The End of Act One

This is the Engineers speech at the end of act one. This is meant to set up the challenge for the rest of the play.

Enter Engineer

ENGINEER: Silence. Silence and attention. Listen

Seize my words and quiet your own. We are lost.

Ruin and an end to things un-begun

the field collapses now, we have no time.

One chance remains, call Fate and Tyche both

One final cast of the die, you’re the last

the teams are dead, the sphere turns out of synch

a gyring crystal palace of the dead

the dangling ornament of a crashed car

final testament of a doomed household

cast from the burning home like a child’s doll

un-scorched, by a ruin, with the family gone.

Live cities. There were live cities beneath.

They were gardens and carnivals of life

A greater art than any artist drew.

And now, where people grew. Dead Martian sand

turns idly and un-noticed in a wind

that’s thin and bare like a ragged hem. Gone.

Mankind’s been cut, out histories reversed

edited out, a bad act, a failed scene

an inferior movement of the soul.

The dregs of men are now confined to Earth

to brawl and war in a slow dying world

pathetic lees of what they could have been

You must undo this thing. At any cost.

SENSE: How? What happened here and why? What happened?

ENGINEER: The agency that bought us to this pass

could come only from within, only we

move past moments like shadows, only we

would engage to deceive upon this scale

to scale and weigh philosophies and faiths

nations, movements, each against the other

and only we are the masters of time.

One amongst you makes a play of their nature

Thoughts costumed, mimed ideals, a masked motive.

A traitor. One of you commands this crime

and only you can put it right.

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