Plays

ATHENA’S SELF-DEFENCE FOR GIRLS-TO-BE

A One-Act Play

by

Michael Doherty

Scene One

SETTING: Somewhere outside of time and space.

(As the lights rise, ATHENA is motionless, wearing her iconic helmet and carrying her spear. Behind her is a “Bob” type of lifelike martial arts dummy and a table upon which are four beanbags, an iron, and a rolling pin. ATHENA puts down her spear, removes her helmet and looks around herself, gazing at floor level.)

ATHENA
New souls. You all look so…small. And bright, like morning’s dew drops hanging from the green leaves. Are new souls always like this?
(Beat)

No, of course you don’t know. After all, you’re new, you’ve never been incarnated before, have you?
(Beat)

Oh, one of you has? As what?
(Beat)

A carrot. Aside from one carrot, has anyone else been incarnated before? No? Then as one who has sometimes indulged in that tumult of sense and emotion that is human existence let me tell you, you are all about to begin an amazing adventure. And not only are you about to become human beings, you are going to be that best kind of human being: girls. And someday, you will be women.
(Beat)

Well, you see, there are two kinds of humans, there are women and there are men. Women are the ones that look after everything. They make new humans – inside their own bodies! – they make sure that everyone has tea and honey in the morning, that the sick have cold compresses and warm blankets, and that there are irises and narcissi in the garden rather than just cabbages and onions. And then there are men.
(Beat)

Me? Listen to me going on without even introducing myself and you’ll think that you enter a realm where courtesy is unknown. My name is Athena, Athena the glaucous-eyed, Athena parthenos, Athena of the city, she whose companion and avatar is the owl, the god of wisdom and of judicious warfare and of the city of Athens, among other things. And to answer your question, I’m not technically either a man or a woman. I’m a god. But I normally manifest as a woman, a beautiful woman, and since you’re all going to become women, you will look like me.
(Beat)

(Looking down) Yes, yours might be bigger than mine. But that’s not really important; breasts and internal genitalia are not what will define you as women. Whether for a god like me, or for new souls like you, being incarnated as a woman is about achieving your full potential, whatever that might be.
(Beat)

Oh yes, there are certainly male gods.
(Beat)

Oh yes, that too, there has indeed been a god incarnated as a man. Though the other gods tend to think it ended badly, and don’t like to talk about it.
(Beat)

No, I can’t remember any gods being incarnated as carrots. But a god could be incarnated as a carrot, if he or she wanted. Raven once incarnated as a pine needle so that a girl would swallow him and get pregnant.
(Beat)

No, that’s not how it’s usually done. Usually, getting pregnant is a process that involves a woman and a man. Or, in my father’s case, a woman and a swan. Or a woman and a bull. Or a woman and a satyr. If you’ve seen Picasso’s etchings, you’ve seen my father’s notions of courtship and human procreation.
(Beat)

Right, of course you haven’t. But once you’re incarnated as girls, you will see all sorts of things, and know beauty both in art and in the everyday. Those experiences will allow you to grow and evolve in ways that you cannot do in this realm where nothing happens and nothing changes. And that’s why we’re together in this time and place outside of time and place, to help prepare you for some of those experiences. What do you think will be the single most important thing for you to know when you’re incarnated as girls?
(Beat)

No, not photosynthesis. No, the single most important thing for you to understand will be…unarmed combat. Yes, it is surprising, but what’s even more surprising is that most girls never really understand it at all. For most of them, it’s just ineffectual slapping and pushing and tears and the inevitable submission to the will of others. You, however, are going to be different! It’s not that difficult, but (looking around and lowering her voice) we don’t really have a lot of time, so I’m going to explain just five simple principles that I want you to try to remember. That is, I want you to remember them not just on this plane of existence, but when you are incarnated on earth.
(Beat)

Yes, it would be a good idea for you to write them down, if you had pens or paper or hands or if you knew how to write, none of which is the case. For now, just try to remember.

(ATHENA moves her chair to the back of the stage and pushes the “Bob” dummy to the front.)

ATHENA
The first thing to remember is where to hit. There’s no point in hitting a man in the chest, you’re simply not going to be strong enough to hit him so hard that you’ll stop his heart. Let’s start at the top. If you hit the temple (ATHENA hits the dummy’s temple) or the side of the jaw where you can torque the head around (ATHENA hits the dummy’s jaw), then you can rattle the brain inside the skull, like a peach inside an amphora. If you hit just under the nose where there’s a cluster of nerves (ATHENA hits under the dummy’s nose), then you can cause intense pain and disorientation, particularly if you break the nose at the same time. Hit the eyes and he can’t see (ATHENA hits the dummy’s eye). The neck is good because it transmits oxygen and blood and neural impulses, so if you collapse the trachea (ATHENA hits the throat) or compress the carotid artery (ATHENA hits the side of the dummy’s neck), then you’ll cause unconsciousness or death. And instead of hitting, you can get the same effect with a good chokehold (ATHENA applies a chokehold from behind the dummy). Hit the solar plexus and paralyze the diaphragm (ATHENA hits the dummy’s solar plexus) so that he stops breathing, and again he’ll pass out and maybe die. What am I forgetting? Oh, right, the testicles (ATHENA kicks the dummy’s groin). But you’d probably have figured those out on your own.
(Pause)

Are you crying? Why are you all crying? You’re unincarnated souls, you don’t even have tear ducts, just stop. Please, please stop. Look, if you stop, I’ll tell you a story.
(Pause)

Thank you. There are gods like Algos who feast on the sounds of humans crying and other gods who can’t hear it at all. For me, it’s painful.
(Beat)

Yes, I understand that it’s not nice to hurt people and that the idea of it upsets you. I don’t like it either. My brother, Ares, is the god of senseless violence. I am the goddess of necessary, reasoned violence, and if you think that violence is never necessary, then your time in the world of men will soon teach you that that is not true.
(Beat)

No, I don’t hate men. Just because I never had a boyfriend doesn’t mean I don’t like men. Take Odysseus, for example, I liked him. Would you like to hear his story?
(Beat)

Good, I’ll tell you the story, or part of it anyway, and in return, you’ll promise not to cry any more. Odysseus was a great hero, he fought in the Trojan War – a war that admittedly was partly my fault, though mostly Aphrodite’s fault for telling Paris he could have Helen, who was already married, but let’s skip over that – and thanks to my arranging for Odysseus to get home after the Trojan War, he had a lot of exciting adventures with a Cyclops and sirens and with Scylla and Charypdis and with the sorceress Circe, and with Calypso,but most of those didn’t directly involve me, so we’ll skip over those too. Anyway, he eventually made it home to Ithaca, but his wife Penelope was besieged by suitors, so I was the one who disguised him as a beggar and put him in touch with a swineherd and a cowherd, and then together with Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, we slaughtered all of the suitors!
(Beat)

You know, you’re right that’s not a very good story, but somehow it sounded more interesting when Homer said it. Even the part of the story where Odyssesus hanged all of the serving women, you don’t think about how horrible it is when Homer says it, it just seems like a good story. I sometimes wish I’d let Odysseus drown. But Hercules, my half-brother, I helped him with his labours. And my other half-brother, Perseus, I told him what he needed to know to kill Medusa the Gorgon. Which, again, I feel with hindsight was an unfortunate outcome for which I was not entirely blameless. Knowing that someone is a monster can make it easy to forget who created the monster. But there, you see, that’s three men I liked, Odysseus, Hercules and Perseus, which out of the roughly seven billion men who have ever lived is really quite a high percentage. But if you don’t want to think that I’m teaching you unarmed combat against men, then maybe you’ll wish to remember that no one hurts women as much as other women. No better? Then think that maybe you have to know unarmed combat to defend yourselves against (Beat) ophiotauruses. They’re half bull and half serpent. Or maybe you might need to fight the Gegenees, they’re six-armed giants.
(Beat)

I am not, you can read all about them in Bullfinch’s mythology, just as soon as you’re born, you go to school and you learn to read, all things that are more likely to happen if you pay attention for long enough to learn the skills that can keep you alive. In the meantime, the second lesson – and remember, no crying – is what to hit with. Bear in mind that in unarmed combat, you’re hitting someone else’s body with your own body, which may seem ill-advised if you think about it too much. So you don’t want to hit someone else with your eye. And no matter how many pushups you might try to do with your nose, you will never make it strong enough to hit someone with it. You want to hit with something small so that the force is concentrated, and hard, so that all of the force gets transmitted to the target. These two knuckles (ATHENA indicates the knuckles at the base of the first and middle fingers) are ideal, but unless you practice enough, you’ll bend your wrist and hurt yourself. So for most of you, it will be better to use a small muscle near the end of one of your limbs. So with the open hand, use the inside and outside edges of the hand, or the base of your palm (ATHENA indicates the three muscles and then hits the dummy in quick succession with all three). With the closed hand, use the bottom of the fist (ATHENA indicates this area and hits the dummy repeatedly with both hands). If you’re kicking, use the ball of the foot, or the edge of the foot or the heel (ATHENA kicks the dummy three times from three different angles). The knee and the elbow are good, but it’s usually best to use them against softer targets if you can (ATHENA knees and elbows the dummy). So now that you’ve learned two important principles of unarmed combat, it’s time for: a pop quiz! Think carefully. If you have a choice between hitting someone in the nose with your elbow or hitting someone in the elbow with your nose, which one should you do? How many say hit them in the nose with your elbow? How many say hit them in the elbow with your nose?
(Beat)

You’re all right! Yay, isn’t unarmed combat fun? And aren’t you glad you’re learning it?
(Beat)

Mmmm, yes, all right. Like what sort of things?
(Beat)

Dancing?
(Beat)

Makeup?
(Beat)

Dating? How are you even aware of any of those things? And why would I spend my time trying to teach you about them? You know, new souls don’t normally get taught anything at all, they just get thrown into bodies and left to figure everything out for themselves, sometimes in one incarnation, sometimes in a series of them, depending on the dominant metaphysical model of their time and place.
(Beat)

Oh, yes, get born in the wrong culture and the overwhelming odds are that you will only get one, very short life followed by an eternity of torment. Bear that in mind the first time you find yourself sneering at the bad fashion sense of someone who’s chanting on a street corner in an orange robe or rolling you eyes at someone’s made-up version of a fertility ritual in honour of the goddess Eostre. At least they’re not going to Hell or Tartarus. Anyway, the point is that this little chat that we’re having was not easy to arrange and is strictly unauthorized, so this bubble of space-time I’ve carved out isn’t going to last very long. That’s why I’m only going to use this opportunity to teach you the most essential information for your happiness and survival, not make-up secrets.
(Beat)

All right, just one question, but it had better be important.
(Beat)

Yes, there is such a thing as love at first sight, but in my personal experience, it usually involves a mortal falling in love with a god and then getting turned into a stag or some other sort of animal or plant as punishment. And if a god takes a fancy to a mortal, it’s no better. When my father “fell in love” with my mother, it was all kisses and sweetness at first…until he ate her. And no, I don’t mean that euphemistically. The only way I got to be born was one of the other gods split my father’s forehead open with an axe, and I leapt out, fully armed and armoured with my spear and my helmet, and as the poet said, Athena “pealed to the broad sky her clarion cry of war, And Ouranos trembled to hear, and Mother Gaia….” And ever afterward, when the soldiers of Athens, my namesake city, marched into battle, they would chant that same war cry in my honour: Alala!
(Beat)

No, I’m not the goddess of melodrama, you must be thinking of Melpomene, the muse of tragedy. Though sometimes when I ponder how little good I’ve accomplished in the past three thousand years, I fear it’s Thalia, the muse of comedy that inspires my efforts. Anyway, the point of the story of my parents is that it goes to show that dating can be a very dangerous experience, so that it’s important that girls know…what?
(Beat)

Exactly! Unarmed combat! So third principle, you might even like this one, since it has broad application and is useful even for things that aren’t directly related to unarmed combat, like…I think it’s called “tennis”. When you hit something – or when you throw something – use as many muscles as you can, starting with the big muscles and working to the small ones. Simple demonstration. (ATHENA takes the four beanbags off the table) I throw the first time using only my fingers and wrist (ATHENA throws a beanbag), and you can see it doesn’t go very far. I throw the second time, using my forearm as well (ATHENA throws a beanbag) and it goes further. I throw the third time using my whole arm (ATHENA throws the third beanbag) and it goes further still. And if that’s as far as it goes, you know what people call that?
(Beat)

Throwing like a girl! For thousands of years I have watched fathers teach their sons that if they’re throwing rocks or throwing javelins or throwing footballs, they can’t throw with just their arms, and that they have to start with the big muscles in the core of their bodies and rotate their hips and shoulders, because that’s how you get (ATHENA throws the last beanbag, using her whole body, so that it disappears off stage) power. And what works for throwing works exactly the same (ATHENA hits the dummy in the head, rocking it onto its side) for hitting. Girls can throw and can hit the same way, but mostly no one bothers to teach them when they’re young, so they never learn how.
(Beat)

I don’t know. I’ve thought about it and thought about it. When you’re a god, if you have a pensive bent – and if you look at Thor or Kokopelli, you realize that we don’t have a lot of deep thinkers among us – but if you do, then you can think about things for thousands and thousands of years, and if after thinking about something for thousands and thousands of years you still don’t understand it, then that can be very, very annoying. And if during those thousands and thousands of years, you have from time to time taken on the appearance of a mortal – which is harder than you might think – so that you, the goddess of philosophy, could walk among them and speak with their great philosophers, with Socrates and Aristotle and Bob Dylan and Jerry Seinfeld, and none of them know any better than you, then eventually you just make up the best answer you can to that question. So why do people treat girls differently than boys? I think it’s to do with freedom.
(Beat)

That’s right, freedom is doing what you think is the right thing to do rather than what someone else thinks you should do. You don’t have to think about it very long to realize that freedom is the whole point of being a human being. And believe me, as a god, I know, because much as we gods like being worshipped – and we really, really like it – if people had to worship us, if people just automatically worshipped gods because we’re gods, then it would be meaningless, absolutely. It’s the fact that they’re free to worship us or not that makes it matter. But when it comes to girls, people forget what even the gods know, that for anyone to be truly free, everyone has to be free. You remember how I said that women are the ones that look after everything? So people think about all the things that make life nice (ATHENA lifts the rolling pin off the table), whether it’s making honey cakes (ATHENA lifts the iron off the table) or making sure that everyone doesn’t look wrinkly all the time, and they ask themselves, “Who else is going to look after that sort of thing if not women? Men?” And then they laugh, and they tell their daughters that being a nurse or a housewife is a rewarding vocation, so that all the jobs that genuinely require being free, like sailors and artists and starship captains get done by men. And freedom is why we study unarmed combat, so that no one can make us do anything we don’t want to do.
(PAUSE)

I’m sorry, what was the question again? Never mind, we really have to get on with your lesson. It’s important that we be finished before anyone notices that you’re missing. Here’s why: souls that are reincarnated have to drink from the water of the River Lethe – the water of forgetfulness – before they return to earth, so there’s no point in trying to teach them anything. But because you’re new souls, no one will expect you to know anything; they’ll think that you don’t have anything to forget. So for once, I should be able to make a difference. You’ll arrive on earth actually equipped to deal with life, or at least part of it, just as long as no one knows we’ve had this little chat. So this is the segue to the fourth rule I want you to remember about unarmed combat: (ATHENA shakes the iron and rolling pin she is still holding): it doesn’t have to be unarmed. Although I have seldom cast my gaze upon the earth in recent years, a relatively short time ago as I think of time, I looked at an island far to the east of Greece, but one where the islanders led the same sort of simple lifestyles as fishermen and farmers I remembered. An emperor came from across the sea and conquered them and forbade them from carrying weapons. No swords, no spears, no guns. So they took their everyday implements, the stirrups from their saddles, the flails they used to separate grain from chaff, the oars from their boats, their walking sticks, the tools they used to make furrows for planting, and they turned those into weapons, and trained themselves to use those weapons to overcome their enemies’ swords and spears. What they did, you can do. It will almost always be better to hit someone with some thing (ATHENA makes several creative strikes against the dummy using the rolling pin and the iron) than with parts of your own body. So if you have a stick or a wrench or a rock or a shovel or a telephone or….
(Beat)

Yes, or even a carrot, you can use it to defend yourself. I remember one of Jehovah’s followers killed one thousand of his enemies with only the jaw bone of an ass.
(Beat)

Yes, it is hard to imagine circumstances in which the jawbone of an ass would be the very best thing at hand with which to defend yourself. But it was a long, long time ago, when people just didn’t have as many things as they have now.
(Beat)

Yes, it’s true, most of my stories and examples are from a long time ago. I don’t pay the same attention to humans that I once did.
(Beat)

Why? Do you remember the first thing I said to you?
(Beat)

That’s right, I said you looked so small and bright. When you think back on it, though, it seems fuzzy to you, doesn’t it? You remember that I said it, but you might not remember my exact inflection, or whether I was leaning forward or back on my chair, or whether my spear was in my right hand or my left hand or in both hands. For humans, it is really only the present moment that is real. Everything that has gone before is just prologue. The gods, though, remember everything. Every single moment I have spent with you remains as fresh and real as this moment, and it always will. Since we remember every moment of our own lives so vividly, our minds are very full. But we can choose to look and to see your lives as well, every moment of them, and if we do, we never forget any of those moments either. We can see the sparrow fall and if we do, then for us it will always be falling. That wasn’t such a problem when there were only a few of you, leading your separate, scattered, short lives. But now there are so many of you, and if we gods choose to watch, then every cruel, vicious, thoughtless thing you do to each other stays with us. Forever. To me, the Sabine women are still screaming as they are dragged away from their families, the women tried as witches at Wiesensteig and Salem are still burning, the women sealed inside castle walls as hitobashira are still trying to claw their way out. So mostly we gods turn away, and when you cry out asking why we have abandoned you, we don’t hear because we simply can’t bear to listen.
(Pause)

