Tragicomedy in three acts. Dedicated to Stanislaw Wyspianski.
Characters:
All characters are employees of a Government Science Foundation. In particular,
Cedric - member of upper management
Rooster - member of upper management
First Year Rotator - temporary employee
Second Year Rotator - temporary employee
Permie - permanent employee
Alice - bright child, a daughter of the First Year Rotator
There are also ghosts of:
Vannevar Bush - sage and visionary
Linus Pauling - Nobel winning chemist
Richard Feynman - Nobel winning physicist
Kurt Godel - famous mathematician
and lastly
Ghost of Unfunded Investigator
Setting:
In the background there is a big brightly lit conference room in a Government Science Foundation. End-of-year party is in full swing and people are milling around. The scene is the area just outside that room, with dimly lit corridor extending in both directions. Two chairs and a side table, where characters come out to sit, talk and smoke e-cigs, complete the setup.
Act I
Scene 1 Did you affirm?
(First and Second Year Rotators walk in with wine glasses in hand. They turn on e-cigs and sit down.)
First Year Rotator (strikes a conversation apprehensively) : The system of keeping track of our time is a bit weird, don’t you think?
Second Year Rotator (nonchalantly): Oh, c’mon. You just stamp, stomp, save, affirm, approve, accept, validate, commit, vindicate, submit and voila - it is someone else's job after that! Two weeks of work are properly encoded in the system.
First Year Rotator: Stomp and vindicate?!
Second Year Rotator (laughing): Just kidding. These are my own inventions, this is just to keep you mentally alert when you mouse around. However, many of us have stand up desks just so that they can stomp around when going gets tough.
First Year Rotator (as if awaken from a dream): Yeah, yeah but isn’t looking at the work that was actually done more sensible?
Second Year Rotator (brushes it away with motherly concern): Sense? What kind of attitude is this? This is not kindergarten, you cannot do everything with a single mouse click!
(They gulp down their wine, pocket their vaporizers and head back to the party.)
Scene 2 Diversity
(Permie and First Year Rotator come out and turn on e-cigs. They settle down, take deep drags and produce dense clouds of nicotine vapor.)
Permie (announces while staring fiercely into space): Today diversity is the final frontier of our work.
First Year Rotator (confused): Huh?
Permie (with authority and emphasis): There are whole areas of science scarred by tremendous levels of underrepresentation. Women, minorities, veterans - they are all missing in action!
First Year Rotator (with a flash of understanding): And the other guys finally got tired of it?
Permie (confused): What other guys?!
First Year Rotator: The ones that are overrepresented. They must be laboring hard and complaining about it a lot.
Permie (annoyed): Nobody is complaining you dummy, except for us. You must have missed some training.
First Year Rotator (grasping for understanding): Don’t you have to tackle overrepresentation simultaneously with underrepresentation. Isn’t it a zero sum game?
Permie: No it isn’t! Arrgh! I cannot work in this environment. Go talk to Cedric.
(They get up and go back to the main room.)
Scene 3 Procedures
(Cedrick and Permie get out for a smoke. Cedric has a fancy looking atomizer with adjustable taste and nicotine settings. Clearly leadership position comes with an additional stress level.)
Cedric (thoughtfully): Why is it always assumed that the default settings are zero?
Permie (desperately trying to connect to an unforseable direction in which this conversation is going): Well, isn’t it the most common case?
Cedric: I am thinking of the form 1512. It has 16 fields where employees report travel expenses. Shouldn’t we request that they actually put zero if it is a zero?
Permie (a bit flabergasted): If there is nothing to report they leave it blank, don’t they?
Cedric (with grim satisfaction): Exactly.
Permie (uncomfortably): Hmmm.
Cedric (after a brief pause and very sweetly): It is a good idea to fill in those missing zeros and I am glad that it comes from you. I will announce it during our stand-up meeting tomorrow morning and there will be a decade worth of data to back-fill.
Permie (whispers): Ouch, my colleagues will thank me for this!
(First Year Rotator joins them and starts puffing anxiously on the latest nicotine delivery system.)
