Taylor walking alone across the Gnosis campus.  It is dusk.  There is no snow on the ground, but it clearly cold, as he is wearing a jacket and a hat, and is walking somewhat hunched over, with his hands jammed into his jacket pockets.

CAPTION: “You might want to take some time to think it over,” was what Iris ended with.

Extreme close-up view of a tabletop.  There are some polyhedral dice (four-siders, eight-siders, twenty-siders) and some sheets with what look like crudely-drawn maps visible.

CAPTION: When I was in high school, I did a lot of fantasy role-playing.

View of a knight in badly scratched and dented armor, swinging a battered sword at an ogre.  They are fighting in the midst of some sort of hellish landscape.

CAPTION: In games, your characters would keep going, enduring all sorts of things that no ordinary person would do.

View of the same knight, sitting in front of a fire, with a wizard and a roguish-looking fellow, plus a female elf in a chainmail bikini.

CAPTION: Stay up all night, live in your armor, go charging into battle as long as you had one hit point left. A player-character was nothing like any real human being.

View of two figures, set against an abstract landscape.  One is the knight in armor, now bright and shining, holding his sword and striking a heroic post.  The other is Taylor, in his jacket, cowering.

CAPTION: That’s the difference between fiction and reality.

Taylor standing under a tree (very small), facing away from us.  The tree is large, dark, ominous; its branches are bare.

CAPTION: Reality sucks without you in it, Marie.  I’d rather be a fictional character.

Professor Waite standing in her laboratory, adjusting the X-ray like device over the bed.  Jill is leaning against the wall in the background.  Little Michiko sits on a stool next to her.

WAITE: I can’t believe you actually talked that boy into this.

JILL: It wasn’t that hard.

Close up on Waite, peering into a cavity in her machine.

WAITE: Yes, well, if I were him, I’d be wondering why someone who wasn’t already a woman wouldn’t be volunteering.  Are you sure he’s smart enough?

View of Jill and Little Michiko.  Little Michiko is looking ahead, sternly.  Jill is casting her a sideways glance.

JILL: Not a question of smart.  He’s nineteen, and a boy, and in love.  In short, the kind of hopeless romantic who wouldn’t think to ask.

Close up view of one of Waite’s hands, turning a dial on a control panel.

CAPTION: I just hope you can make him pretty enough.

View of Little Michiko and Jill.  Little Michiko has a wry expression, while Jill has turned to her and looks slightly shocked.

LITTLE MICHIKO: I think he’s rather pretty already.

JILL: Michiko!

Close up on Little Michiko, who looks somewhat irritated.

LITTLE MICHIKO: I hope you haven’t forgotten that I’m not really an eight year-old.

Taylor is standing next to Professor Waite and her apparatus.

TAYLOR: I’m ready.

WAITE: Excellent, Mr. Chase.  Please disrobe completely and lie down on the table.

Taylor in profile in part of the panel, looking nervous.  In the back of the panel we see Little Michiko, still on her stool resting her chin on her palms (elbows on knees, little-girl like).  Jill is standing, also grinning.

TAYLOR: Uh, in front of…them?

Close up on Jill’s face.  She has an eyebrow raised.

JILL: If you have trouble being naked in front of people, Taylor, you’re going to have a hard time on this mission.

View from above.  He is lying naked on he table (his genitals obscured by the apparatus above.  He is strapped down at his ankles and head and one of his wrists.  Waite is fastening the straps on another of his wrists.

CAPTION: Now might be a good time to get used to being tied up, too.

View of Jill and Taylor from the side.  Jill has placed her hand on Taylor’s crotch, and we can see that he is obviously erect.

CAPTION: I have sort of a hard time concentrating…I mean, it’s been weeks since I’ve been this close to a girl and, well…

Same view as before, except that now Jill has clearly grabbed Taylor by the balls and is squeezing, because he has a look of fear and pain on his face.  Jill’s face is wearing an icy smile.

JILL: Of course, if you tell anyone what I’ve just told you…it won’t be at all pretty.

Close up on Taylor’s face.  Beads of sweat have appeared on it.

TAYLOR: Why tell me any of this at all, then?

Close up on Jill and Taylor’s faces.  Jill has let go of Taylor’s balls and is now encircling his head with her arms, and nibbling at his ear again.

JILL: Let me ask you this, Taylor.  How much do you love Marie?  What would you be willing to give up for her?

TAYLOR: Everything.

