| (Another night in the pub for Gordon and Arthur. Arthur is staring into space. Gordon passes | |
| a hand in front of Arthur's eyes, with no reaction.) | |
| Gordon | You're very quiet, Arthur. Nothing wrong, is there? |
| Arthur | No, no. Just… thinking. |
| Gordon | Oh thinking. I've been trying to give that up. Anything special on your mind? |
| Arthur | Well, it was last night, in bed. |
| Gordon | Ah yes, I've had that problem. I shouldn't worry about it. |
| Arthur | What problem? |
| Gordon | When you can't manage -- um -- er -- can't manage to get to sleep. |
| Arthur | It was in that few moments just before you drop off, when your mind is free-wheeling… |
| Gordon | For those who have minds. |
| Arthur | Yes. Thelma hadn't long returned from choir practice and was snoring softly, in the key of |
| C sharp major… I was musing on the latest news from America. | |
| Gordon | Oh, the latest school shootings, yes. Teenage gunman on the rampage. |
| Arthur | The most recent in a long line. The Americans won't be happy until everyone over the age |
| of four is armed to the teeth. | |
| Gordon | For those who have teeth. |
| Arthur | And I was thinking what a stupid, senseless act that was… No sane, normal person could |
| possibly do that. | |
| Gordon | No. |
| Arthur | And out of the blue, I suddenly had this shattering thought. |
| Gordon | Really? That's -- um -- the second one this year, isn't it? What was it? |
| Arthur | Well -- it's obvious to you and me -- that by and large, give or take a few million, on average, |
| that our American friends are -- how can I put this? Really, really stupid. | |
| Gordon | It's a contentious viewpoint. |
| Arthur | I don't want to generalise… they're not all stupid… |
| Gordon | There are pockets of lucidity, are there? |
| Arthur | Occasional outbreaks of sanity, yes. But a frightening percentage of them believe that Jesus |
| rode into Jerusalem on a dinosaur. | |
| Gordon | Oh yes. And that the earth is only six thousand years old. |
| Arthur | These are people who voted for George Bush. |
| Gordon | Twice. |
| Arthur | Exactly. And that's super-stupid. But -- but -- however stupid they are, |
| they don't know that they're stupid. | |
| Gordon | More to be pitied, and all that? |
| Arthur | Yes. And of course, America consumes over seventy-five percent of the world's supply of |
| stupid. | |
| (They drink as they contemplate this statistic.) | |
| Gordon | So that was your shattering thought, was it? Americans are stupid, but they don't know that |
| they're stupid. | |
| Arthur | No. No, that wasn't my thought. No, I then took my thesis… |
| Gordon | Your thesis, yes. |
| Arthur | I took it further. I said to myself, I said, there must be other people -- all over the world -- |
| who are equally as stupid, and completely unaware of it. | |
| Gordon | Global stupidity. If only we could harness it as a force for good. |
| Arthur | People in this country, even. Industrial leaders, politicians, the vicar, Mrs Theobold down the |
| road -- | |
| Gordon | Especially her, yes. |
| Arthur | …. Many of them completely potty, and yet not knowing it. |
| Gordon | Yes... Arthur, your thought isn't particularly original, is it? I mean, most of us have known |
| politicians were crazy for years. It's almost a job qualification. | |
| Arthur | Oh that's not my thought. |
| Gordon | Isn't it? Did you know the bar shuts in another three hours? |
| Arthur | No. My thought was… all these people, planet-wide, all walking about looking fairly normal |
| on the outside, but inside -- gibbering buffoons. All mentally going (He flips his finger over | |
| his lips several times.) Any one of them liable at any moment to explode into an orgy of | |
| of violence. | |
| Gordon | Any chance you might get to the point? |
| Arthur | All right. All right. My thought was -- suppose it's me, too? |
| Gordon | Ahh… |
| Arthur | You see where I'm going with this? I could be raving nuts and never know it. |
| Gordon | Well, you've got away with it so far. |
| Arthur | But it's worrying, Gordon. To think that even people like me might be carrying the seeds of |
| violence and destruction, and not be aware of it. | |
| Gordon | You don't think you might suddenly go on the rampage, do you? Going berserk at Sainsbury's |
| cheese counter, battering old Mrs Hoskins with a double Gloucester? | |
| Arthur | Anyone can snap. |
| Gordon | True, true. |
| Arthur | What's more worrying -- it's not unknown for this kind of thing to break out. Multiple incidents. |
| It's contagious. | |
| Gordon | Mass hysteria, yes. |
| Arthur | Mobs looting the shops… |
| Gordon | Teenagers rioting in the streets, throwing Molotov cocktails. |
| Arthur | Or even worse -- zombies. |
| Gordon | Zombies? |
| Arthur | Re-animated corpses, with wide blank staring eyes, incapable of speech, shuffling along in |
| search of their next victim. | |
| Gordon | I think that's a bit over the top, Arthur. I mean, zombies don't really exist, do they? |
| Arthur | You've not watched Big Brother then? |
| Gordon | Ah… |
| Arthur | If those sort of people were ever to act in concert, it could be -- you know -- like… um… |
| Gordon | Night of the living dead. |
| Arthur | Exactly. The modern world is a lot more stupid and backward than it was -- say -- four |
| hundred years ago. | |
| Gordon | Well I wouldn't argue with that. |
| Arthur | We're evolving backwards. Where are your modern Shakespeares? Your twenty-first |
| century Michaelangelo's? | |
| Gordon | Well, there's Banksy. |
| Arthur | We're regressing. It's like Flowers for Algernon. And the possibility exists -- that it's a virus. |
| Gordon | A virus? |
| Arthur | Yes, a virus. Sapping our intelligence, forcing us back into a more primitive mould. |
| Gordon | Like measles or swine flu? |
| Arthur | You've got it. And we have no defence -- because it's making us all too stupid to do the |
| research to fight it. And it could strike at any moment. | |
| Gordon | I think you're being a bit alarmist -- |
| Arthur | It could happen to any one of us -- even you. |
| Gordon | Hang on, hang on. If I was stupid, I think I'd know about it. |
| Arthur | But that's my whole point -- you wouldn't know if you were stupid or not. If you weren't stupid, |
| you'd never be entirely certain of it, and if you were stupid, you'd always be a hundred percent | |
| certain that you weren't stupid, because you'd be stupid. | |
| (A silence. Gordon shakes his head violently.) | |
| Gordon | I'm certainly confused. |
| Arthur | It's Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle all over again. |
| Gordon | Yes but look -- look -- by the same token -- using your reasoning -- I could very well be super- |
| intelligent, and not know it. | |
| Arthur | (Chuckling.) Gordon.. |
| Gordon | What? What? |
| Arthur | Please… don't be stupid. |
| (They drink as the lights fade.) | |
| © Leonard Morley 2009 |