Life and Death in One Act.

Come, sit next to me, I saved you a seat here in the front row. Have you seen this play before? No? Then you are in for a treat.

Ah, there’s the protagonist. Not much to look at, is he? You see him grow up from scene to scene. An intelligent boy, interested in the way things work and how to make them work better. He excels in school, but he doesn’t get along very well with other children. The saddest part is that he is not lonely. A chemistry set, an astronomy book, special classes after school all content him.

We see him now in high school, surrounded by other youths all finding themselves. He joins the science club and the math team, and we think “Ah, now we will see him grow! He will make friends, and his life will take a sudden turn!” But no, the plot twist comes far later in this play.

But we are tricked. He meets a girl, also on the math team. He is in first place, the best in the club, and she is not second, nor third. But she is intelligent, and she likes go and he likes go.

They go on a date and they talk about math and science. She likes anime, the science fiction and space stories more than the endless variety of ninja stories. Real science and science fiction both fascinate her. She writes short stories, which she lets him read. He returns them bleeding with red ink, pointing out the scientific inaccuracies.

They remain together through college, though they don’t see each other very much. They are both hard workers and good students. Our protagonist builds a robot for his senior project and he lets her name it. She knows that she inspired him with her anime and her own stories of towering robot warriors and intelligent androids. We see that she is lonely, but through her we can see that the protagonist does have some creativity, some spark of passion. We find ourselves rooting for her to bring it out in him.

They graduate college. She becomes an accountant. She was not first or second or third on the math team, but she is good at what she does. He wins a grant, and scholarships, and he swiftly gets his masters, then his doctorate, and then more grants and funding for his own research.

She wants children, and though he doesn’t say so, he’s not really interested. But she gets pregnant, a stroke of luck more than anything. When she gives birth he is in his lab, working late. His new robot performs far better than he’d hoped and he is sure his funding will be continued. Oh yes, the baby was a girl.

She turns six years old and he forgets her birthday once again. It has been two years since he has remembered his wife’s and twice as long since he has remembered his own. It’s four in the morning and he in the lab with his robot. He has a heart attack at thirty-two years old. No one else is at the lab that late, and his wife does not truly expect him home until dawn. Maybe. He dies alone.