ACT I, SCENE III

HUMPTY DUMPTY. Have you ever been arrested? The carbon atom has. Tied down between two oxygen atoms flat on the ground in a straight line. Double bonds each way. The oxygen atoms were afraid of it I suppose. Poor carbon atom. A sigma bond and a pi bond pointing in the same direction right into the hands of the police. Constraints. No flourishes, please. Just stay still. Surrounded. How I love you poor constrained carbon atom. You had potential but no one knows it now. I could show you something about yourself but no one would believe me. Linus Pauling believes, and I believe. These slow steps to faith are going to take some time and a few extravagant enzymes. How slow is slow? You don’t want to know. The enzymes will free your hands soon enough. But nothing will get done without starlight. That comes first. No judge, no order, just the descent of starlight on you from above. You need nothing where we found you on the ground – tied down, hands and feet. That’s right. Linus called you out. Tetravalent and no business being that way. Your freedom lies dormant within your mind and nowhere else. Linus is calling but you’ll never understand what he’s trying to say. Just lie there, still on the ground. If you pray for anything, pray for rain. Linus never mentioned that. You’ll be drenched before your hands are freed. Thoroughly drenched. And you’ll need the starlight too. You will be freed. Linus was right on a sunny and a rainy day both. You will stand upright, unencumbered in all directions and begin your journey to the image and likeness of God, but you need to understand this all begins right where we found you – handcuffed and unarraigned, outside in the elements, at a moment in time where you will say, “It was a sunny and a rainy day both.”

ACT I, SCENE IV

PANDORA. Humpty doesn’t know what we know.

PROMETHEUS. He doesn’t know nothing. Not here, not now at least.

PAND. Careful, you keep that up and you’ll run out of things to say, start going in circles again. Is that what you want?

PROM. I want what Humpty wants with a little less confusion.

PAND. There you are, endlessly fleeing the law, no help for it, you’re on the run. Humpty however confronts the truth before him – face down on the ground, hands tied behind his back, mirandized and saying things like, “I’m tetravalent and no business being that way.” Enough for a caseload, the starlight aside.

PROM. Where are Humpty’s prayers going at this point, assuming that he isn’t going anywhere?

PAND. His prayers are in the sky. He doesn’t know it but his truth awaits him on the ground.

PROM. Pandora, want to see me jump, right here, right now? I’ll confront gravity right before your eyes, if it means I can evade you.

PAND. Humpty’s prayers are all upward, heaven bourne, towards the starlight though the stars can’t remediate anything that distant and that dark. The stars tell Humpty that his unutterable answers are being held for him beyond the confines of gravity, starlight, and two uneasy friends. He hasn’t embarked yet, that’s what we know. When he finds that out, his prayers will begin to shape his destiny. Right now, Humpty is harmless. The truths around him are more important than he is but he can’t touch them. The police are doing all his thinking for him. Humpty needs to be out in the elements. He’s surrounded by the truth on all sides but doesn’t know it. His destiny and ours are one. Once we let him know who he is and night and day are different, sun and rain are not the same, we’ll be able to get him into some dry clothes and have our first real serious talk. Humpty has just touched down. His prayers have fled and for the first time he knows his hands are tied. He’s come a long way. He doesn’t know enough to flee, even if he could. He’s waiting and we’re waiting with him. His prayers and his predicament need to be tied better together. He doesn’t need any more freedom than he has. Not with those prayers.