1.01 Introductory Lecture 1

Order

1.01

Status

::REVISE-READY::

Location

Status: "Trenchwood Institute" -- Highlands Elementary School, 2320 Newport St, San Mateo, CA 94402

GC PoC: Erik Stuart, (650) 395-8463, lab@trenchwood.com

Parking: School lot, free

Bathrooms: Yes

Food: No

Type

Mandatory Presentation

Plot Setup

Players see the Grand Unveiling of Doctor When's life's achievement

Props

• PowerPoint presentation on Erik's Laptop File:PPT for intro speech.ppt
• projector
• screen
• PA system
• time machine set with sound/light/smoke special effects.
• seats for players

Plot Point to Convey

The Doctor's creation is a time machine. Tongue-in-cheek tone of game through homologous survey of others' failed time travel efforts (lots of references to time travel in pop culture). Doctor When has been working on this problem since high school and is about to demonstrate. The Doctor's high school friend, Prof. Catherine Chronos, has flown in to assist. Two of the key components of the time machine are the "midi ether co-keypad ring" and the "quantum chronomentometer," which the Professor and the Doctor were specialists in respectively. Doctor admonishes audience to "Never use time travel for petty personal gain." Dr. When is carrying an overly-conspicuous and highly recognizable envelope but makes no overt reference to it. When he enters the time machine and activates it, the machine goes haywire.

Short Description

Welcome! Doctor vanishes into time machine, which breaks.

Open Time Period

Saturday, 9:00 AM-9:10 AM

Staff Instructions

Actors:

• PROFESSOR CATHERINE CHRONOS: Kristina Kenney
• DOCTOR WESLEY WHEN: Dan Kurtz
• TIRESIAS THE JANITOR: Sean Gugler

Script:

Although the lab has been cleaned up for the big unveiling and neat rows of chairs have been set up for guests, the jumble of mysterious fringe technology and mementos pushed to the sides confirms that on normal days this is the scene of creative chaos.

The throngs of visitors, all lured to the lab by a very cryptic invitation, buzz with speculation. LAB ASSISTANTS bustle about with last-minute adjustments to the equipment. TIRESIAS shuffles about in the back emptying trashcans, etc.

A welcome message is displayed on the screen at the front. (SLIDE 1) Near the screen, some drapes cover and hide a mysterious bulk that is taller than a man.

LAB ASSISTANT:

Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats - the Grand Unveiling is about to begin.

PROFESSOR CHRONOS meekly steps up to the nearby podium.

Hello? [clears throat] Hello! [crowd quiets down] Uh...thank you. My, I'm so nervous. Welcome, my scientific colleagues, distinguished members of the press, financiers, and government officials. I am Professor Catherine Chronos from the New England Institute of Extremely Hypothetical Knowledge. Today it gives me great pleasure to present to you a man ahead of his time.

You may not have had much of a chance to observe him refining his art since he has had to work apart from the mainstream scientific establishment. But he has been my close friend ever since we went to high school together. So I have had the rare opportunity to watch the work of a master.

And now it's your turn. Without further ado, let me present the man of the hour: Doctor Wesley When!

The skeptical, yet expectant audience applauds. Prof. Chronos takes her seat, a chair at the side of the stage.

DOCTOR WHEN strides up the aisle toward the podium. He has a (somewhat conspicuous and prominent) large envelope in his lab coat pocket. As he steps up to the podium he stumbles and the envelope falls out of his pocket.

DOCTOR WHEN (muttering to himself, but audible enough for the audience to hear):

Oops. Can't lose that.

He picks up the envelope and (not so) discreetly puts it back in his lab coat pocket, and then goes to the podium. DOCTOR WHEN:

Today I can and will change the course not of just one man's life, but of history!

SLIDE 2 is displayed.

You may laugh. I have been laughed at before. Laughed at for my ideas that challenged the established orthodoxy. But the laughs just spurred me on. On to labor for two decades shunted to the fringes of science.

SLIDE 3 is displayed.

And finally it's my turn to laugh. Ha! I will reveal my life's work...my great gift to mankind:

SLIDE 4 is displayed.

...a time machine!

The high priests of science said it couldn't be done. That it broke the very laws of nature. Ha again!

But before I show you my breakthrough, let us review the missteps of my less-qualified predecessors. SLIDE 5 is displayed.

Another famous doctor...who shall remain nameless...tried creating a time machine out of a police call box. What insanity--it's just not big enough on the inside!

SLIDE 6 is displayed.

Professors Theodore Logan and Bill S. Preston, Esquire, learned nothing from their predecessor's folly of trying to create time machines out of telephonic devices. I mean look at this--this critical component is flimsier than a coat hanger.

SLIDE 7 is displayed.

Doctor Emmett Brown took a rather stylish, but equally disastrous approach: converting a sports car into a time machine. But it had massive, impractical energy requirements.

SLIDES 8, 9, and 10 are displayed during the next line.

The list of failures goes on and on: furniture, tunnels, and even bathing equipment. But I have fixed their errors with a key breakthrough: the quantum chronomentometer.

SLIDE 11 is diplayed.

I don't think anyone else in the world could have properly fabricated one. Now you've already met the eminent Prof. Catherine Chronos, visiting us from the East Coast. Not only is she a brilliant scholar of art history, she is also a visionary in the theory of temporal mechanics. She has made several key theoretical discoveries that I have put into practice, such as the ...

SLIDE 12 is diplayed.

... tachyon midi ether co-keypad. And she has been my best friend since high-school. She'll be assisting with the demonstration.

Prof. Chronos waves shyly to the crowd from the side of the stage.

But enough talk. I will activate the machine and reappear one minute of your time from now. But my watch will prove that no time has passed for me.

Now I step into the future!

Doctor When unveils the machine. He activates it and steps in. It rumbles, shakes and spews smoke. Prof. Chronos's expression makes clear that these are not good signs.

The Doctor does not reappear after a minute as expected. The lab assistants don't even bother trying to hide their panic as they scurry about the machinery trying to diagnose the problem. A frightened Prof. Chronos steps back up to the podium.

PROF. CHRONOS:

Gadzooks! The machine has malfunctioned. Poor Wesley, I mean Doctor When, is now bouncing around through time!

I don't understand what could possibly have gone wrong. Frankly, I only work on theory. Doctor When was the one really driven to create a working machine.

But wait! All of you are probably the greatest assembly of brilliant minds since the Manhattan Project. We could really use your help.

The machine's core dump could tell us what went wrong.

Prof. Chronos pulls a single core out of the machine, segueing into 1.02 Core Dump.

Site Close Down:

• No close-down, scene automatically continues to 1.02 Core Dump

Detailed Description

See script (above) for details.

Puzzle Answer

N/A

Puzzle Solution

N/A

Credits

Everyone on GC who helped with the story; mostly Allen, Erik, Trisha.

Manager

Erik

Hints

N/A

Response to Correct Answer

N/A