Close up on Taylor’s crotch.  He’s erect again, and Jill’s fingertips are lightly brushing his trousers against the erection.

JILL (out-of-panel balloon): Everything?

TAYLOR (out-of-panel balloon): Yes, but why ask?

Same view as before, except in this one Jill’s hand has reached for the tab on Taylor’s fly zipper and is beginning to open his fly.

JILL (out of panel balloon): Because you certainly won’t be able to penetrate Frau Kupler’s organization with one of these…

Drawing back from Jill’s car.  We can’t see inside the windows.

CAPTION: It gets more fantastic than that.

Panel from Taylor’s P.O.V.  He is reaching across a desk in a factlty office shaking hands with PROFESSOR REBECCA WAITE.

CAPTION: The next day Jill takes me to the psychology department and introduces me to a Professor Waite.

WAITE: How do you do, young man.

Cutaway view of Waite’s office.  Taylor and Waite are in the act of sitting down.  Jill is leaning against a bookcase further in the background of the panel.

TAYLOR: So why am I here?

WAITE: We’re going to put you through a little…test.

TAYLOR: A test?

Close-up on Jill’s face.  She loooks rather grim.

JILL: We’re going to find out if you really love Marie as much as you say you do.

View from above inside something that looks rather like a hospital room.  There is a narrow bed, which Taylor is lying on, underneath a sheet.  He has apparently disrobed, because we see his bare shoulders a his left arm, extended.  Waite is standing by him, checking a syringe of some kind that she has just filled.

TAYLOR: So what happens now?

WAITE: We shall be inducing a sort of dream state in you…your arm, please.

Close up on Taylor’s arm.  We see his arm, Waite’s hands, and the syringe, with which she is injecting something into his arm.

WAITE (out-of-panel balloon): I’m afraid you might not find what you dream very pleasant.  You can wake up at any time, but the longer you stick with it, the better you’ll do.

Taylor’s P.O.V.  He is lying on his back, so he is looking up at the tiles on the ceiling.

CAPTION: Professor Waite tells me to lie back and just let things happen.  For a little while nothing does.

Another Taylor P.O.V.  He has turned his head to the side, and is looking out in the lab.  LITTLE MICHIKO is standing there, looking at him.

CAPTION: Out of nowhere, this little Asian girl appears.  And stares at me.

Close up on Little Michiko’s face.

CAPTION: She can’t be more than eight years old.  But she’s looking at me like she’s sizing me up.  It’s creepy…

Little Michiko’s face again, this time visible through “ovals,” which black out the borders of the panels (symbolic of Taylor’s falling asleep).

CAPTION: Maybe this little girl is where dreams begin.

Night view of an old graveyard.  There is no moon.  The gravestones are badly weathered and some are leaning.  Illumination comes from a sodium vapor lamp off the street.

CAPTION: The graveyard…

CAPTION: It’s in my hometown.  It’s old.  If you look at the headstones you’ll see the names of people streets and schools are named after in my dying hometown.

Close up on an old tombstone.  Engraved on the tombstone is the legend SYLVANUS MORRIS 1821-1888.

CAPTION: When I was a boy I hated and feared this place, especially at night.

CAPTION: In my imagination I could hear the dead whispering to me, just below the threshold of hearing and yet still there somehow, saying “come join us.”

The lights on, we see JILL KEENEY (well, Jill-Prime, actually, but she’s the successor to the role of Jill Keeney) holding Taylor against the wall with one of his arms held in a hammerlock.

CAPTION: Our of the corner of my eye, I think I recognize this woman.

JILL: What do you think you’re doing, perv?

View of the floor.  We see Taylor’s and Jill’s feet.  Also, the bottle of shampoo, which is spilled where Taylor dropped it.  It is making some ominous bubbles…

CAPTION: I’ve seen her picture in the Illuminator.  She’s Jill Something-or-Other.  Star senior athlete.  Could probably kick my ass without even breathing hard.

TAYLOR (out-of-panel balloon): Please…my name is Taylor Chase…Marie was my girlfriend…

Close up on Taylor and Jill’s faces.  Out of the panel, Jill is twisting Taylor’s arm and Taylor’s face is registering pain and perhaps a degree of panic.  Jill’s face is close by.  She is looking at him with a steely glare.

TAYLOR: No one’s heard of her for weeks…and no one seemed to be doing anything…I’m just trying to find out…

Same pose as before, but both Taylor’s and Jill’s features have relaxed a little bit.

