Engineer

Story by Mike, embellished by Geoff

OK, here's the story that Mike told me:

Once upon a time there was an Engineer who had everything in the world But he was bored. So he builds a machine to turn his brain inside out, so he can go live inside his mind. In his mind anything he imagines, IS, instantly. But there’s this woman he loves, and she can’t bear to lose him, and he can’t bear to hurt her. So, for her, he builds this screen, which he can show anything he imagines on. So she can see what he's thinking. Then he turns his brain inside out, and his body goes in a metal cocoon while his mind explores his mind. But out in reality, there’s a Bad Guy, and he tries to get with the girl and kill the Engineer. It gets complicated and dangerous and exciting. At the last moment the Engineer rises up from his computer, tears out the wires, and saves the girl.

Basic outline:

I. The Engineer is bored

II. He fights with his girlfriend and builds the machine

III. Exploring his mind

            the white-hot light

IV. Gods, Mothman, and exterior conflict

V. Tear out the wires

I.         The Engineer is bored.

            The Engineer has nothing to do one day, so he builds a really crappy robot. The robot can't walk or think or do much of anything, except grunt and play pre-recorded nonsense quotes the Engineer made (nonsense stuff like "The Future is now!" and "This show sucks!" and "Fine, sure, whatever."). Then he leaves it on the couch and goes to Cincinnati. When he comes back, in a couple days, his friends and family hadn't even noticed he was gone. The robot's on the couch, in the exact same spot, eating a pot pie and watching TV, grunting and saying, "This show sucks!" They thought the robot was him, so they fed it and watched TV with it and never noticed a difference. 'We thought you had a cold.'

II. He fights with his girlfriend and builds the machine

            Having your brain turned inside out should not be easy or fun. I doodled a diagram I'll show you, but basically, we should use large machines, fake blood, and horrible crunching noises to show that this is not a reversible thing.

            It's really easy to see why the Engineer's girlfriend is not down with this plan. As a matter of fact, I agree with her. The Engineer has made a decision to play Playstation, all day every day, forever and ever and ever. So the Bad Guy is probably not a bad guy to anyone but the Engineer. More on him later.

III. Exploring his mind/ television (the white-hot light)

At first he's too close and the monitor shows strange colorscapes, pure thoughts and sounds. First the Engineer imagines a place. A 'here.'

Then he destroys it.

Then he makes another place. Then he creates an infinitely small world, and he travels through the space between atoms until he finds something indivisible: a red ball floating in space, perfectly smooth. Though the Engineer can get as small as he want, or make the ball as big as he wants, the surface remains perfectly smooth. He can destroy it, but not divide it. When he shatters it into sawdust, it instantly forms into a galaxy of perfect red balls.

The Engineer has conceived of something he cannot divide, something not subject to his will; something, therefore, not him. Since It is not him, therefore there is a Him. With this realization he gains perspective. The screen now observes him, instead of looking through his eyes.

We gain distance.

The Engineer expands infinitely large, past galaxies and universes, until there's nothing at all. Easy. He tries several realities -- they bubble and boil through him and his physical body melts into a glistening-green willow-like archetype that constantly changes shape. Or black, like a gear in a machine. Whatever. We know it's him. Then he builds the infinitely large embassy, and tries to learn the language of his mind. Words and pictures evolve across the walls; dreams, memories.

Then the Engineer looks around his mind, and wonders if there's anyone else in here.

Since he can imagine it, of course there is.

Meanwhile, on the outside:

            I think a party would develop, where everyone comes over and spends all day watching the Engineer’s brain. They could use his frozen body as a coffee table. This is where the Bad Guy comes in – he shows up and starts charging admission (splitting it with the Girlfriend 50-50, or course). It is my theory that the Engineer’s mind communicates in pure music, and out here in reality, it’s talk talk talk. The music should be based on speech and the patterns of speech (the staccato diminuendo of laughter comes to mind). Call and response, singing along with the television. I’d also like to work with modern folk music. “Modern folk music,” to me, is best explained by strumming a guitar and singing “Wish You Were Here” really badly. The story’s really man vs. machine, right? Cold vs. warm, hard vs. soft, digital vs. analog. Peanut butter vs. jelly. And I can think of no better way to sum up the horrifying but beautiful, warm, creepy, comfortable banality of everyday life, no better way than to play Wish You Were Here while you’re watching TV.

