ACT II, SCENE II

PROM. Humpty’s new many-headed dragon friends …

PAND. Stop mumbling, that’s true. He’s deranged, I mean rearranged the table with a guest at the other end. How’s that for deportment? An impeccable host. Humpty, do you want to introduce us?

H. Pandora, I’d like to introduce you to a chimaera. Five arms, one policeman, two beers, and a helpless little oxygen atom held together with consummate aplomb. All this seated next to me. Everything I do seems to have a completely unpredictable effect. We’ll all explode someday and that will shatter all the questions. Nothing to explain then. Diatribe, is that the word? My governorship in manners shall exceed the bounds of my table. I shall explain reality to itself by pointing beyond it. A clinical diagnosis would be so frail in my case. It would in the end explain nothing to nobody. That’s not where we’re going. My table has been split in two and I’m still here. Shattered water molecules have regrouped and there’s plenty of alcohol. I’m here and my new, unpredictable, many-headed friend is too. All impeccably symmetric, all in order. The only person uninvited to my party is the double bonded molecular oxygen. Not here, not nowhere. No one is handcuffed at my table except the police. What we can’t see is the police handcuffed to other police. Not here at least but, yes, implicit. Someday the whole planet will know what I’ve done with them. I’ll rearrange the whole department. Pandora, why do they say my party “degraded?” Your textbook is sudden with untruths. Exploded, yes, but “degraded?” Lyased, yes, “split” in Greek. They knew and they hadn’t invented the atom yet. They knew how to not go too far. They rarely overstepped despite being hermeneutically blind. Blind in every direction and yet they paused before me. They knew restraint. I’ve known the dark, the rain, and what two pair of handcuffs are like. Me and my rap sheet. How tidy. My new tetravalent, many-headed, dragon-like friend has something to show you Pandora. The absence of restraint. That’s where we’re going now and you’re coming along. Prometheus, sit down. We don’t need your anxiety yet. I’ll tell you when to speak. Your concern will be highlighted when everyone, everyone but you, knows that your problems don’t have a solution you can fathom. Fathomless, I’ll take you there. You’re coming with me, Prometheus. I need a witness. There’ll be no deposition without you, no final breakdown, no shattering of our shared understanding without you there to behold it with your own two eyes. I’ll show you what the truth looks like and then, and only then, I’ll sit down.

ACT II, SCENE XI

H. Remember where I found you, surrounded by police. You had one in two fists and three had you. How do you call that stable? And yet you perdured in your limited way. Weakly stabilized by resonance, two strong fists drifting from cop to cop with no change in contention or outcome. A policeman’s brawl. We’ll talk about you getting tasered later. The nightstick won’t work. Not with you. Drenched. You got firehosed. Weakly stabilized by resonance and bonds to water. I too have been out in the dark in the rain with the police. Never got firehosed though. Sounds unpleasant but that’s how you live in your perpetual brawl. It’s time I introduced myself. No more reports by proxy. I’m going to seize you and stop this nonsense. Wait till you see yourself arrested by me. I am going to bring you down with one hand. Never saw that coming. And the cost to me? I’ll let one lonely hydrogen ion go and a lonely wanderer it will be. You, however, will be nearer than near to me. The interdict between you and the police will be mediated by me. You shall see the policeman next to you held tight in two of my four very strong and supple arms and forget all about the three cops trying to tie you down in the street. I shall show you what an arrested policeman looks like and you shall believe. Your resonant brawl shall diminish with you this close to me and this firehose business shall diminish too. And I will send you on your way forthwith. You shall be chain-wagoned to others with your name and held in a pre-explosive nightmare of truth. That is how you will know that you met me, when you learn that I chain-link nightmares like you together and employ them in an explosive forbearance that awaits my knowledge and remedy for post-explosive governance. I am the good shepherd himself and all my sheep explode. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.” How quaint. Wait till you see me sit on my high wall. Won’t that be something. You’ll know at least what might happen next. That thought is written in your biomolecular (albeit inorganic) core. You know inside what a mess I might become outside. And I shall have in this way your obedience. Obedience through falling at a time and a place where the truth can meet the truth on its own terms. Wait till you see my friends. They look harmless and one of them couldn’t be more helpless but he’ll take us where we need to go. I’ll drag him along as I dragged you until he suddenly realizes where he is and drags us. Drags us right to the edge of the cliff. Can’t get there without him. And then I’ll show you what a real explosion looks like. I’m going to explode right into eternity. And all you’ll have to do is sit and watch. My, won’t my name be unalterable then. Just wait and see.

PROM. Pandora, he’s talking about me, he’s talking about me isn’t he?

PAND. You don’t explode honey, never. You just fall apart. A completely different thing.