FreeScene_01: The Experience, a Ride

INT. CONFERENCE ROOM - THEME PARK HQ

Big room, very sleek, very minimal. Would-be abstract paintings if not for the recognizable theme park rides. EXECUTIVE and BIKER sit across from each other at a conference table intended to hold meetings for 15+ people. The back wall is all floor to ceiling windows with a view of palm trees. 

EXECUTIVE

We’re turning your experience into a ride.

BIKER

My experience?

EXECUTIVE

The bike race. In europa.

BIKER

Barcelona.

EXECUTIVE

Of which you’ve made the video.

BIKER

Yes. Of course.

EXECUTIVE

The go-pro video.

BIKER

Yes. Of course.

EXECUTIVE

We’re turning that into a ride.

BIKER

The go-pro video?

EXECUTIVE

Your experience. We wish for it to be authentic.

BIKER

I’m sorry. I dont believe I follow.

EXECUTIVE

Authenticity, with this kind of venture, is king, you see. We wish for our theme park ride to be authentic.

BIKER

Ah.

EXECUTIVE

Authentic to your experience of riding in the race.

BIKER

Yes. Of course.

EXECUTIVE

We’ll need you to sign over the rights. We will of course make this worth your while. An exorbitant sum.

BIKER

The rights to the video?

EXECUTIVE

The video does not interest us. I speak of the experience. Similar to... life rights. As we would when making a biopic. A picture. About your life.

BIKER

Is this something you’re planning?

EXECUTIVE

No. Well. Not unless the ride reaches a certain level of success. It’s rare. Not unheard of. But rare. For example, the haunted house was a ride, then a movie. The temple raider, now that was a movie first, then a ride. Then a movie. It’s not an exact science. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. What we wish to make is a ride. Authenticity.

BIKER

To the experience.

EXECUTIVE

Yes. Of course. The experience. You’ll sign here.

(Executive opens a folder, slides it across the table, indicates—)

Here. And here.

Biker signs.

EXECUTIVE

The check is in the mail.

(laughs heartily at her own joke. Waves it away.)

Not yet, of course. We’ll have to process all of this. The accounting department. But the money spends. I assure you, the money spends.

(beat)

What we’ll need is an explanation of the event.

BIKER

Of the race?

EXECUTIVE

In Barcelona. Yes. A description. In your words. Precisely your words. Which illustrates... how it went.

BIKER

I have the video.

EXECUTIVE

Not the video.

BIKER

A go-pro, mounted on my helmet, which accounts for every second.

EXECUTIVE

The video does not interest us.

BIKER

Captured sound as well, of lower quality. But you can hear what it was that happened, hear it for yourself, the people cheering as I passed.

EXECUTIVE

The video holds no interest for us. We need to understand your experience. How you felt while whizzing by. Your emotions, you see.

BIKER

Yes.

EXECUTIVE

The emotion is what we’re paying for. You signed here and here.

BIKER

Yes. Of course.

EXECUTIVE

And here. The emotion.

BIKER

An authentic experience.

EXECUTIVE

Exactly.

BIKER

My emotions. As I went whizzing by the crowd.

EXECUTIVE

You see now.

BIKER

Yes. Of course. I will provide you with, what exactly? A transcript?

EXECUTIVE

If you wish.

BIKER

Or, a recording? I could tell you what I experienced, we could record. You could play it back as often as you liked.

EXECUTIVE

Ah. This is a good idea. This is what we are looking for.

BIKER

You could regulate the volume. 

EXECUTIVE

The video holds no interest to us, but this? This is a good idea.

BIKER

Turn the volume low, if you like, as though I were whispering to you. Intimately. To you alone. Or turn it high, if you dared, as though we were quarreling and I were shouting at you. 

EXECUTIVE

The speed?

BIKER

Yes! The speed. Fast forward to feel the thrill, to feel what I felt as I barreled down the streets of Barcelona. As I whizzed by the crowd.

Executive pulls out a tape recorder, hits record.

EXECUTIVE

Now. Start now. We have the technology.

BIKER

As I ripped through the streets. Twisting down those pinhole european alleys.

EXECUTIVE

Barcelona.

BIKER

Those Barcelonan alleys! How we placed the ramps just so, how I rode along the walls. The walls goddammit, like I was in the fucking matrix! Like I was the one! The chosen one! In Barcelona! Only me, a bike, a route, predetermined. No practice, of course. The route could exist for one day. One day only! The energy drink company, you’ve heard of them, you’ve drank their sludge. They carted in the ramps and ropes and television cranes, they shut down the entire neighborhood.

EXECUTIVE

Barcelona!

