Unwell Season 4/Episode 8- Ephemeris
by Bilal Dardai
A quiet drive
The dream team
Stars (above, below)
===
Listen to the Episode Here.
Content Advisories for this episode can be found here.
Support Unwell and HartLife NFP on Patreon at www.patreon.com/hartlifenfp
This episode features: Joshua K. Harris as Rudy, Kat Hoil as Abbie, and Anuja Vaidya as Norah.
Written by Bilal Dardai, sound design by Jeffrey Nils Gardner, directed by Jeffrey Nils Gardner, theme music composed by Stephen Poon, recording engineer Mel Ruder, associate producer Ani Enghdahl, Theme performed by Stephen Poon, Lauren Kelly, Gunnar Jebsen, Travis Elfers, Mel Ruder, and Betsey Palmer, produced by haydée r. souffrant, Unwell lead sound designer Eli Hamada McIlveen, Executive Producers Eleanor Hyde and Jeffrey Nils Gardner, by HartLife NFP.
====
THE INTERIOR OF A CAR, DRIVING ON
A DIRT-AND-GRAVEL PATH INTO A
FORESTED AREA. THE HEAT IS ON LOW.
ABBIE: Are we sure this is a road?
NORAH: Your map is unclear. What did you call this again? A DPS?
ABBIE: GPS. Global positioning satellite.
NORAH: Remarkable. So people have placed in orbit a machine capable of finding you anywhere on the planet?
ABBIE: Several of them.
NORAH: How does it work?
ABBIE: Norah, I’m not versed in the finer details of telecommunications or satellite surveillance. All I know is that usually it keeps me from getting lost. Usually. Rudy said we should take the path to the base of the trail but I can’t tell if this is the path he meant or if we’re just driving through a clear space in the woods.
NORAH: According to this we are very close to Sinclair Knob. I thought you said we were meeting him near a high hill?
ABBIE: “Knob” is one of those folksy synonyms people use when they’re tired of naming everything a hill. See also mound, hillock, hummock, knoll, or tump.
NORAH: There. I see it up ahead. Yes, that seems familiar to me. Perhaps I saw it when I first arrived in town.
ABBIE: The whole of the landmass should belong to Mt. Absalom. It was hard to tell from the town charter. In case it ends up mattering.
NORAH: In case what ends up mattering?
ABBIE: We still don’t know if you or Wes or any of the others manifest beyond the borders of the town.
NORAH: Silas was.
ABBIE: Silas excluded. What I’m saying is...if you start to feel...I don’t know. If you think you might blink out of existence tell me immediately and we will turn around.
NORAH: You sound concerned.
ABBIE: I am concerned.
NORAH: It’s very sweet.
ABBIE: People are always saying that about me.
NORAH: I will inform you if anything feels unusual.
(AFTER A MOMENT) Dr. Peltham must believe it is safe for me. He wouldn’t ask me to come out this far if he felt it might do me harm.
ABBIE: I hope you’re right.
NORAH: You’re uncertain.
ABBIE: You heard how Wes and Dot described him.
NORAH: Rudy is often enthusiastic.
ABBIE: Enthusiastic. But Dot said he was ranting about sound waves and fixing Fenwood and throwing crowbars down wells. Like he was on the edge of some kind of breakdown, maybe. Then again, what do we know? I’m no mental health expert and neither is Dot.
NORAH: You feel we should be cautious.
ABBIE: I don’t want to take our safety for granted. Even if one of us is already dead.
NORAH: That seems...well-advised. (BEAT) Is your therapy going--
ABBIE: --I’m not going to talk about that.
NORAH: I apologize. (BEAT) I would like to drive.
ABBIE: Right now?
NORAH: Not right now. In the future. It was not something I had the opportunity to try before I died.
ABBIE: Not that you would have been allowed.
NORAH: True, although I’d say I’ve made quite a career of doing things that were not allowed. (BEAT) I wonder how my telescope is.
ABBIE: You haven’t checked on it?
