Mad Dogs

[first lines]

Dr. Mackenzie:
I would get a job if I was you.

Rabbie Burns:
A job?

Dr. Mackenzie:
Aye, an undertaking or an appointment with a future profit, even of a trifling or temporary nature.

Rabbie Burns:
I don't know about that.

Dr. Mackenzie:
Well I can't keep you in the program any more, Rabbie. You're a 100% successful remission. You know, you are my pride and joy, Rabbie.

Rabbie Burns:
Well I don't feel too grand at the moment.

Dr. Mackenzie:
Are you hearing the voices again?

Rabbie Burns:
N-no.

Dr. Mackenzie:
You taken your pills today?

Rabbie Burns:
Religiously.

Dr. Mackenzie:
Well you can throw them away, because they're placebos.

Rabbie Burns:
Eh, come again?

Dr. Mackenzie:
Placebos, Rabbie. A medicine given to humor or gratify a patient, without having to exercise any curative effects. In a word, rubbish.

Rabbie Burns:
I thought I was feeling a bit less ship shape.

Dr. Mackenzie:
It's in your head Rabbie. That's what you've had for the last 21 days. Off the drugs and no relapses. It's all in the mind!

Rabbie Burns:
So that's it then.

Dr. Mackenzie:
That's it Rabbie! I've got to be going, your the last appointment of the week. Now have a good Sabbath. Go forth and do not multiply. Come and see me in three weeks time. Here's my office number if you need me before that. After hours leave a message. I *can* be there in an emergency. Anything short of an emergency and the wrath of God will descend upon in terrible and consuming fury!

Alien:
You have been chosen out of the countless millions that inhabit this speck of dirt to be the bearer of a binding command.

Rabbie Burns:
Ah, tell me about it.

Alien:
You will inform the leaders of your planet of our ultimate decree.

Rabbie Burns:
Can this not wait 'til tomorrow, I've got an important date.

Alien:
For decades we have we have watched your feeble experiments in steam locomotion, combustion engine, 3D animation, and nuclear power, but we have not interfered.

Rabbie Burns:
What about all those alien abductions, snatching people for their bed and shoving things up their ass? The corn circles...

Narendra:
How do we know you're the police?

Thin Man:
By our arrogant demeanor and our total disregard for civil rights.

Narendra:
Something really fishy is going on.

Jimmy Joyce:
Fish are the masters of deception.

Alien:
Why you? That's a reasonable question. Rules of nature, cosmic constraints. You see we can only be seen and heard by certain people. People whose brains work on certain frequencies. Schizophrenics, paranoids, mystics, religious fanatics and the like. All of those people who are least qualified to deliver a simple message. It has cost us *so* much bother in the past. Even the supreme being's going on about it. He calls it the limit of omnipotence.

Rabbie Burns:
We're a sorry lot. But there's a lot of really good people down there.

Supreme Being:
Hmm, name one.

Rabbie Burns:
Well, you got um Socrates, Galileo, Jesus Christ, he wasn't too bad. You've got Nelson Mandela, Kenny Douglas, your Princess Diana. oh and Canadian TV host off the television, the one who goes around the global highlighting child labor in the 3rd world...

Thug:
[while torturing] I love this job. It makes up for missing the Cold War.

Jimmy Joyce:
Hold it right there. Only that's my partner you've got tied down there. A bosom friend. And the best interpreter of Hey Mister Tambourine Man in the entire London Transport network.

Narendra:
Put those guns away, this isn't Texas.

Jimmy Joyce:
I've always wanted to meet the end in a bubble bath. A Fort and a Mason's bath salts, and a nice wooden duck.

Jimmy Joyce:
If you're a human please knock once. If you're an alien from the farthest reaches of the galaxy please knock twice. [3 knocks]

Supreme Being:
This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. One of your modern poets, Mr. Burns. Not your name sake of course, a much more pessimistic scribbler. It should come as no surprise though, it's all in my book. Alas there are so many versions. Very difficult to know when to put a full-stop to a creative work, don't you think? I preferred to leave it open-ended...

[last lines]

Newscaster:
This is Sheridan Morley, signing off at the end of the world.

title card:
To be continued in another galaxy.