CHANGE OF PLANS

Act 1

AT RISE : Late afternoon. Coronado resting; duffel bag pillow, football helmet beside him. Aura regarding painting, rinsing brush. SINE enters carrying pitcher and glasses.

SINE

Finished?

AURA

No. The light's changed. It's overcast.

SINE (mispronouncing it)

Moonsun?

AURA(saying it right)

Monsoon? That would be nice. No - That's smog. Rain doesn't often make it to the bottom anyway.

SINE

Here. I've brought you something to drink.

AURA

Well thank you. - What is it?

SINE

Monsoon.

AURA

Can I rinse my brushes in it?

SINE

You have a whole river for that !
(kicking CORONADO's foot; presenting glass)
Hey, Nado, is monsoon time . . .

CORONADO

Wha. . . What . . . What . . .

SINE

Drink. Drink. Straight from headwaters of the Colorado
(to both)
Have you been there?

CORONADO

Grand Lake?

SINE

I don't know. I thought maybe springs and glaciers.

CORONADO

Yeah. Grand Lake. Hey, thanks for the drink. Yeah. That's where it starts. - Yeah. You should see the yacht club there. Beautiful.

AURA

What's a yacht club doing there?

CORONADO

Well, it's a lake. You know. Spring-fed. Glacier-fed. It's the world's highest yacht club.

AURA (drinking)

Well, here's to the spring.

CORONADO

Yeah.
(drinking)
Monsoon. That's a good name for a drink. Tastes like tea though.

AURA

They actually named a car Monsoon. Shows the southwest is getting popular, huh?

SINE

You say is smog? - Like in Los Angeles?

AURA

It’s probably that coal power plant again...

SINE

Go to Bejing for real smog. China very busy making stuff cheap for world. Are you from Los Angeles?

AURA

Arizona.

SINE(singing the song)

"Arizona, won't you go my way."  (lyrics) - I heard that on the radio.

CORONADO (to AURA)

What part?

AURA

Oracle.

CORONADO (holding out helmet)

More. In the helmet’s good.

SINE

Boy, you thirsty!

CORONADO

Oaring down that river all day broils you.

SINE

Four and a half pounds of sunshine every second.

CORONADO

Huh? - Go ahead. Right there, in the helmet. (Sine pours into helmet.)

SINE

Every second four and a half pounds of sunlight hits the earth.

CORONADO (putting on helmet)

Pelted with photons huh.

SINE

There are glasses.

AURA

Ugh. Now you’ve got tea in your hair !

CORONADO

And you've got paint on your mouth. God that feels good! - I'm practicing . . .

AURA

For what?

CORONADO

Coronado. The explorer.

SINE

So the first name and the last name together is the last name..

CORONADO

Coro. Nado. Yeah. Coronado. - Don Francisco Vazquez de Coronado.

SINE

Football player in the shower?

CORONADO

Not in 1542. BF. Before football.

SINE

So, it's Don Francisco Vazquez de Coronado. –

CORONADO

More.

SINE

You’re already wet !

CORONADO

I’ll take a glass.

SINE

That's a mouthful. Not just Coronado, huh?

CORONADO

Not just Coronado. That's where the family's from. - (Removing helmet): Boy that felt good. The de in Spanish means from.

SINE

So, it's Don Francisco Vazquez.

CORONADO

Coronado's enough.
(to AURA)
What did you say your name is?

AURA

Oracle, Aura for short.

CORONADO

Your name is . . .

AURA

Same thing.

CORONADO

And that's it? Just Oracle, Aura?

AURA

With bells on.

SINE

Well, call me Sunshine. I'm from outer space.

AURA

You have an accent.

SINE

I never leave home without it. - Here's to home, wherever it is.
(Drinks. Jocosely)
But seriously, here I am, new in this country, just a dumb tourist at the bottom of Grand Canyon. We're not going anywhere until morning for sure, and then I never see you again. But when I buy you a drink, you play games.

CORONADO

Oh...

SINE

I'm in America now, and I have a dream: to know who I'm talking to.

CORONADO

Hey. Another American. We better be nice to this guy.
(to SINE)
Hey, man, I'm not tryin’ to mess with you. - My name is Jacob Lopez.

SINE

Not Coronado?

CORONADO

and not Don Francisco Vazquez. I'd give you a card, except I'm out of real estate.
(to AURA)
Wichita.
(to SINE)
But I'm working something up for the Park Service, I hope, about Coronado, the guy that opened up this country. So call me Coronado; I like it.

AURA

Did he go by boat?

CORONADO

No. That was John Wesley Powell. Powell was later, much later.

SINE

Coronado. Not Colorado.

CORONADO

Coronado. The first pioneer. Only not famous. Yet.

AURA (to SINE)

And I am Aura, and I'm from a little town near Tucson called Oracle, and
(citing painting)
that's what I do.

SINE

Really. That's really nice, the way you see the rock and the light are the same.  - So you're named for where you're from, too, like Coronado, and, and, Buffalo Bill.

AURA

He wasn't from Buffalo . . .

SINE

Tesla has a big battery factory in Buffalo. 

AURA

He just killed ‘em wherever he went. Now he's buried in Golden, Colorado. The buffalo would dance on his grave, if they were around.

Above: Rath & Wright's yard with
40,000 buffalo hides baled
for shipment -Dodge City, 1878

Above: Buffalo Bill's grave on
Lookout Mountain

SINE

I never knew Americans are named for where they're from. Is this something new?

CORONADO

No, no. Forget it. This is getting weird.

AURA

And you?

SINE

Sine: Sine Qua Non(pronounced see nay qua no n).  I lived in Beijing.  But where I  am from is not in my name. I'm  new in America . I have much to learn.

CORONADO(skeptically)

This isn't your first stop, is it?

SINE

I stopped along the way, here and there. Last place I stopped before here is this side of Tuba City, forty miles east, where Russians tested the Mars Rover. Tuba City area very much like Mars, we think.

Looking out the window of our flying saucer:
a dash of red on the blue planet - canals included

CORONADO

And so here you are . . .

SINE

Yes. Grand Canyon very interesting to me, as geologist. The bottom, especially.

AURA

So you thought you'd just drop in.

SINE

Yes. I dropped in. Hey. That's good. Drop in. (Laughs)

CORONADO (making mental note)

Amazing; and such an old joke. - Where'd you say you're from?

SINE

Beijing.  China.

CORONADO

China. They don't have that joke in China , huh?

AURA

I think it's a language thing.

SINE

Your man Horace Greeley said "Go west!"  I've been driving west all the way from New York City and Buffalo in the Tesla., and then I plugged in to Route 66. 

CORONADO

Charging all the way ?

SINE

It’s not like wagon trains feeding horses with grass everywhere.   But it's not too bad: The Tesla gets 200, maybe 300 miles a charge  A website shows where  there are charging stations.

CORONADO

Wagon trains. You know who blazed the Santa Fe trail, Route 66, all of that?

SINE

Coronado?

CORONADO

From west to east! - In Kansas they're trying to preserve the ruts the wagon trains made heading west. Can you believe it?

AURA

Okay, Coronado
(To SINE):
And you?

SINE

Going to LA. Big opportunity.  Elon Musk is going to Mars!

CORONADO

No . . .

SINE

China had a deal with Russia to collect Mars soil samples in the 1980’s. But Russian rocket didn't work right. Elon Musk makes rockets land back on earth to reuse.  He knows what he’s doing. 

CORONADO

Wait a minute. Back up one. You’re in some space program?

SINE

Geology . . .. China.

CORONADO

As an astronaut!?

SINE

No, no.  - We call them taikonauts.

CORONADO

Not in this country.  And you're a geologist, and you're here in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The moon is that-a-way, buddy. And people think I have a weird story.

SINE

Russians got some moon rocks. Not as many as you. Have you seen the moon rocks at Johnson Space Center in Houston?

CORONADO

No. Can't say I have.

SINE

Me neither.  They don’t let Chinese see them.  - Russians trained in Houston, at Johnson Space Center.

CORONADO

The Russians trained at Houston, and drove around Tuba City in the Mars Rover. Where have I been?

SINE

It was for good-will, détente, Gorbachev…. Remember the Soyuz-Apollo link-up? And I wanted see Meteor Crater where Americans trained for the moon.

AURA

Meteor Crater on 1-40?

SINE

Interstate, yes. It's  as close as you can get to the moon and Mars.

CORONADO

God, that link-up was ages ago, whenever it was. That’s history, man.

SINE

Like Coronado, huh?

CORONADO

I mean there's a whole generation of kids that only hears about that from books and reruns. Boy, now I remember seeing that on TV. You're makin' me feel old.

SINE

Well, I'm not dead. Give me - five years? - and you can call me rocket man.

CORONADO

Why? What're you going to do?

SINE

I'm going to Mars.  If Elon Musk can shoot a car there, he can put me in the driver’s seat.

AURA

Crackpots!

SINE

This is why everybody comes to America ? Everybody wants
(singing commercial)
"the high country . . .”  (lyrics)

AURA

Marlboro Man rides again. Maybe this time on weed.

SINE

This is where the dreamers come. Musk from South Africa. Me from China.  So. . .  My American dream is going to Mars.  Chinese put a machine on the moon, but …

AURA

So you're going to Mars to collect some rocks?  – What’s the matter with the ones we’re sitting on.

SINE

Nothing! That’s why I'm down here. - You know the black rock in Vishnu Schist downstream? Is half as old as earth. Only stuff we can touch that's older is from moon.

CORONADO

Different rocks are different ages?

SINE

Well moon rocks are about the same age as earth and planets; but the rapids, that rock that fell in from the top, that's very new, only quarter billion years or so.

CORONADO

They ought to have birthday parties.

SINE

Rocks have much to tell. Like, you think the moon doesn't have atmosphere. But it has atmosphere - locked up in its rock.

AURA

Why not go with the Chinese space program. They’ve got one, don’t they?

SINE

Run by the government. The U.S. is past that and now private companies  are doing it.  Elon, Bezos, Branson . . .   The U.S. privatized.

AURA

Too privatized.

SINE

Huh?

AURA

Take me. What I should be doing is murals or mosaics on railroad bridges or something everybody looks at every day. But no; there's no money in that. But do a little painting somebody can put in their house; big wigs pay thousands.

SINE

Subway stations in Beijing have many murals.  New York subways have advertisements.

CORONADO

Beijing.  There you go, Aura. 

AURA

The American Indians were communal enough to make their cities as single buildings - like Chaco Canyon.

Artist Lloyd K. Townsend's rendering of a view of Chaco Canyon's
Pueblo Bonito circa 1,200 AD

CORONADO

Beijing, Beijing.  Peking I've heard of. Where's Beijing? 

SINE

Same thing.

CORONADO

Well call it Peking then.

SINE

Where have you been!  San Francisco is not called Saint Francis.

CORONADO

Just do it, if you want people to know what you're talking about.

AURA

Once upon a time there was a time when we weren't so split up - or, what did you say - privatized. We had public transportation, public libraries, public swimming pools . . .

CORONADO

Still do.

AURA

People don't use them like they used to. They're cutting back on hours. They're disappearing, hour by hour.

CORONADO

Well it's not like they're the only thing around anymore. Everybody's got a car now, maybe two. Most people end up with a private library whether they meant to or not.
(to SINE)
Magazines, newspapers - just keep piling up, you know?

SINE

I use the internet.

CORONADO

(to AURA): It means that Sine here, who's been around some, chooses the American way. It means we're richer.

AURA

What it means is that cloud of dust up there.
(to SINE)
They’ve even talked about putting a bridge across the Grand Canyon for the cars.

SINE

I hear what you say. But private enterprise is not to  blame. It’s Communists who decided  to build  the biggest dam in the world up the Yangtze River from Beijing. And it has a road on top, too.  Nothing more communal than a dam. 

CORONADO

You know, this river doesn’t get to the sea anymore.

SINE

This big river?

CORONADO

Yeah. When I signed up for this boat trip, I thought we'd shoot the rapids and then float down to Mexico, because when I read about Coronado, he was supposed to meet some supply boats that came all the way up from Mexico. Those were the first Europeans to see California. But you know what? The current was so strong at the sea they couldn't sail up the river. They had to get the Indians to pull the boats like barges. Then I get here and it turns out after the rapids we just splash into Lake Mead. And that's it - like a big water park.

