A One Act Play

Unplugged

By G. L. Horton
copyright © 1998 Geralyn Horton

CHARACTERS:

BERNICE WHITING, Vice President of Midlands University late thirties, very businesslike.

PANACEA F. SOMMERBY, Ph.D. late twenties, eccentrically dressed.

Time/Place/Scene: Ms. Whiting's office. She is working at her computer when Panacea bursts in.

PANACEA (dashes in, hysterical)
What have you done to me?

WHITING
I beg your pardon?

PANACEA
You should beg my pardon, Ms. Vice President Whiting! How could you?

WHITING
Do you have an appointment?

PANACEA
Cutting me off!

WHITING
I did what?

PANACEA
You didn't even notice? Like a drunk running over a bicycle--

WHITING
What bicycle is it you're talking about? Downtown? In the parking lot?

PANACEA
Not my Bicycle. It's my life you cut off!

WHITING
I'm not in a position to cut off anyone's life-

PANACEA
My research! You cut off my voice, my life, my lifeline, the Ariadne thread I depend on to lead me through my scholarly research!

WHITING
Please, Ms--

PANACEA
Don't you even know who I am? After all messages I've left for you, all the phone calls --

WHITING
I am very busy.

PANACEA
Busy! Busy! If you won't see me now, after all the --!

WHITING
Maybe we'd better begin at the beginning. You do have an appointment?

PANACEA
Of course I have an appointment! That's the only way they'd let me in. Whenever I'd come you were out, or busy, or in conference, or busy, and you never returned my phone calls. I've waited days to get to talk to you, days when my life has fallen apart on me and there's nothing I can do because I don't know why or what would fix it. Why you couldn't at least give me some information over the phone -

WHITING
Is this about your assistantship? With all the funding cuts-

PANACEA
I don't have an assistantship. I'm a postdoctoral fellow. You haven't a clue, do you? You and your bureaucratic meddling are destroying the most important intellectual project in the university, and you don't even register that you're doing it!

WHITING
If you'll just calm down--

PANACEA
I am calm. Very calm, considering--

WHITING
--- and explain what it is you've come for.

PANACEA
I've come for some answers. Why have you terminated me? On whose orders? How do you expect me to do my work, my revolutionary planet-saving work, without my Internet account?

WHITING
Ah. Your Internet account. Which was terminated because--?

PANACEA
You tell me. That's what I want to know.

WHITING
I seem to remember something now-- . You are Miss Sommerby

PANACEA
Doctor. Doctor Panacea F. Sommerby.

WHITING
Ah, yes. Of course. We were forced to terminate the Sommerby account because of legal problems. Use of copyrighted material without permission --

PANACEA
What do you mean, use? I simply took a post off one bulletin board and put it on another, giving the source full credit --

WHITING
Not being authorized to do so--

PANACEA
Authorized? By whom? I shared news, from a news service, with people who would have access to it anyway, but probably wouldn't have stumbled onto it themselves --

WHITING
It's a matter of copyright--

PANACEA
Says who? If there had been some kind of copyright sign, some posted warning, then I would have known that I was supposed to get permission, and I would have done that.

WHITING
The software includes a warning--

PANACEA
I never saw it!

WHITING
Ignorance of the law is no excuse . As a scholar, it is your professional duty to know and to follow professional ethics. If you were enrolled here as a student, plagiarism would be grounds for expulsion. A member of the faculty or staff who plagiarized could be fired. As it is, working as an independent scholar--

PANACEA
I never plagiarize! It's fair use Intellectuals build on each other's work, that's how we make progress. You couldn't --

WHITING
-- being neither one of our students or our staff or faculty, we would not be able to monitor and control your use of the Internet services, to be sure you were in compliance--

PANACEA
Control! So that's what this is about?

WHITING
The university must have some way to

PANACEA
Control us. On behalf of your corporate masters!

