Mosquitoes Page 3

ALICE. Oh no. That’s not. There’s a spare under the sink.

  HENRI. If you still want a lift, we leave in eight-and-a-half minutes.

  ALICE laughs. HENRI exits.

  KAREN. He’ll do.

  JENNY. Eight-and-a-half minutes. Does he time everything to the second?

  ALICE. It was a private – he’s joking, he’s being funny.

  JENNY. Oh right. Cos that went over my head. Must be a whole new level of comedy I just don’t get, I thought you said he was handsome.

  ALICE. I’m sorry. I have to go to work. I have to be there by nine, if it was any / other

  KAREN. It’s the big day, I know! The grand switching-on!

  JENNY. Shit, that’s today? You should have said.

  ALICE. You’ve had / other things to

  JENNY. Why didn’t you say?

  KAREN. The first beam! I’d like to come with you.

  ALICE. Why don’t you stay here, keep Jenny company? You could see the Jardin Anglais, Luke loves the Jardin Anglais, there’s a clock made of flowers and / you can

  KAREN. A clock made of flowers, Jenny! You’ll like that. (To ALICE.) I’ll put on some slacks and powder my nose, be ready for you in a flash.

  ALICE. Just it might be tricky at this late / stage to

  KAREN. I should have won a Nobel Prize. I think they can find me a corner of the room.

  KAREN exits. ALICE goes to JENNY. JENNY bats her away.

  JENNY. Don’t.

  ALICE. What?

  JENNY. I didn’t know it was today.

  ALICE. It’s all over the news.

  JENNY. Oh is it? I’m so sorry I’m not up to date with current / affairs

  ALICE. Sorry, sorry, what did I do wrong here? You ring me up, in tears, you need to get away I say / of course, come

  JENNY. You should have said, it’s not convenient.

  ALICE. You’re in grief! You’re / my sister and you’re in grief

  JENNY. We would have come another day.

  ALICE. You’d already booked the tickets!

  JENNY. No just, crazy but I thought you might take some time off.

  ALICE. I’ve been working on this for eleven / years

  JENNY. Eleven years, I know, eleven years, know what I was working on for eleven years? Having a fucking kid, but whatever, you have to go, so go, I’m just saying if you’d said it wasn’t a good time

  ALICE. It is a good time.

  JENNY. Well not if you’re never going to be here it’s not, might / as well be sitting at home in fucking Luton

  ALICE. I am going to be here, just not every single minute of every / single day!

  JENNY. Did I ask for that? Did I ask for every single minute? No.

  ALICE sighs, heavy.

  JENNY mimics the sigh. Tuts, viciously irritated.

  A long pause. KAREN enters, still in a skirt/dress. Takes in the silence.

  KAREN. Oh dear. The permafrost descends. Already, how long have we…

  She looks at her watch.

  Forty minutes! Some sort of a record, right girls?

  JENNY. Yeah you’d think with your soothing maternal presence we’d make it to lunch at least. Fuckssake can you hear yourself?

  KAREN shakes her head, looks at ALICE, gestures to JENNY.

  KAREN. You see this? You hear this? And she can’t understand why I need some time out.

  ALICE. Mum. Come on. Jenny’s feeling / very

  JENNY. JENNY’S NOT FEELING ANYTHING.

  Pause. ALICE looks at KAREN.

  ALICE. I thought you wanted to change?

  KAREN looks down at herself. A confusion. Pause.

  KAREN. I changed. I changed my mind. Hey Alice. Got one for you.

  Allie.

  Pause.

  Oi.

  ALICE. Yes Mum.

  KAREN. Okay so Heisenberg is driving in his car when a policeman pulls him over for speeding. The policeman asks: ‘Do you know how fast you were going?’ Heisenberg replies: ‘No. But I know where I am!’

  KAREN cracks up. ALICE smiles.

  JENNY. Why is that funny?

  HENRI enters, dressed, with the car keys.

  HENRI. On y va?

  ALICE. You want to wait in the car with Henri, / Mum?

  HENRI. Avec plaisir. Après-vous madame.

  KAREN takes HENRI’s arm and they go.

  JENNY. Excuse me? Why is that funny?

  ALICE. You wouldn’t get it.

  JENNY. Not an imbecile, not a fucking halfwit

  ALICE. Never said you / were it’s just

  JENNY. So go on then.

  ALICE. complicated to explain.

  JENNY. Have a go.

