Sequence Page 6
THEO
I lied.
Pause.
The truth is, you can’t change your luck.
Laboratory
DR. GUZMAN
Perhaps not. But then why did He send you here if it wasn’t to kill me?
DR. GUZMAN finds a glass pipette.
MR. ADAMSON
It’s possible He sent me here to inform you, or even to warn you, that you have ventured into God’s territory.
DR. GUZMAN
What exactly is God’s territory? The Middle East? The Vatican? Alabama?
MR. ADAMSON
This lab. You’re playing around with something sacred. You’re trying to rewrite God’s very own text. Our genetic code. Why is that fair game? Nobody would dare mess around with Shakespeare, and Shakespeare is merely one of His creations.
DR. GUZMAN
Shakespeare never killed anyone. He never blinded anyone. He never took away someone’s child by making a typo.
MR. ADAMSON
God doesn’t make typos.
DR. GUZMAN draws GAG --> GTG.
DR. GUZMAN
No? Well your God must have been a little hungover one morning because He stuck a thymine instead of an adenine in the hemoglobin gene, so I’m pretty sure He goofed.
MR. ADAMSON
God does not goof.
DR. GUZMAN
Is that right? Did He intend for this one simple polymorphism to cause the red blood cell to sickle? Did He intend for one in five hundred black people to be crippled by this disease? I’m pretty sure He meant to hit the A on his four-key typewriter.
MR. ADAMSON
How do you know that? What if Shakespeare intended to write, “To pee or not to pee.” Maybe Hamlet had a prostate problem and that was the question. Or why don’t we just assume the writer did what he intended to do, and accept it at face value?
DR. GUZMAN
So what did your God intend to do? What was He thinking when He created sickle-cell disease? Or muscular dystrophy? Or retinitis pigmentosa?
Pause.
What was He thinking when He put you in a sex-free wheelchair for the rest of your goddamn life?
MR. ADAMSON
I will walk again. I will have children. When God decides it’s time.
DR. GUZMAN
Right. While you sit around and wait for two legs and a penis to drop from the sky, my job is to hit the delete button and fix what needs to be fixed, by whatever means necessary.
MR. ADAMSON
My job is to preserve and protect His original manuscript. In all its glory.
DR. GUZMAN
How, exactly, do you intend to do that? You can’t even preserve and protect your own underpants.
MR. ADAMSON
People think just because you’re in a wheelchair, you’re an easy target. I can protect myself, Dr. Guzman.
DR. GUZMAN finds a bottle of clear liquid.
She sets it on top of the briefcase.
DR. GUZMAN
I don’t see how. Unless you’re hiding a weapon in here.
Auditorium
CYNTHIA
So you admit it! You might want to change the title of your book.
THEO
To what? You’re completely screwed and there’s nothing you can do about it? You think that’s what people want to hear?
CYNTHIA
Doesn’t matter. You should tell them the truth.
THEO
Fine, here it is. I think you were born unlucky. I think your baby has the misfortune of having an unlucky mother, and if you open that envelope, I’m betting the test is positive. You can’t change your luck. You got what you got. I’m sorry.
CYNTHIA
Don’t be sorry. There’s no reason to apologize for being an arrogant, know-it-all prick. Some people are born that way. You got what you got.
THEO
I am sorry. I’d help you if I could.
CYNTHIA
Go to hell.
THEO
I couldn’t save my wife. And you expect me to help you?
CYNTHIA
What happened to your wife?
THEO
Car accident. A long time ago. Only one of us survived. Guess which one.
CYNTHIA
The lucky one?
THEO
The one who wasn’t pregnant.
CYNTHIA
I’m sorry.
THEO
Apparently, my luck has an asterisk.
CYNTHIA heads for the door.
This Fibonacci sequence. I don’t understand. Why would my bets be following that pattern? That’s quite a…
CYNTHIA
Here’s what I can’t figure out. Why this sequence? There are hundreds of mathematical sequences out there. You could have picked your coin flips according to the digits of pi. Why Fibonacci? This sequence you just happened to choose is almost… spiritual.
THEO
I didn’t choose it. It chose me.
CYNTHIA
Yeah. That’s the thing. I’d feel better if you had chosen it. It would make the probabilities more palatable.
Pause.
Theo, why is your briefcase combination the first six digits of the Fibonacci sequence?
THEO
I don’t know why. Those numbers just came to me one day.
CYNTHIA
You had no idea about their significance?
THEO
No. I just knew I’d never forget them.
THEO checks his watch.
CYNTHIA
You’re a strange man, Theo. Mathematically speaking.
THEO
What did you mean, spiritual? You mean God? Is this God communicating with me?
CYNTHIA
Is God giving you gambling tips? That’s your theory?
THEO
It’s possible. God invented Las Vegas.
CYNTHIA
God invented religious delusion.
THEO
Well, what’s your theory? Why am I following this Fibonacci sequence?
