A BEAUTIFUL REALITY
Evening.
A quiet hillside in the North-East of England.
Jamie, 17, stands staring at Anna, talking at her rather than with her. Anna, 18, lies on the bonnet of an abandoned car, looking up into the universe.
JAMIE [Talking and thinking at a million miles an hour.] Did you never get to thinking that, like other than humans obviously, that maybe just maybe there might be intelligent life within our very galaxy? Not just in the universe, I mean that’s pretty much a scientific inevitability, but in the Milky Way itself? [Anna shrugs.] Did you ever hear of Fermi’s paradox, or the Drake equation? Well Enrico Fermi estimated that there were 100-400 billion stars in the Milky Way and 70 sextillion in the observable universe, 70 sextillion! That’s seven with twenty one zeros! Anyway, he reckoned that even if intelligent life occurs on only a tiny percentage of planets around these stars, there must still be some that have developed civilisations and that given the size of our galaxy there must be a large number of civilisations in the Milky Way alone. So the paradox is, if this is all taken to be true, then where the hell is everybody? I mean we can’t just be alone, right? They reckon there could be about forty billion Earth-sized planets orbiting sun-like stars just within the Milky Way. I mean we’ve already found four other Goldilocks planets, have you heard of Goldilocks planets? [Anna shakes her head. Still not quite listening.] A Goldilocks planet is like our planet, Earth. It’s where the conditions of a planet have, against all the odds, developed to be just right to nurture life. Not too hot, not too cold, just right, that’s why they call it... well I mean you probably got that. Anyway, I mean just think, if Earth was a few hundred miles closer or further from the sun then we’d either burn or freeze to death. And if the moon wasn’t in our orbit, which by the way one day it won’t be as it’s drifting away from us at a rate of about four inches a year, then we wouldn’t have tides and if we didn’t have tides the sea would be stagnant, if the sea was stagnant it would be nearly impossible for life to have come about in the first place. Then you get to thinking about evolution and the miracle of consciousness. It’s amazing really. A gift that’s pure chance. I mean if you think about when your mum and dad were, you know, like having sex and that -
ANNA What?
JAMIE No, I’m just saying, when they were conceiving you -
ANNA Why are you talking about my parents have sex?
JAMIE Mine too! Everyone’s. When everyone’s parents have sex there’s about 100 million sperm in the average male... you know. And the chances of me or you being that one in a 100 million is... well it’s one in a 100 million. Then you get to thinking about infant mortality rate, I mean the fact that we’re born in this century let alone this country means we were always much more likely to survive childhood. So if you consider all those things at once and then think that we’re standing here now talking like this and thinking like this it’s... well it’s... it’s just brilliant. It’s all so unlikely, yet it had to happen to someone. Like the lottery only much much bigger. You know?
Pause. ANNA seems unphased by all this.
ANNA What about God?
JAMIE What?
ANNA What if this is all a master plan of the divine and chance doesn’t come into it?
JAMIE Well I mean that’s something that is being disproved by the hour. Science is closing in on all theological arguments. They call it the God of the gaps.
ANNA Who do?
JAMIE What?
ANNA Who call it the God of the gaps?
JAMIE I dunno. Them. Anyway that’s not important. The God of the gaps is the idea that religious nuts will fill any gap in knowledge with the explanation that God did it. Then as soon as science fills the gap they say yeah well look at all the other gaps. One day there won’t be any gaps left and science will be the only God.
ANNA That’s depressing.
JAMIE No it isn’t.
ANNA What’s the point to life if it’s all figured out? Isn’t the mystery part of the excitement, part of the reason for it all?
JAMIE There’ll still be mystery, just not as much.
ANNA So there’ll still be God?
JAMIE Well, I mean I s’pose it’s a possibility. But the point is the further we advance the closer we get to the truth.
ANNA But what if the truth is too much for us to handle? What if [doing her best Jack Nicholson impression] we can’t handle the truth! Or if the truth is that there is no truth.
JAMIE Well that’s a truth in itself.
ANNA Very clever.
