Intertwined

“The Trouble then is just this : 

During this period the atomic 

clock ticks faster and faster. 

We may anticipate a state of affairs 

in which Two Great Powers will 

each be in a position to put an end to 

The Civilisation and 

Life of The Other, 

though not without 

risking its own. 

We may be likened to 

Two Scorpions in a bottle, each 

capable of Killing The Other, 

but only at the risk 

of His Own Life.”

— J. Robert Oppenheimer.

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: 

All right. Let’s look at this Sugar Ray Leonard/Robert Durán fight. 

It’s round 12, June 20th, 1980. 

MIKE TYSON: 

This is the moment when I wanted to be A Fighter, watching 

Two Masters fight. 

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. 

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: 

What’s happening? 

MIKE TYSON: 

These Two Fighters waiting for, 

setting up, waiting for a moment 

right now, any moment he’s ready, 

he’s ready to land a punch, but his 

head moved, as soon as he thinks he’s set, then he moves his head, 

then, watch this guy, he’s getting 

ready to punch with dazzling combination, but he can’t hit,

both guys are fighting. 

It’s almost like the fighting’s staged, it’s choreographed, 

they can’t hit each other, 

but they’re both punching, 

very tired, too, the twelfth round. 

I didn’t really know if 

I was going to be 

A Fighter or not, 

but after watching these guys, 

I knew. You know they were fighting, they fought fifteen rounds, and it was a war, but none of them has a mark on their face. 

It was a hard fight, but nobody 

had a mark on their face, 

they’re master technicians, you know? 

They knew their craft well. 

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: 

And he’s your favorite fighter. 

MIKE TYSON: 

Durán, yes, yes. 

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: 

You actually say in the book that most people assume that’s it’s Ali, 

but it’s really Durán for You. Why? 

MIKE TYSON: 

He was a street fighter like me. 

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: 

You identified with him. 

MIKE TYSON: 

Yeah, he was cruel and mean. 

I never looked at Ali —

I respected Ali and 

I worshiped Ali, but 

he was very tall 

and very handsome, 

I was very short and

not so handsome and 

I wasn’t good-looking

and he was very, I don’t know, articulate 

and I spoke with a lisp 

and I didn’t relate The Two, 

besides We were Black. 

Ali was a Middle-class kid, 

he had a Mother and Father 

that both worked —

My Mother and Father 

were in the sex industry. 

Roberto Durán’s Mother 

was pretty much, 

you know what I mean, 

out there as well, 

so I related to that, and 

I didn’t have to change —

I didn’t have to change my diction, 

I didn’t have to learn 

how to talk polite, 

I didn’t have to be nice, 

I didn’t have to have 

a proper linguistic skill 

and so if he could be accepted 

and be worshiped that way 

I thought I would be 

able to as well. 

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: 

He made it click for you. 

It was him who made you 

want to become— 

MIKE TYSON: 

It was him. He was just a master fighter. After that fight he pushed Lenny into some other guy and told him to suck his balls (laughter) and I just drove me nuts, I said, “Yeah, that’s my man.” (laughter/applause) 

But then you have to understand, I’m fourteen, I’m only fourteen years old when these guys fought, this was 1980, so I’m fourteen years old and I thought that was the most remarkable person in the world. (laughter) You know, a lot of people when they hear me talk about these events in my life they can’t imagine I’m twelve years old. 

They always think I’m older.

 PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: 

No, this is what is amazing. 

It’s the first hundred and fifty pages of the book, you realise that when you’ve arrived there, you are only fifteen or sixteen years old, 

and you’ve lived a hundred lives 

it feels like, the intensity and extremity of The Life is so extraordinary, one feels that it’s nearly incredible that 

you’re so young. 

MIKE TYSON: 

I don’t know why. 

I was born with great perception, 

if it came from my street life, 

from being locked up for stealing 

and facing unbelievable odds as a young kid, I had great perception. 

And once I watched 

those guys fight, 

I just knew — it was a matter of Time, 

but I knew My Time 

would soon come. 

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: 

And You also had a perception that 

Your Life would not LAST. 

MIKE TYSON: 

No, but I knew I knew 

I would obtain my goal 

before it existed, 

I knew that, I knew 

I would be champ of 

The World before I died. 

I knew I wasn’t going to die 

before I became champ. 

You know, Dying is just as 

glorious as Living when you 

really think about it. 

Because You couldn’t 

have a Life 

if You didn’t have Death, and 

You couldn’t have Death 

without Life, so

How could Death be 

less glorious than Life —

They’re Both Intertwined

with one another.