It’s not that sad. Back when we were all interventionist gods, we mostly screwed things up. That whole Trojan War, can you believe it was all because Hera, Aphrodite and I all wanted the same apple, and Zeus couldn’t decide to which one of us he should give it, so he decided that some shepherd should judge which one of us was the prettiest? Were we the idiot gods of vanity, stupidity and petulance? And even once the war started, we couldn’t leave well enough alone, and Zeus and Ares and Apollo and Hera and I all had to interfere and try to help our own favourites. What suffering we caused, there and everywhere we were worshipped. Not that we were even the worst or our histories the most blood-drenched. Compared to Xipe Totec or Shakti, we Olympians were as placid as lambs. And imagine how much worse it would be now, when the followers of all the different gods are all intermingled throughout the earth. Imagine if when the followers of Hunapuh and Jehovah were in conflict and they prayed to their gods, those gods actually appeared, with lightning and plague and darkness and armies of demons. In truth, you are all better off without us.
(Beat)

You? I suppose it’s because, much as I try to look away, I sometimes can’t help watching. And I thought that I know more now, I’m an older god, and maybe if I tried just one more time, I could make at least a little bit of progress with a little bit of humanity toward decency and happiness and…oh, no.
(Beat)

I’m so sorry. Our little bubble of space-time has collapsed. Even now, all of the other gods are beginning to be aware of what I was trying to do, the cosmic powers of order and chaos are starting to sense an imbalance in their orderings, and soon the three fates will look closely at their loom and see a change to their intended weavings. Before long the entire pantheon of pantheons will be mobilizing to stop me and to restore the status quo. They will make you drink from the waters of the Lethe, you will forget everything I have told you, this will all have been for nothing.
(Pause)

The fifth principle of unarmed combat? It’s kind of you to ask, but I think you’re just humouring me. We all know you didn’t really want to learn unarmed combat, don’t we?
(Beat)

Really? All right, we must have a few minutes, so why not? The fifth principle of unarmed combat is…don’t stop. Violence is a terrible thing, a thing to be avoided, but if you decide it is required, that your cause is righteous, then you must keep going until your enemy is defeated, until they are incapacitated and cannot threaten you any longer. If you relax, if you think that striking one blow should be enough, then your enemy will mistake your mercy for weakness and will be encouraged to rise up and attack you again.
(Pause)

Don’t stop. The odds will always be against you, those who want to keep you from doing what you know to be right and true will always be bigger and stronger than you , they will muster weapons of convention and hatred, but if you have once decided to make a stand against them, then don’t stop until you have won.

(As she continues talking, ATHENA retrieves her spear and helmet from where she had put them down earlier and begins to gird herself for battle.)

Girls, I didn’t tell you why my father, Zeus, swallowed my mother, did I? He was afraid. Afraid of me, the daughter he had conceived, afraid of the prophecies that I would be more powerful than him. Even though he was the king commanding of all of the gods of Olympus, throwing lightning bolts from both hands, he feared what I might accomplish. And if I haven’t accomplished much recently, maybe you can change that for me. It’s been a long time since I was Athena Promachos, Athena of the front line, but that changes now.

(ATHENA strikes her spear upon the ground, opening the portal between worlds.)

The door is open and it’s time for you to go, girls. You have lives to live and bodies waiting and you feel yourselves being drawn toward them. You may hear a commotion behind you but don’t look back. Carry on and begin lives full of beauty and without fear. And always remember: you are the beloved of Athena.

(ATHENA puts her helmet on her head and strikes a warlike pose)

Alala!

(The lights fade to black.)

CAST OF CHARACTERS

ARES                                      The God of War.  He is wearing military clothing from an

earlier era or mix of eras.  He has a Mars bar and a Staedtler eraser in his pockets.

SETTING

A place outside of normal spacetime.  The detritus and keepsakes of thousands of years of war – guns, spears, cannons – are piled and scattered about.  Somewhere in the mess is a softball-sized rock.  There is also a large bomb, on which are lights or an illuminated display which will later be switched on.  Front and centre is a chair upon which a god might comfortably sit.  A large blackboard, whiteboard, or similar writing surface has an underlined heading, “ARES, GOD OF…”, and is half-covered with apparently random nouns, most of which – though still readable – have been crossed out, and a marker with which to write.  There is a flip chart, and a calendar.  The audience members have all received ribbons in one of four colours – blue, green, red, white – before entering the theatre.

TIME

The eternal present.

AT RISE:                                            ARES is asleep in a chair, a bottle still partially

clutched in one hand.  His grip on it gradually

loosens, until it drops to the floor, waking him.

Startled, he leaps to his feet, ready to defend

himself.

ARES

Shiva, no!

(ARES is initially disoriented)

Gods should never dream, for we dream new worlds, and those worlds dream new gods.

                                                            (ARES perceives the audience)

Who are all of you and why are you here?  Or did I dream you?  No, wait, I remember.  You’re here because I commanded (BEAT), no, I requested your presence, because there was something (BEAT). I remember, I want something from you.  Hah!  That puts the shoe on the other foot doesn’t it, the idea that a god might want something from you?  Most of the time it’s one way only, isn’t it, you’re the one who wants something when you’re saying “please save me from drowning”, or “please help me win the gold medal”, or “please don’t let my boyfriend figure out that I have a secret crush on his sister.”  Sorry human in the second row, that was probably supposed to be just between us, wasn’t it?  Never mind, look, the point is that most gods don’t want anything from you, which is why the Romans gave you a word for that needy minority of the gods who are always wanting you to pray, or sacrifice goats, or build cathedrals.  “Cult”, from cultus deorum, meaning “cultivate the gods”.  If you believe in a god that wants you to do specific things to cultivate them, to make them feel good about themselves and you, then you are in a cult, and let me assure you that I am not that kind of god.  Well, not now, anyway, not any more.  After all, it’s…

(ARES peers at the audience)

Hmm, what year is this, anyway?  Assuming you’re all dressed in clothing that’s fashionable for your time, then it’s 2019.  Hmm.

(ARES looks at a calendar)

Ah, 2022.  Never mind, in this timeline, you couldn’t spend much time shopping at the mall in the last couple of years, could you. 

(ARES looks at his own archaic clothing, and in the

course of the play changes into less military garb.)

Where was I?  Right, cults.  They’re distasteful and passé.  Telling people what they have to wear on their heads, or how they have to spend their Sundays, or Saturdays, that’s not for me.  Except for today.  I want something from you, and here’s what it is:  I want to know what you want.  What do you want from me, what do you want now, as opposed to seventy years ago, or seven thousand years ago?  Because, frankly, you always want something, don’t you?  Let me show you something.

(ARES rummages about, then holds up a softball-sized stone.)

Take Gurk, Gurk knew exactly what he wanted.  You remember Gurk, little fellow, hairy, flattish face, maybe three feet tall, not quite as smart as a border collie?  No?  You should, he was your great-grandfather, many times removed.  Admittedly, it was a long time ago, maybe three million years.  Gurk and his extended family lived near a marsh where a lot of bulrushes grew.  Bulrushes:  try eating them and you’ll never complain about oatmeal again.  Absolutely disgusting, but they’re easy food to pick, and they grow year-round even in bad years, so life for Gurk was about as good as it got in those days.  When I saw him, though, he was having a bad day.  It was stinking hot, so humid that everything was dripping, and Gurk was standing on the edge of that marsh, holding this rock, this very rock, his friends were all standing beside him, and they were holding rocks too.  The reason they were holding rocks was that another (BEAT) people, tribe, whatever they were, other creatures that looked almost just like Gurk and his friends had shown up, and they wanted to drive Gurk’s group away from that marsh so that they could have it for themselves.  You have to understand, this was a zero-sum situation:  whichever group got control of that marsh would live, the other group would all starve to death.  One group would get to pass on its slightly different, proto-human DNA into the future, and the other group would not.  It would be as if they had never existed.  And what was the one significant difference between these two little bands of hominids, what tiny spark of imagination did Gurk have in the cells of his baseball-sized brain that made him different from his counterpart in the other group?  Gurk asked me for help.  I have no idea why he thought I existed.  I’m not even sure that that I did exist before that moment.  If I did, I can’t say I’d given you apes any more thought than I’d given crabs or crocodiles.  But he asked me for help, and I helped him.  Basically, what he was visualizing when he spoke to me was that I would make his rock fly straighter and faster and further, and the other fellow’s rock fly less straight, and that I’d help him be brave, so that he wouldn’t run away, or be paralyzed by fear and shit himself while somebody knocked his skull in, so that’s what I did.  I helped him.  If I hadn’t, none of you would be here.  Oh, yes, some of you in the first row, I can definitely see the family resemblance to great-grandfather Gurk.  And let me tell you, Gurk believed that I had helped him, and he was very grateful.  And that’s pretty much how it went for a very long time.  Five thousand years ago when the Sumerians were fighting the Elamites, it was all “make my spear fly straight and don’t let me shit myself”.  At Crécy, “let my arrow fly straight”, at Waterloo “let my musket ball fly straight”, in Vietnam and Afghanistan “let my rocket fly straight”, and always, always, of course, with the postscript “don’t let me shit myself”.  Thousands of years of unsoiled undergarments, that has been my greatest gift to humanity.

(writes the words “UNDERGARMENTS” on the board, ponders it for a moment, then looks at the rock again.)

Why did I hang onto Gurk’s rock for all these years?  Sentiment, I suppose.  But recently I asked myself that question that troubles both gods and humans:  does it bring me joy?  And the answer was that it doesn’t, and so to one of you, the descendants of Gurk, I return Gurk’s rock. 

(ARES gives the rock to an audience member)

Treasure it always.  After all, it helped make me who I am.

(ARES appears to listen to a question from the audience)

Hmmm?  Who am I?  You really don’t know who I am?  I’m Ares.  Ares?  The god of war?  No?  Ah, maybe you know me better by my Roman name, Mars.  Still no?  You realize that they did name the fourth planet from the sun after me?  And, while it may seem less significant, a very popular chocolate bar. 

(ARES produces a Mars bar, gives it to an audience member)

Here, you can have this, don’t treasure it always, they go stale. 

(ARES produces and contemplates a Staedtler eraser)

Also, strangely, my name and face appear on these German pencil erasers.  What’s the symbolism there?  Can war erase mistakes?  I don’t think so.  War is a mistake that should be erased?  Maybe, who knows?

(ARES gives the eraser to an audience member)

Anyway, you still don’t remember me?  Awkward.  Okay, you’ve seen the movie “Wonder Woman”, right, not the unfortunate sequel with Kristin Weig, the original one?  You remember the bad guy?  That’s me.  Not a very flattering portrayal, is it, even aside from the casting of David Thewlis as me rather than, say, Brad Pitt or Chris Evans.  And, frankly, I don’t come off any better in “Percy Jackson” or any other movie or television depiction.  Too bad, since I’m a bit of a movie buff. 

(writes the words “MOVIES” on the board)

Now that I think of it, that might be why some of you didn’t recognize me.  Gods appear differently to individual mortals depending upon their cultural backgrounds.  Look at me now.  Most of you probably perceive me as a younger, taller, more muscular version of Arnold Schwarzenegger, right?  If some of you don’t, well, that says something about you.  Anyway, getting back to “Wonder Woman”, it’s the worst, because – spoiler alert – Wonder Woman kills me because she’s mad at me for starting the First World War.  Really?  If I was responsible for starting the First World War, and Wonder Woman killed me, then who started World War Two?  And the Korean War and the Six-Day War and the Vietnam War and whatever that was in Afghanistan? Remember when you were in high school, and you – like every other sullen, resentful teenager in the past century – had to write an essay on the causes of the First World War, apparently you didn’t have to bother discussing the arms race, or the secret alliances, or the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, you could have just written “it was Ares’ fault” and gotten full marks.  Wars apparently start not because of the arrogance or stupidity of actual human beings, no, it seems that it’s all just because of some interfering god, namely me. 

(writes the words “INTERFERENCE” on the board)

Now I know what you’re thinking:  that’s just the movies, no one actually believes in me or any of the other gods anymore.  Well, maybe one.  Or three?  And I won’t say that you’re wrong, but maybe you just don’t even realize which gods you believe in.  So suppose you’re Roman Catholic and you’re in the artillery, in a warzone, and you’re wondering if you’ll zero in on the enemy’s position before they zero in on yours, and as you’re sweating away, loading and unloading artillery shells just as fast as you can, you still find time to pray.  To whom?  “God”?  No, you figure “God” might be too busy, and that even though he sees the sparrow fall, he might not see you, so you pray to the patron saint of artillery, don’t you?  And for forty thousand dollars, who is the patron saint of artillery?  Bong, time’s up!  Saint Barbara, of course.  Nice girl, lovely girl, one small problem, she lived in a tower her whole life before her father beheaded her.  So since Saint Barbara’s still dealing with some serious parental issues, who do you suppose answers those prayers from soldiers in the artillery?  Me, because you remember the whole “make my artillery shells fly straight” discussion we had earlier, right?  And suppose as well that if you’re on a warship and you see on the radar that a couple of enemy fighters are inbound, then you pray to the patron saint of navies, don’t you?  And who is that?  St. Andrew, of course!  Well Saint Andrew is busy with haggises and bagpipes, isn’t he, getting warmed up for the next Burns Night supper, so it’s me again taking those prayers.  So even after all this time and a thousand years after people supposedly stopped believing in me, being the god of war keeps me pretty busy.  And it really has been a long time.  That business with Gurk is my first memory.  I certainly wasn’t Greek three million years ago, and neither was anyone else.  There were no “twelve Olympians”.  And how I ended up with Zeus as my father and Hera as my mother is a complete mystery to me, but then most of you probably feel just as mystified when you look at your parents.  But while we’re on the topic of my family, I think that some of you may have had a conversation with my half-sister, Athena, yes?  Or she lectured at you for a while, which is her notion of conversation.  Did she mention my name?  Say nice things about me?  Or – and this is just a guess – did she say that she was the goddess of righteous warfare, and in a kind of sneering fingernails on a blackboard tone imply that there’s a stupid kind of war, and that that’s the kind I’m in charge of?  She did, didn’t she? Don’t you just love that idea, that there’s two kinds of war, a good kind and a bad kind?  The good kind must be where our benevolent king fights against their tyrannical ruler, inspired by our true religion as opposed to their primitive superstitions, where we seek to preserve the traditional way of life of our noble populace against their strange customs of their brutish savages? Is that how the other side sees it, I wonder.  See, when I look at war – which I do a lot – it looks to me as though what they’re about is mostly either “we’ve got stuff and you can’t have it” or “we don’t have any stuff, and we want you to give us your stuff”.  Anyway, we were talking about my sister, Athena.  The smart one. I was thinking about her because I’ve been a bit out of sorts recently, it’s not just the Wonder Woman thing, and it’s not just that no one believes in me anymore.  And it’s not even thousands of years of watching young men die in the litter of their own scattered limbs and intestines.

(ARES appears to listen to a question)

Hmm?  No, it doesn’t bother me, all that pain and misery, I can wall it off, you see, I keep all those memories of human suffering in a sort of mental storage locker, the kind of storage locker that’s on the edge of town that you have to drive to, and then enter the code to get into the parking lot, and then enter it again to get into the building, and again to get into the elevator, and then you have to remember the combination of your padlock before you can open the big sliding door.  And I never, never, never open that storage locker, otherwise, I’d probably be crazy.  But, you know, some of the stuff inside has been leaking out recently, because it’s so full, but that’s not what I wanted to ask you about.  You see, what has me confused is that I hear people talking about “toxic masculinity” and I realize that they’re talking about me.  Everything I was always supposed to stand for – being strong, keeping your feelings inside, fighting for what you believe in – that’s all bad now, isn’t it?  And it’s the same with war, right?  No one still believes that it leads to technical innovation or that it’s character building, so I just don’t know what I’m supposed to stand for anymore, what I’m supposed to be, and it’s got me worried.  So.  I tried to think about what Athena would do if she was worried about something, and I realized that she would talk it over with one of her smart friends, like Socrates or Einstein or Oprah.  But I don’t have any smart friends, I’ve just got, you know, you.  But you’re good enough, because I’m pretty sure that I only exist because you all wanted me to.  So if now you genuinely want to move on and you want me to move on and be something different, I think that I can do it, but really, that means that you also have to be ready to move on and be something different, and I’m not positive that you are, since not having a god of war means not having wars.  Can you do that?  I don’t know, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and that’s why I’ve brought you here to have a serious chat, because I’ve got some questions I want to ask you and some ideas I want to try out on you.

(ARES pulls a flip chart to the front of the stage)

Let’s start with the questions.  These are just to get your impressions of war, generally, whether it’s good or, you know, bad.  You don’t have to write your answers down.  I’m a god, so I know what you’re thinking.  First question.

(ARES flips to the first page of the flip chart)

Would you personally enlist as a soldier and to go to war if, (a) the Pope said you had to, (b) the King said you had to, (c) Greta Thunberg said you had to?  Okay, surprising answers, but let’s move on.

(ARES flips to the second page of the flip chart)

When you worry about the possibility of war, your main concern is (a) death, (b) property destruction, or (c) new autonomous weapons systems will turn against humanity once Skynet becomes self-aware?  Right, I’m not the only movie buff, it seems.

(ARES flips to the third page of the flip chart)

Yes or no question, would wars be less common if military uniforms weren’t so darned attractive?