NORAH: I haven’t. I don’t know why. There is nothing that prevents me. (BEAT) I was quite upset with Rudy, did you know that? When he began to meet with the Delphic Order, I said some very unkind things. Out loud to myself, captured as echoes. It seemed thoughtless to me that he should preoccupy himself with other interests when we were making such progress. But I have been no better. Once I learned I could move beyond the observatory walls I had very little willingness to go back. The telescope seemed of less importance even to me.
ABBIE: You astronomers. So mercurial.
NORAH: (LAUGHS) Mercurial! That’s quite clever.
ABBIE: (SIGHS) It was. I don’t know why I said that out loud. I usually let the wordplay stay in my head and die unspoken. I’m very tired.
NORAH: I only wish he’d been more forthright with me before he’d abandoned the project, instead of, instead of...
ABBIE: Ghosting you?
NORAH: What did you say?
ABBIE: That’s what it’s called nowadays. When somebody cuts off contact but doesn’t tell you why? They’ve ghosted you. That is not me trying to be clever again.
NORAH: Although that is, indeed, clever.
ABBIE: Shoot me. (BEAT) Speaking of the observatory. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.
NORAH: What’s that.
ABBIE: I’m having trouble finding any information on Cornelius Deerfield.
NORAH: Who is that?
ABBIE: ...your colleague? Dr. Deerfield? The one the Delphics named the observatory after?
NORAH: I’m sorry, Abbie, but I have no idea who you’re talking about.
ABBIE: Weren’t you part of his team when you came to the observatory?
NORAH: There was a team, yes, led by Drs. Stephenson and Graff. There was nobody named Deerfield. Not during my tenure, anyhow.
ABBIE: All right then. That feels like confirmation.
NORAH: Confirmation of what?
ABBIE: A dangling thread in the town narrative. Of which there are several, so it’s nice to tie one off.
NORAH: Glad I could be of service, then. (BEAT) Although it does compel me to observe that the first time you’ve bothered to ask about my experiences as a living scientist you decided to focus on one of my male colleagues.
ABBIE: That...I didn’t intend to...
NORAH: A male colleague, I’d further point out, who wasn’t even there in the first place.
ABBIE: I didn’t realize you wanted me to ask.
NORAH: A curious sentiment from you, Abbie. From all I’ve seen and been told, you tend to ask regardless of what the subject wants.
ABBIE: I was trying to be sensitive. To you. For once. (BEAT) I’m sorry. Do you want me to interview you?
NORAH: Goodness no, I have much preferred to languish in obscurity while the men received lengthy biographies.
ABBIE: I’d need to figure out how to cite you. “Primary source” might be most accurate.
NORAH: “Primary source,” you say. And here I thought we were friends.
ABBIE: My recorder’s in the trunk. We can start on the drive back. (BEAT) There, up ahead. I see a flashlight.
NORAH: You think that’s Rudy?
ABBIE: If it’s not Rudy then it’s a bear that knows how to use a flashlight. Which means we have other problems.
ABBIE STOPS THE CAR. THE DRIVER
AND PASSENGER SIDE DOORS BOTH OPEN
AND CLOSE.
ABBIE: Rudy? Are you there?
RUDY, ABBIE, AND NORAH WALK
TOWARDS EACH OTHER. THREE SETS OF
FOOTSTEPS IN DIRT AND LEAVES.
RUDY: I wasn’t sure if you’d come.
ABBIE: We weren’t sure either. Norah convinced me.
NORAH: Dr. Peltham.
RUDY: Dr. Tendulkar.
NORAH: I’m not--
RUDY: --I know, I know, technically blah blah, let
me call you what you are. I bestow upon you
an honorary doctorate from Peltham
University. There you go. Hello.
NORAH: Hello.
RUDY: Wes told me. I’m glad for you. I’m glad I
get to see it for myself.
NORAH: It still feels very new.
RUDY: Were my ears playing tricks on me, or did
you have footsteps just now?
NORAH: Of course. It is not difficult when you
remember to do it. But no tracks yet, as you
can see.
RUDY: Eh, maybe don’t work too hard on that. Not
being easy to follow is a handy skill to
have.
