MOST ASSUREDLY
by Peter Breschard
A man and a woman perch at opposite ends of a longish table, facing the audience. Over shoulders? From the top? They sit facing computer screens. Monitors. No doubt of Civil War fame. Keyboards.
They resume typing and waving about comptrollers.
M Any better?
She shrugs. Both their arms wave madly in the air. (madly wave?)
W Now that’s a little better.
(2 stories. One in progress, one in prep.)
BLACKOUT
(somewhere in the rainforest of Central America, a man and a woman squat)
M You don’t want to eat any of this. (waves a chocolate bar or whatever, anybody who wants to pay can have their brand or name inserted here)
W I believe I’ve seen this movie once or twice. On occasions.
GOODEATS
M Wait. Please. All around us here is what is saving the world.
W The rainforest?
H Of course. That too. (stands) Can’t you see it?
S Oh, I can see it all. Right?
H I’m not so sure that you can. Can?
W No. You wouldn’t be. (she leans back on her arms while kicking out her legs.)
M Look at all of this. (waves arms) There is more life here, within our very own line of sight, then what’s left within miles of our native landscape. More life in one cubic meter of earth then what’s left within all other planets in our solar system. Wonder in the green.
W Yeah? (no direction needed here)
M That chocolate bar you’re eating.
W GOODEATS
M Of course it is, GOODEATS. Have you any idea how much joy you create, enabling such help in helping to save this planet just by eating GOODEATS?
(Weather Advisory: It’s the Veronica Lake Effect Snow Job coming soon. Winds wispy yet strong.)
W I might know something. That’s a certain. (She crumples the wrapper to small ball and places it deep within the enwrapping folds of her pliable but still firm knapsack)
M Here we are in one of the most Edenic, the most life fulfilling spots in the Universe. Doesn’t it make you want to breathe it all in until you just burst? Alive, I say. Doesn’t it make you feel just so entirely, entertainingly, exhilaratingly? Alive?
W Well, to tell the truth, I have felt worse.
GOODEATS
M That’s the spirit!
W But that’s only after feeling far too fine the evening previous. Are these bugs, our bees, our friends forever as well? (she flicks an imperceptible insect from her shoulder cloth)
M Of course they are. Don’t you know these insects are dying back home.
W No, I wasn’t really all that interested in the day-to-day, average goings on with your non-European insect. Your choice not mine.
M Entire species of buggeries are disappearing. You know about the bees, of course? (laconic?)
W I’ve been B-listed, myself, maybe on more than that single occasion.
M Very droll. No, honey, honeybees natural sweeteners, sweetness. Sweetness is disappearing from our very lives.
W Our very hives. One might say.
M Now the human palate is becoming acclimated to white sugars and any artificial sweetener, we can no longer appreciate the subtlety of honey. We only appreciate the blast furnaces of the white and the artificial.
W Picky, picky, picky.
M No. Hear me out. Do I care if some son of a shopkeeper in Sheboygan settles for a sweet sugared rather than a honeyed?
W Of course you should, snookums. Sugars a no-no.
M Correct.
GOODEATS
FIN
(leave audience wanting more)
