Æon Flux
Æon Flux is an avant garde animated science fiction television series created by Peter Chung and broadcast on MTV. It premiered in 1991 on MTV's Liquid Television experimental animation show as a six-part serial of short films, followed in 1992 by five individual short episodes. In 1995 a season of ten half-hour episodes aired as a stand-alone series.
| Opening Prologue | Utopia or Deuteranopia? | Thanatophobia | A Last Time For Everything | Ether Drift Theory | The Purge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Demiurge | Isthmus Crypticus | Reraizure | Chronophasia | End Sinister |
Opening prologue
[edit]The following exchange (which is reminiscent of a similar dialogue heard at the start of most episodes of The Prisoner) takes place over surreal images of Goodchild and his forces alternating with images of Æon committing acts of sabotage. The scene ends with the famous 'eyelashes and the fly'.
- Trevor Goodchild: The dream to awaken our world!
- Æon Flux: You're out of control.
- Trevor Goodchild: I take control. Whose side are you on?
- Æon Flux: I take no side.
- Trevor Goodchild: You're skating the edge.
- Æon Flux: I am the edge.
- Trevor Goodchild: What you truly want, only I can give.
- Æon Flux: You can't give it, can't even buy it, and you just don't get it.
Utopia or Deuteranopia?
[edit]- Introduction: Trevor Goodchild has recently seized power in the nation of Bregna. The former leader, Clavius, has vanished under mysterious circumstances...
- Trevor Goodchild: The unobserved state is a fog of probability, a window of and for error. The watcher observes, the fog collapses, an event resolves – a theory becomes a fact. What is the truth? Tell me if you know [heh] and I will not believe you. Things are never as they seem. Clean gloves hide dirty hands and mine are dirtier than most. Without truth there can be no justice.
- Reporter: Many people hate you and would like to see you dead. How does that make you feel?
- Trevor Goodchild: Those people should get to know me a little better. Then they'd know I don't indulge in feelings.
- Æon Flux: My name's Æon Flux. I'm here on a mission to assassinate Trevor Goodchild. Is everybody listening? Do you believe me? Everybody happy now?
- Gildamere: I'm staggered by the complexity of these documents. I've spent many hours trying to crack the codes.
- Clavius: What don't you understand?
- Gildamere: I think I have a handle on some of it; for example: the 'mile-high jellyfish', that's the upper-house of parliament. Am I right?
- Clavius: No....
- Gildamere: And the "flying saucer men", that's the ministry of justice?
- Clavius: No. The flying saucer men are the flying saucer men. Narzack! Area 66. The global empire. What level are you!? We're men of peace, so we attack. Deploy the orbital jellyfish. Next expulsion of all foreign particles.
- Gildamere: You're mad... you're insane!
- [Clavius knocks Gildamere to the floor.]
- Clavius: Shut up, mother.
Thanatophobia
[edit]- Introduction: A heavily armed border wall separates the nations of Bregna and Monica. Yet many Breens seek to escape the mysterious designs of Trevor Goodchild...
- Trevor Goodchild: Tell me your heart's desire – one wish and it's yours.
- Cybill: Anything?
- Trevor Goodchild: Just no heads on the plates. I'm going to go get a drink. Would you like one?
- Cybill: No, thank you.
- Trevor Goodchild: Right . . . that would have been it you know.
- Æon Flux: I'm commandeering your libido under Monican aegis. This is an authorized police action, lover. You're mine.
- Trevor Goodchild: Well, moderation in all things.
- Cybill: Moderation is NOT abstinence. Moderation necessarily connotes use.
- Trevor Goodchild: Use?
- Cybill: So use me, Trevor. You must.
- Trevor Goodchild: I have no choice.
- Trevor Goodchild: That which does not kill us, makes us stranger.
A Last Time For Everything
[edit]- Introduction: Æon has heard about Trevor's new method for creating exact human duplicates...
- Trevor Goodchild: My work offends you – why? Human beings are not so unique. Just a random arrangement of amino acids.
- Æon Flux: Suits me.
- Trevor Goodchild: Yes it does.