The Serpent-Queen : Jean Tatlock

Oppenheimer :

Our Bodies are mostly just 

empty space between molecules,

and yet somehow —

presses palms with Kitty 

(who he has just met)

— The Strong Forces of Attraction

in The Universe act to prevent

Our Bodies from falling through

one another —

They mesh their fingers together,

become Quantum-entangled

and Fall in Love.

The Serpent-Queen dismounts following sex, and walks across Oppenheimer’s bedroom, bare-breasted to study His Bookshelf.

Jean Tatlock :

What kind of Physicist has a 

whole shelf’s-worth of Freud?

Oppenheimer :

(Naked, but not-actually.)

It’s not just Freud, it’s

more the Jungian…

Jean Tatlock :

You were in Psychoanalysis?

Oppenheimer :

When I lived in England, in Cambridge,

I had some Problems.

Jean Tatlock :

What Problems?

Oppenheimer :

I tried to Kill My Teacher.

She picks-up The Book 

He is READING,

holds it up at the page 

it is open-to 

Jean Tatlock :

What’s This?

Oppenheimer : 

It’s Sanskrit.

Jean Tatlock : 

You can Read it?

Oppenheimer : 

I’m still Learning.

Jean Tatlock : 

(holds up The Book) 

Read it to Me.

Oppenheimer : 

It tells of how Vishnu, taking on 

His Multi-Armed form….

Jean Tatlock : 

READ The WORDS —

Oppenheimer : 

“Now, I am Become Death;

(she duly hops back on 

to his newly re-erect penis)

The Destroyer of Worlds.”

“At the root of nearly all female and male opposite-sex attraction are a whole series of unanswered and probably unanswerable questions. There are mysteries and confusions that occur at the levels of the dating ritual. These have been the staple for nearly all comedy and tragedy from the earliest times right up to the present. But the greatest and most enduring questions reside underneath the courting and dating rituals and often find full expression at the stage of the mating ritual. Women want to know what it is that men are after, what they want and what – if anything – they might be feeling during the act of sex. These questions are a staple of conversation between friends and a source of unbelievable private concern and angst at some stage (sometimes all) of most people’s lives from adolescence onwards.

  If there is any one thing in society that gets even close to matching the confusion and angst of women about men, it is of course the list of questions which men have about women. The subject of nearly all dramatic comedy is the inability of Men to understand Women. What are they thinking? What do they want? Why is it so hard to read their actions?

Why does each sex expect the other to be able to decode their words, actions and silences, when no member of the opposite sex has ever been given a decoding manual for the opposite sex?

  At the root of the heterosexual male’s set of concerns and questions is the same question that women have about men. What is the act of lovemaking like? What does the other person feel? What do they get out of it? And how do the sexes fit together? The Ancients contemplated these questions of course. They linger in Plato – and are suggested most famously in Aristophanes’ contribution to the Symposium. But none of it is answered. The Mystery continues, and most likely always will.

  And that is where the presence of especially male homosexuals makes its unnerving entrance. For until the advent of plausible surgery for people who believed that they had been born in the wrong body (of which more later), the most disturbing travellers across the sexes were male homosexuals. Not because of a strongly feminine part of their nature but because they knew something about The Secret that women hold in sex. It is a Question – and a concern – which has existed for millennia.

  Consider the legend of Tiresias as recounted in the Metamorphoses. There Ovid tells the story of Jove and Juno, who one day are idly joking about lovemaking. Jove tells Juno, ‘You women get more pleasure out of love than we men do, I’m sure.’ Juno disagrees and so they resolve to get the opinion of Tiresias: ‘He who knows both sides of love.’ 

The story of Tiresias is complex. Ovid tells us that Tiresias once came upon a pair of huge snakes mating in a green copse. He attacked them with his staff and was immediately transformed from a man into a woman. After spending seven years as a woman, in the eighth year he came upon the snakes again, and struck them again. ‘If striking you has magic power / To change the striker to the other sex, / I’ll strike you now again,’ he tells them. He does so and returns to being a man.

  Jove and Juno summon Tiresias because they want him to declare judgement on the question of whether men or women enjoy lovemaking more. The traveller across the sexes declares that Jove is right: women enjoy lovemaking more. 

Offended by the claim, Juno condemns Tiresias to be blind, and it is to compensate him for his blindness (for no god can undo the act of another god) that Zeus endows Tiresias with the gift of prophecy – the gift that will later allow Tiresias to predict the fate of Narcissus. Gods, snakes and staffs aside, the legend of Tiresias raises – and suggests An Answer to – A Question of the greatest depth. It is one that gay men also play a part in.

