SOMA | The Meme Dump
Indeed.
NICK
Good. Well. Thanks, sister! Thanks for all your help.
LEONARD
Get some sleep, Nick. We’ll meet again on this in the AM.
Nick hangs up. He lies his phone down and throws a handtowel over it. The big man crouches down and examines the grout between the floor tiles. Small red mushrooms have begun to sprout there, too. Nick slams his fist down on the toilet paper dispenser. It breaks away from the wall with a cloud of pulverized drywall. The androgynous couple is startled. Nick stands up. He rubs the emotion from his face.
NICK
Sorry, Gaysians. If you fall asleep in a bathroom, you’re gonna see some crazy shit.
Nick's bulldog, Deltoid, peaks into the bathroom, looking forlorn.
NICK
You’re all helping me clean.
14.Exterior. Ward’s Island Ferry. Dawn.
Characters: LEVON, JEREMY. Props: Longboard.
The sun rises over Toronto harbour as Levon sleeps. Jeremy has used the longboard as a stretcher and transported Levon on to the Toronto Island ferry.
Levon hears the voice of Terence McKenna in his headphones once again, this time talking about the approaching singularity.
TERENCE MCKENNA
Obviously, if we’re experiencing the same level of change in a year that we previously experienced in two thousand years, we can 102
SOMA | The Meme Dump
propagate that trend into the future and see that a day will come when we will experience more change in an hour than we have experienced in the past twenty thousand years. A situation like that is unimaginable, so we call it a singularity, a place where the normal rules of the model breakdown. Modern religions have anticipated the singularity by calling it the eschaton or the end of time. Technological communities have anticipated the singularity by thinking in terms of artificial intelligences or something like that. In whatever form it takes, we seem to be on the cusp of a dramatic evolutionary leap, a deeper order of complexity than biology or biology plus culture has been able to provide. We’re on the brink of something truly awesome and unknown.
Levon stirs and wakes. Jeremy is leaning overboard, listening to the water hitting the hull of the ship. He starts tapping on the rail of the ship to the tune of The William Tell Overture. He adds his own lyrics.
JEREMY
To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump.
To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump.
LEVON
Jeremy? Am I dead?
JEREMY
Not yet.
Off the starboard side of the ferry, the young men see three dogshaped parade balloons floating out over Lake Ontario. A banner dragging behind one of them reads, “HAPPY DOG DAY”.
LEVON
Jeremy? Are we crazy? Or are they?
JEREMY
I don’t know.
LEVON