First Year Rotator (looking at Cedric): Do we have some policies addressing scientific overrepresentation?
(Cedrick and Permie jump up.)
Cedric (alarmed): Watch what you are talking about! What overrepresentation?
First Year Rotator (evidently lost): I dunno. Like all these foreigners. (his voice trails off)
(Cedric and Permie who are both foreign born look uneasy.)
Cedric (as if passing judgment): Listen, (he leans over trying to read First Year Rotators' nametag) there is a 48-hour course in our training academy covering such topics. Lets go back to this conversation after you complete it and pass all tests.
(First Year Rotator looks forlorn and goes back to the party.)
Cedric (muses): Training, training and more training.
Permie (looking alarmed): Perhaps we should join the crowd now.
(They retreat.)
Scene 4 Ghosts of the glorious past
(Second Year Rotator and Rooster come out of the main room. They get e-cigs going and check dimly lit corridor.)
Second Year Rotator (struggling for a conversation topic in the presence of his supervisor and choosing poorly): Isn’t our organization not quite what it used to be?
Rooster (taken aback as this in a few short years will be his legacy): Do you have anything specific in mind?
Second Year Rotator (suddenly worried): No, nothing special. But were we not more involved in the past?
Rooster (irritated): Darn! Cedric is keeping everybody so involved that any more of it and we will have a revolution here! (he calms down and continues) You know what? It is the year’s end. Let’s invite the ghosts of past investigators and ask them these questions. It can’t be simpler than that.
(Both Rooster and Second Year Rotator stand up, blow wispy clouds of nicotine vapor and whisper into the dark corridor)
Rooster and Second Year Rotator: Come out, come out wherever you are! Funded or declined, live or dead - the Foundation is calling you!
(They head back as faint echo bounces off the walls. Just when they disappear inside, the lights flicker strangely.)
Act II
Scene 1 Gatekeeper
(Nine-year old Alice who attends the party with her parent comes out of the room. She is bored and she tries unsuccessfully to remove the wrapping from a nicotine patch and apply it to her knee.
Suddenly there is a motion in the corridor and four ghosts come into view.)
Alice (firmly): Who are you ugly things?
Ghosts (somehow stumped and not used to deal with the living): We were invited by the management.
Alice (laughing): Sure you were. Must be friends of the DJ.
Ghosts: DJ?? We are ghosts of past glory on a friendly mission.
Alice (dead serious): Identify yourself!
First Ghost (with dignity) In my former life I was called Vannevar Bush, and these are ghosts of Richard Feynman, Kurt Godel and Linus Pauling.
Alice (firmly): Those names mean nothing to me.
Feynman's ghost (oozing ectoplasm profusely and clearly recognizing the communication problem): What about your credentials? Show us your badge!
Alice (cool and composed): I can see through you Mister. You don’t have a body. Go away!
(Godel's ghost is visibly upset and mutters something in German, Pauling's ghost pops vitamin C like it is going to make a difference. It is a clear impasse.)
Scene 2 Famous and less famous
(At this moment Rooster and Cedric come out of the main room sucking on their e-cigs and they notice waiting ghosts.)
Cedric: Don’t we have procedures here? I do not want some untrained personnel intercept our visitors. (he glares at Alice)
(There is a flash of recognition on his face as he sees Pauling and Feynmann’s ghosts.)
Cedric (respectfully): Dr. Pauling and Dr. Feynman, so to speak. How glad to see that you have made it here.
Rooster (hesitantly): I have summoned them. These are the ghosts of our past glory.
Cedric (with a hint of sarcasm): Funny, I do not recognize the other two.
Rooster: The bigger one is the founder of our organization and the other one is some mathematician (he also displays hesitation concerning the ghosts of lesser people.)
Cedric (darkly): Welcome, welcome. But if you are the ghosts of past glory I am going to check on your past annual reports. They better be in order.
(all ghosts start pulsating nervously as the past glory involved greatly relaxed reporting rules.)
Scene 3 Chit chat with ghosts
Pauling’s ghost (with emphasis): No need for hostilities. We bear gifts of peace and future glory.