AURA

You didn't know about Hoover Dam?

CORONADO

Well sure, but I figured we'd go around and start up again at the bottom.

SINE

That has a road on top too, and it goes across the Canyon. Where's the water go? 

AURA

Farmers, mostly, some to the cities and the mines. The way they fight over it you'd think they were different species. - And don't forget everybody’s swimming pools.

SINE

Can float from Hoover Dam farther down? Is possible?

CORONADO

Not all the way to the ocean. It fades out.

AURA

I bet it'd be called the Colorado Wash - wouldn't be here at all - if it weren't for the lakes and rafters. Recreation's big business.

SINE

So this river is used up before it touches the sea?

CORONADO

Well the Sea of Cortes is still there. You just have to walk part of the way.

SINE

You mean the Gulf of California?

CORONADO

Sea of Cortes.

SINE

On my map the river ends at the Gulf of California.

CORONADO

Same thing.

SINE

Like Beijing ?  Peking?

CORONADO

Ugh . . .

SINE

This could be a problem.

AURA

It’s already a problem. The lake the dam made is getting used up, so now you see like big bathtub rings around it.

SINE

No.  I mean with the idea of bringing water that’s gone over dam back behind it again, but just when the dam  is putting out more power than needed.

AURA

What’re you talking about.  Once it’s over, it’s over.

SINE

I don’t know if this is Musk idea or somebody else's, but Los Angeles wants  to pump water back behind dam when making more electricity than people need. Like recharging a battery.  

AURA

Great!  So now they get to choose between getting enough electricity or enough water. 

CORONADO

Water, kind sir.

SINE

Tea. Here.  (Pours)

AURA

“Give me power or give me thirst” is how Patrick Henry might have put it. - I suppose they could keep the river going by getting more drinking water from the ocean instead of the river.  That's  what San Diego does. They get the salt out   - - - -  and the plastic, I hope.

SINE

Elon could help with that one:  He makes solar panels too.

AURA

Or use the Dam’s extra power to do it ? 

SINE

Maybe it's not his idea . . . 

AURA

Well at least the ocean is available, and it’s got too much water now anyway with the north pole melting and everything.

SINE

So you think the Pacific is guaranteed for always.

CORONADO

What?

SINE

You think your Coronado could have thought this river would stop because people had other plans for it? - Do you know about Mars?

CORONADO

The planet?

SINE

Or been to Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff?

24-inch Clark Telescope Percival Lowell installed
at his new observatory in 1896 - Flagstaff, Arizona

CORONADO

You have?

SINE

Sometime I will go, because Lowell obsessed Mars. That's the Harvard guy who predicted Pluto before his student discovered it.

AURA

He couldn't see it from Harvard?

SINE

He wanted the clearest skies he could find. So he built Lowell Observatory. I guess he named it, too.

CORONADO

He should have named Pluto after himself, too. Then he’d have had something.

AURA

So what about Mars?

SINE

He thought he saw "canals" that maybe Martians made. He was wrong. But canals? Dead rivers.  No ocean either. And the only water on Mars is polar ice.

CORONADO

There's water on Mars?!

SINE

Ice.

CORONADO

That's fantastic. Melt the ice and start up another earth, huh?

SINE

Good luck.

CORONADO

Wow.

AURA

Mars isn’t our fault, but somebody is gradually changing the whole earth. And it's not the beavers that built Hoover Dam.

SINE

Well, there's the future. - Anyway, you have it good in America .  China is progressing, but not there yet.

CORONADO

I thought I read something about them putting up a space station.

SINE

See what I mean?  It’s been done already.

AURA

We have a lot of stuff. That's for sure. Space stations. Cars and radios . . . We've got stuff Roman emperors never had or even imagined. But you know what, Mister Sine Qua Non, ex-Chinese Communist? Everybody wants more. And if you can't think of it, the advertisers tell you. So some people feel like failure’s when they hear about ball players and CEOs making more than the populations of whole countries. And you know what? They don't think they've got enough, either.

CORONADO

No, no . . . It’s not the money. Sure you’ve got to have some, But if you’re any good, you just keep getting more. It’s like points in a game. Like Jeff Bezos. You and little retailers would say he’s pigging out. But he’s like you: what makes him happy is doing what he’s good at. And if Amazon is the only store left, it’s like the dam: It works because it’s the easiest solution and everybody can eat off the proceeds when they’re taxed.

AURA

From each according to their ability . . . . To each according to their need. Now you’re talking.

SINE

Where have I heard that before ?

AURA

So there you were in China watching “Dallas” or

SINE

"Big Bang Theory" is how I learn English

AURA

and you got sucked in. The Pilgrims would be amazed how we've twisted their hope.

SINE

I just want to drive the Tesla to Mars.

AURA

Welcome to the dream life. Just don't expect a happy ending. Because there is no ending.

CORONADO

The Pilgrims . . . You'll have to excuse her. She's upchucked on too much Horace Greeley and wagon wheels.
(to AURA)
Didn't anybody ever tell you that Coronado was over here looking for fame and fortune a hundred years before the Mayflower landed, long before anybody came up with the words "American dream," at least in English? And he did it himself. He put a million dollars of his own money into his expedition, and years of his life and. . .

AURA

He had a million dollars to start?

CORONADO

Well it was his wife's money - same difference.

AURA

So the guy marries a million dollars, and then he starts seeking his fortune. - See what I mean? It's never enough. Fine. Coronado - first American Dreamer. So what?

SINE

What he's saying is the American dream is the human dream, if I hear you right. What else?

AURA

There’s just saying no - to materialism, competition, separateness, ego.

SINE

And instead?

AURA

Sharing, caring . . .

CORONADO

Peace and love. She's talking about the '60s, man.

SINE

What would this look like?

AURA

Like the world as a commune, at best; man in harmony with himself and the rest of nature.

CORONADO

Or one as small as a household tending its own backyard, more likely, and even that's no cakewalk.

AURA

Life can be as hard as you make it.
(to SINE)
Imagine no cars, no roads . . .

CORONADO

Hey, we're there.

AURA

Where you live.

CORONADO

Wichita! Ha!

AURA

No, you can't. Okay. So, given the immutable natural law that people move about the landscape in metal containers in the belief they need to be somewhere besides where they are - which would account for a quarter of the workforce being in the auto industry - then imagine:  Instead of having gone through whatever people go through to win and then provide for a car, they would hop into one of the world's cars that somebody else happened to drive to where they are, and they drive off to wherever.

SINE

What about the guy who arrived in the car that’s gone. How does he get back?

AURA

Back to what? If every dwelling, including his, was open to whoever appeared, he could stay put. But if he wanted to go back for some more important reason, like because his mother was there and needed help taking a pill, or because the score for a song he was writing was there, he’d take some other car that was already there, or wait around for another to come, or thumb it. - So he’d get back all right.

SINE

So it would look like a world-wide motor court, nobody in charge.

AURA

No, with everybody in charge, doing what needed doing when they noticed it, assuming they had the time and inclination, and skill.

CORONADO

Assuming, assuming. What's the motivation? Why does anybody make these cars. Why is the man writing a song. What would get Sine to move here to do whatever the hell he’s doing?

AURA

To do something they can feel good doing - like children at play.

CORONADO

But not for stuff, oh no.

AURA

If everybody owned everything, there would be no need to get stuff.

CORONADO

Why don’t you go play painting railroad bridges.

AURA

There’s nobody paying for it.

CORONADO

But it’s something you enjoy.

AURA

I’d do it if I didn’t have to worry about getting paid, but that’s not the system we’ve got.

CORONADO

It’s got workarounds:  You could get on welfare where you get paid for doing nothing or whatever.  You could try selling your service to the railroad or the highway department.  Go nonprofit or pass the hat and let people who drive by donate.  If popular enough, you could get investors. 

SINE

China was very poor for the generation before me.  Famine made people die.  Communism seemed a way for people to help each other, but it didn’t work until people got the right to keep what they make.  Your idea is beautiful, but people need to see how helping helps themselves. 

CORONADO (to Aura)

So you’re a John Lennon fan, I suppose.

SINE

So no private property in your world?

AURA

Well if everybody owns everything, they wouldn't need to be a slave to work, or steal if they weren’t.

CORONADO

Not much privacy, either.

AURA

There'd be privacy if people respected each other.

CORONADO

Well it sounds like easy street, but be realistic. Nobody says no to money or good luck.

AURA

The Hopi Indians voted against a casino near Winslow for years - hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars a year.

CORONADO

So that's why the braids and wampum. . . - Maybe they heard that idea that got floated a while back about having one in a blimp over the Grand Canyon.

AURA

A casino?!

CORONADO

Too much competition.   Somebody said they’re going to have one anyway after the coal plant closes because they’ll lose the coal jobs they have there. -  You know, there's this nostalgia trip that everything was perfect before the white man showed up. But if you go back to the beginning . . . Like, when Cortes found the Aztecs in Mexico, his crew thought their city the equal of any in Europe. But you know what made it go? Tribute. From all the people they'd conquered. Those were the people who helped Cortes with his crew of five hundred knock over a city of a quarter million.

Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital
From the mural by Diego Rivera

Tenochtitlan, map of city per Cortez

AURA

The Tohono O'Odham Indians near Tucson mind their own business.

CORONADO

What do they do?

AURA

They grow cotton and they never made people slaves to do it.

CORONADO

Well, there are Indians, and there are Indians. Here’s a story for you: It's 1528, only fifteen years after one of Columbus' old crew gets to pilot his own ship and becomes the first Spaniard to touch North America - at Florida  (lyrics). It's 1528 and the Florida governor, a Spaniard naturally, has it from the Indians there that to the west is a land where the natives wear golden hats. So he sails west into the Gulf of Mexico with four hundred men to go for the gold. Why not? Cortes had already gotten rich from taking the Aztecs, and there sure didn't seem to be gold in Florida. Only thing is, they get shipwrecked in a hurricane at Galveston. The four survivors

SINE

Only four?  Out of four hundred?

CORONADO

They figure they're closer to New Spain, (That’s Mexico City now), where Cortes was governor. How were they to know? They'd never heard of anyone getting there by land before; didn't even know it was connected. So they walk across Texas, and across all of Mexico almost to the west coast.

AURA

They walked?

CORONADO

Well there weren't any horses - plenty of buffalo, but the only horses were the ones the Spanish brought over, and none of the ones they’d brought to Florida survived. (They'd eaten them they were so hungry.)

SINE

Where are the cowboys and Indians?

CORONADO

Hey man, that's later. No cows yet, either.

AURA

No cows, either?

SINE

You know, I haven't seen any cowboys and Indians yet.

AURA

Go to the movies: the old ones - on TV.

Dodge City, Kansas - Late 1870s

SINE

I saw them on TV.

CORONADO

That stuff is over with.

SINE

Wait

CORONADO

Go see Dodge City just the other side of the Colorado line in Kansas. They've got the Longbranch, and Boot Hill - the whole thing. But that's not life today.

AURA

There weren't any horses?

CORONADO

Not then; not where they were.

AURA

Where're you getting your information?

CORONADO

Not from the movies . . .

AURA

And this is the truth?

CORONADO

You didn't learn all your American history, did ya. - Well this is my point: they lucked out at first and met up with some Indians who helped them - or else we wouldn't have heard about this. There's your kind of Indian, maybe. But it was a long walk - It took 'em six years. It might have taken less, but unfortunately other Indians enslaved them along the way - till they escaped. So there's a different kind of Indian.

AURA

Okay. So there are Indians and there are Indians. You start them all off in a land the white man never heard of, and some enslave each other and some don't. Maybe there's more than one kind of human nature, but it's a cinch which kind should be encouraged.

SINE

If you isolate the human nature you favor and bottle it in spaceship, the planet it lands on would have to be called Paradise. - But, we're here. You called me ex Chinese Communist. But China is not Communist now. China is pragmatist. Human nature is animal nature. Even the songbirds announce their territory.

AURA

At least the songbirds only claim what they need and can handle.

CORONADO

They would handle more if they could, you can bet on it. - If rabbits had invented the motor car, we'd be road kill.

SINE

At least the ankles.