JAMIE One day the aliens will come and we’ll think that they’re the Gods, but then we’ll realise that it’s all just science. They’ve taken billions of years to evolve just like us and everything that looks like fate is really just chance and coincidence. Or maybe we’ll be the aliens and they’ll think we’re Gods. And who’s to say that we’re not?
ANNA Yeah well if aliens do come we should be scared.
JAMIE Why?
ANNA Cos all they’ll want is our resources.
JAMIE That’s probably true. Richard Dawkins said that it won’t be until aliens come that all humans will come together as one.
ANNA Richard Dawkins is a dick.
JAMIE He made a good point. In reality we’re just tooth gnashing savages blowing ourselves into oblivion. Just cos we’ve got buildings and stuff doesn’t mean we’re any better than the monkeys we came from.
ANNA We were Gods a minute ago.
JAMIE Yeah well maybe God’s an animal.
ANNA What like an elephant? Or a monkey?
JAMIE Not like that. Anyway. You know what I mean.
ANNA Not sure I do Spunky.
JAMIE Don’t call me that.
Anna laughs to herself. She looks back up to the stars. Jamie still stares at her. Silence.
ANNA A shooting star!
JAMIE Where?
ANNA Gone now. I tell you, for someone who said they like star-gazing and UFO spotting you’ve done very little in the way of looking up at the sky.
Jamie shuffles, embarrassed.
JAMIE Yeah well you got me talking about stuff.
ANNA I think you got yourself talking about stuff.
Jamie drops to the floor and lies on his back. Anna laughs.
ANNA What the fuck are you doing?
JAMIE Looking at the stars. S’posed to be a meteor shower tonight. S’why I came here in the first place.
ANNA No it isn’t. You came here cos you wanna be abducted.
JAMIE If I wanted to be abducted I’d go to the Welsh Triangle. Or Sedona in Arizona, if I could afford it. They have more UFO sightings there than anywhere else in the world.
ANNA Funny that in’t it?
JAMIE What?
ANNA How UFO sightings always happen in the arse end of nowhere where there’s fuck all going on, and they’re always seen by some poor nut job who wants sell their story looking for a bit of extra cash.
JAMIE That’s not always the case.
ANNA Strange that you don’t believe in the nutters from 2000 years ago talking about a man in the sky. But your more than happy to believe old Barney Bonkers when he says he saw a little green man going for a piss by the side of the A 428.
JAMIE I believe in the inevitability of extra-terrestrial life. Most scientists do. And I know that it’s only a matter of time before we make contact with something.
ANNA Well I think we should focus a little more on our own planet before we start worrying about other people’s.
JAMIE They wouldn’t be people. They’d be something else.
ANNA Right. [Pause.] You can come up here you know. I only bite if absolutely necessary.
JAMIE What?
ANNA Up here. On the bonnet. I know our bare arms might touch but I promise I’ll try to keep my hands to myself.
JAMIE I wasn’t thinking that.
ANNA I didn’t say you were Spunky.
JAMIE I don’t like it when you lot call me that. My name’s Jamie.
ANNA I know your name’s Jamie. Spunky.
He gets up from the ground and looks at her. She laughs. He moves onto the bonnet with her, rigid as a board. They stare at the sky. Silence.
ANNA Boo!
Jamie jumps out of his skin. Anna roars with laughter.
JAMIE Don’t do that. Still laughing, she takes out a cigarette and lights it.
ANNA Want some?
JAMIE No. Thanks. I’ve got asthma.
ANNA Course you do.
JAMIE Did you know that each cigarette takes 15 seconds off your life.
ANNA Is that right? And how the fuck d’you work that one out?
JAMIE Well not literally. It’s just if you take the average life expectancy of a group of people who don’t smoke and compare it with the life expectancy of a group who do, then you can work out the amount of time each cigarette takes off by factoring in how much the smoking group smokes a day.
ANNA I don’t get it.
JAMIE Well in the first group -
ANNA I don’t really care.
JAMIE Right.
Pause. Anna smokes. They stare at the sky in comfortable silence.
