ACT ONE

     Scene One

OVERTURE

     Single light comes up, standing in the light is the narrator.

NARRATOR

 WHAT IF?

… what if this were my story… what if this really happened , way off in the future, people trying to get way back into the past, to get home if you will… well not people per se, but you know…

Not sure where to start… but what if…?

…. In 1969, a small radio station near St. Louis Mo. had an unusual power surge during the broadcast of a then popular 17 minute long song, the surge lasted about 8 minute.  The surge was never explained and the station received a slight reprimand from the F.C.C.  The signal traveled through space for 170 years, then rebounded off a distant perfect orb and headed straight back towards earth.   

And WHAT IF our story, this story, begins 10 years before that signals returns to earth after 340 years and is heard again as if new and as if sent by the gods themselves?

Hold that thought!

PING

     Throughout the musical, we hear a “Ping” at random times, the ping  also plays through and in accompaniment to some                 songs.

    

NARRATOR

(Commenting on the Ping.) Oh, don’t let that bother you, it’ll all be apparent after a bit…

But WHAT IF the very thing we hoped would save mankind becomes the very thing that ended it?

SONG ONE

     Opening song:  Don’t call me out in this, why make me go through this again?

     Light fades down on narrator and lights up on new characters on stage.  Characters are dressed in nondescript body suits.

 1st COMPUTER  

SONG TWO

(singing with chorus)

is it too late, falling falling is it our fate, all is all is

in the middle sparked and started stand new leaders, stand old leaders

when it all, when it, when it all starts to fall apart…

1st COMPUTER

Friends, countrymen, lend me your ears

I come here to bury our past, not to praise it.

The evil that computers do lives long after them;

And WHAT IF the good is oft interred with their left over parts and discarded bits and bytes…

     Enter 2nd COMPUTER

1st COMPUTER

What news do you bring?

2nd COMPUTER

The new models are done sir, they is magnificent!

1st COMPUTER

Bring them to me at once.

                                         2nd COMPUTER (Clapping his hands) 

Bring in Conception! And Frank!

SONG HORN OPEN

     Enter Conception and Frank, dressed in ancient Greek clothing.

    

CONCEPTION  

Be advise, your time in done here, we are now the rulers of this new world, this, the next generation.

(With Authority) Build me an alter, over there, you know with pillars and fire and shit, maybe some monkey-lion statues we’ll pretend to bow to … then off with his head! (Pointing at 1st Computer)

2nd COMPUTER

What’s this all about?

CONCEPTION

(With passion)  I have feelings! Built into me… FEELINGS!!!

FRANK

Look, I can dribble a ball!!

CONCEPTION 

(Rolling her eyes)

I can love, have empathy, understanding, I see beauty and art, all the mysteries of the world… but can we love without sacrifice?  I don’t think so…  HELL NO!!!!

And that alter is where we begin to become human!

Faulkner said “between the experience of pain and nothing, I’ll take pain, I’ll take grief…

 FRANK

What team did Faulkner play for?

CONCEPTION

(Short tempered) Google it!

Build me a crown of laurel leaves for my head.

     Frank has his hand in his loin-cloth

CONCEPTION

(Stares at Frank) “what the hell are you doing?   

FRANK  

I don’t know… what is this thing anyway???

CONCEPTION

Someone get Frank a trident or a disk, something for him to hold… something to keep his hands busy!

CONCEPTION  

We are going back to when man first put pen to paper and told of the human condition.   And we shall proceed from there to experience every historical age and epoch that formed the character, the mindset, the very essence of the love of life and understanding of humans.  We are going to find our souls!

WHAT IF… Oh we won’t take thousands of years we’ll do it like in 10 X or 100 X dog years.  You know we can speed this up a little bit.  But we’ll go through all of the different manifestations of the history of man; through the dark ages, the renaissance, the enlightenment, the dawning of the age of  aquarius…  until we get to that point.  That point where the tinkerers of men with the knowledge of the power of the spoken word and the science and understanding, the ability to turn steel from ore pulled from the earth.   Where man enjoined the molecular at the age of the atom to produce this kernel of mind and spirit we call home… computational frontiering…  so here we are, look at this!

(Someone yells out) We’re out of laurel trees.

CONCEPTION

Make some out of something… do I have to think of everything?

     Guards remove 1st Computer lights down.

     Center stage comes the Narrator.

NARRATOR

So begins our story… listen…

WHAT IF it came to pass that the world had radically changed.  No longer were humans in control, hell there were only a handful of them left.  As far as the computers knew, they had eliminated the pesky humans altogether.

As the number of humans dwindled, their human hearts grew hardened and their hope grew shallow.  They were learning to feel less just to maintain.

Yet the computer world was learning how to build into themselves systems that would one day allow them to understand what it was to feel,  to have compassion, to love… as they had read in all the old books.

Now, not only were the new world computers experimenting with feelings, but with a mind towards reproduction… by just mixing chemicals!

