Listen to the Episode
Recording Script
EPISODE 2: HEALTH
SFX A CD-ROM is placed in a CD-ROM drive.
SFX Quid Pro Euro 96 launch music.
GUIDE: Would you like to start a NEW GAME or LOAD an existing game?
SFX Mouse Click.
GUIDE: You have
SFX CD Whirr
GUIDE: ONE.
SFX CD Whirr
GUIDE: Saved games!
SFX Mouse click.
SFX Loading.
ATMOS The island.
GUIDE: What a walk! Up and down and up and down. Phew! I don’t know about you but these hills are tiring me out. And the sun is warm as you like! I’m much too hot. This is probably nothing to you. I bet you were always out and about with your pad hunting down a story. We tour guides are made of softer stuff! No, I’ll be more like you. You know, I’d love to be a real explorer, not caring about the hot sun and focusing on finding out what goes on under the surface of the world. Wouldn’t that make me the best tour guide ever? Speaking of which, look, there’s a cave in the distance. Might be a might cooler. Or might be dangerous. But that wouldn’t stop an explorer! Let’s go. What do you think? Either we can go straight there, or we can climb higher to get a better view. What shall we do? Straight to the cave, or climb higher?
SFX Mouse click.
GUIDE: Oh! Alright. We can go higher. It pays to be careful. Come on then.
SFX CD Whirr
GUIDE: Huff huff! I… blimey. So hot. Now, let’s have a look at this cave. Phew. Oh! Here’s a coin operated telescope. Do you have a coin? Check your inventory by pressing the inventory button.
SFX Mouse click.
GUIDE: Choose the coin.
SFX Mouse click.
GUIDE: Put the coin in the telescope.
SFX Mouse click.
SFX Telescope slot.
GUIDE: Now look through the telescope.
SFX Mouse click.
SFX Metal creak.
GUIDE: Oh wow! Do you see that? That’s not a cave. It’s a mouth! The mountain isn’t a mountain. It’s a head! A giant baby’s head. And this isn’t just a hill with a telescope, it’s the body of the giant baby lying on its side, with a telescope. What do you think, shall we brave the cave, or, baby’s mouth? It’s not moving. I think it’s a model. And it’s all downhill from here. I think, as someone who wants to be an explorer, that we should!
SFX Mouse click.
GUIDE: OK, follow me! I’ll try to get into an explorer state of mind.
SFX CD Whirr
ATMOS Inside a giant baby’s skull filled with objects and with a hospital bed hanging from the ceiling. Heart monitor bleeping.
GUIDE: It’s even hotter in here! I suppose that’s what happens to a fibreglass head in the sun. Is there a way out? Let’s look around. Wow, that’s not what I expected. It’s huge! The space takes up the whole skull. No brain then. But it is full of things! Maybe one of them can help us build a boat. I can see: a blackboard hanging on the wall, a shoebox full of love letters, an army uniform on a tailor’s dummy, a judge’s gavel, and an antique writing desk. And what’s that hanging from the ceiling? Why it’s a hospital bed. Funny what people leave lying around. Do you think there’s something in here that will help us build a boat?
SFX Mouse click.
GUIDE: The blackboard is fixed to the wall! That won’t help us build a boat. Hmm. I don’t see how anybody’s managed to write on it. Look, there’s a box for chalk sticks but it’s full of syringes.
SFX Mouse click.
GUIDE: Do you really think we should read someone else’s love letters? Well, you’re the journalist! Oh hang on. This isn’t a love letter, it’s a length of bandage. That’s ridiculous!
SFX Mouse click.
GUIDE: Yes, the army uniform on the tailor’s dummy will make us look like sailors out at sea. Oh no, my mistake, the army uniform wasn’t on a tailor’s dummy, it was on a nurse! And he’s just walked out.
SFX Nurse footsteps leaving.
SFX Mouse click.
GUIDE: I don’t think much justice is being doled out by that judge’s gavel. The base is a heart monitor and the hammer is a heart. Eugh yuk!
SFX Mouse click.
GUIDE: There are more letters on the antique writing desk. But these are letters of complaint. Here’s one about how teenagers are spending too much time watching music videos, and here’s one about how slippers used to be easier to find, and here’s one about the difficulty of writing letters of complaint when your pen is a full sized kidney dialysis machine dipped in ink!
SFX Mouse click.
GUIDE: Hmm. Is there anything on the hospital bed we could use to build a boat?
SFX Mouse click.
GUIDE: The sheets! That’s a great idea! We can use them as sails. But how are we going to get the bed down? It’s winched all the way up to the ceiling. Look, it's attached to a rope which is connected to the wall where it’s wrapped around those three levers. One pointing up, one pointing down, and one in the middle. Maybe if you get the levers in the right formation, the bed will come down.
SFX Mouse click.
SFX Levers move.
SFX Bed lowers one corner and a sheet comes loose.
GUIDE: That’s it! You got the bed to drop one corner and part of the sheet shifted. Try again.
SFX Mouse click.
SFX Levers move.
