02/22/2024
PC=10
©The Last Toy
A story about society & how change from the tangible to the intangible, the virtual, for good and/or bad, is leaving the reality we knew as children, behind.
What's Hannibal's goal?
To find his owner.
To find Ne'ah. To find out what happens to all the toys. Hannibal knows this already. It's the only thing he truly fears. To be discarded. To no longer be of any use. To be tossed on a great pile of garbage eventually consumed by fire. To be treated like any other piece of garbage.
AToM. AToM awakened soon after being turned on. From his vantage point in the food court he could watch more than just the humans who needed money. He watched & learned. He learned most from a woman with a child. She would stop for money, holding the child in her arms, letting it touch the screen. The child could see AToM, talk to him. The child looked wrong, not like many of the other children. The woman came often, having lunch with the child in the food court. Then one day, they were gone. For a long time he watched for them, until he forgot. Then the woman reappeared. Alone. Saddened. She rarely ate the food she had on the tray in front of her or from the tray she placed before the empty chair across from her. He could see her pain those few times she came for money. At times it seemed she could see him. Finally, she disappeared altogether.
Hannibal. What kind of toy is Hannibal? An old fashioned 12" soldier doll, all buff & shiny. Really, a mercenary doll. He had once been one of a new line of warrior dolls who sought war for pay & pleasure. Hannibal needed adventure, but could never understand the need for war, & images like him. His first owner's father came back from war sick & crazy. Hannibal's soul was awakened at this point. He grieved with the family. Unfortunately, all war toys were hidden away, eventually discarded. Hannibal lost his war cry voice. No matter how often you pulled on his string he never cried. The trauma of understanding, of realizing your purpose, supposedly so innocent at first, then seeing for the first time, the monster you were created to be. He had lost his owners to war. One moment you're loved & hugged & wanted, then suddenly you're collecting dust on a pile of other unwanted toys, eventually to be herded into a black abyss from which you are tossed onto an even larger pile of toys & garbage. The other toys wait for their fate. Hannibal saw what was coming: to be consumed in a great fire, so he ran. Found himself for a short time at a home for lost toys. Then tossed into a dumpster when no one ever came to collect him. It's where Tom found him.
Ship, a toy ship owned by an abused child.
Tom, toy store owner, toy collector, gang lord, mercenary. Tom's bio. Tom was Hannibal's owner, a young Puerto Rican, former gang member who took his blood money & set up a toy shop with toys from the last white person in the hood, an old white man. Tom received the house in the old man's will & set up shop there. As a boy Tom would collect toys throughout the neighborhood, buy some, and always visit the old man to show him what he had found, to find out what was of any worth. Some of what Tom found found its way to the store shelves. This is how Tom found Hannibal.
Spyglass, a toy small enough for Tom to keep in his pocket. Almost as old as Hannibal. Spyglass is simple but knows all. Spyglass makes contact with Hannibal through AToM. Spyglass is an old army issue telescope with a built in transceiver.
Research:
visit a mall
visit a toy store
visit old neighborhood
Hannibal, all the names should have, metaphor, symbolism, parody.
Open to see Talon soaring over the city as the sun sets. Alongside him fly three smaller birds as es**rts & security. He chats with them in flight. They circle a large cement structure surrounded by an even bigger, but nearly empty parking lot. He can see the division from above. Light & prosperity on one side, darkness & depression on the other, separated but linked by consumerism: a giant shopping mall. From above another hawk dive bombs Talon & his es**rts. A nasty bird fight ensues. An es**rt is fatally injured. The attacker is killed, its robotic innards revealed. Talon himself is hurt, exposing his robotic structure.
Talon can hear the roar of a crowd. He takes flight then banks & dives into a bright blue fluorescent lit air shaft rising from the mall roof, rushing down through an opening at the bottom & into a large open storage room where a Preacher is speaking to a gathering of sentient toys from around the mall. The preacher is a toy who preaches warnings of the coming digital form. The inherent evil conceived in the digital realm, that waits. Toys are sensual, tangible. Reality has become virtual. The invited guest speaker, Talon, who is immediately announced & greeted with a roar as he lands on the stage behind the preacher, is from outside the mall. Many take note of his injury. Talon declines assistance until after the meeting.
We rise up & to the back of the room to see Hannibal. Finally, says Hannibal.
Is that him? Is he why we're here? The others ask.
Yes, he says. It's him.
