First man (comprehension drawing on his face): “The Madigan Plan!”
Second man: “And you really think any woman is going to have the balls to kick the Femocrats off Pacifica?”
First man: “I guess what we need is a real man as Chairman for a change…Say, who was the last bucko Chairman?”
Cut to a closeup on Mike Lumly. The camera pulls back to reveal the large male crowd he is addressing in front of the main entrance to Parliament.
Lumly: “Who really ended the Femocrat strike that was destroying our economy? (He jerks a thumb at the Parliament building.) Those ball-less wonders?”
Crowd: “NO!”
Lumly (sardonically): “Our lady Chairman?”
Crowd: “NO!”
Lumly: “Who saved Pacifica?”
Crowd: “WE DID!”
Lumly: “And how did we do it?”
Crowd: “BUCKO POWER! BUCKO POWER!”
Lumly: “And what’s the only answer to Femocrat subversion of this election?”
Crowd: “BUCKO POWER! BUCKO POWER! BUCKO POWER!”
Lumly: “And what’s a man who votes for anyone but a Bucko Power candidate?”
Crowd: “A BALL-LESS BREEDER!”
Cut back to a reprise of the opening shots: phalanxes of men marching back and forth across the screen, left, right, left, the rhythm of the cutting and the marching feet creating a drumfire of righteous power and determination.
Male voiceover: “Bucko Power on the march! For freedom, for democracy, for Pacifica—and for a new Parliament with the balls to preserve them!”
A full shot on two feathery roly-poly bumblers—one wearing a silly pink ballet skirt, the other stuffed into a black leather uniform—as they whonk and babble at each other, bumping bellies belligerently. Cut to a similar shot on two humans in male and female clown suits, one wearing a mask that caricatures Roger Falkenstein, the other wearing a grotesque Cynda Elizabeth mask, as they squirt each other in the face with traditional seltzer bottles.
Cut to a long shot on a mixed crowd of men and women on a stylized mock-up of a Gotham street. The women wear enormous false pink breasts, the men wear giant red rubber wongs, and all of them are in clown makeup. A man creams a woman in the face with a gooey cream pie. The woman retaliates in kind. In a few moments, dozens of pies are flying through the air, then hundreds. Soon everyone is coated with white pie-filling as the great battle continues to escalate. Barrages of pies fall from the buildings. Finally, there is an ominous whistling sound like a missile falling, and an immense ten-meter cream pie falls from the sky onto the fray with a godlike splat.
Caption: “THE PINK AND BLUE WAR!”
Cut to a two-shot of Carlotta Madigan and Royce Lindblad as they walk together on the beach at Lorien lagoon.
Royce: “Boys will be boys!”
Carlotta: “And girls will be girls!”
They begin raving at each other in mock anger.
Royce: “And so’s your mother!”
Carlotta: “And you’re another!”
Rugo waddles into the frame from the left, stands between them, glances back and forth at the two of them in rather patronizing indignation, and delivers a sermon.
Rugo: “Whonk-ka whonk ka-whonkity? Whonk whonk ka-whonkity whonk? Whonk, whonk, whonka!”
Royce and Carlotta look appropriately chastened and embarrassed.
Royce (foolishly): “Well, you see, jocko, it’s like this, we humans are having a very serious election campaign. The men are afraid that the women are going to bite their wongs off…”
Carlotta: “…and the women are afraid that the men are going to confine them to purdah…”
Rugo bounces up and down cackling.
Royce (indignantly): “It’s not a joke; it’s serious! Just ask Pacificans for the Institute or the Femocratic League of Pacifica, and they’ll set you straight.”
Rugo, disbelieving, continues to bounce and cackle. After a moment, he pauses, looks up at Carlotta, then at Royce, both of whom have put on expressions of mock anger. He shakes his head slowly, sadly. He makes cooing throaty noises. He grabs Royce’s hand in his big flexible bill and places it in Carlotta’s. He rubs his body against both of them, turns to face the camera, and whonks contentedly.
The camera moves in for a closeup of Royce and Carlotta, smiling together now. The frame freezes, then solarizes into an abstract ikon of loverly bliss. This slowly dissolves into a lyrical series of shots of lovers that melt into each other to dreamy romantic music. Two faces coming together in a kiss, silhouetted by a rich seascape sunset. A naked couple walking hand-in-hand through a forest in balletlike slow motion. A couple making love in a feather-soft white snowbank under a jeweled night sky.
