EDITH: It’s not like Will.
HARRY: (quietly) Mary passed away yesterday.
John glances up and dashes out of the door after Will.
LINDA: Who?
HARRY: His wife. She had, uh, pancreatic cancer.
JOHN: Will! I didn’t know about Mary. I’m sorry. I can see how this might have hit you.
WILL: Please, permit me to be infantile by myself.
JOHN: (holding out his hand, with the other hand on Will’s arm) Will, please.
WILL: (hands him the gun, turns around and walks away)
JOHN: (checks gun to find it unloaded)
Meanwhiler inside.
HARRY: What the hell were you thinking, Art?
ART: Oh, come on. Something had to be done.
EDITH: I have to say I agree.
DAN: And he’s our friend. Whatever else on earth is going on, he’s our friend!
EDITH: You sure about that?
HARRY: Why the hell are you being so hard on him, Edith?
EDITH: One of my favorite people has disappeared. Can you get Alzheimer’s at 35? Maybe I’m trying to wake him up. Maybe I’m too sad to cry.
JOHN: (entering) What I said about myself hurt him. He struck back.
DAN: Expertly— That stuff about stealing life forces?
JOHN: I’ve always wondered about the reasons.
HARRY: Well, we still have an afternoon to kill, right? Charades? (chuckling) No. John? I have a charade, and it is just for you. A’right? Sandy, come here. Come on, come on, come on. Okay, this one’s for you. A’right. Ready? (grunts like ape) (notices Sandy and wolf whistles) (more grunting, play-acts whacking Sandy on head with club) Ooh!…Unh. (puts arm around Sandy)
JOHN: My first wedding?
HARRY: There you go. There you go! Very good, and I bet at least one of us… (points around the room)…is your direct descendent.
DAN: And I didn’t even send a Christmas card.
HARRY: Christmas card? What about a birthday card? And don’t even get me started on the candles… with the blowing and the… (huffs)…and all the candles! Yeah, all right. I tried.
DAN: Well, uh, call me underdeveloped, but I’d like to hear more.
HARRY: Me too.
LINDA: More.
HARRY: You double-damn swear this isn’t some cockamamie science fiction story you’re pulling on us?
DAN: Next question.
ART: You— You— You realize this is an invitation to men in white suits with happy pills.
DAN: Think about it— A mechanism allowing survival for thousands of years?
ART: Run out of room even faster.
DAN: Well then we’d have to go to Mars as a colony as we expanded, as we’d have to.
JOHN: I’d like that. On a planet of another star?
DAN: I envy you.
LINDA: Did you have a pet dinosaur?
JOHN: (smiling) They were a little bit before my time.
DAN: At least something is.
ART: No doubt you could give us a thousand details, John, corroborating your story, from the Magdalene to the Buddha to now.
JOHN: Ten thousand, and you could stay out of the books.
EDITH: Oh, it’s getting chilly.
HARRY: (beckoning to the fireplace) Here, come over here. Join me.
DAN: That, uh, raises an interesting question, John. Could there be others like you who escaped the aging process as you have?
HARRY: Representing something terrific we don’t even know about biology.
DAN: We’re learning all the time.
HARRY: Yeah, but how would he know? He doesn’t wear an armband, an I.D. Badge saying "yabba dabba doo."
(chuckles)
JOHN: There was a man in the 1600s.
EDITH: (interrupting) Where were you in 1292 A.D.?
JOHN: Where were you a year ago on this date? Anyway, it was the 1600s, and I met a man, and I had a hunch that he was…like me, so I told him.
ART: Ah. See, you said this was a first.
JOHN: I forgot.
DAN: A crack in your story, John?
JOHN: A touch of senility.
Anyway, he said yes, but from another time, another place. We talked for two days. It was all pretty convincing, but we couldn’t be sure. We each confirmed what the other said, but how do we know if the confirmation was genuine or an echo? I knew I was legit, but I thought, "maybe he’s playing a game on me." You know, a scholar of all we spoke about. He said he was inclined with the same reservation.
DAN: Now, that’s interesting. Just as we can never be sure, even if we wanted to— I mean, if we were sure, you couldn’t be sure of that.
JOHN: We parted, agreeing to keep in touch— But of course, we didn’t— And 200 years later I thought I saw him in a train station in Brussels. Lost him in the crowd.
EDITH: Oh, what a shame. I–I mean, if it were true.
HARRY: Okay, here’s one for you. What do you do in your spare time?
JOHN: (laughing) Oh every 50 years or so, when I wanna get away from the rush, I go down to a primitive tribe in New Guinea, Where I’m worshipped as an immortal god, and they have a huge statue of me. It’s a big party. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of pictures of it, but I’ve already packed them up. I’m sorry.
EDITH: I won’t make the obvious nasty crack about more unwashed cavemen.
JOHN: Actually, bathing was the style until the middle ages when the church told us it was sinful to wash away god’s dirt, so people were sewn into their underwear in October and they popped out in April.
EDITH: You said you just happened. I don’t believe that. If your story’s true, why did God allow you to happen?
DAN: That makes an interesting point. Are you religious, John?
JOHN: I don’t follow a known religion. No.
DAN: Ever?
JOHN: Long time ago I did, like most people. Some just never get over it.
DAN: Do you believe in god?
JOHN: As Laplace said, "I have no need of that hypothesis." He may be around, though.
EDITH: He’s everywhere. We just can’t see him.
HARRY: Pfft. If this were the best I could do, I’d be hiding, too.
DAN: And creation…
JOHN: It’s here, I’m not so sure it was created.
EDITH: What then?
JOHN: Maybe it’s just accumulated, fields affecting fields.
ART: What about the source of the field energies? Wouldn’t that imply a prime mover?
JOHN: I’d wonder about the source of the prime mover, and turtles all the way down, infinite regress, but that doesn’t imply anything to me…Back to the mystery.
EDITH: It’s a very old question, but there’s no answer except in religious terms. If you have faith, it’s answered.
DAN: Did you ever meet any person from our religious history? A Biblical figure?
JOHN: In a way.
EDITH: Who?
JOHN: We should skip this one.
HARRY: No, no, no skipping. Come on.
JOHN: Next question.
HARRY: No, come on!
Everyone clamoring.
ART: Come on, spit it out!
DAN: Good lord! You were one of them!
JOHN: This is going in a direction that I–I— I–I didn’t expect. I hoped it wouldn’t— We…should call it a night.
ART: Come on! You were someone in religious history?
JOHN: (hesitates) Yes.
EDITH: In the bible?
JOHN: (hesitates) Yes.
HARRY: Someone we know?
EDITH: How could we not know someone in the bible?
HARRY: I mean somebody important.
JOHN: You may think you know him, but it’s mostly myth.
ART: (loudly) The entire bible is…mostly m-myth and allegory with maybe some…basis in historical events. Y-You…were part of that history?!
JOHN: Yes.
LINDA: Moses.
JOHN: Moses was based on Misis, a Syrian myth, and there are earlier versions— All found floating on water, the staff that changed to a snake, waters that were parted so followers could be led to freedom and even receive laws on stone or wooden tablets.