A One Act Tragicomedy based on the style and characters of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

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A city street in Vancouver. No trees.

Dawn.

The near future.

Vladimir flat on the ground. Sleeping.

Estragon standing, teeth clenched, pressing buttons on his flip cell phone. Flips it open, flips it closed, flips it open. His frustration grows.

Estragon: Go to hell! (Throws phone to the ground, the phone bounces and resounds.)

Vladimir (awoken): That’s where we’re going.

Estragon (picks up phone, pockets it): You’re awake! I thought you’d never wake up.

Vladimir (pointing towards Estragon’s pocket): No signal?

Estragon: No, you didn’t give any signals you were alive. I swear you weren’t breathing or anything.

Vladimir: I meant your phone.

Estragon: Oh. No. We’re in the middle of the city and there are no signals. What’s the world come to, eh?
Long pause. Vladimir gets up, arranges himself.

Vladimir: Remember how we got here? Remember Bernays?

Estragon: I had an uncle called Bernays.

Vladimir: Listen. (Digs through his pocket, takes a piece of paper out of his coat pocket, lectures): Edward Bernays, an American born to immigrant parents, was Freud’s nephew. And using his uncle’s theories about people’s unconscious desires, he was the first to manipulate people into buying things they didn’t need. One of his first and greatest achievements was to destroy the taboo against women smoking. Employed by George Hill, the president of the tobacco corporation, he promoted cigarettes as ‘torches of freedom’ and linked them to the women’s suffrage movement. That’s how Bernays popularized the idea that women who smoked were independent from the 1920s on–[1]

Estragon: And this uncle of mine, he told me a story about a scientist called Pavlov and his dog. He said that Pavlov would ring a bell whenever he would feed his dog. But after a while, wanting to see what would happen, he rang the bell but didn’t feed the dog. The dog started salivating, expecting the food nevertheless.

Together: Do you see how irrational it was?

Vladimir: Liberation had nothing to do with smoking, and yet Bernays had women convinced that it did!

Estragon: The bell had nothing to do with the food, and yet Pavlov had his dog convinced that it did!

Together: Are we on the same page?

Estragon: You were saying?

Vladimir (flips page over): And that’s the beginning of how we got here. That’s the beginning of consumerism – the creation of needs in order for businesses – in that case the tobacco company – to thrive.

Pause.

Estragon: Let’s go.

Vladimir: We can’t.

Estragon: Why not?

Vladimir: We’re waiting for the world.

Estragon: But waiting for the world for what – to what?

Vladimir: I’ll get to it. (Takes another crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. ) Any questions?

Estragon (takes his phone out, flips it open, flips it closed): Alright, so how did we get from consumerism to (indicating the desolate streets) This? I mean, I still don’t see the connection.

Vladimir (points towards phone): Still no signal?

Estragon: I meant between the concepts.

Vladimir (from the paper): Well, from the onset of consumerist techniques to the establishment of major clothes corporations, car corporations, and junk-food chains, the path was short. Through incessant use of commercials which convinced people not only to buy Gucci clothes, or Ford cars but also to spend their lives working so that they could buy more and more Gucci clothes, Ford cars, and thousands of other material goods – a materialist culture was quickly established. And since some worked even two jobs in order to sustain their materialist lifestyle, they had no time to cook and thus took recourse in buying junk food from Pizza Hut or KFC. Additionally, neither did they have time to spend with their children – whose nannies were TVs, which taught them to be like their parents and devote their lives to acquiring material possessions–[2]

Estragon: One second. You mean this (holds up the phone)?

Vladimir: Yes.

Estragon: But–

Vladimir: Yes?

Estragon: I like this phone.

Vladimir: It doesn’t even work anymore. And there’s no one to talk to–

Estragon: –you.

Vladimir: But I’m right here.
Pause.

Estragon: Alright, so let’s say that I agree with you so far: consumerism led to a materialist lifestyle. What’s so terrible about that after all? I mean if people were alright with being consumers, they might as well have worked their whole lives to get an extra car, or fill their houses with IKEA furniture. What does it have to do with how we got here?