Cedric (with suspicion): What makes you think we need any help?
(He glances at Godel’s ghost who wears a t-shirt emblazoned with logo “Jersey roots, global reach” and who glares at Cedric accusingly.)
Cedric (murmurs to himself): I do not like these Princeton snobs.
Feynman's ghost: Oh c’mon. We read the news. You can do better, much better in fact.
Rooster (asserting authorithy): Cedric! Lighten up, I think we got something good here.
Cedric (snaps back): This is all quite irregular. If Congress gets wind of it we will all be in trouble. Consorting with ghosts is no better than watching pornography.
Rooster (bows his head towards the ghosts): This is a birthplace of ideas and you are like four kings bearing gifts. We welcome you.
(He gestures toward the main room but ghosts hate well lit spaces and they do not budge.)
Cedric (clearly annoyed by the religious innuendo): Pst, pst!
Rooster (excitedly): Oh please, do tell us what are you bringing.
Scene 4 The gift
Vannevar Bushs’ ghost (as he reaches somewhere below his waistline): It is a five and quarter inch dick, disk I mean (he becomes ghostly white from embarrassment), containing a document. This document is a rallying cry for the scientific community, a challenge, a vision, and a budget driver, (he runs out of breath) something that you call a solicitation.
(he presents an ectoplasm dripping disk to Rooster).
Cedric (bored): Solicitation? We have just a million of those.
Rooster (is getting more annoyed with Cedric. He accepts the disk with some apprehension and continues with reverence): An old technology, but please, do tell more.
Godel’s ghost (barely comprehensibly): Do you know how schwer it ist fur a poltergeist to schreiben on eine diskette?
Vannevar Bushs’ ghost (with pride): This is not just a solicitation. This is a mother of all solicitations! It will light a fire under your universities, raise the mood of your scientists, call the best minds from afar and bring rational thought back into the fold. We will ride the wave again! (he roars) We will ride the wave again!
(Godel and Pauling’s ghosts try to join in while Feynman’s ghost is giving high fives all around. One wonders what they think about the current line-up of programs at Government Science Foundation)
Rooster (who quite badly needs something to assert himself in the organization is clearly excited): Can it be? This sounds like an answer to our prayers.
(Cedric is deeply in thoughts and looks worried)
Cedric (with more than a hint of doubt): There are no compliance issues I hope.
(Ghosts look a bit puzzled but Feynman’s ghost reads the situation correctly.)
Feynman’s ghost (with a twinkle in his eye): No Sir, none whatsoever!
(Afterwards all ghosts disappear, Cedric and Rooster stand in the middle staring at the disk.)
Act III
(Everybody gets out and all look at Rooster and Cedric. The batteries in their e-cigs are completely discharged and nobody is smoking anymore. For a brief moment their nicotine-free minds are in direct contact with reality. Everybody feels like this is history in the making although only Rooster, Cedric and Alice know what has actually happened.)
Scene 1 Plans
Permie (excitedly) What just happened? Alice is talking about some ghosts?
First Year Rotator: Ghosts?
Second Year Rotator (semi-seriously): Stranger things happened here ... we had mice once.
Rooster (solemnly and raising the floppy up in the air): This is a gift from our past heroes. A new solicitation, and it is the mother of all solicitations! (obviously there is not much more to say at this point and he also chokes from excitement.)
First Year Rotator: Wow! this is great, lets get it rolling.
(Second Year Rotator pulls out his laptop and starts fumbling with his 50-character password. There is a palpable spark of excitement.)
Cedric (decisively): Slow down, slow down my friends! We have procedures, chain of command (he takes the floppy from Rooster who stands frozen). Let me put it in the system and then we will discuss it some more. But you stay here and wait for the sign. Look at the big monitor, solicitation will first show up there. (He wanders off to his office.)
Permie: Lets talk about the options. We really do not know what it is all about.
Rooster: No, we should wait for the sign. Wait for the sign (he repeats sternly), don’t be so hasty.
First Year Rotator (as always inquisitive): Who said to wait for the sign, ghosts or Cedric?
