CHARACTERS:
MAN                                       Any age
TALL WOMAN                     The same age

SETTING:
A bare stage

TIME:
Now

(MAN and TALL WOMAN stand facing the audience. They do not look at each other; they do not seem to be aware of each other, until the end. They speak to the audience, or maybe they're thinking out loud.)

MAN
I think I'm an alien.

TALL WOMAN
Am I too tall for you?

MAN
Not Mexican, no.

TALL WOMAN
Some people find that exciting.

MAN
From outer space.

TALL WOMAN
Men, women.

MAN
Another galaxy.

TALL WOMAN
Some find it intimidating.

MAN
Possibly a parallel universe.

TALL WOMAN
But intimidating, I find, is also exciting.

MAN
I think a parallel universe is the most likely, actually.

TALL WOMAN
It's difficult to tell the difference.

MAN
Definitely.

TALL WOMAN
Your heart races, your breath quickens, you sweat, you're nervous.

MAN
Definitely a parallel universe.

TALL WOMAN
It's not easy to tell.

MAN
They say these parallel universes—there could be an infinite number, apparently—

TALL WOMAN
Do you think I'm coming on to you?

MAN
They figure these things out mathematically.

TALL WOMAN
You should decide, one way or the other.

MAN
Numbers don't lie.

TALL WOMAN
Our future, together, apart, depends on it.

MAN
I guess that's not true.

TALL WOMAN
Maybe not.

MAN
Numbers in the budget, for example.

TALL WOMAN
Uncertainty, they say, lies at the heart of the universe.

MAN
They lie a lot.

TALL WOMAN
Randomness.

MAN
My VISA bill.

TALL WOMAN
They say that at its most fundamental, the universe is jumpy.

MAN
I think those numbers lie.

TALL WOMAN
We're here, you and I, because at its most basic the universe is on edge.

MAN
I can't remember buying a George Foreman grill.

TALL WOMAN
You wonder what the future holds.

MAN
Which has not been delivered.

TALL WOMAN
Life is dangerous.

MAN
Identity theft?

TALL WOMAN
Every breath is one breath closer to death.

MAN
That happened before I was born.

TALL WOMAN
Who would have thought we would become so intimate, so soon?

MAN
I've always felt as if my identity had been stolen.

TALL WOMAN
So entangled.

MAN
I don't know—by Albert Camus. Jean Paul Sartre. Nietzsche.

TALL WOMAN
Spinoza said that there are as many kinds of feelings as there are things that cause those feelings.

MAN
I'm not crazy.

TALL WOMAN
If we were to get close to one another, our breaths would intermingle.

MAN
It's a hypothesis, that's all.

TALL WOMAN
It's a kind of intimacy.

MAN
Haven't you ever felt…different?

TALL WOMAN
Molecules, atoms, quarks, some from my lungs, some from yours, hopelessly entangled, perhaps for centuries.

MAN
Not like everybody else?

TALL WOMAN
Einstein proved that under certain circumstances two things can become "entangled." A photon, say, a tiny chunk of light, and another photon.

MAN
Everybody's unique, I know that.

TALL WOMAN
They become intimate.

MAN
DNA, fingerprints, the iris of your eye.

TALL WOMAN
I don't know the details—"spin," "momentum," "position"—the usual ways two bodies become intimate.
MAN
Some people feel at home, whether they're in New York or Paris or…North Dakota.

TALL WOMAN
Then, after they become intimate, after they become entangled—it doesn't take long, it can happen like that—they go their separate ways.

MAN
They feel like they belong.

TALL WOMAN
They wouldn't have to part, I suppose, maybe they could decide to stay together, but they don't.

MAN
I don't.

TALL WOMAN
Maybe they've had too much entanglement.

MAN
I'm just entertaining hypotheses about my feeling different.

TALL WOMAN
Each shoots off—at the speed of light, of course, about 186,000 miles a second—they just fly off, in opposite directions, maybe they don't even say "Goodbye" or "Have a nice a day," they simply leave each other, as quickly as they can—well, they always go the same speed whether they're tired or not, you could say that light is never in a hurry or is always in a hurry, it doesn't matter, a light particle has a mind of its own.

MAN
One hypothesis might be that I am actually an alien from another planet, here in the form of an earthling, and I'm programmed not to realize this so I'll fit in, except the programming didn't work.

TALL WOMAN
So our two entangled photons, who have gotten to know each other, however briefly, head out, one going this way, the other that way, for, oh, say, a few billion light-years, they're gone a long time, they travel a hell of a long way.