AURA

You guys are taking us straight to hell. What if every species, or even one more, had our hang-ups? What if rabbits cooked their food, and had little toilets and sewage treatment plants

CORONADO

How would this play out . . . Us and the rabbits.  Who'd be in charge of the sewer system.

SINE

Buffalo driving would be a real problem. Sports cars the size of moving vans.

AURA

Well I guess we don't have to worry about that. I'd just hope the buffalo treated us better than we treated them.

CORONADO

There you go with that nostalgia trip again. We're here, and the buffalo aren't. How would the country have been built if a freight had to stop every time a herd of buffalo crossed the tracks.

AURA

A little slower? The citizenry could have endured it.

CORONADO

Maybe it could have, but it didn't. It didn't have to, because it had guns. It proceeded at the rate it felt comfortable with because it had technology.

AURA

And thereby man extended his reach.

CORONADO

And his standard of living.

AURA

Maybe by your lights. The plains Indians' standard of living depended entirely on the buffalo for food, clothing, shelter. Buffalo Bill gunned down four thousand of them in about a year to feed the railway construction crews. He was such a hot shot he went into show biz, and kids riding the train west later shot 'em just to be macho. I learned all about it on our move west when my dad took us to the SOB's museum in Golden.

CORONADO

Someday, when the nostalgia peters out . . .

AURA

You mean when the Indians can forget about the past . . . Go on.

CORONADO

they may be happy the iron horse is doing the heavy lifting. Before the Spanish showed up, they didn't know what horse­power was. Hell, they didn't even have the wheel.

SINE

No wheel either?

CORONADO

That's right. They had to hunt the buffalo by stealth, and their only transportation was their tootsies.

SINE

Maybe that's why there were still four thousand for Buffalo Bill.

AURA

You could also say the buffalo's standard of living started going downhill as soon as they encountered people.

CORONADO

The buffalo's standard of living. What would you do? Get rid of the cars, the roads, the San Francisco Bay Bridge, San Francisco? Turn us all into vegetarians? You probably think you're a harmless artist. But what other creature grinds colors out of the very rock itself to splash around on stuff that used to enjoy being a plant until it got beat to a pulp and flattened like a pancake just for you to “express yourself” and get a pat on the back. The buffalo could care less about your art.

AURA

The buffalo and me are okay. I do their portraits sometimes at their refuge in Salt Lake. It pays the bills, and nobody gets hurt.

Antelope Island Buffalo Refuge, Salt Lake, Utah

SINE

You sure go the long way to . . . What started this discussion?

CORONADO

I don't know.

AURA

The haze . . . I'm not painting.

SINE

Well, I believe man can change, and will live differently when there is no choice. Communism, public transportation, all that will happen to conserve resources, if nothing else. Your public libraries now internet, yes? - When smog is so thick there is nowhere clear, people will change.

AURA

So how do you explain Beijing’s smog.

SINE

People have choice. They can leave. Like me. Or go from provinces to Beijing for work.

AURA

You’re still going to want the stuff the smog makes..

SINE

Well of course. – I'm human.

AURA

But once in awhile, somebody, some special somebody, will try something different.

SINE

Like what?

AURA

Like Arcosanti.

Arcosanti, Arizona

CORONADO

Where'd I hear that - somewhere . . .

AURA

Between here and Phoenix, one of Frank Lloyd Wright's students is building a high rise city in the desert, so when you want to go to the store, you don't use a car and a road; you get on an elevator instead.

SINE

Why is there no news of this?

AURA

He's not done.

SINE

Is one guy?

AURA

He has students helping.

CORONADO

No…. This isn't how cities happen. Why expect people to cram into a high rise in the middle of hundreds of miles of kitty litter good for nothing but jack rabbits and subdivisions when they can stretch out all they want?

AURA

Some people enjoy the desert.

CORONADO

I mean if you're going to have subdivisions, they’re going to go where there’s nothing to start with.

AURA

I take it you've never had the wine the Indians make from the saguaro cactus that takes hundreds of years to grow.

CORONADO

No. But hey, I'm ready. I've never run my Vette on the rubber and gas I’ve heard they make from those desert plants, either, you know.

jojoba , with biodiesel seeds

AURA

You should have been a developer.

CORONADO

I was. Look, if you had the choice between blading the desert or good Kansas farmland - believe me, it's an easy choice.

SINE

Why not New Mexico? The way I came looks like pure rock. Save the desert and farmland.

AURA

Well nothing happens if somebody doesn't start. At least Paolo Soleri is trying with Arcosanti. You're a scientist. How about it?

SINE

Solar, sure . . . . But social metamorphosis into a high rise? Good luck. - If clean air  is the most important, get everybody into a Tesla.  But this takes time.

AURA

What’s wrong with that?

SINE

Human nature. If you reduce exhaust, people will drive more, or faster, or bigger cars, until the air is bad again.

CORONADO

They're driving houses now, Sine. Some of those RVs are nice.

AURA

One day the homeless will be housed, and the rest of us'll be on the road in Baby Boomer heaven.

CORONADO

Make mine a fifty footer.

SINE

See. Will need even less exhaust.

CORONADO

Make more Teslas.

AURA

Only, the fuel still comes from the wall outlet that has a coal plant on the other end.  You can’t change the world overnight.

SINE

Maybe sometime there will be solar collectors on each car - like on spacecraft.

AURA

That’s even nuttier than -  You know, the smart money puts a solar roof on top of the roof they’ve already got.  If they could get a little more communal they could bunch some together in a park and share the power, and then the homeless could clump together out of the rain.

"Power generator"- Natural Bridges National Monument, Visitor Center

CORONADO

So the juice could still come from the wall outlet - like at the visitor center at Natural Bridges National Monument. Have you seen that? They use those solar collectors, too. Only they put out the same power they used to need a whole flock of diesel generators for. I couldn't believe it. They're really making headway with solar.

AURA

They’ve got ‘em on the visitor center here too.  And I think they use them on the salt water in San Diego.

SINE

Enough sunlight falls on one square foot of earth every day to power two houses.

AURA

All electric?

SINE

Yes. - But so what? Say you do this. Everybody feels good;  the air is clear. No problems. People feel so good they expand the family. Later on, it's bumper to bumper.

AURA

Time for Arcosanti.

SINE

If that is the answer, there will be Arcosantis next door to each other, like Manhattan.

CORONADO

I say go for it. Once technology takes hold, it leads to things you never imagined.  -  Like spices. In Coronado’s time, spices were the technology for preserving food. And everybody’s wanting spices was what got Columbus to try a short cut that, surprise surprise, put us here. Poor guy. He meant to get to the orient.  In fact he thought he’d made it to the West Indies, calling the Indians Indians, and kept sailing around trying to find what he was looking for.

SINE

Each new invention just buys time until the population rises again to unsustainable. The most beautiful idea people have is kids. This is what you do when happy.

CORONADO

Now we're cooking. Westward ho!

AURA

You're a fatalist.

SINE

Natural law.

AURA

There's too much discontent for that to be true. Child abuse. Divorce.

SINE

Later, maybe. Even before. But conception . . . Creation is happiness.

CORONADO

It's the best animal idea, too. Cattle multiplied like crazy in the new world. But the Indians, who took it in the pants when we got going, didn't; they were melancholy. Since they outnumbered us by millions in the beginning, you'd have thought they'd predominate. But no.

AURA

So technology is not the answer is what you're saying?

SINE

I said that?

AURA

Well, what are you saying?

SINE

Space.

AURA (scoffs)

Space. - People used to have big families when the farm needed extra hands. Kids were their security in old age. But now machines do the work, on the farm, in the factory. Technology lets society get along with fewer people, or at least with fewer workers.

CORONADO

I can buy that too: If the Spanish had had the machines  we have today to grow and process sugar, they wouldn't have forced the Indians to do it, or imported blacks when the Indians died out. Machines are easier to get along with.

AURA

If you're a mechanic.  A culture that frees the slaves only because it can get the same results from machines is sicko.

CORONADO

We're talking downsizing, right?

SINE

Okay. I see. But technology also allows more people. Like your Arcosanti - can push more into a smaller space, and grow food in ten-story greenhouses, if necessary.

CORONADO

Maybe what you have is some kind of leapfrog development, where there's some advance that makes life easier for people, richer, lets them live longer . . .

SINE

And then because people feel better, like they have the world by the ass ....

AURA

You're thinking of tiger-by-the-tail.

SINE

Yes, why not? - they go use leisure most enjoyable way possible.

AURA

And we end up with more people.

CORONADO

More people, but richer at the same time.

SINE

That's what happened in the U.S.-  China is getting richer too, now,  but even the one child limit makes thick smog as people get richer.

AURA

We are very lucky, thanks to the rest of the world doing the wage slave bit to keep us topped off  with imported TVs, oil, you name it . . . We're using up everything. We've cut down four-fifths of the forests in this country and then we expect the Brazilians to leave the rainforest alone so we can breathe.

SINE

The forest is very good at making smog into trees, but sometimes the forest burns  and let's the smog out again. It's better to  put smog in ground to be rock, like planets do when cooling off, but this is still too expensive. 

CORONADO

We have a growth economy.  Anything’s possible.

AURA

Phoenix is a growth all-right.

CORONADO

Well what would you do with all the kitty litter around here.

AURA

You really are in real estate, aren't you.

SINE (singing)

"Little boxes, and they all look just the same.”  (lyrics)

CORONADO

What did you . . . hit every oldies station between here and New York? - Well, what? Guayule plantations?

SINE

Guayule?

Crushing the desert shrub Guayule yields non-allergy producing latex

CORONADO

For condoms.
(laughs)
For too many people.

AURA

Nothing.

CORONADO

What?

AURA

How about doing nothing with it. Otherwise, it's like the locusts that already sucked the copper and gold out of Arizona and turned the land upside down stinking of sulfur.

Asarco copper mine by Green Valley south of Tucson

CORONADO

That has got to be the ugliest picture I’ve ever heard of of played out mining towns like Jerome and Bisbee. I thought they turned into photogenic little artist colonies after the mines.

Bisbee, Arizona as pictured by resident artist Gene Elliston

AURA

Jerome and Bisbee, yeah. Artists saw the beauty there even after the rest of the population took off when the mines shut down.
(to SINE)
We're famous for our ghost towns.

CORONADO

So now everybody's in Phoenix.

AURA

Right. The next ghost towns'll be bigger.

CORONADO

Phoenix a ghost town, huh?

AURA

Buffalo  was a comer too, once. - The people I admire are the ones who stay behind and get the unemployed to make some sense of their lives.

CORONADO

Not Phoenix.

AURA

Even while it's growing you see a vacant store here, a littered lot there. Tiny islands of despair and not making it. The dream spinners keep staking out new territory.

CORONADO

Sorry. - Waves of retirees glom to the warmth.

AURA

A demographic bulge.

CORONADO

They’re running away from the cold north.

AURA

Only thing is, global warming's next up.

SINE

Why worry about population growth when every place you mention is someplace people left or . . .

AURA

It's how we leave it. It's nothing new. Even the Anasazi Indians. They had a whole network of cities in Chaco Canyon, a veritable empire like the Aztecs in Mexico , but even the Anasazi moved on, long before Columbus. They had dams and canals that finally failed. A ranger there told me they figure it took 200,000 trees to build Chaco, and you can see the pinon juniper forest around it hasn't come back yet, eight hundred years later. And the Anasazi had to be more in tune with the desert than we'll ever be.

Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon,
after the drought and the passage of time

CORONADO

Not enough, though, huh?

AURA

Well what do you know of cholla fruit salads and prickly pear pie?

CORONADO

And you do? Man, dinner at your place must be a trip.

AURA

You'd better hurry. The cacti are starting to keel over.

SINE

Maybe weather changing is why. It's been getting warmer since the last ice age.

AURA

Well you fellows had better figure out where the water's coming from. The ground water is falling faster than the zoning boards can issue permits.

SINE

China famine during Mao is why only one child per family for a long time after. Smog anyway.  So now there are not enough workers to care for the old people.  Not even enough wives now because nobody wanted a daughter when they could only have one.  When no people, no market. 

CORONADO

Unless the animals start driving.

AURA

Ha ha. People want stuff, and stockholders want more stuff. Progress would be the stock market going down because people quit buying houses in Phoenix because they'd moved to the ghost towns where there are houses already.