  Remarkably few people have taken this question up. One of the few who has done so in recent years is the writer and (not coincidentally) classicist Daniel Mendelsohn in his 1999 work The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity. In that family history-cum-memoir he delves deep into this subject. Asking what it is like when two men have sex he writes:

  In a way, it is like the experience of Tiresias; this is the real reason why gay men are uncanny, why the idea of gay men is disruptive and uncomfortable. All straight men who have engaged in the physical act of love know what it is like to penetrate a partner during intercourse, to be inside the other; all women who have had intercourse know what it is like to be penetrated, to have the other be inside oneself. But the gay man, in the very moment that he is either penetrating his partner or being penetrated by him, knows exactly what his partner is feeling and experiencing even as he himself has his own experience of exactly the opposite, the complementary act. Sex between men dissolves otherness into sameness, men into de, in a perfect suspension: there is nothing that either party doesn’t know about the other. If the emotional aim of intercourse is a total knowing of the other, gay sex may be, in its way, perfect, because in it, a total knowledge of the other’s experience is, finally, possible. But since the object of that knowledge is already wholly known to each of the parties, the act is also, in a way, redundant. Perhaps it is for this reason that so many of us keep seeking repetition, as if depth were impossible.

  Mendelsohn goes on to describe a poem written by a friend about a young gay man who watches football being played by men whom he silently and jealously desires. The poem finishes with a lustful, imaginative description of the players having sex with their girlfriends and of one man ‘falling through her into his own passion’. Mendelsohn describes his own earlier heterosexual experiences, and whilst admitting that there was nothing unpleasant about them, they were, he says, ‘like participating in a sport for which you’re the wrong physical type’. But he adds:

  From those indifferent couplings I do remember this : when men have sex with women, they fall into the woman. She is the thing that they desire, or sometimes fear, but in any event she is the end point, the place where they are going. She is the destination. It is gay men who, during sex, fall through their partners back into themselves, over and over again.

  He goes on:

  I have had sex with many men. Most of them look a certain way. They are medium in height and tend to prettiness. They will probably have blue eyes. They seem, from the street, or across the room, a bit solemn. When I hold them, it is like falling through a reflection back into my desire, into the thing that defines me, my self.

  This is a remarkable insight, and also a disturbing one. Because it suggests that there will always be something strange and potentially threatening about gay people – most especially gay men. Not just because Being Gay is an unstable component on which to base an individual identity and a hideously unstable way to try to base any form of group identity, but because gays will always present a challenge to something innate in the group that make up The Majority in Society.

  All women have something that heterosexual men want. They are holders, and wielders, of a kind of Magic. But here is the thing : Gays appear in some way to be in on The Secret. That may be liberating for some people. Some women will always enjoy talking with gay men about the problems – including the sexual problems – of men. Just as some straight men will always enjoy having this vaguely bilingual friend who might help them learn the other language. But there are other people — insecure people — for whom it will always be unnerving. 

Because for them gays will always be the people – especially the men – who know TOO MUCH.”

He’s Sincere.

He’s Sincere, 

because He’s A Drunk, and 

Drunks are always Sincere, 

even when they are lying —  

they have no filter.

It may be Dishonest, it might be 

complete and utter self-Justifying horseshit, 

as it usually will be, and almost  

exclusively  is, BUT —

He Means it 

when He Says it.

Zod :

You are The One, 

Kara Zor-El —

Supergirl :

…..What Did You Do to Kal-El?

Supergirl :

WHAT DID YOU DO????

Zod :

The infant, did not survive 

The Procedure….

The Babysitter

Oppenheimer : 

Do You remember Klaus Fuchs 

at Los Alamos….?

Mrs. Kitty Oppenheimer : 

The Babysitter..?

Spaghettification

The colossal cone-shaped jet housings on Red Dwarfs underbelly screamed and  whined in their losing battle against the irresistible drag of the Black Hole's gravitational pull. Suddenly, as one, they ceased their pointless protestations and puttered into silence.

All resistance gone, the massive mining vessel catapulted into the blackness towards the event horizon. Lazily, the jet housings started to rotate - 45 degrees. 90  degrees, 120 degrees, until finally they had described a full half-circle. The rotation motors wound down, and the stabilizing bolts cracked loudly into place. All the while, the ship howled faster, ever faster towards the lightless unknown.

The jets fired up again. Thousands of hydrogen explosions harnessed the raw energy of the universe and thrust the ship forward, to the brink of demi-lightspeed, and  beyond.

'Event horizon : two minutes and closing.' Kryten pulled the safety webbing over his shoulders and inflated his crash suit.

'Did I tell you about spaghettification?' said The Toaster

The Cat lurched upright from the couch bolted to the corner of the anti-grav chamber. 'What's spaghettification?' 

'I didn't mention it, then?' 'One minute fifty.' 

