VALERIE
‘No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch.’ This is the creation of Victor Frankenstein. The first man-made man.
CARL
Legally, it’s not a man. And it’s crude… look at those sutures. He’s been stitched together like sailcloth.
CARL lets VALERIE hold the sheet. She’s happier to look at MONSTER than he is.
RORY is interested in GALA, who stands impassive. He passes a hand in front of her face. Her eyes don’t move. RORY tries to tweak her nose. She swiftly grabs his wrist.
RORY
Quite a grip you’ve got there.
CARL
She’s not programmed for your voice-print. Gala, let go.
GALA opens her hand and RORY takes back his wrist, which he rubs.
RORY
She’s a fleshbot?
CARL
We don’t call them that. She’s a bioengineered servitor organism. Clone-grown, gene-spliced, tweaked in the bottle, augmented with biotech.
ALISON
She looks like a person.
CARL
What should we make her look like? Herman Munster here?
ALISON
We call him Mr Boots.
CARL
I’m not surprised. We call her Gala.
VALERIE
Short for Galatea.
ALISON
If Unwin can make her, we should have known Frankenstein was real…
CARL
Unwin didn’t make her. My team did.
RORY
But Unwin own her.
CARL
Have you read your contract? Unwin own us all.
VALERIE
Except me. I’m on Sabbatical from Shrewsbury College. I’m a consultant.
MYRA
Professor Court, Dr Cleaver… are you on site?
Everyone jumps.
RORY
Don’t mind Myra. Always with us, yet so far away… in an undisclosed location. Think of her as a drone strike with a bedside manner.
CARL
We’re with the subject now. I see very little we can learn from it.
MYRA
Professor Court?
VALERIE is still looking at the MONSTER.
VALERIE
It’s momentous. The details tally. The clothes. The face. I’ve no doubt… this is the man made by Victor Frankenstein in 17—
MYRA
Product One. Unwin designate him Product One.
ALISON
One?
MYRA
The servitor organism is Product Twelve.
RORY warily approaches GALA again. He is plainly more interested in her than the MONSTER.
CARL
Gala was Product Eleven, but they bumped her up when you found the thing in the ice. Retroactively, Frankenstein became an Unwin Pharma employee. Know what the company did after your preliminary report? Sent lawyers to Switzerland to buy a baronetcy… Sir Joshua Unwin can call himself Baron Frankenstein. It’s all about IP. Whatever Victor did, Unwin has a proprietary interest in. Not just the meat on the slab, but the biotech. We’re here for the intellectual property of Frankenstein.
VALERIE
There’s a Hammer Film you never saw.
RORY (to CARL)
Gala is programmed for your voice-print?
CARL
Of course.
RORY
Would she bend over backwards for you?
CARL (smug and showoffy)
Gala, bend over backwards.
GALA bends over and makes an arch.
RORY (amazed)
She has extra vertebrae? Like an anglepoise lamp. When will she be marketed?
CARL
She’s not for home use. Gala costs more than a beach house in Malibu.
ALISON
But she’s the next generation of that? [meaning the MONSTER]
CARL
Only in the way a moon rocket is descended from a Frisbee.
VALERIE
Didn’t they invent moon rockets before there were Frisbees?
CARL
If that’s a rusted Model T Ford, Gala is a showroom Ferrari…
GALA is still an arch.
ALISON
Let her stand up again. She’s making my stomach hurt.
CARL
Gala, stand straight.
GALA does.
MYRA
Professor Court, you have two days to study Product One on site and verify its provenance.
VALERIE fusses around MONSTER while MYRA talks.
VALERIE gasps, drops the sheet and clutches her hand to her chest. She backs away.
CARL (irritated)
What is it now?
The sheet stirs… MONSTER sits up, cloth over face.
RORY (melodrama voice)
It’s alive!
CARL (not noticing MONSTER yet)
That’s a philosophical-legal question that can’t be answered easily. Life is…
ALISON
Shush.
CARL looks at MONSTER, runs out of pompousness.
CARL
Jesus Fucksticks!
The dropcloth falls, disclosing MONSTER’s distorted, soulful face. In the framing story, ROBERT has a cardboard Karloff head. Now he’s creepier, but more pathetic.
MONSTER twists around at the waist, legs stiff. His arms go out, wavering…
MONSTER
Friends? Friends… good?