(Nobody remembers and they quarrel, Rooster says that these were ghosts but others point to Cedric).
Permie (with resignation): Ok, lets wait.
(all but Alice plug in their vaporizers into the usb ports in their laptops. Emotions settle as they commit to waiting.)
Scene 2 Disaster
(The clock on the wall jumps ahead by a few hours. The sun will rise soon. Cedric returns with a worried look on his face. A cloud of nicotine vapor trails behind him.)
Cedric (reports hastily): I found an old computer and opened the file. The fonts were all too small and there were millions of compliance issues. Surely you were joking Mr Feynman (he adds sarcastically remembering Feynman’s ghost promises of quality.)
I did not bother to read it but tried to make the most pressing corrections so that it can pass administrative review. You would not believe it but I guess that these ghosts have never read the Grant Proposal Manual, even the oldest edition (he is clearly shocked by this).
Permie (interrupting) Did you save a copy of the file?
Cedric (exasperated): Well, the system was very suspicious of it and it refused to save it.
Second Year Rotator (greatly agitated): Did you e-mail it to yourself?
Cedric (annoyed): I tried but Outlook did not like the file.
First Year Rotator: Did you put it in Dropbox?
Cedric (with finality): Don’t you know that Dropbox in not legal in our organization? Have you heard of North Korea?!
Rooster (trying to calm everybody down): Ok, ok, lets read the floppy again.
Cedric (whispering): Well, that is the problem.
Alice (very loudly): Sir, sir, we can’t hear you!
Cedric (repeats louder): Well, that is the problem. I do not have the floppy anymore. I seem to have lost it. (he says it in an oddly disarming way.)
Scene 3 Aftermath
(There is a faint beep of e-cigs indicating full charge and everybody starts smoking again. The night is nearly over and the mood lifts slightly as clouds of nicotine vapor fill the air. There is a feeling that something odd has just happened, but nobody quite knows what it was, and the reality takes over and slowly pushes it aside.)
(Alice is the first to notice some movement down the corridor.)
Alice (firmly): Who are you?
(Ghost of Unfunded Investigator emerges from darkness. All the declinations gave him rhinoceros’ skin and he has multiple scars from reviewers’ insults. He barrels forward unfazed.)
Ghost of Unfunded Investigator (in a deep booming voice): I am the Ghost of Unfunded Investigator. I appear to those whose projects have been declined. It is hard work these days (he adds it as if he was blaming somebody in the present company).
First Year Rotator: Why are you so angry?
Ghost of Unfunded Investigator (incredulous): Who do you think I am? Mickey Mouse?! I am permanently pissed! I represent people who are responsible for 90% of the scientific progress and who get abused at every turn of their career.
(First and Second Year Rotators get quiet and thoughtful while Permie looks like he has heard it many times already)
Cedric (annoyed): Listen buddy, in any case you are in the wrong place, we do not apply for grants ourselves.
Ghost of Unfunded Investigator (with an air of finality and laughing devilishly): You are wrong, you are so wrong! Life is a one big funding competition. And you know what? you did not make the cut! You just blew it (he howls unpleasantly).
Permie (with concern and agitation): What will happen to us?
First Year Rotator (stunned): I just started here. I did not even finish my training.
Second year Rotator (with anxiety): Are we being punished?
Rooster (with regret): I should have been more assertive.
Ghost of Unfunded Investigator (as if talking to children): Stop whining! Nothing will happen to you. I am here to help you to forget and to heal.
Rooster (surprised): Really? Thank you very much!
(There is a moment of eerie silence and everybody watches as the Ghost of Unfunded Investigator pulls out a small keyboard and starts playing a simple tune. People begin dancing and swaying back and forth with the rhythm as if hypnotized.)
Ghost of Unfunded Investigator (playing and singing, see here for the studio recording):
Oh where, oh where did my floppy disk go,
what is wrong, what is wrong with my data flow,
data is polluted, floppy got deleted,
we will now lay low, lay low
we will now lay low, lay low.
(this repeats endlessly, each time fainter and with some echo)
(The music is soothing and the lights in the corridor turn on. Everybody slowly sleepwalks to their offices as the new day begins.)