Soft female voiceover: “Pacifica is for lovers…”
Mellow male voiceover: “And lovers are for Pacifica…”
A closeup on Rugo, looking dreamy and contented now. The camera pulls back for a longer shot, showing Royce, Carlotta, and Rugo ambling slowly together down Lorien beach. The camera moves in again for a two-shot on Royce and Carlotta.
Royce (sardonically): “But men will be men…”
Carlotta: “…and women will be women.”
Cut to a closeup on Rugo.
Rugo (in a rather cute quacking voice): “But humans will be humans if they stop whonking at each other like bumblers.”
Cut to a full shot on a Bucko Power candidate haranguing a small streetcorner crowd of men. His mouth, his arms, the fist-shaking gesticulations of the crowd—all are in jerky fast-motion. Moving in graceful contrasting slow motion, Royce and Carlotta move into the frame and bracket the speaker.
Speaker (in filtered mechanical voice): “Down with Femocracy! Power to the penis! We demand what we deserve.”
Royce and Carlotta glance at each other meaningfully, shrug.
Royce: “He asked for it…”
Magically, they both produce cream pies and slam them in the speaker’s face from both sides.
Royce and Carlotta: “Pacifica for the Pacificans!”
Cut to a similar shot of a wild-eyed woman hectoring a female crowd. Royce and Carlotta move into the frame, flank the speaker, and look questioningly at the crowd.
Speaker: “Sisters! Speak out for your rights! Tell these faschochauvinist dupes what you want! Let me hear it! Let me have it!”
Carlotta grins at the crowd and raises her hand like an orchestra conductor.
Crowd: “Pacifica for the Pacificans!”
Pies fly from both sides, creaming the speaker’s face with white goo.
Cut to a two-shot on Royce and Carlotta walking on Lorien beach.
Carlotta: “Of course, this election is serious business.”
Royce (fatuously): “In fact, I’ve never seen so many serious people shooting their damn fool mouths off in my life. If you believe what you hear, Carlotta’s sold out the women of Pacifica to Transcendental Science and sold out the men to Femocracy, both at the same time. How’d you manage that trick, babes?”
Carlotta (waving her hands like a magician): “The hand is quicker than the eye!”
Royce: “And if you believe that, you must believe in the tooth fairy, too.”
Carlotta: “Personally, I make a practice of believing in two impossible things before breakfast. Today it was Transcendental Science and Femocracy.”
Royce: “Well, we’ve had our fun, fellow Pacificans…”
A huge hand shoves a big cream pie into the foreground of the shot as if handing it to the viewer.
Carlotta: “But come election day, it’ll be your turn to throw the pie!”
Royce Lindblad giggled, turned away from his net console, and gave Carlotta a big grin. “They don’t know what’s hitting them!” he said. “Falkenstein’s bellowing like a wounded godzilla, and the Femocrats won’t even talk to newshounds. Their campaigns are disasters, and they can’t even figure out why.”
Carlotta shook her head, paced around his office, glanced at the depth poll f
igures on the access screen, and sat down on the arm of Royce’s lounger. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure why either,” she said. “I thought this media blitz you layed out was crazy, but…”
“But it’s working, isn’t it?” Royce said somewhat smugly.
The depth poll figures might not be ideal, but the shape of the new Parliament was already clear. Planetwide, the projected vote now broke down as 23 percent Femocrat, 30 percent Bucko Power, 31 percent for the vague Pacifica for the Pacificans movement, and 12 percent undecided with two days of campaigning left. Neither Transcendental Science nor the Femocrats had a prayer of forming a new government, and a paralyzed Parliament would mean maintaining the status quo by default—a Madigan Chairmanship and a continuation of the Madigan Plan. And a considerable portion of the population, male and female, was at least temporarily coming to see the whole Pacifican Pink and Blue War as some kind of hideous joke.
“If there’s one thing you can count on fanatics to do when it’s escalation time, it’s lose their sense of humor,” Royce said “They’re screaming foul slok at us and each other and they just can’t comprehend why we’re just counterpunching with cream pies. And still less why it’s working as well as it has.”