(ARES flips to the fourth page of the flip chart)

Another yes or no question, is it time to exclude men from the armed forces and make them women only?

(ARES flips to the fifth page of the flip chart)

Last question.  If you were the god of war and wanted a change of occupation, what would you do instead?  No, that’s okay, I didn’t think you’d have any answers for that one, but I do know that if I’m going to stop being the god of war, then we all have to let go of a few things, not just Gurk’s rock, but some other things too, and I have three of them I want to suggest for your consideration.

(TAKES A REMOTE CONTROL DEVICE FROM THE STACK OF PARAPHERNALIA, HOLDS IT ALOFT)

The first thing to let go of is feeling afraid all the time.   You remember when you were little?  There were other people, people who were different from you, and some of them were bigger than you, and sometimes they weren’t very nice, were they?  Maybe you got pushed down in the schoolyard.  Maybe they told you that your Backstreet Boys lunch kit wasn’t cool.  And that made you feel (BEAT) insecure, right?  That’s how everybody feels!  What people do when they feel insecure is get together with other people who are the same as them, so that collectively they’ll be bigger and stronger than all those people who they find threatening, and that’s how you find yourself with an army.  And a navy.  And an air force.  But it’s just never enough, is it, because those people who are different from you, they’ve got armies too, and don’t even get started on all the criminals that you thinks are out there, so it turns out that all the locks and bars and guns are just never enough to make you feel really secure, are they?  So what if we could do something about that, something to make you feel really secure, then maybe we won’t need to have quite so many wars, hmm?  Who’s got a smart watch?  Hands up!

(GESTURES TO A PERSON IN THE AUDIENCE)

You, just hold your arm up in the air for a few seconds.

(DOES SOMETHING WITH THE REMOTE CONTROL)

Perfect.  I have something for you.

(ROLLS THE VERY HEAVY BOMB FORWARD.  IT NOW HAS A BLINKING CONTROL PANEL.)

Have you ever owned an atomic bomb before?  They’re great, though really only for a very limited range of uses, and this one is now synchronized to your heartbeat!  If your heart stops, this baby goes off.  Pretty cool, huh?  Is anybody going to cut you off in traffic now?  If they do, one thing leads to another, they throw a punch, you hit your head, no more heartbeat, boom, there goes the whole city.  From now on, the primary concern of everyone you know, everyone you meet, everyone within a ten-mile radius around you is going to be how to keep you happy and healthy.  You’re feeling secure now, right?  No need to thank me, it’s fine.  Oh, now I probably should have asked this earlier before I did the heartbeat synchronizing thing, but (BEAT) you’re in pretty good health, right?  You work out, watch what you eat?  That’s good.  And you keep the watch fully charged all the time, right?  Great, great.  Oh, by the way, absolutely, positively do not get more than one hundred meters or so from this thing, okay?  And I’m hoping you came in a truck or a van since, frankly, it’s pretty heavy. 

(WRITES “REALLY HEAVY THINGS” ON THE BOARD)

Okay, that’s insecurity taken care of, and if you’re not always worrying about other people messing with you, maybe you won’t feel the need to go to war with them, and we can all go on to other things.  Because, again, I’m thinking that if you didn’t need war, you wouldn’t need a god of war, freeing me up to be god of something else.

(LOOKS AT THE BLACKBOARD)

Though I’m still not exactly sure of what that something else might be.  Anyway, I don’t want this to be about me, it’s absolutely about you, and what you want, and the second thing you want that’s connected to war is your need to belong.  Just like Gurk, you worry if you don’t feel part of a group.  To you or me, looking at Gurk and his little band, they looked just like the other monkeys, the ones they were fighting.  But that’s not how Gurk thought about it.  To Gurk, the other people in his band were everything.  Those were the people who picked the bugs out of his fur, the ones he could count on to throw their poop at the lions while he was running for the trees, and really, isn’t that what you all still want?  I see it in the clubs you join and the sports teams you support and the clothes you wear, all the ways you signal that you belong to something, that you’re not alone.  That’s fine when you’re cheering for a hockey teams – even the Toronto Maple Leafs, sort of – but it’s easy to forget that people who are on different teams are still people, and the same with people who look a little bit different from you, or wear different things on their heads than you do, and especially people who live in other countries than you.  So someday it would be great if all that great loyalty and group spirit you feel you could maybe expand to include a bigger group than you’ve realized up to now, like maybe (BEAT) humanity.  So, as a baby step, let’s remember what the Romans – who worshipped me, a point in their favour – came up with, namely that all of your loyalty was channeled into whether you were a Blue or a Green or a Red or a White, completely abstract choices not related to where you lived or what you looked like.  Whether you were watching the chariot races, or going to the theatre, it was your completely artificial allegiance to one of those four factions that mattered, not where someone came from or what they looked like.  If you were a Green supporter in Constantinople, then the Green supporters in what’s now England or France or Algeria or Jordan, they were your brothers and sisters, and it didn’t matter that they lived somewhere else or looked different from you.  So Green supporters, can you agree that other Greens are your brothers and sisters?

(ARES listens)

Blues, do you agree that Blue supporters are your brothers and sisters, and maybe better than the Greens?

(ARES listens?)

Whites?  Reds?  Everyone?  That’s great, and remember, the point is, if you start thinking of people who live elsewhere as part of your group – Greens in Iraq, Reds in North Korea, Blues in China, Whites in Russia – maybe you won’t get together with your neighbours and, you know, go kill them.

Third idea for not having wars, and this may come as a surprise to you, but you are really awful at choosing your leaders.  I mean, elk and bison and bighorn sheep are better at it than you, and they decide by butting heads.  Stickleback fish let the best-looking fish be the leader, and even though they are not pretty fish, they at least have a better system than you.  Indian jumping ants have antenna duels to decide who the new queens will be, but you?  Your leaders aren’t the smartest, or the most honest, or the best-looking, or the most altruistic.  And every time you realize that the leader you’ve got is terrible, and that someone else is bound to be better, they never are, are they?  They just get worse and worse, so that you look back and the leader you previously thought was an imbecilic crook now looks like the leading statesman of a golden age.  And it drives you crazy, doesn’t it, because it’s very, very important to you as glorified monkeys to know who your alphas are, and it’s important to me because you keep choosing leaders who blunder into wars while swearing they want peace and drag the rest of you in with them.  So, I’m sorry, I know that letting you have the illusion of free will is important and something I’m supposed to do as a god, but I’m taking this out of your hands.  After careful consideration, the new Global Hegemon, the supreme ruler of planet Earth is…

(ARES flips the last page of the flip chart, showing a poster-sized photograph)

Tom Hanks.  I know, some of you were hoping for Kim Kardashian, but this way you get Rita Wilson too, so it’s going to be great.

So, to sum up, three baby steps.  I’m not saying that these guarantee you’ll definitely do away with war, but it’s a start.  If you can get over your insecurities, remember how much you’ve got in common even with people you don’t know, and get better leaders, then maybe you could do me out of a job.  Maybe you don’t really need a god of war.  Of course, if you decide you’re happy doing what you’ve always done, then I’m definitely the god for you, and we’ll just carry on as we were.  In fact, hang onto Gurk’s rock for now, since if you do have another big war, then you’ll probably find yourself back in the Stone Age, and it could come in handy.  But whatever you decide, don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.  You see, our little discussion has clarified things for me too, because I think it went well.  So the next time your significant other tells you that you have to have a…

(ARES WRITES “SERIOUS CHATS” on the blackboard)

… “serious chat”, like the one that you and I have just had, and you’re thinking “oh, oh”, just remember:  there’s no need to shit yourself, Ares, god of serious chats, is here for you.

(BLACKOUT)

(END)

CAST OF CHARACTERS

JP                                            The past-oriented aspect of what was formerly the

two-faced Roman god Janus, who is somewhat jaded and acerbic

JF                                            The future-oriented aspect of what was formerly the

two-faced Roman god Janus, who is somewhat wide-eyed and innocent               

SETTING

The surprisingly-ordinary abode of the god Janus.  It contains keepsakes from the past 2,700 years, as well as from the future.  These include:

• A boxed set of Harry Potter books;
• Photograph albums;
• A silver coin, about 2 cm in diameter (a denarius);
• An embroidered mission patch.

On the wall, there could be a profile picture of Janus, such as from an ancient bas-relief.

TIME

The present.

AT RISE:                                               (Prior to the rise, there is a loud

tearing sound, like two strips of Velcro being separated, and the scene opens with JP and JF staggering about in pain)

JP

You told me that wouldn’t hurt!

JF

You told me that it would be worth it!  At least I think you did, why can’t I remember?

JP

You can’t remember?

JF

No!

JP

If you can’t remember, that must mean that you’re the part of me (BEAT), of us now I suppose, that looks to the future, and I must be the part that looks to the past.  We knew that if we separated one of us would lose their memories of the past and the other would lose their ability to look into the future.

JF

We did?

                                                            JP

I guess you’re the one that lost their memories of the past.  Well, future boy, the important thing is that it worked.  We’re free!

(JP AND JF ENJOY A MOMENT OF

EXUBERANCE)

JF

Wait, are you taller than me?  How is that right, surely we should be the same height?

JF (SCRUTINIZING JP’S FACE

UNCOMFORTABLY CLOSELY)

Wow, you are so good looking.  I would have thought we’d look exactly the same, like twins, that seeing you would be like looking in the mirror and seeing myself, but that’s not right, is it?  Am I as good looking as you?

JP

Almost.  I think we can agree that we are both very, very attractive.  And you know what that means?

JF

I absolutely do not.  I don’t remember what anything means right now.

JP

We talked about it, it’s a big part of why we separated.

JF

If that conversation took place in the past, it’s apparently gone from my mind, so just tell me.

JP

After twenty-seven hundred years, we are finally going to get to have sex.

JF (HORRIFIED)

What, with each other?

JP

No, with someone else!  With anyone else!

JF

Wait, you’re telling me that we haven’t had sex in twenty-seven hundred years?

JP

It’s not like we didn’t try, but someone would come over, we’d start to get into it, and they’d say, “I just can’t while you-know-who is in the room” or they’d ask “can’t we be alone”, and the answer was always “no”, because neither you nor I could ever, ever really be alone.

JF

Didn’t they have personals ads, or Internet dating sites in the past?  There must be some subset of the population whose kink is making out with one half of a two-faced Roman god while the other half reads a book or something.

JP

Reads a book?  Is that what you think was happening?  No, it was all “What’s going on back there?  When is it my turn?  Flip over and….”

JF

All right, all right, I get the picture.  It just seems a bit (BEAT) trivial in terms of being a reason to split one, single being – a god – into two halves after thousands of years.

JP

It wasn’t really just the sex thing.  I’m surprised that you can’t remember, since you were the one who used to complain about every single embarrassing incident that ever happened to us in the past twenty-seven hundred years because of having two faces attached to one body.

JF

I vaguely remember some of it.  All the times when we tried to walk in two directions at once, like we were part of some slapstick comedy routine, or both tried to answer the phone.

JP

Those occasions when someone was taking a picture and they’d say “turn around so we can see your face.”

JF

And we would, wouldn’t we, again and again, so that we ended up spinning like a top.  Were others unkind to us?  Did they all treat us like some sort of freak?

JP

Mostly, yes.  But we did enjoy a brief period of popularity beginning in 1997.  (TAKES HARRY POTTER BOXED SET OFF BOOKSHELF) That was the year that the first Harry Potter book was published, so at the Hallowe’en party that year, the other gods thought we were being very au courant by coming as the fused-together Voldemort and Professor Quirrell.   Of course, every year after that, it was “Oh look, Janus is dressed up as Voldemort and Professor Quirrell (BEAT) again, what a surprise”. 

JF

Why didn’t they ever think we might be the fused-together Harry and Ron from the Harry Potter book number twelve?

JP

Because there are only seven Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling hasn’t written a Harry Potter number 12.

JF

What, no “Harry Potter and the Enchanted Nursing Home”?  Oh, right, that’s in the future, she hasn’t written it yet.

JP

Why would J.K. Rowling write another Harry Potter book?  Surely the billions of dollars she’s earned from the first seven should allow her to live comfortably in her Scottish castle for the rest of her days, eating kippers and flouncing about in her wizarding robes.

JF

Don’t you remember, after Scotland separates from the UK she spends her entire fortune on her campaign to become the Queen of Scotland.  You know, “Caledonexit”.  Which, by the way, finally cures the British of using “exit” as a suffix every time someone wants to leave Britain. Which is just as well, because otherwise when Keith Richards moves to Mars in the year 2102, they’d have to call it “Keithexit”, which just sounds stupid.

JP

Can you really see into the future?  I remember that we used to be able to do it when we were one person, but it seems so unreal now.  I mean, the future doesn’t exist yet, does it?

JF

Some parts of it do, or they might just as well, because of their inevitability.  Which reminds me, don’t drop the Harry Potter boxed…

(THE HARRY POTTER BOX SET FALLS ON JP’S FOOT)

…set on your foot, oh never mind.  So I can pretty clearly see anything that happens in the next few minutes.  After that, most things get blurry round the edges, because they’re just possibilities.  Not everything, of course, some things are so unavoidable that they stand in the timestream the same way that a giant boulder stands in a river, just forcing everything to flow around them, and those look absolutely clear to me.  The Yellowstone supervolcano eruption of 2026, Taylor Swift becoming President of the United States, things like that.  What I don’t get now is the past.  Can you really remember everything that’s ever happened to us?

JP

Well, back until Roman times anyway.  Before that, it’s a blank, of course.

JF

Why a blank?

JP

We didn’t exist yet?

JF

What about the Greeks, didn’t they worship us?  I mean, they had all the same gods as the Romans, right, but just with different names?

JP

Almost all the same gods, all of them but us.  You see the Romans needed all those other gods because they had no backstory.  All of a sudden they were the world’s superpower, but they didn’t feel like they had a real culture to go along with that power since they’d sprung up out of nowhere, so they looked back at the Greeks and appropriated big chunks of their culture, including their gods.  It’s like when the British in the nineteenth century looked back at some imagined Scotland of the past, and all started wearing kilts.  The Greeks, though, they thought there weren’t any great civilizations to look back at, they thought they were the first people in the world living their “civilized” way of life, so they were only looking forward, and they thought that things would continue as they were forever, unchanging, that they would be the apex civilization forever.  The Romans, though, they could see that might not be true, because they’d conquered the Greeks and all the other civilizations that existed before them, the Phoenicians and Egyptians and all the rest plus, they thought that their empire would continue into the future forever and ever, so they needed some god that could personify the perspective of looking both backward and forward in time, and taa-dah, I was born.

JF

“We”.

JP

What?

JF

You said “I”, but it’s “we”, “we” were born.

JP

Oh.  Sorry, you and I being two different people is taking some getting used to.

JF

You make it sound as if we came into existence just because the Romans wanted us to.

JP

Where do you think gods come from?  You know what Xenophanes said.

JF

If he said it in the past, then no, no I don’t, actually.

JP

It was only twenty-six hundred years ago, practically yesterday.  Anyway, he wrote “if oxen or lions had hands and could draw and do the work with their hands that men do, horses would have drawn the form of gods like horses and oxen gods like oxen.”

JF

Wow.  I guess that’s profound, is it?  So why couldn’t the horses and oxen hold crayons in their teeth and draw?

JP

Okay, forget the horses and oxen. You remember what Ludwig Feuerbach wrote in 1851, no, of course you don’t.  It doesn’t matter anyway, Ludwig Feuerbach wasn’t a celebrity, so what he said didn’t count, just like now.  But, half a century later, Sigmund Freud  – who was a celebrity, so everyone remembered – wrote exactly the same thing in 1900:  “der mensch schuf Gott nach dem seinigen.”  Man made god in his image, which, of course, is a play on Genesis 1:27, which said God created man in his image.

JF

This Freud, some sort of theologian, was he?

JP

Well, he had views on religion, saw it as wish fulfillment, the need for a father figure, so I suppose so, yes.  But the point is, the Romans felt the need for a god that could look both forward and backward in time, so they created us, just like humans in all times and places have created the gods they felt they needed.

JF

And what, worshipped us?

JP

Like gods.  No, that’s not right, not “like” a god, you and me, we literally were a god, and not just any god, we were huge!  Every feast throughout the year, in honour of every other god, would always begin by ritually invoking us.  Us, the great god Janus!  We were the most important god in the entire Roman pantheon, right up there with Jupiter.

JF

So did they name a planet after us?

JP

What?

JF

A planet.  Jupiter got a planet named after him, so did most of the other big gods, Mercury, Venus, Mars.  So is there a planet Janus out there somewhere?

JP

Well, no.  They did name a month after us, though, January, the very first month in the year, and they still decorate things with our picture at the start of the new year when they have a big New Year’s feast, with fireworks and paper hats and hangovers.

JF

That’s pretty good.  Did they name anything else after us?

JP

Janitors.  Because, you know, we’re the god of doors, and the Latin word for door was “janus”, so a janitor was originally a doorkeeper or porter, therefore….

JF

Janitors are important.  Things would get pretty messy if there were no janitors, having their noble profession named after us is nothing to be ashamed of.  Is anything else named after us?

JP

The Society of Janus is the second-oldest BDSM organization in the United States.

JF

BDSM?

JP

It stands for bondage, dominance, submission, and masochism.

JF

Yes, thank you, I know what it stands for.  And the society named after us is only the second oldest?

JP

Yes.

