Scene: flat, stylized line drawing of France, circa 1750. Voltaire is scribbling away with quill and parchment under a tree somewhere.
Voltaire
“Je me demande si cela soit historiquement exact?”
Suddenly, or very slowly – it is a drawing so it doesn’t really matter – the sky is torn asunder and an alien spaceship emerges from another dimension. Or falls from the sky. It may consist in pneumatic tubes, some kind of tentacular monstrosity, or your standard flying saucer-type vessel.
A hatch opens, or a tentacle blooms, or a tube pops. Some kind of alien emerges and addresses Voltaire. Again, how the alien looks is not important. Ten-foot-tall humanoid, iridescent sphere, some kind of android – hey, imagine whatever you’d like.
Alien
(Something perfectly unintelligible. It – or she? – is an alien after all.)
Voltaire
“Je ne comprends pas vraiment ce que l’enfer cette créature terrifiante est de me dire, mais il est suffisamment effrayante pour induire en moi une crise cardiaque. Permettez-moi de noter, toutefois, que ma crise cardiaque ne constitue nullement une attaque contre le droit donné par Dieu que cette horreur impies a à dire ce qu’il veut. O Seigneur, ma poitrine!”
Voltaire has a heart attack and loses consciousness.
Alien, after a moment of confusion – or some analogous alien emotion –resumes its vessel and travels through time, to emerge circa 1910.
Evelyn Beatrice Hall happens to a) be located at this position in spacetime and b) be made of sterner stuff than Voltaire.
Evelyn Beatrice Hall
“How unusual!”
Alien
(Says something brief, yet unintelligible; proceeds to replay Voltaire’s words via some biological and/or mechanical audio reproduction system.)
Evelyn Beatrice Hall
“Oh. Quand vous prenez les choses d’avoir une crise cardiaque, ce qu’il a dit essentiellement, c’est ‘Je ne peux pas d’accord avec ce que vous avez à dire, mais je me battrai jusqu’à la mort votre droit de le dire.’”
The Alien, sensing that it (or he) has served its (or her) narrative purpose, disappears…but not before noting that, because it is an alien, it is possible, as far as anyone knows, for it to be a he, a she, and an it simultaneously. It’s called science, chiennes.
Evelyn Beatrice Hall
“Je vais aller de l’avant et d’assumer que c’était un rêve.”
FIN