'No you didn't. What is it?' said Rimmer. 

'Well,' said the Toaster, 'when you enter a Black Hole, an effect takes place, called "spaghettification”. I thought I'd mentioned it, but obviously I didn't. Anyway, just so you know, it'll happen fairly shortly.' 

'One minute forty.' 

The Cat lay back on the couch and stared up at the ceiling. 'So what the hell is it?' 

'Spaghettification. Let me guess,' said Rimmer. 'I can see only two options : 

one - due to the bizarre effects of the intense gravitational pull, and because we're entering a region of time and space where the laws of physics no longer apply, we all of us inexplicably develop an irresistible urge to consume vast amounts of a certain wheat-based Italian noodle conventionally served with Parmesan cheese; or two - 

We, the crew, get turned into spaghetti. 

I have a feeling we can eliminate option one.' 

'You're absolutely correct,' said the Toaster. 'You all become sort of spaghettified.' 

'Forty seconds,' counted Kryten. 'Then what happens?' 'Well, then you become de-spaghettified,' said the Toaster, and added: 'hopefully. Holly was a bit vague about that part. Still, he didn't seem to think it was terribly important.' 'I get turned into spaghetti,' the Cat's eyebrows leapt to the top of his forehead, 'and that's not important?' Thirty seconds.' The Cat tried vainly to lift his head from the cranium support - he had a major collection of dirty looks he wanted to sling at the Toaster - but G-force pinned him, immobile, to the couch, so he slung them at the ceiling instead. 'Is it too late to change this plan? I have no idea what well-dressed spaghetti is wearing this year.' 

'Ten seconds.' 'Ten seconds?' Rimmer was equally immobile. 'What happened to twenty seconds?' 

'I forgot to say twenty seconds,' Kryten apologised. 'I was listening to the Cat.' His eyes flitted to the scanner scope again. 

'Oh, sorry - apologizing for not saying "twenty seconds” has now made me miss saying "five seconds”.' 

'So how long now?' yelled Rimmer. 

'Err ... no seconds,' said Kryten. And he was right. 

*** 

The combination of jet thrust and gravitational pull forced Red Dwarf through the lightspeed barrier the moment it hit the event horizon. 

To all intents and purposes, the ship no longer existed in the universe of its origin. It shrugged off Newton, Einstein, Oppenheimer and Chien Lau, and subscribed to a completely new set of physical laws. 

They were in the Black Hole, heading for its centre. Heading for the ring of light that swirled suicidally around the spinning singularity - the core of the dead star where all the matter sucked in by the Black Hole was compressed to infinity. 

And they were heading there at such a speed, they were overtaking light.

The Cat's body started to spill off the couch in every direction. Long, thin strands of what had formerly been him slithered across the floor and intertwined with the strands that had been Kryten and Rimmer and the Toaster. 

The anti-grav chamber became a sea of heaving, screaming, living linguini. Everyone became part of everyone else. They threaded together and formed a new whole. They weren't four, they were one. 

The particles that had once formed Rimmer's intelligence, in a blinding flash of empathetic insight, suddenly became aware of the desperate, monumental importance of toast. 

Instantaneously, the strands that had been the Toaster were conscious of the overriding necessity for dressing well and having a really terrific haircut. 

The vermicelli that was now the Cat tasted the feeling of being mechanical, and knew with unshakeable certainty that Silicon Heaven existed, and the best way to get there was through diligent hoovering. 

Simultaneously, the macaroni that was Kryten knew what it was like to be Rimmer. He understood what it was like to have had those parents, that childhood, that career, that life. It was impossible to scream, but that's what Kryten was trying to do. 

The ship was no longer a ship, it was a huge tachyon, a superlight particle, howling through a universe outside our own. It was a pool, then a wave, then a ball, then a dot, then it had no shape - it just was. 

The huge mound of spaghetti slithered across space/time and peered into the face of the spinning white disc. 

'Look,' said a part of the spaghetti that was mostly Rimmer. In the centre of the spinning light were six interlocking coils, like fibre optics, but of a size beyond size. The immense hollow cables twisted and undulated like the snakes on the Gorgons' heads. The tubes were of colours that had no meaning to the human eye. They spun and swirled in a timeless dance of beauty. 

Not for the first time, Rimmer cursed himself for not bringing his camcorder. 

'What is it?' he said, but before anyone could answer the ball of speed the ship had itself become slung around the singularity. It bounced off the sudden cushion of anti-gravity it met there, then, like a swimmer who has dived too deep, lunged desperately for the surface, for the event horizon, for the known universe. It struck upwards, fighting off the gravity that tried to suck it back to its core at the speed of light. 