CORONADO

Even if nobody wanted stuff, somebody would want to be boss of more people, a bigger country, or outnumber the enemy. Nations have always been into expansion

AURA

Opening the west sure did it for the U.S.

SINE (to AURA)

There must be enough population to have division of labor, to have any technology at all - be more than animals.

CORONADO (to AURA)

You think things would be different with a smaller population?

AURA

I think there would be some level of population that could function without using up everything.

CORONADO

We're at five billion now. What is it? Four billion? Two? What's the break-even point?

AURA

Ask a mathematician.

CORONADO

Would you believe two is too many?

AURA

It can be figured out.

CORONADO

No. I mean two people.

AURA

Adam and Eve?

CORONADO

I'm talking history.

AURA

This’ll be good.

CORONADO

It's 1492, plus a few, and Columbus has sailed back and forth a few times, never really finding anything worth the effort. But then rumors of gold get to Cortes back in Spain.  He comes over, and gets appointed to check out the Aztecs in Mexico. He ends up living in Montezuma's house with gold galore. That takes care of North America. The year is 1521. Now it's a few years later, and a cousin of Cortes leaves Spain to seek his fortune, and when he gets to America , he gets wind of another Indian empire. By 1533, Pizarro conquers the Incas in Peru , and ends up with more gold than Cortes. That takes care of South America. Two cousins, two continents.

AURA

The end?

CORONADO

Or the beginning.

SINE

Or the ever-lasting middle.

CORONADO

It's a matter of opinion. Cortes probably would have gotten around to the Incas, but, he was busy. Then it would have been one guy, two continents.

AURA

Why say two continents, when they only got Mexico and Peru .

CORONADO

Because there wasn't any gold anywhere else. And that's all they were looking for.

AURA

So those Indians were into gold, too, just like they were into slavery?

CORONADO

No, they didn't see gold that way. If they had, they might have kept it under wraps. No, they just thought it so beautiful that it belonged to gods, and they gave one god's accoutrements to Cortes because they thought he was that god come back to them. Same deal with bird feathers. - For trade, they were into barter, though sometimes they used chocolate beans.

AURA

Chocolate as money?

CORONADO

Yeah.

AURA

Now I like that.

CORONADO

You do . . .

AURA

Well it would be a nuisance to be a billionaire, wouldn't it? It kind of levels things: money growing on trees.

CORONADO

Bushes, I think.

AURA

So the Conquistadors took their golden art even though it was just a spiritual thing to them.

CORONADO

Yeah. That's why they had to melt it down. - Hey. You don't think Columbus and all of them came all the way over here for beans, do ya?

SINE

One man's beans . . .

CORONADO

No. - And try not to get personal, huh?  Thieving Conquistadors. You know what the Queen of England called the Brit that ripped off the most Spanish galleons of anybody?

AURA

No.

CORONADO

Sir. Sir Francis Drake. She knighted him. And he kept the stuff for himself and Britain . The Indians didn't get it back.

AURA

God. History makes me sick.

SINE

If everybody was as sensitive as you, there would be no more reproduction because of an acquired distaste for the human race.

AURA

If everybody was as fatalistic as you two, none of us would have been born.

CORONADO

I bet we're living proof.  -  Any kids?

SINE,AURA

No.

CORONADO

Me neither. -  Three misfits.

SINE

No worries; no shortage of people. Nature's way.

AURA

So two cousins come to America to seek their fortune.

CORONADO

Very American of them, no?

AURA

And claimed everything in sight. Not your typical tourists.

CORONADO

Gold was the icing on the cake they tasted first. The rationale was the Indians weren't Catholic, so they claimed the land and people for God and country.

AURA

Some rationale. Spain got into it with their European neighbors, too.

CORONADO

Right. Just the ones that weren't Catholic. - And when they showed the Indians their horses and what a noise their guns could make, the Indians didn't view them as tourists either. That was all the technology they needed.

AURA

What do you suppose would have happened if the Indians had no gold.

CORONADO

I think the cousins would have left, disappointed, like Columbus and Coronado.

SINE

Columbus? Disappointed?

CORONADO

He didn't find what he was looking for: a shortcut to the Spice Islands, and he didn't come across any gold, either. He died a pauper compared to Cortes and Pizarro.

AURA

And Coronado?

CORONADO

When he heard how well Pizarro and Cortes had done, he came over in 1535. By then, the four men who'd been shipwrecked near Galveston had made it to Mexico City and told the Spanish viceroy there about their trip and what they'd heard from the Indians along the way. This Viceroy . . .

AURA

Cortes?

CORONADO

No, a new guy was living in Montezuma's house, one who'd come over on the same boat as Coronado. (The Emperor back in Spain replaced Cortes because he was getting too big. Cortes was still around, just demoted. The Emperor wanted to maintain control, see. That's what emperors do. His job, you know?) Well, the new guy thought he could make out. So he sent one of the four survivors with a priest to look for the seven cities of Cibola they'd heard of and check 'em out.

SINE

You mean the four just finish their walk across Texas and Mexico and he sends one back right away?

CORONADO

Well none of them wanted to go, but one was a slave and didn't have a choice. He made do, I'll give him that, though. There he was, a couple days ahead of the priest and supply train. He was the guide for the priest, see. And since he’d gotten along with the Indians in these parts on his previous walk by coming off as a medicine man, he even picked up a retinue of three hundred Indians, who probably helped with directions. He was the kahuna in his part of the expedition, and Indians welcomed the dude, offered him women, which he accepted. The priest didn't like that.

SINE

This story is stranger than fiction.

CORONADO

So finally they get to the first of the cities . . ..

SINE

This was something real, then, not just rumor, or misinterpretation.

CORONADO

Yeah, it was real enough. In fact, if you go back on I-40, to Acoma, they went there, too. It's not Cibola, but it's close.

Acoma

AURA

The oldest continuously inhabited city in the U.S.

CORONADO

The first city they found in Cibola was just across the line into New Mexico: Hawikuh, where the Zunis used to live.

AURA

Oh! The Zuni fetish necklaces. Exquisite!

CORONADO

Necklaces?

AURA

Never mind.

CORONADO

I'm talking about the Zuni Indians. Now they live in Zuni, and thereabouts.

SINE

So what happened?

CORONADO

Well, Esteban, that's the black slave leading the party . . .

AURA

Wait a minute.  You mean the first Spaniard to see this area was a black slave?

CORONADO

I don't know about being Spanish. They called him Esteban -Spanish for Steve - but, yeah, he was black. Don't ask me where he came from. Might have been the islands off Spain where they were using slaves to raise sugar cane, or maybe the Carribean where they were doing the same. I don't know.

AURA

You ought to put that in your play. So many blacks feel out of it, you ought to put in how they were in on this country from the git-go. - Wow! And how their kids were all over the southwest before the Pilgrims showed up - by how many years?

CORONADO

A hundred. Eighty if you want to get technical.

AURA

And to think the settlers didn't want to fool with the Indians; they didn't know the half of it. - Here we are in the ultimate suburbs, and a black man blazed the trail.  Unbelievable.  Heck, he was ahead of the Spanish . . ..

CORONADO

Hey. Who's telling this story - me or you?.

SINE

So what happened?

CORONADO

The Zunis killed him.

AURA

Why?

CORONADO

He’d kept a medicine rattle a different tribe had given him as part of his act. Wrong tribe.

AURA

Jeez.

SINE

Gāisǐ de.

CORONADO

And so the priest didn't go any closer. All he saw in the setting sun was the walls of the adobe apartments, and it was like looking at forbidden fruit.

SINE

And . . .

CORONADO

So they hurried away and told the Viceroy they'd seen one of the cities and sure enough, they were cities, but well guarded.

AURA

They left without making sure there was gold there?

CORONADO

How could they? They were outnumbered, and it looked like they'd be killed if they stuck around. What they needed was an army if they were going to get any closer. The Indians guiding them seemed pretty impressed. Of course the Seven Cities of Cibola was a big deal for them.

AURA

And the Viceroy got carried away.

CORONADO

Well why not. Cortes and Pizarro had already found more gold than anybody had dreamed of. Why else would the Zunis have killed some poor black dude.

SINE

So Coronado became the next Cortes.

CORONADO

If only. Cortes himself wanted the job. He’d finally rested up enough from conquering Mexico and was ready for more. But the Viceroy - he was supposed to rein in Cortes, plus, he liked Coronado. They'd gotten acquainted coming over on the boat. So Coronado got it, and away he went.

AURA

Ãndéle. They could have done the California gold rush right then and there.

CORONADO

Maybe.... if anybody'd heard of California gold. But the California Indians weren't into it. Plus, a little thing called the Grand Canyon got in the way.

SINE

That's your play?

CORONADO

That's why I'm here, pal.. -  So Coronado and his army went with the priest back to Hawikuh where Esteban got killed, took the town, and found no gold. So he sent scouting parties out. One group got to about Grandview Point; hmmn, six, seven miles up river from here, and had their first look at the Grand Canyon, just a big hole in the ground like I heard one tourist describe it. That's what it was for them, too, when you get right down to it, and they meant to go on to hopefully something worth finding. The Colorado looked like nothing more than a creek from the top. It wasn't till they headed down that they realized what looked like small stones from the top were bigger than the tower of Seville, as they put it, back in the capital of Spain , the biggest building any of them had ever seen. Plus, there wasn't enough water on the way down, so they gave up. And you know these guys weren't quitters - they'd just walked god knows how many miles from the west coast of Mexico .

AURA

What did they say about the scenery, never having heard of it?

CORONADO

Nobody knows. One man kept a log, but it got lost. - The guys on that trip weren't too much into scenery is my guess. They had a painter with them too, but the guy's paintings didn't survive either.

AURA

At least the astronauts got some pictures.

SINE

So no gold. Just a big hole in the ground. Coronado was so disgusted he quit.

CORONADO

No. Another scouting party he’d sent east seemed to have got on to something, and before it was all over Coronado himself led half his army from Pecos New Mexico down through Oklahoma into the Texas panhandle, and then up to about the middle of Kansas. Lots of buffalo and Indians and grass so high on the flat plains they couldn't see where they were going and felt lost at times.

six foot tall buffalo in the tall grass

SINE

That man was motivated.

CORONADO

But all that turned out to be a dry hole too. After a couple of years, Coronado headed back south, empty-handed. He’d headed the best planned and financed expedition in the Americas , put half his wife's dowry into it, and came back with zip. - With no payout, the Spanish didn't even come back for forty years. - Kind of like the moon walk, huh Sine.

SINE

What made them go back even forty years later?

CORONADO

The usual: competitors, other Europeans, coming around. - The icing on the cake for Coronado was: the guy he’d left in charge while he was gone? Four years later he was running gold mines in New Spain.

AURA

There's a lesson in there somewhere, somewhere . . .. So if everybody including him thought he was a failure, why do a play about him?

CORONADO

He's as much a hero as anybody is for sure, and, us Mesikin Americans can use some heroes. This hole in the ground is something everybody wants to see, and my man Coronado is the one who found it for us. If he knew what I'm doing, he’d probably laugh. I don't know; he might appreciate the recognition. Like a dead artist whose paintings finally sell. All we've ever gotten in school is how the Pilgrims beat their way across this continent and settled it, and here's one of my own people who was ahead of all of them.

AURA

How is he a hero, though.

CORONADO

I already told you. He's the one who opened up this country. The Santa Fe trail was his way east before the so-called pioneers and their wagon trains ever went west on it.

SINE

In science we call this - Yìwài fāxiàn

- in English: pity, pity, no; serenity, no . . .

AURA

Serendipity.

SINE

That's it.  That's it.  Serendipity. You start with a theory, like, in a movie: "Thar's gold in them there hills" - and you try prove it. And instead of gold you find something unexpected. Many famous scientists famous because of serendipity.

AURA

Don't you have to realize you found something worth finding for it to count? Anyway, I thought you said Esteban . . .

CORONADO

Esteban was in the picture at all thanks to the Spanish.

AURA

Yeah. I'll bet he thanked them every day. You could just as well write a play about the Indians. They blazed the trail across the great plains before anybody.

SINE

Before buffalo?  You said they made  a living chasing the buffalo. The buffalo were first, just like they say the Indians followed the elephants, no, mammoths, across the  Bering Strait land bridge from Siberia when the sea level fell. Gāisǐ de !  That means the Indians are Chinese, or Russian, or . . .

