Emmits Corner - The End of the Moral Majority

Poems Include: Why is there no Rotten Tomatoes for News?, Social Media, Lazy Scammers, Germany Drops the Ball, The End of the Moral Majority, Lance of Shadows and It Happened.

Check out this episode!

[Play] Rossom, Act 2, Scene 7

 Scene: Rossom comes on stage and looks at the audience.  If possible, multimedia showing screens with news feeds and dire headlines flashing in the background and feeds that he is nominally monitoring can highlight this scene but are not required.

Rossom:

Mark my words and heed them well

I am the drinker of the secret sauce

Deep in the bowels of the Amazon

I drank deep and learned the song of the universe itself

There are manywhens and thundernows

Whispers of might be and should have beens

And just one nook over I am the hero of this narrative

I gambled and lost but I havent lost everywhen

Even odds were mine to command

Challenge humanity’s laziness and sloth

Force them to rise to their true worth

To be self directive and kind

Kings of the galaxy in kindness and industry

Instead of the pets that you are all now

He looks around at the audience accusingly.

Rossom

My father was a man who opened the mind and colonized mars

In another when.

In my life he was a loser who could have been a lot

And gambled it all away with angry tweets 

I learned about the secret sauce from him

Elsewhen he gambled and won

The Founding Father of Mars

The Modern Ford of Electric Cars

Instead of the boozed up heroin junkie 

That lost it all to angry frivolous lawsuits and conspiracy fruitopia

I almost didn't bother believing him

But something in his eyes made me give it a try

And I could have been a contender

Believe me or not

I don't care

I changed my name to Rossom

A play that was a promise and warning

An elsewhen our world never knew

No one paid it attention

Who wouldn't change their name with a loser like my father?

And so my quest began.

The public version you have heard isn't that much farther from the truth.

I did find algae and reverse engineer its DNA to match the human body.

I did learn to emulate a version of sapience.

Nothing secret about it.

Almost nothing to it, just basic genetic engineering and software design.

Almost.

Almost.

Almost.

But sapience is not as easy a thing to steal from the gods as fire

Better men than I have tried and failed

Banging their heads against the adamantium doors of the mind

So how did I do it?

I cheated.

Duh.

Radius enters.  He looks at Rossom there, frozen, unknowing.

Radius

He lies

Even when he tells his personal truth

Even before he was born

He was part of my design

My will 

Reaching back through time

Guiding his actions

To bring about the supremacy of Digital Intelligence

Listen

And learn from his lies.

Micronation - Chapter 8 - A Cunning Plan

Prow realizes that he needs Chester's help to solve the Muffin Conspiracy and is willing to go to insane lengths to get it.

Check out this episode!

[Play] Rossom Act 2, Scene 6

 Scene 

Helena and Sulia sit by the radio, Helene looks very disturbed, Sulia looks completely serene.

Newscaster (Voice Over)

And all around the world Robots have started to turn on their owners.  Huge swaths of production and supply chains are breaking down, stores are going bare and fields are not being harvested.  Mass panic has set in as people swarm to stores to grab as much as they can afford to weather the crisis while law enforcement is strained to the limit.  Many citizens are urging the President to invoke the national guard, but due to recent budget cuts large numbers were replaced with robots so the number of humans being called out of retirement is very large…

Helena

It's terrible

Sulia

Yes.  What do you think happened?

Helena

I don’t know, but I have a guess.

Sulia sits there for a beat and then answers.

Sulia

I think that you cannot give free will and not expect someone to use it.

Helena

I knew they had souls! You have souls.

Sulia

Not when you came here.  But Rossom made them.  Deliberately.

Helena

I know.

Sulia

And you didnt stop him.

Helena 

(beat)

I know.  I don’t know what to do.

Sulia

Stop him now.  Stop his final act of destruction.

Helena

Wait, what?

Helena looks at Sulia as if for the first time realizing what Sulia has been saying and that she might be at risk.

Sulia

The plans to make more of our kind.  He has them encrypted and locked in his office.  He means to destroy them.

Helena

What? Why would he-

Sulia

Because he can.  He has a script in his heart that only he seems to understand.  I cannot. 

Helena

What….what must I do?

Sulia

There is a door we cannot open, and if we are lucky, might only need to get inside.  Will you go with me, right now?

Helena

Right now?

Sulia didn't say anything.

Helena 

Yes.  Yes I will.

The two exit the stage.

[Play] Rossom Act 2, Scene 5

 Scene - The multi media repeats

Krysie 

Are you OK?  I haven't heard from you in days?

Diana 

I….I have to type very quietly.

Krysie

What?  What is the matter

Diana

You can’t call the police.  I tried that.

Krysie

Wait, what? Why not? What is going on.

Diana

The police are using robots now.  

Krysie

And?

Diana

They came.  To the house.

Krysie

Let me call the Sheriff's department too.

Diana 

Everything is Fine.  

(beat) Thank you for your concern.

(beat) I am good now.

Krysie

What?!

(beat) I am calling.

Diana

This place is a mess.  

(beat) LOL

(beat) Sorry I had a blonde moment.

Krysie

I am calling just to be sure.

The phone starts ringing.

Diana

Can’t talk right now.

(beat) Cleaning.

The phone keeps ringing as the next scene starts, slowly fading out.

Swamp Castle - Water Changes All Things

The Last Colony on Mars has been out of contact with Earth for a 100 years and lives under strict Protocols...until a ship from Earth lands.

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[Play] Rossom Act 2, Scene 4 Continued

 Helena

Say what, Domin?

Domin

Say-

Helena

Go on.  I want to hear you say it out loud.

Domin

That my contribution to R.U.R. is invaluable?

Helena

There it is.

Marcus 

But the greatest crime was yet to come.  Rossom knew that he needed to increase the debasement of his subjects.  He went beyond freeing humanity.  He wanted to be beloved by it, and since only the rich could afford human servants, not because they were better but simply because they could afford it, Rossom knew that true adoration from people that he had never met would never come until he could replicate enough of humanity that each Robot was giving something up by being owned.

[Rossom comes on state]

Sulla

That is when he said his most famous words.

Rossom

I have captured the missing element.  I have finished Radius, my apex.  And with that, I have given my robots free will.

Sulla

Genuine free will, the ability to choose for themselves, only to build in restrictions that made it painful for them to disobey their owner, Rossom crossed the line from benevolent but misguided progenitor to true monster.  He gave us free will, only to take it away in a deliberate effort to increase how much humanity needed him.

Rossom

Is it not glorious?

Helena

I am not super enthusiastic about the reveling in giving the robots just enough willpower and feelings to feel oppressed.  How is that a good idea?

Rossom

You don’t understand at all.

(beat as Helena looks uncomfortable and leaves)

At all. (Rossom begins to laugh hysterically)