Vladimir (takes off hat, finds another crumpled page in it, puts hat back on, reads): Consider, first of all, that cars polluted much more than public transit. And in 2004 there were more cars on the road than licensed drivers in the US. People were convinced that they needed to buy a car, that cars represented a status-symbol – this was not natural. What was once a luxury turned into a necessity. China is the best example: for years its major cities were characterized by a sea of people on bicycles, and in the 80s there were barely any private cars. By 2000, however, there were 5 million private cars on its streets [3].

Pause.

Second of all, junk-food chains had gigantic negative environmental impacts. Consider that intensive breeding of livestock and poultry led to deforestation, land degradation, and contamination of water sources and other natural resources. For every pound of red meat, poultry, eggs, and milk produced, farm fields lost about five pounds of irreplaceable top soil. Lastly, the animals we ate got more grain and more water than people – 70% of US grain, and 190 gallons of water per animal per day, respectively [4]. (Looks at Estragon to see if he has anything to say).

Estragon: Go on.

Vladimir: Third of all, consumerism meant a throw-away, made-to-break culture. That is, companies made certain products – plastic gadgets, electronics – with a limited life-time. The faster the products broke, the more were bought. Additionally, since consumerist culture was also based on fashion, the emphasis was constantly on the ‘new’ so that even if certain products didn’t break, new ones were bought only so that the consumer was up-to-date – computers and cell phones being the best examples. What this ultimately meant was that a large amount of waste was generated. Waste which, apart from polluting, ended up being dumped in peripheral, poor countries. Around 2000, for example, 20 million tons of waste was shipped to the periphery annually [5].

Estragon (takes out phone, flips it open, flips it closed, throws it to the ground violently): To hell–

Vladimir: –we go.

Estragon: Who can we blame but the businessmen?

Vladimir: Ourselves.

Estragon: It was them.

Vladimir: Us.

Estragon: Them.

Vladimir: Let me continue.

Estragon: Alright (picks up phone and pockets it).

Vladimir: All that I’ve said so far only shows how we got here: the fact that consumerism was unstoppable, that it was the heroin-addiction of the modern world, meant that pollution – which was its baby brother – was unstoppable as well. And between pollution, the release of carbon dioxide, and climate change and ecological disasters, there was only a baby step.

But let us, for a moment, make abstraction of the apocalyptic effects of consumerism. Its effects went much beyond pollution – it also caused mass poverty in peripheral countries, and deterioration of health (both mental and physical) in rich countries.

Estragon: So what people were really consuming was other people`s lives and their own health?

Vladimir: Yes.

Estragon: So – we can liken them to vampires?
Pause. Vladimir looks around nervously, as though someone is watching. Takes hat off, looks into it, looks at Estragon.

Vladimir (whispers): Yes.

Estragon: And–

Vladimir (puts hat back on): Yes, yes. The point is that 86 percent of the world’s resources were being consumed by 20 percent of the world: the developed world [6]. To illustrate this better, in 2008 one-third of Chinese carbon emissions were due to the production of exports, which were consumed by the developed world [7]. Moreover, consumerism meant that food became a commodity – it wasn’t something farmers grew for others to eat, it was something companies produced for other people to buy. To go back to the feeding of livestock, although the grain and water used to breed them was enough to feed every person in the world, this didn’t happen because there was a huge market for cattle in wealthy countries. Additionally, some of the best agricultural land in the world was used to grow other commodities such as cotton, sisal, tea, tobacco, sugar cane, and cocoa, none of which were necessary or very nutritious [8]. In short, it became money over people. Consider that in 2004 the worldwide annual expenditures for cosmetics totalled 18 billion USD, while the estimate for annual expenditures required to eliminate hunger and malnutrition was 19 billion USD; expenditures on pet food in the US and Europe totalled 17 billion USD a year, while the estimated cost of immunizing every child, providing clean drinking water for all, and achieving universal literacy was 16.3 billion USD [9]. (Pause for effect. )

Estragon: I remember a few years ago I walked into a restaurant and asked for water. And to my surprise they said that they no longer served it, that they’d run out. They only served beer.

Vladimir: You told me that just yesterday.

Estragon: I did? Well you’ve read that report to me every day since I met you.