ABBIE: So? We’re here. What’s all the espionage
about, Rudy?
RUDY: There’s something I want to talk through
with the both of you. I also need you to see
something while we talk. A visual aid.
ABBIE: What is it?
RUDY: It’s up there.
ABBIE: Up there? As in the top of the fucking Knob?
RUDY: No. The trail doesn’t go quite that high.
ABBIE: You’re still making us climb.
RUDY: It’s a very gentle incline.
ABBIE: We couldn’t have done this any earlier? It’s
almost sunset!
RUDY: The timing is part of what I need you to
experience.
ABBIE: (EXASPERATED) Ugh! Fine!
RUDY: Trust me, please. This is worth it.
ABBIE: I get to be the judge of that. Lead the way.
THREE SETS OF FOOTSTEPS WALKING UP
A DIRT-AND-GRAVEL TRAIL. SILENCE
FOR A MOMENT.
RUDY: Oh! Before I forget to mention it: The
telescope is fine. Figured you’d be
curious.
NORAH: You’ve been using it?
RUDY: I wouldn’t call what I’ve been doing “using
it.” Just some routine maintenance.
Cleaning, tightening, that sort of thing.
NORAH: Have you looked at anything interesting?
RUDY: Only to adjust the focus.
NORAH: Then you haven’t attempted to...
RUDY: Look at Omega Centauri again?
NORAH: Yes.
RUDY: I won’t lie to you. It crossed my mind. But
you know what they say about insanity,
right?
NORAH: No...?
ABBIE: Doing the same thing and expecting different
results.
RUDY: That’s the one.
NORAH: I’m grateful you didn’t. I wouldn’t have
wanted you to. It’s a mystery neither of us
need to solve.
RUDY: I’d say that describes most of the mysteries
you and I look into the first place, Norah.
We’ll come back to it. We’ll try something
different.
ABBIE: Or: You could listen to Norah and let it go.
RUDY: That’s...not something I’d have expected you
to say.
ABBIE: I’ve recently had cause to reconsider the
limits of fearlessness.
RUDY: Did something happen?
ABBIE: I’m fine. I’m not talking about it. How much
further?
RUDY: Not very. I’ve been up here a few times the
last week. I know the way pretty well now.
ABBIE: Could you at least give us some idea of what
this is about or does everything in Mt.
Absalom need to be a nasty surprise?
RUDY: It’s about Silas.
ABBIE: Meaning what? You’re not...taking us up here
to meet with him, are you?
RUDY: Silas isn’t here.
ABBIE: You can’t know that for sure.
RUDY: He’s spent forever trying to get back into
the town. We’re not going to find him
wandering the edges.
NORAH: You brought us here so Silas won’t hear us.
RUDY: Him...or any of the Delphics.
ABBIE: I see. You’ve gone rogue.
RUDY: That’s an overstatement. I am pursuing other
avenues of approach.
ABBIE: Don’t do that. I speak academic too,
remember?
RUDY: The Delphics are busy taking actions they
feel are necessary. I’m trying to be a
little more thoughtful about it.
NORAH: Before you take whatever actions you feel
are necessary.
ABBIE: What’s Hazel up to, Rudy?
RUDY: I don’t know. She won’t say. And Chester
won’t tell me.
ABBIE: But you’re still worried enough that you’re
holding a secret meeting with the two of us,
at sunset, on a high hill outside of town.
So you don’t know. What do you think?
RUDY: The Delphics have this view of Silas...he’s
a malevolent force, but he’s also a man. If
he’s a man, you have a chance to reason with
him. But Silas isn’t a man. He’s more like
an adjacent galaxy.
ABBIE: You’ll need to explain that one.
RUDY: There is a power here in Mt. Absalom. And
there’s a power that Silas has. Now that
Silas is inside the town, those powers are
colliding. Norah, I forget, were you still
alive when Hubble...no, he wasn’t talking
about any of this until the 1920s. Vesto
Slipher, does he sound familiar?
NORAH: I’d heard of Dr. Slipher. Several colleagues
mentioned him as someone who showed promise.