Characters:
All characters are employees of a Government Science Foundation. In particular,
Cedric - member of upper management
Rooster - member of upper management
First Year Rotator - temporary employee
Second Year Rotator - temporary employee
Permie - permanent employee
Alice - bright child, a daughter of the First Year Rotator
There are also ghosts of:
Vannevar Bush - sage and visionary
Linus Pauling - Nobel winning chemist
Richard Feynman - Nobel winning physicist
Kurt Godel - famous mathematician
and lastly
Ghost of Unfunded Investigator
Setting:
In the background there is a big brightly lit conference room in a Government Science Foundation. End-of-year party is in full swing and people are milling around. The scene is the area just outside that room, with dimly lit corridor extending in both directions. Two chairs and a side table, where characters come out to sit, talk and smoke e-cigs, complete the setup.
Act I
Scene 1 Did you affirm?
(First and Second Year Rotators walk in with wine glasses in hand. They turn on e-cigs and sit down.)
First Year Rotator (strikes a conversation apprehensively) : The system of keeping track of our time is a bit weird, don’t you think?
Second Year Rotator (nonchalantly): Oh, c’mon. You just stamp, stomp, save, affirm, approve, accept, validate, commit, vindicate, submit and voila - it is someone else's job after that! Two weeks of work are properly encoded in the system.
First Year Rotator: Stomp and vindicate?!
Second Year Rotator (laughing): Just kidding. These are my own inventions, this is just to keep you mentally alert when you mouse around. However, many of us have stand up desks just so that they can stomp around when going gets tough.
First Year Rotator (as if awaken from a dream): Yeah, yeah but isn’t looking at the work that was actually done more sensible?
Second Year Rotator (brushes it away with motherly concern): Sense? What kind of attitude is this? This is not kindergarten, you cannot do everything with a single mouse click!
(They gulp down their wine, pocket their vaporizers and head back to the party.)
Scene 2 Diversity
(Permie and First Year Rotator come out and turn on e-cigs. They settle down, take deep drags and produce dense clouds of nicotine vapor.)
Permie (announces while staring fiercely into space): Today diversity is the final frontier of our work.
First Year Rotator (confused): Huh?
Permie (with authority and emphasis): There are whole areas of science scarred by tremendous levels of underrepresentation. Women, minorities, veterans - they are all missing in action!
First Year Rotator (with a flash of understanding): And the other guys finally got tired of it?
Permie (confused): What other guys?!
First Year Rotator: The ones that are overrepresented. They must be laboring hard and complaining about it a lot.
Permie (annoyed): Nobody is complaining you dummy, except for us. You must have missed some training.
First Year Rotator (grasping for understanding): Don’t you have to tackle overrepresentation simultaneously with underrepresentation. Isn’t it a zero sum game?
Permie: No it isn’t! Arrgh! I cannot work in this environment. Go talk to Cedric.
(They get up and go back to the main room.)
Scene 3 Procedures
(Cedrick and Permie get out for a smoke. Cedric has a fancy looking atomizer with adjustable taste and nicotine settings. Clearly leadership position comes with an additional stress level.)
Cedric (thoughtfully): Why is it always assumed that the default settings are zero?
Permie (desperately trying to connect to an unforseable direction in which this conversation is going): Well, isn’t it the most common case?
Cedric: I am thinking of the form 1512. It has 16 fields where employees report travel expenses. Shouldn’t we request that they actually put zero if it is a zero?
Permie (a bit flabergasted): If there is nothing to report they leave it blank, don’t they?
Cedric (with grim satisfaction): Exactly.
Permie (uncomfortably): Hmmm.
Cedric (after a brief pause and very sweetly): It is a good idea to fill in those missing zeros and I am glad that it comes from you. I will announce it during our stand-up meeting tomorrow morning and there will be a decade worth of data to back-fill.
Permie (whispers): Ouch, my colleagues will thank me for this!
(First Year Rotator joins them and starts puffing anxiously on the latest nicotine delivery system.)
First Year Rotator (looking at Cedric): Do we have some policies addressing scientific overrepresentation?