TAYLOR (smaller -lettered balloon): …someone had to try…

Another view from above.  Jill has turned Taylor around and is facing.  She has her hands on his shoulders.

JILL: Maybe you’d better come and talk to me.

Taylor and Jill sitting in the front seat of a small passenger car.  We see them in parallel, in profile.  Jill is driving.  Their faces are illuminated by the lights from the dash.  It is night.

CAPTION: Jill makes us get in her car.  She talks, but only about trivia.  I wonder what’s going on.

View from overhead.  Jill’s car is pulling up in a small parking area, it’s lights on.  There are a few other cars.

CAPTION: We don’t drive far.  Just to the edge of Pleasant Prairie, where there’s a lake.

Front view of Taylor and Jill sitting in the front seat of her car.  Jill is leaning forward to turn on the radio.  Taylor has his head turned, looking at her.

JILL: Get in back.

TAYLOR: Why?

JILL: This is a make-out spot for PP high school kids.  That’s what we’re going to pretend to be doing.

Extreme close-up of Jill and Taylor in low light.  Jill is nibbling at Taylor’s earlobe.

JILL: This is a good way to get close, talk low while playing the radio, and not look…suspicious.  Do you understand.

TAYLOR: Well, yes, but…

Close-up, but not quite as close as the previous panel, showing Jill and Taylor in the back seat of Jill’s car.  Jill has placed her index finger across Taylor’s lips.

JILL: Shut up and listen carefully.

“Helicopter view” of the make-out area, including Jill’s car.  We see that a full moon is shining down.

CAPTION: And so I listen.  I hear a really frightening story.

CAPTION: Jill and some of her friends think they have a lead on some sort of international high-class white-slavery ring.

Close up of COLONEL JEREMIAH MADDER, sitting at a lectern in full dress uniform, lecturing.

CAPTION: In the middle of all the excitement, some spy-guy named Colonel Madder got arrested near Gnosis.

CAPTION: He was mixed up in capturing girls from Gnosis somehow.  Jill refuses to tell me how she could possibly know this.

Close up of BRIDGET O’BRIAN.  We see her head and shoulders, which are bare.  She is floating inside some sort of fluid-filled tube.

CAPTION: Apparently it goes back to something one of Jill’s friends got mixed up when she was doing study abroad.

A view of a naked girl, bound and bent over some sort of hobby-horse.  FRAU KUPLER, clad from head to toe in black leather, is in the process of flogging the naked girl.

CAPTION: Some sort of creepy madam runs an organization dedicated to making girls into sex slaves.

The lobby of the Periclea (an auditorium/theater).  We see Taylor and PAMELA in profile, talking.  Between them a poster advertising VERDI REQUIEM:  STUDENT PERFORMANCE.

TAYLOR: Hey, Pamela…have you seen Marie?  We were supposed to attend together.

PAMELA: Sorry, Taylor.  She slipped away at the gym last night I haven’t seen her since.

Taylor sitting in an Periclea seat.  He’s putting his hand on an adjacent seat waving off another approaching student.

CAPTION: Wonder where she could be?

TAYLOR: Sorry…I’m saving this for someone.

Close up on Taylor’s face, now in the darkened auditorium.  He looks worried.

SFX: Swirling musical score, marked with lyrics “…in die illa tremenda.”

CAPTION: She’s never stood me up before.

Close-up on Taylor, who is rising out of his seat, looking shocked.

TAYLOR: Jesus…

View of the stage in the Periclea.  Chorus and orchestra members are looking around in fear and confusion.  TANYA YIP is holding CONNIE MORTON (the soprano solosit) who has just fallen dead on stage.

CAPTION: Looks like bad times are coming at Gnosis.

Taylor sitting on the edge of his bed, holding a phone.

TAYLOR (into phone): Marie?  Sweetie?  I know everyone’s really shaken up by what happened tonight and I’m really worried and I really need you to call me, okay?

Taylor lies in bed in the dark, alone.

CAPTION: No call ever comes.

An outdoor scene at Gnosis. The campus is covered in snow.  A pair of detectives and a student are standing on a path.  One detective is asking the student questions, while another is writing something down on a a notepad.  In the background, Taylor walks by, his hands jammed into the pockets of a winter coat.