Then the lightspeed drag of gravity cancelled out the light-speed momentum of the ship, and Red Dwarf regained its physical form. Suddenly it was travelling at a relative speed of less than two hundred thousand miles an hour towards the event horizon. The metal of the bulkheads buckled and groaned. Leering cracks ripped through the metalwork and zigzagged insanely down the port side. 

The ship started to slow. 

Plasti-domes splintered and shattered. Steel mining rigs were wrenched protesting from the ship's back and swirled helplessly down into the singularity to be crushed into infinity. Still the ship slowed. The jet housings started to creak, and then, all over the vessel's belly, one by one, pinion rods snarled and snapped, and the housings came away and tumbled into the infinite abyss. Still the ship slowed. Half the propulsion jets were lost. Hydrogen fuel pumped from the jet carcasses and flooded into the relentless void. 

Like a harpooned whale, the wounded craft pitched wildly for the surface, for light, for life.

Slower still. Another crop of housings moaned and warped and fell away. Still slower. And slower. And slo-o-o-o-o-o-ower. Relatively, the ship was moving at barely fifty miles an hour. Then thirty. Twenty. Ten. The Black Hole had just to claim one more jet housing to tip the balance, to drag the ship below lightspeed and trap it forever in its bleak embrace. It didn't. 

With the suddenness of an infant's birth scream, Red Dwarf exploded through the event horizon and into the known universe. Free of the worst of the cloying quicksand grip of the dead star's interior, the limping vessel peaked back up to lightspeed for an instant of an instant before the final remnants of gravitational drag slewed it to a halt on the very periphery of the Black Hole's influence. 

*** 

The de-spaghettified Cat looked down his body and checked it was all there. It seemed to be. He unbuckled himself from the couch and stood on uneasy legs. 

'Everyone OK?' Kryten nodded, still too nauseous to speak. 

'What was that?' said Rimmer. 

'In the middle of the spinning light. Those tubes.' 

'The Omni-zone,' said the Toaster. 'Holly predicted we'd find that. It confirms his theory.' 'What theory?'

'The theory that there are six other universes, and all their gateways converge at the centre of a singularity.' 

'There are six other universes?' said Rimmer. 

'So Holly reckoned,' said the Toaster. 'He also believed that our universe is the bad apple. It's the cock-up universe. Something went wrong with our Big Bang and made Time move in the wrong direction, that's why nothing makes sense.' 

'I'll tell you something that does make sense,' The Cat staggered over to the Toaster. 

'You made me eat seventy-three rounds of buttered toast. Check that: seven, three,' he slapped his rump. 'I feel like I'm carrying around a third buttock in my pants. And I just want you to know this - I want you to live with this for the rest of your life - you,' he jabbed the Toaster with his long-nailed forefinger, 'you make real lousy toast. It's cold, it's burnt, and it's soggy.' 

The Toaster twirled his browning knob defiantly. 'Hey -what d'you expect for $ £19.99 plus tax? Conversation, quantum theory and good toast?' 

Lord — These Affairs are Hard on The Heart

“Yes, You Buy Me Many Things.  Thank You.”

The evening before the test, someone recalled “the frogs had gathered in a little pond by the camp and copulated and squawked all night long.” 

Oppenheimer chain smoked nervously and sat quietly reading the French poet Baudelaire:

Seductive twilight, the criminal’s friend Silent like a wolf

The sky is closing down

A dark cloth drawn across an alcove

Where the impatient man changes into a beast of prey

At 5:10, the countdown began at zero minus twenty minutes. 

As loudspeakers ticked off the time at five minute intervals, Oppenheimer wandered in and out of the control bunker, glancing up at the sky. 

At the two minute mark, he was heard to say to himself,

“Lord, these affairs are hard on the heart.” 

Minus one minute... Minus fifty-five seconds...

Ella Oppenheimer was “very delicate,” a friend remembered, with an air of sadness about her. 

Robert was precociously brilliant, and both parents were protective of his uncommon gifts. 

Frail, frequently sick, 

he was attended to by servants, driven everywhere. 

He rarely played with other children.

Priscilla McMillan, writer: 

He wasn’t mischievous. 

He was too brilliant to be just one of the children. 

But his parents treasured him; 

treated him like a little jewel. 

And he just skipped Being a Boy.

“My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that The World

 is full of cruel and bitter things,”

 Oppenheimer said. 

“It gave me no normal, healthy way to be a bastard.” 

Sometime around the age of five, Robert’s grandfather gave him a small collection of minerals. 

“From then on,” he said, 

“I became, in a completely childish way, an ardent mineral collector. 

But it began to be also a bit of a Scientist’s interest, a fascination with crystals.”