WHITING
We could be held legally responsible. Our whole access to information systems could be withdrawn, because of one person's illegal use--

PANACEA
There's no such thing! Even if they had a copyright warning, which they absolutely did not, and I went on to deliberately violate it, which I absolutely did not, the university couldn't be held responsible. Nor could I. This entire Cyber field is new -- brand new. There's no cases for precedent. People are going ahead and assuming that it should work like radio broadcasting, or like published books, but there's no settled law in this area, and it may even be that anything that's been once posted on the Net is forever after in the public domain, an instance of speech like talking on the street corner, totally free and unprotected as well as indefensible.

WHITING
I don't think you can--

PANACEA
I can unless you stop me. Just last week, National Public Radio was saying that a task force is drafting up some recommendations for Electronic Copyright laws. Just last week! So they don't exist yet, so I can't have broken them!

WHITING
As far as our corporate server is concerned, this is a matter of contract. I have discussed what would be an appropriate response to your transgression with the company, and they convinced me that termination is the right step. If we allow this sort of thing go on, we are colluding in your theft, and subject to sanctions, either contractual or by a suit for damages. If the university wants to keep its own access--

PANACEA
They can't do that! My files aren't on disk, cutting me off without a download means I lose almost two years of work--

WHITING
Cybercorp's a private corporation. Of course they can choose what entities they want to do business with. If they are afraid that their merchandise will be subject to expropriation, or that your data is illegally obtained --

PANACEA
Facts aren't property. Ideas aren't merchandise--

WHITING
Of course they are! The "marketplace of ideas" is the foundation of our democratic society--

PANACEA
Of your plutocratic society! "Marketplace of Ideas" is capitalist crap! The "free exchange of ideas" is the way democrats put it, and the way we practice it, too.

WHITING
Well, now you'll have to practice some other way, won't you? You've broken Copyright Cyberlaw and the price of that transgression is being dropped from your research account. You should have thought of that before you went ahead--

PANACEA (shows bruised arm)
Went ahead ? As if I deliberately--Wait. I can prove it to you. See this?

WHITING
You mean somebody beat you? Forced you to--?

PANACEA
I got these bruises when I fell down and hit against the bookcase: I fainted from the shock of it, do you see? Fainted dead away.

WHITING
That hardly--

PANACEA
I'd never heard of Cyberlaw! I don't believe that there is such a thing! This is harassment, an excuse for the patriarchy to kick me off the net, to keep my revolutionary messages from getting through to my oppressed sisters.

WHITING
Well, whether or not you believe in Cyberlaw, CyberCorp believes in it. As far as CyberCorp is concerned, you're off line, and blacklisted.

PANACEA
But I've arranged my entire life around my research account. Losing it means losing the intellectual life. I'm struck dumb. Rendered impotent.

WHITING
Come now, Miss Sommerby, let's not dramatize an inconvenience into a catastrophe. There are other roads leading to the information highway. If you are reasonable, I'm willing to help you.
(WHITING types in a filename on her computer)

PANACEA
You are?

WHITING (checking file)
If you are reasonable. Come around here and look at this.

PANACEA
What is it?

WHITING
A list of the phone numbers of the local services. Sign up with one of them and you can be back on-line within a few hours. Maybe you can even find one that will wink at piracy and electronic theft.

PANACEA
That's the kind of attitude I've come to expect from this corrupt institution.

WHITING
I beg your pardon?

PANACEA
What are you, getting a kickback?

WHITING
Young lady, I'd advise you to--

PANACEA
Handing out that kind of information. As if a university employee's an advertiser, as if you work for the commercial sector rather than help people in their search for truth--

WHITING
If this is how you treat people who go out of their way to --

PANACEA
I'm not surprised. Everything at this school has become corrupt. One long commercial. When I served on the President's Commission last year, then I was shocked by it. Horrified, even, to hear the members refer to the students as customers. "Educational consumers" of the institution's "educational products".

WHITING
Aren't they?

