WORLD-SPORT: Act 1, scenes 2-3

Scene 2

[Inside one of TINTIN’s cells. SURGEON TEMPLAR and SURGEON CRIME fly X-wings and communicate via radio. In their foggy distance, a chrome sphinx one hundred times the size of Egypt floats as in an infinite expanse of maple syrup. The sphinx’s feet occasionally fire retrorockets, allowing it to shift axial positioning but not to move forwards, backwards, left, right, up or down.]

SURGEON CRIME: What did this shit?

SURGEON TEMPLAR: Check out that rupture [motions to ten o’clock high. A vague crimson darkness forms a spiral there.] Something spat this shit in here. Ok. We’ve got to get some tweezers. Port.

[Snap cut to:]

Scene 3

[TINTIN lies on an operating table, barely conscious. A myriad fibre-optic cables flow out of his lower back and into ALDERAAN, roughly the size of a golfball. Control panels everywhere. Sheets of perspex with glowing white lines being traced with TV remotes by unpaid extras with giant plastic bellends for hats. A droid croaks repetitiously, something sounding like “sin the system”. At TINTIN’s side sits BANG&OLUFSEN (MILOU’s 12 year-old nephew), who has fixed TINTIN’s gaze with a police siren and three fire poi.]

BANG&OLUFSEN: Come hither, little one.

TINTIN: …for dinner?

BANG&OLUFSEN: Come hither, little one, and I’ll whisper in your ear.

TINTIN: I had this incredible haddock chowder. [Becoming animated] And crusty bread. Then no-one would pay me to eat the spider I’d unstuck from the grease on the extractor fan with a crisp, so I did it for free.

VOICE FROM INTERCOM: Crime! It’s the reed that birthed it! Look at that alazarin backfeed trailing its entry trajectory! You see those clouds leeching out? Let’s take a closer look. Krrrk. I don’t know captain, it looks kinda hairy up there. Krrrk. You’re not going to get shit in the afterlife with that attitude, Crime. Krrrk. Sir I’ve got kids to hang around. Krrrk. It’s not that great, son, trust me. Krrrk.

[BANG&OLUFSEN, irritated, walks briskly to the intercom, snaps it off, turns round to TINTIN and smiles.]

BANG&OLUFEN: Excuse me. [laughs.]

TINTIN: But she’s always like that, particularly when I stick gum on the wall beside my bed.

BANG&OLUFSEN: Child. Hush.

TINTIN: Anyway, she comes back from her Mother’s place in Cardiff.

BANG&OLUFSEN: Hush, little one.

TINTIN: Four fucking hours, four – fucking – hours I spend waiting there without any trousers or bogroll in the house before she can be bothered to call me. [BANG&OLUFSEN walks over to the ‘morphine’ dial on a panel above TINTIN’s head and turns it to 4.5, returns and pulls up a swivel chair, sits backwards on it.] I’m stuck with the fucking lighthouse family booming upstairs, I can’t see straight cause the salad…salad bowl…Wednesday? [relaxes.]

BANG&OLUFSEN: Good. That feels better, doesn’t it? Now listen closely, I’m going to tell boogaloo a little story.

TINTIN: Sick.

BANG&OLUFSEN:

HOW THE NUMCHUCKS LEARNT LUCID DREAMING

Yahoo Inc. on Tuesday settled a lawsuit filed against the Internet company by Chinese dissidents who accused it of complicity in their jailing, according to a court filing. Yahoo (YHOO) had been sued earlier this year in California by Wang Xiaoning, Shi Tao and Yu Ling for allegedly providing Chinese authorities with personal information that led to Shi and Wang's imprisonment and torture. In a joint stipulation of dismissal filed

TINTIN: [sings, softly at first.] go-nah be…for-evah you and me…

BANG&OLUFSEN: shhh. Oh, yeah…filed in U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Yahoo and the plaintiffs say they have reached a "private settlement understanding," though they disclosed no details. Yahoo agreed to bear the dissidents' legal costs, according to the filing. In a prepared statement, Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang said that

TINTIN: …in the sky of love, above…

BANG&OLUFSEN: Will you…

[Enter DELOYT&TUSH, out of breath, violently and clumsily through the swing doors.]

DELOYT&TUSH: ____’s stable, no thanks to your pricking around. Milou’s in there now, dipping his biscuits in his tea for him. He’ll probably never dance again.

BANG&OLUFSEN: If you don’t mind, I had just started…

DELOYT&TUSH: Who’s this little man?

TINTIN:…remember november remember remember…

BANG&OLUFSEN: I…

DELOYT&TUSH: Beat it, kid.

[Exit BANG&OLUFSEN, furious. DELOYT&TUSH sits down.]

DELOYT&TUSH: It was just before the reed launched himself into you and just after you told him to celebrate his identity-fraud in private that it hit me. Like a sack full of typewriters it hit me. Fantasy is the aesthetic envelope that focusses my nerfcharge into the beam of impossible object-choices, but the good ones, too! I cannot, Tintin, cannot forego this enterprise. Must not. The force of my desire is limitless in this zone, multiplied exorbitantly because I am impervious to harm and I can therefore afford to misjudge my capacity to effect change in the real world, which is minimal. But in this optative realm how I can undo history [DELOYT&TUSH leans forward an increment too far on the swivel seat, which collapses forward spilling him across TINTIN, severing the bundle of cables that enter his lower back.]

TINTIN:…felt a plant-like readiness for death…

DELOYT&TUSH: [examining the cables.] What the shit?

[Fade out]