  ALICE. I can’t. I’m late. I’m sorry.

  Pause.

  Don’t mind Luke. He doesn’t understand. He cried when I told him.

  You will. You will be gentle with him, won’t you?

  Sudden black.

  LA FIN DU MONDE EST REPORTÉE

  The ATLAS control room. Screens, a crowd, a great clamour, cameras, laptops. A TV JOURNALIST is mic’d up, preparing to broadcast to a CAMERAMAN. She should be the nationality of the country in which the play is being performed. SCIENTISTS enter speaking in many different languages.

  GAVRIELLA. Ho bisogno di caffè ma non l’ha portato nessuna… e neppure qualcosa da mangiare… come stanno funzionando le macchine? Sei pronto! Susuma?

  JOURNALIST. Can someone talk to me?

  FRENCH SCIENTIST. Oui oui, je suis dans la salle de contrôle je dois verifier quelque chose avant qu’on commence…

  JOURNALIST. Can someone please talk to me?

  CAMERAMAN. Hallo? Hörst du mich? Ja ich komme.

  Pause.

  JOURNALIST. Yeah I can hear you fine. Okay. Stand by. ALICE and KAREN enter, KAREN walks slowly with a stick.

  KAREN. You don’t expect the decay.

  ALICE. You’re not decaying.

  KAREN. I wasn’t referring to myself. I was referring to the rust.

  ALICE. It’s not rust, it’s wood.

  ALICE brings KAREN a chair, she slumps gratefully into it. A SCIENTIST approaches ALICE.

  FRENCH SCIENTIST. Alice, viens voir! Ils nous ont mis dans le Google doodle!

  ALICE. Oh my God! Montre-moi…

  They rush away to look, as GAVRIELLA BASTIANELLI approaches KAREN.

  KAREN. I’m out of the game.

  GAVRIELLA. Fatti non foste a viver come bruti – a viver…

  KAREN. I forget everything takes an eternity to get going. The waiting. Alice.

  JOURNALIST. Armageddon. Armageddon.

  CAMERAMAN. Ich bin bereit ich erwartete auf die zweite batterie

  JOURNALIST. Am I saying that right? ‘Armageddon’?

  FRENCH SCIENTIST. Gavriella, il y a beaucoup trop de monde ici. Tu peux faire quelque chose s’il te plaît?

  GAVRIELLA. Fare il tuo sporco lavoro non è compito mio. (To KAREN.) Madam, do you mind if I move you to the side?

  KAREN looks at her. Pause.

  KAREN. I have a first-class honours degree from the Imperial College of Science and a DPhil from the University of Oxford, in 1956 I received a research fellowship to Cambridge, where I was instrumental to pioneering theories into condensed matter, particularly the liquid helium which I believe has such import to the function of this Collider, and which won my husband the Nobel Prize, in 1975 I received a Leverhulme Trust grant and vastly expanded existing knowledge of carbon nanotubes, I have been Treasurer of the Royal Society, I am the recipient of the Glazebrook Medal, the Faraday Prize and thirteen, one-three, honorary degrees, I am a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and since my retirement I have written two widely acclaimed books.

  In short, yes. I do mind being moved to the side.

  ALICE rushes over.

  ALICE. Mum, this is Gavriella Bastianelli, my partner, she’s in my working group, Gavriella, my mother.

  They shake hands.

  GAVRIELLA. The famous Karen Landau, yes, I came to your lectu
res at Cornell in 2001. Alice has told you about our work improving the triggers?

  KAREN. We don’t talk shop. Her sister sulks. All these computers! When I started out it was me and three men in eggy pullovers, sitting in the back of a van in a field somewhere in Cambridgeshire. You really felt you were on an adventure.

  JOURNALIST (to CAMERAMAN). because we’d both had a lot to drink and

  ALICE sweeps past, the JOURNALIST thrusts a mic in her face.

  ’scuse me? Do you have any comment to make about the potentially dangerous work due to take place here in Geneva now the LHC is online?

  ALICE. well I don’t know if I’d phrase it quite like / that but

  JOURNALIST. Okay but if I can just, in September 2007 they said the risk of a destructive incident was zero.

  ALICE. Yes?

  JOURNALIST. But in October that same year they said the risk was negligible.

  ALICE. That’s correct.

  JOURNALIST. Can you look towards the camera?

  ALICE looks towards the camera.

