The Man with the Digital Transmitter
Act I scene i: One morning, a man is taking a shower. He woke up with a stuffy nose and headache and hopes that it's from the flu shot he had gotten two days before and not COVID. His right arm is sore to the touch from the shot. The band-aid is still on his arm where the nurse had put it. His body feels achy. He blows his nose into his hands. Out of his nose comes a tiny, crystalline, transparent piece of glass, cut like a diamond but with a flat top. The piece is so small that he loses it out of his hand. It falls on the shower floor.
The shower water has washed the glass piece out of his hand. It almost goes down the shower drain but he catches it just in time. He groans as he extends his stiff body to trap it and pick it up. He calls his wife to look at it. She's making coffee and doesn't want to be bothered. She got her flu shot too and she didn't sleep well. She thinks the flu shot exacerbated her hot flashes. He lifts it close to her face. It sits in the middle of his little finger.
Act I scene ii: She saves the piece of glass like she would save a tick into an empty, unlabeled, plastic pill container. It's about the size of a deer tick.
Act II scene i: Later at dinner, he looks at the piece through a magnifier. When magnified it looks like it has a satellite dish inside of it. His wife warns him not to swallow it again. At first, she thinks the tiny bead of glass is from their granddaughter's bead set and that the bead somehow got into his food or drink. The man shows his wife the magnified piece. He links the piece of glass to orbs he has seen in his yard. The inside of the glass piece looks the same as the inside of the orbs. His wife says that the piece is not a necklace bead because there is no hole through which to thread a string.
Act II scene ii (Flashback in bed and in car.): Ever since he got his second COVID booster, the man had been hearing short digital spurts of noise on occasions coming out of his head when he lays his head down on his pillow to sleep. What surprises him is that his wife hears them too. “What was that?” she asks. If his wife hadn't heard them, he would have thought that the sounds were just an aberration in his sleeping. He also experiences ringing in his ears when he gets close to radio and phone towers. “I'm hearing that ringing again,” he says to his wife. He glances to the right and watches the red blinking lights on a tall radio tower.
Act III scene i (a montage of pictures): The man and his wife believe that the object that came out of his nose is a digital tracking device part of a secret pentagon surveillance operation led by Queenie Diggens, Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) out of Building 8 known as the Pentagon's Brain. Diggens has advocated for children's digital tattoos and for swallowable digital pills.
Act III scene ii: The man believes that his recent seasonal flu shot has chemically triggered an expelling agent in this device that has sent the glass from his ear to his nose via his Eustachian tube. He believes that his blowing of his nose has interrupted the intended passing of the device. It was destined for his throat where it unknowingly would be swallowed and eventually expelled by a bowel movement where it would be less likely to be discovered.
Act IV scene i: He goes on a quest to find other people who have experienced this. He tries to figure out how he ingested this device and why he was targeted. He has published essays critical of Woke Culture, CRT and local, state and federal government. He wonders if something he had posted on Twitter or Facebook has sent a red flag to Big Brother.
Act V scene i (parking lot): Then, after weeks of searching and inquiries, both he and his wife disappear. The last they are seen is by his friend, Richard, coming out of the Giant Grocery. FBI agents surround them and put them in a black van and take them away. Two FBI agents take their car and their groceries back to their house.
Act V scene ii: Some neighbors see this and think that its simply an Uber delivery. The agents are quick inside the house. They have a small devices that emit a red laser beam that umbrellas as it gets closer to the piece of glass.
One agent says, "We're getting warmer."
They enter the man's office and the beam umbrellas larger. "It's in this room," the agent says. When the umbrella is covering the piece of glass an arrow appears on the silhouette of the umbrella pinpointing exactly where the transmitter is located. The agents come out of the house and walk up the street. They disappear around the corner.
Scene iii (neighbor's bedroom): There is a for sale sign in front of their house the next morning. A neighbor across the street, an elderly woman who can't sleep, sees a man in a suit hammering the sign in the front lawn before dawn. She thinks its a realtor and murmurs, "He's up early." She goes back to bed. Her husband is sleeping. She hears a digital sound. She reaches over her husband and shuts off his phone but the sound has really come out of his head.
Act VI scene i (Richard's office, his brother's office,): Richard calls his brother Jeffrey who works for the FBI. Jeff says that he will check it out. Jeff never calls Richard back.
Act VI, scene ii (At a dinner table.): Months later at the next family get together, the family is having Thanksgiving Dinner. Richard asks Jeffrey if he had heard anything about his friend and his wife. Jeffrey gives Richard a look and replies, "Pass the mashed potatoes."
Act VII scene i: The man and his wife wake up in a white room. They were sleeping in an all white bed. At the bottom of the bed, there is a table and a chair. There are two settings on the table. The one setting on a plate is the man's favorite, meatloaf; and at the other setting the woman's favorite, rice and beans and chicken. The man and woman are naked. They get out of bed holding hands. They sit next to each other holding hands across the table. Without speaking, they simultaneously take a helping from their plates. They smile at each other and put the food in their mouths. The room goes black.
Act VIII scene i (a Third World farm): A Vietnamese farmer is opening a bag of granular food. The bag is labeled in big red, white, and blue letters, USA. As the peasant pours the food onto the ground, you can read on the bag, Organic Pig Protein.
Act VIII scene ii (Flashback to Richard's Thanksgiving Dinner): At the Thanksgiving dinner, Jeffrey takes what appears to be candy bars out of his jacket and hands them to his niece and nephew. They thank him. On the wrapping of the bar it reads, DARPA Protein Bar - chocolate flavor.
