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4.    INTERIOR BLACKNESS      A WABBIT WHOLE      NIGHT

In the darkness we see GREDD dressed like Alice in an aproned blue and white pinafore. Lost, she is intermittently frantic and forlorn until she stumbles upon ABE costumed as the WHITE RABBIT.

 

LACEY (GREDD)

I could just murder you.

 

WABBIT (ABE)

It’s Alice. No. It’s a lice. No. It’s a lace. Well hello, Lacey. Well hello, Lacie. It’s so nice to have your bright shining facie for a song.

 

LACEY

I know I’m a louse. But, I could rip you limb from limb, I could.

 

WABBIT 

Nobody made you follow me down. Nobody pushed you.

 

LACEY

I fell. I fell! It wasn’t my fault.

 

WABBIT

No. You jumped in this whole. You’ve walked down that wascally street so many times. You’ve peered into it.-

 

LACEY

I never!-

 

WABBIT

You’ve skirted it. You’ve thrown rocks and bottles down to sound it. And now you’re here.

 

LACEY

(glumly) Now I’m here. 

 

WABBIT

Aww kiddo. Of all the wabbit wholes ya could’ve plopped into, I’m glad this is the one. So, it's ok. And I know just the thing to re-calm your mind.

 

LACEY

Yeah?

 

WABBIT

Yeah. Infinity!

 

LACEY

What?

 

WABBIT

Infinity! Ain’t it a mythological conceptual construct that nobody can woik with?

 

LACEY

(trying to concentrate) Yeah, I guess so. Old fashioned maths couldn’ work with it well. It messes up equations so, whenever it pops up. …Which it has an irrepressible tendency to do-

 

WABBIT

I knew it! See? Remember how nothingness used to be mathematically unusable but then the A-rabs-

 

LACEY

The Windoos?-

 

WABBIT

Yeah, the I Racks, or something like that. They came up with a simple that let them work up nothing and use it to their advantage-

 

LACEY

You mean a symbol?

 

WABBIT

Don’t tell me what I mean! Haven’t you been through all this before? Haven’t we?

 

LACEY

Yeah! And the same with the square root of negative one. That’s even wilder, really.

 

WABBIT

Right you are, you mathamological genie ass! A lower class I! Eye magical! 

 

LACEY

A lower case iota.

 

WABBIT

(growling) Watch It…! 

 

LACEY

Yeah. Imaginary and complex numbers opened up whole new worlds of quantum infinite dissimilitude. But the normalization… So damn ugly and awkward.

 

WABBIT

Yes! That’s the ticket! Just come up with a way to use infinity the same old brand new way. Neat, sweet, reet, and petite!

 

LACEY

There’s already a symbol–

 

WABBIT

Which makes it all the more simple! Though I’d rather use Q. Just figure out what it takes to make it work in equations–

 

LACEY

Math statements…

 

WABBIT

(growling again) Watch… it!

 

LACEY

(helplessly) Sorry!

 

WABBIT

And watch those wascally equations waltz us into time travel and transporter beams.

 

LACEY

Yeah, if that were new, it would be a new kind of Maths! A new kind of number set! Meta math. Hyper real… No… Pata math.

 

WABBIT

Eggs Zactly! But so quizzical, Joanie growl. Oh this calculatus! It’s already hurtin’ me head! You just go and figure it out without me, willya? But ya better hurry!

LACEY brandishes an imaginary silver hammer and tries to smack at WABBIT’s head. WABBIT cringes.

 

LACEY

I can’t take this. I just can’t take it! I can’t. Sorry, Poops.

LACEY jumps into a whole and disappears. WABBIT peers into the whole and thoughtfully shakes his head.

 

WABBIT

That’s my guerilla girl. Finds herself in a whole and tries to dig her way out.

LACEY appears behind him.

 

LACEY

Hey Poops! I think it works. I fell up! Eeeww!

(aside in a stage whisper)  It’s really epsilon omega!

 

WABBIT

(as Barbara Stanwick) Well, would ya look at that!

LACEY jumps in the whole again and after a moment reappears floating a bit above him.

 

LACEY

It might need just a bit more normalizing.

 

WABBIT

Not too much!

 

LACEY

Wait a minute. I must’ve dropped a sign… Something didn’t cancel out.  Wait. 

LACEY concentrates hard.

          LACEY (continued)

OH?

LACEY is now suspended downside up.