(BEAT)

JF

Right, moving on then, what plans, exactly, did we make for after breaking up into two different beings?  You mentioned the sex part, which I now feel a bit awkward even saying out loud, given the BDSM reference, despite the fact that we were one single person until a very short while ago and presumably we didn’t have any secrets from each other before then, but I’m guessing that we must have had more than just hooking up in mind for our separate lives.  Was there something important we wanted to accomplish that we couldn’t do as a conjoined being?

JP

No, not really.

JF

Were there perhaps two different crucial, divine tasks that needed doing in two different parts of the cosmos at the same time?

JP

Nothing I can think of, no.

JF

Can you give me any hint, some clue of what thinking led to us splitting up?

JP

We were in IKEA.

JF

IKEA?

JP

It’s a furniture store.

JF

I do know that, there are IKEA stores in the future.  I’m just surprised that a purveyor of flat pack household goods would figure into a significant decision by an ancient and powerful deity regarding its own personal integrity.  But do go on.

JP

We’d gone in to buy some tealights and some new bar stools.

JF

Bar stools?

JP

The old ones were getting a bit tatty, and we couldn’t sit in regular chairs because one of our two faces would get pushed back into the cushions and wouldn’t be able to see.  But in the showroom, there were people sitting in high-backed armchairs like Poangs and Strandmons and Remstas and Oskarshamns, and they all looked so comfortable.  And then we walked through the bed showroom and people were lying down (BEAT) on their backs!  With their heads resting on pillows!  It turns out that twenty-six percent of humans aren’t side sleepers, they can sleep on their sides or their backs, whatever they want.

JF

So just to be clear, because we had two faces on one head, we always had to sleep on our side?

JP

Yes.

JF

Which I deduce that seventy-four percent of human beings do voluntarily anyway?

JP

Correct.

JF

And the fact that we couldn’t do what only a minority of human beings do anyway, namely sleeping on their backs or face down, is what made us decide to give up the one thing for which we were famous, the attribute for which we were – according to you – created, namely the ability to look both forward and backward in time, is that right?

JP

It sounds a bit silly when you put it like that.

JF

It seems to me that there was more going on than just armchairs and mattresses.

JP

What do you mean?

JF

I’m just saying, it must have been like when couples break up, that it’s always really about some huge underlying problems, but that the catalyst, the thing that sets them off, is something petty and insignificant, like leaving their dirty coffee cup on the counter instead of putting it in the dishwasher, or mispronouncing “risible”.  Look at humans.

(JP STARES DISTANTLY AT THE AUDIENCE)

JF

Wait!  What are you doing?

JP

I’m looking at humans.

JF

I meant it figuratively, not literally.  (STARES DISTANTLY AT AUDIENCE)  Oh, great, now you’ve got me doing it too.

JP (POINTING AT AUDIENCE)

Look at that one.  She’s watching a play.

JF

Is she enjoying it?

JP

Yes, at least she thinks she is, but she’s wondering why playwrights these days always want to break the fourth wall, she thinks it’s vulgar.

JF

The fellow beside her, he’s watching it too, he’s thinking how much better it would be it Ricky Gervais and Emma Thompson were playing the leads.  Look away, look away!

(BOTH LOOK AWAY, SLIGHTLY DAZED) 

JP

The thing with humans is that you can’t look at them for too long, or you end up getting immersed in their lives, the wet, squishy beginnings, the bit at the end where they all stop breathing, and all of what they squeeze in to the middle.  Watching them makes for an interesting diversion, but you don’t want it to turn into one of those obsessive hobbies, like ant farming or parkour.

JF

But if they’re like us, or we’re like them, then surely it can be helpful to consider what they do when they’re in a situation like we’re in, when two beings that were previously joined together become detached.

JP

You’re speaking of marriage and divorce.

JF

Yes.

JP

Something I’ve wondered:  since about half of the humans who get married stay married forever and the other half get divorced, which is it supposed to be? Are divorces failed marriages or are ongoing marriages failed divorces?

JF

I don’t think it matters, what matters is that humans know what to do when they split up, since even the ones who were never married have often been in some sort of paired relationship.  Here’s what we have to do.  One of us has to look at some random group of humans and scan their memories of what happened when they severed their past relationships.  The other has to make sure they don’t look for so long that they get caught up in the minutiae of their existence.

JP

All right, if you look for too long, I’ll shake you or slap you or something.

JF

Why do you presume that I’m the one who’s going to look at them?

JP

I’m the one who has memories of what it was like looking into humans’ minds in the past.  You don’t, right?

JF

Right.

JP

So you’re probably thinking that it can’t be that bad looking inside humans’ minds, right?

JF

Right.

JP

Off you go, then.

(JF VISIBLY BRACES, THEN LOOKS AT THE AUDIENCE)

JF

Holy me, it’s horrible!

JP

Who do you see, what are they thinking?

JF

It’s that same group of people, and they’re still watching that same play!

JP

Focus!  Just look at their thoughts and memories about splitting up.  Why did they do it, how did they handle it?

JF

Okay, okay, I’ve got it.  (JF LOOKS AWAY FROM THE AUDIENCE) I know the things that we have to do now, the things that humans do when they break up a relationship.  You might want to write these down.  One, decide who gets our friends.  Two, divide up our stuff.  Three, one of us has to move out.

JP

Is that all?

JF

Well, those are the main points.  There are some other things that they all seem to do when they’re about to break up, I’m not sure if they’re important, but I guess we might as well get them out of the way.

(JF SPENDS ABOUT A MINUTE SIGHING DEEPLY, VISIBLY POUTING, SLAMMING THINGS, THROWING CLOTHING INTO A SUITCASE, STORMING OFFSTAGE AND BACK ONSTAGE, GESTICULATING, AND WEEPING IN FRUSTRATION, WHILE JR WATCHES IMPASSIVELY, ENDING IN JF EMBRACING JP IN A BIG HUG.)

JP

Are you done?

JF

Oh, yes.  You understand, that was the abbreviated version, it would normally be spread out over a longer period of time.

JP

And what’s the point?

JF

I’ve no idea.  (BEAT) But, if I had to speculate, it’s because if you’ve promised to love someone and live with them forever, and then you change your mind, it would be a bit anti-climactic to just say, “I’ve changed my mind, so long and don’t forget to water the aspidistra.”

JP

Did you find out why they break up?

JF

You were quite right about that.  There usually are big underlying reasons.  Mostly it’s to do with evolutionary biology, the fact that human babies are born helpless and stay that way for years, so human couples are genetically programmed to stay together for just long enough that they can look after a child until it’s old enough to look after itself.  Sometimes, though, it’s because human personalities continue to develop over long periods of time, so that two people who are compatible when they’re young may develop along different lines and end up being incompatible.

JP

It must be difficult for humans to form pair bonds when they know that.

JF

Oh, no, they don’t know it.  Either they are completely unaware of it or it’s taboo to ever acknowledge it, I couldn’t tell which, but when humans form couples, they have to at least pretend to believe that it’s forever, and when they break up, they have to firmly believe that it’s because one of them forgets birthdays or balls their socks up instead of folding them..

JP

How odd.  But you said that despite that, they do have established procedures for what happens when they break up, and that if we follow their example, one of us has to move out.

JF

Yes, and when I look into the future (PRETENDS TO PEER INTO THE FUTURE), I can see that it’s you.  Good luck finding an apartment, I wish I could tell you that gets easier in the future, but it doesn’t.

JP

You also said that we have to divide up our friends.

JF

Yes.

JP

That’s easy, we haven’t got any.

JF

We’ve been alive for twenty-seven hundred years and we don’t have any friends?  How is that possible?

JP

We hang out with the other gods, sure, but none of them are comfortable being around someone who remembers all of the mistakes they’ve made in the past and sees all the mistakes they’re going to make in the future.

JF

What about humans, do we have any human friends?

JF

I wouldn’t say “friends”, but we’ve had some good times with pop stars.  You won’t remember this, but back in 1967, we were there in Michigan for the inaugural appearance by Iggy Pop and the Stooges?

JF

Was it by any chance Hallowe’en, so we could blend in?

JP

And in 1969 we saw David Bowie onstage at that huge pub in Gravesend, the General Gordon, when the crowd booed him offstage, and in 1974 we partied with Led Zeppelin and Bad Company when they launched a new record label at Chislehurst Caves, with naked wrestlers and a naked woman in a coffin covered in jelly and the servers were all dressed as nuns.

JF

It was Hallowe’en again both times, wasn’t it?  Look, I don’t remember those events, but I agree that if people only wanted to be around us at Hallowe’en they weren’t real friends.  Let’s not worry about dividing up our friends for now, and move on to dividing up our stuff.  (LOOKS AROUND) We don’t seem to actually have a lot to divide.

JP

Don’t be fooled, we’ve got warehouses full of twenty-seven hundred years’ worth of stuff.  Doors mostly.

JF

Doors?

JP

It’s like with humans.  Suppose one of them goes on vacation to India or Africa and decides to buy a little sculpture of an elephant as a souvenir.  Their friends see it, and next time that their birthday or Christmas comes around, they think “she bought that little elephant, she must like elephants”, and next thing they’ve got elephant salt and pepper shakers, and elephant cookie jars, and elephant beer mugs, and it’s too late to say, “look, I’m really not that keen on elephants, stop giving them to me.”  We were the god of doors, because doors symbolized transitions, which is what we were really the god of, transitions between life and death, youth and adulthood, war and peace, and so on.  But everyone gave us gifts of literal doors, temple doors, city gates, fortress doors, thousands and thousands of doors.

JF

You can have those, I don’t mind.

JP

Does that mean that I’m the one who gets to keep being the god of doorways?

JF

All right, sure.

JP

What do you want, then?

JF

Are we the god of anything else?

JP

Weddings and New Year.

JF

I’ll be the god of those.

JP

What about physical things?  What about (PICKING COIN FROM SHELF) this silver denarius with a depiction of us on one side and of the goddess Roma on the other.

JF

No, you can have that.  I want that mission patch, though.

JP

Mission patch?  I don’t remember a mission patch.

JF

You wouldn’t, it’s from the Ares IV mission to Mars in 2032. 

JP

How can you have a memento from something that hasn’t happened yet?

JF

Hard to explain, but it’s because in this timeline it’s not going to happen at all now, so no one remembers it but me.  It goes badly.  Someone should remember their sacrifice.

JP

Speaking of remembering, you should have these.  (PULLS PHOTO ALBUM FROM SHELF)  They’re photographs, some we took, some with us in them.

JF

Photographs?  Look, I’m the god who looks into the future now, limitless opportunities, broad horizons, goal-oriented, I don’t know that I really need any photograph albums or to be thinking about the past.

JP

Let’s have a look.  Here’s one of us in Bologna in 1088, we were there for the founding of the first university in Europe.

JF

Wow, could you really buy a Baloney U sweatshirt on the very first day?

JP

And here’s one of us on vacation in the Bahamas.

JF

Looks like we were having fun.

JP

Yes, the photo was taken on October 11, 1492.  Columbus arrived on October 12, 1492, which – because of our ability to see into the future – sort of harshed our mellow, as the young people say.

JF

Not if this is 2024, no they don’t.

JP

Look, the thing is (BEAT) we are our memories.  It’s our memories, our experiences of every good and bad thing that ever happened to us that makes us what we are.  When we split into two beings, I didn’t realize that you would lose that, that you would be left with no past.  If you don’t remember our past, you should at least have these photo albums so that you can look and see what it was like.

JF

Thanks.  But you know, you lost something too.  Being able to see into the future, to know how our todays create our tomorrows.  Now that you’ve lost that, well, next time, it might be something more serious than just dropping a book onto your foot.

JP

And yet humans manage it.

JF

What do you mean?

JP

Everyone from Thoreau to the Buddha tells them they should live in the present, but really, isn’t that all they ever do?  When it comes to remembering the past, ask a human to really remember even the most intense experiences, like what a toothache really feels like, or childbirth, and they just can’t do it.  And expecting them to remember the lessons of history?  It’s no wonder that poor Ares can’t seem to stop them from blundering into wars, or that Athena keeps hoping they’ll gain enough wisdom to treat each other decently.

JF

They’re just as bad about the future as they are about the past.  They’ve known for one hundred and twenty-seven years that burning fossil fuels will result in climate change, but they still drive around in fossil fuel powered vehicles, and heat their water and their homes with fossil fuel powered boilers, and cook their food on fossil fuel powered stoves, and every day when I look ahead, the collapse of the bees and other pollinators becomes less blurry, and the extinction of all the fish becomes more defined, and humans, well, after a certain point not too far in the future it becomes difficult to perceive any humans at all.  (BEAT)  Did you and I try to help, to teach them about the past, warn them about the future?

JP

We tried.  We had to try. (IN BRANDO VOICE)  “You was my brother, Charlie. You shoulda looked out for me a little bit.”

JF

What’s that?

JP

Oh, just a quote from an old movie.  It’s about looking out for those who are weaker than you.

JF

Ah, like “With great power comes great responsibility.”

JP

Spider-Man.

JF

No, it’s from President Swift’s inaugural address.

JP

If humans create the gods they need, then maybe – for now – they still need a god who can do what they apparently can’t, who can remember the past and look ahead into the future.

JF

I knew you were going to say that.

JP

So when humans split up, do they sometimes try getting back together again?

JF

Yes.  It doesn’t usually work out, though.

JP

They know that, and yet they still keep trying?

JF

Yes, it’s one of those charming things about humans that makes us gods keep paying attention, the way they undertake the most impossible of tasks and keep trying through failure after failure, and all the time, they still imagine that we gods have got their backs.

(JP AND JF STAND BACK TO BACK, BUT STILL SLIGHTLY APART FOR NOW)

JP

Back to back, gods and humans, it’s a charming picture.

JF

At least humans have backs.  On three, one, two,….

(JP AND JF BRACE THEMSELVES AND BOTH START TO MOVE BACK TOWARD EACH OTHER)

JF

…three!

(A SOUND LIKE THUNDER, THEN BLACKOUT)

(END)

CAST OF CHARACTERS

ANNIE                                                A young woman.  She wears ripped trousers and an

ankle monitor

ANNA McBRIDE                              A hologram of an early 20^th century suffragette.  She carries a placard with “Deeds, Not Words” written on it.

DR. BARBEAU                                  An older man, director of the museum

SETTING

The 3^rd floor of a museum in Victoria, which is under renovation.  Unusually for a museum, there are no objects or artefacts, though there could be painted backdrops suggestive of the late 19^th or early 20^th centuries.  There is a chair near a door on one side of the stage.  On the opposite side of the stage from the door, a circle about six feet in diameter is marked on the floor.

TIME

The present.

AT RISE:                                            The stage is empty.  The door opens, but no one                                                                    appears.

ANNIE

(off)

Where am I supposed to go?

BARBEAU

(off)

In, just go in!

            (ANNIE enters, but remains close to the doorway at first as she looks all around,

then hesitantly moves further into the room)

                                                            ANNIE

Okay, I’m in.  But this can’t be the third floor, there’s nothing here.

BARBEAU

Of course it’s the third floor, the elevator literally said the words “third floor” before we got off.  Didn’t you read about this in the newspaper? 

ANNIE

They didn’t let us have newspapers where I was, or Internet access either.  There was a library, but it was all paperback novels, the kind that have men without shirts on the covers.  What happened to the blacksmith’s shop, where’s the old sailing ship?  I loved those.

BARBEAU

Gone, all gone, part of the push to de-colonise the museum.  You shouldn’t have expected nothing would change while you were away.

ANNIE

I changed, I just didn’t know everything else would.

BARBEAU

What’s that?

ANNIE

Are you really not going to come in?

BARBEAU

No, it doesn’t work if I’m in there, I told you.

ANNIE

You haven’t told me anything.  I don’t understand what it is you want me to do, and I don’t understand why you have to shout at me from the atrium instead of coming into the gallery with me where we could speak normally.

(DR. BARBEAU enters, appearing exasperated)

BARBEAU

Fine, fine, but I must say your attitude doesn’t reflect your situation.  You know, you could be doing your community service hours in an orange jumpsuit picking up trash beside a highway somewhere.  You ought to be grateful.

ANNIE

Oh, I’m grateful, in fact everyone is grateful that I’m here.  The oil company that donated the money to the museum is grateful, because it makes it look merciful if the protester it sent to jail gets to work on the project it’s funding.  The government is grateful because having a woman starve herself to death in prison over its policy of promoting fossil fuel exports just before an election would be bad optics.  And I’m grateful because I’ve been forced to face the reality of just how pointless my efforts really were. 

BARBEAU

That’s better, then.  And the museum is (BEAT) not ungrateful.  The fact that you worked here in the past makes you unusually well-positioned to be helpful on this project, and given the current financial constraints the museum currently faces…

ANNIE

Getting me to work for free as a condition of my parole is better than having to pay a contractor.

BARBEAU

Quite right.  Things are very tight these days.  You’d be surprised at how much it costs us every time we have to “repatriate” a totem pole or other cultural artefact back to the village where it came from, money that wasn’t in our budget.  Hiring engineers and construction cranes and trucks and barges isn’t cheap.  Luckily, as director I have access to a “contingency fund”.

ANNIE

If it didn’t want to pay the cost of returning those artefacts, maybe the museum shouldn’t have stolen them in the first place.

BARBEAU

“Stolen”.  Hah!  The last one we gave away definitely wasn’t stolen, we’d bought it from an estate sale in the United States just three years ago, and we have the signed receipt proving it was purchased from the original owner more than a century ago, who was no doubt happy to get fifty dollars for something he’d left behind when his family abandoned their village to move to a town where he could go to church and get work in a sawmill, probably sawing up the old growth trees that people like you care about so much.

ANNIE

Sounds like you want the museum to keep everything the way it used to be, so why don’t you?

