SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

JACQUENETTE: Monsieur Cartwright! Early?

WHITLOCK: (aside) An identical response! Perhaps free will is a mere illusion. On the other hand, she’s an automaton.

(JACQUENETTE slaps him.)

JACQUENETTE: How dare you employ such a term for a lady!

WHITLOCK 3: How dare you eavesdrop on an obvious aside!

(LADY CADENCE appears at the DOOR. Coughing, she WAVES away the SMOKE which continues to issue from WHITLOCK’s TWEED.)

LADY CADENCE: Mr. Cartwright? Are you quite extinguished?

WHITLOCK 3: Lady Cadence! Come, we haven’t much time. (He takes her ARM and ushers her into the PLAZA. JACQUENETTE follows, PROTESTING in FRENCH.)

LADY CADENCE: I demand to know the meaning of this impertinence!

WHITLOCK 3: In a few moments, your one true love will enter this plaza.

LADY CADENCE: Mr. Cartwright! You’re raving! I assure you, that is quite impossible.

(An EXPLOSION sounds, and WHITLOCK 2, only MODERATELY SINGED, is thrown on-stage as before. LADY CADENCE gasps.)

WHITLOCK 2 & 3: (together) Great Scott!

WHITLOCK 3: I forgot that you would be barging in.

WHITLOCK 2: (aside) Brass tacks! I appear to be preceded by my future self! But perhaps I can yet conceal from Lady Cadence the secret of my punctuality. (to WHITLOCK 3) I know thee not, foul foreigner flambé! Unhand that lady at once!

WHITLOCK 3: Silence, you pompous idiot! You’re about to enslave mankind to an alien race!

LADY CADENCE: (to WHITLOCK 3) You are raving! (She WRENCHES free of his GRASP and steps back from both WHITLOCKS.)

WHITLOCK 2: I haven’t enslaved anyone! The alien race has already embarked!

WHITLOCK 3: Not yet! Not after they meet you!

LADY CADENCE: I utterly fail to comprehend.

WHITLOCK 3: I invented a machine, Your Ladyship. A machine to traverse the corridors of time.

LADY CADENCE: Impossible! But why?

WHITLOCK 2: Don’t say it!

WHITLOCK 3: To repair my frequent lapses in punctuality.

JACQUENETTE: Milady!

(LADY CADENCE silences her with a gesture.)

LADY CADENCE: The effort seems excessive.

WHITLOCK 3: Alas, the cure has proven worse than the disease. But in my travels I have learned that your path to happiness lies with this creature from the stars… Vril.

(Off-stage, as before, are heard rhythmic cries of Vril, Vril, Vril! )

LADY CADENCE: Why do they chant his name?

WHITLOCK 3: Because he annihilates all who dislike him.

LADY CADENCE, JACQUENETTE, and WHITLOCK 2: What?

WHITLOCK 3: He believes our village is the whole of our Earthly race! If we assure him he is universally belovèd, Your Ladyship, he will depart once more to the heavens. With you.

LADY CADENCE: How can you sacrifice me to this monster?

WHITLOCK 3: Sacrifice? On the contrary! You love him! He has feelings! He broods!

LADY CADENCE: He broods ? A loathsome reversion to adolescence!

WHITLOCK 3: That’s not what you said twelve hours from now!

WHITLOCK 2: You’re mad, Whitlock. Lady Cadence would never stoop to greet such a fiend, much less grant him her affection.

WHITLOCK 3: You haven’t heard her after she meets him!

WHITLOCK 2: But that hasn’t happened yet!

WHITLOCK 3: It’s happened to me !

LADY CADENCE: Stop talking to yourself!

WHITLOCK 2: I won’t be tyrannized by time, Whitlock-from-twelve-hours-hence! I have conquered time for her sake. (WHITLOCK 2 takes her HANDS.)

(triumphant chant)

WHITLOCK 2: My lady, if indeed a fiend will soon, by some preternatural power, darken your heart, allow me to use these last few moments of light to offer you my own.

empty::[]

(WHITLOCK 2 kneels before LADY CADENCE.)

