AWAY]
BASIRA
If anyone’s listening… Goodbye.
I’m sorry, and…
Good luck.