CAPTION: There’s a lot of activity on campus.  People asking questions everywhere

Taylor is standing in the Gadget (the student cafe).  He is holding open a copy of the Gnosis Illuminator (the student newspaper).  One headline on the paper is visible, reading POSSIBLE LEAD IN MORTON DEATH.  In the background we can see a coffee bar with a barista taking someone’s order.  Another male student is looking over Taylor’s shoulder.

CAPTION: One poor girl is dead.  Some other students seem to have disappeared.

Taylor trudging through the snow, alone under a streetlight.  The light illuminates the part of the panel containing Taylor,  The rest is dark.

CAPTION: A week goes by, the two, then three.  In the chaos of events, no one seems to have that much attention for one freshman girl.

Two women walking down a snow-cleared path.  It daylight.  They are looking over their shoulders at Taylor, who is behind them, raising a finger.

CAPTION: But my attention is undivided.

TAYLOR: Hey, can I talk to you women a minute?

Taylor sitting across the table from Pamela in the Gadget.  Both have hot drinks of some kind.  Pamela appears to be talking, and Taylor is leaning forward across the table, listening intently.

TAYLOR: The last person I know to have seen Marie turns out to be her friend Pamela.  They were working out late in the gym.  She says she heard something suspicious shortly after she last saw Marie.

Taylor stands with one hand on a pair of double doors labeled WOMEN’S LOCKER ROOM.  He is looking around rather nervously.

CAPTION: For some reason, I think that playing CSI will help, somehow.

View “from above” as Taylor enters the locker room.  It is dark.  He is illuminating the path in front of himself with a flashlight.

CAPTION: I really, really hope that no one is in here.

Someone in quick sequence turned on the lights in the room (SFX:  CLICK!), grabbed Taylor from behind (we see this person hands pushing Taylor hard forward) and shoved him up against the lockers (SFX, large letters:  SLAM!).  The bottle of shampoo that Taylor was smelling before is spilling out of his hand.

TAYLOR: Fuck!

A view inside a locker, which Taylor has just opened.  There is a towel, some toiletries.

CAPTION: Marie’s locker.  Didn’t Pamela say she told her she was going to the showers?

Reverse view of the previous panel.  Taylor’s face is illuminated by the glow of his flashlight, which he has set down.  He has taken a bottle from the locker, opened it, and is smelling it with an enraptured expression. In the ground (unseen by Taylor) a vague outline of a face can be seen.

CAPTION: I remember this smell…her hair…and yet it’s off a little somehow…

Close up view of Taylor and Marie’s hands, which are clasped together (a continuation of the action from the previous panel, they are still walking along but are now holding hands).

CAPTION: Her name was Marie.

Taylor and Marie sitting side-by-side in an auditorium.  They are watching a movie, their faces illuminated with a ghostly glow from the screen.  Marie’s head is on Taylor’s shoulder.

Taylor and Marie in the Gadget, sitting across from each other over coffee, gazing into each other’s eyes.

Same panel as before, except that they are leaning across the table at one another, kissing.  One of their coffee mugs has been knocked over and spilled.

Taylor and Marie are together on a bed.  Both are kneeling, with Taylor behind Marie.  Both are still wearing underpants, and Marie’s bra has come unhooked and fallen around her waist.  Taylor is reaching around, feeling Marie’s breasts.  He is leaning forward to kiss her, while Marie has turned her head around to meet his kiss, her mouth open in anticipation.

CAPTION: There was a moment where I feel like the luckiest guy ever born.

Taylor and Marie under the sheets, copulating in the missionary position.  We see them in profile, heads and shoulders visible above the sheets.  Taylor’s face wears an appropriate expression of climax, while Marie is smiling blissfully.

CAPTION: You’d have to be a pretty unlucky guy not to have at least one moment like that in your life.

An elegant, high-rise cityscape.

CAPTION: Marie wasn’t like me at all.  She was a big-city girl, with a trust fund…and indifferent parents.

Border of the panel should be somewhat puffy (indicating that it is Taylor dreaming or fantasizing).  Taylor’s head, eyes closed, should appear in the lower-right part of the panel.  Inside the panel, a riot of images indicating Marie in a variety of interesting sexual adventures.  This can be largely artist’s choice, but should include at least one multi-partner scene, one with bondage, and one lesbian encounter.

CAPTION: A lot of guys might have been made jealous at hearing about all the stuff Marie had tried.

CAPTION: Not me, though.  I found it amazing to hear about all the things she said she’d been through.  It was a real turn-on.

