Sequence Page 3
Because I can’t walk.
DR. GUZMAN
Thank you, Captain Pike, that’s very helpful.
MR. ADAMSON
I was born with cerebral palsy. Doctors said I would never walk. But I proved them wrong. By my twelfth birthday I was actually the fastest kid on my football team.
DR. GUZMAN
Congratulations.
MR. ADAMSON
By thirteen I was back in a wheelchair.
DR. GUZMAN
What happened?
MR. ADAMSON
Drunk driver ran a crosswalk.
DR. GUZMAN
No shit.
MR. ADAMSON
There were eight of us crossing. Everybody else walked away. Doctors said I would never walk again. I didn’t believe them.
DR. GUZMAN
(into voice recorder) Cerebral palsy, one in three hundred. Drunk driver, one in eight.
MR. ADAMSON
You think I’m unlucky?
DR. GUZMAN
You think you’re not?
MR. ADAMSON
I think God makes everything happen for a reason. If I wasn’t disabled I probably wouldn’t even be here talking to you. I’m pretty sure I only got admission because I’d look good in class pictures.
Auditorium
THEO
And that’s why you’re here today. Because you’re pregnant.
CYNTHIA
That’s a little presumptuous.
THEO
Something made you put on that miniskirt. I’ll bet it has something to do with your baby. Am I right?
CYNTHIA doesn’t respond.
First child?
CYNTHIA
First pregnancy. And last. I am not going through this again.
THEO
Morning sickness?
CYNTHIA
I can deal with the morning sickness. I just… I swore I wouldn’t put myself in this situation.
THEO
What situation?
CYNTHIA
You wouldn’t understand.
THEO
Yeah, you’re probably right.
CYNTHIA
The situation where I’m sitting on a ladder wearing a miniskirt, talking to some guy who claims he’s the luckiest man in the world… all because of this.
CYNTHIA produces an envelope.
THEO
What’s that?
CYNTHIA doesn’t answer.
I’ll bet you want my help with that.
CYNTHIA
You like to bet, don’t you?
THEO
That’s what we do, we lucky people.
CYNTHIA
According to 60 Minutes, you made your first bet twenty years ago.
CYNTHIA puts away the envelope.
THEO
Yes, I believe that was Super Bowl XYZ-IMNOP.
CYNTHIA
Don’t most people bet on who’s going to win?
THEO
My way, you didn’t have to worry about silly things like who had the better team.
CYNTHIA
So that’s why you bet on the coin flip.
THEO
That was the only place on the planet I could actually make a bet like that. A true fifty-fifty proposition.
CYNTHIA
Flipping a coin is not a true fifty-fifty proposition.
THEO
I’ve been misled.
CYNTHIA climbs down from the ladder, still protecting the briefcase. She makes her way to the board.
CYNTHIA
For starters, there is a one in six thousand chance of a coin landing on its edge, so it’s more like 49.99 each way. But that aside, if you start with a coin showing tails up, there is a greater likelihood of it ending tails up.
THEO
How do you figure that?
CYNTHIA draws on the board a coin, rotating in air.
CYNTHIA
The coin rotates in the air… Tails, then heads, then tails… Overall, it spends fractionally more time in tails than in heads.
THEO
I should have bet tails.
CYNTHIA
You did. Twenty years ago. A thousand dollars. Every penny you had to your name.
THEO
I felt lucky.
CYNTHIA
Doubled your money.
THEO
I was lucky.
CYNTHIA
Same thing the following year. Only heads. Why heads?
THEO
Why not?
CYNTHIA
Doubled your money. Again. Now four grand. Next year, tails. Then tails. Then heads. Double or nothing every time. Don’t believe in hedging your bets?
THEO
I was on a roll.
CYNTHIA
You’re not kidding. Every Super Bowl since you’ve bet on the coin toss. And every year, for the last twenty years, you have doubled your money.
THEO
More or less. Casinos take a cut. Bookies take a cut.
CYNTHIA
Last January you placed a bet of 440 million dollars on heads. And won.
Laboratory
DR. GUZMAN
That’s ridiculous. Your God’s bright idea is that he bestows upon you paraplegia as your ticket to the Ivy League?
MR. ADAMSON
Isn’t that why you’re here?
DR. GUZMAN
What are you implying?
MR. ADAMSON
I figured if anybody would understand it would be you. Can I please have my briefcase back?
DR. GUZMAN
Are you suggesting I’m here because I’ve lost ninety-two per cent of my peripheral vision?
MR. ADAMSON
No, of course not. Your success is clearly due to your achievements. But in the beginning…
DR. GUZMAN
In the beginning? Isn’t that the opening line of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species? No, that’s not it.
MR. ADAMSON
I was just wondering if your disability might have helped you. When you were starting out. A foot in the door.