(Cedrick and Permie jump up.)
Cedric (alarmed): Watch what you are talking about! What overrepresentation?
First Year Rotator (evidently lost): I dunno. Like all these foreigners. (his voice trails off)
(Cedric and Permie who are both foreign born look uneasy.)
Cedric (as if passing judgment): Listen, (he leans over trying to read First Year Rotators' nametag) there is a 48-hour course in our training academy covering such topics. Lets go back to this conversation after you complete it and pass all tests.
(First Year Rotator looks forlorn and goes back to the party.)
Cedric (muses): Training, training and more training.
Permie (looking alarmed): Perhaps we should join the crowd now.
(They retreat.)
Scene 4 Ghosts of the glorious past
(Second Year Rotator and Rooster come out of the main room. They get e-cigs going and check dimly lit corridor.)
Second Year Rotator (struggling for a conversation topic in the presence of his supervisor and choosing poorly): Isn’t our organization not quite what it used to be?
Rooster (taken aback as this in a few short years will be his legacy): Do you have anything specific in mind?
Second Year Rotator (suddenly worried): No, nothing special. But were we not more involved in the past?
Rooster (irritated): Darn! Cedric is keeping everybody so involved that any more of it and we will have a revolution here! (he calms down and continues) You know what? It is the year’s end. Let’s invite the ghosts of past investigators and ask them these questions. It can’t be simpler than that.
(Both Rooster and Second Year Rotator stand up, blow wispy clouds of nicotine vapor and whisper into the dark corridor)
Rooster and Second Year Rotator: Come out, come out wherever you are! Funded or declined, live or dead - the Foundation is calling you!
(They head back as faint echo bounces off the walls. Just when they disappear inside, the lights flicker strangely.)
Act II
Scene 1 Gatekeeper
(Nine-year old Alice who attends the party with her parent comes out of the room. She is bored and she tries unsuccessfully to remove the wrapping from a nicotine patch and apply it to her knee.
Suddenly there is a motion in the corridor and four ghosts come into view.)
Alice (firmly): Who are you ugly things?
Ghosts (somehow stumped and not used to deal with the living): We were invited by the management.
Alice (laughing): Sure you were. Must be friends of the DJ.
Ghosts: DJ?? We are ghosts of past glory on a friendly mission.
Alice (dead serious): Identify yourself!
First Ghost (with dignity) In my former life I was called Vannevar Bush, and these are ghosts of Richard Feynman, Kurt Godel and Linus Pauling.
Alice (firmly): Those names mean nothing to me.
Feynman's ghost (oozing ectoplasm profusely and clearly recognizing the communication problem): What about your credentials? Show us your badge!
Alice (cool and composed): I can see through you Mister. You don’t have a body. Go away!
(Godel's ghost is visibly upset and mutters something in German, Pauling's ghost pops vitamin C like it is going to make a difference. It is a clear impasse.)
Scene 2 Famous and less famous
(At this moment Rooster and Cedric come out of the main room sucking on their e-cigs and they notice waiting ghosts.)
Cedric: Don’t we have procedures here? I do not want some untrained personnel intercept our visitors. (he glares at Alice)
(There is a flash of recognition on his face as he sees Pauling and Feynmann’s ghosts.)
Cedric (respectfully): Dr. Pauling and Dr. Feynman, so to speak. How glad to see that you have made it here.
Rooster (hesitantly): I have summoned them. These are the ghosts of our past glory.
Cedric (with a hint of sarcasm): Funny, I do not recognize the other two.
Rooster: The bigger one is the founder of our organization and the other one is some mathematician (he also displays hesitation concerning the ghosts of lesser people.)
Cedric (darkly): Welcome, welcome. But if you are the ghosts of past glory I am going to check on your past annual reports. They better be in order.
(all ghosts start pulsating nervously as the past glory involved greatly relaxed reporting rules.)
Scene 3 Chit chat with ghosts
Pauling’s ghost (with emphasis): No need for hostilities. We bear gifts of peace and future glory.
Cedric (with suspicion): What makes you think we need any help?