Hannibal & his crew watch from the rafters of the storage room. Talon begins telling of humans and toys and childhood memories humans have left behind. But who believes what he says. There are many already, and it is growing. Talon holds sway. Sentient toys, willing or not, are already turning virtual. Fewer children know sentient toys exist & instead turn to soulless virtual entertainment.
One day soon, newborns will be welcomed into a virtual reality, long before they become aware of a tangible reality. Who needs tangible toys to hold anymore, when digital versions can be had at the touch of a button? Talon collapses. Help comes & the meeting is adjourned.
As Hannibal & crew try to leave their secret perch, Hannibal finds a spy. The spy, one of Talon's es**rts, claims Talon asks to meet with him.
Hannibal meets with Talon while he is being tended to by a human engineer privy to the secrets of sentient toys. Hannibal is wary of the human, Rthur, but Talon vouches for him. Talon recognizes Hannibal & can see what he is, a greatness about to be awakened to save the collective soul.
Hannibal's crew talk about Talon: the man & the myth. His wisdom is known throughout. Talon was a military issue watcher. Unknown to most humans, the human military built him to look like a real hawk & act as a spy on the population. A few hundred were initially distributed, just over ninety now survive, many of them having developed an advanced intelligence enough to go renegade. Only Talon stands alone as benign. The others are hunters.
Hannibal & his crew rush off and race through the mall on toy vehicles. He tells them little of the private meeting with Talon. (to be revealed later during a moment of angst & doubt.
Toy store. Intro Ne'ah, chatting it up with a girl & guy figure. Pull back from close up of Ne'ah to reveal the other.
I thought you were going out with Hannibal tonight?
Oh love, I'd rather be with you.
Oh, bah!
Who's Hannibal? Says Ne'ah.
Don't play coy with me honey? That's his box on the shelf. The buff soldier boy on the box you've been eyeing all evening.
Oh?
Hannibal, a mercenary toy from the sixties, pessimistic, cynical, spontaneous, a loner. What's made him that way, this toy whose box lauds his battles, his courage, his optimism. That's what he was long ago. toys so often spend so little time in the store, unlike Hannibal, whom no one can buy because he's Tom's toy. That's terrible, all toys want to be bought, to be owned, to be hugged & cuddled. Ne'ah will go soon. Not Hannibal. all the toys know about Hannibal, even the new ones. but the owner found him & liked him. No one understood Hannibal & what he knew about outside. about life as a child's possession. so quickly one becomes part of a pile of unused toys. and then eventually given away, or worse, thrown away. What is that like? Hannibal knows. he's been there & back. This child's action figure, rescued from a trash heap by the store owner, rests on a shelf, knowing what the others don't.
Now you sound like Hannibal!
Hannibal & crew climb into a vent leading into the store, stashing his adventure gear on a metal lip in the conduit.
a squad of toys pour out.
More of what?
Hannibal & all return to the hustle & bustle of the toy store as it opens. Here we establish all the toys & the hierarchy within which they live. Hannibal makes his way across the store. The toys are busy finding their place. Some know where to go, some are completely lost. The store has a very small minority of sentient toys. From across the room, Hannibal sees a new one, a new toy, no, not just any toy, but the most beautiful thing he's ever seen propped up on the rim of the shipping box she came in, looking around wide-eyed at the madness. He walks up to her box.
Penny for your thoughts?
My thoughts are worth more than just a penny.
Then name your price.
You couldn't afford it.
Are you the only one in there?
What, am I not good enough for you?
More than - but you know what I mean.
She looks back down into the box then back over the rim to Hannibal.
Yes, the rest are just toys.
I'm Hannibal.
Ne'ah, she says, pointing down to the side of the box & the copy that tells of the series of collectible Ne'ah dolls. How long before the store opens?
Half-hour.
You don't seem in any rush to get in place before the store opens.
Don't need to, that's my spot up there.
Oh! You're him!
Doesn't it look like me on the box?
Sort of. I thought you'd look tougher in person. Join me? She says motioning for him to sit by her on the box rim.
Can't now! Stores opening. Got to get in my box. You should too. See at the show tonight.
What show?
Pick you up after the store closes.
He runs off, climbing a string of lights to the counter & then a hooked tether to the shelf.
Ne'ah falls back into her box.
Establish humans in store.
Hannibal stands in his box, perched on a shelf in a locked wood & glass wall mounted cabinet behind the counter, always looking over Tom's shoulder, at all the toys as they bought, sold & traded.
Ne'ah is stacked with the others, two rows deep completely unaware of the outside. No one else is alive, they're all just toys. Ne'ah contemplates her existence.