Martin Sherwin,

Historian: 

He wrote to the New York Mineralogical Society on a typewriter. 

They were so impressed with what he had to say that, of course, thinking he was an adult, they invited him to give a lecture, and little Robert, at age 10 or 11, shows up at the New York Mineralogical Society, and has to stand on a box in order to see over the lectern to give this lecture. 

That is NOT a normal, 

average childhood.

Narrator: 

Eight years separated Robert from his brother Frank, 

too many for companionship. 

Robert was a loner. 

And at New York’s Ethical Culture school, he inhabited his own rarefied world, more comfortable with his teachers than with the other students, who nicknamed him “Booby” Oppenheimer. 

To protect himself, he relied on his preternatural brilliance and grew aloof and arrogant.

 Priscilla McMillan, writer: He didn’t grow up. He studied a great deal, which shielded him from the world. 

And the emotional side of him didn’t catch up until much later.

Narrator: 

Oppenheimer graduated high school valedictorian 

and then conquered Harvard. 

He studied chemistry, physics, calculus; English and French literature; Western, Chinese and Hindu philosophy; 

He even found time to write stories and poems.

Richard Rhodes, writer: 

He described it as being like The Huns invading Rome, 

by which he meant he was going to swallow up 

Every bit of Culture and Art and Science 

that he could possibly do.

Martin Sherwin, Historian: 

Harvard’s an environment in which 

The Intellectual Life is a rich feast, 

But the Social Life is a desert.

Narrator: 

In all his years at Harvard, 

he never had a date. 

He remained immature, uncertain, 

easily bewildered in social situations. 

One friend remembered 

“bouts of melancholy, 

and deep, deep depressions.” 

"In the days of my almost infinitely prolonged adolescence," he said later, 

“I hardly took an action, hardly did anything that did not arouse in me a very great sense of revulsion and of wrong. 

My feeling about myself was always one of extreme discontent.” 

His doubts about himself came clear in his poems:

The dawn invests our substance

With desire

And the slow light betrays us,

And our wistfulness...

We find ourselves again 

Each in his separate prison 

Ready, hopeless

For negotiation 

With other men.

TAXIARCHY

 

I am Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. 

Surrender now, and we can avoid bloodshed.

So Infernally Touchy....

In times of spiritual trial, Oppenheimer would search the Bhagavad-Gita, a sacred Hindu text, for meaning and comfort. 

He often turned to the story of the warrior Prince Arjuna, who to fulfill his destiny must Fight and Kill.

“In battle, in forest, at the precipice in the mountains,

On a dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows,

In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame,

The good deeds a man has done before defend him.”

(The tunnel seals behind them.)

ACE: 

Doctor?

DOCTOR: 

Don't worry, Ace. 

It's only a trap.

[Clearing]

(The Brigadier and Lavel run from the helicopter, which then explodes.)

BRIGADIER: 

Five million pounds worth of aircraft, and we've lost it.

LAVEL: 

They’ll make us pay for that

BRIGADIER: 

We'll be poor for the rest of our lives.

(Lavel's leg hurts.)

BRIGADIER: 

Pulled a ligament?

LAVEL: 

Oh good. I thought it might be something serious.

BRIGADIER: 

I'll see if I can get some help from the village.

LAVEL: 

But sir, we don't know what the situation is here.

BRIGADIER: 

The situation, Lavel, is normal. 

And it doesn't get much worse than that. 

You know, I think I'm rather enjoying this.

(The Brigadier takes his service revolver from its holster and heads off.)

[Churchyard]

(Mordred is reading the names on the war memorial.)

MORDRED: 

‘Tis a shrine to those fallen in battle.

MORGAINE: 

So, they are not the savages you led us to believe. 

You fought on their soil without proper respect for the dead.

MORDRED: 

Mother, I —

MORGAINE: 

You have dishonoured us, Mordred. 

What is victory without honour? Leave us!

(Mordred walks through two lines of knights. The Brigadier walks up the road by the church.)

MORGAINE: 

What manner of man are you?

(Morgaine and the Brigadier meet at the church gate. The Brigadier points his revolver at her.)

MORGAINE: 

A Warrior, no less. 

How goes the day?

BRIGADIER: 

I've had better.

MORGAINE: 

I am Morgaine, The Sun Killer. Dominator of the thirteen worlds 

and 

Battle Queen of the S'Rax. 

What say you?

BRIGADIER: 

I am Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. 

Surrender now, and we can avoid bloodshed.

*****

BRIGADIER: 

Let me see if I've understood you correctly. 

You are holding a Remembrance ceremony for the dead of our World Wars, a ceasefire, to remain in force for the duration of said ceremony, right?

MORGAINE: 

Your words are strange, 

but that is the meaning, yes.