Everyone looks at each other but no one moves.
MYRA
Product One? Is Product One responsive?
MONSTER
Product… good?
VALERIE melts and goes towards the outstretched arms. CARL holds her back.
CARL
Caution, Professor. Gala, assess the product…
GALA wheels around to order. She touches MONSTER’s wrists, forehead and heart like a nurse.
MONSTER is amazed by GALA. He snarls, experimentally. Gets a blank look.
MONSTER
Friend…? Woman?
RORY
Only technically. Gala is a girlie golem. Mr Boots, meet the great-great-great granddaughter of Frankenstein.
RORY overcomes nervousness and walks over. He confirms GALA’s diagnosis.
RORY
Yes, it’s alive all right. Alive alive-o.
MONSTER is puzzled. RORY feels its spine.
RORY
Bit of a problem. His back is broken. Irreparably. Mr Boots wasn’t made for walking.
VALERIE breaks away from CARL, almost hugs MONSTER.
VALERIE
All my life, I’ve hoped to meet you. We are your friends. I am your friend.
MONSTER
Friend good. Woman good.
MONSTER lays head on VALERIE’s chest.
RORY
He’s imprinted on you. Like a chicken.
ALISON
That’s one thing Frankenstein didn’t give him. A mum.
MONSTER looks up at VALERIE.
MONSTER
Ma-ma…?
VALERIE isn’t sure about this, but goes with it.
VALERIE
Yes… if someone has to be. Ma-ma. Mother.
MONSTER
Mother, good.
CARL (whispers)
Motherfucker!
MYRA
I take it we’re no longer concerned Product One might go to mush like defrosted strawberries. Professor Court, under the revised circumstances, you are executive in charge. Product Twelve, access code Coppelia Seven oblique stroke Valerie Court. Professor, you need to say something to Gala… the voice recognition app responds best if you sing, actually.
I’ve a breathing wheeling loving feeling…
CARL (fed up)
We get it!
VALERIE
Dancing doll!
GALA turns to l
ook directly at VALERIE.
VALERIE
Dance, Gala, dance…
GALA dances as VALERIE sings; RORY and ALISON join in.
VALERIE
Got a clockwork heart in her
Makes a perfect partner…
VALERIE/RORY/ALISON
Dancing doll!
VALERIE
She’s got a china face
And knows her place
Got dainty arms
And tender charms…
VALERIE/RORY/ALISON
She’s the only, lonely, lively, lovely…
MONSTER (deep voice)
Dancing doll!
VALERIE (offhand)
Gala, stop.
GALA stops dancing. MONSTER smiles, trying to laugh, clapping hands like a seal.
MONSTER
Dancing doll! Dancing doll! She’s… Dancing doll!
MYRA
If you’ve finished desecrating the classics… perhaps you could do the consulting you’re paid for. Thank you very much.
Blackout.
Lights up.
MONSTER in a wheelchair. VALERIE has a copy of the book Frankenstein. GALA nearby.
VALERIE (reading)
‘…he was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance.’ [shuts book] Do you remember Victor? The man who made you?
She gives him the book. He looks at the cover.
MONSTER (afraid)
Frank-en-stein! Frank-en-stein… bad…
VALERIE (sadly)
Yes… bad. Neglectful.
MONSTER
Book… good?
VALERIE
We’ve been arguing about that for a long time. We don’t know how much is Mary… or even her husband, Percy… and how much is… well, your real life. It’s a bit Chinese whispers.
MONSTER (whispers to GALA)
Chinese whispers… [laughs at joke].
VALERIE
Parts of the book are things you told Victor which Victor told a man called Robert Walton which he told his sister and which, I believe, she passed on to Mary. Who dressed it up a lot. It can’t all be accurate. The you in the book doesn’t sound like you. He sounds like a romantic poet. Mary knew more about romantic poets than about… science. The you in the book spends a lot of time – I mean a lot of time – quoting Milton.
MONSTER
Mil-ton?
VALERIE
Author of Paradise Lost. ‘Did I request thee, Maker, from this clay to mould me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?’
MONSTER (puzzled pause, then eager)
Only, lonely, lively, lovely… Dancing doll.
Fade down.
Lights up on MYRA and, elsewhere, CARL.