BARBEAU

Colonialism.  It’s a bad thing now, I’m told.  Not real colonialism, of course, this place was only a colony for twenty-one years, and that was a century and a half ago, too far in the past to have been a cause of today’s social problems.  No, “colonialism” as a mislabeling for all of the unfortunate and unintended consequences of a subsistence economy and an industrial economy getting thrown together and having to adapt to living with each other.  So for the museum it means that anyone from a First Nation who shows up here demanding we give them back something that once belonged to their ancestors can have it, no questions asked, and if I don’t facilitate that, then the government will just replace me with someone who will.

ANNIE

And the exhibits that used to be on this floor?  The salmon cannery, the Peace River homestead, the coal mine?  All gone because of government policy?

BARBEAU

Policy?  It’s not a policy, not the sort of thing you commit to paper that can be subject to an FOI request,  it’s just pragmatism.  Look, what’s the point of a museum at all?  I’ll tell you.  The world changes.  And as it changes, people look around and see what’s vanishing, and if they like it, or think it’s interesting, then they want to preserve some of it, and put it on display where they can show everybody what things used to be like.  No one paints the same way Rembrandt used to paint, so the best Rembrandts are in the Rijksmuseum.  Fabergé isn’t making jeweled eggs any more, so they’re all in the Hermitage.  And a century and a half ago, no one was carving totem poles any more, so they ended up here.

ANNIE

You’re the museum director, if you’re not happy about giving them back, then why do it?

BARBEAU

That you should ask that question betrays a level of naïveté which explains why you’re the one on parole and wearing an ankle monitor and I’m the one who’s the director of this museum.

ANNIE

If you want to man-splain that to me, go ahead, I’m literally a captive audience.

BARBEAU

In life, Annie, sometimes you have to just get along.  If the museum doesn’t give artefacts back to First Nations that want them, then their chiefs will be unhappy and will complain about the government on Twitter and TikTok, and then an unhappy cabinet minister will complain to her chief of staff, and that unhappy chief of staff will call the chair of the museum’s board of directors, and the unhappy chair will call me.  Isn’t it better to just keep everyone happy in the first place?

ANNIE

Even if you think it’s wrong?

BARBEAU

Who am I to say what’s right or wrong?

ANNIE

So you just follow orders?

BARBEAU

If it gets to the point that someone has to give me orders, then I’ve already failed in my job, since I should have my finger on the pulse and anticipate what’s the smart thing to do.  You could try being smart, try (INSINUATING) anticipating how to make people happy who are in a position to help you.

ANNIE

Let’s just try you telling me what I’m supposed to be doing here, and I’ll do it and be gone.

BARBEAU

Fine.  What do you know about (BEAT) AI? (BARBEAU PRONOUNCES “AI” AS THOUGH IT’S A WORD)

ANNIE

“I”?  You mean you?

BARBEAU

No, AI, it’s an acronym for “Artificial Intelligence”, and it’s spelled A – I:  “AI”.

ANNIE                                                            BARBEAU

People just say “A I”, not “AI”.                     I hadn’t heard of it either.

BARBEAU

It turns out that this “Artificial Intelligence” can do great things.  It can carry on a conversation in a way that is indistinguishable from a human being.  It can create moving images that look just as realistic as ones made using a camera.  It can recognize faces, and understand what people are saying, even read their lips if they aren’t near a microphone.

ANNIE

You know I don’t have any background in computers or programming, right?  If whatever you’re expecting me to do here involves that sort of thing….

BARBEAU

No, don’t worry, I certainly wasn’t presuming you were smart enough to be a computer programmer.  No, the computing part is all finished, but it was done by people in a country where they don’t speak English, and don’t worry about the ethics of advanced technologies.  What we need you for is (BEAT) something else.

ANNIE

What exactly is that “something else”?

BARBEAU

Come over here.

(BARBEAU WALKS TO THE EDGE OF THE MARKED-OFF CIRCLE, FOLLOWED BY A RELUCTANT ANNIE)

BARBEAU

Reach into the space above this circle.

(WHEN ANNIE HESITATES, BARBEAU GRABS HER WRIST AND ROUGHLY THRUSTS HER HAND INTO THE AIR ABOVE THE CIRCLE)

BARBEAU (RELEASING ANNIE’S WRIST)

What did you feel?

ANNIE

I don’t know.  Some sort of mist?

BARBEAU

It’s called a fog screen, a column of very fine water vapour coming down from a pipe in the ceiling.  The hologram gets projected onto it.

ANNIE

A hologram of what?

BARBEAU

Also in the ceiling and on the walls are cameras and microphones that monitor everything that anyone says or does in this room, and feed that data to the artificial intelligence that generates the hologram and to the speakers that are the hologram’s “voice”.

ANNIE

A talking hologram?

BARBEAU

You remember how in the Old Town display you liked so much, you could smell the cinnamon from the apple pie that some pioneer had just baked, you could hear the clip clopping of their horse passing by under the window, feel the vibration of the train pulling into the station?  But what was missing?  The people.  It was as if the Rapture had occurred, and they’d all disappeared.  But one of those people was still here, wasn’t she?

ANNIE

Me.  One summer I was “Pioneer Pauline”, with mud on my skirt asking tourists if they could help me find our missing milk cow, the next I was “Waterfront Winnie”, enticing sailors into a pub.  So now you have, what, some sort of holographic recording of someone doing the same thing?

BARBEAU

That’s the idea, but it’s not just a recording, it’s something much more sophisticated than that, you’ll see, but yes, it will do the job that you used to do, just do it better than you ever did.  It won’t be some actress dressed up in costume repeating a script, it will be as if it’s the actual historical person.  In the prototype that you’re about to see, it’s a suffragette, Anna McBride, who was alive just before women got the vote in this province.  She’ll be talking about the struggle for women’s rights.  If this one is a success, then the entire museum may soon be populated by holographic versions of historical and pre-historical people.  Before letting the public see it, though, I need someone to test it and report back.  Make sure there are no problems, nothing inappropriate or alarming.

ANNIE

Beta testing.  Why me, why don’t you just do it yourself, or hire some contractor?

BARBEAU

When I’m in the room, the hologram system won’t work.  Maybe you’ve heard about how some people can’t wear wristwatches, that they just stop telling time if they try, maybe because their bodies have a strong electromagnetic field or something.  I think it’s like that.  The technician I spoke to didn’t speak very good English, but he seemed to be saying it’s some sort of glitch.

ANNIE

That explains why you can’t do it, but why do you want me to do it?

BARBEAU

If there are any problems, I don’t want to read about them in the newspapers, and I don’t want anyone asking how much we spent to get this far.  This project has to be completely secret, until it’s ready to be unveiled.  That’s why you’re the right person for the job, not just because you used to work here, but because if you were to breathe one single, solitary word about it to anyone, I would report you for having violated your parole, so that you would go back to prison, and would serve out your original sentence plus additional time for the parole violation.  Now I’m going to leave, but I’ll check back in a while, so try to make some progress.

(BARBEAU LEAVES THROUGH THE DOOR.  ANNIE WATCHES HIM GO, AND WHEN HE HAS LEFT, FURIOUSLY FLIPS HIM THE BIRD.  SHE DOES NOT SEE ANNA STEP INTO THE CIRCLEBEHIND HER.  AS ANNIE  TURNS BACK TOWARD THE CIRCLE, ANNA WAVES HER PLACARD AND SHOUTS.)

ANNA

Women unite!  Deeds, not words!

(ANNIE SHRIEKS, AND THEN STANDS PARALYZED)

ANNA

Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, I seem to have this compulsion recently to begin every conversation by shouting slogans at people, it’s rude, I know. (BEAT)  Can you understand what I’m saying?  (BEAT)  Sei paralizzato dalla tua conversazione con l’uomo orribile?

ANNIE

Why are you speaking to me in Italian?

ANNA

I saw you giving that horrible man the digitus impudicus, the middle finger, as they do in Italy (ANNA DEMONSTRATES), whereas we British use the two-finger salute, thus, (ANNA DEMONSTRATES) so I thought perhaps if you didn’t understand English, you might understand Italian, silly of me when I’d just heard you having a conversation with him in English, but it doesn’t matter now, does it?  (ANNIE REMAINS STUNNED)  Look, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, let’s start again.  Women unite!  Deeds not words!  Now I’ve done it again, I’m so sorry, I really have no idea why I seem to now begin every conversation that way.  My name is Anna McBride, how do you do.

ANNIE

How do I do?  I’m not sure, maybe check back in a few minutes.  Annie is my name.

ANNA

How delightful, we have almost the same name.  And I see that we have something else in common as well.

ANNIE

What’s that?

ANNA

We’re both suffragists, we are both promoting the rights of women.

ANNIE

How could you tell that about me?

ANNA

You’re wearing trousers, which I have never actually seen a woman doing before.  I must say, you’re braver than me.  At least it’s not unlawful for women to wear trousers here, unlike in San Francisco or Columbus or Chicago or Miami or so many other American cities.  And do you know, in American cities where it’s not actually illegal, the authorities use the anti-vagrancy laws to punish women who wear trousers, like poor Jennie Westbrook in New York, who disguised herself as a man so that she could earn a decent wage, and got sent to prison.  Do you know that yours have a bit of a tear in them, barely noticeable really, but perhaps you caught them on something on your way here?

ANNIE

That’s the fashion where I come from.  Or maybe I should say when I come from?  Speaking of which, do you know where we are?

ANNA

Yes, of course I do.  Do you not know where we are?  Given your torn clothing and confusion, perhaps you’ve been in an accident.

ANNIE

Please, just humour me.

ANNA

We’re in the museum, in the City of Victoria, on Vancouver Island.  Though I must say, it looks rather emptier than what I remember from my last visit.  What have they done with all the totem poles?

ANNIE

There are still quite a few totem poles here, but they’ve repatriated some of them.

ANNA

“Repatriated”.  What a funny word.  What does it mean?

ANNIE

Given back.  Some people said that the poles had been stolen from the people that carved them, so the museum gave them back.

ANNA

Well, that’s confusing.  The whole point of creating the museum in the first place was to stop totem poles from being stolen!

ANNIE

I’m sorry?

ANNA

No need to apologize, it wasn’t your fault, was it, it was those Americans, and the Germans too, sailing into every deserted village up and down the coast and without so much as a by-your-leave, the totem poles all end up in museums in Washington and Frankfurt.  One of these days, the fact that each of those two countries thinks it’s entitled to rule the world is going to end up with them going to war, I expect.  I just hope they don’t drag the rest of us in with them.

ANNIE

What year is this?

ANNA

Oh, dear, you didn’t know where we are, and now you don’t know what year this is, and your clothing is torn, are you sure you haven’t perhaps been in a streetcar accident?  I know they say the streetcars are very safe, though I imagine the fifty-five people who died when the Point Ellis Bridge collapsed would tell you differently.  If they weren’t dead, of course.  Anyway, there’s a chair over there, perhaps you should sit down.

ANNIE

No, I’m perfectly all right, but please do please tell me, what year do you think this is?

ANNA

Well, I – think – it’s 1914.  What year do you think it is?

ANNIE

2024.

ANNA

I see.  You know, I believe that I would like to sit down.  I’m going to fetch a chair for myself and come back in a moment.  If you were to fetch a chair as well, then we could sit together, wouldn’t that be nice?  Back in a moment.

(ANNA LEAVES.  ANNIE MAKES HER WAY UNCERTAINLY TO THE CHAIR, WHICH IS NEAR THE DOOR.)

BARBEAU

(off)

Annie, is everything all right?  What do you think so far, does the program seem sufficiently (BEAT) lifelike?

ANNIE

Quite lifelike, yes, I’d say so, so far.  I’m going to need more time.

BARBEAU

(off)

Try to make up your mind.  It’s a big decision, whether we incorporate this program into our exhibits or pull the plug, so we want to get it right.

ANNIE

What do you mean, “pull the plug”?

BARBEAU

Just that.  Suppose this thing starts spouting gibberish, or worse yet, says something offensive, we don’t need that kind of trouble.  We can just erase the whole program if we have to and start again.

ANNIE

Come back later.  (ANNIE carries the chair over to the circle.  ANNA reappears with a chair.)

ANNA

Women unite!  Deeds, not words!  Sorry, I’m still doing it, please just ignore it.  Did I hear that horrible man speaking to you again?

ANNIE

He is pretty horrible, but how do you know about him?  He said that you wouldn’t even appear if he were in the room.

ANNA

Not now, I won’t.  The very first time I met him, he spoke to me as if I were a prostitute.  He wanted me to do things that would shock you if I were to repeat them.  Frankly, I think they’d shock the better class of prostitute.

ANNIE

What, he asked you to do sexual things?

ANNA

The requests that I understood certainly were sexual in nature, yes.  The rest I’m just guessing about, but they sounded very smutty.  I urge you to avoid him if you can.

ANNIE

Unfortunately, I can’t.  I don’t like him, but I’m still surprised that he would be like that to you.

ANNA

I’m not surprised.  The fact is that many men just don’t consider women to actually be human beings, they just see us as a combination of domestic servant, object for their lustful urges, and bearer of their children, so they feel free to treat us as mere objects, and women like you and me even more so.

ANNIE

What do you mean by “women like you and me”?

ANNA

It’s because we’re suffragists, of course, the fact that we want women’s rights.  The idea that we want to upset the established order threatens them, and so they react by attempting to demean us.  If I were to tell you the things that have been shouted at me during our marches, you would be shocked.  I can only hope that things will be better after we win the vote.

ANNIE

I don’t share your confidence.  In my time, women have the right to vote, but I don’t know that things are much better.

ANNA

Oh, yes, your time, the year 2024 you said.  So I suppose you’ve come back in what Mr. Wells called a “time machine”, have you?

ANNIE

No, you and I are actually both in 2024.

ANNA

Are we?  I must say, the future looks more drab than I had imagined.  I expected everyone would be inhabiting flying crystal spheres and have clothing made of aluminium, the sort of thing that Edgar Rice Burroughs writes about.

ANNIE

You’re teasing me.  You don’t believe it’s 2024.

ANNA

Well really, which seems more likely, your claim that I’ve been flung forward more than a century in time, or my theory that you’ve been in an accident and have a concussion?  If we’re in the future, shouldn’t you have, I don’t know, a hat that lets you read minds, or levitating shoes?

ANNIE

No, but I do have this.  (ANNIE PATS HER POCKETS)  Oh, I forgot, I’m not allowed to have it any more.  But everyone else in 2024 has devices that are the size of a wallet that are a combination of a telephone, a camera, an adding machine, a recording device, a weather forecaster, they let you instantly access just about any book that’s ever been published, plus they do lots of other things.

ANNA

Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. There are these fantastical devices in your time and everyone has one except you?

ANNIE

I own one, but I’m not allowed to carry it anymore.

ANNA

And why is that?

ANNIE

It’s a term of my probation for being allowed out of prison.  The judge was afraid that I would use the phone to organize more protests.  Oh, that reminds me, I do have one futuristic device.  (ANNIE ROLLS UP HER TROUSER LEG TO DISPLAY HER ANKLE MONITOR)

ANNA

What is it?

ANNIE

It’s an ankle monitor.  It uses radio waves, I suppose you’d say, to track my position, so that if I go anywhere other than home or work, it will send an alarm to my probation officer, and I’ll be sent back to prison.

ANNA

Signor Marconi got the Nobel Prize five years ago for his work with radio, but I expect he’d give it back if he knew it might lead to something like this.  You say that the only invention you can show me from this future of yours is something that allows governments to track the whereabouts of their citizens and to send them to jail if it doesn’t approve of where they go?  I think I’ll happily stay in 1914, thank you very much.

ANNIE

Well, there is one other invention I should tell you about, but it’s a bit awkward.

ANNA

Go on, then.

ANNIE

Have you ever heard of Charles Babbage’s analytical engine?

ANNA

A thinking machine that could do fantastically complex mechanical and astronomical calculations almost instantly?  That was supposed to store information on punch cards about formulae that would be calculated on a sort of mechanical loom, invented about half a century ago, brilliant idea, would have weighed tons if it had been built, hideously expensive, never worked.  What about it?

ANNIE

Eventually, a version called a “computer” that does work gets built, that relies on electricity rather than mechanics, and by the time I’m alive, it’s become so sophisticated that it can actually simulate a completely lifelike human being.

ANNA (DISMAYED)

Oh, I understand immediately what you mean.

ANNIE

Do you?  I’m relieved, I felt embarrassed to tell you.

ANNA

No, it’s sad but good that you’ve been forthright about it.  But tell me, for how long have you (BEAT) believed that rather than being a living human being, that you were just an elaborate mechanical automaton?

ANNIE

What?  No, not me, you!  Why would I think that I wasn’t real?

ANNA

Some women do feel that way.  Trapped doing work that’s beneath their dignity, not valued for their opinions or their intellect, not listened to, powerless, their freedom of movement constrained by societal expectations, they end up believing that they have no more humanity than a steam hammer or a cotton gin.  Does any of that sound familiar?

ANNIE

Look, the fact is that I’m the one who’s real and you’re the one who’s not.  You’re a hologram, a projected image, generated by a computer.  You’ve been created to simulate a suffragette who lived a century ago, so that you can talk with visitors to the museum and educate them about the past.  You are not a real person.

