Ensign Jovenan – More questions than answers
Jovenan
((Hiro’s Quarters, 04-0602, USS Artemis))
All the quests had arrived, and the host of the evening was directing them to their seats. Jovenan sat down on the sofa as Hiro started the movie.
Jones: Computer, dim lights to seven percent. ::lights dim, allowing just enough light to find snacks/drinks by:: Start the movie.
The screen flickered to life. Jovenan wasn’t sure what to expect. She knew a movie was somewhere between a book and a holoprogram. It played out in front of one’s eyes like holoprogram, but one could not take part in it or change the plot, just like one couldn’t in a book. She focused as something began to happen on the screen.
Movie: The movie begins with an old man telling a young boy named Joshua a story about goblins and warning him to never trust them.
Jones: I'd have thought that was a given.
Vedic: Diplomatic Corps would still try to make goblin first contact.
Luxa: Are these goblins native to Earth? Did they arrive in a vessel?
Jovenan: Why do the goblins look like that? Their skin and eyes and everything look so… weird.
Movie: Joshua wakes up from his nightmare about goblins, and we see the Waits family packing up their car to go on a family vacation to the town of Nilbog. Joshua's older sister wants the family to wait on her boyfriend Elliot, who has promised to join them. Mr. Presents (the patriarch) doesn't like Elliot, and doesn't want to wait. The family eventually heads out without him. On the way to Nilbog, they encounter a strange hitchhiker, who appears to Joshua as Grandpa Seth. He warns Joshua against going to Nilbog, but the family ignores Joshua's pleas to turn around.
Jones: Probably nothing to worry about, right?
The setting felt a bit alien to Jovenan. She knew of humans and the Earth, but seeing them from so long time ago was difficult to grasp. Using her knowledge of human history, she tried to figure out when the movie took place. Just before the Eugenics Wars, perhaps?
Movie: The Waits family arrives at their vacation home in Nilbog and has dinner, where Joshua is warned again about goblins by his dead grandfather's ghost. Ghost-grandpa Seth freezes time somehow and tells Joshua he has to stop the family from eating the food however he can. Joshua, thinking quickly climbs onto the table and begins urinating on the food just as time resumes.
Vedic: Better than field rations.
Luxa: :: laughing :: That's some expert scent marking … he'd fit in at a Caitian wedding!
Jovenan: ::covering her eyes:: Oh my God, no! Why is he doing that!?
Movie: Joshua's father is understandably angry at Joshua's behavior, and carries him down the hallway, pointing out taped-up name plaques on the bedroom
Jones: ::with the movie:: I WON'T ALLOW IT!
Jovenan: ::still disgusted:: If I had done that, I would’ve been executed. Literally.
Movie: Joshua is then sent to bed, the entire family having to go to sleep hungry. The next day, Holly, Joshua's sister, sneaks out to make out with her boyfriend Elliot, who followed the family in an RV with a couple of his "loser friends," Arnold, Drew, and Brent.
Movie: Arnold goes for a walk outside of Nilbog and encounters a girl being chased by goblins. When Arnold approaches them and insults them, they respond by throwing a spear into his chest. They flee to a chapel in the woods, where they encounter the goblins' queen, druid witch Creedence Leonore Gielgud, who uses the "Stonehenge Magic Stone" to give the goblins power. Creedence tricks them into drinking a magic potion that dissolves the girl into vegetable matter which the goblins eat, a horrifying scene witnessed by Arnold that prompts him to scream helplessly while also being transformed into a tree.
Jovenan was horrified of the scene that was taking place before her eyes. Luxa nearby was also having difficulty watching it.
Movie: The following morning, Michael and Joshua venture into town to buy some food, as the food they had was peed-on. When in town, they find the general store closed, and Michael falls asleep on a bench. Joshua wanders off on his skateboard, eventually going into the local church and eavesdrops on a sermon, which bewails the "evils" of eating meat. The parishioners capture him after seeing his skateboard roll into the church and attempt to force-feed him ice cream; Michael walks in on the scene and becomes suspicious, taking Joshua home.
Movie: Later, Drew sets off on a run into town because there is no food or drinks in the RV. Along the way, Sheriff Gene Freak picks him up in his car and gives him a green hamburger.