Carlotta took another, longer look at the depth poll figures. “But I think we’ve milked the fun-and-games approach as far as we can,” she said. “Seems to me, anyone who’s still committed to Femocracy or Bucko power after all this is going to vote that way no matter what anyone does in the next two days. I’d expect the undecided to break roughly in thirds, so that’s not going to affect the outcome either…”
“Yeah,” Royce said.
“Which means no one will have the votes to oust me from the Chairmanship or repeal the Madigan Plan or dare to force a vote of confidence on anything for the duration of the trial period.”
Royce nodded. “You could call it constructive paralysis,” he said.
“But when the trial period is up, we’ve got to be in a position to get through a resolution expelling the Femocrats and Transcendental Scientists, or at least win an electronic vote of confidence and elect a new Parliament that will pass it if this one votes it down. So…”
“So?”
Carlotta got up and began pacing the office again. “So since the outcome of this election is already decided, we should start playing the endgame now. Get heavier and nastier so that the result of this election isn’t just a cream pie, but a ringing endorsement of Pacifica for the Pacificans. Of me. Of us. Of the Madigan Plan. Of Pacifican nationalism.” She grinned crookedly at Royce. “It’s time to change the media blitz and make us heroes, babes.”
Royce laughed. “I suppose I can hold my nose and do it,” he said. “Carlotta Madigan and Royce Lindblad, saviors of the Pacifican way of life, champions of Pacifica for the Pacificans, the golden couple, and so forth…” He grimaced wryly. “As long as we don’t start believing it ourselves.”
Carlotta laughed. She looked down at him with what seemed like a perfectly straight face. “Why not?” she said archly. “Isn’t it the truth?”
A medium shot on Royce Lindblad and Rugo. Royce is apparently involved in a serious conversation with the fat little bumbler, but he’s whonking and squawking like a bumbler himself. Hard cut to a tighter shot on Carlotta Madigan as she flings a pie into the face of a male speaker. Cut to a full shot on two figures made up as clowns, their faces ludicrous caricatures of Royce and Carlotta, as they grope each other obscenely, squirt the camera with seltzer bottles, and finally heave a barrage of pies at a large hologram of Pacifica in the background.
Cut to a two-shot on Roger Falkenstein and Mike Lumly sitting in a viewing balcony at the Institute, with the Godzillaland jungle in the background.
Falkenstein (shaking his head in bemusement): “Can you, as a native Pacifican, explain the antics of your two leading politicians? Their serious political discourse seems to consist of soft porn, pie-throwing, and…uh, talking to dumb animals. Is this the traditional Pacifican way of choosing a government? Have our psychohistorians missed something?”
Lumly (righteously): “They’ve got nothing serious to say, so they’re reduced to making public asses of themselves.”
Falkenstein: “Nothing serious to say? In the face of an impending Femocrat coup? With the existence of this Institute at stake? The Chairman of Pacifica can contribute nothing more to the political debate than low humor, pretty pictures of the landscape, and xenophobic rantings about ‘Pacifica for the Pacificans’?”
Lumly: “There’s only one issue in this campaign: whether or not Pacifica is going to become a Femocrat dictatorship. Any Femocrat is going to vote for her own kind, and any real bucko knows that the only alternative is to support Bucko Power all the way. So who’s left to Vote for crypto-supporters of Madigan? Just a handful of fools who don’t take the real threat seriously. So Madigan’s campaign theme is nothing but honest: a vote for a Madigan supporter is a pie in your own face.”
A triple split-screen shot. On the right, a long shot of the Parliament chamber, filled with female Delegates, sprinkled with armed female troops. On the left, the shot of Royce and Carlotta as clowns, heaving pies and squirting seltzer. In the center of the screen and dominating the shot, a rapidly cut montage of the wonders of Transcendental Science—buildings springing up instantly, an artificial sun transforming the icy wastes of Thule into a green garden, an ancient man blossoming forth with new youth and vigor.
Singing male chorus to the beat of marching feet:
“Which side are you on?”
“WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?”
Two shots alternating with each other again and again: Nero playing his violin on a balcony while Rome bums below him and hairy barbarians pillage and rape in the flaming streets; Carlotta Madigan on a similar balcony overlooking Gotham, kissing Royce while a similar horde of barbarians—Neanderthals stuffed into black military tunics—rape women in the streets below and wave “Bucko Power” placards.
