SAMUEL, GERTIE, and BOP are seen laying in a small cave. The cave limits are (in a proscenium): left wing is cemented off entirely. A hill of dirt begins from left wing rising continuously, beyond the right wing. Light comes from that side of the stage.
SAMUEL or GERTIE or ACTOR WHO PLAYS SAMUEL or ACTOR WHO PLAYS GERTIE appears in a spotlight in front center
SAMUEL or GERTIE: The Saturnites. Prologue: I am a Terrifying Soldier from the Terrible Army reporting for duty, sir! It is doubtful that the sky will fall in on itself, so that’s where to throw the bombs, sir. See the trouble with germ warfare is when do they stop eating? The germs I mean; they kill us all and then… then are they all going to die? Can they eat themselves? That seems an awful waste, sir. Men should build weapons that can live beyond the thing they kill. Then there’s a refined replacement.
And maybe we are that fine replacement, and I am a scientist that built the center of the bomb that blew it all up; and I anxiously sucked soup from my bowl, watching the bomb tick, forgetting my spoon, forgetting that spoons are really a luxury and luxuries have to be exploited upon immediately.
The woman.
She was a child, an unsexed thing, when we moved here to the center of the earth. I brought her with me. Happenstance, chance or courage and virile bravery, something like that. And, when we are safe in the center of the earth, what becomes of the Terrible War of the Terrible Sounds? What if you can’t reach headquarters? What if the ground stops being grounded and electrical impulses flood through civilian bodies? There are many things you don’t account for:
If it’s quiet where you are, it is small. If there are doors that don’t open, there are no doors. If the unsexed thing asks you for words, she is simply trying to remember what should not be remembered.
Build a word, build a story.
SAMUEL or GERTIE SINGS, returning to a sleep position.
(tune of Peter and the Wolf)
Oh where does the monkey go? When you shoot him take his soul oh where does the monkey go- o.
Samuel sleeps.
Gertie wakes. Screams.
Samuel wakes. hits her. She retaliates. He pins her, she slips out from under him, runs across the stage, stops screaming.
Samuel is satisfied. Goes to sleep.
GERTIE: Wake up Samuel.
SAMUEL: No!
GERTIE: Tell me a word.
Samuel gets up and hits her.
SAMUEL: Go to sleep.
She slaps him about the face. Runs to the other end of the stage to avoid retalitation.
SAMUEL: Okay.
GERTIE: It is a cloth like our cloth, but it is hard. It sticks your hand. It’s not thorny. It feels white and not comfortable. You touch it and it feels the way cloth does when your hand is tired from touching it.
She rubs her hand against her dress rapidly until it creates some heat. This is to illustrate.
Samuel rises and tries to hit her but misses.
GERTIE: Fuck, Samuel!
Samuel throws her to the ground. And moves to the place next to her. She kisses him again and again on his back.
Bop is awake. He watches.
When Gertie is sure he is calmed, she goes to sleep. Samuel is apparently asleep. Bop lies back down and goes to sleep.
Stage is silent.
Bop cannot sleep. He gets up and begins to scrap the moss off the floor. He sings.
BOP:
Oh where does the monkey go? When you shoot him take his soul oh where does the monkey go- o.
SAMUEL: NO Bop!
GERTIE: NO Bop!
Bop continues to sing. Samuel attacks him. Bop hits Samuel hard. Samuel hits Bop hard but returns to bed. Samuel watches Bop as he begins again to sing.
BOP:
Oh where does the monkey go? When you shoot him take his soul oh where does the monkey go-o.
Gertie pours dirty water into a glass. Gives it to Bop. Bop drinks it. Samuel intimidates Bop. Bop gives Samuel the glass. Samuel drinks.
SAMUEL: History is written by the survivors. I don’t know why you do that yet. Do you want some meat?
BOP: No I want it later. I’ll eat this now.
SAMUEL: Acts of aggression are used by lesser men to prove dominance that can be established through more intellectual means. Odysseus slay the cyclops.
BOP: I’ll eat that later.
GERTIE: Boy, boy, your legs are slender and are making me laugh. Boy boy boy.
BOP and GERTIE laugh. Gertie puts her hands through his hair. They smile.
SAMUEL: A farmer walks into a bar.
GERTIE: Bar bar bar.
Gertie and Bop laugh.
SAMUEL: That is not why it is funny. Touch my hair.
GERTIE (to SAMUEL): Bar bar bar.
SAMUEL yells.
GERTIE laughs. BOP is not laughing.
GERTIE: Boy boy boy.
She touches SAMUEL’S hair.
SAMUEL laughs. BOP does not laugh but smiles.
SAMUEL: Marital love exists above all other loves, even that of parental love.
BOP looks uneasy.
SAMUEL: Because from marital love extends parental love. It is the source… A farmer walks into a bar and says…boy boy boy!
BOP, GERTIE, and SAMUEL laugh.
GERTIE is crying. BOY BOY BOY. Oh my Boy! MY Boy! BOY!! Blue boy! Bell blues Blue bells bellbottoms bottomed boy! Cut a bottom in three pieces. One boy for two boys and for my boyself.
SAMUEL: Shhh Shhh Shhh.
GERTIE: Kill me! hit me hard in my belly! Keep my body resting under you but kill my matrix. I hate it. I hate it.