Jones: For the record, they're not typically green on Earth. Never have been.
Luxa: No, don't eat it! Where's the piss boy when you need him?
Jovenan: He can’t hear you, Luxa! And please, no more piss boy!
Movie: When he arrives in the town, Drew goes to the store and the owner offers him Nilbog milk.
Vedic: It's like trying to shop at a Vulcan grocery store.
Jovenan: But why did they have milk? Wasn’t it considered an animal product at the time?
Movie: Feeling dizzy, he goes to a chapel and finds Arnold, who has mostly transformed into a tree. Drew drags him out, but Creedence appears. She knocks him out and chainsaws Arnold into pieces. Drew is then killed off-screen.
Vedic: I should get some plants in my bunk. Liven the place up.
Luxa: You can have mine. All of them.
Movie: At the house, the family discovers that the townspeople have prepared them a surprise party to apologize for the events at the church. Joshua attempts to make contact with Seth, only for Creedence to appear in goblin form through the mirror and attack Joshua. Seth's ghost appears and chops her hand off with an axe.
Luxa: :: screams :: Ah! The beautiful evil witch woman is a goblin too!
Movie: Creedence returns to her chapel, where she transforms herself into a beautiful woman in revealing clothes; she then travels to Elliot's RV, where she seduces Brent and drowns him in popcorn.
Jovenan: Hey look, that’s popcorn! He’s going to have popcorn shells attached to his mouth for sure. No, wait. Did he just die? Oh.
Movie: During the party, Seth and Joshua try to cause a distraction using a molotov cocktail, but the Priest captures them, takes the makeshift firebomb, and recites a spell that banishes Seth's soul to hell. However, before he vanishes, Seth summons a bolt of lightning from the sky, which ignites the cocktail and kills the Priest in a fiery explosion. When Michael extinguishes his burning corpse, his true Goblin form is revealed, and the villagers turn on the Waits, revealing themselves all as Goblins. The Waits and Elliot then retreat to the house, where the villagers surround them and hold them hostage.
Jovenan: The ghosts can do all those things? I didn’t know that. But… why didn’t he prevent them from going there in the first place, then?
Movie: Joshua, Elliot, Holly, Michael, and Diana hold a séance to communicate with Seth, who returns from the dead and tells them that he can retain a physical form for exactly ten minutes before he has to return to the afterlife. Seth gives Joshua a paper bag containing a "secret weapon" to use against the goblins. The goblins break into the house and transport Joshua to Creedence's chapel, where Joshua opens the bag, revealing a "double-decker bologna sandwich". He eats the sandwich, making his body poisonous to the goblins; he then touches the Stonehenge Stone, along with his family and Elliot, which destroys Creedence and all of the Goblins present.
Vedic: I wonder if that would work against the Borg.
Luxa: That sandwich does sound really nice.
Jovenan: What? How does… Why does… What?
Movie: The family returns home, where Joshua's mother is seen eating food from the refrigerator. The food, unknown to the family, has been poisoned by the family of goblins which is very likely to be the Presents family, who took over their home during their exchange in the country. Joshua then walks in on a group of goblins eating his now-dead mother's green, bloated torso off of the kitchen counter and offering him a bite.
Jones: ::with the movie:: Want some, Joshua?
Luxa: No, no. They got away … it's not possible?
Joshua screams in horror at the end.
The movie ended and Hiro turned the lights back on. Jovenan felt confused, having several questions the film didn’t answer.
Jones: So, what'd you think?
Vedic: Still a landmark in Earth cinema.
Lorana: I don't know what to think? The piss boy … did he get eaten?
Jovenan: I think he would have been eaten. But wouldn’t the goblins also get caught by Earth authorities soon after that? There’s no possibility they could escape in a human city.
Kader/Jones/Vedic/Lorana: Response
Jovenan: Okay. But some of the characters spoke in differently from you and had different mannerism. Were humans like that back then, or is it a movie thing?
Kader/Jones/Vedic/Lorana: Response
TAG/TBC
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Ensign Jovenan
Science officer
USS Artemis-A
E239911J11