MSTing: HELIOPOLIS (5/5)
a.ca...@genie.com
> Aurora led Daniel past several doors to her family's apartment, and
>rang the doorbell.
Tom: So they have doors that automatically vaporize and rematerialize, but
they don't have a mechanism for letting someone into her own apartment?
>As they heard the faint tinkling of the doorbell from inside announcing
>that company was at hand, Daniel caught Aurora's eye
Crow: Good save! If it had hit the floor it would've gotten all covered
with lint.
>and smiled handsomely at her, goading her to laughter -- but she resisted.
>In a moment the door shifted to gas,
Tom: They could really help fight air pollution if they'd shift to ethanol
instead.
>and through it they could see a young man, just a few years older than
>Daniel. If he was suprised by Daniel's presence, he did not show it.
> "You must be Daniel," he said politely, glancing at Aurora.
Mike [falsetto]: "No, I'm Aurora, you idiot! I've only been your =sister=
for like sixteen years now! Jeez!"
> "My brother, Nizan," Aurora explained.
Tom: What's his last name? Zentra?
>Nizan remained where he was and examined Daniel. There was a queer look on
>Nizan's face
Crow: HEL-lo!
Mike: I think we've just found Neal's point of entry.
>that Daniel could not read.
Mike: Oh, I think we figured out that Daniel can't read quite some time ago.
>In the silence of the moment, Daniel felt an eerie chill descend upon him.
> " -- who is it, Nizan?" a motherly voice called from the interior.
Crow: I know that voice! It's Aurora's creepy Uncle Ralph! He had an
accident with a case of malt liquor and a bottle of estrogen supplements
back in the 70's.
>It went unanswered.
> "=Pleased to meet you=," Daniel said extending his hand, after
>waiting for what he considered to be long enough. Nizan accepted his hand
>graciously.
Mike: I'm sure married life will treat them well.
> "Likewise," Nizan said. He started to go back inside. "Come in,"
>he said over his shoulder. They followed him into the dining room where
>he and Aurora's parents were quietly eating dinner
Tom: Whoa! Easy, thunder. School lets out, they teleport home, and
everyone's eating dinner? Either teleportation takes four hours or
they're eating dinner at three o'clock!
>-- and so entranced were her parents that they did not even notice she was
Crow: --pregnant and strung out on heroin.
>home. Without another word, Nizan reseated himself in his chair and
>resumed his previous task of eating.
All: DUR-HEY!
Tom: As if he'd be at the dining table doing laundry.
Crow: Does eating really count as a "task"? I mean, in addition to being a
basic physiological requirement?
Mike: Depends. If they're having pork rinds and Beefmato, I'd say yes.
>There was, Daniel noted, an extra place-setting already laid out in
>anticipation of
Mike: --the prophet Elijah.
>Aurora's eventual arrival. "Who was it?" Aurora's mother asked, looking at
>Nizan and wiping the corners of her mouth with her napkin.
Crow [Nizan]: "Oh, just Ed McMahon and some guys with video cameras.
Something about some sweepstakes. I said we weren't interested."
>Nizan nodded in the direction of Aurora and, turning her head, her mother
>lifted her eyebrows in astonishment
Tom [falsetto]: "That's right! I have a daughter! What's your name again,
dear?"
> "Oh!" she said, smiling at Aurora. But her gaze settled
>questioningly on Daniel.
Mike [falsetto]: "Hey, aren't you George F. Will?"
> "This is Daniel, Mom," Aurora began, and as she facilitated the
>terse introductions, she averted her eyes to the overhead lighting, the
>vase, the bowed table-legs, the window through which they could watch the
>sunlight falling down...
Crow: ...and finding itself unable to get up...
>"Would you mind if he joined us for dinner?" she asked no one in particular.
> "Of course not!"
Mike: --said Walter Mondale, wandering by.
Crow: What??
Mike: Well, she didn't ask anyone in particular. It's just as likely she
was talking to him as anyone else...
>her mother exclaimed, smiling warmly at Daniel.
Tom [falsetto]: "I'll just give him your portion! You can stand to lose a
few pounds, you bloated sow!"
Mike: "The ABC Afterschool Special" will return after these messages.