(He glances at Godel’s ghost who wears a t-shirt emblazoned with logo “Jersey roots, global reach” and who glares at Cedric accusingly.)
Cedric (murmurs to himself): I do not like these Princeton snobs.
Feynman's ghost: Oh c’mon. We read the news. You can do better, much better in fact.
Rooster (asserting authorithy): Cedric! Lighten up, I think we got something good here.
Cedric (snaps back): This is all quite irregular. If Congress gets wind of it we will all be in trouble. Consorting with ghosts is no better than watching pornography.
Rooster (bows his head towards the ghosts): This is a birthplace of ideas and you are like four kings bearing gifts. We welcome you.
(He gestures toward the main room but ghosts hate well lit spaces and they do not budge.)
Cedric (clearly annoyed by the religious innuendo): Pst, pst!
Rooster (excitedly): Oh please, do tell us what are you bringing.
Scene 4 The gift
Vannevar Bushs’ ghost (as he reaches somewhere below his waistline): It is a five and quarter inch dick, disk I mean (he becomes ghostly white from embarrassment), containing a document. This document is a rallying cry for the scientific community, a challenge, a vision, and a budget driver, (he runs out of breath) something that you call a solicitation.
(he presents an ectoplasm dripping disk to Rooster).
Cedric (bored): Solicitation? We have just a million of those.
Rooster (is getting more annoyed with Cedric. He accepts the disk with some apprehension and continues with reverence): An old technology, but please, do tell more.
Godel’s ghost (barely comprehensibly): Do you know how schwer it ist fur a poltergeist to schreiben on eine diskette?
Vannevar Bushs’ ghost (with pride): This is not just a solicitation. This is a mother of all solicitations! It will light a fire under your universities, raise the mood of your scientists, call the best minds from afar and bring rational thought back into the fold. We will ride the wave again! (he roars) We will ride the wave again!
(Godel and Pauling’s ghosts try to join in while Feynman’s ghost is giving high fives all around. One wonders what they think about the current line-up of programs at Government Science Foundation)
Rooster (who quite badly needs something to assert himself in the organization is clearly excited): Can it be? This sounds like an answer to our prayers.
(Cedric is deeply in thoughts and looks worried)
Cedric (with more than a hint of doubt): There are no compliance issues I hope.
(Ghosts look a bit puzzled but Feynman’s ghost reads the situation correctly.)
Feynman’s ghost (with a twinkle in his eye): No Sir, none whatsoever!
(Afterwards all ghosts disappear, Cedric and Rooster stand in the middle staring at the disk.)
Act III
(Everybody gets out and all look at Rooster and Cedric. The batteries in their e-cigs are completely discharged and nobody is smoking anymore. For a brief moment their nicotine-free minds are in direct contact with reality. Everybody feels like this is history in the making although only Rooster, Cedric and Alice know what has actually happened.)
Scene 1 Plans
Permie (excitedly) What just happened? Alice is talking about some ghosts?
First Year Rotator: Ghosts?
Second Year Rotator (semi-seriously): Stranger things happened here ... we had mice once.
Rooster (solemnly and raising the floppy up in the air): This is a gift from our past heroes. A new solicitation, and it is the mother of all solicitations! (obviously there is not much more to say at this point and he also chokes from excitement.)
First Year Rotator: Wow! this is great, lets get it rolling.
(Second Year Rotator pulls out his laptop and starts fumbling with his 50-character password. There is a palpable spark of excitement.)
Cedric (decisively): Slow down, slow down my friends! We have procedures, chain of command (he takes the floppy from Rooster who stands frozen). Let me put it in the system and then we will discuss it some more. But you stay here and wait for the sign. Look at the big monitor, solicitation will first show up there. (He wanders off to his office.)
Permie: Lets talk about the options. We really do not know what it is all about.
Rooster: No, we should wait for the sign. Wait for the sign (he repeats sternly), don’t be so hasty.
First Year Rotator (as always inquisitive): Who said to wait for the sign, ghosts or Cedric?
(Nobody remembers and they quarrel, Rooster says that these were ghosts but others point to Cedric).