 

        LACEY (continued)

Oops! …Wait a sec… Ok ….Ahhh …Oh? Oh! Ooooh. That’s it. There we go.  …Huh? Uh? Uh? Ahhh…

LACEY gently floats down to ground zero.

 

WABBIT

(in a Cuban accent) Lacy! Lacy! Youse home!

 

LACEY

What? Who’s Lacey? …Huh? …Oh.

 

WABBIT

Never mind. You had me at Oh.

 

LACEY

I think you’re really onto something with this infinity engine idea. Who’s the genie ass here anyway?

 

WABBIT

Yeah, but does it only woik in WABBIT Wholes?

 

LACEY

Ok. Let’s figure this out. Everything starts and ends with one.

Together they start working out some dance steps.

 

WABBIT

And then you keep on adding.  One. Two. Three. Four. It never stops. There’s always more!

 

LACEY 

And now you gots the naturals numberses! See? Three. Four. Seven. Six. Only bend if you want kicks!

 

WABBIT

Eight. Nine. Ten. And then… Eleven!  And where does that get ya? Huh? Huh? Huh?

 

LACEY

Bad ole infinity? Twenty a one. Twenty a two. Something’s undone. Gotta pour out my shoe.

 

WABBIT

But it’s so easy! Three Billion and Three. Three Billion and Four, and Away We GO! Just gotta flip that Karma and get O NO! Only some poor people, They Just Never Know!

 

LACEY

Instantly! Five. Seven. Eighty-eight. Stop and Go. Begin again. Tell me Grapefruit, Who Has Seen the Wind?

 

WABBIT

It’s the Crusty Rossetti Superhypernormalpatacalculatus!

 

LACEY

It’s a dance to craze, inflate, negate, and superneversubjugate us! 

 

WABBIT

Now, on to the negatives!

 

LACEY

That means step back a set of integers.  Two steps forward. Five steps back. Turn again and fade to black!

 

WABBIT

How’s this different from going around in circles? Ten steps up and two steps down. Don’t splooge mayo on your gown.

WABBIT is now four feet above the ground.

 

LACEY

Yuck. I oughta leave you hanging there. Take one step higher, then nine steps lower. 

Following her instructions, WABBIT gets back on solid ground.

          LACEY (continued)

Pick her up but, don’t you throw her.

 

WABBIT

It’s the LennoYokus superhypernormalpatacalculatus!

 

LACEY

It’s a dance to craze, deflate, rotate, and hyper pata sublimate us!  

Got your footings now? Cuz negatives get you to the edge of the imaginary realm.

 

WABBIT

How they do that?

 

LACEY

Well, as we learnt in elemental school, square roots of positives are straight and level-

 

WABBIT

Real L 7. 

 

LACEY

But squirt a neg?

 

WABBIT

Unleash a C-Moon revel! 

 

LACEY

We’re gonna need some visual haptic aids to make any progress with this stuff!

LACEY lays out a sequence of Feynman Dance Step Diagrams on the floor. 

 

WABBIT

Oh, thanks! Otherwise it’s too hard to picture.

They struggle with some strange and difficult steps trying to follow diagrams that won’t stay put.

 

LACEY

It gets complex really fast.

 

WABBIT

You can say that again!

 

LACEY

It gets complex really fast!

 

WABBIT

You can-

 

LACEY

This is where words oughta seem to start to fail you.

LACEY hopscotches along the pattern laid on on the floor. With each step she changes. She’s bigger. She’s smaller. She’s the Duchess. She’s the Queen of Hearts. WABBIT follows. He’s the Mad Hatter, the Gryphon, the DoDo, and then Humpty Dumpty. They each take a step and disappear in a strangely staticy way.

 

       WABBIT (VOICE OVER)

What are we now and where? Did we just get bandersnatched?

 

       LACEY (VOICE OVER)

We must have scared up a Snark.

 

       WABBIT (VOICE OVER)

I told you what would happen if you got too snarky.

 

       LACEY (VOICE OVER)

“It’s an agony in eight fits.”

 

       WABBIT (VOICE OVER)

I’m feeling strangely displaced. “What's the good of Mercator's north poles and equators, Tropics, zones, and meridian lines?”

 

       LACEY (VOICE OVER)

“Those are merely conventional signs.” They don’t apply here except sideways on second hand Fridays.

 

       WABBIT (VOICE OVER)

It’s the Bedlam Boojum Blues!

LACEY pops back as The Carpenter. WABBIT reappears as The Walrus.

 

LACEY

Wow! Wait a sec.