SAMUEL: You don’t want that.
GERTIE: I do, I do. I cannot kill what is of my belly. I cannot kill what comes forth from me. No more. I will live off the manna.
SAMUEL: Science shows you cannot live off of the manna. It makes you sick and blue and kills the life inside.
GERTIE: It is not life inside, it is cries and silence!
SAMUEL: It is breath for us, and cries for the future, not silenced.
Broadway music plays. Drumbeat. Patriotic.
One day!
The sun exists still in our hearts,
We’re not dead yet
We can save it!
We can save humanity, baby!
TOMORROW!
TOMORROW!
Just keep hope for Tomorrow dear
TOMORROW!
TOMORROW!
It’s just a day. a. way.
You see things in your dreams, things I cannot even name, and they will all be again!
Cadence.
Mini-Aria begins
Gertie:
What will become of us, though, if we must live on ourselves forever?
Vaudeville music tumbles in.
Samuel:
You cannot think so far away my dear.
The job of a man and a woman is to make six men and six women
And then six men will make six women and six women will make six men,
and one day they may be able to …
Boys Boys Boys Boys Boys!
Bop:
Bar bar bar.
Samuel:
Boys boys boys.
Gertie:
But that’s not…
SAMUEL and GERTIE:
Why its funny!/Why its funny?
Samuel:
Well,
Sixteen men,
they get together and have an idea
it’s happened before.
Then from that idea they make six more
And soon you’ll see
We may be able to…
Bar Bar Bar Bar Bar!
Gertie:
But that’s not…
SAMUEL and GERTIE:
Why its funny?!
Gertie: But we’ll have to eat eachother.
Samuel:
boys boys boys. Boys eating boys. Boys boys boys. Bars and boys and boys.
Gertie: How can we go on without the solution?
Samuel: The solution is
boys boys boys. Bar bar bar.
SAMUEL and GERTIE:
But that’s not why it’s funny!?!?
BOP breaks into a perverse laughter. He is beside himself.
Bop: It’s funny.
SAMUEL subdues BOP.
Serious music begins again. Drumbeat. Patriotic.
SAMUEL and GERTIE:
One day Maria will grow up.
We wait for that day. We hope and we pray.
And one day she will. Spring from the womb,
unsunken ungloomed,
unmaled unsexed, unless someone checks,
but without that sickening broom,
that sickening unsexing thing. That meat stick.
That makes of things objects
SAMUEL:
Beauty is a saturnite when he has to be. Beauty will kill his babies.
SAMUEL: It’s a beautiful universe baby.
Cadence.
BOP is spotlighted. Bop’s song.
BOP:
And I must wait impatiently,
will I kill them will I kill me?
Will Dad go first will Mom unfurl,
is what’s in his meatstick is it in mine as well?
We all know Lot and the price of peace,
we all know Gamor and Sodomy.
We all know that Lot paid the price of purity.
Oh live oh live humanity
it is not for us it is for thee,
to turn and look the other way…
You can look the other way…
What will become of us without us?
LIFFEEEE!!!!! LIFFFEEEEE!!!! LIFFFEEEE!!! Twitches. Like a belly. Like an organ that yells and pouts and will kill for meat.
But David. David was the precious one.
And I, I, I, I starved for that whole month.
The month of David.
David was a precious one.
He combed my hair.
He washed so delicately everywhere.
He could not live now. He could not stand the massacre, the necessary massacres.
But some day he will live.
When the.
When the. When. When.
When we have the excess for preciousness.
When the mosses grow foot deep.
When this manna is more than our meat.
He would love light.
He would lie next to it.
He would not let us kill him
And have us watch him fight it.
He was to be destroyed early like the rest,
early, but he was precious.
And when we have gone,
when this epoch is done,
we praise no one but him.
For that, I must live.
For that, I must be the living one
Cause I would decree nothing!
no sanctity in nothing!
In no-one but him!
the one that slipped!
the one that kept my heart full of soul,
free of his blood, but full of his love.
Without it, how will the children learn to lo-o-ove?
LIFE!!!!!!! LIFEE!!!!!! LIFEE!@!!!!! LIFFFEEEE!!! CAAALLLLSSS!!! We must answer it! We must heed our minds around our groins, we must sign our lives to our future.
One day Maria will Grow up.
BOP: It cannot end like this.
SAMUEL
Man will survive because our science keeps up with our detriments. Gestation now is only process of hours, a series of eggs, a plank, the world is not necessarily over. We can stay alive. Many many alives.
The sound of a baby crying.
A Funeral Dirge.
AMUEL, BOP?:
One day. Bobby will grow up.
Tomorrow Bobby will grow up.
Life is hard and Life is toil.
Tomorrow we will still be.
Tomorrow.
Today. Bobby gives life to us
We can return him to this world.
Tomorrow Tomorrow
He’s coming back!
He’s coming back!
He’s coming back!
GERTIE appears.
Gertie: Tell me a word, Samuel. It is immense. It is like a damp cloth inside you. You ache like a hollowed husk, and the wind is always blowing. You somehow breathe.
She breathes. This is for illustration.
Samuel: She overspeaks of course, she’s never had a thing in her belly. It’s all quite sanitary, very unviolent. Let us eat.
End.
