Lars Shrike Walks the Night

Analyze.

- (Woman on recording): Analytic circuits impaired.

No threatening life form detected.

No power left. No power left.

Damage alarm! Damage alarm! Damage alarm

Where were you?

I don't feel so good.

You...

You piece of shit.

I resent that.

Fucking turdfish bird!

Ah!

Shit! Shit!

Shit!

Why didn't you warn me?

It's not a life form I'm familiar with.

(Lars): Facts.

What are the facts?

There are things that can hurt me.

There's a power grid on the meridian.

If I can get there, this thing can beam me off.

That's an assumption.

Do I have amnesia?

Am I brain damaged?

Something is missing.

(Man): Somethingismissing.

Am I narrating?

(Man): Don't assume anything.

That's how to survive.

Anything can change.

Everything will change.

(Lars): Something feels fucked.

Everything is fucked.

I could be captured at any moment.

Another turdfish bird or something worse

could fly out of nowhere.

Do I have a wife?

Children? Parents?

All I have is a name.

And why Lars Shrike?

Mommy and Daddy Shrike?

And baby Lars?

(Woman): Lars, good night.

(Lars): If I dream, I don't remember.

Was I a test tube baby on a spaceship?

Was amnesia engineered into my genes,

and I awoke to selfhood?

Without the neuroses of parents

and genetically programmed to navigate the world,

whatever that world or planet or asteroid might be.

And somewhere along the line, I failed to socialize,

or I was wrongly accused,

and I wound up on a prison planet

for a crime I forgot.

Or was I genetically engineered to be a prisoner?

Because prisons need prisoners.

It could be a false memory...

a memory implant.

In this memory,

I was sent to a psychiatric hospital on the Alfvén moon.

I was... am a manic depressive.

I am manic.

To avoid being depressed,

I was falsely accused of industrial espionage

because the watchers

did not believe I could invent so many things.

Lars Shrike...

the hero of his own story.

No.

Ah!

Fuck!

Damage alarm! Damage alarm!

Damage alarm!

Ouch!

Ah, shit.

Damage report:

Barrel bent. Main circuit marginal.

Aim unreliable.

Navigation unreliable.

You're awake.

It's OK, Lars.

How do you know my name?

You escaped.

You're famous.

Yes, I'm real.

Can you read my thoughts?

I can read your expression.

Are you...

A prisoner? Yes.

Lottie. I escaped too.

Where are you from? What system?

Seoul.

I have Earth parents.

Do you?

I don't know.

Don't know or don't remember?

I don't remember.

So I don't know.

Where's my chrono-blaster?

(Woman): Lars...

(Lars): What are my options?

Number one, she might not be what she seems.

She might be a threat, a double agent.

She might be anything.

I can kill her.

I have the element of surprise.

Damage alarm! Damage alarm! Damage alar

Two, I can kiss her.

Might be my first time,

because amnesia is a form of virginity.

Three, we can politely go our separate ways.

I might double my odds of escape

if the pursuers have to split up

to pursue me and Lottie separately.

Four, I might find the duplicity of her friendliness exciting

and have amazing sex with a double agent

because she is pretending to be something she's not.

Damage alarm!

It's sex and death and self-loathing

all rolled into one.

Five...

There are probably an infinite number of option,

but I'd just like to stop thinking and kiss her.

It's so cold and you're so warm.

You're the nicest person I've met on this planet.

Was there a Lottie?

Was there a chrono-blaster?

Did an imaginary Lottie steal an imaginary chrono-blaster?

CB.

Lars.

Why a blue sky today?

I don't know the astronomy of this plane

I don't even know its name.

(Man): Don't assume anything.

That's how to survive.

Anything can change.

Everything will change.

- (Lars): Fuck me, they got tracking devices.

Maybe they're calibrated to a different life form.

Elite guards?

A native tribe?

Ah, drinking cylinders.

Clever.

I need to wait for night.

How does an amnesiac entertain himself?

This is where I could relive memories.

Review the moments that got me here.

If I had memories.

Ah!

How does this work?

Is it heat activated?

By body heat.

Pressure sensitive.

Is there an access code?

A pattern that you tap.

Ah...

My first good day.

That I remember.

Mmm. Mmm!

A four-wheeled device.

Units for solitary confinement.

A penal colony.

Is he a guard?

Is this housing for the guards?

A tracking device and a communicator.

An evolved form of the chrono-blaster.

(Woman): I'm highly evolved.

Quiet!

I'm very highly evolved.

Analyze.

Nutritional value.

Toxicity?

Low-level toxicity likely.

How low level? How likely?

-Analytic circuits impaired. Power diminished.

Immediate power recharge advised.

Where? How?

That's your job, not mine.

(Lars): A rat in a maze...

who thinks the maze is freedom.

Well?

(Woman): No access to power source.

Then how am I supposed to charge you?

I don't know.

(Lars): Prison guards on patrol?

Or maybe I crawled through a wormhole

that connects the prison planet to this one.

Maybe the guards followed me through the wormhole.

Or maybe I am an experiment,