So, beginning today, another two-week run of script, continuing the Gnosis College story arc. Not because I’m any good necessarily, but for the more fundamental reasons that I think I am obliged to keep practicing. Also, the story interests me. Hence a new script, in fourteen (probably) posts. It’s called “Tiresias,” and why this is will become pretty apparent soon.
Page 1
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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… |
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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. |
Page 2
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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. |
Page 3
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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.
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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. |
That’s the dream, isn’t it? Be someone no one will look twice at in high school, in a town where your abilities and imagination are more the object of contempt than appreciation, but do well and go to college where things will be different. And perhaps even find…romance. I remember well what it’s like to be Taylor’s age and believe in such things.
As Taylor is soon to find out, things will be quite different indeed.
Why are you always one move ahead of me? I just gave the current WIP the subtitle “The Modern Tiresias” like last week
I wish I could say “Ha! My mind-reading ray is working!” But unfortunately, it isn’t. Damn these cheap surplus vacuum tubes! That possibility eliminated, I guess there’s nothing to fall back on except culture-drive coincidence. Given the rich fictional possibilities that one could get out of the myth of Tiresias, I’m surprised the name doesn’t crop up more often.
In any event, it’s an awesome choice of subtitle, especially given its distinguished antecedent.
It gets freakier. Cheap surplus vacuum tubes are a major plot-point in said story.
Gosh.
Looks like I and the rest of mad science-enjoying community have something to look forward to here.