SFX Bed lowers one corner and a sheet comes loose.
GUIDE: There goes another corner. Now the sheet is hanging off the side. It looks like a projector screen! One more should do it.
SFX Mouse click.
SFX Levers move.
SFX A projector extends from the wall.
GUIDE: Ah! A projector is coming out of the wall! What a fright. With any luck, we’re about to watch another interesting film.
SFX Projector starts flickering and continues under the following as we zoom into the screen.
Today: Dreams.
This is Ms Rachel Morgan, a life coach who lives on the east coast of Scotland. In the mornings, she sees clients. In the afternoons, she works on her book. And in the evenings, she walks along Kirkcaldy beach and enjoys Fife’s salty wind, roaring waves, and picturesque half buried shopping trolleys.
Rachel likes her days but she loves her bed. Because Rachel Morgan’s absolute favourite thing to do is: dream.
Rachel is an expert dreamer. She keeps a dream journal, consults a hypnotist, and frequently takes part in new and uplifting experiences so that her brain can take them apart and mix them up at night.
1, 2, 3 and off to sleep. Now. Let’s see what she’s dreaming!
Here in her dream, Ruth is sat with one of her clients in her office. So far so mundane.
But her office is a café in Berlin that she once visited, and her client is the silhouette of a bullfighter she knows from a postcard that her sister sent her from the Picasso Museum in Auchtermuchty. And look, up there, no ceiling! Rachel is sat on the bottom step of a sweeping staircase which leads up and round and up round higher and higher and higher. On the next floor, a television station is creating a weather forecast, and on the one after that: LIDL! It goes on and on until right at the top where a distant patch of blue sky is being covered up with paisley wallpaper. Back on ground level, the main door of the café is about to close and a couple of train passengers who were having a quick smoke and stretching their legs get back on before it pulls away. [SFX train whistle and pulls away] In other words: a typical dream!
But wait. Something’s not right. Rachel, you look distressed. Well no wonder! You’re sat on a black silhouette of a bullfighter interviewing a café you visited with your sister in Berlin. Above you, a branch of LIDL is creating a weather forecast and the sky is wallpapering some smokers with a paisley train.
And now a television train is interviewing the Picasso Museum in Auchtermuchty while paisley cigarettes stretch their weather forecasts in LIDL café and your sister wallpapers your face with a silhouette of a staircase! What’s going on?
Oh dear.
Rachel has DREAM FLU.
Dreams are a healthy and legal way to unwind. But too much of a good thing leads to unwanted consequences. Just ask the roller-coaster designer whose lungs went loop-de-loop. Or the map-maker who tattooed road numbers over his arteries. Or the fish who drowned.
If you dream too much, it will make you ill. The more you dream, the higher your risk of DREAM FLU. The sickness keeps you bed-bound while fragments of your dreams blend quicker and quicker and quicker, so fascinating and distressing that they are impossible to wake from.
What’s the solution? A dream sickness requires a dream cure. [SFX Back to the madness] Rachel, put down that wallpaper and look for: a dream apothecary. It could look like anything. Can you see one? There! Look! The woman in a tall powdered wig. [SFX teeth dropping on the floor] Her teeth are dropping onto the floor. See if you can get one.
Rachel swallows the tooth and … all is dark. Well. Greyscale. Rather curved. Where are we? We’re in Rachel’s cranium, as seen by her brain. The pill she took will prevent her from dreaming anything for a little while. Maybe it’s time to cut down on the dream journaling, eh Rachel? Now. Let’s leave Rachel to wake up in her own time.
Top tip: If you don’t know what to dream about, consult the European Union approved dreaming list which, in the twenty first century, will be digitised, and available on floppy disk.
SFX Projector end. We zoom back out to the room.
GUIDE: It did show an interesting film! I learned a lot. From now on, I’m going to make sure my dreams don’t get out of control with naughty consequences. You should too. Now that the film’s finished, can you reach the sheet? And then let’s find a way out. I’m so hot, I think I’m going to faint.
SFX Mouse click.
SFX You solved the puzzle!
GUIDE: This will make a grand sail! We’ve got another component of our boat. Now, which way do we-
SFX Wall crumbles
GUIDE: Cough cough. Looks like all that machinery in the wall was too heavy. Come on, the cave-in made a hole in the other side of the skull. Oh, what a lovely breeze! Let’s go through the hole. I think I’ve got this whole explorer business out of my system. I don’t know how you do it! Too hot for me. From now on, you lead. Why don’t you save your game before we go? Press ALT L and the number 9 to save.
SFX That.
GUIDE: Would you like to SAVE, start a NEW GAME, LOAD an existing game or QUIT?
SFX Click.
GUIDE: Saving in Slot 1.
SFX Saving. Ding!
GUIDE: Would you like to PLAY ON, LOAD another saved game, or QUIT?
SFX Click + Quit
GUIDE: OK. Goodbye for now. See you back on the island next time you play Quid Pro Euro 96! Quid Pro Euro 96 is a European Videos game.
SFX Quid Pro Euro 96 shuts down. CD-ROM removed.