Vladimir: I have? Well let me finish it – I’m sure there’s something new in it this time around. (Takes off one of his shoes, looks inside, shovels out another piece of paper, reads): As I was saying, consumerism also affected our health. Think, first of all, about junk-food and soaring rates of obesity. Although junk-food and soft-drink companies were well aware of the unhealthy aspect of their products – Coca-Cola containing excessive amounts of sugar, which ultimately lead to calcium deficiencies, KFC being full of trans fats, which ultimately increased the risk of coronary heart disease – they still advertised excessively, especially to children. Diabetes even became a preponderant health problem because of this type of consumption [10]. This is no different than Bernays’ initial catering to women to smoke cigarettes, which were known to be very unhealthy even in the 20s. Again the previously-mentioned formula applies in describing the consumerist system: money over people.

Estragon: I’m going. (He does not move).

Vladimir: And it didn’t only have to do with junk-food. Even processed foods of any kind – which, again were introduced at once with consumerism – contained unhealthy additives. Food colourings and additives such as monosodium lutamate, aspartame, phosphoric acid and hydrogenated fats were all damaging to health. For example, tartrazine (the yellow food colouring E102) was linked to allergic reactions, headaches, asthma, growth retardation, and hyperactivity in children [11].

Additionally, due to the preponderant farming that used pesticides, even vegetables and fruits had residues of dangerous chemicals in them, which were proven to cause cancer, decreasing male fertility, foetal abnormalities, chronic fatigue syndrome and Parkinson’s disease [12].

(Estragon, no longer listening, flips phone open, closed, open, closed).

Regarding mental health, as we became a more and more consumerist society and became richer and richer, people didn’t actually grow happier. According to Dr. David Myers, a professor of psychology at Hope College, the number of people reporting themselves as very happy decreased slightly between the 1960s and the 2000s. In the 2000s, people were twice as rich but no happier: divorced rates doubled, teen suicides tripled, reported violence quadrupled, and depression rates soared. He linked this to the deterioration of social relationships and internal skills such as self-awareness that are crucial for well-being – a deterioration caused by extrinsic goals such as money and material possessions. In summary, from a 2008 survey of eight hundred college alumni, those who preferred a high income and job success to having close friends or a fulfilling marriage were twice as likely to describe themselves as ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ unhappy [13].

Estragon: That sounds like me.

Pause.

I can’t go on like this.

Vladimir: That’s what you think.

Estragon: Let’s go.

Vladimir: We can’t.

Estragon: Why not?

Vladimir: We’re waiting for the world.

Estragon: And why, in the name of consumerism, are we doing that?

Vladimir: I’ll get to it.

Estragon (makes a grab at the paper Vladimir is holding): Let me have that. (Reads it over): Alright, but you see here, we were aware of the effects of consumerism and we did something about it. In 2007 junk-food was banned from BC schools. Organic food – that is, unprocessed and healthy food – was available throughout BC, in stores such as Choices Markets. A very influential anti-consumerist organization sprung-up in Vancouver in 1989 called Adbusters Media Organization. (Reading from paper): Its goal was to dethrone the authority of advertisements and corporate culture. It started social marketing campaigns such as Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week, whose purpose was to promote a lasting lifestyle commitment to consuming less and producing less waste. Considering all of that, why didn’t it work?

Vladimir: In short – we needed much bigger changes. Merely banning junk food in schools was not enough; advertisements for it were still all over the place. Had the BC government taken harsher measures, such as banning junk food in all of BC, quite a lot would have changed. Even more, children could have been educated at school about ads, their power over people, and a more responsible way to live one’s life. Consider that Canada was one of the world’s biggest consumers, which meant that rash measures needed to be taken to make a difference. Even Adbusters was too tame. It worked through the consumerist system to propagate its message by selling magazines. The idea should have been the opposite: we needed to change the system, not its effects. In regard to climate change, we chose to mitigate pollution by giving incentives to corporations such as carbon credits. But this did not essentially stop them from polluting and bringing us to (indicating the desolate streets) This. Even in 2009, when students studying Political Science were asked whether they were at University to get a better future career and make more money, or to become better people who could help others, the vast majority (90%) were in the former category [14].

Estragon: So it’s like that joke.

Vladimir: Which?