ANNA

You’re correct, of course.  I’m not a person at all.  (BEAT) I’m a woman.  Under the British North America Act, only “persons” can be appointed to the Senate, so I can’t be a senator, and neither can I vote, or be elected to the House of Commons, because women are not recognized as persons.  I am endeavouring, however, to change that, as are many other women like me.  Wait here.  (ANNA STEPS OFFSTAGE BRIEFLY AND REAPPEARS WITH PAMPHLETS IN HER HAND, ONE OF WHICH SHE EXTENDS TOWARD ANNIE)  Women unite,  deeds, not words, you know, you know.  This is the latest issue of The Champion, which is the official journal of the British Columbia Political Equality League.  It’s published here in Victoria by Maria Pollard Grant and Dorothy Davis, and has reports from British Columbia and around the world about the fight for women’s suffrage.  I want you to have it and to read it.  It’s very good, well, except for the parts that are supposed to be humorous, they’re really not, but otherwise it’s full of fine content and should convince you that you and I both really are real persons.

ANNIE

I can’t read it.

ANNA

Oh, that’s so sad.  A bright young woman such as yourself denied even the basic education that would allow you to read.

ANNIE

I know how to read, but those pamphlets are holograms too.  If I try to touch them, or you, we’ll just pass through each other.  Here, put your hand out if you don’t believe me.

(ANNA extends her hand and ANNIE swipes her own hand “through” it)

ANNIE

There, now do you believe that you’re a hologram, and that every word you say is just generated by a computer program?

ANNA

You couldn’t touch me, but I couldn’t touch you either.  What makes you sure that you’re not the one who isn’t real?  Maybe you’re the ghost of one of those victims of the streetcar crash, doomed to haunt the Inner Harbour, and every word you say is just a memory of a conversation you had when you were one of the living, rather than me being a hologram.

ANNIE

Well, I must admit you don’t act the way I thought a hologram would.  I thought you’d just be spouting a few programmed phrases, and that you wouldn’t talk about anything except women’s suffrage.

ANNA

I should hope that I don’t do that.  It’s terribly unjust that women don’t have the vote, and of course I work to change the world and make it better, but I can’t let that be my whole life, I can’t let it consume me so that I can’t talk about anything else.  (BEAT) So tell me, what was it that you went to prison for.

ANNIE

This will be completely unfamiliar and meaningless to you, but I was protesting against climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

ANNA

Actually, I read an article about that in Popular Mechanics about two years ago.  I clearly remember the title, in fact, it was “Remarkable Weather of 1911: The Effect of the Combustion of Coal on the Climate – What Scientists Predict for the Future.”  The article said that we’re burning two billion tons of coal each year, and that that adds seven billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere, which makes the air a – quote – more effective blanket for the Earth – end quote – and raises its temperature.  It sounded very worrisome.  Still, now that we know it’s a problem, I’m sure governments and scientists will act quickly to remedy the situation.

ANNIE

They haven’t by my time, in fact they keep building new pipelines for oil and gas to make it worse, so that all life on Earth will become extinct, and that’s what I was protesting against.

ANNA

What exactly did you do?

ANNIE

I glued myself to a painting by Emily Carr.

ANNA

Miss Carr who runs a boarding house on Simcoe Street?

ANNIE

Yes, I suppose that’s her.

ANNA

She can’t have been very happy about that.  I mean, I’ve seen her paintings and they’re not very good, but still.

ANNIE

By my time she’s long dead, and she’s remembered as one of Canada’s greatest artists.

ANNA

The fight for women’s equality must indeed make great strides in the future if a Victoria eccentric is to become recognized as one of Canada’s greatest artists.  But why did you glue yourself to one of her paintings?

ANNIE

It’s called “civil disobedience”.  Since no one is doing anything about the climate crisis, protesters like me do things that are illegal, so that we’ll be arrested and go to jail to demonstrate our concern about the issue while still showing our respect for the legal and political system.  It was developed by a man named Gandhi, who said that those who engage in it should look forward to going to jail with the eagerness that a bridegroom feels when anticipating his visit to the bridal chamber.

ANNA

Ah, Gandhi, that would be the South African lawyer, I imagine, nice little man by all accounts.  Now that you’ve actually been to prison, do you feel that bridegroomish eagerness about the prospect of ever going there again that he speaks about?

ANNIE

Not really, no.

ANNA

And the respect for the legal and political systems that you say in your time are facilitating the end of life on Earth, just how strongly do you feel that respect?

ANNIE

Not so much.

ANNA

And the connection between oil and gas and works of art, you acknowledge that’s really non-existent?

ANNIE

Not a direct connection, but the bourgeoisie aesthetic nurtures the klepto-corporate… (BEAT) no, there’s no connection.

ANNA

Then if you’d allow me to make a small suggestion, you might change tactics and blow things up.

ANNIE

What?

ANNA

Blow things up, burn things down, that’s what the suffragists in England have been doing for the past two years.  Letter boxes mostly, but they’ve burned down the houses of several cabinet ministers, and they blew up the Theatre Royal while Prime Minister Asquith was there, and they bombed David Lloyd George’s house, and they tried to burn down the All England Lawn Tennis Club and the Crystal Palace Football Club, and tried to blow up St Paul’s Cathedral – twice – and St Martin in the Fields Church, and they burned down a castle in Scotland, and bombed the pier at Great Yarmouth and lots of other places too, and they took a horse whip to Winston Churchill and they took another horse whip to a man who they thought was David Lloyd George in disguise, though it turned out he wasn’t, which must have been awkward.

ANNIE

Stop!  Look, you can’t be talking to people who come to visit the museum about blowing things up!  Or if you do, you have to seem disapproving.

ANNA

Well, according to you, the bombs worked, because by your time, you say that women have the vote.  The reason I keep saying “deeds not words” is that’s the motto of the Women’s Social and Political Union.  Politicians will talk you to death, literally according to you, so the question is, what do you do about it?  If you’re going to go to prison anyway, wouldn’t it make more sense to be imprisoned for blowing up one of those gas pipelines, or scuttling an oil tanker, or derailing a coal train, rather than for gluing yourself to a painting?

ANNIE

Yes, but if you say that sort of thing and Dr. Barbeau – the horrible man – hears about it, he’ll take steps to prevent you from, from coming here, and from speaking to other visitors to the museum.

ANNA

Don’t let him.  Remember, I’m a person, same as you.  Besides, even if I’m – what did you call it – a hologram and you’re a ghost, I think we could be friends.  And all right, I suppose that when I’m speaking with other people in the museum, I could try to emphasize democracy and reform and de-emphasize the bit about the firebombings, if that’s what you want.  Anyway, here he comes now, so I’ll slip away.  Remember:  you don’t get results by letting people walk all over you.

(ANNA EXITS, BARBEAU ENTERS)

BARBEAU

What’s this, sitting down on the job?

ANNIE (LOOKING INTENTLY AT THE CEILING AND WALLS)

I believe that it’s possible to stand up for something even when you’re sitting down, don’t you?

BARBEAU

Now you’re not making any sense.  Did you speak with the hologram?  Is it safe to let the public interact with it?  And what are you looking at?

ANNIE

She just left.  And I’m looking to see whether it’s possible to spot the cameras and microphones.  It’s not, though, is it, which I suppose makes it easy to forget that they’re there.

BARBEAU

Of course they’re there, I told you, they see and hear everything that goes on in this room, that’s how it works.

ANNIE

But they don’t just see and hear it, they record it, and store the recording.  If they didn’t, then the AI wouldn’t have any data to work with and wouldn’t be able to analyze it, and formulate the appropriate responses.  So there has to be a recording of everything.

BARBEAU

Of course, of course, you’re just stating the obvious, what’s your… ?

(BARBEAU PAUSES, AND REVEALS A LOOK OF REALIZATION)

ANNIE

Everything said in this room, everything done in this room, all recorded.  Like I said, it would be easy to forget that and say something (BEAT) inappropriate, something career ending.

BARBEAU (SIGHING)

What do you want?

ANNIE

There won’t be any more talk of “pulling the plug” on the hologram.  You are going to open the exhibit about the fight for women’s rights in this province, but you will be the one person who won’t see it.  You’re also going to remember to tell my probation officer today and frequently how exemplary my performance of my duties here has been, so exemplary that you’ve decided to dip into that “contingency fund” of yours to pay me an honorarium.  I’ll tell you the amount later.

BARBEAU

Now look here….

ANNIE

We’re done, you can leave, I’ll close the door behind me when I’m finished.

(BARBEAU LEAVES IN A HUFF.  ANNA ENTERS.  WHEN ANNIE TURNS TO LOOK AT HER, ANNA OPENS HER MOUTH TO SPEAK, BUT ANNIE HOLDS UP HER HAND TO STOP HER)

ANNIE

Allow me, this time.  Women unite.  Deeds, not words.

ANNA

Women unite.  Deeds, not words.

(ANNIE AND ANNA REACH OUT SO THAT THEIR PALMS “TOUCH”)

(BLACKOUT)

(END)

CHARACTERS

(All appear to be in their 20s)

JENNIFER                                           A writer and professor of English literature.

FITZ                                                     A professional hockey player.

LOU                                                     An actor.

SIMON                                                 A South Asian physicist.

EM                                                       A slacker, wearing a red shirt

SETTING

Fitz’s family cabin.  There is a table and chairs at centre stage with cake plates, forks and glasses, and there is a bookshelf with books.  There is a single door stage left, with its knob on the downstage side and hinge on the upstage side.

TIME

The present.

(When the lights rise, JENNIFER is sitting in front of a birthday cake with lit candles.  FITZ, SIMON, LOU and EM standing behind her, singing in the note G.)

FITZ, SIMON, LOU and EM

…you.

(JENNIFER inhales sharply but instead of blowing out the candles, holds her breath and stares intently one-by-one at each of the others)

FITZ

You realize that you will still get older even if you don’t blow out the candles?

SIMON

But if you do blow out the candles, popular belief is that doing so gets you a wish.  It’s a custom some believe dates back to ancient Greek offerings to the moon goddess Artemis.  But most experts agree that it only goes back to seventeenth century Germany.

LOU

Time’s up, I’m starving.

(LOU blows out the candle.  JENNIFER exhales and sits panting)

EM

You know if you wait too long, the candle starts to melt and you have to pick blobs of wax out of the icing?  Or, you know, you can eat the whole things and the wax just passes through you.

FITZ

So you couldn’t decide what to wish for?

LOU

You should have stuck to wishing to be young and beautiful.  I always do and (gestures at herself) taa-daa.

EM

No way, you should never wish for anything at all or you might end up with some weird “Monkey’s Paw” version of what you wanted.

JENNIFER

I didn’t make a wish.  And I just hesitated because I was surprised.

SIMON

When it’s a surprise party, then it’s okay to be surprised, you might even say it’s expected.  But this isn’t a surprise party, it’s been planned for ages.  And when you plan a birthday party, there’s a certain inevitability to the fact that the person whose birthday it is will have to confront their own mortality as symbolized by a cake engulfed in flames.

JENNIFER

Speaking of confronting your own mortality….

EM

If it had been up to me, we would have made it a surprise party, but everyone figures you’re too smart to be fooled.

JENNIFER

I think we all know I’m not that hard to fool.

(EM and SIMON look pointedly at FITZ and LOU, who look at each other)

LOU

Ooh, is it “fasten your seatbelts” time already?

                        JENNIFER

Fitz, is this really your family’s old lodge?  It looks just the way I remember it.

FITZ

Since it was only a year ago that we were last here together, yeah, nothing’s changed.  A lot of bedrooms, a giant fireplace, a lake, trees, mountains, sort of like a private summer camp.  Look, I know a lot has happened in the past year, but some things stay the same.  I think you’ve got some icing on your face.

JENNIFER

Lou, can I borrow your mirror?

            (LOU takes a compact out of her purse and gives it to Jennifer, who

studies her reflection.)

LOU

How did you know I’d have a mirror?

JENNIFER

Seriously?

LOU

Well, that’s something else that’s never changed since we first met.  You remember that I was behind you in the line when we were getting our pictures taken for our student ID cards, pictures that we were going to be stuck with for four years, and I suggested you might want to comb your hair.   I’ve always got a mirror and makeup in my purse and you don’t have a purse at all.  I guess that’s why People magazine called me a narcissist and the New York Review of Books called you “modern literature’s clockwork thinking machine”.

                        JENNIFER

I tried to convince myself that they’d meant it as a compliment.

SIMON

Whether they did or not, it still seems odd that someone described as a clockwork thinking machine could be surprised by getting a birthday cake at their birthday party.

                        JENNIFER

I guess what I meant when I said I was surprised was that I had really thought that we would never all be together again.  Certainly not like this.  Did the rest of you?

                        FITZ

No.  I thought I had screwed things up too badly.  I didn’t think any of you, especially you, Jennifer, would even want to talk to me again.

LOU

The pronoun you should be using, Fitz, is “we”, as in you and I had screwed things, and I use the verb screwed” advisedly.  You’re probably tired of hearing me say it, Jennifer, but I am still so, so sorry.

                        JENNIFER

It was all so long ago.  There was a time that I was really angry at both of you, even though I knew that some of the responsibility was probably mine.  But that wasn’t why I was asking if you were surprised to have us together again.  Doesn’t it seem kind of (BEAT) strange?

FITZ

I know, but it feels great, too, doesn’t it, being back together again?  Remember how we all used to be together all the time, the four of us?  After everything exploded and our lives turned into one long flight from the paparazzi, I thought you and Lou would never want to see me again, let alone each other.

LOU

That nice George Clooney let me live at his Lake Cuomo place for weeks until it all blew over, but it was pretty bad.

EM

The tabloids absolutely killed you three.  I remember standing at a checkout reading a cover that said “Hijinks for Hunk, Hottie, and Hack.”  Though, Jennifer, I’m sure they didn’t really think you were a hack, it was just alliteration.  You know, “Homewrecking, Hijinks, Hack”.

SIMON

It was so awkward if I had a dinner party trying to remember which of you had ended up getting to keep which of our friends.  Of course, I eventually realized that the three of you had become such big celebrities that you didn’t need real friends anymore, so then I just started inviting people I wanted to sleep with who might be impressed that I even knew you.

LOU

Look, I’m just happy we could put all that behind us and get together for this special occasion.  After all, time has passed.

JENNIFER

That’s my point, a long, long time.

LOU

I’m glad it seems that way?

JENNIFER

So to you it just “seems” like a long time?

LOU

But now we’re fine, right?

JENNIFER

“Fine”, in that footsteps outside the tent that are probably a rabbit but might be a bear sense, yes. Don’t you at least find it strange being here with Fitz?

LOU

Oh, Jennifer, don’t be bitter.  I mean, if I had a pony for every man I ever slept with who lied to me, slept with my best friend and then broke up with me, I could have the pony-ride concession for every children’s birthday party in Hollywood.

JENNIFER

No, I meant the part about him being dead.

LOU

Fitz, when I said you were dead to me, you know I didn’t mean it.  I just say whatever I’m thinking, which people seem to find strangely endearing.

JENNIFER

No, I mean dead in the sense of you and Simon and I having been pallbearers at his funeral.

(After a long PAUSE, LOU starts screaming, followed by SIMON and EM)

FITZ

I used to get screaming from teenage girls in my rookie year, but I had a mullet then, and I was okay with it.  It’s a bit unseemly coming from my adult friends.

EM

Man, I am so sorry.

FITZ

Sorry for what?

SIMON

And I am so (BEAT) lucky.  I’m the luckiest scientist in the world.  Fitz, can you see me?  Can you hear me?

FITZ

Simon, I have the outstanding physical attributes of a professional athlete and I am three feet away from you.  Yes, I can see you and hear you.

EM

Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about that terrible, terrible night.

(SIMON pokes at FITZ with his finger)

SIMON

Someone write this down:  the subject was completely opaque and exhibited complete corporeal manifestation and fully interactive capabilities.

FITZ

Stop poking at me.  And just because I’m a professional athlete doesn’t make me “opaque”, I graduated from the same university you did.

LOU

Oh, god, he doesn’t know.

FITZ

Know what?  What are you all being so weird about?

SIMON

I don’t know how to tell you this, Fitz, but you died.  And now look at you!  You look fantastic!  You know, for someone who’s dead.

FITZ

When you say I’m dead, are you talking about the scoring slump I had during the regular season, because you do know I won the Conn Smythe during the playoffs.

LOU

It’s no joke, Fitz, and no one is speaking metaphorically.  You died in a tragic accident.

EM

An accident that really wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was more just youthful exuberance in an unfortunate combination with alcohol and heavy machinery.

FITZ

So you all really believe that I’m sort of ghost?

(The other characters nod, and Fitz begins wailing and shaking like one of the damned, but then stops and calmly continues speaking and shakes his empty beer bottle.)

I’ll tell you what’s dead:  this beer.  Who wants another?

LOU

Fitz, you don’t seem to be very good at being dead.

FITZ

I am excellent at everything I do that involves any element of physicality.  If you know what I mean.

JENNIFER

You really were excellent, Fitz.  The Canucks had just won the Stanley Cup, thanks to you scoring the winning goal in the final seconds of game seven.

FITZ

I accept the thanks you undoubtedly wish to extend on behalf of a grateful city and nation.

JENNIFER

Do you remember convincing the Zamboni driver…

EM

Against his better judgment and explicit warnings.

JENNIFER

… to take you for a victory lap around the rink, and you climbing up on top while you were still wearing skates and drinking champagne out of the Cup?

FITZ

Well, yeah.

LOU

And falling off?  And getting crushed?

FITZ

No, that I don’t remember.  I am pretty sure that I would have gotten really drunk celebrating the win, but I obviously sobered up enough to come here for your birthday party.  Whatever may have happened between us, I wouldn’t miss your birthday.

JENNIFER

You never did, Fitz.  As long as you were alive, you always remembered my birthday.

FITZ

But you’re not kidding?  You’re really saying that you think I’m some kind of ghost?

JENNIFER

That’s part of what I’m saying.  Unfortunately, it’s not the worst part.