JAMIE Do you ever think about stuff?
ANNA You might have to be just a bit more specific.
JAMIE Like big stuff. Important stuff.
ANNA Like what?
JAMIE Like, I dunno...
ANNA Go on spit it out.
JAMIE Like sometimes I think that I’ve figured it all out and that I might just be the cleverest person in the world it’s just no one else knows it yet.
ANNA Right. Well I can tell you, you’re not.
JAMIE I know. But I still think like that sometimes. Or sometimes I think I’m like Jesus or something, and one day I’ll talk to God and he’ll tell me what to do and everyone will want to meet me cos I’m like the most important person in the universe, or whatever.
ANNA You just spent the last five minutes talking about why God doesn’t exist and now you’re saying you’re Jesus.
JAMIE No but not really. I know I’m not really. It’s just a stupid thing I think about sometimes. I know it’s not true, but I still think it. I don’t know why. It’s like something in my brain that I can’t control is always making me think I’m different.
ANNA Special?
JAMIE Well yeah, sometimes. But then other times things in my brain just sort of tell me I’m nothing, like just nothing. Like all humans are nothing, but I’m even more nothing than everyone else. And I should die for the sake of mankind cos I’m just worthless.
ANNA Jesus. You should probably, you know, talk to someone about that.
JAMIE You never think about that kind of stuff?
ANNA I’m not suicidal, and I don’t have a Messiah complex if that’s what you’re asking.
JAMIE It’s not... never mind.
Beat.
ANNA You’re funny.
JAMIE I’m not trying to be.
ANNA Not funny ha ha, just... funny.
Pause.
ANNA I do sometimes think that I was made for somewhere else. Something else. Bigger than this. And that if I had a different mum who wasn’t so ill the whole time and a different dad who didn’t always... yeah. And that if I lived in a different place that I’d still be me but my life and all my dreams might be different too and it would mean that I could just, you know, do stuff. Stuff I wanted to do. Stuff I should be doing. Stuff I know I can do. But I don’t do here. I can’t.
JAMIE Everywhere’s the same though really. And all parents are pretty much the same.
ANNA No they’re not.
JAMIE They are.
ANNA Trust me, they’re not.
JAMIE Well either way, being somewhere else wouldn’t change anything cos really it’s all the same. It’s like being here now the universe looks really big, but really it’s all just made of small stuff like us. Everything is as small and meaningless as everything else.
ANNA I was talking about London or New York or something, not Mars.
JAMIE I know, I just meant... never mind. [Pause.] I don’t normally get to talk to people about this kind of stuff.
ANNA What kind of stuff?
JAMIE UFOs, stars and that.
ANNA Yeah well I’ve always preferred a bit of the old reality. You know?
JAMIE Not really. It’s all reality. Just cos we don’t understand it or can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real.
ANNA Some people are forced to face this world and stargazing becomes the privilege of those who aren’t.
JAMIE You don’t need to tell me that.
ANNA Oh cos you suffer so much.
JAMIE You wouldn’t understand.
ANNA Wouldn’t I? Look, you’re funny. Stars are nice. The idea of UFOs is cool. But it’s cold and I’m bored shitless, so I’m gonna head.
JAMIE Oh right. I’ll walk you home if you want.
ANNA Oh that’s awfully nice of you! A chaperone? For me?
JAMIE I was just offering.
ANNA Well don’t. I’ll see you tomorrow.
JAMIE Okay. Sorry for... it’s just I thought -
ANNA It’s cool.
JAMIE Yeah cool. Anna?
ANNA What?
JAMIE Tomorrow at college, are you gonna -
ANNA No.
JAMIE So we’ll just pretend we never -
ANNA Yeah.
JAMIE Right.
ANNA Just the way it goes. For now.
JAMIE Yeah.
ANNA And I’m being serious you know. Have a talk to someone about that stuff in your head, might be a good idea.
JAMIE Oh yeah. Right. Bye then.
ANNA See you later, Jamie.
She leaves. Jamie stares after her, then looks back up to the sky.