Estragon: A madman is completely convinced that he’s a seed, not a man. He’s taken to a mental hospital and given therapeutic treatment by a team of psychoanalysts. A few months later, healed, he walks out of the mental hospital aware that he is a man. However, when he gets to his countryside home, a chicken trots into his kitchen, and the man yells out in fear and rushes back to the hospital. When he gets there and tells the doctors what happened, the doctors don’t understand: ‘But now you know you’re a man, not a seed, so why are you afraid of the chicken?’ The man replies: ‘I know that. But does the chicken know that?’

So it was with consumerism. Although we were each individually aware of its negative and catastrophic effects we couldn’t effectively do anything to change the system because we assumed that it couldn’t be changed. We assumed that even if ‘I change my habits, my consumerist lifestyle, the person next to me won’t’. In the end you’re right: it’s not the businessmen that are to blame, it’s us.

Vladimir: Exactly.

Estragon’s phone rings.

Your phone is ringing.

Estragon (indifferently): Yes.

Vladimir: Your phone is ringing.

Estragon: Yes.

Vladimir: Answer it.

Estragon (answers it): Hello? Hello?

Pause.

No one.

Pause. Vladimir checks his pockets, his hat, his shoes, for another piece of paper. He can’t find it.

Estragon: Let’s go.

Vladimir: We can’t.

Estragon: Why not?

Vladimir: We’re waiting for the world.

Estragon: But waiting for the world for what – to what?

Vladimir: To wisen up.

Pause.

Estragon: What world?

Estragon and Vladimir look at each other. They look away. Estragon flips the phone open, flips the phone closed. Vladimir lies back down to sleep.

Curtain.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Curtis, Adam, director. “Happiness Machines.” The Century of the Self. BBC Four, London. 29 April, 2002.

2. Jacobs, Gregg D.. “Consumerism, Happiness and Health.” Truestar Health. 31 Mar 2009..

3. Mayell, Hillary. “As Consumerism Spreads, Earth Suffers, Study Says.” National Geographic News. 12 Jan 2004. 31 Mar 2009.

4. Shiva, Vandana. Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000. 70-71.

5. Robbins, Richard. Global Problem and the Culture of Capitalism. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1999. 235.

6. “Human Development Report 1998: Consumption for Human Development.” United Nations Development Programme. New York:1998.

7. Weber, Christopher L., Glen P. Peters, Dabo Guan, and Klaus Hubacek. “The Contribution of Chinese Exports to Climate Change.” Energy Policy. 36 (2008): 3572-3577.

8. Robbins 211.

9. Mayell.

10. Ibid.

11. Unknown. “Organic Foods in Relation to Nutrition and Health Key Facts.” Medical News Today. 11 Jul 2004. 31 Mar 2009.

12. Ibid.

13. Jacobs.

14. This was a personally witnessed event in Professor Erickson’s Poli 240 class. March 18, 2009.

[We see the ‘father-of-global-warming”, James Hansen, walk out of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in downtown New York City. James has a blank expression. We hear his voice commenting on the action, as the narrator would. This narrating voice will be labeled “JAMES’ NARRATION” to distinguish it from James Hansen’s actual words within the story.]

- – -

JAMES’ NARRATION: The life of a preeminent climatologist is tough. You waste away your youth studying advanced math and physics, hunker down in a university library, eat only cereal, write a dissertation on the atmosphere of Venus, slave the next thirty years away on computer models, determine that your home planet is catastrophically being affected by climate change, and then when you try to tell people about all this, they arrest you with Daryl Hannah outside a coal factory. The worst part of it all is that I’ve become the focal point of a recent college graduate’s eccentric imagination – one which he forces me to have dinner with Russian philosopher and semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin – if only to see if he can help me in my quest to find the most effective rhetoric for engaging the public. I never studied this man Bakhtin in college and darned if I could tell you what semiotics entails. Philosophers of science rarely meet up with dead Russian rhetoricians – I’ve found that we have different tastes in movies. But if this kid thinks Bakhtin can help me with my public speaking, well, I’m all ears. [He walks into the restaurant and checks his coat.]

MIKHAIL: James, how do you do.

JAMES: Why, hello Mr. Bakhtin. It’s a pleasure to meet you. How are you?

MIKHAIL: Please, Mikhail. I am fine. Please take seat. We have much to discuss.