            It is my opinion that the Bad Guy plays acoustic guitar.

IV. Gods, Mothman, and exterior conflict

            In this segment a local news crew comes by and does a story on the Engineer, and they show pictures of the screen, and the Bad guy sues them for copyright infringement.

Meanwhile, in the computer:

            The Engineer leaves the Embassy and finds himself on a vast mercury plain, the sky like a lava lamp. In the far distance, at the four points of the compass, stand giant gods with the heads of animals.

            As far as the Engineer travels he can never reach them. He cannot bring them closer. He picks the southern one, a woman with a jackal’s head, and flies toward it as fast as he can. She gets no closer. He keeps trying. She comes no closer, and the other gods go no further. He tries again. The god send an avatar out to meet him.

            The avatar is Mothman. Mothman, if you don't recall, was a seven-foot tall human-shaped monster with bat wings, no arms, and lambent red eyes. It haunted Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1966 and 1967; they made a movie about it called the Mothman Prophecies. I've been reading about it a lot lately. Good stuff. Anyway, I want to use Mothman as the internal villain. He's dark and furry and nasty and mute, everything the Engineer is not. They chase each other around the Embassy -- the Engineer tries to catch him, and he always escapes. The Engineer builds prisons and Mothman wriggles out the bars. The Engineer makes a glass dome and traps Mothman in it. Mothman slides out the side. Mothman never flies away but perches, watching him, and moves only to escape. As soon as he’s safe he flutters to the ground and waits, like a pigeon fleeing you in the park.

            This is metaphysical Coyote and Roadrunner, and will be much fun to animate.

            He destroys the Mothman, but there it is again. He talks to it and it only stares at him with the red eyes.

            So the Engineer does not escape challenges -- when he's turned inside his mind, he has to confront himself and what's already there.

V. Tear out the wires

            Out of frustration the Engineer asks his girlfriend for advice, and sees her on the couch, making out with the Bad Guy.

            I vote for an unhappy ending. I think when the Engineer pulls the wires out of his head, he should die right there, and the Bad Guy and the Girlfriend should live happily ever after, sitting on that couch watching old tapes of the war inside the Engineer's head. Because, let's face it, if the Engineer really loved her that much he probably would have stayed in reality. Even if he loved her, who's to say the Bad Guy doesn't too? And think about it from her point of view -- why shouldn't she have both? The real live boyfriend and the harmless television screen boyfriend? The best of both worlds.

            It's a pretty strange thing for a television screen to be jealous of a human. Even if the television was human once, it isn't now.

            Speech balloons would be really cool in metaphysical computer space.

            I already have animations of the Engineer's embassy. It's pretty cool.

            There's no reason to believe the Mothman is either male or female.

            Do any of these people have children?

            Inside the computer there are no words --pure music. Outside, talk talk talk talk, dialogue dialogue, and the music should be based on human speech, the patterns and rhythms, the way we laugh and shout.

            Actually, the robot from the first chapter could be a good Bad Guy.

Major tropes:

Mothman,

mathematics,

House of Leaves (by Danielewski),

Gian Carlo Mendotti’s fantastic opera, the Medium,

Krazy Kat, by Herriman

Cool songs to play on an acoustic guitar:

Wish You Were Here

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, by Neutral Milk Hotel (G - Em - C - D. The bridge is Em - G - Am - C)

Real Real Real, by Jesus Jones (remember from way back in the day?)

Kiss Off, by the Violent Femmes

Because I don’t know where you grew up, but crappy college rock is the folk music of my people.