Scene 5 — The Game

The Fedora Handbook, Rule #17

“It's a smart idea to always be sociable. You don't even have to be sociable, just be sociable!”

INT. HALLORAN UNION — ROOM 3C — WEDNESDAY, 7:00 P.M.

The folding table. Five chairs. A tin of dice that used to hold something else.

VICTOR sits behind a screen turned away from everybody. He is broad and soft and takes up a chair and a half. The ponytail is long, black and wet-looking at the root. The beard has come in on the neck and nowhere else and he keeps it. There is a shine on him under the strip light, at the hairline and along the sides of the nose. The T-shirt has a history and the room is downwind of it.

On his head is a tall hat of green felt glued over card, which he made himself. It is enormous. It juts. It is for no purpose except being seen from the other end of a room, and it leans, and when he turns his head it arrives a moment later.

Nobody has said anything about the hat since Owen had arrived, and he wasn't about to be the first.

MILES has three sheets, two pencils and a plague doctor's mask, which he is wearing. The sheets are his by right. He is the documentarian, and the documentarian is the only person at the table apart from the DM who is permitted to write anything down: what was found, what was said, what was agreed and by whom, and whether it was approved. Anything the documentarian has not recorded did not happen, and Victor rules on this the way other people breathe.

DEREK and SIMON are not allowed to keep notes and are visibly relieved about it. DEREK has a mug he brought from somewhere and a dice set in a felt bag. SIMON has a dice set lined up in front of him by size and is the only one sitting up straight.

Owen has paper in front of him tonight only because they are still setting him up, and Miles has looked at it twice already.

The lid of a pizza box has a grid drawn on it in green marker, twelve by twelve, and four counters on the grid that are bottle caps.

Owen has a sheet with RANGER at the top in Victor's handwriting and nine numbers on it that somebody else filled in for him. Near the bottom there is a line marked COMPANION and something written on it.

GUILDMASTER [VICTOR]

So. The bursar's office has a line in the ledger

they can't account for. Every month for three

years the Collegium has paid a salary to a

lecturer in the natural philosophy faculty, and

every month it has cleared, and last week somebody

in accounts finally asked which lecturer.

CLERIC [DEREK]

And nobody knows who it is.

GUILDMASTER [VICTOR]

Nobody knows. There's a classroom with his number

on the door, and a syllabus, and thirty students

who turn up to it, and not one of them can tell

you the man's name or what he looks like or the

last time he stood in front of them.

DOCUMENTARIAN [MILES]

(muffled, through the mask)

Mmf mmff mm mmfff.

Nobody responds.

DEREK

Mask, Miles.

Miles pushes the mask up.

MILES

I said if he isn't in the records then he isn't a

lecturer and the payments are the crime, not the

man.

GUILDMASTER [VICTOR]

The payments are why you were sent. Nobody has

sent you to find a person. They've sent you to

close a line in a ledger.

Miles writes that down. It takes a while, because it goes in the ledger and the ledger has columns.

VICTOR

Read me the last thing you have.

Miles pushes the mask up.

MILES

(reading)

Payments, three years, unaccounted.

Faculty of natural philosophy.

Not approved.

VICTOR

Good.

Miles pulls the mask down. Simon has not written anything and does not want to.

SIMON

Is anybody actually worried about him?

VICTOR

Nobody's worried. Nobody has been worried for

three years. What they have is a number that won't

reconcile, and they'd like it to reconcile by the

end of the month.

Simon writes nothing down and does not stop looking at Victor.

VICTOR

You're at the end of a corridor on the third

floor. There's a storage room at the end of it and

the door is locked from the inside.

MILES

I hit the door.

VICTOR

You may hit the door.

Miles rolls. It is not enough. Everybody at the table can see that it is not enough.

VICTOR

The door is administrative. You'd need a form and

the form is on the other side of it.

DEREK

Is that a joke?

VICTOR

No.

SIMON leans over to Owen and taps the sheet twice, near the top, where it says what a ranger is for.

Owen

I investigate at the floor.

Victor stops.

VICTOR

Say that again.

Owen

The corridor floor. If he's been in there, he came

along the corridor. Is there anything on the

floor?

Victor looks at his screen for a moment longer than the question needs.

VICTOR

Roll for it.

Roll it. What the table rolled is in the box.

TRACKING · THE THIRD-FLOOR CORRIDORDC 12

Echo: 0 · Score: 0

DEREK

Three years and eleven minutes.

VICTOR

Yes.

DOCUMENTARIAN [MILES]

Hang on. Both of those can't be true at once, so

one of them's new.

Victor takes a moment.

VICTOR

Now you're playing.

Nobody says anything for a moment.

SIMON

I open the door.