DR. GUZMAN
Because my white cane might look good in class pictures.
MR. ADAMSON
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—
DR. GUZMAN
You have the audacity to suggest my blindness is somehow an advantageous mutation? Do you have any idea what I’ve had to overcome to be here? The sacrifices I’ve made for this?
DR. GUZMAN gestures to her lab.
If you knew you were going to be completely blind within a year, what would you be staring at right now? Tropical sunsets? Impressionist paintings? Or test tubes?
MR. ADAMSON
Why don’t you just stop? Go see the world, before…
DR. GUZMAN
Before I can’t see the world? Because if I stop now, Mr. Adamson, I will have wasted my sight on a failed experiment and that would mean I earned an F. But, unlike you, I have no intention of spending my remaining days lying awake at night second-guessing my choices.
MR. ADAMSON
I don’t do that.
DR. GUZMAN
You never think about that chance rendezvous with the car? I don’t believe that.
MR. ADAMSON
I try not to. But you know what I do think about? All those little things I could have done that day that might have slowed me down half a step. If I had to tie my shoelace. Or even just sneeze. But what’s there to second-guess? How could I have known?
DR. GUZMAN
I knew. I saw the darkness creeping in from the corners. And I chose to lock myself in this ba
sement lab. I chose science. Over sunsets.
MR. ADAMSON
Some people might second-guess that.
DR. GUZMAN
I am not some people. I knew I had the brains and the ambition and opportunity to attempt something significant. Better a bold F than a timid W. Only now, they’re calling me unstable! An intellectual liability. They’re looking for an excuse to put me out to pasture, while I work day and night to make my mark, before I lose the remaining eight per cent of my visual field.
MR. ADAMSON
Dr. Guzman, there’s a pub down the street. With a ramp. How about I buy you a drink?
DR. GUZMAN
Mr. Adamson, do you want to walk again?
MR. ADAMSON
I don’t need to walk again to have a meaningful life.
DR. GUZMAN
Answer the question.
MR. ADAMSON
I will walk again when God decides—
DR. GUZMAN
A. You want to walk again. B. You don’t.
MR. ADAMSON
A.
DR. GUZMAN
I may be able to help you.
MR. ADAMSON
I’m not interested in spinal-cord research.
DR. GUZMAN
Neither am I. I’m talking about something much bigger.
MR. ADAMSON
I don’t need your help.
MR. ADAMSON makes a grab for his briefcase.
DR. GUZMAN sees him just in time, thwarts him using her white cane as a weapon.
She locks the door, puts the key back in her pocket.
DR. GUZMAN
I think you do. But first, I need to know something.
Auditorium
CYNTHIA
What’s your secret?
THEO
I’m on a lucky streak. That’s all.
CYNTHIA
A lucky streak? How the hell do you have the audacity to go double or nothing on each flip, and that aside, how on earth do you get twenty consecutive coin flips right?
THEO
I’m a lucky man.
CYNTHIA
No. You’re not.
THEO
Time Magazine called me the Luckiest Man Alive.
CYNTHIA
Give me a break. You can’t keep hiding behind luck.
THEO
Who’s hiding? The media follows my every move. There are cameras and reporters waiting outside the building right now. Do you have any idea what that’s like? Now if you’ll kindly give me back my briefcase—
CYNTHIA
Okay. Fine. Let’s say you are lucky. Why? Why are you so lucky? That’s what I want to know.
THEO
That’s what everyone wants to know.
Pause.
Even me.
CYNTHIA
I don’t understand why the casinos let you keep betting. Are they just hoping your luck is going to catch up with you sooner or later?
THEO
Are you kidding? Nobody will let me stop. The casinos want me to keep winning. The believers bet with me. The skeptics bet against me. But everybody has their theory and now the entire planet bets on the coin flip. Seniors. Soccer moms. Even Canadians.
CYNTHIA
What about this year? What’s it going to be? Heads or tails?
THEO
I don’t know yet. But Vegas is waiting for my call. And my phone is in my briefcase. And my briefcase is still, by strange coincidence, in your hand.
CYNTHIA
Aren’t you worried your streak is going to end?
THEO
Do I seem worried?
CYNTHIA
It will end. Sooner or later. It has to.
THEO
No, it doesn’t.
Pause.
But it will.
Pause.
Today.
Laboratory
DR. GUZMAN
Now. Did you even read the textbook?
DR. GUZMAN renews her efforts to open the briefcase.
MR. ADAMSON
No.
DR. GUZMAN
Why not?
MR. ADAMSON
Because I don’t care.
DR. GUZMAN
About your grade? About your future? What exactly don’t you care about?
MR. ADAMSON quietly pulls out his cellphone. There is no signal.
MR. ADAMSON
Genetics. I don’t believe in genetics.
MR. ADAMSON moves around the room, inconspicuously holding up his cellphone, searching for reception.