I still do not know what you are talking
about.
RUDY: I’m getting too deep into the cosmology.
Here’s what I’m trying to illustrate. In
theory, when two galaxies collide, they
twist each other. All the gravity
surrounding the stars pulls at each other at
the same time and you end up with a single,
integrated galaxy that doesn’t look like
either of the ones it was made of. Two
spirals blend together and you get an
elliptical.
NORAH: I see. You believe that the longer Silas
remains in town the more it will warp Mt.
Absalom.
RUDY: With everyone here stuck on the ride.
ABBIE: Is that...the galaxy collision thing...is
that supposed to happen to us and whatever
galaxy is right next to us?
RUDY: Andromeda. Eventually, if the models are
correct. But it won’t happen for another
four billion years or so.
ABBIE: Got it.
NORAH: The sun will have incinerated this planet by
then.
ABBIE: Then I won’t cancel my weekend plans.
RUDY: But now: Here’s what happens to your thought
process when you start working with
metaphors. Sorry, when I start working with
metaphors.
ABBIE: You come up with other metaphors.
RUDY: So it’s not just me.
ABBIE: Pattern recognition tends to leave one
vulnerable to allegory. It takes some
discipline to repress it.
RUDY: That’s tragic.
ABBIE: You work your way and I’ll work mine.
RUDY: Fair enough. Anyway, I start thinking of
Silas and Mt. Absalom as galaxies and then
my train of thought really jumps the rails.
I remember all of these other little
details, these shards of, these snippets.
Things people said, things I caught in
passing. Like finding five pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle without knowing that they all
belong to the same puzzle.
ABBIE: That’s definitely more of a you experience,
Rudy.
RUDY: I step out of the observatory to take a
walk. Get some fresh air. I keep walking.
I’m barely conscious of the direction I’m
going, how long I’m out. I find myself here,
at the bottom of Sinclair Knob, and there’s
still light outside, so I start walking up
the trail. (BEAT) To here. Take a look.
THE WALKING STOPS. A SILENCE.
NORAH: I see the town.
RUDY: Yes. It’s a nice view. That’s not
specifically what I wanted you to see,
though. (BEAT) Sun’s almost down. Watch.
A LONG, MEDITATIVE SILENCE.
RUDY: (QUIETLY) Do you see it?
ABBIE/NORAH: No. / Yes.
NORAH: The lights.
ABBIE: You mean from the houses?
NORAH: They look like--
RUDY: --now look up.
NORAH: Ah. Yes.
ABBIE: (AFTER A MOMENT) Okay. I see. This is that
romantic astronomer nonsense the two of you
do. The lights in the houses like the lights
in the sky or whatever? Pale blue dots and
starstuff?
RUDY: Not that. Well, sure, a little bit that.
ABBIE: You really ought to be talking with Marisol.
RUDY: You’re being too literal. I told you I was
thinking in metaphors. (BEAT) Norah, did you
keep an ephemeris?
NORAH: Not of my own. We’d put Dr. McCall in charge
of that.
ABBIE: What’s an ephemeris?
NORAH: A journal. We would use it to capture
trajectories of the objects in the sky. My
father also kept one. I remember seeing it
on his desk.
ABBIE: Is it like some kind of star map?
RUDY: Nothing that elegant. It’s basically a
series of tables. Columns and rows of
coordinates, month by month, year by year.
Like, have you ever read a baseball
scorecard?
ABBIE: I’m not sure why you’d even ask me that.
RUDY: See, when you look at a completely
filled-out scorecard, you can replay the
whole game in your head just off the data.
With an ephemeris, you look at the notations
and you can get a sense of how everything is
moving, their positions relative to each
other and to the Earth. I came up here, I
looked up at the stars, I looked down at Mt.
Absalom, and in my head, it...for the first
time I felt like I was seeing more than one
object in motion at once. (BEAT) I have a
small confession. I may have, accidentally,
blown up the bottling works.
NORAH: What?!
ABBIE: That’s what you call a small confession?
RUDY: Accidentally!
ABBIE: How do you accidentally blow up an entire
factory?