VICTOR

It opens. He's sitting on the floor with his back

where the door was. He says he has been in here

for three years and he would like to know why

nobody came.

DOCUMENTARIAN [MILES]

He's been missing eleven minutes.

VICTOR

He has.

Owen

Which one's true?

Victor puts his hand flat on the screen.

VICTOR

Both. That's the campaign.

The storage room is deeper than a storage room. Behind the man there are shelves, and behind the shelves, on the floor, there is a cage with a card wired to the front of it. The card has a date on it and nothing else.

Owen

What's in the cage?

VICTOR

Something that has been in a cage in a locked room

for three years and is still alive, which ought to

be your first question and isn't.

CLERIC [DEREK]

Don't open the cage.

PALADIN [SIMON]

Open the cage.

DOCUMENTARIAN [MILES]

(muffled)

Mmff mm mmfff mm mmffm.

DEREK

Mask.

Miles pushes the mask up.

DOCUMENTARIAN [MILES]

I said I can't record it as approved if nobody

approved it.

VICTOR

Then record it as not approved.

Miles does, and enjoys it.

Owen

I open the cage.

Victor sits back and lets it happen without asking for a roll, which he has not done once all evening.

Roll for what comes out. The table's is in the box beneath.

COMPANIONd20

Written on the sheet in ink.

DEREK

It came out on its own. Nobody told it to do that.

VICTOR

It's yours now. It doesn't need telling.

Something comes up the corridor behind them. Victor takes his time over it: the sound first, then the size of it, then the smell, and only afterwards the shape. It is a dog. It is the wrong height at the shoulder and it has been made by whatever makes forms rather than by whatever makes dogs. It seems to be... rippling?

MILES

We haven't written anything down yet.

VICTOR

No. Not yet.

The fight takes twenty minutes and is mostly Miles asking what the modifiers are. When it is over, the marmot is still there, and stays with the party for the rest of the evening, and is fed twice.

VICTOR

The thing goes back down the corridor the way it

came in. And then the corridor starts filling with

dust.

MILES

From where?

VICTOR

From nowhere. It's coming down like it's been

coming down for years, and it's about an inch deep

at the far end already, and it's getting deeper

towards you.

SIMON

We run.

VICTOR

You run, and you get to the stair, and it's up to

your knees at the top step, and then you're in

your beds and it's morning.

Nobody says anything.

VICTOR

The professor is teaching. The class is full.

There's no cage in that room and there's no room

at that end of the corridor, and the corridor is

clean, and the ledger reconciled overnight.

SIMON

Does anybody remember any of it?

VICTOR

You four do.

MILES

And the animal.

Victor looks at the sheet in front of Owen, where somebody has written the animal's name in.

VICTOR

And the animal.

The door opens. A man in a grey coat with a bin liner in one hand stands there and takes in the room: four students, a screen, a felt hat and a plague mask.

THE JANITOR

Twelve.

VICTOR

We're in the middle of something.

THE JANITOR

It's twelve.

VICTOR

(to the room, not to Ted)

The Help has it. Ask it for the last four minutes

on Wednesday and we'll pick it up there.

Derek is already asking his for the last four minutes before Ted has finished holding the door open.

Cut to:

EXT. CORLISS FIELD — SATURDAY — AFTERNOON

Cold. The whole campus, because attendance at two home games is recorded and this is the second.

Owen came to get the attendance recorded and go, and MILES found him at the gate and walked him to the fourth row before he had worked out how to say no to it.

The FEDORA SOCIETY sit together. There is room either side of them.

MILES has the programme, because Miles has whatever there is to have.

DEREK

Bread and circuses.

VICTOR

Three hundred and forty hours, Derek.

Look around you. This is two.

Chad throws. The stadium makes a noise. SIMON is watching the game, actually watching it.

SIMON

(quietly)

He's good.

VICTOR

At this.

Chad throws again. The noise is bigger.

SIMON

(still watching)

At this.

Owen takes the first game's programme out of his bag, because he keeps things, and puts the two side by side on his knee to see who is new.

Nobody is new.

Somebody is gone. Number 30 is on the first sheet, with a name and a year and a town, and on the second sheet the number 30 is not there at all. The list runs 29, 31.

Owen

Who's thirty?

MILES

There isn't a thirty.

Owen

There was in September.

Miles takes the first sheet, reads it, and turns it over, and turns it back.

MILES

That's a misprint.

Owen

It has a town on it.

MILES

It's a misprint.

He hands it back and watches the game. Derek did not look up. Victor is writing something in a notebook and did not hear any of it.

SIMON looks at the sheet for a long time and does not say anything, and gives it back, and looks at the field.

Owen puts both programmes in his bag.

He does not throw either of them away.