PANACEA
No. I objected to that then, and I object now. Consumerism makes people passive. Turns judgment into preference. Consumers don't think. Consumers respond to stimulus. A real education would turn out anti-consumers. Critical thinkers who'd refuse to serve the profit motive. That's why the corporate masters told this university to kick me off the President's Committee, and that's why you were instructed to pull the plug and silence me now.

WHITING
Well, I'd say if that's what you believe, it'd be more honest to pay for your own Internet connection. Why be a dependent of an institution you despise?

PANACEA
Of course I'd rather be independent--

WHITING
Look here, then. Take a look at these figures. Not so bad. Basic service is about $30 dollars a month. You should be able find that. Fewer meals in restaurants--

PANACEA
How many hours on-line does that include?

WHITING
Twenty.

PANACEA
But I'm on the Net sixteen hours a day, six days a week!.

WHITING
America On Line advertizes unlimited--

PANACEA
But you can never get on!

WHITING
It looks as if you a guarenteed eighty hours that could be anywhere from $1000 to as little as $120 a month.

PANACEA
$120 a month! Even if I went without eating altogether--

WHITING
I don't see how you have time to eat anyway. If you work eighty hours--
Who is it you work for? Doesn't your department supply computer access?

PANACEA
I work for the oppressed, and for this university.

WHITING
Not according to our records. Not since December of last year.

PANACEA
That was Professor Gelb's project. This project's my own, but the University will get some of the credit, too.

WHITING
Well, then. Perhaps your sponsor could put in a good word for you. Where do you get your funding?

PANACEA
I can't get funding. Society is so screwed up it doesn't even realize that it is dying for lack of the information theory that only I am working on.

WHITING
Uhhuh?

PANACEA
I need society to take care of me so that I can have time to be a truth-teller. In return, I'm going to find society a way out from the dead end it is racing toward at this very minute

WHITING
How do you live, if you aren't working?

PANACEA
I am working!. There is nothing so important as Pantopia, nothing that would provide a greater return on the social investment. But, in a capitalist society, work like mine is not valued. Only my university research account made it possible.

WHITING
What about your rent? Your transportation?

PANACEA
If I didn't get an eight hundred dollar check every month from my father, I would be a homeless woman, living in a cardboard box--

WHITING
Eight hundred dollars? Sounds generous to me-

PANACEA
$400 of that goes to pay off student loans. $250 is my rent --

WHITING
That's a good deal.

PANACEA
I have roommates.

WHITING
I'm glad to hear that.

PANACEA
As you can see, I've been marginalized. If I had funds, I'd buy health coverage.

WHITING
You don't have health coverage?

PANACEA
So I'm living without medical care.

WHITING
You really shouldn't do that. You need health insurance. The comprehensive kind, that covers mental--.

PANACEA
I know. I have a panic attack every time I ride my bicycle. If one of those gas-guzzling idiots hit me --. And I have a lump.

WHITING
In your--?

PANACEA(points to heart)
Here. I know I should see a doctor about it. But Ms. Whiting, without insurance---,
I wouln't care, but with the harassment, and the death threats--

WHITING
Death threats?

PANACEA
My work exposes me. You see, Cyberspace is dominated by capitalist thugs and female impersonators. I unmask them, all the cultural misogynists, the ones whose greed is destroying the world. They begin their counterattack by flaming me, parrying my appeals to reason and conscience with their vile sexist insults. Then, when they see that I am undaunted by their verbal attacks, they threaten me physically.

WHITING
I've heard that Cyberspace is like the Wild West---

PANACEA
They say they have guns. Their guns are their fetishes, their sacred phallic trophies--

WHITING
They say that?

PANACEA
No-- that's what I say. They know it's true, though. That's why they say they're going to find me and shoot out my kneecaps.

WHITING
You definitely need health care.

PANACEA
It costs over $200 a month.