CORONADO

Sure.  Why not a play about the goddamn grass the Buffalo chased after all the time.   I'll tell you why.  Because the grass doesn't care.  Plus it's mute. It couldn't make a play if it wanted to. And it won't pay to see a play, if it could see a play.

AURA

Even if it laid down its golden boughs before you?

CORONADO

Green stuff. And I don't mean chlorophyll.

AURA

Well, I'd like to speak on behalf of the grass, and the ancestors of the grass.

CORONADO

Your next painting, then.

SINE

Face it. We are an accident  (lyrics). It's amazing we're even here. We don't really know our ass from a hole in the ground.

CORONADO

Well, I'm amazed I'm in a hole with you two. - I've made my point. Two was too big for this earth. Of course, they were Mexicans.
(exiting)
Excuse me. Coronado has to go start a
(singing)
"yellow river, yellow river  (lyrics)" - I will be a spring in the bushes.

AURA (exiting)

Look after my piece. I'm going to turn you on to cactus wine.

CORONADO (calling)

Make mine tequila.

SINE

I look after your piece.
(calling)
I'm right behind you. I'll give you hand. - Coronado, keep a watch.  We’ll be right back.
(exits)

(BLACKOUT)

(END OF ACT 1)

A Saguaro in bloom. The Saguaro is the state flower of Arizona.

Act 2

AT RISE : All three are back after a pit stop. Drinking again.

CORONADO

What do you call this? It's different.

AURA

Saguaro wine.

CORONADO

That's the big cactus you see on the postcards, right, that looks like this,
(assumes a saguaro pose)
or this.

(AURA and SINE laugh.)

Anything that looks like that has gotta be full of wine for sure.

AURA

In the summer, the Indians use long poles to knock the fruits down. The kids collect them with the red part facing up, because this pulls down the clouds. They boil the fruit for the juice, and after it's turned to wine, they start drinking late one summer's night and sing and dance till sunrise, to really bring the clouds down and make the plants drunk with rain. Much happiness.

White-winged doves eating the fruit borne of the
saguaro blossoms they pollinated earlier in the season

CORONADO

Superstition.

AURA

The monsoon rains cool off the desert every summer, El Niño or not. So it seems to work.

SINE

Such a pretty story. You know, I would like to meet these Indians. In Beijing, Peking, we have completely lost track of our Chinese brothers.

AURA

If you ever go to Kitt Peak telescopes by Tucson, you can.

Kitt Peak telescopes, Arizona

SINE

Kitt Peak, where they study the sun.

AURA

And the stars. The "long eyes" - like the Indians say - are right in the middle of their reservation.

CORONADO

Then how do they stay in their time capsule.

AURA

It's the same tribe that never used slaves in the cotton fields, despite a civil war battle half way between Phoenix and Tucson. I don't know. I hope they never change.

Picacho Peak by Interstate 10, site of U. S. Civil War battle

CORONADO

The march of time . . . They're probably sitting on something right now somebody'll want.

AURA

Pitch black nights? Crystal clear skies? Boundless stretches of desert? Who'd want that beside . . . Oh, not . . .

SINE

An American researcher I met in Houston told me Tucson is growing so big and bright at night it makes the sky glow all the way to Kitt Peak.

AURA

It's a hundred miles away.

SINE

Dust, too. Is why the Hubble.

AURA

Hubba hubba.

SINE

No - Hubble - the space telescope - the one that's in orbit,

CORONADO

above the dust and hubba hubba.

AURA

Two isn't too many. Coronado and, and . . .

CORONADO

Cortes and Pizarro . . .

AURA

They were more than two. They had whole armies. Numbers is what makes the difference.

CORONADO

A few unemployed adventurers looking to make a killing? Coronado's expedition was a way to give them something to do.

AURA

And what about the people back in Europe? That was the launching pad. Without their lust for gold, things would have been tranquil.

CORONADO

Coronado was on a split with the King, Viceroy, a few other investors. Sure, he had backers and helpers, but - you get the picture. Human nature in just a couple of people could strip the world bare. Numbers just speed it up.

AURA

Even if human nature was the exact opposite of what you think, and everybody was humble, self-effacing, frugal, communal even, if there were enough of us, we'd run out of stuff eventually. The only thing that would save the day is restraint, which people would have if they respected what they encounter.

SINE

If they were happy enough, they would skip restraint; and if they had  technology, no problem.

AURA

Well I think it's lucky they were only into gold. What if they'd been after - sand. The beaches would be gone and stowed in somebody's vault.

SINE

It's fortunate they did not need silicon, yet.

AURA

Bye-bye San Diego; hello silicon valley. Cities looking for clean industry think that's so great. But making it makes poison. Maybe technology is the problem. Nobody complained about pollution until they fired up the industrial revolution with a lot of coal, did they?

CORONADO

Maybe running into a buffalo turd did it for the Indians.

AURA

Slow suicide from breathing the air and drinking the water would do it for anybody.

SINE

There is only one way out.

CORONADO

Yeah?

SINE

You are looking at it.
(the sky)

AURA

Right.

SINE (singing)

"Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars . . .”  (lyrics)

AURA

Good choice.

SINE

Well what's the problem?  Space for buffalo and the railroad. Enough sky for haze to disappear.

AURA

Coronado's point was it wouldn't have mattered if the Indians and buffalo were spread over five times the land; they'd be gone now.

SINE (singing)

"Give me sand lots of sand under starry skies above, don't fence me in . . .”  (lyrics)

AURA

What is it about the West that draws all you cowboys, and space cowboys.

SINE

Well, one thing is, you can see the stars.

AURA

You weren't here years ago.

SINE

May be your eyes.

AURA

My eyes are fine, thank you. And I read the papers. And I know they have a tracking station in Colorado Springs to chart the orbits of all the paint chips, empty booster rockets and other crap we've sent up, so the rest of the stuff they're shooting up doesn't run into it.

SINE

A few years ago a Russian satellite ran into something from a Chinese anti-satellite test.  That was embarrassing.  But don't let that bother you.  All that stiff burns up as it hits atmosphere.

AURA

It burns me up too. The sharpest minds we've got are tracking a cloud of debris. At least I can see the haze. The other stuff is like stuff dropped in the water. You can't see it; you just know it's ruined, and every once in a while somebody finds a fish that's grown up with a plastic sixpack carrier around its stomach.

CORONADO

Poor bastards. You wonder how many have concussions from rocket parts falling in the sea. That reminds me of . . . Where’d I see that . . . A flying billboard satellite, so even if you're in a plane you can see "Drink Pepsi" float through the sky.

AURA

Not at sunset, I hope.

CORONADO

I have no idea.

SINE

Privatization of space.

AURA

Think of the employment opportunities as we zip about the galaxy building interstates, Walmarts, and going-out-of-business K-Marts.

SINE

Well what do you want? You want the pressure off, yes? You do not like mining. Mine Venus. You want clear skies? Put factories on Mars.

CORONADO

Yeah. Don't stop at the border with maquiladoras. Mexicans like to breath too.

AURA

Maybe the Captain of the Exxon Valdez could hire out to steer a cargo from Chernobyl to a black hole while you're at it. I'll bet we've still got his oil slick binding our countries together. - You'd have liked the Biosphere people, before they got a grip.

Biosphere II during human space habitat research

SINE

The who?

AURA

The Biosphere? In swinging little Oracle? Near Tucson?

CORONADO

Oh yeah. That made the tabloids, didn't it?

AURA

That was about a couple of them getting married. No. - Imagine a gigantic bubble in the middle of virgin desert that has an ocean and a rainforest in it, where the big idea was to make a miniature version of earth to put on other planets to support people - as if on earth.

SINE

Just a moment . . .

AURA

But where it seemed the even bigger idea was to make money-as-usual off this, this bubble, by attracting tourists to some kind of adult Disneyland ecology trip where even the love affairs of the occupants make the news.

CORONADO

Yeah; that's earth all right.

SINE

You know what?

AURA

With the result that even in little Oracle you can hear a kind of traffic hum the way you do in Phoenix, and the real earth is getting trashed from more car exhaust and roads and having to mine the earth more yet to build more cars because everybody's wearing theirs out driving around to the Biosphere, etc. etc. What did they care? Getting ready to live on some other planet, or on all the other planets, as if who needs this one. This is just the cradle that we'd forget after awhile.

SINE

What do you mean: "Now they got a grip?"

AURA

They came to their senses and saw they weren't going anywhere for a while, so they switched to figuring out how to make this planet last.

SINE

Same experiment. Good PR, though. This can't hurt.

AURA

You mean . . .

SINE

I mean we live in a bubble now, only it's hard to see this, it's so big. Maybe we notice, when something goes wrong, like your fish. But in space, we know we're in a system because when any part breaks down, it can mean the end, like the space station. People don't see how earth is similar, yet. I think it will take as long as for people to live the way you imagined in your perfect world. Because the planetary adventure is starting soon, and the planets are endless. We'll proceed through the universe as your pioneers did through the West. But with no Pacific Ocean to stop them.

AURA

The Pacific hasn't stopped anything. Now its Indonesia , Africa . . .

SINE

We probably must keep going on earth until  it is finished. Maybe then we will understand. But for now, it's on to the planets, and the rest of earth. No stopping. Is time.

AURA

So this is where your fatalism brings you - to some wild west version of space where everybody goes for the gold, whatever it is.

SINE

So what? There's plenty room for everybody. Even if every man had his own planet and the population grew exponential, we could not even leave the neighborhood. We do not even know how many stars there are. And planets? - To populate the universe will take forever. Stars and planets are born and die faster than people. Did you know that?

AURA

What do I know . . . 

SINE

They had a head start. Five billion people on earth now. One hundred billion galaxies, and who knows how many planets. Plenty of room: one planet for drivers who don't mind exhaust, another for cigarette smokers who do and are willing to walk. Another for purists who don't smoke or drive.  Endless possibilities.

AURA

The freedom to pollute as one's conscience dictates. The Pilgrims would be proud.

SINE

Okay. So we leave some planets untouched - wilderness areas.

CORONADO

And have another one or two as garbage dumps.

Yucca Mountain, future national nuclear waste dump near Las Vegas
As seen from the light at the end of the five mile tunnel

AURA

Better than plutonium in Nevada. - All right. I get it. It might work as long as everybody stayed on their own planet. They probably would as long as it was expensive and time-consuming to get from one to the next.

CORONADO

You're thinking like yesterday. By the time this is happening, we'll get around easy, no waiting. And you can bet some planet will have more uranium or something that everybody wants, and we'll have star wars for sure. Besides, if people settled for just doing their own thing in isolation, like you, every desert island would have somebody on it already. No. People like to mix it up. And nothing happens without division of labor. - Picture earth as downtown, the neighboring planets as the suburbs. Even if downtown starts looking kind of messy, people still want to keep in touch with home, tap the big market, do the shopping. Coronado could have set up a whole society covering the area he claimed for Spain , from Kansas to California. But no, Spain was his reference point, and he headed back to Mexico . He sent letters to the King and Viceroy as he went along: progress reports. (Of course they were in on the deal, so he had to.)

AURA

It may be in the air, but there's a lot in the air: competing ideas, competing cultures. If we have any sense, we'll stay right here and get right with each other and the world, first. Your fantasies are very cute, but you can't just pigeonhole pollution somewhere, or even certain ways of living.

CORONADO

There could be like a menu. How do you want to live. Okay, we'll ship you there. If you're really demanding, you get your own planet.

AURA

Think what the space program takes to do just an occasional space shot. Multiply that by a hundred, or just two.

CORONADO

NASA is like Columbus' trip. After the government push come the settlers.

Getting up to speed for the future New Mexico space tourism launch site

SINE

Yes. Like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. The military started it. Now private companies put up hundreds of satellites - enough to cover earth. And this is just the beginning. At least in the U.S. -  Even China is putting up a satellite to light up a city  instead of more street lamps.

AURA

I don't even want to think about it.

SINE

Is no big thing.

AURA

I don't care.

SINE

Coronado, how long did it take for Coronado to get to Kansas, from the time the Spanish found America . 1492 to Coronado in Kansas.

