Scribblers go Victorian!

Lyric and Amity are chatting in the base. Wraith is flickering in and out of reality.

LYRIC: OK, let’s start again. Right, can you remember what I was feeling after the 8th round of “Is It a Food” on the coach yesterday?

AMITY: Yes, of course. You were very frustrated and a bit bored.

LYRIC: Right, and why do you think that was?

AMITY: Because we’d been on the coach for ages and you’d lost the last round of “Is it a Food.”

LYRIC: OK. It wasn’t that. How can I put this? Sometimes after the 8th or 9th round of something, or when they’re very tired...

AMITY: Um...are you saying that sometimes other people don’t want to play a game?

LYRIC: Yes!

AMITY: Oh.

CHRONAL enters.

CHRONAL: Hi guys. Amity, want to play a game?

AMITY: Really?

FINESSE enters from the control room.

FINESSE: No time for that.

(CHRONAL beams)

FINESSE: Something’s very wrong. We need to do some damage control on your little brother’s games, Lyric.

LYRIC: What’s he been doing?

WRAITH: Window.

They all go to look.

Here’s what they can see, possibly over a series of panels.

The street immediately in front of the Scribble Pit looks normal - beautiful, green, eco-friendly etc. There’s a letter box on every corner, a few electric cars and plenty of bus stops. The street is clean. Then as they look further away, they’re looking into Dickens’ London. It’s cobbled streets, horse and carts, and people in Victorian clothes walking around.

In between the two towns, there’s a transition space. A modern letter box is half-transformed into an old-fashioned one, a modern woman is looking perplexedly at an old-fashioned man who is offering her his arm from slightly further away.

SHIFT is leafing frantically through a Scheme of Work for the Narrator’s writing course.

SHIFT: Week 17: Historical Fiction.

Back in the street, the Victoriana has now reached the edge of the Scribble Pit. The perplexed modern woman from the previous shot is now in a bustle and walking happily off on the arm of the man.

AMITY (to FINESSE): Will we keep our powers?

FINESSE: I’ll make sure of it.

FINESSE begins to create a protection around the Scribblers.

LYRIC: No need. He can’t take things out of the universe. I can’t.

WRAITH: It’s coming.

SHIFT: Feels different this time.

A wave of movement and reality washes over them, and suddenly the Scribble Pit has been transformed into a Victorian living room.

The Scribblers are now appropriately dressed.

FINESSE looks somewhat matronly, even a little severe. Chronal looks significantly more respectable than the other men - sombre colours, well-cut suit.

Lyric looks younger. Frankly, the only appropriate word is ‘dapper’.

Shift is dressed like a society beauty, in blue.

Wraith is wearing the most nondescript, appropriate suit imaginable. In a Victorian gathering, he would be about as close to invisible as it is possible to be without his unique abilities.

Amity is wearing a red dress that, while appropriate, just verges on gaudy.

SHIFT (who is much less phased by physical change): Oh, blue.

FINESSE: Hmmm, suits you. What am I..? Hold on, why are you dressed for a party and I’m wearing the worst dress I’ve seen this side of the millennium?

AMITY giggles.

AMITY: Check your new memory. You’re married.

CHRONAL: Oh yes, so we are.

SHIFT: Ah. So the boring clothes because Lyric’s illiterate little brother thinks that’s how married people dressed.

LYRIC: You realise this means it’s much worse than we thought?

Everyone looks at him.

LYRIC: We’re not in Victorian London, we’re in my illiterate little brother’s idea of what Victorian London was like.