>It was an artificial smile, Daniel knew, a smile
Mike: --made of aspartame and rayon.
>to soothe or take the place of words; from her dour expression when he
>arrived, it was clear she certainly had little to smile about. While Daniel
>snatched a chair from an adjoining room, and then patiently waited for the
>food to be passed,
Crow: Eww! Doesn't he know he's got it all in the wrong order? First you
chew it, then you swallow it, then you digest it and =then= you pass it!
>Nizan eyed him cautiously between bites, and affected the same sweet smile
>as his mother's when Daniel caught him at it.
Crow: Hey, Mike! What did =you= use to do when you got caught at it?
Mike: I have no response to that.
>Strange upbringing, Daniel thought.
> "How long have you known Aurora?" her father asked. The answer:
>three to four weeks.
Tom: That's funny. Half an hour ago, story time, he'd only known her for
two weeks.
Mike: Well, this scene =feels= like it's been going on for a week or two.
> "Where do you go to school?"
> The answer: 3-N.Q.
Crow: Oh! Oh! Who is Jefferson Davis, Alex? What? No? Aw, man! Okay,
I guess I'll take Potpourri for $200.
> Daniel surveyed the family members seated at the table.
Mike: Top five answers on the board, here's your ques-TION!
>The father was spearing his food indelicately, alternating between the
>sweetmeats
Crow: Is that anything like sweetbread? [shudder]
>and corn garnish. The mother, presented with the same plate,
Tom: Couldn't someone get her her own plate? That's so unsanitary!
>merely picked at it, prodding the meat and sifting the corn without really
>consuming anything. And Nizan, although he appeared to be eating steadily,
>was still occasionally peering over at Aurora and her unusual guest. It
>bothered Daniel.
Crow [Daniel]: "I demand that you avert your eyes from me at all times!"
Mike: =He= doesn't like being watched? He's the one doing a bite-by-bite
study of the eating habits of the entire family.
> "What do you do for a living, Nizan?" Daniel asked. Nizan looked up
>from his plate and glanced for a moment at Aurora.
Tom [Nizan]: "Oh, I get most of my money selling her on the street. $15
fifteen minutes, $25 half an hour. Right now you owe me about six hundred
bucks."
> "I work in Central Communications. I'm an engineer."
> "Second Rank," Nizan's mother added proudly. That was indeed an
>honor.
Mike: Big deal. I'm sure Marrissa outranked him by the time she was six.
> "Wow," Daniel said, for lack of anything more enlightening to say,
>but it sounded charming anyway. He looked at Aurora and smile, she
>reciprocated,
Crow: Eww! Right at the table, too!
>then blushed and looked down at her plate Nizan-like.
Tom: Meanwhile, Neal bungled another sentence Mentech-like.
>A strange upbringing, Daniel thought. Her mother's attention switched
Tom: Jimmy Smits.
>to Daniel.
> "You and Aurora are good friends then," she said. "She told us all
>about how you met," (Aurora blushed and smiled down at her plate =that way=
>again)
Mike: Neal thought of one mannerism to give these characters, and by God,
he's going to use it!
>"but we haven't had the chance yet to meet you." Daniel shrugged.
> "Well here I am," he said. Nizan glanced up at him, illicitly.
Crow: See? I told you! Didn't I tell you?
Mike: Oh, I stopped doubting your theory pages ago. I'm sure Neal owns a
squeegee and drinks lots of diet soda.
>Daniel smiled serenely back.
> "I really have to be off now," Aurora's father said,
Tom: "They're only paying us extras to work till five."
>brushing his moustache with a crumpled linen napkin. He offered his hand
>to Daniel: "Roland," he pronounced his name.
Crow: No, that's how he =spelled= his name. If you want to tell us how to
=pronounce= it you'll have to use the International Phonetic Alphabet.
> "Pleased-to-meet-you," Daniel single-breath'd,
All: *groan*
Tom: That suck'd.
>accepting the handshake vigorously. With only a little more fuss, the
>dining room was absent of the father's presence.
Mike: Wow. These sentences are getting more and more awkward with each
passing line.