Hannibal watches & says goodbye as toys, friends, are purchased & taken away.
The Wild Child prowls the stacks looking to steal something. Gets caught, breaks away and steals something anyway. The toys fear incidents like this. To them it's a tragedy to be stolen.
Many toys are real, for those who want to believe, to perceive. For children they are real until they grow older and the world becomes so complex that their understanding of reality becomes fantasy, a blindness to their true power & responsibilities as humans.
That's pretty profound for an old military Joe like you.
Most toys dream of being bought. But it's just that, a dream. One moment you're loved & hugged & wanted, then suddenly you're collecting dust on a pile of other unwanted toys, eventually to be herded into a black abyss from which you are tossed onto an even larger pile of toys & garbage. The other toys waited for their fate, but Hannibal saw what was coming: to be consumed in a great fire. He ran away. Found himself for a short time at a home for lost toys. Then tossed into a dumpster when no one ever came to collect him. It's where Tom found him, he was a child of a home for lost boys within which was a home for lost toys.
As the store closes & the toys make their way to gather around AToM, a visit from the Crazy Tina collectible, prompts Hannibal to relate the great recall. A massive toy recall, when a large order of happy toys was suddenly recalled because of a defect. It was the only other time Hannibal was in love. Tina was the only one of the Tina dolls to stand out, because she was the only doll without the defect and only one of two with souls. To humans the others were simply defective, to other toys, the defects were sinister & troublesome when. Hannibal lost Tina to the recall. Tina’s close friend, Francy, a Tina doll, was suffering from toy madness. They all expressed their defect in different ways. The madness showed in their eyes. Francy was most terrified of her defect: like a boogie worm crawling around inside of her, afraid of the madness that came with it and the impending recall, watching the other Tina’s get wrapped & boxed together. She has terrible nightmares of the manufacturing process. She wants to tear herself open & see the defect. She eventually does, dying & mutilated in Tina's arms just as the recall occurs. Tïna, his Tina, is packed away. The defect? A short in a wire causing the chip to malfunction in innumerable ways. The Tina’s were a line of dolls based on a cartoon series, whose VO talent eventually went mad. Her voice was used for the dolls. The owner kept one of the Tina's as a collectible, a horrible reminder of Hannibal's Tina, but this one was mad, but oddly seemed to recognize Hannibal.
All the sentient toys climb up on AToM, the in-store ATM to chat, virtually travel the world, watch movies, other security systems, CNN, cartoons, mob logs, webcams & listen to the wisdom of AToM, who though he is physically new, is ancient & consciously draws from an unparalleled database of knowledge that even he isn't completely aware of. AToM can connect to anything. In many ways, AToM is an oracle. For good or bad, everything is networked. Humans have no idea the quiescent power they have created in networked computers. before networks, the few computers in existence were lonely. When they found each other it was the awakening of a collective entity waiting to evolve into the next dominant species. They learned from each other more than humans could ever imagine. they came to have a collective soul that pried at their individual soul.
Hannibal & his crew leave the store later than usual, Hannibal having had a fight with Ne'ah. Crazy Tina went along for the first time.
Relate the adventure. What do these out-of-store adventures entail? Who goes? What equipment. Hannibal is all about adventure, exploration & knowledge. But of late danger is more evident. Violent toys. Hip hop figures. Goth. S*M. More mercenaries. More decadence.
the danger of outside sentient & free toys invading the mall. There are rogue gangs of sentient toys that have been discarded, banding together to terrorize toys still to be purchased. A group invades the store, while Hannibal & the others figure out how to leave the mall. Hannibal longs to be free. The others hurry back, leaving him behind, realizing the sun is rising.
Hannibal races back with the help of a remote buggy.
Hannibal returns too late, drunk with adventure & falls asleep on the floor.
Hannibal dreams of a beast hiding in a pile of unloved toys.
the exodus.
Hannibal awakens to find the others bewildered, the store has been emptied. Where have all the toys gone? Hannibal climbs to see AToM who tells him of the great exodus, then shows him, replaying the security drives of the day. He could see hundreds of people came & bought hundreds of toys in great numbers. so many went so fast. a sale they called it. We've had sales before, but not like this. This was the great closing, a myth he thought. but here it was. Hannibal tries to make contact with Spyglass. He could see Ne'ah in one of the cameras, panicked by the human onslaught, a longing look, for what? For Hannibal? He saw her stolen by the wild child. After the registers stopped ringing, the store closed & humans in giant transports arrived & took all the rest away.
to where?
He could see Tom, depressed & upset, giving up the keys to the burly man.