- Æon Flux: These people you're copying are already superfluous. You're trafficking in excess.
- Trevor Goodchild: The issue is not excess but access. Others take away reproductive rights; I grant them.
- Trevor Goodchild: ...Although I must admit, now that you're here the standard method of procreation does seem somewhat appealing.
Ether Drift Theory
[edit]- Introduction: Trevor's experiments are contained in an ecosystem called the Habitat. An ocean of paralytic fluid protects it from the intrusion of outside influences...
- Trevor Goodchild: They say cats always land on their feet but at this point there's really no floor.
The Purge
[edit]- Introduction: Æon is on the trail of the ill-mannered criminal brute, Bambara...
Bambara: Hi, my name is Bambara. I'm a 36-year-old Virgo and a former killer, whose hobbies include: performing recreational autopsies, defecating, and drinking rum. I've recently been given a conscience, and would very much like to help you.
- Bambara: You made me cut off my left arm and give it to a little boy!
- Bambara: Tell the little witches to piss off!
- Trevor Goodchild: Piss off, little witches.
- Æon Flux: You're psychotic. You no longer have a common conscience with your fellow man.
- Trevor Goodchild: I never did. You see, I understand the will to evil. The will to evil is like an iron in the forge. There is only one way to shape it [right] – with a conscience that is the fire. My children, Judy, Bambara, it was for them I created the Custodian; an artificial conscience, a fire for those that had none!
- Æon Flux: But you lost the substance. You lost the substance by grasping at the shadow.
- Trevor Goodchild: You wish to know if you have been implanted. You wish to confirm your autonomy of will.
- Æon Flux: Yes.
- Trevor Goodchild: You would also like to leave this place alive. Yes?
- Æon Flux: Yes.
- Bambara: You're just a dirty little carbuncle, festering in the corner! [audience booing] No need to get uptight. I was merely making an observation!
The Demiurge
[edit]- Introduction: Æon Flux and the Monican resistance force have captured the Demiurge, a powerful god-like being, and prepare to send it into space to rid the Earth of its influence. The Breens, led by Trevor Goodchild, battle to prevent the launch...
- Trevor Goodchild: Light in the absence of eyes illuminates nothing. Visible forms are not inherent in the world, but are granted by the act of seeing. Though the world and events do exist independent of mind, they obtain of no meaning in themselves- none that the mind is not guilty of imposing on them. I bid my people follow and, like all good equations, they follow. For full endowment of purpose, they do submit. In turn, they resign me to a role inhuman, impossible, and unaccountable. But I can no longer stand the sleepless nights. I think I am learning to love the Demiurge...
- [Trevor is on top of Æon, and has her pinned to the ground.]
- Trevor Goodchild: You shot Rubio and not me! Now why is that?
- Æon Flux: Trevor, don't trouble me with your thin smile...
- [She grunts and flips him over. Æon now has Trevor pinned.]
- Trevor Goodchild: STOP!....there's a pain...in my back...
- Æon Flux: Can you describe it...in words...?
- Trevor Goodchild: What...?
- Æon Flux: I want you to tell me about the pain.
- Trevor Goodchild: Sharp...stabbing...piercing...
- Æon Flux: You're telling me nothing.
- Trevor Goodchild: It feels like.. a nail!...Twisting...into my spine.
- Æon Flux: Yes. But there is no nail...
- Trevor Goodchild: No...
- Æon Flux: ... so there is no pain.
- [They kiss.]
- Celia: Please, tell me what you know!
- Æon Flux: We won. We must have been right.
- Celia: You know something! Tell me what you know!
- Æon Flux: What I know? He said the light was beautiful. Yes, it was. No use, see, because the truth isn't even pretty. What else? Oh, right. Love isn't the answer. It's the problem.
- Trevor Goodchild: The height in tension in any game occurs when the rules allow for the influence of human judgement. The advantage in this instance is held by the player who drops the ball to allow the opponent a hollow victory. Half of eternity is still eternity. Infinity and Zero are different degrees of the same value. Pain isn't real beyond the individual who feels it. But the nail is real.