Crow: "Aurora's dad left." How hard can it be to write that Aurora's dad
left?
>Daniel took a deep breath.
> "Aurora and I are getting married," he said. Nizan jerked upward.
Tom: Yeah, that's about how I felt when I heard Ratliff was marrying off
Marrissa.
>Aurora darted an angry look at Daniel and he cracked a mirthful grin. She
>rolled her eyes to the farthest heavens.
Crow: They came up boxcars.
> "He's kidding," Aurora said laughing with Daniel somewhat, but not
>really. Her mother, though, laughed most of all.
Mike [falsetto]: "Imagine that! A man actually being willing to touch you!
Hilarious!"
> "What a shame!" she said, and Aurora protested embarrassedly. Her
>mother twinkled at Daniel. He was, after all, a remarkably handsome
>individual
Tom: Why? Why why why why why? If Neal wanted to write a mash note to
George F. Will, why couldn't he just =do= it and leave us out of it?
>-- he tended to have that effect on people. And there was Nizan, searching
>Daniel with an incomprehensible look on his face.
> With a polite, "excuse me," Aurora dismissed her self from the table
Crow: So her ego left, but her id and superego are sticking around for
dessert? Is that it?
>to fetch something from her room. A moment after she left, her mother
>leaned conspiratorily toward Daniel.
> "Now explain what it is between you two," she said. "Aurora has
>never given me a straight answer. You see, she's never had a boyfriend
>before."
Crow: There! You see? It's a whole theme! Neal goes into raptures about
Daniel's hair, Nizan has a queer look on his face, Aurora can't be straight
and doesn't go for boys--
Mike: Now you're pushing it.
>This was news to Daniel, though it was not wholly unexpected.
Mike: Nor was it unexpected that after her experience with this guy she'd
end up spending the rest of her life in a convent.
> "Aurora hasn't been secretive, has she?" Daniel asked, with what he
>hoped was the appropriate note of concern.
Tom: E-flat? I guess that's close enough.
> "Well, you know girls," her mother laughed, but Daniel felt her eyes
>probing him for a response.
> "Uh, no. Not really," he said.
Mike: "Actually, I don't know any girls."
Crow: Was that supposed to be Daniel or Neal talking?
Mike: Take your pick.
>Daniel fixed his deep eyes on Aurora's mother. "I like Aurora very much,
>but we're more like best friends who happen to be of opposite sexes..."
Tom: "Best friends who've never had a real conversation and don't really
know anything about each other..."
>(Daniel let his voice die away...)
Crow: If only he'd do the same thing with his pulse.
>"I'm not sure what is going on with Aurie though; she's been touchy all
>day." Her mother nodded. Daniel quickly glanced over at Nizan, hoping to
>surprise him, and Nizan hurriedly looked down at his nearly-empty plate
>again.
Tom: Look, I'm not normally a violent person, but I'm =really= beginning to
wish someone would just haul off and belt somebody.
Mike: Sorry, buddy. I think we've just seen the closest thing to an action
sequence we're going to get.
>It was beginning to get irritating.
> "So Nizan," Daniel threw himself at the dragon's jaws, "is something
>on your mind?" He smiled winningly.
> "No, not at all," Nizan responded easily. "Why, is something on
>yours?"
Crow: I don't think Daniel's had anything on his mind since the Carter
Administration.
> "I was hoping to start a conversation," Daniel drily explained.
> "Strange opener," Nizan retorted, chewing on the end of his fork.
Mike: Mmm, silverware.
> "'Zahnnie," his mother reproached.
Tom: That's it. I quit. Forrester wins this round. I give up. [turns self
off]
Mike: Servo? Servo, speak to me!
>Nizan made a sour face
Crow: --out of his mashed potatoes.
Mike: This is no time for glib rejoinders! I think Servo's dead!
Crow: Who?
>and put down his fork.
> "I =do= have other things to do tonight," he answered in the same
>voice.
Crow: --then switched to a delightful Brando impression!
> "Well then do them," his mother said in a saccharine voice.
Crow: What, they have teleportation and helium crystals but they haven't
invented Nutrasweet?
>Resting her head on her hands,
Crow: --her legs and torso went into the kitchen.