RUDY: By hurling a crowbar into the well
underneath town hall! How else do you do it?
NORAH: ...I don’t understand.
RUDY: Neither did I! The same way we didn’t
understand how you can get hit with a bolt
of lightning by looking through a telescope!
ABBIE: More weird Mt. Absalom shit.
RUDY: No. Enough. We keep shrugging our shoulders
and dismissing it all as unexplainable
phenomena and I want to figure this thing
out, once and for all. A unified theory of
Mt. Absalom. (BEAT) That’s why I came up
here: To get a view of the place that I
hadn’t had before. And which is why I asked
you to come up here with me: Because I can’t
work this one out on my own, and you’re two
of the smartest people I know.
NORAH: Locally, perhaps.
RUDY: Locally or otherwise.
ABBIE: All right. Let’s talk this thing out, Dr.
Peltham.
RUDY: That’s all I ask.
ABBIE: You said you threw a crowbar down a well,
and that somehow this blew up the bottling
works.
RUDY: That might be a coincidence--
NORAH: --but it seems unlikely.
ABBIE: Especially after what happened to Wes and
Lily.
NORAH: Correct.
RUDY: What happened to...?
ABBIE: Wes threw some rocks into a well below
Fenwood House, and suddenly we found
ourselves face-to-face with Lily, age 10.
NORAH: You’re aware that--?
RUDY: --Wes told me about that. Are you sure
you’re okay? Finding out you’re not a
ghost...
NORAH: That I am an echo, or a memory, or something
else. It is a semantic argument for now and
it is not all that defines me, Dr. Peltham.
Please do concentrate on the matter at hand.
We have two instances of an unusual
occurrence tied to the disturbance of a
well.
ABBIE: Come to think of it, that’s also right
before we started getting reports of wolves.
RUDY: Wes thinks those are also ghosts. Er,
echoes. Memories. Whatever.
ABBIE: So that’s three.
RUDY: There’s also supposed to be a deeper well
beneath the observatory. Chester said it was
dry, but he said the same thing about the
one under town hall.
ABBIE: That tracks. There was a baptismal font down
there in the chapel.
RUDY: Was it dry?
ABBIE: I didn’t dig it up. But the font was empty.
NORAH: Perhaps it does not matter. We did not throw
anything into that well, but perhaps we
disturbed it all the same. After all, we
pointed the telescope at Omega Centauri.
Twice. With fatal results.
RUDY: As if we’d completed a circuit.
ABBIE: A circuit. Really. Like maybe there’s an
electrical current that connects a nebula
a jillion light years away to a hill in the
middle of Ohio.
RUDY: Hm. I hear you. Hard to prove. Working
theory. The key is the pattern.
NORAH: The key is the water.
RUDY: Yes. On the money, Norah.
NORAH: Were there any other occurrences?
RUDY: I don’t recall anything besides...
ABBIE: Are you kidding?
RUDY: What.
ABBIE: Thanksgiving, Rudy.
RUDY: I’m not...
NORAH: What happened at Thanksgiving?
ABBIE: Silas stopped in for dinner. He and Dot went
after each other. Verbally, not physically.
RUDY: Right...Silas said all of his cryptic
quasi-Biblical blabbity-blah, Dot was
telling him he can go walk off a cliff...
ABBIE: And what were the radiators doing?
RUDY: They were a little noisy, I remember that.
ABBIE: A little noisy? Rudy, the radiators were out
of their fucking minds. I’m saying that
maybe the reason Silas got up and left as
fast as he did wasn’t because Dot was
reading him the riot act, but because the
radiators were doing the same thing. Because
what’s going through the radiators?
RUDY: Steam.
NORAH: Water.
RUDY: Oh my god. Yes. That’s the thing I’ve been
forgetting about. Phase transitions. States
of matter. Wait. Not just matter. Energy. I
need a chalkboard. There’s no chalkboard up
here.
NORAH: Rudy. Take a breath.
