When Children Play.

  

Part of an attempt at a play, from 2003...back when even distopias could be optimistic....

When Children Play.

 

A Play.

 

 

Setting, a suburban home of the year 2025.

Cast

 

Peter                (son of John and Mary, born 1964, age 61

Mary                (mother of Peter, born 1944 – treated for senile dementia with

Human Transgene Therapy (HTT) in 2005 when the technique was untried (age 61), apparent age in 2025 : 21.  A net gain of one year for each six months of therapy.

John                 (father of Peter, born 1941 – treated in first “War on Age” push

                        2015 (age 74), apparent age in 2025 : 48.  He has gained a little on her

                        with later improved therapy but he has not yet regained his youth.

Doctor Life      NHS consultant, born 2000, age stabilised at 20. 

Trainee Nurse  Claire, born 1990, age 35 unstabilised.

 

Act 1 Scene 1.  (5-10) minutes duration

 

Mary:    [a young woman]  shouting from upstairs:

 

John, are you coming up to bed?

 

John:     [clearly an older man]

 

Soon I’m just watching the news.  The War’s almost won they say.  No one over sixty alive by ’25.   They’d got Angela Rippon reading it, you know that dancer off Morcambe and Wise. 

 

Mary   [voice approaching, and aurally should be by John by end of sentence]: 

 

Oh, well they say, I’ve no doubt.  I’ve no doubt they won’t be happy ‘til we’re all the same.  It’s a good job Peter doesn’t look his age.

 

John: 

 

Well, if he stays quiet.  Doesn’t go out much – does his work on the networks, he might last another dozen years before they pick on him.  I wonder he thinks it’s worth it.  It doesn’t hurt.  They wouldn’t let it hurt.

 

Mary: 

 

He’s got his reasons, Dad  [note Mary uses the word Dad for her husband unself-consciously, as a woman born in 1941 might, but we will see in the latter part of the play that John has begun to find this disturbing.]

[Banging as of something falling upstairs.]

 

John:   Hell,  Peter are you okay lad?   [Runs up stairs]

 

Peter:   I had a bad dream,  I couldn’t remember Sarah’s eyes.   I can’t sleep.

 

Mary:   Well you have to.  We need some time to ourselves.  You can look at the photo-albums in the morning, play her records back: but you’ve got to sleep.  You’re not getting any younger.

 

John:     Mary!

 

Peter:     No she’s right.  I don’t want to be a burden, you know that.  But I can’t do it.  I just can’t.  It wouldn’t be right.

 

Mary:    It was right for other people.  You don’t mind living off our earnings.  How would we make a living if we felt like you.

 

John:     He can’t help how he feels, he does his bit.  You’re just overwrought with the party coming up, but that’s not his doing.

 

Mary:    Oh no, I just have to have him hiding from the guests I suppose.  This is supposed to me my big occasion. My coming of age.  The rest of my life a level playing field laid out before me.  [She is almost in tears]  Twenty one years old, and I’m going to know that upstairs he’s lying there dying slowly because he can’t face the needle.

           

Peter:     Mother!

 

Mary:     Don’t mother me, you’re sixty fucking one.  You’ve made your bed and can die in it for all I care.  I’m young, the treatments working on me.  It’s made me young.  It’s given me back myself.  I was out of my mind when they gave it me, a guinea-pig for an untried cure, and it put my mind back together.  A year younger every six months, and I have to spend my twenty first birthday with a pair of geriatrics.  Get your father to pity you, I going out.  [door slams].

 

John:      You have to understand, Pete – her body’s full of hormones and things, I told her she should stop at 35, keep the perspectives she’d learned, but she always had an excuse to run on for another set of treatments.

 

Peter:      She’s only got bad memories to run from, Dad  - imagine the slow climb back from senility.  I’ll top myself before that.  And she’s still got you, even if you started later you can catch her up in time.  She’s got you always before her to prompt her.  Whatever horrors she forgets you’ll be there to remind her of the good times, and to have new good times when you’re settled.

 

John:      Sarah wouldn’t have wanted you to die.  If she were here…

 

Peter:      Things would be different, yes I grant that.  But she isn’t, she’s dead.  Dead before a Lifeguard could reach her with the needle. Dead before her life could be unravelled.  Dead and gone on, and I don’t intend to live apart from her a moment longer than I have too.  And I won’t forget her.

 

John:       You’re forgetting her already.  Time does that.  Just because your brain isn’t being rebuilt from inside and your muscles growing strong again doesn’t make your recollections sacrosanct.  Age can wreck your mind as surely as the needle.  Is it so wrong that Age should pass away?  What did it ever bring but suffering and pain, and humiliation.  Tomorrow your mother will dance like she danced when rationing stopped.  Like a young girl.  And whether they take you or not, I want you in public – applauding.  A proper family occasion

 

Peter:       I’ll be there, but I can’t reject age.  Age is wisdom, and acceptance, and experience – and the treatment eats away experience with memory.  Mum’s going to spend her whole long immortal life making the accidents a twenty year old makes.  I hope you’ll have the stamina to keep up with her.  As for me, I’ll die before I choose to lose Sarah.