Marie in a swanky gown, sitting at a tiny table in what looks like a stylish nightclub.  Her hair has been made up, and she is looking out of the panel at the viewer with an appraising expression on her face.

CAPTION: She might have been only a freshman like me, but she already had…some adventures in her life.

Taylor and Marie, seen from the head up, lying in bed (their heads on on a pillow).  Taylor is looking up with an amazed expression on his face.  Marie is lying with her face in profile, her lips near Taylor’s ear, whispering something in it.

CAPTION: And Marie liked to share

Taylor tied naked to a bed (the P.O.V. involves looking down at him, as if we were a fly watching from the ceiling).  We see Marie from behind.  She is naked except for a pair of high, black-leather …books and is holding a riding crop.

CAPTION: I suppose she could have been making some of it up, but she sure had lots of interesting ideas.

A view of a wrought-iron gate, with MOTHER SUPERIOR EUPHEMIA (from the script Progress in Research) behind it, frowning.

CAPTION: Sometimes I thought Marie was lucky not to have been sent next door to Mary Magdalene College.

Portion of a campus map, showing Gnosis and Magdalene right next door to one another.

CAPTION: Where (rumor has it) a lot of problematical girls get sent by their rich families.  It’s right next door to Gnosis…

CAPTION: …but just try getting in there without permission!

A frat-house party.  Marie is standing on a table, somewhat scantily dressed, dancing.  A bunch of disheveled, intoxicated-looking frat guys are watching her.

CAPTION: Not that any walls would ever have been likely to hold Marie.  She was a real free spirit.

This panel reproduces the scene in Gnosis Dreamscapes, with Marie having sex with JOHN SAMSON in front of her three amazed friends.

CAPTION: I know sometimes she did stuff with other guys.  She even told me about it.

Taylor sitting on the side of a bed, holding Marie crosswise on his lap.  She is kissing him,

CAPTION: But really, I could cope with the hijinks and the open relationship stuff.  I felt blessed for every minute we had together.

A teen-aged TAYLOR CHASE is walking down a corridor in a high school.  He is alone, walking head-down, stoop-shouldered.  Behind him a big athletic guy is surrounded by admiring high-school girls.

CAPTION: I didn’t really amount to much in high school…

Taylor sitting around a table with a couple of other teen-aged guys in what looks like a den in one of their parents’ basements.  They shouldn’t be good looking guys — at least one should be overweight, one should have glasses, and another a bad case of acne.  Books and dice sit on the table.  In the background on the wall, some sort of poster from a Japanese anime series

CAPTION: The closest I ever got to girls were in role-playing fantasies…

Long view of a shabby-looking main street of a small town.  Taylor is walking along it, a tiny figure.

CAPTION: Pickings would have been a little slim in they dying town I grew up in.

Taylor, surrounded by other students (he’s mid-panel) taking the SAT.

CAPTION: But I had an aptitude for tests, and there was a college that wanted people from “non-traditional” backgrounds.

A title panel page.   A long view of Gnosis College, looking idyllic.  “Old Bricks,” the central building, is in view.  Title reads:  GNOSIS QUEST, CHAPTER TWO:  TIRESIAS

CAPTION: And so I got a scholarship to go somewhere really cool.

A long view down a seminar table.  The table is covered with books and notebooks and surrounded by students.  At the head of the table sits a PROFESSOR, while around the table sit various STUDENTS.  Taylor is sitting just to the Professor’s left, and appears to be in the act of speaking, gesticulating to make a point.  Everyone appears to be listening to what Taylor has to say.

CAPTION: It was so cool to be around people who actually seem to care about ideas.  No one at home was like that.

Taylor with about half a dozen other students, sitting around a table in a Gnosis cafeteria.  Trays with various people’s lunches are sitting on the table. The students are laughing, apparently having shared a really funny joke.

CAPTION: And people here are fun. You can actually talk to them and enjoy yourself.

A party scene.  Lots of students standing around talking, holding cups of beer.  Taylor is in the center of the panel.  He is looking away from us, catching in a corner of the panel a glimpse of MARIE OLDEN, who appears to be winking at him.

CAPTION: But the one thing that was really special here…

Taylor and Marie are walking side-by-side along a slated path.  It is autumn, made clear by fallen leaves in the breeze and on the ground around them.  Taylor is looking at Marie, somewhat rapt.  Marie is smiling, in the act of saying something.

CAPTION: …was just one person.