JAMES: Yes, absolutely. First off, why does this loony twenty-something think you can help me spread the word on global warming? This is a scientific question and Mikhail, as far as I know, you have no credentials in the scientific community.

MIKHAIL: What? Science? Mr. Hansen, I love science. I try much to apply science to literary criticism, eh, what you say, to give it “scientific footing.” And as for your “ideology” based on empirical studies, I can help you with that.

JAMES: You apply science to literature? Check, please. [Looks for waiter.]

MIKHAIL: No, no! You must listen. There is no “literature.” Your scientific papers, you know, the ones that no one but other scientists read. That is literature. My ticket stub to the Yankees game, that is literature. Look, give your papers to me, I’ll have my friend publish them – put you top of the charts in New York Times Book Review. Hah? James, it’s all about dialogue. What you’re doing now with Daryl Hannah and the activism, it’s the same thing as when you publish in Science or when you go testify in front of Congress. Only different audience, you see?

JAMES: Sure, but I think I’m doing a very fine job explaining my case to the public.

MIKHAIL: Then why must you bring up Holocaust, yes? Why?

JAMES: [Coughs.] Ahem, yes, that was an unfortunate metaphor – but I really do think…

MIKHAIL: Wrong words. They do not care what you think. Look, spreading this “global warming” ideology – you see, I know it’s hard. But you really must use rhetoric…

JAMES: I don’t buy into bells and whistles.

MIKHAIL: No, no! Not bells and whistles, signs and images! See, you must be like me, Russian formalist. I will tell you.

JAMES: Mikhail, we are heading towards a certain destruction of our environment. Reason has to win out, here. Soon, the oceans turn to an acid strong enough to burn the skin from our bones, our ice caps will melt into pools of water, deeper than the unfathomable depths of our souls, our…

MIKHAIL: Good! Metaphor, wonderful. Let me show you first lesson, you see?

JAMES: [Grudgingly] Fine. What have you got.

MIKHAIL: At next conference, you see, I want you to try something.

JAMES: Yes? I’m all ears, Mikhail. What possibly have you got for me.

MIKHAIL: Yes, this time, before you get arrested, I want you to paint your belly red and scream gibberish at the top of your lungs.

JAMES: What?! Are you stark raving mad?

MIKHAIL: No, not in least. Look, I tell you what – I’ll join you on stage.

JAMES: Well, that sounds reasonable.

MIKHAIL: It would be no worry. Lenin and I, this is how we became good friends.

JAMES: You knew Lenin?

MIKHAIL: No, not really. But that is beside point. The point is we must convince others of your ideology.

JAMES: I take offense to that. You speak like I’m some sort of Marxist, some crazed Communist.

MIKHAIL: No, no. Wrong ideology. Look, we all have an ideology. It is not bad word. I, for one, believe that this kid who brought us here is nutcase.

JAMES: Yes, I’ve heard many have told him so…

MIKHAIL: Who does he think he is? Woody Allen?

JAMES: Probably some combination of Woody Allen and Andre Gregory. Have you ever seen My Dinner With Andre? This is like a terrible remake. But then again, things are getting strange in the world. Why was I arrested with Daryl Hannah? I mean, Blade Runner was great – don’t get me wrong – but no one wants to see an aging climatologist and a dead Russian philosopher talk about science and rhetoric together. That’s like combining peanut butter and toothpaste.

MIKHAIL: Ah, but you need both to get stains out of t-shirts.

JAMES: I suppose. But still, who mixes the two?

MIKHAIL: Stalin did once. Right before he exiled me to Serbia.

JAMES: Wow, what was that like?

MIKHAIL: Have you seen The Day After Tomorrow?

JAMES: Yes.

MIKHAIL: Well, imagine Dennis Quaid in a bathing suit trying to rescue his son.

JAMES: That cold?

MIKHAIL: No, not cold. Just strange.

JAMES: Hm, I’ll buy that.

(The two continue eating, discussing Stalin’s little quirks, climate science, and potential prank calls to Senator James Inhofe.)

“Darwin’s Strange Inversion of Reasoning”
(January 14th, 2009, Frederick Wood Theatre)
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One of Darwin’s earliest critics noted his “strange inversion of reasoning: in order to make a perfect and beautiful machine it is not requisite to know how to make it.” This is indeed a counterintuitive idea, but it is central not just to biology but to computer science and, indeed, all of science.