FITZ

We loved each other, we were at one time engaged to be married, you’ve just told me I’m dead.  What could you have to say that could possibly be worse than that?

JENNIFER

It’s not so much that there’s worse news, it’s just that there’s more of it.

EM

Uh-oh.

                        SIMON

I don’t like where this is going.

JENNIFER

You know, twenty minutes ago I had liver spots on my wrinkled hands, my hair was thin and white, I could barely see or hear, and everything ached all the time.  But now I feel great, and when I looked in the mirror five minutes ago, I looked fantastic, just like (BEAT) all of you.

LOU

Let’s not go that far, but you do look good.  You know, for you.

JENNIFER

It’s a terrible thing outliving all of your friends.  All.  All of your friends.

SIMON

Oh, Jennifer, no.

JENNIFER

Turning on the morning news and hearing strangers joking about their deaths.

SIMON

I was in the lab.

LOU

I was at a party.

EM

Oh my god, it’s the salmon mousse!  (BEAT)  You know, from Monty Python’s “Meaning of Life”?  It’s a riff on Bergman, death comes to their dinner party?  (BEAT)  Man, you all really did spend all your time studying, didn’t you?

JENNIFER

Yes, Lou, you were at a party.  And if ever anyone went out with a bang, it was you.  You could have rolled Marilyn Monroe, Jane Mansfield and Kurt Cobain into one self-destructive, sex-and-drug-addled nuclear explosion, and they still wouldn’t have matched your earthly departure in terms of scandal and fodder for the tabloids.  And why would a grown woman own a monkey anyway?

LOU

So I got a lot of press when I died?

SIMON

More than when you won the Academy Award.

LOU

Did they re-release my old movies?

EM

The Toronto Film Festival had a gala retrospective:  “Lou Morgan:  a Beautiful Passion”.  Or was it “Lou Morgan:  a Passionate Beauty”?

SIMON

The last thing I remember I was at Cern, at the Large Hadron Collider.  I was out on the floor, making some adjustments, and then I don’t remember anything until I was coming here after picking up your birthday cake.  Which I bought at that bakery just off the campus where we all used to go on Saturdays.

JENNIFER

You were trying, as I understand it, trying to prove the existence of chronoton particles.

EM

Which is why, after the accident, every Star Trek fan in the world, starting with me, wrote to the Nobel committee and demanded they give you the physics prize.

JENNIFER

Sadly, however, the Nobel Prize can’t be awarded posthumously.

EM

But because the chronoton explosion may have thrown you out of the timestream, no one could be sure whether you were actually a petrified corpse, or still alive but in a state of stasis, like in The Stone God Awakens, so they gave you the benefit of the doubt, decided you were some sort of living statue, and gave you the Nobel Prize!  Congratulations, man!

SIMON

Thank you, that’s terrific, but it does appear with hindsight that the smart money would have been on my actually being dead.

FITZ

So you two both remember me and Lou and Simon dying?

EM

Everybody in the world remembers you three dying.  Other than getting entombed in the Great Pyramid of Cheops, you couldn’t have made your deaths better known if you’d tried.  The only difference between Jennifer and me and the rest of the world is we knew you personally.

LOU

Ri-ight.  So do you remember Jennifer dying?

EM

No.  Hey, that must mean I died first.  Jennifer, if you’d died before me, I’d have heard about it, what with you being so famous.  So if I died first, how did I go?

JENNIFER

How?

EM

Don’t’ worry, I don’t care if my death was horrible like for Fitz, or embarrassing like for Lou, or weird like for Simon, just tell me straight, how did I go?

JENNIFER

This is really, really awful, and I truly don’t know how to tell you, but I haven’t the slightest sense of who you are.

EM

In that “nobody really knows who anybody else” is sense?

JENNIFER

No, that’s not what I meant.

                        EM

You’re saying I look different?

JENNIFER

No, I’m saying that Fitz and Lou and Simon have been my best friends since I met them at the very start of my freshman year.  When I say I don’t know you, I mean it in the sense that you’re the odd man out, and that I never saw you before in my life until now sense.

FITZ

God, I thought it was just me. All night, I’ve been saying random names in my head, hoping that I’d remember, “Oh yeah, it’s (BEAT) Alphonse” or “Albert”.  But it turns out that I’m not brain-damaged – though admittedly, compared to being dead, that might be okay – I just don’t know you.

LOU

Unless you’re that stalker I had to get a restraining order against, I don’t know you either.

SIMON

You’re not my imaginary friend, Mr. Wuggums, are you?  No, forget that I asked that.

EM

I can’t believe you people!  I’m Em!  You all know me, or you used to.  I was at university with you.  I went to the same classes as you, the same parties.  I didn’t become a celebrity like each of you, but I was there, we were part of each other’s lives.  Jennifer, you remember in first year Creative Writing, how vicious everybody was, and when you finally workshopped that story about the tricycle and the dog, how mean some of the people were, but how one person said it made them cry?  That was me!  I was that crybaby.

JENNIFER

I do remember that.  That was the first story I ever got published.  So did you become a writer too?

EM

Nah, I thought I was a writer for a while, but it turns out you that if you want to be a writer, you actually have to write stuff all the time.  I mostly fell into jobs, a lot of them involving driving.  Fitz, when I was driving the Zamboni at the arena, we must have spoken to each other every day.

FITZ

Sure, I remember now, I called you “Mr. Zamboni”.

EM

See, you do remember me!

FITZ

I called everybody who drove those things “Mr. Zamboni”.  I called the guy who picked up our uniforms “Mr. Laundry” and the guy who sharpened our skates “Mr. Skates”.  Sorry, but it’s not exactly like we were soul brothers.

EM

Okay, that makes me feel a little bit better about running you over with the Zamboni.

SIMON

I suppose you and I could have been in some classes together, is that how you know me?

EM

So you don’t remember a taxi ride to the airport, you were going to take a teaching job at some crap university in Ontario to pay off your student debt even though you really wanted to take a research fellowship at Cambridge that would have paid almost nothing but let you do leading-edge particle physics?

SIMON

You were the taxi driver, you refused to stop at the domestic terminal and drove me to the international terminal instead.

EM

You see?

SIMON

By the time I dragged my suitcase back to the domestic terminal – in a snowstorm – I had missed my flight and had to buy another ticket, which put me even more in debt.  But yes, you were right, and you probably did contribute to my eventual decision to go to England, which apparently resulted in both a Nobel Prize and my death, so my gratitude is not completely unalloyed.

LOU

And me, did you give me my first acting job or talk me out of dropping out of acting to take a job selling shoes?

EM

No, you and I, it was nothing really.

                                                                     LOU

Sounds like it must have been something?

                                                                     EM

Yeah, well, we did almost have sex once.

LOU

Sure, like I almost became an astronaut.  I fantasized about it for a while but there was no chance of it ever actually happening.

EM

It was after a floor party, you were angry about some guy, who with hindsight I think was probably Fitz, you thought that having sex with me would show him, but you were drunk and I said no, we talked for a while, that was it, no big story.

LOU

Actually, I’m pretty sure that someone saying no to sex with me would have been a big story.  I’m not sure how I feel about it.  I think maybe I should feel insulted, or I would if I believed we were all really dead and having this conversation, which I don’t.

                                                                     JENNIFER

I’m telling you, we’re dead.  I’m dead, you’re dead, “Em” is dead, we’re all dead.

                                                                     LOU

You seem very quick to believe that.  Maybe this is some sort of dream sequence.

                                                                     SIMON

Humans dream in black and white.

                                                                     LOU

Not me, I dream big and bright.  Besides, what stupid kind of death involves sitting around at a cabin with old friends arguing about whether you’re dead or not?  It’s like some sort of bad movie.  No, a movie would have a bigger props and scenery budget.  Maybe like a bad student demo film?

                                                                     JENNIFER

I’ll defer to you when it comes to bad movies.

                                                                     LOU

Well, it’s not like any of your books ever got made into movies.  Your characters could all have been dead for what difference it would make.

                                                                     JENNIFER

I had no idea you read, let alone anything I’d written.

                                                                     LOU

 You know, maybe I just like being alive more than you do.  You never seemed to show much enthusiasm for it and now you equate us being here in physical bodies, eating cake, and arguing to being dead, whereas most people would associate all of those things with the exact opposite, namely being alive.

JENNIFER

Fine, if you want to believe you’re alive, I expect you’ll be able to convince yourself it’s true.

LOU

Meaning what?

JENNIFER

Haven’t you ever wondered if there was a connection between you being successful at acting and your ability to believe in whatever was convenient for you?

FITZ

I think Jennifer means that you were able to believe it was okay for you and me to be having sex while I was engaged to her.  Which I guess also means that whatever sort of afterlife we’re in, it’s not one where everybody has forgiven everybody else for whatever they might have done wrong during their lifetimes.

                                                                     LOU

What I believe in is what I always believed in, namely living.  I believe that this cake is delicious.  I believe I’m glad that I ordered German chocolate cake even though I knew you would prefer plain, white cake, because it’s just better.  I believe that I will keep drinking this Gewürztraminer until I become an angry drunk and then keep going until I become a sloppy and maudlin drunk.  What I don’t believe is that there is any theology that would have us spending our afterlives in Fitz’s family’s cabin.

SIMON

Lou, you know I never believed in any mumbo jumbo, but I really do remember when you died, and if you’re dead, then I think we all must be.

LOU

Well, you’re the scientist, so if you say we’re dead, I’ll defer to you, but can I borrow your cake fork?

SIMON

Sure, but….

LOU

Just put your hand here on the table for a moment, will you?

(LOU slams the tines of the fork down toward SIMON’s hand, which SIMON snatches away at the last moment)

                        SIMON

What the hell are you doing?

                        LOU

If we were dead, you wouldn’t be worried about me sticking a fork into your hand because you wouldn’t have a hand and I wouldn’t have a fork.  This is real, which is why when I go outside and smoke this cigarette, I may get cancer and die.  Not right away, but eventually.

                        EM

No, Lou, you shouldn’t….

                        LOU   

This is real too.

            (LOU grabs EM’s head and pulls him into a long, passionate kiss)

                        LOU

Thanks for not sleeping with me.  It was decent of you.

            (LOU exits through the door into the bright light beyond)

                        EM

We shouldn’t have let her go.

                        FITZ

One cigarette won’t kill her.

SIMON

Not now, anyway.

EM

No, we shouldn’t have let her go because it’s a trope of every murder mystery and every horror film.  Once somebody leaves the group and goes off on their own, they’re not coming back again.

JENNIFER

Lou’s right about one thing.  You know how in a dream, there aren’t any bright colours, and one thing just turns into another without any logic?  This isn’t like that.  Whatever it is, it’s real.

FITZ

Simon, you’re a scientist.  There must be some way to tell what’s real and what isn’t.

EM

Obviously you missed seeing “The Matrix”.

SIMON

I know.  I have my mobile phone with me.  I’ll call someone and ask….

JENNIFER

You’ll ask them what, if you’re dead?

                        SIMON

Significantly, there is no cell phone signal.

EM

Da-da-da-DUMM.

FITZ

We’re at a cabin.  There was never phone service here.  It doesn’t mean anything.

SIMON

Philosophers have always questioned whether it’s possible to tell if the things we see and hear are real or not.  The general consensus is that it’s not.  But in our universe, we know that certain physical laws apply.  If we could show that those laws don’t apply here, then we’ll know that this isn’t real.

                        EM

How do we do that?

                        JENNIFER

Oh, I know.  Fitz, you see that bit of wall there?

                        FITZ

Yes, I do.

                        JENNIFER

We are all going to concentrate as hard as we can, and you are going to run at that wall as fast as you can, but instead of hitting it, you are going to run right through it!  Go, Fitz, go!

                        FITZ

You are not J.K. Rowling and I am not Harry Potter.  Despite what you say, I think you’re still mad at me.

                        SIMON

How about this?

            (SIMON takes a book off the shelf.)

We know that on our world, things fall at a set rate, accelerating at one-point-eight feet per second per second, and we all intuitively know what that looks like.  So let’s all watch this book fall and see whether it falls at a normal speed or not.

            (SIMON drops the book and all watch intently as it falls)

                        SIMON          

Well?

                        FITZ

This is stupid.

                        SIMON

Did it look like it was falling at normal speed or not?

EM

It looked slow to me.  I say we’re on a smaller planet than earth with a weaker gravitational field.

                        JENNIFER

It looked perfectly normal to me.  And how is it that a falling book is the best science can do to help us figure out where we are?

                        FITZ

When Lou gets back, let’s get into the car and drive back into town, maybe someone there can tell us what’s going on.

                        EM

Lou won’t be coming back.

                        FITZ

Lou was mad, sure, but she’ll be over that by now.

                        EM

Maybe the reason you were all so successful is that you don’t own television sets!  We’re in classic Rod Serling territory by way of Agatha Christie, and whatever is on the other side of that door, it’s not going to be somewhere you come back from.

JENNIFER

The undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

EM

Wow, Star Trek six, a favourite.

                        FITZ

So you’re saying we’re in death’s waiting room, and that the real thing is on the other side of that door?  If that’s so, then let’s just stay here.  We’ve got cake and beer and whatever’s in the fridge.

SIMON

It’s just a door, who’s to say we can’t walk through it and walk right back in?

                        FITZ

Be our guest, you can have a good laugh at us as soon as you’re back.

                        EM

No, I’m the one in the red shirt, I’ll go.  Even if this is all just a metaphor, I drank enough beer that I have to go find the metaphorical outhouse.  But if I’m wrong about it being a one-way door, as soon as I’ve walked out, I’ll walk right back in so you’ll know.  And then I’ll go to the outhouse.  But just in case, I want to say that I’m honoured to be dead in your company.

            (EM exits.  JENNIFER, FITZ and SIMON watch the door, but it

doesn’t re-open.)

                        SIMON

I have a theory.

                        JENNIFER

Any rational explanation for what’s going on would be welcome.

                        SIMON

You won’t like it.

                        JENNIFER

Share it with us anyway.

                        SIMON

When we think about life and death, we tend to assume that it’s a case of it being one or the other.  One moment you’re alive, the next you’re dead.

                        FITZ

We assume that because it’s true.  I was there when my grandmother died, and it was like somebody had thrown a switch.

                        SIMON

But we’ve all read stories about people who drowned in extremely frigid water and were brought back to life even hours later without any brain damage, because the cold had slowed down the rate at which their brains died.

                        FITZ

But none of us drowned.

SIMON

No, but if cold slows down brain death so that it takes hours, then even at a normal rate, it must take minutes, so that after the heart has stopped beating, there will still be enough oxygen for the brain to keep functioning.  Maybe during that time, when the brain of the dying person is deprived of sensory inputs and no longer has to keep the rest of the body functioning, it creates an artificial scenario, resurrects old friends and a familiar environment, stretches those minutes out to what seems like a longer time, filling in that time until the brain finally stops functioning altogether.  Maybe in addition to creating a bright light that we can go toward, the brain can put that light on the other side of a door, and put that door in the wall of a cabin.

JENNIFER

So you’re saying this cabin, both of you, Lou, Em, the birthday party, it’s all something created by my dying brain?

                        SIMON

No, I’m saying it’s something created by my dying brain.

                        FITZ

You’re both in my cabin, can’t it be my brain that’s dying?

                        JENNIFER

It’s my birthday!

                        SIMON

You two don’t know enough science to have thought of this explanation, I have to be the dying one and you two are just old memories – very dear memories – I’ve dredged up.

                        JENNIFER

If you’re right and only one of us is actually real and alive, then that person should know things that the others don’t.  If it’s you, prove it, tell us something we don’t know.

                        SIMON

All right.  Fitz, you always hated math, what’s the value of pi to four digits?

                        FITZ

How I need a drink.

                        SIMON

Sure, pour me one while you’re at it.

                        FITZ

No, I mean it’s an old bar bet trick to remember the value of pi.  “How” has three letters, “I” is one letter, “need” is four letters, “a” is one letter, “drink” is five letters.  Three-point-one-four-one-five, so you’ll excuse me if I’m not convinced that you’re the live one and I’m imaginary.

                        SIMON

Jennifer, you were no scientist, can you name the planetary bodies in our solar system?

                        JENNIFER

Same idea, Simon, “Mother very thoughtfully made a jelly sandwich under no protest.”  Mercury, Venus, Terra, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and don’t tell me that Pluto isn’t a planet anymore because I don’t care.

                        SIMON

There’s no point in my arguing with you about this, I’m just arguing with my own mental constructs and putting off the inevitable.  When I walk through that door, you will both wink out of existence.  The lights will go down, the curtain will fall.  And that saddens me more than I can say.  Of all the people I ever knew, there’s a reason my mind would have chosen the two of you to be here with me at the end.  Real or not, I love you both.  Goodbye.

(SIMON walks through the door.  JENNIFER and FITZ do not disappear.)

                        FITZ

I was pretty sure it would just be you and me at the end.

                        JENNIFER

Why?

                        FITZ

Because we needed – I needed – to make amends.  I’m sorry I behaved badly.  I’m sorry I hurt you.  I’m sorry you had to live without me for, I gather, a long time.

                        JENNIFER

You know, I did live a long time without you.  And even though all the wrinkles have disappeared, I’m really very, very old, and I learned a few things along the way.  One of those things is that when we’re young, we just don’t realize how fragile hearts are, so we’re careless with them.  But even broken hearts mend.  I also realized that every time we say goodbye to someone, we ought to realize it might be the last time, because one of those times it will be.  I’m glad that I got another chance to see you, Fitz.  That is, if Simon was wrong, and you’re really you, not just some synapse misfiring in my old, dying brain.

