INT. CREEK MOUNTAIN/LEVEL 22/MESS HALL – EVENING
Daniel, Meyers, and Barbara are seated close together at one of the small tables taking up space inside the mess hall. Beyond them, four solitary airmen having meals by their lonesome, and a sandy-haired civilian member of the personnel arguing with a cook over the lemon content in the lemon chicken, the room is eerily empty.
DANIEL: (cont’d) … why bring us in on this project? Why bother recruiting an Egyptologist, a comparative linguist, and an astrophysicist if you’re only going to cuckold them? If there’s any method to their madness, I fail to see it.
MEYERS: I suppose that’s why the term “military intelligence” is considered an oxymoron.
BARBARA: Lovecraftian languages and OOPArts are all fine and dandy like sour candy, but they’re not subjects the military goes gaga over. Meanin’-of-life stuff is meanin’less to them unless there’s somethin’ big in it for them to exploit. (beat) Mark my words, my two big stud-muffins – the coverstone is to the Staff of Ra what whatever-it-is is to the Ark of the Covenant.
Meyers whistles the tune from Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Nazis melt, and everyone at the table laughs.
MEYERS: I can’t get my mind off that Col. O’Neal. (beat) There’s something off about that man.
BARBARA: (waves her hand with dismissal) Col. Flattop’s just a product off an assembly line.
MEYERS: I doubt it. He reminds me too much of my third cousin Richard. (beat) You see, Richard served in Vietnam, was one of the soldiers who were there at the My Lai massacre. Things he saw there really took their toll on him. (beat) O’Neal has the same eyes Rich had – the same hard eyes.
BARBARA: (takes a bite from the drumstick on her plate) This palaver’s losing its pizzazz. How’s about we try a different genre?
DANIEL: Fine by me.
BARBARA: Glad to hear it. (beat) Why don’t we open up some, get to know a little bit more about one another? (turns to Meyers) I nominate Meyers, here. He likes talkin’ about kin, so now he can find somethin’ closer to home to talk about.
MEYERS: (smiles) Oh, I don’t think so, Doctor. It was your idea to open up so you start.
BARBARA: Oh, very well. (punches Meyers playfully in the arm) As you can both probably guess, I’m a thoroughbred Texan through-and-through. I grew up on a ranch with my Mama and Pop – both of whom are still kickin’, thank God – and my brothers Kenny and Laurel. Laurel has a daughter – my niece, Mistress – who’s the cutest little carrot top in pigtails. A bona fide Annie in Green Gables. (beat) She’s just darlin’.
MEYERS: I don’t like subscribing to stereotypes, but you don’t really strike me as the astrophysicist type. What got you into the game?
BARBARA: I guess you could say I’ve always had a connective streak, for want of a better term – an eye for connectin’ the proverbial dots which make up reality as we know it. (beat) It started when I was a little girl, just this little skinny thing of about seven. The family had taken a trip to Florida, and one day at the beach I was just runnin’ a stick through the wet sand of the shoreline – I had it in my head that this was the way to catch a fish – and I just happened to spy some trash some litterbugs had left half-buried there in the sand. Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, I saw a isosceles triangle – an honest-to-God isosceles triangle. Lord, it was frightenin’.
DANIEL: (incredulous) Frightened … by a triangle.
BARBARA: (gives him the evil eye) It’s not just that I say a triangle – hell, apophenia makes it impossible not to see triangles everywhere – it’s that I could recognize the mathematical significance behind it. Me, a girl of seven who was still learnin’ how to carry numbers. (beat) I didn’t understand it, but I could recognize it, and that’s what scared me. (beat) But later it began to fascinate me. And the more it happened – in different places, under different circumstances, with different shapes – the more fascinated I became. Here I was, seeing all these random, disconnected items joinin’ together, forming concrete shapes … shapes that were random, disconnected items in-and-of themselves, just waitin’ to be interconnected in ever bigger shapes. (beat) I fell in love with discoverin’ these shapes, of uncoverin’ their secrets, of seein’ the universe in its entirety. I suppose, in the end, that I wanted to see my personal universe in its entirety as well. (beat) Well, that’s the cut-and-dry of it. (to Meyers) Your turn, Big Bear.
MEYERS: (blushes) Let’s just say that when it became apparent that I’d never compare with Plácido Domingo, I went with my second love and chose the life of a comparative linguist.
DANIEL: (deadpan) That’s it?
BARBARA: (smirks) A man of few words, our darlin’ Gary is.
MEYERS: (shrugs) I’m an open book. What you see is what you get.
BARBARA: And other cliches, I’m sure.
Daniel chuckles. Meyers just frowns.
MEYERS: And what’s your story, Dr. Wunderkind?
Daniel suddenly goes silent and still, his face growing stony.
BARBARA: (places a hand on Daniel’s shoulder) Hey, shug, Meyers’ just pokin’ some fun your way. Don’t become an icicle on us now.
DANIEL: (shakes his head) It’s not that. It just reminds me ….
BARBARA: (concerned) What is it?
DANIEL: It’s just that … well … as a kid, my biggest dream was to become a successful comic book artist. (beat) I’d gotten into comics when I was around six and I just fell in love with the medium of telling stories through sequential art. My parents, on the other hand, were scholarly types. They tolerated my hobby but didn’t exactly approve of it; comics were lowbrow entertainment, they told me. (beat) Anyway, the day came when I decided I wanted to begin taking art lessons. Mum and Dad said they’d go through with it, but they kept putting it off and off. Eventually I got tired of their excuses and one night I just blew up in their faces, just had a great big tantrum. (beat) As luck would have it, that was the night they had to take a flight to Cambridge to attend a conference. (beat) I guess taking up Egyptology was my way of apologizing to them for the things I said to them that night, of making amends ….
An awkward silence settles over the three scholars. After a few moments, Meyers reaches into the front pocket of the shirt under his sweater and pulls out a bronze-coloured flask.
MEYERS: Well, this is our first night as a team on Project Giza. I suggest we propose a toast. (unscrews the cap) To Project Giza. (takes a sip)
Meyers hands the flask to Barbara.
BARBARA: To Project Giza. (takes a sip)
Barbara hands the flask to Daniel.
DANIEL: To Project Giza. (takes a gulp)