BIKER

We were there for one day. Careening down, break neck, those Barcelonan hills, those bottle necks they call their alleyways. I must have ridden down every one them. A roof even. I rode across the top of someone’s roof. I’d never taken this route before in my life. I didn’t have a passport until the week before the race. We weren’t staying in Barcelona, you see. We’d gotten an air bnb in Valencia, on the coast. We lived on Tapas for five days before we took the van in to Barcelona. My bike in the back. A spanish speaking guide, myself and my fiance. Ex-fiance, I might add. 

EXECUTIVE

She didn’t.

BIKER

Oooooh she did. She knew what she was after and it wasn’t a silver medal, my friend. No sir-ee. It was not a silver medal.

A knock at the door. Biker stops his story. Executive looks distraught, in pain from the arrested climax of the tale.

EXECUTIVE

No! No! Go on! She wanted gold, she wanted gold and you couldn’t deliver.

BIKER

Of course I couldn’t. 

(struggling to restart but pushing through)

That course, no practice, one day in Barcelona. One day only. She wanted gold. Not me. I drove home alone. Alone in the van.

EXECUTIVE

To Valencia.

BIKER

Just me and my spanish speaking guide.

EXECUTIVE

What of your bike?

BIKER

No bike. I’d thrown it into the sea.

EXECUTIVE

The sea!

Another knock at the door. They stop again.

EXECUTIVE

No! You bastards, no!

Another knock. Door opens.

ASSISTANT

Ma’am?

EXECUTIVE

I’ll kill you. I’m with a client. If this isn’t earth shattering—

ASSISTANT

Ma’am.

EXECUTIVE

An emergency at the very least.

ASSISTANT

We’re taking a coffee order.

EXECUTIVE

You bastard.

Executive gestures to Biker.

BiKER

Just a matcha latte, oatmilk, no sweetner.

ASSISTANT

Ma’am?

EXECUTIVE

Decaf, black. The usual.

ASSISTANT

We’ll return shortly.

EXECUTIVE

I’ll kill you.

Assistant starts to leave. Remembers something, re-enters.

ASSISTANT

I almost forgot, ma’am.

EXECUTIVE

Yes, for the love of god, what is it?

ASSISTANT

There are people protesting outside.

EXECUTIVE

Outside?

ASSISTANT

Yes.

EXECUTIVE

Here?

ASSISTANT

They’re outside, protesting the ride.

EXECUTIVE

Which ride?

ASSISTANT

This ride.

EXECUTIVE

This one, here? The one we are discussing right now?

ASSISTANT

Yes.

EXECUTIVE

This theoretical ride?

ASSISTANT

Yes.

EXECUTIVE

The contracts are right here, the ink has not yet dried. The accounting department? Yes? The check is not yet in the mail.

ASSISTANT

I know.

EXECUTIVE

It does not exist, what they are protesting. This ride?

ASSISTANT

Yes.

EXECUTIVE

It does not exist, so what are they protesting? An idea?

ASSISTANT

Yes.

EXECUTIVE

They’re protesting an idea?

ASSISTANT

Yes.

Beat.

EXECUTIVE

Well by all means send them in.

ASSISTANT

Of course. And your coffee order, we’ll return shortly. There’s a place nearby which roasts there own beans.

EXECUTIVE

You really must try the coffee some time. Are you sure?

BIKER

Just the matcha, really.

EXECUTIVE

They roast their own beans.

BIKER

Just the matcha.

EXECUTIVE

Alright.

ASSISTANT

Shouldn’t take long. I’ll send in the protestors.

Door closes. They sit in silence. Beat.

Door explodes as 3 protestors rush in screaming, tossing papers and furniture in the air, breaking the windows. Executive and Biker hardly react.

Executive starts recording on the tape recorder.

EXECUTIVE

Where were we? Ah, yes. The van, to Valencia. Your bike, the sea, second place? Your fiance, she wouldn’t. Your fiance?

BIKER

Of course.

Protestors run around screaming, jumping on the table, and throwing papers everywhere. Bike tells his story. As he does, the lights dim.

BIKER

My guide, the native Valencian, spanish his only tongue. First of all, he drove like a madman. Did I mention that? A mad man. His time on the side streets, in that van, rivaled any moment of the race I’d ridden myself. You want an authentic experience, perhaps we should get him in here. You speak spanish, I assume. And maybe he didn’t drive across the rooftops, not in the van, but once or twice along the walls themselves. The fucking matrix. Absolutely mad. I adored him. He could see in me the heartbreak, my fiance, she’d snapped me in two. He would not suffer it. He drove us not to our lodgings, but instead the metroplex. That spanish sun had long since set. People in Valencia, they eat late. They drink coffee. They dance. He took me to one such location. Purple lights, deep bass. People, bodies really, in the dimness, wet bodies, sliding all over each other. And the music, bleeding eardrum bass. Migraine trebble. And bodies. Wet bodies, sliding, moving. With passion. Passion. Wet bodies, with passion. Moving, in the dimness. The dimness. With passion. Sliding all over each other, in the dark... 

BLACK OUT.