BIG SCIENCE! ------------ The main characters: MARIE MORIARTY Age: 34 Job: Professor, Great Eastern University Looks: Tall (5'11"). Red hair. Rather good-looking and traditionally voluptuous. Wears: Khaki shorts, short-sleeved button-down shirt, boots, sometimes a pith helmet. Marie is devastatingly smart and capable. She is intimately familiar with almost every branch of human knowledge, from history to science to technology to literature. Marie is employed as a tenured professor of semiotics and metaphysics at her alma mater, Great Eastern University. In the timeless tradition of college professors everywhere she foists off the actual work on her long-suffering graduate assistants, giving her more time to gad about the world and get into trouble. Her personality is recklessly outspoken and forward, her attitude towards Badness highly hostile. While she's dangerous at jujitsu, Marie would rather think her way out of a problem than use her fists, and she'd never, ever actually use a gun. WILHELMINA ORWELL Age: 16 Job: Student Looks: Average height for her age. Long blond hair. Pale, thin and quite beautiful. Wears: A demure white dress. Wilhelmina is Marie's niece, on her summer break from the Cheltenham School for Child Prodigies and Sidekicks in London, England. She's as shy and demure as Marie is brash and obnoxious, but there's a mind just as powerful as her aunt's under there somewhere. Her one weakness, such as it is, is for games -- pool, foosball, Dreamcast, whatever; the prospect of playing a game distracts her amazingly well. [Open on: A Mad Scientist's lair in an evil stone castle. Lightning and thunder boom around.] VOICE: Imbeciles! Idiots! _Morons_!! [We see the Mad Scientist: Dr. LUDWIG THANATOS. He's short, he's crazed, he's wearing a long white lab coat and has deranged long black hair and thick glasses.] DR: They laughed at me at the Academy! _Laughed_ at me! Well, we'll see who laughs last! AH, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA -- [A doorbell rings.] DR: Eh? [He runs through the corridors to the front door.] DR: [brightly] Who could that be? [He throws open the door. Recoils in shock. Beyond is Professor MARIE MORIARTY and her niece, WILHELMINA ORWELL. Note that despite the thunder and lightning earlier it's actually a pleasant sunny day outside.] MARIE: Dr. Ludwig Thanatos, I presume? WILHELMINA: Hello...! [Dr. Thanatos looks nonplussed, but holds the door open for them.] DR: Well, if it isn't the always annoying Professor Marie Moriarty, and who is this? MARIE: My niece, Wilhelmina Orwell. DR: Good God, what a name. My heart goes out to you, you poor girl. WILHELMINA: [curtsy] Thank you! I'm very pleased to meet you too! [He chases after them into the grand hall.] DR: So what brings you here, Professor Moriarty? (And what would make you go away again?) MARIE: I'm here because of what you did last night. DR: Last night? Ah yes, I took a glass of prune juice (as is my wont) and retired abed early with my dog-eared copy of Kant's "Prolegomenon On Any Future Metaphysic." MARIE: Last night, at the Physical Society's Conference on the Mass of the Neutrino and Pancake Supper in Kenosha. DR: Oh... _that_ last night. [Flashback to last night. At the pancake supper, Marie (in a stunning evening gown) notices a commotion at the head table. Dr. Thanatos is confronting Dean KAFKA, who as it happens looks exactly like Robert Stack.] DR: Accusation! KAFKA: Confusion. DR: Belligerence! Threat! KAFKA: Reasonable explanation. DR: Outraged denial! KAFKA: Sharp reply. [WHACK! Dr. Thanatos smacks Dean Kafka in the face with a sheaf of paper.] DR: So that's how it's going to be, eh? You mock my theories! You deride my achievements! You refuse to APPRECIATE my GREATNESS! You'll pay for that! [He climbs onto the table right in front of Marie, turns to the assembly, almost slavering...] DR: FOOLS! I'll destroy you ALL! [Back to present day.] DR: [Awkward pause.] DR: Ah, heh heh heh heh! Well, I can see how that might be misinterpreted...! MARIE: So you aren't thinking about some kind of revenge, then? DR: Who, me? Embark upon an intricately devised scheme of vengeance so magnificent as to make the entire Earth tremble at