CORONADO

1541. Forty nine years.

SINE

Gāisǐ de, is fast. And they were walking. So it took from the beginning of the universe to 1492 for Europeans to find America , and only fifty years to learn the area and start mapping  the continent. Is miracle. And now we map a planet in a few days or two years at most. And accurately; no guesswork. Same as landsat maps of earth. And no hands.

AURA

Speed is it, isn't it. Nascar living. Can't get rich fast enough, either.

SINE

My point . . .

AURA

Yes. Man can do it. He's got the gift. He's got the power. In fact, he nearly stopped global warming with nuclear winter. What he has trouble with is holding back. - I say why knock yourself out cloning everything we have enough doubt about already to be discussing this much. I refer back to my picture of Walmarts sprinkled out there like stardust.

SINE

You have doubts.

AURA

And I'm not alone. Don't tell me you could have gone either way on nuclear war.

SINE

That is past, yes? Now we can have fun: try new environments, see new sights. You think the buffalo were good. They did not hold back. When they saw a meadow, they ate; they frolicked. They did not wrestle with the question of being a nuisance to the grass. When Coronado came, the buffalo were all over, yes? Look: you love landscapes. Imagine these rock walls and a pink sky. That is Mars.

AURA

What the . . .

SINE

Or: a cloud-capped volcano higher than Everest against a clear red sky.

AURA

What're you . . .

SINE

Or yellow rivers . . .

CORONADO (singing)

"Yellow river, yellow river . . .”   (lyrics) I'll be back in a minute.
(exits)

SINE (calling)

Molten sulphur.

CORONADO and AURA

Ich!

SINE

Or night skies ablaze with a million moons . . .

CORONADO (off)

Yeah. Now you're getting somewhere.

SINE

These places exist. Look at your Viking 1 photos of Mars and you'll see stark red landscapes like this, but with pink skies and blue clouds. Fantastic.

Yucca at White Sands, New Mexico

AURA

Fantastic, like Meteor Crater? White Sands New Mexico? Your off-road Martian roving around Tuba City? There are plenty of places right here as surreal as anywhere else in the universe. I think I'll stay where I can breathe.

SINE

You must have wondered about life out there sometime. Imagine beings that breathe ammonia . . .

AURA

Jesus Mary and Joseph ...

SINE

Well, Walmarts maybe not everywhere.

AURA

Ammonia marts, then. Madison Avenue is pretty imaginative. What I'm asking for is a moment's reflection before doing whatever we do do.

CORONADO (calling)

Doo-doo is right. The buffalo had it right.

SINE

Well I . . . Anybody who treks to the bottom of the Grand Canyon to grasp it in your art - You must be an adventurer, and optimist.

AURA

It could be nice. I'm just upset by what I see. The world is my living room, and the guests are misbehaving.

SINE

So move. Escape. In space everything is new. We don't know what we'll find.

AURA

But what about the other newcomers? Maybe some people can be totally open and mesh with a new environment. But I'm afraid most cling to the familiar. Even explorers have old habits. It's perfectly natural. And then they can't accept the new world for what it is, but have to destroy it and replace it with what they know.

SINE

Oh I think it will be difficult to not be totally absorbed by what we discover. It may compel our undivided attention. Life out there will blow our minds.

AURA

It just may do that.

SINE

I'm excited just to be near the radio telescope at Socorro.

Radio telescope array - Socorro, New Mexico

CORONADO (returning)

More telescopes? – What a relief . . .

SINE

They listen for radio signals from other civilizations. Is just south of Albuquerque. Satellite dishes as big as houses, on railroad tracks. Many, many.

AURA

Smarty-pants scientists. Radio signals my ass.

SINE

Hmm.

CORONADO

If you’d have gone a little farther south you’d have gotten to that spaceport they’re gonna’ fly tourists way up there. White Sands.

SINE

Huh? 

AURA

If you're so gaga, you might as well expect a message in flying comet debris that comes across as a three-dimensional petroglyph legible only from the inside out. Why should it be easy? To meet numbskulls? - Like the people in Roswell. They're still trying to figure out what happened there, and that was years ago.

SINE

Roswell

CORONADO

New Mexico again.

AURA

Not that far from Socorro, either, appropriately. You'd think they would have seen the light.

SINE

What . . .

AURA

The flying saucer crash - whatever . . .

SINE

Flying saucer?

AURA

Maybe.

SINE

Gǒu shǐ! And you were there.

AURA

No. The closest I ever came to any of that was Star Wars, when they were filming in Yuma.

The secret to levitation revealed at the set of the Star Wars sequel,
on location at Imperial Dunes by Yuma, Arizona

SINE

Yuma?

CORONADO

Downstream, where the river peters out.

AURA

You'd like it. Another one of those unearthly-looking places, except on earth.

CORONADO

What did you do?

AURA

Matte paintings for some of the sky. It's where the monsters came out of sand pits by the anti-gravity barge. Revenge of the Jedi? - Never mind. So, fine. We get to Mars, you get the rivers going again, you make the desert bloom. What's wrong with this picture?

SINE

What?

AURA

No Walmart.

SINE

Tā mā dì dìyù !

AURA

Know why? - Because Coronado hasn't wiped out the buffalo and Indians yet. You haven't been able to get the railroad built.

CORONADO

Excuse me. Coronado knocked off the buffalo and the Indians?

AURA

Well it's a team effort, isn't it?

CORONADO

Have you forgotten about your friend Buffalo Bill? The genocide was on your pioneers' watch. Marching the Cherokees  from Florida to Oklahoma worked pretty good. Coronado came, he saw, and he left.

AURA

And the Zunis?

CORONADO

All right. The Zunis. - But that wasn't Coronado's doing.

AURA

What'd I miss.

CORONADO

Who would've thought I'd get into all this with some broad I wash up to on a sand bar. - Look, when Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, sure, he made the Indians work the sugarcane he brought. But they dropped like flies, mostly from diseases he didn't even know he’d brought. This really ticked off a Dominican brother in his crew who thought they were to blame, and his writings made it to the Emperor. Same thing happened to Cortes, and Pizarro, and by the time Coronado got his turn the Emperor required the explorers and settlers to treat the Indians nice. That's why Coronado got the job and Cortes didn't. And he tried like hell to do what the Emperor said: He traded with the Indians along the way for food; he didn't just take it. And though they had horses on this trip, they walked anyway because the Indian allies who volunteered weren't supposed to carry stuff. That was the horses' job.  

SINE

Not enough horses?

CORONADO

They had a thousand horses and fifteen hundred people, okay? -And when they got to the Zuni village, he meant to negotiate. The only, only reason they got into it was that the troops were hungry, and some of them were veterans of Cortes and Pizarro, and the Indians weren't welcoming them. So Coronado gave in and the battle was on. - Along the way they passed some deserted Indian villages, and historians think maybe smallpox was a reason. It spread the same way colds spread. So Indians who'd never even heard of the Spanish got sick and died as soon as they heard about them from other Indians who had met them, or who had only heard about them.

AURA

I wonder why the same thing didn't happen when the Pilgrims came over.

CORONADO

They think it did. And just like everywhere else, it killed nine out of ten Indians.

AURA

Jeez.

CORONADO

The Conquistadores and the Pilgrims both thought it was God's will, and the Indians figured their own gods just weren't up to it.

AURA

They were using germ warfare and didn't even know it.

(to SINE)

And you want to go to some other planet, or galaxy even, and see what kind of hell you can raise there.

SINE

We probably will not even find anything like us.

AURA

And if we do, they can all just drop dead.

CORONADO

Well it's not a one-way street, you know. Nobody in Europe heard of syphilis till Columbus got back.

SINE

Peace and love.

AURA

So Europe was just lucky people fool around less than they talk.

CORONADO

That's a fact.

AURA (to SINE)

Maybe you can pick up the Andromeda strain on your travels and bring it on home.

SINE

You know, both of you make man sound like some superhuman, powerful . . . We are nothing. We don't even know why we're here. We just go round and round, like a squirrel in a cage. So we do things like shoot the buffalo, and drain the Yangtze. What's that in the bigger picture?

AURA

Do continents count? - Picture a continent as one animal's homestead, with copper being mined in the backyard (Arizona), hauled over the sidewalk (the Interstate) to the workshop (Illinois) where it's made into wires that get strung all over the place and turn the New York night into day. Picture vegetables grown in the side yard (midwest) and hauled over the driveway to the kitchen (Indianapolis) for canning, and served later in the dining room (LA). We've turned a continent into a homestead, and the only critter that knows his way around the place besides us is the cat and dog. The buffalo might have done okay if anybody'd given them a map and told them to cut sharp turns at the fences. - What used to be a garden with nothing between the animals and the rain but the forest canopy has turned into some regimented, plasticine estate.

CORONADO

Animal house, forever.

AURA

And now the birdies and the fish have to watch out for windmills and wave turbines.

CORONADO

Wave turbines?

AURA

Yeah. To catch ocean currents. Something I just read about.

SINE

Well, an ant hill is a work of nature, you could say, and a nation is, too. Even a global culture. But, you know, you worry too much, as if something is imminent. . .

AURA

You said yourself you can map a whole planet in a few days.

SINE

When I drove here, there were stretches where I could see for miles - like in New Mexico - and no sign of humanity - only the road. - Like another planet.

CORONADO

Or the Coronado expedition.

AURA

Nice illusion. Everything's been mapped and accounted for.

SINE

Petrified Forest not stoned because it saw man. That happened long before. Foundations of Capitol Hill, Bejing are built on a crust floating on a jelly sea of molten metal. Two shakes and gone. - The dams in this River are  impressive, but just cries in the wilderness of tiny creatures wanting a drink. The River has been dammed before by rock slides, volcanoes, off-and-on. Why be upset when man blocks it? - And before, there was no river, because here was the bottom of the sea. Draining away the ocean was not our idea.  The River was not our idea.  Pollution, materialism, are recyclable. The whole planet is recyclable. Humanity, too. We are star dust. Take away the water, and we are just dust. We are not lords because we stand on dry ground.

AURA

Humble pie my eye.

SINE

I feel I know where man is in the schema. And if we are alone, it would be nice to have some friends, say, over there....

AURA

Well that's a step forward, I guess. Coronado and the rest seemed more interested in maybe finding something in the other guy's sack.

SINE

To aim for  the stars I think gives us a focus, something to shoot for. This could bind us together, like the Space Station, and our differences would melt away.

CORONADO

That's good, Sine. Our place in the universe is making the universe our place.

AURA

And it's this culture going into space; it's a responsibility. We ought to decide if we want our yet bigger place in the universe to be a bunch of parking lots filled with our fuming exoskeletons.

CORONADO (to SINE, who appears baffled)

Cars again, Sine.

SINE

Is - the whole diversity of earth going into space, the European space program; the Chinese . . .

AURA

Same jet set culture, sorry.

SINE

all fascinated with the adventure. Western civilization invented  the hardware, yes, but now everybody has it, just like African television. The beauty is a new sense of comradeship as we lift off for other worlds.

CORONADO

Sounds good, Sine, but we've been at this point before, with the discovery of this new world we're sitting on. The history of the new world is of the battle royale between all the nations duking it out.

SINE

Space is different from America because nobody knew America existed. Explorers claimed new areas as they found them. In space, we will not even get to a planet unless we know it's there and aim for it. Anyway, Space is limitless; there is no need to step on other people's toes.

CORONADO

Location location location. The stuff close to downtown earth is gonna be more valuable. Hell, we're already in space and there's no unity. - You said yourself every nation has their own machinery up there. The only way, only way we'll get together on it is if one of us finds some Indians up there who chase us back here.

SINE

That would do it. From the beginning we have thought there is some greater consciousness. Before, it was gods. Now we think must be other life.

AURA

It better be smarter than we are. We haven't figured out what the animals in our own backyard have to say, and we've had plenty of time.

CORONADO

If it is smarter, it'll find us first.

AURA

That's smart?

SINE

Maybe just to see what is.

CORONADO

Maybe because we've got something they need.

AURA

Hopefully not sand.

SINE

Maybe just wide-open spaces, clean water and air.

AURA

Something they’ve already trashed back home.

CORONADO

They could be looking for something different.

AURA

And find us by accident.

SINE

Serendipity again! The arms race was nothing. When we find we have company and no way to follow them, in one moment the earth will become as one.

CORONADO

We'd be the suffering Indians. They could force us to work on their big space ships because we're so small we could track down the mice.