BRIGADIER: 

Right. What must I do?

MORGAINE: 

I wish you to know that I bear you no malice.

BRIGADIER: 

I understand.

MORGAINE: 

But when we meet again, 

I shall kill you. 

Morte D'Arthur

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

So all day long the noise of battle rolled

Among the mountains by the winter sea;

Until King Arthur's table, man by man,

Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord,

King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep,

The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,

Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,

And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,

A broken chancel with a broken cross,

That stood on a dark strait of barren land.

On one side lay the Ocean, and on one

Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:

"The sequel of today unsolders all

The goodliest fellowship of famous knights

Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep

They sleep -the men I loved. I think that we

Shall never more, at any future time,

Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,

Walking about the gardens and the halls

Of Camelot, as in the days that were.

I perish by this people which I made, -

Though Merlin sware that I should come again

To rule once more -but let what will be, be,

I am so deeply smitten through the helm

That without help I cannot last till morn.

Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur,

Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how

In those old days, one summer noon, and arm

Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,

Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,

Holding the sword -and how I rowed across

And took it, and have worn it, like a king:

And, wheresoever I am sung or told

In aftertime, this also shall be known:

But now delay not: take Excalibur,

And fling him far into the middle mere:

Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word."

To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere:

"It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus,

Aidless, alone, and smitten through the helm.

A little thing may harm a wounded man.

Yet I thy hest will all perform at full,

Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word."

So saying, from the ruined shrine he stepped

And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,

Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,

Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang

Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down

By zig-zag paths, and juts of pointed rock,

Came on the shining levels of the lake.

There drew he forth the brand Excalibur,

And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon,

Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth

And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt:

For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks,

Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work

Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long

That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood,

This way and that dividing the swift mind,

In act to throw: but at the last it seemed

Better to leave Excalibur concealed

There in the many-knotted waterflags,

That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.

So strode he back slow to the wounded King.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:

"Hast thou performed my mission which I gave?

What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?"

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:

"I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,

And the wild water lapping on the crag."

To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale:

"Thou hast betrayed thy nature and thy name,

Not rendering true answer, as beseemed

Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight:

For surer sign had followed, either hand,

Or voice, or else a motion of the mere.

This is a shameful thing for men to lie.

Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again

As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing

I bad thee, watch, and lightly bring me word."

Then went Sir Bedivere the second time

Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere,

Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought;

But when he saw the wonder of the hilt,

How curiously and strangely chased, he smote

His palms together, and he cried aloud,

"And if indeed I cast the brand away,

Surely a precious thing, one worthy note,

Should thus be lost for ever from the earth,

Which might have pleased the eyes of many men.

What good should follow this, if this were done?

What harm, undone? deep harm to disobey,

Seeing obedience is the bond of rule.

Were it well to obey then, if a king demand

An act unprofitable, against himself?

The King is sick, and knows not what he does.

What record, or what relic of my lord

Should be to aftertime, but empty breath

And rumours of a doubt? but were this kept,

Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings,

Some one might show it at a joust of arms,

Saying, `King Arthur's sword, Excalibur,

Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake.

Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps

Upon the hidden bases of the hills.'

So might some old man speak in the aftertime

To all the people, winning reverence.

But now much honour and much fame were lost."

So spake he, clouded with his own conceit,

And hid Excalibur the second time,

And so strode back slow to the wounded King.

Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily:

"What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?"

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:

"I heard the water lapping on the crag,

And the long ripple washing in the reeds."

To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath:

"Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue,

Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me!

Authority forgets a dying king,

Laid widowed of the power in his eye

That bowed the will. I see thee what thou art,

For thou, the latest-left of all my knights,

In whom should meet the offices of all,

Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt;

Either from lust of gold, or like a girl

Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes.

Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice,

And the third time may prosper, get thee hence:

But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur,

I will arise and slay thee with my hands."

Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran,

And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged

Among the bulrush-beds, and clutched the sword,

And strongly wheeled and threw it. The great brand

Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,

And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch,

Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,

Seen where the moving isles of winter shock

By night, with noises of the northern sea.

So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur:

But ere he dipped the surface, rose and arm

Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,

And caught him by the hilt, and brandished him

Three times, and drew him under in the mere.

And lightly went the other to the King.

Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath:

"Now see I by thine eyes that this is done.

Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?"

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:

"Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems

Should blind my purpose, for I never saw,

Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die,

Not though I live three lives of mortal men,

So great a miracle as yonder hilt.

Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him;

But when I looked again, behold an arm,

Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,

That caught him by the hilt, and brandished him

Three times, and drew him under in the mere."

And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard:

"My end draws nigh; 'tis time that I were gone.

Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight,

And bear me to the margin; yet I fear

My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die."

So saying, from the pavement he half rose,

Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm,

And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes

As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere

Remorsefully regarded through his tears,

And would have spoken, but he found not words,

Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee,

O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands,

And rising bore him through the place of tombs.

But, as he walked, King Arthur panted hard,

Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed

When all the house is mute. So sighed the King,

Muttering and murmuring at his ear, "Quick, quick!

I fear it is too late, and I shall die."

But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,

Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walked,

Larger than human on the frozen hills.

He heard the deep behind him, and a cry

Before. His own thought drove him, like a goad.

Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves

And barren chasms, and all to left and right

The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he based

His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang

Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels -

And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,

And the long glories of the winter moon.

Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge,

Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern,

Beneath them; and descending they were ware

That all the decks were dense with stately forms

Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream -by these

Three Queens with crowns of gold -and from them rose

A cry that shivered to the tingling stars,

And, as it were one voice, an agony

Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills

All night in a waste land, where no one comes,

Or hath come, since the making of the world.

Then murmured Arthur, "Place me in the barge,"

And to the barge they came. There those three Queens

Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept.

But she, that rose the tallest of them all

And fairest, laid his head upon her lap,

And loosed the shattered casque, and chafed his hands,

And called him by his name, complaining loud,

And dropping bitter tears against his brow

Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white

And colourless, and like the withered moon

Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east;

And all his greaves and cuisses dashed with drops

Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls -

That made his forehead like a rising sun

High from the dais-throne -were parched with dust;

Or, clotted into points and hanging loose,

Mixed with the knightly growth that fringed his lips.

So like a shattered column lay the King;

Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest,

From spur to plume a star of tournament,

Shot through the lists at Camelot, and charged

Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere,

"Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?

Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?

For now I see the true old times are dead,

When every morning brought a noble chance,

And every chance brought out a noble knight.

Such times have been not since the light that led

The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.

But now the whole ROUND TABLE is dissolved

Which was an image of the mighty world;

And I, the last, go forth companionless,

And the days darken round me, and the years,

Among new men, strange faces, other minds."

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfills Himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?

I have lived my life, and that which I have done

May He within Himself make pure! but thou,

If thou shouldst never see my face again,

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep or goats

That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer

Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

For so the whole round earth is every way

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

But now farewell. I am going a long way

With these thou seest -if indeed I go -

(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)

To the island-valley of Avilion;

Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,

Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies

Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard-lawns

And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea,

Where I will heal me of my grievous wound."

So said he, and the barge with oar and sail

Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan

That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,

Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood

With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere

Revolving many memories, till the hull

Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn,

And on the mere the wailing died away.

[DOOR CHIMES.]

Come.

Jean-Luc.

Kirsten.

Hello.

May I? 

Apparently, you have urgent Federation business.

I understood you to have left affairs of state behind.

I am staying as far from it all as I can.

So then what can I do for you? - Bruce Maddox.

- What about him? I believe that he is using neurons from the late Commander Data to create a new organic synthetic.

Well, that's not far from all of it, it is all of it.

The Romulans are involved.

This gets better and better.

Commander Data was not only my colleague, he was my dear friend, and he gave his life, body and soul, to the Federation.

And if there is a chance that some part of him still exists, then I think we have an obligation to investigate.

There is no "we", Jean-Luc.

Kirsten, I know we have not always seen eye to eye.

Nevertheless, I have a request to make.

Based on my years of service, I want you to reinstate me, temporarily, for one mission.

I will need a small warp-capable reconnaissance ship with a minimal crew, and if you feel that my rank makes me too conspicuous, well, then, I am content to be demoted to Captain.

The sheer fucking hubris.

You think you could just waltz back in here and be entrusted with taking men and women into space? 

Don't you think I was watching the holo the other day along with everyone else in The Galaxy? 

I should not have spoken in public.

The Romulans were our enemies, and we tried to help them for as long as we could, but even before the synthetics attacked Mars, 14 species within the Federation said, 

"Cut the Romulans loose, or we'll pull out".

It was a choice between allowing the Federation to implode or letting the Romulans go.

The Federation does not get to decide if a species lives or dies.

Yes, we do.

We absolutely do.

Thousands of other species depend upon us for unity, for cohesion.

We didn't have enough ships left.

We had to make choices.

But the great Captain Picard didn't like his orders.

I was standing up for the Federation, for what it represents, for what it should still represent.

How dare you lecture me? 

Ignore me again at your cost.

My cost?

You are in peril, Admiral.

There is no peril here, only the pitiable delusions of a once-great man desperate to matter.

This is no longer your house, Jean-Luc.

So do what you're good at: GO HOME

Request denied.