…a play in one act.
SETTING:
Hell – fire, brimstone, tortured souls, broken toilets, no Internet. Your typical land of eternal punishment.
In the northeast corner, between the River Styx and Wal Mart corporate headquarters, stands Satan’s office high-rise.
On the top floor of Satan’s high-rise is Satan’s executive office. On his broad desk lay plans for the apocalypse, which include the blueprint for a planet-demolishing WMD, the anti-Christ’s resume, and the recipe for Baconnaise.
Satan’s phone rings. He presses the button for speaker.
SATAN: ‘sup?
SATAN’S ADMIN ASST: I’ve got Minion 2307 on line 2. He’s got that report you wanted on the extremists’ end of the Apoc prep.
SATAN: Great.
Satan takes the call.
SATAN: Gary! Talk to me, buddy.
GARY: Just want to let you know everything is going as planned. We’re gonna make our numbers, no problem.
SATAN: ‘Bout time. What are the numbers?
GARY: Millions, and rising steadily. At this rate, we’ll have more extremists than we’ll know what to do with.
SATAN: Hey, you can never have too many. The more, the scarier, right? What about their metrics? How they doing on those?
GARY: Let’s see…hate’s off the charts, they’ve got irrationality to spare, and enough fear and anxiety for three apocalypses. They could use a little more intolerance, though. They’re a bit low on that, relatively speaking.
SATAN: Why? What’s up with that?
GARY: I don’t think it’s that there’s more tolerance in the world. I think worldwide economic insecurity plus those recent natural disasters have made them more focused on survival rather than petty differences.
SATAN: No time to screw unto others when you’re screwed yourself?
GARY: Yeah, pretty much.
SATAN: Well, we can use that to our advantage, too, right? We can pretty easily convert economic insecurities into generalized fear.
GARY: Way ahead of you, boss. We’ve already converted 26% of the insecurity into groundless distrust and diffuse anger.
SATAN: Great, great. Keep it up. At this rate, we’ll have the world coming here in a hand basket by the end of this century.
GARY: Yeah. I tell ya, those Christian extremists are the best thing to happen to our cause.
SATAN: Whoa, wait. I thought we were talking about the Muslim extremists.
GARY: Oh, sorry, no. Want me to get the report on them?
SATAN: Is it very different?
GARY: Not really.
SATAN: No, that’s okay. As long as it’s all working for us.
GARY: That it is, boss. That it is.
Michelle Motoyoshi | Contributor
Michelle Motoyoshi has wanted to be a writer since she first learned how to scribble words on a page. Since then she has cobbled together a few accomplishments, like having her work performed by local theater groups, publishing three educational books for children, and writing articles for local and online publications. She has also managed to earn a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley, while supporting her writing addiction by working as a writing instructor and program coordinator with Ohlone for Kids in Fremont, CA.
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