MAN
Or else it did work, and I'm programmed to begin to realize the truth now.

TALL WOMAN
But no matter how far away from each other they travel, these two entangled bodies, no matter how long it's been since they were, so briefly, so apparently inconsequentially, so casually, entangled—they still are connected.

MAN
And at some time I will—I hope—receive further instructions.

TALL WOMAN
They still communicate with each other—instantly.

MAN
Maybe a manual, like you get with your cell phone these days that explains how to send pictures and everything.

TALL WOMAN
They know what the other is thinking.

MAN
I hope my manual explains things better than the one for my cell phone.

TALL WOMAN
Whereas according to the accepted rules of physics, any communication between the two should take billions of light-years.

MAN
In six languages.

TALL WOMAN
Einstein didn't want to believe it, this instant knowledge across the universe, which defies all laws that we know about.

MAN
What if my manual, the manual for aliens, is in the alien language?

TALL WOMAN
It was a "thought experiment," Einstein's paper about the entangled bodies.

MAN
Will I suddenly know Alien?

TALL WOMAN
It's what we're having now, you could say, a Thought Experiment.

MAN
I'm just trying to find an explanation for these questions that keep popping into my head, like, "Who am I?" And "What am I doing here?"

TALL WOMAN
You don't do the actual experiment, you can't do the actual experiment, so you think it through, you establish the conditions, you set up the parameters, you anticipate the various outcomes, you do the math.

MAN
I suppose everybody wonders that, don't they?

TALL WOMAN
It's at the heart of the cosmos: Chance. Uncertainty. The unpredictable.

MAN
Maybe not.

TALL WOMAN
The speed of light may be changing.

MAN
I've never seen a flying saucer.

TALL WOMAN
There's not a lot we can count on.

MAN
If I were really an alien, wouldn't they visit me?

TALL WOMAN
Because science counts on certain things not changing.

MAN
Just to say, Hi there, ol' buddy, how ya doin'?

TALL WOMAN
The speed of light. The charge on an electron. Time moving forward, not backward.

MAN
Keep up the good work...of being different.

TALL WOMAN
But if these things can change—maybe over a few billion years, maybe in an instant, who knows?—then we're awash in uncertainty. We have nothing to stand on.

MAN
Well, they're busy. They're out there making crop circles, abducting humans, impregnating women.

TALL WOMAN
This floor is mostly empty space.

MAN
Still, they could give a fellow a ring now and then. Birthday card, that sort of thing.
TALL WOMAN
Why don't we fall through? We might.

MAN
So being an alien may explain things.

TALL WOMAN
If certain constants change.

MAN
What if I'm the only alien?

TALL WOMAN
The cosmological constant.

MAN
The only alien on earth.

TALL WOMAN
The Planck constant.

MAN
Or they were here, and then forgot me, when they left.

TALL WOMAN
The fine structure constant.

MAN
So if we're the only aliens in the universe—me, and the other aliens who forgot all about me and left me here—

TALL WOMAN
Dark energy is accelerating the expansion of the universe.

MAN
—without even a god damn manual—

TALL WOMAN
We don't know where the hell it's going.

MAN
—well, that's like being human.

TALL WOMAN
We don't know what the hell it is—dark energy.

MAN
We're in the same boat, you humans and we aliens.

TALL WOMAN
Maybe that's what's keeping us apart.

MAN
It's a hypothesis, that's all.

TALL WOMAN
And then there's dark mass.

MAN
If they did come back for me…

TALL WOMAN
Ninety per cent of the stuff in the universe.

MAN
Where the heck have you been?

TALL WOMAN
We can't see it.

MAN
You drop me off on this insane planet, you give me no manual, you leave me to fend for myself like some feral child raised by wolves, I look all over for you, or somebody like you...like me...

TALL WOMAN
We don't know what the hell it is.

MAN
I've been lonely.

TALL WOMAN
Dark mass filling up everything.

MAN
Why am I here?

TALL WOMAN
In the subatomic world, where there's supposed to be nothing, supposed to be absolute emptiness, it's not empty after all.

MAN
Are there others like me?

TALL WOMAN
Stuff pops in and out of existence.

MAN
Where's the god damn manual?

TALL WOMAN
Virtual particles, they call them.

MAN
What's the plan?

TALL WOMAN
Maybe we're virtual people.

MAN
Is there any meaning to it all?

TALL WOMAN
Popping in, popping out.

MAN
Are we alone?

(They look at each other. BLACKOUT.)

End of Play