Cut to:

VICTOR

(at the gate, on the way out)

Film's tonight instead of Friday. On account of

the game.

Owen

I was going to—

VICTOR

(Grabbing Owen by the shoulder)

Movie night is a time honored tradition, and we

are watching approved films. You can rest assured

of their quality.

Owen goes.

INT. HALLORAN UNION — ROOM 3C — SATURDAY, 6:00 P.M.

Lights off. The projector is booked to the Society under a form Victor renews in person, on the day, every six weeks.

Two boxes of pizza on the folding table. The empties go down to the wall in Whitlock on Monday, which is where the wall comes from.

THE LONG SUMMER

approved · 118 min · as supplied, 104 min

A man walks up a road with a coat over his arm. It is a long shot and it lasts a long time and nothing is said in it.

MILES

(with his mouth full)

What is it?

DEREK

It's on the list.

MILES

That isn't what I asked.

It is old and it has been approved twice, which shows: the picture jumps and the sound arrives late for a while afterwards.

Before the first jump there is a long stretch in a living room. A woman is painting the piano, and the wall behind it The window is open on a soft summer afternoon. There is birdsong. Nothing in the room is wrong. She works and the camera doesn't move, going on long enough that the audience begins looking for the thing they are supposed to have noticed.

The picture jumps again and the sound arrives fragmented. She is no longer in the room, and the piano is finished, with the window shut.

At the second jump the film loses three minutes of itself. One shot is a man at a door and the next is the same man in a road, and there is nothing between them.

DEREK talks over the gap, from memory, without being asked, and he is doing it for Owen, who is the only one in the room who has not seen it.

DEREK

He goes to the house. The brother's already there,

in the kitchen, with his coat still on. They don't

say anything. They stand there. They don't show

you that any more.

Owen

Why not?

DEREK

It came back short.

Nobody in the room finds this remarkable.

The film ends at the gate of the house. The man has his hand on the gate, yet does not open it. Resting on this image, the picture fades slowly, panning towards a deepening sunset.

MILES

Why doesn't he go in?

DEREK

That's in the three minutes.

Victor lets the credits run to the end before he puts the lights on.

They stack the chairs. Simon takes the boxes out into the corridor and comes back for the other two.

MILES

What's on for next week?

Derek has the list up before Miles has finished asking. There are nine films on it and despite having seen all of them, will see all of them again.

DEREK

There's a new one. It's a documentary. It's about

rooms.

MILES

Rooms?

DEREK

Places with nothing in them. They go in and film

them and come out.

MILES

Why?

DEREK

Ninety-one minutes. Approved in June. That's all

it says.

Victor writes it in the diary for Friday.

Owen is still laughing about something Simon said when he gets to the stairwell, and he is on his own by then.

Blackout.

FEDORA SOCIETY#general

Derek10:41 PM

the janitor is called Ted by the way. i asked him

Miles10:43 PM

why

Derek10:44 PM

so we can ask him for the extra half hour

Derek10:44 PM

he said no but he said it nicely

Miles10:58 PM

we could start at six

Simon10:59 PM

cant. docket

Miles11:01 PM

again?

Simon11:14 PM

theyve got me down for the whole term

Miles11:15 PM

thats not what the docket is

Simon11:31 PM

i know what the docket is miles

VictorPRESIDENT8:00 AM

Attendance this week: Wednesday five of five, Thursday five of

five, Friday five of five, Saturday five of five.

Four for four, and I have written it down, and it is going in

the letter.

Sunday. Assignment one, which is the one that counts to a hundred and says fizz on the threes and buzz on the fives.

(defn word [n]
(cond
  (zero? (rem n 3)) "fizz"
  (zero? (rem n 5)) "buzz"
  :else n))
(take 15 (map word (range 1 16)))

Fourteen of the first fifteen are right. Fifteen says fizz, and fifteen is supposed to say both, and it says fizz because that is the first question he asked it and it stopped asking questions as soon as one of them was true.

(defn better-word [n]
(cond
  (zero? (rem n 15)) "fizzbuzz"
  (zero? (rem n 3))  "fizz"
  (zero? (rem n 5))  "buzz"
  :else n))
(map better-word (range 1 21))

The order of the questions is the whole assignment. He does not put it that way. He puts it that fifteen has to go first because fifteen is both, and that is the same sentence with less in it.

(map better-word [15 30 45 60 75 90])

FIZZ.CLJ

(defn word-final [n] (cond (zero? (rem n 15)) "fizzbuzz" (zero? (rem n 3)) "fizz" (zero? (rem n 5)) "buzz" :else n)) ;; move the 15 line to the bottom and see what happens to 15, 30, 45 (mapv word-final (range 1 21))