Permie (with resignation): Ok, lets wait.
(all but Alice plug in their vaporizers into the usb ports in their laptops. Emotions settle as they commit to waiting.)
Scene 2 Disaster
(The clock on the wall jumps ahead by a few hours. The sun will rise soon. Cedric returns with a worried look on his face. A cloud of nicotine vapor trails behind him.)
Cedric (reports hastily): I found an old computer and opened the file. The fonts were all too small and there were millions of compliance issues. Surely you were joking Mr Feynman (he adds sarcastically remembering Feynman’s ghost promises of quality.)
I did not bother to read it but tried to make the most pressing corrections so that it can pass administrative review. You would not believe it but I guess that these ghosts have never read the Grant Proposal Manual, even the oldest edition (he is clearly shocked by this).
Permie (interrupting) Did you save a copy of the file?
Cedric (exasperated): Well, the system was very suspicious of it and it refused to save it.
Second Year Rotator (greatly agitated): Did you e-mail it to yourself?
Cedric (annoyed): I tried but Outlook did not like the file.
First Year Rotator: Did you put it in Dropbox?
Cedric (with finality): Don’t you know that Dropbox in not legal in our organization? Have you heard of North Korea?!
Rooster (trying to calm everybody down): Ok, ok, lets read the floppy again.
Cedric (whispering): Well, that is the problem.
Alice (very loudly): Sir, sir, we can’t hear you!
Cedric (repeats louder): Well, that is the problem. I do not have the floppy anymore. I seem to have lost it. (he says it in an oddly disarming way.)
Scene 3 Aftermath
(There is a faint beep of e-cigs indicating full charge and everybody starts smoking again. The night is nearly over and the mood lifts slightly as clouds of nicotine vapor fill the air. There is a feeling that something odd has just happened, but nobody quite knows what it was, and the reality takes over and slowly pushes it aside.)
(Alice is the first to notice some movement down the corridor.)
Alice (firmly): Who are you?
(Ghost of Unfunded Investigator emerges from darkness. All the declinations gave him rhinoceros’ skin and he has multiple scars from reviewers’ insults. He barrels forward unfazed.)
Ghost of Unfunded Investigator (in a deep booming voice): I am the Ghost of Unfunded Investigator. I appear to those whose projects have been declined. It is hard work these days (he adds it as if he was blaming somebody in the present company).
First Year Rotator: Why are you so angry?
Ghost of Unfunded Investigator (incredulous): Who do you think I am? Mickey Mouse?! I am permanently pissed! I represent people who are responsible for 90% of the scientific progress and who get abused at every turn of their career.
(First and Second Year Rotators get quiet and thoughtful while Permie looks like he has heard it many times already)
Cedric (annoyed): Listen buddy, in any case you are in the wrong place, we do not apply for grants ourselves.
Ghost of Unfunded Investigator (with an air of finality and laughing devilishly): You are wrong, you are so wrong! Life is a one big funding competition. And you know what? you did not make the cut! You just blew it (he howls unpleasantly).
Permie (with concern and agitation): What will happen to us?
First Year Rotator (stunned): I just started here. I did not even finish my training.
Second year Rotator (with anxiety): Are we being punished?
Rooster (with regret): I should have been more assertive.
Ghost of Unfunded Investigator (as if talking to children): Stop whining! Nothing will happen to you. I am here to help you to forget and to heal.
Rooster (surprised): Really? Thank you very much!
(There is a moment of eerie silence and everybody watches as the Ghost of Unfunded Investigator pulls out a small keyboard and starts playing a simple tune. People begin dancing and swaying back and forth with the rhythm as if hypnotized.)
Ghost of Unfunded Investigator (playing and singing, see here for the studio recording):
Oh where, oh where did my floppy disk go,
what is wrong, what is wrong with my data flow,
data is polluted, floppy got deleted,
we will now lay low, lay low
we will now lay low, lay low.
(this repeats endlessly, each time fainter and with some echo)
(The music is soothing and the lights in the corridor turn on. Everybody slowly sleepwalks to their offices as the new day begins.)