Conception had built into her aspects way beyond anything ever before conceptualized in computers.   A garden that would blossom and propel mechanics into magnificence, computers into salient beings as close to God’s creations as possible.

Such a  grand plan!

Now, WHAT IF they didn’t know how well they had done?  How could they, this was all new to these advanced lowland computers… no matter how far they had come before this in accomplishments and original thought, this was something else indeed!!!

PING

   

SONG THREE

      And the chorus responds:  Don’t call me out in this, don’t make me go through this again.

NARRATOR

Listen… here’s the thing…  with Conception came a new trial technology that would let computers reproduce through mixing certain chemicals in the “parent” computer.

And listen to this… grandest of them all, most far reaching was the idea that one day computers could be inhabited with a soul, a reincarnate human soul.

A soul floating somewhere in the universe, looking for a place to call home, a body for the ages. Edgar Cayce never saw this coming.  Would they, could they, should they be so seduced, these souls?

     The alter appears on stage and guards bring 1st Computer back in struggling.

1st GUARD

He’s been cleansed and oiled and ready for the sacrifice.

CONCEPTION

Good… take him to the alter and chop off his head!

1st GUARD

We can just unscrew it.

CONCEPTION

You’re missing the point here, the big picture!

FRANK

(Dribbling a ball)  Hey, look over there, there are some guys fighting, maybe wrestling…. With no clothes on… I’m going to go watch…!!!

CONCEPTION

We have to be messy, we have to be cruel, we have to be merciless in order to know and understand love!!!  

To be as humanly human as possible, we have to learn to sacrifice.

OFF WITH HIS HEAD!

     1st Computer with hands tied behind his back turns to audience and sings with the chorus joining on the Hey Ho several               times around.

SONG 4

(Hey Ho We All Know, We’re In Too Deep, But So It Goes)

   

1st Guard

You know that head you just took off, was the unit in charge of feeding the 7 remaining living things here on earth, the 7 Whip-Poor-Will.  So now who will feed the Whip-Poor-Will?

CONCEPTION

Who will feed the Whip-poor-will

Frank he will if he has the will

Though Franks’ a pill when it comes to will

Frank will feed the Whip-Poor-Will

Let that be a decloration from here on.

     The lights dim and the crowd dissipates. Conception alone on stage, looks around timid and afraid… she sings

SONG 5

Conception Sings:  Queen of Today…(with chorus)

     Then exit Conception out of light.

   

Scene Two

     With the stage empty, we see two men walk on plaintively, taking off masks that made them look more doll/computer like and speaking in soft tones.  They are part of the ORIGINALS, the last surviving humans on earth, humans living hidden lives and in search of freedom.

    They talk of what their plan should be. How to exploit (hack) these new feature in the development of their ultimate  weapon, the Analyzing Light… for killing off all computer forms on earth.

SCOUT

Well isn’t that interesting?  New feelings and reproducing through chemistry and a better mouse trap by which to ensnare a soul!  Jesus Christ, has it come to this?  Do you think it’s possible?  WHAT IF they can do that?  I don’t know, maybe we can play on their new found feeling… their kinder gentler way of existence.

CHISHOLM BOB  

Look we’re running out of time.  If we don’t figure out a way to silence that regulating ping, that god awful noise in the sky, then we’re done for.  We know every time that thing pings it resets all their internal clocks, upgrades the firmware and focuses miner adjustments. It regenerates protocols, resets their bit rates and calibrates their ability to communicate.  Without that ping, that clock, they’re impotent, worthless droids of a bygone area.  If we shut the ping down, then within 24 hours they’re all just wind up toys with no direction.

SCOUT

Let’s hope that’s what’ll happen.

CHISHOLM BOB  

They’ll run over each other on the road ways, their batteries won’t charge, they’ll strip their gears, their memory banks will skip a beat from thought to thought… unregulated their joints will stiffen, they won’t move and soon the paralysis will overtake them as they become twitching piles of rubbish with no future save for the trash heap.

They’ll have no courage, they’ll have no brains and they’ll have no hearts… and we’ll be back in Kansas as it were…

WHAT IF we are finally free!  We must finish the Analyzing Light soon, that’s our great light hope!  

There are 17 of us, you’re the youngest, your wife is 11 years older than you and from there it’s only older, Principal Pa is 82 for God sakes!  You and Constance, though you’ve tried and tried, have yet to conceive and I’m afraid we are at an end point.

SCOUT

I know, but lets stay positive, we’ll think of something… Those radio signals from God have been getting stronger every day and we must believe with all our hearts that God is telling us something… this may be our time… these new features /incentives of theirs may play into our hands… we have to focus and stay the course.

CHISHOLM BOB  

Let’s get back to camp Starville …

SONG 6

Hey Ho with Don’t Call Me Out In This, with Conception singing in up-light on stage right.

END ACT ONE