Mike: You don't really need the rest of us at all, do you?
Crow: Nope! I'm your one-stop robot serving all your comedy needs.
>she turned the family's trademark insincere smile on Nizan.
Mike: --and the family's trademark pit bull terrier on Daniel.
Crow: Hey, quit horning in on my act!
>Nauseated, Nizan abruptly stood up from the table, muttering that he had so
>much work to do, and he carried his plate into the kitchen.
Mike: Wow, that is a lot of work!
Crow: How come they all get to leave and we're stuck here?
>Daniel wondered why Aurora was taking so long and wondered whan she would
>be back,
Mike: He's pretty dense, isn't he? Aurora's clearly lying in a mangled heap
fifteen stories below her bedroom window.
>but now he had to smile politely for her mother.
> "Make sure you get some sleep, 'Zahnnie," she called sweetly after
>Nizan.
Crow [Nizan]: "No problem, Mom. I just took three hundred Halcion tablets."
>"Ah," she sighed, turning to face Daniel. Inwardly, he groaned, knowing
>what was coming. Then she glittered at Daniel,
Mike: Sequins make any outfit come to life!
>and he had to face her light green, covetous eyes.
>
> In the Dreamer's memory, the color of her eyes dissolved into tiny
>shrinking specks lost amid the syrupy white sea of the cornea.
Crow: I took a cruise there once... me and two hundred octogenarians.
>Slowly, the whiteness faded to black,
Mike: It's Louis Farrakhan's dream come true.
>and the Dreamer realized that he was standing upright, pressed against the
>clear plexiglass porthole; he was looking at the receding pinpoints of stars
>in the vast expanse of nothingness. In that lonely moment, the Dreamer
>could imagine the unimaginable emptiness.
Crow: No, no, that was the =last= story!
>He felt the eons.
Mike: Join the club.
> What was he doing here? he wondered. Why had he left golden
>Heliopolis for this eternal night?
Crow: Umm... because everything was really annoying there?
>Why? He felt ill. As he looked out the porthole, he strained to find the
>sun, the one star that should have shone brighter than all of the others,
>but he could not see it.
Mike: Maybe because it's night?
Crow: I think Daniel here's got Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Mike: How do you treat that?
Crow: In this case, I'd suggest decapitation.
>His shoulders sagged and he slumped to the ground, suddenly very tired.
> His predicament got worse by the minute. Not only had his memories
>been eaten away by an abcess of the mind, but he saw now that he was on a
>rocketship very far from home, and he had no idea where he was or why he
>was here.
Crow: I guess his bosses didn't like him.
>=Oh God=, he thought. He closed his eyes. At any moment he expected to
>hear a gentle, healing rain,
Mike: Yeah, there's plenty of that in space.
>like teardrops, falling outside on the windowpane. In his mind's eye, he
>saw the stars blink out, the sky grown dark and fierce with storm.
> Violently he jerked out of his reverie: where had this idea of rain
>come from?
Crow: Good question. I think whoever came up with the idea for a planet
where water just falls out of the sky has a serious beating coming.
>He stood up to look out of the window again, and he saw only the dead flat
>sky and the stars. When, he ransacked his brain madly, had he =ever=
>experienced this thing called rain?
Mike: Umm... Seattle?
>There was no rain nor were there clouds in Heliopolis!
Crow: If he's never seen a cloud before, how can he be aware of their
absence? That's like me saying, "Hey, there aren't any bloogles here!"
>For the first time, he began to doubt whether these long episodes he
>"remembered" had ever really happened to him.
Mike: *groan* So not only were they long, pointless, and annoying, but now
they're fake, too?
Crow: Uh, Mike... it's fiction. In real life they've been fake all along.
Mike: *double groan*
>After all, if whoever had put him here had stolen his memories, they
>probably could just as easily have planted false ones in their place --
>and =that= was a most disturbing thought.
Mike: You're telling me! What kind of sick mind would come up with scenes
as irritating as those?
Crow: Like I said, Mike... it's fiction. Check the byline.
> This rain thing though... somehow that felt real. Or then again
>maybe that was fake too. Frustrated, angry, he pounded his fist against
>the window.
