Millennium Approaches Act 1 Scene 3

Scene 3

Same day. Harper at home, alone, as she often is, listening to the radio. She speaks to the audience:

HARPER
People who are lonely, people left alone, sit talking nonsense to the air, imagining… beautiful systems dying, old fixed orders spiraling apart.

When you look at the ozone layer, from outside, from a spaceship, it looks like a pale blue halo, a gentle, shimmering aureole encircling the atmosphere encircling the earth. Thirty miles above our heads, a thin layer of three-atom oxygen molecules, product of photosynthesis, which explains the fussy vegetable preference for visible light, its rejection of darker rays and emanations. Danger from without. It’s a kind of gift, from God, the crowning touch to the creation of the world: guardian angels, hands linked, make a spherical net, a blue-green nesting orb, a shell of safety for life itself. But everywhere, things are collapsing, lies surfacing, systems of defense giving way… This is why, Joe, this is why I shouldn’t be left alone.

(Little pause.)

I’d like to go traveling. Leave you behind to worry. I’ll send postcards with strange stamps and tantalizing messages on the back: “Later maybe.” “Nevermore…"

(Mr. Lies, a travel agent, appears, carrying a briefcase.)

HARPER
Oh! You startled me!

MR. LIES
Cash, check or credit card?

HARPER
I remember you. You're from Salt Lake. You sold us the plane tickets when we flew here. What are you doing here in Brooklyn?

MR. LIES
You said you wanted to travel...

HARPER
And here you are. How thoughtful.

MR. LIES
Mr. Lies. Of the International Order of Travel Agents. We mobilize the globe, we set people adrift, we stir the populace and send nomads eddying across the planet. We are adepts of motion, acolytes of the flux. Cash, check or credit card. Name your destination.

HARPER
Antarctica, maybe. I want to see the hole in the ozone. I heard on the radio-

(He opens the briefcase. Inside it, there is a computer terminal.)

MR. LIES (His hands poised over the keyboard)
I can arrange a guided tour. Now?

HARPER
Soon. Maybe soon. I'm not safe here you see. Things aren't right with me. Weird stuff happens.

MR. LIES
Like?

HARPER
Well, like you, for instance. Just appearing. Or last week... well never mind.

People are like planets, you need a thick skin. Things get to me, Joe stays away and now... Well look. My dreams are talking back to me.

MR. LIES
It's the price of rootlessness. Motion sickness. The only cure: to keep moving.

HARPER
I'm undecided. I feel... that something's going to give. It's 1985. Fifteen years till the third millennium. Maybe Christ will come again. Maybe seeds will be planted, maybe there'll be harvests then, maybe early figs to eat, maybe new life, maybe fresh blood, maybe companionship and love and protection, safety from what's outside, maybe the door will hold, or maybe... Maybe the troubles will come, and the end will come, and the sky will collapse and there will be terrible rains and showers of poison light, or maybe my life is really fine, maybe Joe loves me and I'm only crazy thinking otherwise, or maybe not, maybe it's even worse than I know, maybe... I want to know, maybe I don't. The suspense, Mr. Lies, it's killing me.

MR. LIES
I suggest a vacation.

HARPER (Hearing something)
That was the elevator. Oh God, I should fix myself up, I- You have to go, you shouldn't be here, you aren't even real.

MR. LIES
Call me when you decide.

HARPER
God.

(Mr. Lies vanishes as Joe enters.)

JOE
Buddy? Sorry I'm late. I was just... out. Walking. Are you mad?

HARPER
I got a little anxious.

JOE
Buddy kiss.

(They kiss.)

JOE
Nothing to get anxious about.

So. So how'd you like to move to Washington?