my wrath? Oh heavens no perish the thought. MARIE: What's that behind your back? DR: Nothing. ...Oh, you mean this? [He reluctantly steps to one side. Behind him is a giant contraption thirty feet high --] MARIE: I don't believe it! Nikola Tesla's Telegeodynamic Oscillator!! WILHELMINA: Tele-who? MARIE: _Earthquake machine_! WILHELMINA: N-no way! MARIE: [lecture mode] It works by causing a resonance in anything it's attached to. A table, or a building, or even the ground. While it runs the vibrations feed on themselves and grow stronger and stronger... DR: Yes! And -- MARIE: Tesla claimed that if he'd let his machine run for seven days it would have cracked the Earth in half. WILHELMINA: How terrible! DR: Indeed! So now -- WILHELMINA: Did it really work? MARIE: Eheh, well, the thing is, Tesla was kind of a crackpot. Just because he invented alternating current doesn't mean all his ideas were winners. It's pretty unlikely this one ever went anyw -- DR: EXCUSE ME! Whose sinister plan is this? MARIE: Oh, sorry. DR: Sorry doesn't find the top quark, Professor Moriarty! Now gaze in awe as I have my REVENGE! MARIE: Hey, Dr. Thanatos, don't do anything precipitous -- [He throws the switch. Tesla coils activate, the room shakes, electricity plays everywhere.] DR: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! WILHELMINA: EEEEK! My dress! [The static electricity is making her dress creep up; she desperately forces it back down. Cut to outside; the whole building is shaking. Note that Dr. Thanatos's sinister castle is located in the middle of an ordinary suburb.] V/WILHELMINA: How dare you make such a perverted invention! [Slap!] V/DR: But, but wait a minute! You're missing the point...! [The earth cracks in concentric rings around the castle, and light pours out of them. And WHAM! A devastating earthquake, confined to the area inside the rings, reduces the suburban neighborhood to rubble. The castle is unharmed, of course. Marie and Wilhelmina watch out the window, horrified. Note that Dr. Thanatos now has a hand mark on his face from being slapped.] DR: AH, HA HA HA HA HA! MARIE: Dear God. WILHELMINA: I... I... I... [She turns to point at Dr. Thanatos:] WILHELMINA: I've figured it out! You -- you're a MAD SCIENTIST! DR: ... You're awfully quick to judge, young lady. You haven't even heard my scheme to hold the world to ransom yet, or met my hideously deformed assistants. WILHELMINA: ... MARIE: Oh, for crying out loud...! DR: Speaking of which... COME TO ME, MY HIDEOUSLY DEFORMED ASSISTANTS!! [Two silhouettes appear in the doorway.] MARIE: No!... Horrible!! Ghastly!! -- Huh? [Enter his assistants, VOLKSWAGEN ("VOLLY") JETTA and CHAI-WEN YANG. Volly is a tall, absurdly busty woman with luxuriantly curly brown hair and a supercilious expression, wearing a low-cut pink dress. Yang is a handsome, confident-looking, short-haired Chinese man in a perfectly pressed black three-piece suit, complete with Ray-Ban shades for him to look at people over.] DR: [stupid grin] Graduate assistants, that is. MARIE/WILHELMINA: ... DR: Ms. Jetta! Mr. Yang! Throw these two interlopers in the dungeon! HA HA HA -- YANG: Doctor, I need you to sign my drop form. DR: Oh, very well. [does so] Now as I was saying, TAKE THEM AWAY! AH, HA HA HA HA HA HA! [The two cart Marie and Wilhelmina off by the scruff of their necks.] MARIE: Hey, you two aren't hideously deformed at all. VOLLY: That's not true. I get split ends like you wouldn't believe. YANG: And I have a birthmark in an embarrassing place. I can't tell you where. [They arrive at the dungeon entrance, an ordinary-looking doorway opening onto stairs going down, and chuck our heroes in.] VOLLY: Have a nice trip! YANG: See you next fall! Heh heh heh! [The door slams, locking them in.] HORRIBLE! GHASTLY! HOW WILL OUR HEROES SURVIVE THE TERRIFYING _DUNGEON OF DR. THANATOS_?? V/MARIE: Wait a minute. This dungeon is actually a luxurious finished basement! V/WILHELMINA: Hey, he's got a foosball table! Aunt Marie, do you think anyone would mind if I...? V/MARIE: This is no time for games, Wilhelmina! We've got to escape, and foil Dr. Thanatos's evil -- Wow, look at that big screen TV...! COME BACK NEXT TIME, AND FIND OUT!