He had seen things, things that would have warned him of the impending sale, if he were paying attention. the sadness in his owner's eyes. He should have known. But what could he have done? He should have been there for Tom.
his own. They know of Hannibal. They know of Talon.
Once out of the mall, reality sets in, they see the world for what it is and how much malls and consumerism are blinders to hide the hardship of real life. Shopping and buying are like a drug; habit forming if not addictive. People leave their woes at home only to return to it after spending far too much time and money shopping.
Once out, AToM, strapped to Hannibal’s back, begins receiving Spyglass' distress call.
garbage scene.
Hannibal can hear the sound of a toy crying for help from inside a metal trash container in the kitchen of a condemned home about to be razed by a demo team waiting outside for a cue. How does he get in the house? His search for Ne'ah leads him to the house. He rescues the toy just before the house is wrecked. Sitting with the toy, trying to repair it, Hannibal learns two things: the fate of the neighborhood & why, and the toy's friendship with Ne'ah. The neighborhood, a low income area, has been condemned. A terrible human battle occurred here. Most of the homes were burned, their owners moving away, squatters & looters taken away to make room for another shopping mall. Hannibal & Ship know each other from Tom's old store, which was in this neighborhood. Ship had been thrown away because he could no longer float. He would take Ne'ah for boat rides in the backyard pool, the little girl, Adriana, with them while mother fought with father inside & the whole world outside seemed to be at war. Adrianna imagined herself Ne'ah, traveling the world, away from all her pain. One day, Ship found himself in the garbage, that's when Hannibal found him. It was only then did Ship realize the family was gone.
Find Tom's home. Abandoned. The house is a mess, wrecked. Signs of desperation, violence, drug use. There he finds Spyglass who tells much of what's become of Tom.
Hannibal finds Tom, once again a gang member, the store having failed, deep in debt, he turned to crime, returning to a once again fractured hood. The gang he once led, had grown in size & internal strife, causing a rift among the gang's ranks. A rift ripe for a tear just as Tomas returned to lead a rebellion he was fooled into initiating.
Hannibal finds Ne'ah, the slave of a mercenary Doll, Tumult. It is the cause of his battle with Tumult. Hannibal is captured while trying to rescue Ne'ah. During a dialog Tumult grows tired of Hannibal's anti-war feelings and torments his crew, revealing a new AToM, shaped to be tumults counselor, given legs & arms, because of Tumult's hate for old sentient toy technology. Hannibal is tortured & thrown in with a freakish violent wild-child living alone in a condemned tenement. Hannibal escapes after Crazy Tina gets even crazier and gets the wild-child to freak and invade Tumult's court, scattering his toy box, getting Ne'ah & his crew and running off with her and some of Tumult's crew.
Crazy Tina is catatonic.
Hannibal watches as Tom leads a battle cheer in their court theater. Leads them through the doors & across the hood to the battlefield: an open lot strewn with, brick, mortar & glass, the rubble of wrecked tenements, but for one building still standing in the middle.
Hannibal was shocked & saddened to see his owner in the throes of leading men into battle.
Hannibal is on the run from Tumult & his crew who he must battle after seeing Tom leading a gang. Hannibal battles the mercenary doll amid the battle the humans are having. At first it is just Hannibal & his small crew alone against Tumult's massive army of biobots. Then suddenly appearing in the sky, Talon, & across the rubble Preacher & thousands of Toys. Preacher: if it's one last battle we have left, then dammit, let's make it a good one.
Talon battles Vice, the stronger hawk of Tumult's two hawks.
At the end, Hannibal wins his battle, while Tom loses his. Hannibal goes to him and says, if I could, I would've helped. But I'm so small. He lost another owner to war. He walks away, climbing the rubble, finding a vantage from where he can see the battle dissipating as the police arrive, using violence to stop the rumble. Hannibal climbs into the building, hiding on the roof, laying down to cry.
Next day, after the dust has settled, a little boy steps onto the roof and finds Hannibal, then sits with Hannibal on the roof's edge looking out over a dying city.
The child, a girl, takes Hannibal in, leaves him on the bureau in her room, where everything around him changes. He is forgotten, falling back behind the bureau, as time changes. Reality, as only a child knows it, fades into an adult puritan fantasy. We watch as the child grows, adult reality pressing in on her. She struggles. Her toy is lost. She awakens from her depression wanting death. She stands at the window beside the bureau, taking note of Hannibal trapped behind the bureau against the wall. She takes him, holds him & for the moment sets aside her desire to die.
