Act Two

Here is the teams reaction to the disaster at the end of Act One. This is the current leading edge of the play.

Act Two

SPEAK: Oh talk about the bishops killer. Fuck.

SEE: So one of you

MAKE:             Or you

SPEAK:                  Oooh, courtroom scene!

CONNECT: Speak what is wrong with you?

SENSE:                              The Sphere, the world
how could one of you? Why? A traitor? Why?
Who has done this? This mass extermination?
Inexplicable. All those lives undone.
Unspeakable god-crime. Abrahams Lord
would weep, he asked only nations and sons
even limited Jihad and Crusade
“Not these people faithful and not this time”
proportion if no justice in all things.
Not this. This horror cannot be described
by words, it can only define itself
a voiceless monster sings itself to shape
each bean a fang each not a claw that drips
unmakeable thing. Oh God. Who did this?
I’ll rip your flesh, I’ll grind your eyes out. Who?

MAKE: Grind eyes? This is just a murder Sensor
Not an Agatha Christie mystery
the killer won’t break down, throw up their hands
whoever did this thinks they’ll get away
if you want evidence than check the body
and why assume it’s one? It could be two.

SENSE: If three or more were leagued against the rest
they would have acted now, if two perhaps
How could they hide? We must act together.
Have been together. In each others sight.

SEE: If one can hide then two can just as well
or easier perhaps.

SPEAK:            One is a tone
A shift of emphasis, a missed line
an influence here, an influence there
a cast on one can conspire with themselves
weigh every course upon a private stage
and make accounting for each duel-faced deed
which may be one thing, or its shadow. Who
can betray a conspiracy of one?
But two? Or three? Well now you have a scene
and scenes play out. They find their end. Connect?

CONNECT: We must go back, it is the only way
whatever happened happened in the Loop.

MAKE: Right, examine the body, evidence.

CONNECT: It could be a trap. To lure us back.

MAKE: If it is do we have a choice? If not
the fact that we’re alive says someone’s plan
went tits up.

SENSE:       We go back, we go back now.

CONNECT: We can’t. Cross-hatch our own movements like thread
like weaving a tapestry inside lines
from another, an illusion of sight.

SEE: It’s like those faces you turn upside down
a grinning lady and a bearded man
depending how you look.

CONNECT:               We’d meet ourselves

MAKE: Couldn’t be helped, us all knocking around
five us, five used to be us, definite
it’s definite we’d meet.

SPEAK:                 Sense even you
can’t keep that straight.

SENSE:                  That’s not what I suggest.
We go back direct and cut our own path

(pause)

SEE: And (pause) That’s bad?

SPEAK:                      Granddad paradox.

CONNECT: We’d die.

SENSE:            We’re dying now.

CONNECT:                         We’d be erased.

SENSE: So would the traitor.

MAKE:                     And they would be trapped.

SEE: Could someone explain this to me?

SPEAK:                                We’d die.
The Loop seems calm but it’s a violent thing.
If we inject ourselves back into time
like a needle sliding under your skin
at the point exact where it entered last
the puncture and scar will erase our acts
and all the things we did to alter time.

SEE: I remember those things.

SPEAK:                       And you still will.

SEE: I’ll remember things that never happened
how can that be? My memories are fake?
and then? What? Walk the worlds trailing ribbons
of recall that no one else has? Is this
where madmen come from? Mislead Chrononauts
living under bridges? How will I die?

SPEAK: You’ll be caught like a tear in someone’s tights
the flaw will chase and race you, squirming close
a snake climbing up a ladder of rope.
as you keep climbing to escape.

SEE:                          Until
It bites me.

SPEAK:     And you wink out like a light
where the rays escape when a room goes dark
where the sound goes when an instrument breaks
where hope dies, where odd socks go, where pigs fly,
goodbye.

SEE:    Slow suicide then.

SENSE:                    Very fast
Very dynamic suicide. Trap them
as we are trapped. They can hide, or survive.
But not both.

SPEAK:       Did I see that in a film?

MAKE: Do it.

SENSE:      You second. Speak?

SPEAK:                        Don’t rush me, Geek.

They turn to SEE

SEE: You say sign up as a kamikaze
What’s the alternative? I hesitate,
Become a suspect? “kill all extremists”
I surrender.

SENSE:      Connect?

CONNECT:             Who can I trust?
Speak? Speak? I don’t know, I don’t know, too fast
we all have moved too fast, how do we know
what really happened, we are in the gaps
between knowledge and assumption, between
word and punctuation.

SENSE:               Forward or back?
Decide.

CONNECT: Why bring this up?

SPEAK:                    Alright, I’m in.

CONNECT: Speak? But there must be some options left. Yes?

SPEAK: You know me Grip, no sense in wasting time.
“an ill wind shifts all ships”, or tides, I think.
I’m sure I read that in a book somewhere
or imagined reading it, ever get that?
Dream memories so vivid or mundane
they mix with the real like cards from a deck
marked up by a child for cheating their aunt.

CONNECT: You cheated at cards?

SPEAK:                        She taught me.

SENSE:                                     Speaker.

SPEAK: What do you expect, a childhood like mine.