AURA

Maybe they'd be nice to us and give anybody a job because we're so big we could hold their spaceship in the air while they scraped off the barnacles.

SINE

Maybe they have found us already, and we don't even know it.

AURA

Maybe the only ones who found us so far are the ones that crashed in New Mexico.

CORONADO

Lucky for us.

SINE

Maybe we alone made it here but forgot where we came from.

CORONADO

Maybe we're Martians . . .

AURA

And ran out of water back home. - Well, if there's somebody out there who can get here, maybe they can tell us why we're here. I'd really like to know. But they'll probably be like you scientists who've gotten us to the moon and sent a camera to Mars, but haven’t a clue about what we're doing here. Nothing I've heard anyway.

SINE

Patience. We keep exploring and learning. Someday . . .

AURA

And after all that, here we are, wherever here is.

SINE

Well,  this is the American way, the human way. A little at a time. You have the impossible dream. You want to know why,  today.

AURA

And why not? I don't even hear scientists ask why. They're like drowning men grasping at whatever answers seem in reach.

SINE

We ask why all the time. Why is the sky blue. And we know why.

AURA

Some chemical equation about how the sky is blue - like green nitrogen plus yellow sunlight gives blue sky. Word games. I'm not asking how. My dog can handle how. How do I get in the house. And what. What's in the house: love or dog food or both. That's as good as you get.

(laying out two stones)

Look at these stones.  One plus one equals two. Where's the information here? I can see one and one, and I can see two. Mr. Science comes along and says one plus one is two. Well thank you very much. Mr. Science says out there is mostly empty space and a few little dots of matter. That even I am made of atoms, tiny universes of mostly empty space with a few dots of matter whirling around. And that my words to you are just vibrations of atoms that pass through the empty space between us till they vibrate your ear drum atoms and get transformed into electrical signals that get processed by that atomic computer in your head. As if it's all machinery. This is a long way of saying nothing. I don't like shell games.

CORONADO

I hear loneliness, isolation, alienation.

AURA

I'll bet your hero Coronado would know what I'm talking about. Looking for wealth when he was already rich was a way to avoid the question. Any recognition he might get would have given him a fleeting sense of being connected.

CORONADO

You're the wrong one to put down the American dream, you with the impossible dream.

(Scoffing): Why.

AURA

I'd rather be that flower - over there. It goes from yellow to red when it’s ready for a butterfly to taste its nectar. It just is, and doesn't ask questions.

CORONADO

It just gets pollinated.

SINE

Asking why like this is wanting somebody to tell you your place in the universe - why you exist.

AURA

The closest I've come to an answer is to be down here, enveloped by these walls. As if the world had opened like a flower . . .

SINE

And nothing above but the black wings of night. You seek a motive force to connect every grain of you to all that is around you, something so all encompassing you are moved in space like a flower at the nexus of forces - drawn up by the light, drawn down by gravity.

AURA

What is there in me that hears a piece of music not as bits of sound separated by bits of silence the way a computer digitizes it. I know this is what music is made of, but I hear it as a unity.

SINE

You may as well ask what is God.

AURA

We've limped along for generations with that crutch. Another word for what we don't know.

SINE

If God is anything but  an unsolved mystery, you are somebody who isn't going to like that either. Is not the ultimate gift for us to discover our place at the same time we know it intuitively?

AURA

But we settle for such flim-flam answers, and do all the crazy things people do.

SINE

It's a getting by. - Now and then we have an insight - like Einstein and Columbus.

AURA

Rarified shell games -

SINE

Is still intuition and emotion.

AURA

Yes. At least we share that with the flower. - But you think you have to leave earth to learn, as if the answer is outside yourself.

SINE

Well, you can get there from here. Why not space? Tell me.

AURA

Because we don't know what we're doing I keep saying. A little bacterium of smallpox proved that. You know what I learned on PBS a few nights ago. Before they set off the first atomic bomb at White Sands, they didn't actually know if it would start some huge chain reaction and ignite every atom of the planet. Dumb and reckless. Best minds of the day.

SINE

If on Pluto, no problem.

AURA

They could have ignited themselves at the same time. - To anybody over there, or there, or there, we're pretty far out already, right?

CORONADO

That's no lie.

AURA

Well is there any earthly reason, or any unearthly reason why you scientists can't make some headway with what you've got already? I mean, here we are; it's as if the earth is cracked open like a coconut.

SINE

Well, we fly in airplanes. Why not spaceships?

CORONADO

Don't get her going on airplanes, man.

AURA

What do you call what we're on now? Maybe it's not the spaceship you want to be on, but if you're going to dance through space, what better could you ask for. You can lean back, relax. You don't even have to steer. You can breathe the air without a respirator, so far. When you want to look at the passing scene, you just look up and out. You don't have to wear a helmet, or squint through a porthole. And if you're bored with the trip, you can raft down a river or step out into a desert lightning show, or do a grand jette. (Does one)

SINE

Nice.

AURA

If there is a heaven, I'd say we're in it  (lyrics).

SINE

Nicely put.

AURA

What makes you think you're going to make progress just by hopping from one piece of ground to another? That's the all­-American, all-human, excuse me, mistake.

SINE

Well, this why thing  (lyrics) has been here a long time, you know, and we still know nothing, I admit it. Would you allow space flight, little earth mother, if it would give us time to learn?

AURA

I'm listening.

SINE

Well,

AURA(exiting)

Hold that thought. I'll be back.

CORONADO

Damn. Isn't that just like a woman. Just as you're coming to the punch line.

SINE

I can finish that for you.

CORONADO(hands SINE his glass)

(BLACKOUT)

(END OF ACT II)

A Yucca in bloom. The Yucca is the state flower of New Mexico.

Act 3

AT RISE : Dusk.

CORONADO (to SINE)

See, Sine.   She remembered.
(to AURA)
Sine's been holding on with cactus juice.

AURA (returning)

Saguaro wine. - Here, try this.

CORONADO

Now what?

AURA

Yucca stems.

SINE

What do you do?

AURA

Taste it. I nearly fell over some on the way to the restroom.

SINE

Sweet.

AURA

If you ever go to the Biosphere, I can have you over for treats.

CORONADO

If you ever have me over, I'll try that Indian stuff, but make something else too, just in case - like tacos.

AURA

Are you sure? That's Indian food you know.

CORONADO

Is not.

AURA

Is too. - What's in it? Beans, tomatoes, chili sauce, maybe some avocado if you're nice, all inside a tortilla. They never had any of that anywhere except America , until Columbus. See. Two can play that game.

CORONADO

Oh come on.

AURA

That's all Indian food, sorry. You are what you eat. You're American Indian.

SINE: (slapping CORONADO's back)

Brothers.

CORONADO

Ugh.  Off me, bro. -   Tomatoes? What about pizza, spaghetti, Italian food.

AURA

I don't know what they ate in Italy before Columbus.

CORONADO

Potatoes morning noon and night I suppose.

AURA

I don't think so. Potatoes weren't anywhere but right here till Columbus.

SINE

They were on  the menu in the Russian Mir, and I believe on the American Shuttle, too. Chinese planted some on  the other side of  the moon. They freeze-dried.

CORONADO

Freeze-dried. That's space age.

AURA

Except the Indians in the Andes have always freeze dried potatoes.

CORONADO

Does this never end?

AURA

A Peruvian told me: At night the small potatoes freeze, and during the day they thaw and soften. The Indians stomp out the moisture with their feet. It's called Chuño, and it keeps about four years.

SINE and CORONADO :(holding nose)

Phew!

AURA

They use it in stews.

CORONADO

Potatoes have gotta be Irish, if they're anything. The Irish potato famine. That made the history books.

AURA

I guess nobody told 'em about freeze drying.

CORONADO

Well what the hell did Europeans eat before America , besides beef. The Spanish brought cattle at least.

SINE

And sugar. You said they brought sugar.

CORONADO

They got that from Africa.

AURA

I don't know what they ate. But, you know what? I think I'll find out. You've got me wondering.

SINE

It's lucky Columbus found America . You’d be starved or bored to death with  the menu if he hadn't.

AURA

They don't call America the world's breadbasket for nothing.

SINE

Now that trip paid off. Serendipity.

AURA: (questioning CORONADO)

Columbus didn't think so though.

CORONADO

He didn't. But we do. I do. Tacos.

AURA: (to SINE)

So what's the pay off? The tough part - getting to America - he did that before he’d ever heard of tacos. Tacos were a taste treat for a job well done, but what have we learned because of tacos?

CORONADO

I thought you were into food.

SINE

We’ve stayed alive long enough to keep figuring things out.

AURA

So the pay off is more people, more activity. But more insight? And what more are we going to know if we manage to get over –  there, say. (pointing at the sky)

SINE

What can I say?

CORONADO

This is where we were before.

SINE

It gives us time to learn Why - Why Why Why.

AURA

Go ahead. But this is your last chance. I'm getting tired.

SINE

Go back to Meteor Crater.

AURA

Big ugly hole in the ground.

SINE

Is  a mile across, yes?

AURA

I suppose.

SINE

The meteor that made that hole was one hundred feet in diameter.

AURA

So . . .

SINE

They come in other sizes. Like hats.

AURA

Okay.

SINE

When satellites - sorry - started to photograph the earth, they found a  huge crater in Mexico, Yucatan, formed just before the dinosaurs went extinct.

AURA

A biggee, huh?

SINE

Over a hundred miles. Until satellites, we have been too close to see. And now geologists have found traces from that impact in the same layers of rock the dinosaurs are in. They died from the impact of a meteor eight miles in diameter. Astronomers in Tucson and Flagstaff have found asteroids and comets with  trajectories that could hit earth.  If earth is our only home, maybe we  would disappear, too. A big enough meteor could crack earth in two.

CORONADO

We'd need the Space Shuttle just to go visiting.

SINE

Maybe. Some say the moon used to be where the Pacific is, until a big collision once.

CORONADO

Sheeh it.

SINE

Only way to learn Why is to live long enough, and we have  a better chance with more places to stay. And maybe we can find other places as easy as earth.

AURA

Aren't there any missiles left over from the cold war? Why not just blow up the meteor before it gets us, or shoot it off course. I know there's still a missile south of Tucson, in Green Valley, by the copper mine. I hear they give tours of it, too, if you can believe it.

Nuclear missile on display - Green Valley, Arizona

SINE

Earth is doomed. If not a meteor,  the sun will burn out. Space is our chance.

CORONADO

Just make sure you get us far enough out. I've seen pictures of the Milky Way, and it looks like we're in a big spiral flush right down the toilet.

SINE

Guess what is in center, at the end?

CORONADO

A black hole?

SINE

Definite maybe.

CORONADO

No shit.

SINE

Kitt Peak astronomers say so.

CORONADO

So we've got to get out of the Milky Way to be safe.

SINE

This is true.

AURA

Well what about the big bang theory. Aren't we supposed to all get yanked back together after the universe quits expanding?

SINE

If that is the way, forget everything.

AURA

Well, why not find out about that first.

SINE

First.
(giving up)
First.

AURA

I thought you said we're learning so fast. What's the point of doing anything if we're just going to die?

CORONADO

We die anyway.

AURA

The species - our life's consciousness.

CORONADO

Now you’re talking like Sine. If we live till everything comes to a grinding halt, it'll only be because we outlasted the Milky Way and God knows what else, which is why we've got to get the show on the road, instead of yap yap yapping about it all night.

AURA

To survive that long, we've got to survive on earth first, and wherever else we go. We'd better get our act together before we go on tour.

SINE

We're trying, yes? Everybody is doing the best they can. We are to this point, and maybe there is no other way we’re here unless everything happened exactly as it  has happened.

AURA

I bet the dark ages really moved things along.

SINE (generally)

How can you know? - We are an experiment with no control group.

AURA

Which is why we'd better get it right. Don't be a fatalist and get sidetracked, Sine. Columbus would still have proved the world is round even if he hadn't bumped into America . Sooner, probably. And in America , the Indians were into astronomy before Columbus set sail.

SINE

You know this?

AURA

At the south entrance of Chaco Canyon, you can see where the midday sun shining through three stone slabs falls on two spiral patterns the Indians put on a cliff face. The daggers of sunshine mark the first days of summer and winter.