She takes a big step to become The Egg Man.

 

WABBIT

Now we’re fab.

 

LACEY

Wait. Let’s take a leap together!

Hand in hand they jump to both  to each become The Mock Turtle. And then they do a dosey doh.

 

WABBIT

This is really something!

 

LACEY

Is it?

 

WABBIT

Whaddaya mean?

 

LACEY

Can imagination be real? I mean, really? Can phantasmagorical non-undelination be a thing? 

 

WABBIT

I dunno. Whaddaya you thing?

 

LACEY

Well, it’s not a thingy thing, I mean not a material thing.

 

WABBIT

Cuz materiality is trapped in space and time?

 

LACEY

Right. But imagination is loosely interlaced through and out of space and time. So it has materiality and music. It’s also a refraction of whatever realities are bound by space time. Sort of. 

They take separate jumps and go through various fun house mirror versions of their previous incarnations from Queen of Hearts and Mad Hatter to a pair of Mock Turtles which are strangely distorted this time..

 

WABBIT

Oh, but now, with your brand new improvised encapsulated infinity engine, we’re gonna leave even that behind. 

LACEY

And enter dimensions of being that never yet intersected with ours.  …Or will we be creating them?

Multiple rabbit wholes appear on the ground but also suspended in space, some rotating slowly others spinning wildly. Some hovering in a gentle flutter. Others flapping like madcap bats. 

 

WABBIT

Outside space and time?

 

LACEY

Nope.

 

WABBIT

Nope?

 

LACEY

Nope. You can’t say inside or outside.  Those are spatial concepts. Did you forget?

They settle into a more comfortable soft shoe.

 

WABBIT

OK. Well then you can’t say enter or exit. For the very insane reason.

 

LACEY

You’re right, Dadoo. How’d ya get so snark?

 

WABBIT

I inherited it, must of, from me daughter. Only wish I had her good lucks instead. 

 

LACEY

Know what Silvia said to Mickey when the rabbit lived?

 

WABBIT

No. What?

 

LACEY

Luck is strange.

 

WABBIT

Say, have you met Miss Vanterpool?

 

LACEY

No. Didn’t she drown?

 

WABBIT

No. But her life got too wild until she wholed up on Sugar Hill. Where we going with this, now? There?

WABBIT points in two different directions at the same time.

 

LACEY

So, like you say, we can’t really go there, never mind, come back. 

 

WABBIT

(waggling his Turtle finger) Spatial concepts! Uh uh nuh! Ixnay widda spatial concepts!

 

LACEY

And infinity, just like nothingness, does not mix well with space and time

 

WABBIT

It’s impermissible! 

 

LACEY

But we’ll just work around it with our simple.

 

WABBIT

Symbol!

 

LACEY

Watch it.

 

WABBIT

And our symbol will be Q!

 

LACEY

Q? Oh, I remember. But… Maybe we shouldn’t joke around with that though.

 

WABBIT

Why not?  I won’t let them scare me.

 

LACEY

Listen, it’s no good. There's no Greek letter equivalent to Q.

 

WABBIT

Oh, so what? That's just an excuse.

LACEY stops dancing and starts swiping her tablet while Wabbit shuffles in place.

 

LACEY

Ok. Wait. There was an ancient Greek equivalent…

 

WABBIT

(with Jacky Gleason antics). And, away we go!

 

LACEY

It was called called a koppa. Oh, and it was derived from the phonecian quok.

 

WABBIT

A quok? Like three quocks for Master Mock?

 

LACEY

Well, I’ll check pronunciation later… Oh. Oh!

 

WABBIT

Oh Oh?

 

LACEY

No. Dadoo, we cannot use koppa or quok. We can’t!

 

WABBIT

And why, pway tell, is that?

 

LACEY

Because… look at the lower-case version!

 

WABBIT

Ancient Greeks didn’t have a printing press, so what’s this borscht with the upper and lower case?

 

LACEY

Shhhh. Look! 

 

WABBIT

Ohhh… that’s…

 

LACEY

Right.

 

WABBIT

Half a swastika.

 

LACEY

Let’s not mess around with Q, Dadoo. We already gots some acceptable symbols for infinities anyways.

 

WABBIT

Alright, already! Alright. Let’s lemonscate out of here!

 

LACEY

What?

 

WABBIT

Didn’t think I knew about that, huh? Did you?  And… And… And… Away… We… Go!

Together they each leap into the infinity symbol wholes (a lemscate curve, if you wanna look it up.)

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