  ALICE. That’s correct.

  JOURNALIST. Negligible isn’t zero.

  ALICE. Scientifically speaking, it’s as good as.

  JOURNALIST. Do you admit that the LHC is not one-hundred-per-cent safe?

  ALICE. You can’t know that anything is definitely safe.

  JOURNALIST. So there is a risk.

  ALICE. Studies show that particles collide at higher speeds in the natural world than we could ever hope to emulate at our facility. Studies have proved the end is not nigh. Excuse me.

  ALICE moves off, rejoins KAREN and GAVRIELLA.

  KAREN. Is this it? Is something happening?

  GAVRIELLA. They’re about to send the first beam, watch.

  They look up at the screens, waiting,

  JOURNALIST. This is Lara Gallagher live from the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, as it goes online for the first time. The largest experiment in human history and one that, some say, could bring Armageddon. In just a moment, beams of protons will be fired around the pipe beneath our feet, in mankind’s most ambitious attempt to understand how the universe began. But it also brings fears it could become a ‘black hole factory’, threatening life on earth. We’re just waiting for the first beam now.

  LYN EVAN’s Welsh lilt is heard. Perhaps he is voiced by THE BOSON.

  EVANS. Let’s get started everybody. Now comes the day of reckoning.

  A tense hush falls over the room.

  Five, four, three, two, one. Now.

  Pause. Nothing.

  No beam.

  ALICE puts her hand over mouth. She is shocked and grief-stricken, like the SCIENTISTS around her.

  KAREN. Oh, what a let-down.

  JOURNALIST (to CAMERAMAN). Okay, back to me.

  ALICE. What happened?

  GAVRIELLA shakes her head, distraught.

  GAVRIELLA. I don’t know.

  JOURNALIST. Back to me. Back to me.

  EVANS. Okay. Let’s try again.

  ALICE reaches for GAVRIELLA’s hand, they clasp each other.

  Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.

  A very long pause. Finally a tiny beep. A bright pulse of light.

  Yes! Yes!

  An explosion of joy in the control room. Celebration. Applause. Camera flashes.

  ALICE. Yes!

  JOURNALIST. The first beam! That’s it, that’s the first beam we just saw there.

  GAVRIELLA makes a call on her mobile.

  KAREN. Was that it?

  ALICE. I think so, do we have confirmation?

  GAVRIELLA (on phone). Hey, are you seeing anything?

  GAVRIELLA listens and puts her hand over the phone, excited.

  Susuma found a signal in the liquid argon calorimeter.

  ALICE. Are you sure?

  GAVRIELLA. Yes, the timing matches the trigger perfectly.

  They embrace.

  JOURNALIST. Excuse me? Can you explain to us what just happened?

  GAVRIELLA. The beam is on its way!

  ALICE. Can I borrow your phone? I left mine at home.

  GAVRIELLA gives it to her.

  JOURNALIST. And what does that actually mean?

  GAVRIELLA. It means we are in business.

  ALICE (into phone). We have beam Luke! There are bottles of champagne all over the desks. I wish I could show you.

  KAREN. I always think it must sound like violence.

  ALICE. What?

  KAREN. The language we use. Impact, collisions. It sounds like runaway trains doesn’t it. Car crashes. When all we’re talking about is, what? The force of two mosquitoes, flying into each other.

  She flies her index fingers together, makes a gentle noise as they impact.

  I need the lavatory.

  JOURNALIST. This is Lara Gallagher returning you to the studio, do keep your texts coming in on today’s topic, ‘Are scientists playing God with our planet’s safety?’ Next up we hear from the Manchester mum who claims a standard X-ray procedure left her son speaking with a Russian accent. That, and more, after the break.

  Sudden black.

  AN EQUAL AND OPPOSITE FORCE

  ALICE’s apartment. The space fugged with cigarette smoke. A full ashtray on the floor. A glass of green liquid beside it. LUKE enters. In a state, he’s been beaten up, his nose is bleeding. He’s shaking. He picks up the glass. Examines it. Takes a sip.

  JENNY enters. Watches him. He takes out his phone, dials.

  JENNY. Thought you were a burglar.

  He hangs up abruptly. She fiddles with an iPhone.

  D’you know the passcode for your mum’s phone?

  LUKE. Yeah.

  ,

  JENNY. What is it then?

  LUKE. Why’ve you got her phone?

  He turns. JENNY sees his injuries for the first time.