JACQUENETTE: (chants) Oh, milady!

LADY CADENCE: (chants) I accept.

WHITLOCK 3: (speaks) What? But you said—that is, you will say—

(The VRILLIANS march on-stage, as before, followed by the VILLAGERS and led by the singing VRIL.)

VRIL:

Vril, Vril, Vril!

VRILLIANS:

Vril!

VRIL:

We cry in voices—

empty::[]

(He sees LADY CADENCE and shrieks in surprise.)

VRIL: What is this? What strange admixture of desire, wonder, desire…

WHITLOCK 3: (aside) Not again.

VRIL: (frowning at WHITLOCK 2)… and what minion dares to obstruct the object of my attraction?

WHITLOCK 3: Your pardon, sir. Allow me to introduce… myself. (He gestures to WHITLOCK 2.)

VRIL: A duplicator! What foul sorcery is this?

WHITLOCK 3: (aside) A duplicator ? A-ha!

WHITLOCK 2: It’s not a duplicator , you purple prince of preposterous—

WHITLOCK 3: What perspicacity, Your Excellency! A duplicator indeed! And imagine if my humble device were employed upon… yourself.

WHITLOCK 2: (aside to WHITLOCK 3) What are you doing ?

RANDOM VRILLIAN: Our joy would be doubled!

RANDOM VRILLIAN 2: Squared!

VRIL: No, you cretins! Swayed by my duplicate’s overpowering rhetoric and charisma, the multitude might prefer him !

VRILLIANS: Never!

VRIL: Silence! I cannot risk such a loss to all the worlds! Come, my Vrillians! Let us leave this dangerous orb at once!

VILLAGER 1: (aside) O rapture!

WHITLOCK 2: (to WHITLOCK 3) We’re brilliant!

WHITLOCK 3: (to LADY CADENCE) Quick! I insist you go with him!

VRIL: As do I.

LADY CADENCE: Mr. Cartwright! I have canonically and definitively requited your love!

WHITLOCK 3: But only because I circumvented the truer passion you would have conceived for Vril under the correct conditions!

VRIL: For instance, seeing me.

LADY CADENCE: Spare me this torturous paroxysm of conscience! Do you love me or not?

WHITLOCK 3: Of course! I already told you!

WHITLOCK 2: No, I did!

WHITLOCK 3: But how can you enter wedlock with a Whitlock when a Vrillian grips the key to your heart? You told me! You love him!

OLD BEGGAR WOMAN: (in a younger voice) To be frank—I may have exaggerated my affection.

(The OLD BEGGAR WOMAN throws off her shawl, revealing LADY CADENCE (henceforth, LADY CADENCE 2 ). At the sight of a second LADY CADENCE, VRIL cries out and recoils, only to behold WHITLOCK 1 entering from L. of stage with his customary tardiness.)

VRIL: Vrillians! To me! Already their vile duplicator vomits forth additional insidious spawn!

(urgent)

VRIL:

I’ll gather my Vrillians,

And leave these civilians,

Whose world makes me wince with concern.

Within our own vessel

We’ll cosily nestle,

To leave and to never return!

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(VRIL and the VRILLIANS exeunt with dispatch.)

VILLAGERS: Huzzah!

WHITLOCK 3: (to the CADENCES) But why have you both forsaken your brooding prince?

LADY CADENCE 2: As it happens, O most insufferable Whitlock—

LADY CADENCE 1: (to LADY CADENCE 2) My dear, before you begin, a wisp of that dreadful cloak still clings to your hair. (She brushes away the offending DETRITUS.)

LADY CADENCE 2: Thank you, my dear. (They KISS each other’s CHEEKS.)

WHITLOCK 1: Lady Cadence, you’re calling me Whitlock .

LADY CADENCE 2: My dear man, you have already professed your love multiple times, in both the past and the future. I believe I am entitled to your praenomen.

WHITLOCK 1: (stunned) Take it. With my compliments.

WHITLOCK 3: When did I profess my love in the future? You professed your love for that alien potentate!

LADY CADENCE 2: How you do harp on that minor misunderstanding! The correct question is not when in the future but in which future.