CARL
I recommend induced coma, then dissection. There’s nothing to be learned from talking with the idiot. He’s, not to put too fine a point on it, a right mongo. Can’t tell us anything about the process. It’s a shame Frankenstein didn’t get frozen rather than his bloody monster…
MYRA
I thought you had a low opinion of Victor Frankenstein?
CARL
You can’t deny his achievement. He did what he did in his spare time in student digs in the seventeen-somethings. Imagine the results if he’d had Unwin Pharma behind him. Proper funding.
MYRA
And marketing.
CARL
Product One would be a hard sell to the general public. It looks like a man, but it’s not. It’s a different species. Gala is more sophisticated, but doesn’t have this thing’s shelf-life. The workmanship is crude, but it’s cast-iron. Frankenstein was the Brunel of genetic engineering. Brunel’s bridges still stay up. Believe me, Dr Lark, there are applications. But we need to unpick the stitches.
Fade down.
Lights up on ALISON and RORY, wearing goggles. ALISON examines a vial of goo. She turns it over and it tumbles like a lava lamp.
RORY
It could be defrosted strawberries. Two-hundred-and-thirty-year-old strawberries.
ALISON
It’s not. I’ve run tests. They came back fragaria negative. The goo used to be something, though. You know, like oil used to be prehistoric monsters…
Oil used to be zooplankton and algae… hardly monsters.
ALISON
I was teasing. It’s weird, though. If it wasn’t stuck in eighteenth-century ice, I’d say it was what we were here for in the first place. Prehistoric micro-organisms…
RORY
…with marketable medical applications.
ALISON
I’d not go that far. Its major application seems to be stickiness. Modern man has no shortage of sticky materials.
RORY
You can never have too much sticky.
ALISON
There’s a fine line between goo and gunge. It must date from when Mr Boots was frozen. It was all around him… as if he sweated it out.
RORY
Some by-product of the Frankenstein process? The book’s vague.
ALISON
If I’d been Mary Shelley, I’d have included the full recipe for making monsters. Charts and footnotes…
RORY
With a caution against trying this experiment at home.
ALISON
You’ve not met my brother. If I’d made a [mouths the word] monster, I wouldn’t mind if it strangled him and framed the cleaner.
RORY
You sure about the murdering bit? Old Boots doesn’t seem the strangling sort.
ALISON
According to Wikipedia, he killed Victor Frankenstein’s little brother and let a maid be hanged for it… then killed his best friend… and his wife… plus assorted woodsmen, hunters and others.
RORY
Maybe Mary Shelley boosted the body count to get a bestseller? Man makes murdering monster is bigger news than man makes slightly bigger, much stupider other man.
ALISON
There’s no goo in the book, either.
RORY
I think it’s the elixir vitae Frankenstein used to kick off the biochemical process. Bring him to life.
ALISON
You’re getting Frankenstein mixed up with Re-Animator. And that was green goo.
RORY
Red and green are both flavours of Opal Fruit.
Light irises on the goo and shuts off.
Lights up on MONSTER sitting, left to himself. GALA is watchful.
MONSTER holds up his hands, looks at them, flexes fingers, holds his knees. GALA pays attention.
MONSTER strains, as if trying to stand. Rises a few inches… is about to fall. GALA gently settles him in the chair.
MONSTER
Back… bad.
MONSTER looks at GALA. She is impassive.
MONSTER touches her face.
MONSTER
Pretty.
GALA stands back.
MONSTER (ordering)
Mirror.
GALA gives a hand-mirror to MONSTER. He looks at his own face, turning the mirror this way and that. He isn’t displeased.
MONSTER
Not pretty.
He gives GALA the mirror.
MONSTER
Dancing doll.
GALA looks at him.
MONSTER
Dance.
GALA doesn’t dance.
MYRA
Product Twelve, access code Coppelia Seven oblique stroke… Product One.
MONSTER
Dance.
FX: music – Olympia’s marionette song from Tales of Hoffmann.
GALA pirouettes. MONSTER smiles and claps.
MONSTER
Dancing doll… pretty friend?
GALA bows.
Fade down.
FX: howling winds…
Lights up on MYRA and, elsewhere, RORY. He has the vial of goo.
RORY (excited)
…the Monster might be the lesser find, Dr Lark. The reagent… that�
�s the prize. That’s the application.