  JENNY. Jesus, what happened to you?

  LUKE. It’s nothing. Is that my hoodie?

  JENNY. It’s not nothing, who did that to you?

  LUKE. Did you go in my room?

  JENNY. Of course I went in your room. They left me here, on my own, what’m I sposed to do, stare at / the walls?

  LUKE. Why did you go in my room?

  JENNY. I wanted to read your diary, who did this?

  LUKE. I don’t have a diary, take / it off.

  JENNY. Well I know that now. Come here.

  LUKE. No, take it off.

  She sighs, takes it off. Tosses it to him. He smells it.

  Great. Now it stinks.

  JENNY. Sit down.

  LUKE doesn’t sit. Pause.

  What was it, a fight?

  A long pause. No answer. JENNY goes out.

  LUKE takes out his phone, dials.

  LUKE. Hi, it’s me… um, Luke. I just wanted to say, uh, sorry. I’m really sorry Natalie, I didn’t mean to

  LUKE hangs up as JENNY returns with a wet cloth. She starts to dab at his cuts. He flinches away. She gives him a look. He lets her clean him up. Their faces are close. He watches her. Pause.

  JENNY. I punched someone once.

  LUKE. At school?

  JENNY. No, it was in a Wetherspoons, I was about… thirty-two? We’d been trying for about four years. She told me if I couldn’t have kids then my life would be rich in other ways, who’s Natalie?

  LUKE. Don’t listen to my calls.

  JENNY. Girlfriend?

  LUKE. She’s no one. She’s the only English girl in my year. She helps me with French sometimes, okay? Is the interrogation over?

  JENNY. This isn’t an interrogation. This is just… helping your aunt with her enquiries.

  Pause.

  Has she got a boyfriend?

  LUKE. I dunno. There’s this graffiti in the toilets about how she gave Ludovic Raas chlamydia but. I don’t know.

  JENNY has finished cleaning him up. He hides his face in his hands, moans. JENNY takes out a small bottle.

  JENNY. Here. Put your tongue out.

  LUKE. What is it?
>
  JENNY. Rescue Remedy. Calm you down.

  He cautiously sticks his tongue out. She drops a drop on to it. Then unscrews the lid, takes a swig from the bottle herself. Pause.

  LUKE. She’s basically the only person in the whole school who isn’t a fucking backbirth. That place is a fucking zoo. I hate it.

  JENNY. Should tell your mum. Get her to move you.

  LUKE. I have told her. I tell her constantly, she doesn’t listen to me.

  JENNY. Well you have to make her.

  LUKE. I can’t make her. How do I make her?

  JENNY. She doesn’t take you seriously, that’s your problem. She doesn’t see you as an actual person.

  Pause.

  You don’t have to tell me anything. We can just sit here or.

  Pause.

  LUKE. It’s so stupid. It’s not even.

  JENNY. What?

  LUKE. I put a leaflet in Natalie’s locker

  JENNY. Right

  LUKE. about HPV

  JENNY. okay.

  LUKE. it’s this STD thing. Virus. It affects your like… cervix, I was in the nurse’s office and they had these leaflets about this injection girls can get, which stops you getting it? And I thought she should know so she could, you know. Protect herself.

  But so at lunchtime, she comes up to me with Heloise and Stefan and the others and she’s like, did you put this in my locker? And they all start laughing. Shouting, throwing stuff, leaves and cans and then Stefan shoves me so I shove him back and he shoves me again and I fall over, and the others are screaming with laughter and but Natalie wasn’t. She tried to stop him but. He’s hitting me, right? Smacking me round the, and because then I saw this big like a stick and I managed to pick it up and I.

  JENNY makes a small noise. She is sitting very still.

  Yeah, and then there’s just. Blood. All down his face. All down his shirt. Off his chin and. He’s crying. Like, openly crying. In front of everyone, and the girls are, so I just ran.

  Pause.

  They laugh at everything. They laugh like constantly, like everything’s funny, and I watch them, and in my head I’m thinking about how they’re going to die. Not in a threatening way not like planning it, just… statistically. You know.

  ,

  You know?

  Pause.

  JENNY. Grow up, Luke.

  He looks at her. Blindsided.

  LUKE. What?

  JENNY. Seriously, sort yourself out. All this? Over what? A leaflet? This poor girl. Natalie, is it? She’s walking around, what is she, your age? Seventeen, is she pretty?