Two Roads Diverge
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Two Roads Diverge is a graphic novel and the first part of the Southland Tales story. It is written by Richard Kelly, illustrated by Brett Weldele and published by Graphitti Designs. [1]
[edit] The Story
The story starts, after a brief prologue showing Boxer Santaros lost in the desert, on a gambling boat on Lake Mead. Fortunio Balducci, a "professional gambler of modest intellect," loses a $23,000 online poker game to a soldier stationed in Syria. Immediately after, Fortunio and his companions (who include fictional former Hermosa Beach mayor Tab Taverner and his son Ronald) hear gunfire over the laptop - the winner's camp has been blasted. Despite the possibility that the soldier is dead, and despite Fortunio's outrage, Golden Palace refuses to freeze the transaction.
Tab suggests that Fortunio, who currently owes some one hundred thousand dollars to some deadly bookies in Las Vegas, cross the border into California before it closes up during the Independence Day celebrations. Although Fortunio's June Visa has been used up, and his financial situation makes it impossible to buy a new one for July, porn actress Krysta Now offers to get him a replacement through "connections" with one of the border guards. They agree to meet at Buffalo Bill's, a truck stop on the state line with a topless bar and a roller coaster.
While making his way to Bufallo Bill's, Fortunio finds Boxer Santaros's unconscious body lying on the road. When he awakens, he declares himself "a pragmatic prevaricator," explaining himself with a further advanced vocabulary which it appears the amnesiac Boxer himself is only reciting. While riding with Fortunio, who stops him from injecting some kind of drug which, besides his clothes, seems to be the only possession he carries. While they ride, Fortunio tells Boxer who he is - a former football player-turned-mega action star. When Boxer asks why they must keep a low profile while they cross the border, Fortunio explains the current state of the world.
On July 4, 2005, an unknown terrorist group set off nuclear bombs in El Paso and Abiliene, Texas, killing about two hundred thousand people. As a result, America has become a pseudo-police state, ostensibly to prevent further attacks.
Meanwhile, a park ranger receives an anonymous tip leading him to a charred SUV made by an alternative fuel company called Treer, with a corpse seated inside. While investigators perform an autopsy on the body, a group of men in black ski masks bursts in, kills all the people inside the room, and takes the corpse.
At Bufallo Bill's, Krysta Now takes the stage - but rather than strip, she performs an original song entitled "Teen Horniness is Not a Crime." Lyrics include "Observe the nerds who shot up Columbine. Never got laid... never got laid. 2008 is the horny teen age." The manager of Bill's is frustrated with her clothed performance, though she points out that her contract never said she would do so. Fortunio and Boxer arrive, and the former briefs Krysta on the situation with the latter. Krysta quickly comes up with a plan to use Boxer to pay off Fortunio's debts and to get one of her scripts directed, thus pushing her career beyond porn star to legitimate entertainment entrepreneur.
According to Krysta's new version of events, Fortunio was a private detective who Krysta hired to find Boxer, her boyfriend who wandered off into the Nevada desert on drugs. She threatens to leave him in Nevada for the bookies to deal with if he does not help. Krysta takes Boxer up to her room and sleeps with him while "reminding" him of the screenplay "he" wrote: a science-fiction cop flick called "The Power." Krysta has her friend Sheena Gee e-mail her script to her from their place in LA, and works out a deal with Fortunio to negotiate a "finder's fee" in addition to the hundred grand he needs, so long as the two of them split it down the middle. She asks only that Fortunio find a lawyer to draw up a production deal for The Power.
Meanwhile, Baron von Westphalen, the CEO of Treer, asks an operative for information on a DNA sample and the "Saltair," presumably the scorched SUV from earlier in the story. He also requests that they run a search for Boxer Santaros's thumbprint, and alert him the moment it gets logged into US-Ident.
We see the first several pages of the screenplay for "The Power." In it, Jericho Cane, a police officer working for the LAPD, along with an old detective friend named Chuck MacPherson and a psychic stripper named Muriel Fox go to a house in Palmdale, where they find themselves in the middle of a domestic dispute. Jericho kills the husband in self-defense, then the house starts shaking. They find out that the quakes have something to do with the couple's 6 day-old baby, Caleb, who has yet to make a bowel movement despite a larger-than-normal diet. The wife also says that her husband was in El Paso when the first nuke went off. Light starts to pulse from under the baby's skin, and it lets out a small fart, causing the house to quake again.
We return to the real world, where Boxer's reading is interrupted by a phone call. The woman on the other end identifies him as the Pragmatic Prevaricator, and tells him to stay with Krysta for his survival. She also tells him to keep on the drugs, and not to ride the roller coaster.
The next day, Boxer, Krysta, Fortunio and his lawyer work out a contract on the production of The Power, under Krysta's production company, "Krysta Energie Productions." (It's French, she says.) Boxer withdraws money from an ATM using his thumbprint, and Westphalen is notified instantaneously, by his mother Inga, the COO of Treer. He reassures her that he doesn't have to worry about Fortunio, who was the unplanned element in their experiment. She also worries that Boxer might ride the roller coaster, which would cause his adrenal gland to release fluid and rupture "the wall."
Fortunio pays off the bookies and receives his Visa, while Krysta tells Boxer that someone is listening in on them. She tells him, quietly, that unless he rides the roller coaster, he will die. He takes her advice over Inga Westphalen's, and on the roller coaster he suddenly has a sort of temporal displacement experience. He sees an Indian tribe from that exact spot on June 23, 1902, and they see him. He waves. The narration tells us that what has happened is basically a wound in the fourth dimension... and that wounds are easily re-opened....
The book takes on a classical literature type of story, the title, "Two Roads Diverge" is from a famous poem by Robert Frost. The cover from the book has a quote from T.S. Elliot, stating that our world will not go out with a bang as we expect, but with a whimper.