- Trevor Goodchild: Natural evolution should amount to nothing by now but a vicious cycle of obsolescence. A world unaccountable to its own past and doomed to repeat it indefinitely, oblivious of any consequence.
- Æon Flux: The only reason I don't shoot you has nothing to do with duty or principle. It's simply a matter of knowing who I am.
- Trevor Goodchild: Is that why you won't let it see you, why you can't bear the gaze? Because you've done terrible things. Then there are the transgressions you never even knew you committed, those are the worst! Because those you can never forget, all you can do is suspect.
- Æon Flux: I'm not in the habit of arguing over the color of red herrings.
- Trevor Goodchild: You can't hide from it, Aeon! It's everywhere!
- Trevor Goodchild: If but the cosmos could possibly have come about innocent of history, and not wholly ignorant of all its potential- unprejudiced, but aware- rather than that its only trial be performed at the mercy of all its error.
Isthmus Crypticus
[edit]- Introduction: Trevor Goodchild's latest obsession is an exquisite being which he keeps locked away in a secret chamber...
- [Æon prepares to jump a gap.]
- Æon Flux: Green light, go. Red light, stop. Green light, stop. Red light, GO!
- Una: Not a dream... not a dream... if it is, don't ever let it stop...
- Ilbrin: Don't be afraid. I used to be a familiar of the demon lover who blinded and grounded you, but I've just given myself a generous promotion.
- Trevor Goodchild: Oh, and after you're done? Go shoot yourself. That's right, kill the damned messenger.
Reraizure
[edit]- Introduction: Trevor's interrogation of a Monican agent leads inevitably to his favorite subject – Æon Flux.
- Trevor Goodchild: Memories are precious. We are only what we remember of ourselves and what we have done. Without memories we are nothing.
- Trevor Goodchild: We are not what we remember of ourselves. We can undo only what others have already forgotten. Learn from your mistakes, so that one day you can repeat them precisely.
Chronophasia
[edit]- Introduction: These are the last things Æon remembers – a baby's photo, a set of coordinates, Trevor's troops approaching...
- Boy: Everything that rises must converge.
- Boy: What the flame does not consume consumes the flame.
- Æon Flux: Everyone's dead?
- Boy: Unborn
- Æon Flux: Been here a long time, have you?
- Boy: Forever.
- Æon Flux: You have to tell me what happened here.
- Boy: Nothing happened. Nothing happens. That is the secret.
- Trevor Goodchild: [gasping] Ttttime...is...in... our minds...Æon...
- Boy: I do love thee. To you I deed all that I am.
- Boy:You have looked in the face of death, but have not guessed its secret.
- Æon Flux: I knew you'd come eventually. I never did catch your name.
- Boy: I am before names.
- Æon Flux: Good for you! How long does this go on?
- Boy: Always.
- Æon Flux: I'm bored already.
- Boy: Composite things are like dreams. Fantasies. Bubbles. Thoughts. Like a dewdrop and a flash of lightning. A new dress and a burning tire. Waves of sand and sinking ships. The shadow of a statue, and an entry in a diary. A brain tumor and an ice cream sundae. They are thus to be regarded.
- Boy: To you I bequeath.
End Sinister
[edit]- Introduction: Trevor prepares to shoot a ray which will change the course of human evolution...
- Trevor Goodchild: Strength is not an absolute value. To be strong is to evolve. Mutability is strength. Evolution is a string of victories by the strong over the meek. The meek shall not inherit the Earth.
- Trevor Goodchild: Go forth, and multiply. Procreation is the fundamental act of faith. We divide, even as we conquer. And is it losses on the field of battle? No! It is in the battle of love. So I turn my weapons to the task of evolution. Case in point: I transform two men's semen into armies of conception by exposing them to the same ray, Aldus B. Sadly, one dies. The other buries him with honor. The ray is imperfect; some will die. But the alternative is the death of the entire human race. We have already evolved so much that our actions would be incomprehensible to a human from a thousand years ago. It's the evolution revolution. Tommorow we speed up the process. All sectors, all species. Only the strong shall evolve.