WHITING
You have no marketable skills? You mean to tell me you were able to make it through our university's PhD program without so much as learning how to type? You must have some computer skills. Email, certainly. Spreadsheets?

PANACEA
All right. Maybe I could work at some mindless job, making minimum wage under some patriarchal boss, forsaking my scholarship and political activism and creativity--

WHITING
Few jobs are really mindless. Your boss --

PANACEA
Mine would have to be. If I traffic with the enemy, I can't let him have my intelligence, or use the skills and knowledge I've built up. Knowledge is power. I must only use it to destroy this ugly inhuman system, and to build Pantopia--

WHITING
I'm trying to help you, Miss Sommerby, but if you insist that you must destroy--

PANACEA
It's probably difficult for you to realize how hard it is for someone like me, trying to make a living as a scholar and a prophet. After all, you, as a top university official, are making more than $130,000 a year.

WHITING
Who told you that?

PANACEA
Public institutions are on the public record. Anyone with a computer and a modem can--

WHITING
My personal finances are my private affair. We are not here to discuss my personal finances.

PANACEA
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. I suppose the bosses figure it's worth it to pay you that fat salary, to turn you against your sisters.

WHITING
How dare you!

PANACEA
Makes you angry to be shown what you're doing, doesn't it? Angry enough to prevent the news of that obscene salary of yours from going out over the Net? If the people knew about the elites their tax dollars are creating, the research money that is being siphoned off into administration, the bloat, the perks, the petty tyranny--

WHITING
I make good money because my time is valuable -- too valuable for me to sit here listening to the paranoid ravings of an airheaded parasite. How dare you call me sister?

PANACEA
You must know your bosses pretty well. How they demean and harass us. You must have had a lot of that, yourself, on the way up. Now they pay you to forget that. Go along with their robot program, oppress uppity women like me for them--

WHITING
Uppity! A trust fund chippy living off her Daddy's sugar tells me she's uppity! Knowledge is power, she tells me. Well, you listen to me, girl. Knowledge ain't power --power is power. I got my little bit of it here, but I got it the hard way. Nobody ever gave me a damn thing--- let alone a free ride to a Ph.D.. I earned this position, learning the language, following the rules; and I'm going to keep those rules in place so that the next lady with good sense and honest ambition has a shot at climbing up to where I am.

PANACEA
For you to have climbed up, there had to be others kept down. Class divisions. However we were born, we were lucky enough to have some choice. I've crossed over to the side of the Have-Nots, while obviously you've gone in with the Haves. The difference between us--

WHITING
The difference between us is -- no, I think I'll let you figure that out for yourself. Now that you won't have the Internet to play with, you'll have plenty of time. Unfortunately, my time is quite limited. I have to bring this interview to a close. Will you see yourself out?

PANACEA
This won't be the end of it. I'll appeal. I'll sue.

WHITING (into phone)
Will you send someone up here from Security, please..

PANACEA
A Capitalist hired thug! I'll leave, you don't have to arrest me. But nothing can stop Pantopia, Ms. Vice, not in the long run. There's no power on this greedy earth equal to a pure and selfless aspiration.

WHITING
You've got a smart mouth on you. And a cute little made-up system , full of trendy neologisms. If you were even smarter, you'd understand that messianic style of yours only works in a cave. Out in the world, people, even oppressed people, run away from talk like that.

PANACEA
You think so? I've got followers, you know. Hundreds, maybe thousands. As you say, I was raised in the sheltered suburbs, so I could afford to be a pacifist. But some of my followers are off the street, they' re Pantopeans because they've nothing left to lose. When they find out what you've done they're going to want to go into action-- (backs out, still treatening)

WHITING (calls after her)
Sometimes the hidden wisdom of the system just amazes me. To think that we were allowing you to roam the Internet, trolling for the lonely, the depressed and the crazed and the vulnerable--- (returns to desk)
I really must email CyberCorp. We owe them a vote of thanks.

THE END

Made on an by .