Female voiceover (sardonically): “Pacifica for the Pacificans!”
Ancient film footage of Nazi stormtroopers smashing windows and beating Jews with truncheons, Adolf Hitler addressing a frenzied Nuremburg rally, tanks rolling through the ruined streets of a city.
Female voiceover: “Germany for the Germans!”
A long shot on an altar atop a great stone pyramid. The steps are lined with bound captives, and at the pinnacle, an Indian priest rips out a beating human heart with an obsidian knife.
Female voiceover: “Mexico for the Aztecs!”
A rapidly cut series of shots of tremendous nuclear explosions vaporizing Paris, New York, London, Peking, Moscow.
Female voiceover: “Earth for machismo!”
Cut to a closeup on Susan Willaway, looking straight into the camera with righteous indignation.
Susan Willaway: “Throughout human history, rabid appeals to irrational nationalism have always been the last desperate resort of ideologically bankrupt demagogues. It took Femocracy to put a stop to it on Earth, sisters, and now that Pacifica is about to be liberated from faschochauvinism, why of course our own little tinhorn demagogue, Carlotta Madigan, dredges up this filthy jingoistic slime from the atavistic past and attempts to hide her treason behind a shit-smeared screen of nationalistic muck! It can’t happen here…?”
A series of shots of Bucko Power demonstrations—marching men, waving fists, distorted shouting faces—all to the terrible music of stomping jackboots.
Susan Willaway’s voiceover: “But it is happening here! Pacifica for the Pacificans! But what kind of Pacifica for which Pacificans is Carlotta Madigan ranting for? Who is responsible for the continued existence of an Institute metastasizing its foul poison through the body politic like a loathsome cancer! Carlotta Madigan! Who sold out her sisters to Transcendental Science? Carlotta Madigan! Who is therefore responsible for the faschochauvinist animals rioting in our streets? Carlotta Madigan, and her Machiavellian breeder, Royce Lindblad!”
> Cut to a closeup on Susan Willaway.
Susan Willaway: “Why has Carlotta Madigan failed to answer the charge of treason against her? Because she has no answer! Instead, she gives us circuses, the Madigan Plan, an Institute, outmoded nationalistic chauvinism, and calls it Pacifica for the Pacificans! And what kind of Pacifica will that be if she succeeds? Just what we have now—a Pacifica ruled by Falkenstein through Madigan’s breeder, where Bucko Power fanatics are allowed to run riot in the streets, where democratic strikes by Sisterhood are broken by blackmail or force, where the beast reigns supreme! Pacifica for the Pacificans? Pacifica for faschochauvinist swine and their lackeys and dupes!”
A panoramic shot of a huge and orderly Femocratic League of Pacifica rally, in which the camera first focuses on a section of the crowd, and then slowly reverse-zooms upward and outward, so that the army of women seems to expand toward the horizon in all directions, filling the field of vision to infinity as if it covered the world.
Female voiceover: “But Sisterhood is strong, Sisterhood is united, and Sisterhood will not be fooled by meaningless slogans. Pacifica for the Pacificans…?”
A tremendous amplified shout from the crowd: “SISTERHOOD FOR PACIFICA! PACIFICA FOR SISTERHOOD!”
A closeup of Carlotta Madigan seated in front of a large hologram of Pacifica, looking cool, tranquil, humbly satisfied with herself.
Carlotta Madigan: “Tomorrow you will vote, my fellow Pacificans, and thereby consign to well-earned oblivion the most vicious and un-Pacifican campaign in the history of our planet.”
Behind her, a montage of Bucko Power demonstrations, striking workers, Femocratic League rallies, angry, animalistic, shouting male and female faces.
Carlotta Madigan: “Where once our political differences were economic and philosophical and settled in the democratic spirit of compromise, now they seem to revolve around the nature of our genitals and are not to be compromised at all. The Femocrats accuse Transcendental Science of subversion, and Transcendental Science accuses Femocracy of plotting a coup, and they both accuse me of treason and atavistic nationalism, and I accuse them of interference in our way of life, and, my fellow Pacificans, all of us are right!”
A World Between Page 32