 

John:        Leave Mary to me,  I’ll take a frivolous youngster over a corpse or a memory.  You think you’ve got the wisdom of age, well as the clock ticks I’m still your elder even after fifteen years of renewal, and you’re still green.  In the end we’d claw our way back from the grave for another glimpse of light.  Serenity is for the middle ages of man, the oldest know only desperation.  You think you could cheerfully follow Sarah into the dark because you haven’t felt it cold on your cheek.  But its not an easy step, and those who say it is – are only the ones who came back wimpering.

 

[A latchkey is heard turning]

 

Mary:       Oh Pete, I’m so sorry – come here.  You’re not too old to give your mum a hug are you?   John, you’re right I’m worrying about the seating plans and my dress.  Do you really like it? 

 

Peter:        Maybe you could put it on Mum, now and give us a twirl?

 

John:        Yes, that would be grand.  Peter’s going to come to the do tomorrow, aren’t you, Pete.  He said he wouldn’t miss it for the world.

 

 Mary:      Oh, if only Sandra could have been here – we’d have looked like sisters.

 

Peter:         Yes, you would.  Let me kiss you goodnight Mum,  I’m afraid I need my sleep.  [His voice is cold, he has registered that Mary can not remember his wife’s name.]

 

Mary:        Sleep well,  I want to show John some dance steps.  He’s going to have to get livelier if he wants to keep up with me tomorrow.  I’ll be dancing with all the young men, and women.

 

John:        I have to call in for a shot tomorrow morning.  I hope you’ll keep your pants on while I’m gone.

 

 

Act 1 Scene 2

 

The Lifeguard Hospital, Doctor Life is on his rounds.

 

Doctor Life:    Inductees and trainees, graduants and graduates – we are the first generation of genuine Doctors the world has ever known for we are the first to be provided with the genuine nostrum, the true cure, the fix for death itself.

Nurse Claire, can you describe the history of the drug?

 

Claire:             It was an experimental anti-senility drug, intended to knock out prions from the old food plagues, make dendritic structures renew themselves within the cortex.

 

Doctor Life:    Quite right, it was a complete accident that it proved to be the one thing every alchemist and quack had dreamt of.  Just when it was critically needed.  We faced a top-heavy society: more and more old people kept alive by medicine and yet unable to productively continue to make a contribution, a living burden of taxation.  Now they not only pay for their treatments, but as they youthen they can earn more and more.  It is a genuine [Doctor Life’s favourite word] win, win situation.

 

Claire:     But there were side-effects….

 

Doctor Life:   At first, yes. Horrible side-effects. Drooling madness and extra-potent cancers, and yet, and yet, in the first year 40 percent of the patients treated, patients on the very edges of death, shuffled nervously back into the world of work and responsibility, and life.  We are the first post-death generation.  Many of us will be not only immortal ourselves, but have the benefit of never having to see a parent die.  Worth the initial risks surely – and the people taking the drug thought so themselves, after all they were dying.

 

John:            He’s right miss, my wife was one of the first treated.  All her hair fell out and she felt like death warmed over, and her temperature was so high it bust the thermometer, but a month later her hair began to grow again, and it was blonde at the roots.  It was like magic, like watching flowers come up in spring.

 

Doctor Life:  Indeed, and I can see that you, yourself have benefitted from the treatment, would you mind coming up and letting Claire here handle your shot.

Mr, er….

 

John:            John Weber, Doctor Life  [pronounced Leefe] we met last time I was in for a booster shot.

 

Doctor Life:    Indeed, indeed.  You must excuse me, we have a large through-put. The War you know.  Always pushing us.  You have a son I think you said, yes? I remember he had some concerns about commencing treatment with us.  How old would he be now?

 

John:               He was born in 1970, so he’d be…oh….I can never do maths in my head since we got a computer. 

 

Claire:              He’d be 55, Mr Weber.

 

Doctor Life:     Quite old enough to get over a silly phobia, and put the community first, eh, nurse. 

 

John:                He does his bit, design work and that, he pays his way.

 

Doctor Life:    Of course, he does, don’t mind me – it’s taking a genuine interest that keeps me going.  That and my little purple pills.  Nurse Claire will see you alright, I have to run.  I’d forgotten an appointment, chaio.

 

Claire:              Sorry about that, he is a little scatty.

 

John:                Has he got an appointment, really?

 

Claire:              We think he’s got a sweetheart.  Keep catching him on the phone, blushing.  He probably levelled off a bit soon.  He’s never been older you see, just dug his heels in at 20, and lord knows we still need young enthusiatic Doctors.

 

John:                Why?  I’d have thought immortality would made demand drop.

I only ever come in for the shots.  Not that the company isn’t fine. 

 

Claire:              Theres still medicine to do, more than you might think.  The needle rebuilds slowly, it’s no help to a man bleeding to death, or a woman aborting.  We’re mainly accident and emergency full-time, but even so demands up if anything.  Leefe says immortality has made people feel invincible, stepped up risk taking, made accidents inevitable.

 

John:                Still it must make it worthwhile to have people walk again, to watch the blind see, the old grow young.

 

Claire:              Age has its beauties, but I don’t want them to be anything but rareties.  You know they’ll make your son take the needle, don’t you.  It’ll be fifties and fifty five year olds next.

 

John:               How old are you, Claire?  If you don’t mind me asking.

 

Claire:              35 this year.  Not locked yet, I’m hoping to have children first, age with them.  Then maybe work my way back to the mid thirties again after a decent interval.