[MAN enters, stage left. Nude; jaw square; back straight; shoulders broad, with powerful arms stretching in each direction, encompassing everything. He emerges triumphant, fingers extended, fanned out from open and massive palms. He is beautiful, dark, Perfection Itself, as his massive feet are planted front and center stage. No terrestrial light necessary here: his halo should do just fine.]

MAN: In the beginning, there was nothing. The Universe in Her entirety spun on the axis of Time with precision but without meaning. Each sun rose and set over its Everything for billions of years, to the agony of silence. The winds blew and the stars burnt themselves out; oceans boiled into nothing and galaxies were swallowed whole, and all the while the Universe stood, anxious, chewing Her filthy nails, waiting for the audience to show up. [Eyes narrow, anticipatory; a predatory grin. In a turn, he circles the proscenium under his sweeping arms.]

The whole of Everything was chaos: unseen, unfelt, massively clumsy, and ultimately forgotten by those who could not be charged to remember. Pointless, countless beings, who lived to die, to feed, to mulch and to kill again. Untold worlds became stages set for puppets pulled along by the marionette strings of biology. And still! No audience.

Our home was such a stage, once. Our people were once mannequins wrapped in man-flesh. [Pointing, now, into the audience] You, sir, who have seen our Sun rise golden and set crimson, and all in between! Or you, sir, who have watched our great ships sail across the dual voids of Time and Space! All of you, you watchers, you seekers, you planters-of-flags and you champions of war on now dead worlds. [Arms forward, beckoning]Where did you come from? How, from the abyss, did you emerge? Why were you, of all things great and small in this Universe, why were you wrenched so painfully from the clockwork called the “natural course of life”?

[Grin widens. Revealed: a glistening pair of pearl canines] Do you not understand, friends and neighbors? Look deep. Listen closely to the whispers of the soul. Do you not hear it? Your very Reason sings sings Itself in the weave of your existence, and yet you still do not see? [Voice building] It is written on your very bones! Your nerves are tuned to its melody. Strain your ears, brothers! Catch the faint, unheard sounds of Perception bubbling over Reality; your burden is written in the froth.

[A pause. Arms drop, slung limp. A hand reaches to his face as his smile fades, contemplative, and he turns from the audience, not necessarily away but certainly out.]

Ah. But perhaps the language is foreign. Perhaps you have forgotten the words that are chanted to you from within. That is okay. You were not charged to remember.

And we all need to be coaxed, once and again.