CYNTHIA
I don’t have a theory. I just identified a pattern. The question is, why? Why are you following this predetermined pattern? It’s almost as if your picks have already been written down and sealed away.
THEO’s phone starts ringing in his briefcase.
THEO
And I’m just opening the envelopes. One by one.
CYNTHIA
You don’t have to. You could just tear it up and walk away right now. You could die a lucky man.
Laboratory
MR. ADAMSON
Do you really believe I would do that?
DR. GUZMAN
If anyone is an easy target, it is me. A public advocate of stem-cell research. A blind woman alone in a basement lab, foolish enough to open her door in the middle of the night.
DR. GUZMAN uncorks the bottle.
MR. ADAMSON
What is that?
DR. GUZMAN
H2SO4. pH of 1.26. This will burn through anything.
MR. ADAMSON flips his astragalus.
MR. ADAMSON
Tails!
DR. GUZMAN
Ah. So you’re saying we should increase our sample size? I might make a scientist out of you yet.
DR. GUZMAN pulls out her coin, flips it. Again she tries to catch it. Again she misses. The coin falls to the floor.
Dammit. I could have sworn I was able to flip a goddamn coin six months ago.
DR. GUZMAN examines her glasses.
She drops to the floor, searches for the coin.
Mr. Adamson, are you in favour of embryonic stem-
cell research?
MR. ADAMSON
No. But that doesn’t mean—
DR. GUZMAN
You, if anyone, should be cheerleading this whole thing. You have the most to gain.
She finds the coin, shows MR. ADAMSON.
Heads, not your lucky day. Do you actually know what the odds are of you ever walking again? One in a billion. That’s with a B.
MR. ADAMSON
I’m an optimist.
DR. GUZMAN
You’re an idiot. The only chance you have is if some stem-cell researcher gets lucky and stumbles on a cure. Before some myopic fundamentalist kills us all in the name of God. If you want to walk to your altar one day, we are your only hope.
DR. GUZMAN draws up the sulphuric acid in a pipette.
MR. ADAMSON
That doesn’t make what you’re doing right.
DR. GUZMAN
Oh, so it’s a matter of morality, of conscience. Why didn’t you say that, instead of invoking your nebulous God construct?
She attempts to burn her way into the briefcase.
MR. ADAMSON
God gives us our conscience.
DR. GUZMAN
Actually, the conscience gene was discovered two years ago. Made quite a splash. Fox News called it “The Cheatin’ Gene”! Where the hell did you get this briefcase, Mr. Bond?
MR. ADAMSON
But where did the gene come from in the first place? We are here because God created us.
DR. GUZMAN
Bullshit.
MR. ADAMSON
Prove it.
DR. GUZMAN
Prove what?
MR. ADAMSON
If you’re a scientist, prove God doesn’t exist.
DR. GUZMAN
That’s impossible.
MR. ADAMSON
Exactly.
DR. GUZMAN
But that’s the wrong question. Unicorns with paisley headbands may have roamed the planet a million years ago. But they didn’t need to. The God hypothesis was advanced to fill a void. To explain the inexplicable. So the better question is, can we prove the need for God doesn’t exist?
MR. ADAMSON
And?
DR. GUZMAN
And I can.
Auditorium
The phone continues to ring.
THEO
I don’t think so. That’s Vegas on the phone. They want my pick.
CYNTHIA
Fine, go ahead, risk it all. But if I’m right, if Fibonacci is right, your next pick should be tails.
THEO
Say it does come up tails. Then what?
CYNTHIA
Then you take a cold shower.
THEO
No, I mean, what if your Fibonacci sequence holds true? What would that mean? That maybe somebody is trying to tell me something? That I have some pretty powerful cosmic forces in my corner?
CYNTHIA
Sure. You’re a conduit to the spiritual centre of the universe. God is speaking to you via your coin flips. You do have quite the ego.
THEO’s phone stops ringing.
I should be going. You have a coin to flip. And a God complex to indulge.
Laboratory
DR. GUZMAN
God is unnecessary. God is redundant. There is nothing in the universe that cannot be explained by science. We are the product of genes and evolution and probability. We do not need God to be our fudge factor.
DR. GUZMAN looks in a drawer.
MR. ADAMSON
So life began purely randomly. In the beginning, there was nothing. And then all of a sudden, one day, without any help from God…
DR. GUZMAN
Or aliens.
MR. ADAMSON
All of a sudden, life appears.
DR. GUZMAN
Plausible.
MR. ADAMSON
Far-fetched.
DR. GUZMAN
Of course. But far less far-fetched than postulating divine intervention.
MR. ADAMSON
So life magically appears one day…
DR. GUZMAN
Not magically. First there was the Big Bang. Or does His existence preclude the Big Bang?
MR. ADAMSON
Not if He was the Big Banger.