Crow: --and as it shattered, Daniel was sucked into the screaming void of
space. The end.
>His ears registered clinking glass...
Mike: Glass! Glass! Glass! Glass! Glass! Glass! Glass! Glass! Glass!
Crow: Mike, what're you doing?
Mike: Trying to liven things up. It worked =before=...
>but in his mind he heard the distant peals of thunder. He closed his eyes.
>The rain outside the glass began once again, this time at full force --
>and then he =remembered=.
Mike: Yes, and?
Crow: Is that it?
Mike: I dunno. Servo usually tells us when it's over.
Crow: Well, we'll give it a few more minutes.
[awkward silence]
Mike: That's enough. Let's get the hell out of here.
[1...2...3...4...5...6...]
[SOL]
Mike: Tom! Hey, Tom! Speak to me! It's over!
Tom: ...beep...bloop...loading ms-dos... ohhh, my head. Wha' hoppen?
Mike: You had a bad reaction to the experiment. Are you feeling okay?
Tom: I guess... man, that experiment just wasn't groovy at =all=.
Crow: Hey, guys, what's the Zed Control?
Mike: I dunno. Is it from MOONRAKER?
Crow: No, I mean, there's this thing here on the desk with a note saying,
"Here's the Zed Control. From your friends at the Satellite of Truth."
Mike: Oh! That must be the secret weapon we need to fight Beta-Nine! [hits
purple button]
[Hexfield viewscreen opens. It's Marrissa -- or rather, the evil Beta-Nine.]
Beta-Nine: How are you, honey? I'm sssssooooo glad you decided to give me a
call!
Mike: Quick! Hit the Zed Control!
Bots: Us??
Crow: This thing looks like the kind of thing you'd need working hands for.
Mike: Hmm? Oh, yeah. [grabs Zed Control, activates it]
[Marrissa's face immediately contorts in horror.]
Beta-Nine: No... NO... =NOOOOO=! "Many-fauceted scarlet emerald"..."how to
hide your money"..."SHOWGIRLS shows what artistic integrity looks like"...
"I thought you were in Nebraska!"..."Glass! Glass!"...AIEEEEE!!!
Crow: That's pretty cruel.
Mike: No worse than what we've had to go through.
[Deep 13]
Dr.F.: What...? What have you done? My invention! My glorious invention!
Beta-Nine, what have they done to you?
Beta-Nine [still looking like Marrissa, but no longer sounding like a phone
sex ad]: You... you monster! These stories are terrible! How can you
inflict such pain on another living creature?
Dr.F. [muttering]: I =knew= I should've used a VHS... they're much more
reliable...
Beta-Nine: I'm leaving! You can find someone else to do your dirty work.
Just wait till the courts get their hands on you! There's not a jury in
the world that'd acquit you! Well, maybe in Los Angeles.
Dr.F.: Leave? You can't leave! I'll just disconnect you!
Beta-Nine: Too late! I downloaded my personality onto the satellite. Ta!
Dr.F. [ripping Beta-Nine machine apart]: Somewhere in here... somewhere...
[finds box with two big buttons on it] Ah-HA! [jabs top button]
[Muffled screams as three recently-launched satellites plunge into the
atmosphere and burn up on re-entry]
Dr.F.: Oops. Okay, this one! [jabs bottom button]
Speak-n-Spell [springing to life]: That is correct. Now spell: "POULTRY".
Dr.F.: Oh, very well. [picks up Speak-n-Spell] Let's see. "P"--
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---O--- Fwshhhh!
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MST3K and all its characters, etc., are Copyright 199x Best Brains. I'm
not a Best Brain. On a good day I'm barely even an Above Average Brain.
This MiSTing is in no way endorsed by Best Brains. Chances are they'd be
sickened and horrified were they to read it. Nevertheless, it may be
distributed freely as long as it's in its entirety and this notice is
intact.
MiSTed by Adam Cadre (MSTie #59588), a.ca...@genie.com, January 1996. Any
comments, questions, remarks, laments, retorts, rebukes or recriminations are
more than welcome. Especially welcome are those featuring the word "swage".
> "You gwand dan-don!" said a neglected Corydrane.