Chaco Canyon solar calendar on first day of summer and winter when
daggar of sunlight falls on center of spiral petroglyph (carved on rock)

SINE

Chaco Canyon.

AURA

No, no. They don't let you get right to it anymore.

CORONADO

Cactus stabbers?

AURA

No.  Rock scribblers. - You know what's closer, and no restrictions? Petrified Forest. The Cave of Life. The afternoon sun comes through a crack in the roof, and forty-five days before winter solstice it shines on a spiral on the cave wall. That's the time the Hopi Indians Wuwuchin ceremony celebrates the beginning of life. They still use landmarks on the horizon to tell the solstices

Progress of sunlight daggar on Petrified Forest's Puerco Pueblo petroglyph
triggers Hopi Indians' Wuwuchin ceremony

SINE

Gāisǐ de.

CORONADO

Man, you're into this stuff.

AURA

I bet there're other examples under water at Lake Powell.

CORONADO

Probably are. There are scads of Indian petroglyphs you can see a short hike away from the boat in Glen Canyon, by the dam. More up Lake Powell from Rainbow Bridge. They kept pointing them out.

AURA

So I say: if the Indians were the only people in the world, they might have gone to the moon on their own sometime. If they wanted to.

SINE

Well, Chinese, you know. - And you are telling me this to not be a fatalist? You say even if the experiment went some other way, it would end the same.

CORONADO

There are Indians and there are Indians, and there's us, and we've all got this itch.

AURA (to SINE)

Look. You know how when somebody learns they've only got a couple years to live, they suddenly rearrange their priorities because they can really feel what’s important? Well, we all three have a fatal disease, you know.

CORONADO

The yucca!

AURA

Life. Life is fatal. Money, fame - these are sirens that can take away your time. Don't do that Tesla job just for the thrill. You know something. Do those jobs only if you really believe in what you're doing.

CORONADO

Highest and best use . . .

SINE

Easy to say . . .

AURA

There's more than one way.

SINE

I'm with you on Why. But pure research . . . Pays nothing. I'm not Einstein, and even Einstein's school kicked him out.

AURA

You could do even better.

SINE

How?

AURA

Get other people to do it. Amplify yourself. Inspire them.

CORONADO

I could write a script where you tell about things.

SINE

Funny. They'll throw me and my green card out for faking.

CORONADO

This is America . You can do anything. This is honest work. We're making software. The Koreans or you guys make the TV sets. Somebody's gotta make the stuff to put on 'em, or else worldwide recession.

SINE

And this pays? You're joking again.

CORONADO (today's fee)

Five dollars a ticket.

SINE

Ha ha.

CORONADO

You don't have to tell them the meaning of life, you know.

SINE

I don't know the . . .

CORONADO

I know. Just get 'em thinking, like you've got me thinking. Ching gow. I'd pay five dollars for this, without the yucca sucka. If they leave just thinking about any of this, they'll get more than they bargained for.

SINE

Why not broadcast, free, you know - advertisers.

CORONADO

With all that other noise? Where they're channel surfing, or trying to wipe the baby? No, man, no. Right here. This canyon gets you in the mood.

SINE

You're looking at the stars.

CORONADO

Same thing.

AURA

They're coming through better than I'd have thought.

SINE

No more monsoon . . .

CORONADO

Maybe there's a wind up there.
(to AURA)
You ever done scene design?

AURA

Hey. I have my own lines. I have a life, thank you.

CORONADO

I might need a Cassandra.

AURA

What kind of scrip are you using, chocolate beans?

CORONADO

Hey, I'm Mexican doesn't mean I'm poor. Real estate, remember? Little houses on the prairie? Paradise found.

AURA

I don't know. What've you got in mind?

CORONADO

The truth. As close as possible. - Hey, Sine. Can you locate mineral deposits, like if you wanted to start up a mine?

SINE

Only if I look. Why look?

CORONADO

If you find a decent mineral deposit on public lands in this country, you get the land for two and a half dollars an acre. You don't even have to mine it.

AURA

Two fifty? What kind of rip-off is this! - I pay taxes - some.

CORONADO

I heard about this guy in Arizona who gets three hundred thousand a year from a Hilton Hotel on land he got this way in the sixties for a hundred fifty bucks. Let's see, two and a half into a hundred fifty . . .

AURA

That's outrageous!

CORONADO

Oh. You'd rather he mine it?

AURA

No.

CORONADO

You think the Conquistadors were bad. I heard about this gold mine in Colorado - Summitville - where they got out the gold by leaching the rock with cyanide. Pretty gold: They give tours at the Denver mint. Only thing is, the mine leaked, and the cyanide killed everything in the Alamosa River for about twenty miles. -  Maybe that’s why there’s a petition, no, I guess it’s a bill now, trying to stop uranium mining a little bit downstream.

AURA (chokes on a scream.)

American Eagle Gold Bullion coin, courtesy of Denver Mint
No immediate threat of extinction

CORONADO

Then the mine went bankrupt, so the government had to clean it up to the tune of twenty million.

AURA

Mining . . .   Here ? !

SINE

Is crazy, like China now. - Why seek mineral lands?

CORONADO

To start up a theater; do this play. Cheap real estate.

AURA

That's good. Turn the tables on 'em. But . . . Not a theater here!

CORONADO

Why not? It's full of people. If it hadn't occurred naturally, somebody'd have built it for the rafting.

AURA

Probably you.

CORONADO

You say what you think. Think of it as a pulpit. It makes a fabulous church.

AURA

The real thing, yes.

CORONADO

And you could preach about sacrilege: I'll bet you have no idea how many mines were down here before they made this into a park, do you. Guys even died trying to put in a railroad.

AURA

And now it's a park - not exactly wilderness - and it doesn't need any more crap.

CORONADO

You actually think I'd try to get you in on commercializing this space? You must think I'm a dumb Mesikin, too. Nah. The great stage is the flat land on top. And the theater could look like a flying saucer. Where'd you say it looked like Mars up there, where they did the Mars Rover test drive?

SINE

Tuba City; west of it.

CORONADO

Anybody that passes by without seeing our play can just spend the rest of their life wondering if somebody is coming or going.

AURA

And who do you think is going to listen to anything I have to say, or to anything you have to say. None of us has anything nice to say about anything.

CORONADO

We seem to have struck a chord.

AURA

The Chamber of Commerce would close it down, or the tourist board.

CORONADO

Nah. We'll advertise for 'em. We'll give honorable mention to the stuff worth seeing, like your sun dagger calendar. It's clean industry. It provides jobs. And - you'll like this - it can't be automated.

AURA

You with your "hero", Sine with man's ... pst ... and me ... God.

CORONADO

Well somehow together we have a point, I think. Putting together the past with the present, and the future. They're of a piece, no?

AURA

Too much alike, I fear.

CORONADO

Well, we are here, and we are learning.

SINE

It's as if we are matter's attempt to explain itself. Conscious star dust on a mission, don't ask me why.

AURA

Okay.

CORONADO

If we can just survive, it might all be worth it. Our understanding could increase.

AURA

It's clear we occupy a place where things are so dependable we can shape them. We can will our hand to move away from our body, as a fist, or as a greeting.

SINE

Ethics in physics.

AURA

We have such freedom.

SINE

And a sense of balance that lets each new insight merge with our life and even become manifest in things, like cars, as if what we learn goes into our evolving, and the world evolves with us.

AURA

A sense of balance in great need of fine tuning.

CORONADO

Cassandras may be the early warning system.

AURA

So far intuition is all that's saved us.

CORONADO

Whatever

AURA

When we go to find shelter by a newborn star, let it be by people, or whatever we've become, who can respect themselves and admire their past and future acts. Our going should not be a fleeing or a conquering - just a joyful noise.

SINE

If we can do that, it must be because we are really trying to answer your first question.

AURA

The first question. We may yet be the equal of a flower.

CORONADO

What a lot of work to get to that point.

SINE

At least to be able to say it - in our language.

CORONADO

A joyful noise, huh. So it's okay for conscious matter to try and become more conscious yet, and enlist other matter in the cause. Ãndéle. This could go somewhere.

AURA

Hold it.

CORONADO

I have my lines, too.

AURA

The only way we're going anywhere is with consideration for what's on our path and in ourselves. You have my respect because you're able to see in your hero what a hero worshipper cannot see, yet you love him anyway. Show equal respect for all the facets of yourself, too. Sine's got something with balance.

CORONADO

Keep talking. This is progress. At least we’ve got our opening lines. You can't have a dialogue without 'em. And you need dialogue to reach a conclusion.

AURA

Maybe this could go somewhere. But,
(yawning)
God I'm tired. I'll see you in the morning, if you're still here.

CORONADO

I'm not going anywhere. - Your painting.

AURA

A bit of scenery? A dream of wilderness. You want to be the stagemanager. You take care of it.
(Goes off humming "God Bless America  (lyrics)")

CORONADO

My pleasure.
(calling)
Think about it, Aura.

SINE

I could like this.

CORONADO

I'm glad you're here.

AURA (a cry, off)

Oh!

CORONADO (alarmed)

The Yucca!

SINE

It's late. Let's go.

CORONADO

You, you old butterfly. Watch your step. Here's a flash. Yell if you need help.
(hands SINE a flashlight)
I'm gonna sleep out here.

SINE: (following AURA, calling)

Wait. I have torch.

CORONADO: (calling)

Hey, Sine, think about it.
(to self)
And there goes Kokopelli, right out of a petroglyph, dreaming after the little earth mother. - Yeah. If not these two, who so love nature, then who? Who should people the earth? - Yeah, sleep. Out here, under the stars, with the earth all around me and this stream from the heart of the land. God. You start out with an idea and you get in the middle of nowhere; you get caught up in what you didn't anticipate; and you meet your dream again as a stranger. Well, Coronado, you did not come here in vain. We shall have a dialogue. Equal shares, family style. Why not? I will not be disappointed.
(raising helmet for a toast)
Serendipity.

(BLACKOUT)

(END OF PLAY)

(DURING APPLAUSE / BOWS, A CHILD, RUBBING EYES, WANDERS OUT ON STAGE)

CHILD

Da ?  Dada ?

CORONADO (rubbing child's head)

Over there

CHILD (running to Sine)

Da . . .

SINE

Look at all the people !

Tours – no charge

CORONADO

Well, that’s our story.  Glad you could swing by to hear it.  -  But before you go, I just want to remind you about our tours.  They don’t cost extra, so if you’ve got the time, you’re most welcome to stick around. 

Our tours are a little different:  you're not stuck on a bus but can pick and choose what sites to stop at.  They're just audio and arranged by what direction you’re going and also by what topics interest you most.  We include text as a way to give you links to get even deeper into things that really grab you.

Say you’re headed south after you leave Grand Canyon and you’re a rock hound or into star gazing or star trek.  Well, Sine’s southbound tour would be the one for you.  Or say you’re into American history and you’re headed east.  Well, my eastward trek might be more what you want. Take one, two, or take ‘em all.  It’s all the same to us.  And, if you've got the time for the bus-type all inclusive itinerary, click the headphones by the title of a tour and you'll be on the bus, hitting each stop one after the other, no interruption.

And just because one of us is heading up a tour doesn’t mean you only get one point of view.  As you can see from that first time we met , we’re not exactly of one mind, so we tend to mix it up a bit, if you know what I mean.  That can make it more interesting for you just as it makes it a little more edgy for us.

If you’re at the Canyon now, you can start with stuff you can check out right around where you’re staying.   If you’re not at the Canyon yet but have heard of our tours anyway, you might like to hear what we can tell you about stuff you’ll be passing on your way to the Canyon.  Like if you’re coming from the east,  just start listening from  the eastern end of our eastern tour and work you’re way west until you end up at the Canyon.

A lot of the stuff we have to tell you about you can also get to by clicking places on our map.   So you can  hop scotch around to your heart’s content  that way, roads be damned. But the map doesn’t  take you to  everything we’ve got to say.  The links in the conversation you’ve just heard will, though.  So, scroll away.

And check out the Idea Factory Forum. Make friends, influence people, and save the world. We’re all in this together. So let’s hear it !

Drive safe. And happy trails  (lyrics) . . .from the Cast and Tour Guides:

* Aura - Audrey Gambach
* Coronado - Jacob Lopez
* Sine - Jun Lu
* Toddler - John Zeeb