RUDY: Yes. Right. (TAKES A BREATH) It doesn’t
matter if the water is liquid or if it’s
vapor in the air. Matter and energy. That’s
everything. Right? Whatever isn’t matter is
energy, whatever isn’t energy is matter.
NORAH: Which transform into each other...
RUDY: Back and forth, over time, everywhere in the
universe. Matter as solids or liquids or
gases and energy as light and sound. And
then we have you, Norah, or Wes, or Silas,
or the wolves... Energy and matter as memory
and consciousness. (BEAT) This is how we
stop him.
ABBIE: Stop him. (BEAT) I’m going to ask you
a direct question, Rudy. Are you planning to
kill Silas?
RUDY: Kill him? Me? Even if I had that in
me...Silas isn’t alive in any way to kill.
He’s a creature combining different phases
of matter and energy, and Mt. Absalom’s
water plays absolute hell with matter and
energy.
NORAH: So if we can get him inside one of the
wells--
RUDY: --we can transform him.
ABBIE: Okay. I’ll follow you on this a bit. How
exactly are you going to force him into one
of the wells?
RUDY: I don’t want to force him. I want him to do
it himself.
ABBIE: This sounds more plausible by the minute.
RUDY: We need to convince him...he needs to accept
that him being present, in this form, is
doing harm to Mt. Absalom. I don’t believe
that’s what he wants. However he might feel
about its people, whatever the town is,
whatever it represents...The One Who Blooms.
That’s who or what he’s interested in
saving. That’s how I need to speak to him.
ABBIE: This is an awfully tall order, Rudy.
RUDY: I’m aware of that. That’s part of why I
wanted you here, Abbie. You understand
people.
ABBIE: Sorry, have we met? I don’t understand
people. I understand histories.
RUDY: That’s not true, Abbie. You tell yourself
you understand histories because you don’t
want to admit you understand people.
ABBIE: (AFTER A MOMENT) What are you asking me to
do?
RUDY: I’m going to do some more analysis on the
powers of the water. With Norah’s help, if
she’s willing. In the meantime, I want you
to help me understand Silas as a person.
I’ll tell you everything the Order believes
about Silas, and you do that thing you’re so
good at--scraping off whatever coat of paint
they’ve put on it so we can see what’s
underneath. Like you did at the pageant.
ABBIE: You weren’t at the pageant.
RUDY: Spikes showed me the movie.
ABBIE: Of course she did.
RUDY: It was riveting. (BEAT) Norah and I can
figure out what he is. Who he is, though,
that’s the column I can’t fill in. If I
don’t have that right it’s going to get
somebody killed.
ABBIE: (AFTER A MOMENT) All right, Rudy. I won’t
speak for Norah. But I’ll help you.
NORAH: I do speak for Norah. I’m also willing to
help you.
RUDY: (SIGH OF RELIEF) Excellent. Thank you.
ABBIE: I’m going to ask you one more direct
question, though.
RUDY: Let me have it.
ABBIE: Why are you doing any of this? You don’t
live here. You don’t have to be this
invested. Honestly, I thought you’d skip
town once the wolves showed up. Nobody would
have blamed you.
RUDY: You’re staying too.
ABBIE: That’s different. I have a degree to finish.
You know what that’s like.
RUDY: True. (BEAT) There have been a lot of times
when I’ve walked away...sometimes run
away...when things started to feel
a little overwhelming. I suppose, just this
once? I wanted to stick in one place long
enough to see the story through. (BEAT)
Okay. We can head back down now.
ONE SET OF FOOTSTEPS STARTS DOWN
THE PATH, THEN HALTS.
ABBIE: Wait. I’d like to stay up here a bit longer.
It’s pleasant.
NORAH: Indeed. Quite peaceful.
RUDY WALKS BACK. THE THREE OF THEM
SIT AND LOOK OUT OVER MT. ABSALOM.
RUDY: This is...I’ve missed working like...I’ve
just missed both of you.
ABBIE: Stop talking, Rudy.
RUDY: Right on.
SILENCE, SAVE FOR THE WIND THROUGH
THE TREES OF THE HILL AND OTHER
SOUNDS OF THE EARLY EVENING.
END