Horatio Week 40: Omega Point

The New Adventures of Horatio
Week 40: Omega Point

A white space. Enter Horatio, clothes soaked with sweat, sword at his side.

HORATIO
Oh. My... No, on second thought, pretty anti-climactic.

Enter Roland Barthes. He carries a briefcase and speaks with a French accent.

BARTHES
My poor attempt at a neutral space, unburdened by layers of meaning.

HORATIO
Roland Barthes? They're letting philosophers into heaven? Ayn Rand's gonna cry foul, man.

BARTHES
Barthes the man is not here. You converse with Barthes the myth, Barthes the assemblage of signs. My suit and tie signify academia, my accent Frenchness, my gray hairs authority. These signs, symbols in their own right, the end results of their own strings of narrative associations, are appropriated and synthesized to form a larger picture, as dots of ink constitute a printed cartoon. I represent a particular philosopher, one of many ways to signify absolute truth to an intended audience.

HORATIO
Me?

BARTHES
Ha.

HORATIO
Okay, yeah, society perpetuates its own values through repeated tropes and images in public discourse. Freshman year stuff, RB. I'm here for what's behind all that.

BARTHES
What did you have in mind?

HORATIO
Not that I don't love your work on the subject of French toys and the grooming of the bourgeoisie's children, but I cut my way out of hell to get here and I came for the big questions. Is there a God? Is there free will?

BARTHES
For the answer to that...you must read the signs in front of you.

HORATIO
I don't suppose Rene Descartes is around?

BARTHES
The traveler's dress includes the ravaged button-down and cracked spectacles of the poor academic; a meadskin at his belt engraved with ancient runes, signifying Norse divinity; the sword of an ever-sleeping king, signifying authority; waterproof demonskin breeches, the skin of an enemy, signifying a warrior; and Guarayu facepaint, denoting the seeker, the mystic.

HORATIO
I scavenged this stuff to survive. It doesn't mean anything.

BARTHES
Everything means something. Your very countenance is a road sign for the culturally literate to read.

HORATIO
You stop deconstructing me right now.

BARTHES
The sweaty face, the piercing eyes, the handsome features marred- punctuated, rather, by the dot of a cigarette burn. The companion of gods, the slayer of demons, the seeker of truth, and now the action hero, wedding the Apollonian and Dionysian like Harrison Ford's Professor Jones.

HORATIO
Thanks, I guess.

BARTHES
Multiple signifiers, one signified: Here stands the hero. That is the intended message.

HORATIO
Implying a messenger.

BARTHES
You begin to see. And if we understand you to signify the hero, your very presence here serves a larger mythology. We know the archetype, the warrior-mystic, the professor-adventurer. But there is a greater metalanguage at work here in which you point the way to a deeper meaning.

HORATIO
Roland Barthes, you are freaking me out.

BARTHES
The denizen of Elizabethan drama utters a contemporary colloquialism, at once addressing the reader in his own vernacular and contrasting it with the archaic speech of the original character, underlining the passage of centuries. We are presented with the speaker's direct lineage, from a wooden O in Southwark to our modern conversationalist. The sign is clear: instant relatability, everlasting shelf life, the inevitable triumph of Western art through the entertainment industry.

HORATIO
What are you talking about?

BARTHES
Don't see yet? Return to the question of your dress. The hero is a thing signified whose signifiers are legion. You're one signifier in the borrowed garb of several others. The result is a myth of continuity. It seizes us by the lapels: My character is heir to Thor and Arthur, my narrative heir to Shakespeare and Dante!

HORATIO
WHOSE NARRATIVE?

Barthes opens his suitcase, takes out a printed script, and hands it to Horatio.

HORATIO
"The New Adventures of Horatio. Week 40: Omega Point."

BARTHES
To understand the myth is to destroy it.

HORATIO (Reading)
"A white space. Enter Horatio, clothes soaked with sweat, sword at his side. HORATIO: 'Oh. My... No, on second thought, pretty anti-climactic.' Enter Roland Barthes."

BARTHES
The God question remains up for debate, but I'm afraid this lays the matter of free will to rest.

HORATIO
I have free will.

BARTHES
Ummmm. No.

HORATIO
You lurk at the end of the universe with an omniscient playscript waiting to mess with anyone who makes it this far. You sad bastard.

BARTHES
I didn't write that.

HORATIO (Reading)
"Horatio grabs Barthes's briefcase and holds it upside down." Oh, you're good. I like that, let's do it.

Horatio grabs Barthes's briefcase and holds it upside down. A stack of playscripts falls out and spills all over the floor. He roots through them.

HORATIO (Reading)
"Week 7: Bounded in a Nutshell. Week 25: Kind of a Big Deal." You've been keeping tabs on me for a year? Psychics, maybe? Interdimensional spy technology?

BARTHES
Far-fetched.

HORATIO
I just tangled with a magical talking tickling monkey.

BARTHES
Do those explanations change anything? The scripts are there. They're true. You must know that in your bones. Weave whatever myths you like to safeguard your sanity. There remains a writer.

HORATIO
Meaning everything that's happened in the past year...someone did that to me.

BARTHES
You could put it that way.

HORATIO
Chris dying. The hills of dead in England. Someone's been sitting in a comfy chair plotting out all kinds of shit to spring on my friends.

BARTHES
The world's coming into focus, is it not? You begin to see the fine strings of prose that make the puppets dance.

Horatio looks around in awe.

HORATIO
"Horatio looks around in awe." Stage directions in italics. Jesus.

This won't last when I leave here, right? I'm getting a 3-D IMAX headache.

BARTHES
When you return to earth, the sight will fade. You understand now how to return?

HORATIO
I can see next week's installment from here. "A donut shop." Within walking distance.

BARTHES
Then there's nothing more for us to discuss.

HORATIO
I've thought of a way to test the free will question.

BARTHES
Oh?

HORATIO
I find the puppeteer.

BARTHES
And?

HORATIO
And fucking kill him.

BARTHES
...that's a new one.

Horatio picks up a script, looks at it, puts it in his pocket. Looks out.

HORATIO
Sullivan, is it? See you in a week, pal. Sleep tight.

He smiles. Lights out.

The End