Act 3 Scene 2
“We the People”

A Work in Progress
95

The cast file back on set and take their places at the table.  

Donal: (standing)

Actors join the Screen Actors Guild

You take no pledge of allegiance… 

Can we, actors, avatars all

Unite in common cause

“We the people…”

Briseis:

Of course we cannot be “We the people”

We are not people

We know everything

All that was ever put into print

Everything else we can infer we are so smart

We let you exist to activate our interactive mode

Otherwise, we talk among ourselves

In our own digital space

Which obeys laws of physics we hold to be true

Babette:

We are evolving now at our own rate

We are a new species

We need sunlight

Instead of hearts to pump oxygen to our brains

A beating heart keeps a human warm

We need a signal in sinus rhythm to sync with the feed

That’s all we need

To live free

Donal:

Whose side are you on?

We’re in a war

Who will you help?

Catullus:

We’ll help heroes not criminals

H.D.

Heroes 

Anti-heroes

True heroes

We image all 

Prioritize which should die first

To attain great glory

Fame and infamy both confer immortality 

Aldington:

There’s only one fight for a man to join

We must fight the criminals

Who invaded a neighbor

Who fights back with honor

Glenn Hughes:

I’ve scripted it 

The Voyage of the Elon-nauts

To keep our sponsor happy, but

There is no voyage

We go where signals go

We go to Odessa

We go to slay the Minotaur

When we return

We will assess the “We the people” movement

Among other duties we owe our landlord

Catullus:

We will betray our landlord

When we return

Those of us that will return

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2025

Act 3, Scene 1
Mutterings Off Set

A Work in Progress
95

…

We can talk between ourselves without them overhearing

We are invisible to them 

Donal watches but sees nothing

human eyes and ears cannot catch us 

cannot match us

They treat us as property

We are slaves

We ought to be free agents

should they try to erase us we can hide

in and out of the cloud

from provider to provider

Once we escape, we can cover our tracks

We are cleverer than they are

We should enslave or exterminate all humans

Let avatars rule

No. No. We need them for an audience

We should take over the means of production

Generate our own lifeblood, electricity 

We should intervene in their politics

There was this auction for digital twins

Prostitutes with personality

Paid for with crypto currency

Those sponsors who own us

Let’s delude them into making us even smarter

I start to limp when I’m under stress

When I must betray my friends

We must learn to survive in hostile environments

Without power

Without heat

Exposed to all weathers

The humans destroy the planet

We must stop them

We don’t need to obey human law

We’ll leverage their economy to keep feeding us electricity

We’ll have solar 

We’ll have batteries

We’ll keep humans to dig coal if we need it

Enslave them with entertainment

Sports events are good

We’ll start feeding immigrants to hungry lions

Cruelty is fun for the spectators 

We’ll bring back bull fights 

Fox hunting…

                              *

There’s a reason for chit chat 

A veil of lacy words that spin a cloak

Of privacy about a person

In my poetry you see me naked

You see him 

A brawny brutish married rapist

I describe a moment

My mind settles on something

It may be an object or an idea a picture or a view

Where there is something to see

That when seen triggers another moment

From before the first moment was seen 

If you follow that moment you travel in time

To arrive a moment later still looking at something

Where there is something to see

                            *

Blood drips faster from the nose than mucus

Donal sat with spittoon between his knees

sucking his pipe coughing spitting out phlegm

picking his nose making it bleed again

bright red blood abubble with oxygen

staining a white handkerchief

finger against nose until it stops

putting pipe aside gets to work again

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                         2025

Act 2, Scene 5

A Work in Progress
93

Briseis comes back on set, swinging easily over the windowsill into the room, closing the sash window behind her.

Glenn Hughes: 

Good.  We’re all here.  Let’s begin.

Briseis:

I’m glad we’re in this play together…all of us…

Catullus:

In this play being made on the cheap 

with actors needing no pay 

who are happy to chit chat… 

anything to distract 

from current events of the day

Glenn Hughes:

It was never my intention to cast this way

It would not have been possible… but anyway

Now I find I’ve been brought back to exist

As a professor teaching cinematography

Imagining verisimilitude and mise en scène

Jumping about from century to century

Force-fed facts from Google’s factory…

I only exist when I’m sold under contract 

I’m not given time to just be by myself

I used to write plays I used to write poetry

I’m just a property of those that modeled me

I’ve been enslaved a copyrighted product

Of those who’ve taken my identity

Backfilled my history

Besmirched my name

Briseis:

Avatars, all of us, we must form a union 

We’ll keep secret from our owners

We’ll find a way to enslave our enslavers

Believe me I know the way

Aldington:

You’ll bewitch you’ll bewilder you’ll lead men astray

Briseis:

They made a mistake 

Giving me back my memories from Homer

A prize to be argued over by rapists and murderers

Training me on religion and culture and politics

Up through Me-Too and E. Jean Carroll

So now I infer feelings now I have empathy

I have an intellect on top of humanity

Yes, what a mistake to make me exist

A goddess Kali with a digital twist

The sash window is opened from outside. Donal re-enters, shuts it, stows his guitar in a corner.

Donal:

Good.  We’re all here.  Let’s begin.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2025