DR. GUZMAN
That’s preposterous. Our genes are the very building blocks of life. The order of the four base pairs in your DNA has programmed everything about you. That sequence created you.
MR. ADAMSON
I don’t know. It seems kind of arbitrary.
DR. GUZMAN
Arbitrary? Without order there is chaos.
MR. ADAMSON
Without God there is chaos. The DNA is just… calligraphy.
DR. GUZMAN
There is order to DNA. Just like there is order to everything. What if Beethoven played every note in his fifth symphony simultaneously? How would that sound? Without order it’s not a symphony, it’s a cacophony.
MR. ADAMSON
Maybe it’s just a different piece of music.
DR. GUZMAN
No, I’m pretty sure it’s a cacophony.
MR. ADAMSON
Order is subjective. It doesn’t matter what order the ten commandments are written in.
DR. GUZMAN
Really? They’re not prioritized? How sloppy! I would have used a logarithmic scale to compensate for the relative value discrepancy of killing versus merely coveting.
MR. ADAMSON
Wouldn’t change their meaning. The sequence was not part of the design.
DR. GUZMAN
But a gene, like any text, is not a palindrome. If you read Hamlet backwards, what do you have?
MR. ADAMSON
Tel… mah?
DR. GUZMAN
You’d have gibberish. There is order in everything. Just ask Watson and Crick.
MR. ADAMSON
Why not Crick and Watson? The order is meaningless. It’s the chicken and the egg.
DR. GUZMAN draws a B on the board.
DR. GUZMAN
Actually, it’s the egg and chicken. The correct answer was B.
The egg came first.
Pause.
Mr. Adamson, how much more research will you require to establish, with a p-value of less than 0.05, that there is no cellphone signal down here?
MR. ADAMSON
Dr. Guzman, what did you mean when you said you might be able to help me?
DR. GUZMAN
How badly do you want to walk?
MR. ADAMSON
What do you mean, on a scale of one to ten?
DR. GUZMAN
If I gave you two new legs right now, what’s the first thing you’d do?
MR. ADAMSON
I’d probably take the door key from your pocket.
DR. GUZMAN
You don’t want my help.
MR. ADAMSON
I guess I’d try to meet a girl.
DR. GUZMAN
Right. You’ve never had sex.
MR. ADAMSON
It’s not about sex.
DR. GUZMAN
Everything’s about sex. Ask Darwin.
MR. ADAMSON
Sure, I want to experience… that. After I get married, of course. And fall in love.
DR. GUZMAN
Of cou
rse.
MR. ADAMSON
I want to be a dad.
DR. GUZMAN
You don’t need new legs for that. If your reproductive organs are still intact they can extract the sperm.
MR. ADAMSON
Sounds romantic.
DR. GUZMAN
There could be scented candles. Vivaldi. Perhaps a moonlight extraction.
MR. ADAMSON
If God wants me to have kids, He will make it happen naturally.
DR. GUZMAN
So if He decides you’re worthy of having children, He will first make you walk.
MR. ADAMSON
Yes.
DR. GUZMAN
You know your God is rolling his eyes right now.
MR. ADAMSON
I don’t think you can help me.
DR. GUZMAN reaches into a beaker full of coins. She produces a single coin.
DR. GUZMAN
Tell you what, Mr. One-in-Five-Quintillion. Call it. Heads or tails. If you get it right, you can go.
Auditorium
CYNTHIA
Really?
THEO
Call it a hunch.
CYNTHIA
You have a hunch you’re going to guess wrong? Today?
THEO
Yes.
CYNTHIA
Do you think that every year?
THEO
First time.
CYNTHIA
So don’t place your bet. Just leave your money in the bank. Why risk it?
THEO
He who lives by the coin flip should die by the coin flip. Don’t you think?
CYNTHIA
No! That makes no sense. If you think you’re going to lose, quit while you’re ahead. Thank your lucky stars and ride off into the sunset. That’s the smart thing to do.
THEO
I never said I was the smartest guy alive.
CYNTHIA
Don’t be ridiculous. What if you lose? Have you even thought about that?
THEO
Every day.
CYNTHIA
You’d become some ordinary guy whose luck and greed eventually caught up with him. No fame. No fortune. You’d lose everything.
THEO
Just an ordinary guy.
CYNTHIA
But if you don’t place the bet, you’d walk away a winner. You’d still be the luckiest man alive.
THEO
Until I die.
CYNTHIA
Isn’t that what you want?
THEO
I’ll let you in on a little secret. This time tomorrow, I’ll be a billionaire. Or I’ll be broke. But either way, win or lose, it’s going to end. Today’s going to be my last bet.
CYNTHIA
I thought they wouldn’t let you stop.
THEO
If I lose, they won’t care. If I win… well, this time I won’t give them a choice.