            (FITZ goes to the bookshelf and searches through the books until he

finds the volume he wants, which he brings back with him)

                        FITZ

You remember your first birthday after we started dating, because I knew you liked literature I bought you an antique copy of my favourite book, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, the one with the leather binding?

                        JENNIFER

I remember.

                        FITZ

You never read it.

JENNIFER

It’s Victorian schlock, Fitz, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t bear the thought of it.

                        FITZ

You’re an insufferable literary snob, but that’s okay, because you never even opened, the cover, did you?

                        JENNIFER

No, I was a bad and ungrateful girlfriend.

                        FITZ

No, that’s good, because it means you don’t know the poem, but I know most of it by heart, so if I can recite poetry that you’ve never read, that’ll prove I’m not just some invention.  Turn to the very back, you can read the last verse along with me.

“And when like her, oh, Saki, you shall pass,

Among the Guests star-scatter’d on the grass,

And in your joyous errand reach the spot

Where I made one –turn down an empty glass.”

Isn’t it pretty unlikely that your “dying brain” would be capable of making up an entire book of poetry you don’t like and a dead, ex-fiancé who can quote from it?

JENNIFER

So if Simon was right, does that mean that you’re the one whose dying brain is generating all this, and I’m just a cherished memory you’ve chosen to replay?

                        FITZ

You are a cherished memory, but Simon’s not right.  Unfortunately, the only way to prove that is to walk through that door.  Shall we go through together?

                        JENNIFER

I think it might be something each of us has to do alone.

                        FITZ

Then would you like me to go first?  At least that way you’ll know you’re not the imaginary one.

                        JENNIFER

That would be very gallant.  Besides, I didn’t get a chance to finish my cake.

            (FITZ tosses back the last of his wine and puts his glass on the table.)

                        FITZ

See you on the other side.

(JENNIFER listens as FITZ goes out the door, closing it behind him.  She eats the last of her cake, puts the plate down and goes to the door.  She looks back at the table, returns to it, turns FITZ’s glass upside down, returns to the door and opens it.)

            (Blackout.)

(When the lights rise, JENNIFER is still standing in front of the door.  She turns the handle and steps through.  Moments later, JENNIFER, FITZ, SIMON, LOU and EM tumble back out of the door in a heap, a la the Marx Brothers scene in “Duck Soup.  All but JENNIFER are dressed unusually:  LOU and FITZ are dressed as angels with tinsel halos; SIMON is in a saffron robe; EM is wearing a colander as a hat.)

EM

The next time I think I have to go to the bathroom, I’m just going to hold it.

LOU (to JENNIFER)

Repent!  I bring you tidings of (BEAT) pretty good joy.  The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand and I am its handmaiden.

JENNIFER

You’re some kind of maiden?  Really?

LOU

It’s an expression. 

FITZ

Hail Jennifer, full of grace, the…. (beat)  No, that can’t be right.  Behold, I, I bring you tidings of great, really great joy.

JENNIFER

What’s up with you two?  And where did you get the kaftans?

FITZ

This isn’t a kaftan, I’m….

JENNIFER

An angel?

FITZ

No, angels are different from us, they’re sort of like dolphins.

LOU

I’m sure they’d love to hear you say that.

FITZ

It’s true, they’re all smooth and shiny, and if they’ve got any junk it must be tucked away inside somewhere.  Plus, they always look like they’re smiling, but they just come across as smug.

JENNIFER

What’s up with you?  You go out to the garage, when you come back you’re all in costume and you two are arguing about angels.

SIMON

That’s right, they’re tied up in outdated dogma and religious trappings.  Just look at those things on their heads.

LOU

For your information, these are haloes.

JENNIFER

They look like they’re made out of coat hangers and tinsel.

FITZ

Sure, that’s what it looks like here in this plane, but in heaven?  It’s like having your head in a snow globe full of disco balls and fireworks.  And everybody you talk to, it’s like their heads are surrounded by rainbows or the northern lights, or as if they’re actually on fire.

SIMON

Let’s call that reason number one for choosing a Buddhist afterlife.  No haloes.

JENNIFER

Choosing an afterlife?

EM

You thought the sorting hat would make the decision for you?

LOU

There’s no decision to be made.  Jennifer wants to go to heaven, because that’s what everyone wants.

JENNIFER

So you’re all competing to be the afterlife employee of the month?  Whoever lands my eternal soul for their particular cosmology gets what?  A plaque?  A new car?

SIMON

More like a promotion.

FITZ

To tell you the truth, at least it’s something to do.   How long did it seem to you like each of us was gone after we walked out that door?

JENNIFER

A few minutes?   An hour?

EM

The word “eternity” is a lot more meaningful to me now than it once was.

FITZ

And it’s not like there’s a lot to do.  What, am I going to go work out when I have a pseudo-body that doesn’t change?   Work at a job, when there’s no money and there’s nothing I need to buy anyway? 

EM

The chance to come back here and recruit you wasn’t one any of us would pass up.

JENNIFER

Why don’t you each give it your best shot?  It seems that I’ve got plenty of time to listen.  One question first, though:  you all went to your assigned afterlives, so why is it up in the air which one I’m going to?

SIMON

Maybe I should answer that, and make the first pitch.  Why you?

(SIMON pulls down a chart with an equation written on it.)

JENNIFER

Where did the chart come from?

SIMON

It’s a miracle.  Apparently I can do miracles now.

FITZ

Yeah, yeah, we can all do miracles now.

LOU

Minor miracles.  Water to wine, yes, raising the dead, no.

EM

Mine are more like card tricks, really.

LOU

Heaven is wasted on some people.  You died, you went to heaven, you’re a saint.

FITZ

Maybe someday, sure, “St. Fitz, patron saint of hockey”, but only the Vatican can make someone a saint.  Sure, I know some saints, we hang out, but they’re mostly your Junior B league saints, Saint Timeon of Parnasus, guys like that, not your heavy hitters like Saint Christopher or Saint Patrick.

                        LOU

Saint Christopher isn’t even been a saint any more, the Pope de-canonized him decades ago.

FITZ

Tell that to someone who’s getting on a plane in a thunderstorm.  Besides, what do you know about, I didn’t see you in Heaven.

LOU

You didn’t see me in Catholic Heaven, you mean.

JENNIFER

Hang on, you’re saying there’s more than one heaven?

                        FITZ

No!

LOU

Yes!  Well no, there’s only one heaven, but the Catholic part is separate, sort of like a gated community.

                        FITZ

There’s no Catholic part, everyone in Heaven just happens to be Catholic.

LOU

You ask St. Francis where the dead Protestants are the next time you see him.  Nice guy, he slips out and comes around to visit, doesn’t care if you’re Baptist or Lutheran or what.

                        JENNIFER (to SIMON and EM)

So what part of heaven did you two go to?  (to EM)  The funny hat section?  (to SIMON)  The chanting “Hari Krishna” on a downtown sidewalk at Chistmastime part of Heaven?

                        SIMON

It’s completely unfair and racist.  Just because my ancestors were from India, I ended up in some Hindu version of the afterlife, where a giant with two heads and four arms was deciding who gets to move on to a higher plane of existence and who has to come back as a French bulldog.  I’m an atheist, I shouldn’t have to put up with that.  If you hadn’t somehow dragged me back here, I’d probably have gotten reborn as a rat that would be used for pointless experiments at some second tier university with an ineffectual ethics committee.

EM

And me, you could say I went to the afterlife for smartasses.  You’re wondering about the colander on my head?  You remember how on the census, one of the questions is “religion”, and how some people would put “Jedi”?  Well, I put “Pastafarian”.

                        LOU

What’s a “Pastafarian”?

EM

Guy down in Kansas gets mad that the schools are teaching “intelligent design” instead of evolution, decides to make up his own, based on the existence of an invisible, undetectable supernatural being that closely resembles a plate of spaghetti and meatballs.  Writes a letter to the school board, puts the letter on his website, it gets millions of hits, next thing you know, jerks like me are putting it on census forms and getting Flying Spaghetti Monster magnets to go on the back of our cars, and to our surprise ending up in the Pastafarian version of the afterlife.

LOU

So what’s that like?

EM

It’s embarrassing!  What images do the terms “stripper fountain” and “beer volcano” conjure up?

                        FITZ

I guess I could try to imagine that.

                        EM

Think of a sparsely-populated, half-finished version of the afterlife as envisioned by frat boy stoners.  I’m not wearing this colander on my head anymore and I’m not going back there.

JENNIFER

I’m no theologian, but I’m pretty sure nobody gets to choose where they go after they die, let alone just make up a religion and create their own version of the afterlife.

EM

Yeah?  Put this colander on your head, step through that door, and see how you enjoy an eternity playing beer pong.

LOU

You are so right, Jennifer, there is only one place to go after you die, that’s Heaven, so if you’re all done here, we can be on our way.

FITZ

Hold on.  Yes, we should definitely all go to Heaven.  The real heaven.  Right after I see if there’s any beer left.  There is!  Who wants one?

SIMON

Isn’t the beer in Heaven better than what you can get on Earth?

FITZ (mumbling)

There’s no beer in Heaven.

EM

Say what?

FITZ

There’s no beer in Heaven, all right?  No beer, no wine, no whisky.  No cake either, hey who wants cake?

(FITZ plates a piece of birthday cake and begins to eat it)

LOU

But you don’t miss them!  We’re all basking in the glory of God’s love and eternal presence, and that’s completely satisfying.

FITZ

Yeah, like she said, completely.  You know, this cake is absolutely fantastic!  I didn’t realize what a great thing cake is before.

JENNIFER

So what else do you do, besides basking?

LOU

There’s singing, lots of singing, and everyone’s in tune.

FITZ

Not so much in tune in Catholic heaven.

LOU

Anyway, what does it matter?  It’s Heaven!  Everybody wants to go to Heaven when they die.

JENNIFER

Are you working on commission?  Maybe I don’t want to go to Heaven, life was pretty good, maybe I want to go with Simon and get reincarnated.  I didn’t do anything really bad, none of us did, I don’t think we’d get reincarnated as snakes or jellyfish or anything.

SIMON

It’s true, humans almost always get reincarnated as humans.  But I don’t really feel like I’ve got the energy to go through it all again.  Especially high school.  And could I do as bad a job of having sex for the first time as I did in this life?

LOU

Not from what Debbie Niedermeyer told me, no.

FITZ

Look, Lou’s right about this one.  You have to go to Heaven.  There’s a formula.

SIMON

D equals L + A divided by I.

JENNIFER

You’re joking.

EM

How come I didn’t hear about this?

LOU

What, it didn’t come up between rounds of beer pong?

SIMON

D stands for “destination”.  Heaven, Valhalla, the Elysian Fields, reincarnation, Stovokohr….

EM

I so should have gone to Stovokohr.

SIMON

L stands for the preponderant “local” belief system.  If you’re in Saudi Arabia it’s Islam, if you’re in England, it’s Church of England.  A stands for “ancestral” belief history, what your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents believed.  Those two factors, what most people around you believe and what your ancestors believed, are the overwhelming determinants of where most people go after they die.  It’s like with politics, even if someone can tell you all sorts of reasons why they vote for one political party over another, they usually just vote for the same party as their parents did, maybe with a little influence from their friends.

JENNIFER

You said something about “I”, what’s the “I” stand for?

SIMON

That’s “individual” self-determination.  But even though it’s in the equation, it hardly ever amounts to anything.  Really, how many Mormons do you find outside of Utah, or Jewish parents with Buddhist children?

JENNIFER

But that’s not true at all.  Think of all those girls in college who decided they were Wiccans?

LOU

That was more of a fashion choice for women who thought they looked good in velvet and shawls, which, frankly, they didn’t.

JENNIFER

Think back to Clubs Day when we were undergraduates, all sorts of people signed up for the Baha’i Club.

FITZ

Being a Baha’i is the religious equivalent of going to a buffet because you can’t make up your mind what you want, so you take a little bit of everything.  A real religion is more like a steakhouse.  You don’t try to order sushi, because you know it’s not on the menu.

SIMON

Even if I hadn’t been conscripted into Hinduism, I’d still be offended by the religion as steakhouse metaphor.

JENNIFER

It’s no worse than the idea that some formula determines what afterlife you get.  Or that just because you haven’t bought into some version of religious dogma, that you still end up stuck with one when you die.

LOU

You may not like it, but that’s the way it is.  Look, you can go through that door with one of us – preferably me – and at least you’ll know where you’re going to end up.

EM

But not with me, because I’m not going back to the Pastafarian afterlife.

LOU

Or you can step through on your own and take your chances.  You didn’t embrace some religion in your later years, did you?

JENNIFER

No.

LOU

And your parents and grandparents weren’t religious were they?

JENNIFER

No.

LOU

So your version of the afterlife would probably depend on where you were living when you died.

JENNIFER

I died in Las Vegas.  So does that mean I’d end up in some Graceland version of the afterlife?

FITZ

Sorry, but because Las Vegas is where really bad people go when they die, there is no Las Vegas version of Heaven.

JENNIFER

Las Vegas is Hell?

                        FITZ

It seems so obvious now, doesn’t it?

SIMON

So really there’s no way to know where you might end up if go ahead on your own.  You might find someone with the head of a dog balancing your soul against a feather.

LOU

That had better be some big feather.

FITZ

I hate to say it, but we can’t stay here forever.  There’s harps to be plucked and haloes to be polished.  You’ve got to decide, Jennifer, where are you going to go?  And you know that I really want you to come with me.  Heaven would be more heavenly if you were there and eternity would be too long if you weren’t.

SIMON

If you ask me, you’d be bored to death, if that isn’t a non sequitur, five minutes after you got there.  If you come with me, at least life’s great adventure continues.  And who knows, maybe we’ll be friends in the next life too.

JENNIFER

Simon, what did you say earlier about us all being together in some sort of cosmic club?

SIMON

A group of souls that is incarnated together can form a jati, so that in all of their successive lives they keep running into each other, maybe as family, maybe as shipmates….

JENNIFER

Maybe as fellow students.

EM

There was one night, Christmas exam time, you’d all come into the pub, you looked so tired like you wanted to have already left to be home with your families, there was a moment when I moved the candle to put the drinks down on your table that I was all of a sudden putting your drinks down on a different table in a different place, where the candles were the only light and there was a piano playing instead of the stereo, and you were in khaki uniform, your faces all changed but I knew you were still you, I was still me.  It was just a second, then everything was back to normal.  I told myself it was just the weed, but I never really believed it.

JENNIFER

What if we are all from the same jati, if we’re supposed to stick together instead of all going off in different directions, doesn’t that sound better than anything any of you have described so far?

FITZ

But go where?  Whose version of the afterlife would we choose?

EM

Couldn’t we browse?

LOU

What, you want to buy your afterlife from Amazon?

EM

The idea that we have to go with somebody else’s design at all is lame. 

SIMON

Who says we have to, maybe we can make our own heaven from scratch.  No, not “heaven”, not “paradise”, not “nirvana”, not some place that’s unchanging for all eternity.

LOU

Would God be there in this non-heaven?

SIMON (to LOU and FITZ)

You were both in heaven, or “heavens”, did you ever actually see God?

LOU

Not me.

FITZ

I got the impression that God is to heaven as Colonel Sanders is to KFC, a beloved, strangely garbed, quasi-mythical being who founded the operation then stepped back and let it run itself.

JENNIFER

So, about the same as on Earth.

EM

So how would we get to this place?

SIMON

When the four of us went through that door, we all went to different versions of the afterlife, it stands to reason there must be a lot more.  If we go through again, together this time, maybe we can just will ourselves to the kind of afterlife we want.

JENNIFER

For that to have any chance of working, we would all have to be agreed on a very specific vision of what we want.

FITZ

And what we don’t want.  You know something that bugged me about heaven was how shiny and spotless everything was, like, you could never let anything be out of place.  I want somewhere that’s more lived-in.

LOU

Another thing about heaven, you couldn’t get away from people.  People singing hymns, people rejoicing, people playing the harp, which by the way is a pretty annoying instrument to listen to when someone untalented is trying to learn it, which is almost everyone in heaven.  Anyway, I spent my life in the public eye, always surrounded by people, and I’d prefer an afterlife somewhere that I can get away from the crowds.

EM

But you still need your father’s house to have many rooms, in case you want to have a sleepover.

SIMON

The Hindu afterlife was just so bureaucratic, everybody getting tested to see what their next incarnation should be, endless lineups, always having to take a number, memorizing the Vedas and Upanishads, trying to figure out the difference between karma and dharma, it was all so exhausting.  I want somewhere chill.

JENNIFER

So, you all want to spend eternity somewhere like (BEAT) this?

(all five look around at the lodge and at each other, and FITZ starts filling everyone’s glasses)

FITZ

I guess only a very bad writer would say something as clichéd as that we all have to make our own heaven?

JENNIFER

Milton said something along those lines in Paradise Lost, and he was a pretty good writer.  And Charlotte Brontë had Jane Eyre say “I believe we leave earth, and make our own heaven yonder.”

EM

Was Charlotte the sister who didn’t have any friends?

JENNIFER

No, that was Emily.  Charlotte had very close friends, such as Ellen Nussey, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Mary Taylor.

LOU

That’s good.  It’s good to have very close friends, especially if you have to make your own heaven.

EM

Could we invite them over?

SIMON

Who?

EM

The Brontë sisters.  You’ve got to keep making new friends, you know, it’s almost as important as keeping your old ones.

JENNIFER

Then I suppose we should raise our glasses in a toast to how our story ends, we say goodbye to our old lives, but we live on with our old friends.

(ALL drink)

(BLACKOUT)

(END)