III.

Dissolve from Scambot’s photo to his face on a pillow. Dreaming fitfully of his childhood, of a dream he had as a child, a fever-induced hallucination.

(Eight-year-old Ian’s perspective, from his pillow:)
What did you see?
Can you remember?
Fever gripped your baby head.
Can you recall a stately procession of dinosaurs, cats, God’s seahorse, your favorite ball?
What did you think when the dinosaurs joined forces and staged a little passion play at the foot of your bed?

He snorts and pulls his blanket off, still asleep,and his dream plunges further back to his babyhood: his perspective from the crib at age 1.
There’s a big red Kellogg’s “K” on the wall. A close-up on the “foot” of the K’s outstretched “leg.” It twitches. A box of Quaker Oats sits nearby. Zoom quickly into the Quaker‘s red, inflated face on the label: “Meh meh meh meh meh,” it says. A man comes in the room to tickle Ian.

Shake off the sweat which gathered in your slippers when fever gripped your baby head.

One of the dinosaurs from Ian’s future fever dream hauls himself across the foot of the crib. He stops, looks upon Ian, and opens his mouth. A small bi-plane flies out of him, piloted by an eerie, round-headed figure of indeterminate sex, with the facial expression of a bowling ball. He/she scoops the suddenly-adult Scambot into the passenger seat, and sings:

Baby baby set my soul on fire, look at me
You and brother do not have to worry ‘bout a thing
I’ll bring the kandy korn that rights the wrong existence That less elegant reality which don’t make nobody sing

With a wink and a thumbs-up, he/she straps a parachute onto Scambot and pushes him out of the plane...he descends, aging in reverse as he does, and alights upon the gymnasium floor of his elementary school at age 6.

Ian, now on familiar ground, twirls freely on the basketball court, inside of a circle painted on the floor: his whirlpool of childhood fantasy. He spent entire recess periods here in this inter-dimensional portal
of his invention, twirling and mumbling.

(One day Ian threw a big dodgeball into the circle, and the floor swallowed it up, he swears.)

Suspended a few feet above him in the air as he twirls, a phalanx of roundheaded bowling-ball faced people sing, as they try on different outfits and compliment one another on how happening they look.

These will be our clothes for walking ‘round in the night air. If life’s a joke, it’s very very good.
But if you were to make starbursts in the air...
Bless the little children.
Flow, you should.

Quick, dream-illogical cut to adult Scambot on an airplane, drunk. A dodgeball bops down the aisle to his left; he doesn’t notice. He’s bummed and trying to write some lyrics to cheer himself up, whenever he’s not hounding the steward for booze.

The bowling-ball people are positioned throughout the plane, singing and acting out the lyrics as he writes them: driving cars down the aisle,
turning into kites with bowling-ball faces, etc.

Flowers, flowers – try again!
In London’s towers cry again.
So on you go, forgetting all your passwords.
I ran so fast, you ran so far.
Let’s run away, let’s fly to Spain, let’s eat a clam,
let’s buy a car.
I ran so fast, you ran so far.
This is no last hurrah.
We ran so fast, we’ve come so far.
Make your world of string and paper,
send it past the rooftops.
Dance into it, not glance into it.
Boldly advance into it.
Leave your footprints in the sound of windchimes.

Scambot himself turns into a kite, then, and soars out of his seat, surging up, through the top of the jet and towards the outer realms of the universe. Transcendence feels imminent.

The Scambot-kite hits a barrier and rams against it, like a bonobo caged against its will.

Still asleep, but disturbed by the incessant thumping sound coming from underneath his bed, the dreaming Scambot winces and buries his face in his pillow. Lifting his head, he’s become eight years old again. Slowly opening his sleep-gummed eyes, he’s stunned to see two piercing eyes at the foot of his bed, peering at him. A gun materializes in his hand, and he shoots at the eyes, brain ablaze with terror. Oh. Not eyes.

His toenails, glinting in the moonlight, and he shoots off two of his own toes. Scambot finally awakens in earnest, his heart exploding huge drumbeats in his chest.