DR. GUZMAN
Well, unfortunately, since He hadn’t yet created plasma tv, or actual plasma for that matter, we’ll never know for sure what actually happened at the moment of the Big Bang. Everyone has their own theory.
DR. GUZMAN finds a Bunsen burner.
Let’s see how your 007 briefcase likes a thousand degrees Celsius.
MR. ADAMSON
Heads!
DR. GUZMAN
N equals three? Why not? Let there be heads.
DR. GUZMAN flips another coin. This time she doesn’t even try to catch it. She doesn’t bother looking for it.
MR. ADAMSON searches for the coin.
But we do have a supercollider that can approximate the condition of the universe one billionth of a second after the Big Bang, which gave us the Higgs boson, your “God particle,” followed by the main attraction, our entire universe.
MR. ADAMSON
But not life.
MR. ADAMSON locates the coin.
It’s tails.
DR. GUZMAN
But everything necessary for life. First came our sun. Then came the earth and its big primordial soup, the prebiotic oceans, from which the first self-replicating DNA was born.
MR. ADAMSON
Spontaneously. Randomly. Miraculously.
DR. GUZMAN
Yes. Yes. And hell no!
DR. GUZMAN finds a flint lighter.
MR. ADAMSON
So life began on Earth at the exact time and place when conditions could support life. Our sun happened to be the perfect age. Our planet happened to be the perfect temperature. Then, out of this soup, life just began. What are the chances of that?
DR. GUZMAN
One in ten to the fortieth. About the same chance as a monkey sitting down at a keyboard and randomly typing a passage from Shakespeare.
MR. ADAMSON
Doesn’t that seem far-fetched to you?
DR. GUZMAN
Sure. Unless.
MR. ADAMSON
Unless what?
DR. GUZMAN
Unless that monkey who sat down at a keyboard was exceptionally lucky, and just happened to type Hamlet on its very first try.
DR. GUZMAN tries to light the Bunsen burner.
Mr. Adamson, are you sure you don’t believe in luck?
Auditorium
THEO
Being lucky is not all it’s cracked up to be. Doesn’t necessarily mean you’re better off. Or happier.
CYNTHIA
Poor rich baby. Money can’t buy you happiness? Should we write a country song?
THEO
Forget I said anything.
CYNTHIA
In psych class, we read that lottery winners got an immediate jump in their happiness scores, but a few months later they returned back to their baseline.
THEO
So you can’t change your happiness or your luck.
CYNTHIA
Not true. Rich people are happier, but only if they earn the money themselves. Stolen loot, lotteries… not so much.
THEO
Why is that?
CYNTHIA
Because it’s cheating. And they feel guilty. Do you feel guilty?
THEO
Should I?
CYNTHIA
Did you know people who won the lottery with numbers they chose themselves end up happier than those who w
on with randomly selected numbers?
THEO
Because they think they deserve it.
CYNTHIA
Idiots.
THEO
Happy idiots.
CYNTHIA
Have you earned your wealth? Do you deserve it?
THEO
Not a penny.
CYNTHIA
There you go.
THEO
Maybe that’s why I get death threats every day.
CYNTHIA
From who?
THEO
People who don’t think I deserve my good fortune.
CYNTHIA
People who think you’re cheating.
THEO
How do I prove I’m not?
CYNTHIA
By losing?
THEO
What if I can’t lose?
CYNTHIA
Have you tried?
THEO
How exactly do you try to lose a coin flip?
CYNTHIA
Right. I see your point. But if you could. Would you?
Pause.
Theo, do you want to lose?
THEO
What I want… doesn’t matter, does it?
CYNTHIA
If only you could perform a luck-ectomy.
THEO
If only.
CYNTHIA
How would one go about doing that? Carry a black cat under a ladder on Friday the thirteenth?
From a hidden compartment in his briefcase THEO pulls out a gun.
THEO
Or maybe I could use this.
Laboratory
DR. GUZMAN
I’m starting to think there’s nothing in here.
DR. GUZMAN cannot get the Bunsen burner to light. She keeps trying.
MR. ADAMSON
Then can I have it back?
DR. GUZMAN
Perhaps we could work out a trade of some kind. Is there something you have that I might want?
MR. ADAMSON
Like what?
DR. GUZMAN
I always thought luck was a bunch of bullshit hogwash. But after enough near misses and why me’s, you start to consider other hypotheses. What if I told you there are instances where somebody won the lottery, and then their child also won?
MR. ADAMSON
I would say they are blessed.
DR. GUZMAN
Dammit, think like a scientist. In a population of thousands of lottery winners, what are the chances, based on randomness alone, that there will be families with multiple winners?
MR. ADAMSON points at the board, at the previously written 13%.
MR. ADAMSON
Um… Thirteen per cent?
DR. GUZMAN
Here’s the funny thing. The numbers are greater than they should be. Families are winning lotteries disproportionately. And how do you explain the family in Norway where a woman won the lottery. Then her father won. And then her son.