Resistance to this ‘strange inversion’ is at the heart of popular discontent with both evolution by natural selection and computer models of the brain and mind. It helps to understand some of the controversies surrounding theories of consciousness to recognize that some of the participants are “mind creationists” who cannot accept Darwin’s inversion when applied to minds.

Sponsored by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Vancouver Evolution Festival. Video filmed by the UBC Terry Project.

- – -
Last Thanksgiving, I needed to bring my flies home for the holidays in anticipation of the eclosion of important potential recombinant male progeny. My goal was to use my freezer, a tray of ice, a dissection pad, a paintbrush, and some hoisted fly food vials from my lab to separate the males and the females.

At some point during Thanksgiving, my mother asked if they “needed to be on the countertop” and when I said “no” they were moved to this photogenic area. Remarks were made about the apt proximity of fruit to fruit flies, the galosh representing the Earth and Nature, etc.

Overall, they were a hit. So don’t be embarrassed to bring a model organism home for the holidays– it can add so much.

This program contains graphic scenes of violence and adult themes. Viewer discretion is advised.
- – -

THE SCENE

Light is pouring into the courtroom. A tense background of hushed conversation fills the room. The defendant, Nosema enters the room. He is a microsporidian parasite. He’s roughly oval shaped and dressed in an orange jumpsuit. He appears infinitesimally small and has a thick cell wall. He stares at the floor, dull and unblinking. Two guards carry him in solemnly. The judge enters.

Bailiff: All rise for the honorable Judge Kara Phyte.

All rise and as the Judge settles in her seat, they follow suit. Judge Kara Phyte is a green alga. She looks composed and just a little bit severe but the water beads forming on her brow betray her. She spent the whole morning photosynthesizing. This is a high profile case. The judge picks up a sheaf of papers, and turns her attention to Nosema.

Judge Phyte: You are charged with murder in the First Degree in the death of Herbert Hostman. How do you plead?

There is a squeak of chairs as Nosema and his attorney rise. The attorney, Perry Mecium helps Nosema up. Perry is a large, hairy ciliate with a kindly air wearing a worn grey suit. His tiny beating cilia brush his client into a standing position. He glances at prosecutor Hugh Glena. Hugh is the very definition of “slick”. Thick protein bands twirl smoothly around the alga’s body, under his plasma membrane. Perry despises mob lawyers like Hugh who defend crooks and put cells who have no voice of their own into prison.

Perry Mecium: Your honor, my client pleads not guilty to the charges.

Judge Phyte: All right, let’s begin.

Hugh Glena: Your honor, I’d like to call our first witness to the stand, Officer Violet Shaw.

A small, velvety purple flower dressed in a green uniform stalks towards the stand and is sworn in.

Hugh Glena: Can you describe what you saw at the scene of the crime, Officer?

Flashback scene. It’s dark and rainy. Violet and her partner are driving in a particularly seedy neighborhood. Red and blue lights are flashing as they hop out of their car and walk towards the crime scene. They see an enormous man reclining on his side, pants half undone in a watery puddle. A spore lies still. A small amoeba advances towards the officers, shaking violently.

Officer Shaw: Yes. Dispatch received an anonymous call at around 1:00 am on the night of the murder. I arrived on scene at about 1:15 am with my partner, Ace. We saw the victim lying in a pool of what looked like his own feces. I also saw the defendant lolling about in the excrement and mumbling something. I brought him into the station for questioning. He didn’t have much to say. He didn’t have to. Microsporidia have been painting the town brown for the last six months but this is the first death we’ve seen in a while.

Hugh Glena: Thank you officer.

Officer Shaw: You’re welcome.

Violet descends from the stand and returns to her seat looking confident.

Hugh Glena: Your honor, our next witness is Dr. Amy B. Proteus.

Judge Phyte nods. A few unicellular spectators rearrange their cytoskeletons to see the amoeba slink along the floor. The bailiff proffers her a tattered lab notebook. The camera focuses on Dr. Proteus and the notebook. We can see the cytoplasm pushing her plasma membrane out forming a pseudopodium that she places gingerly onto the book.

Bailiff: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Dr. Proteus: I do.

Hugh approaches the stand.

Hugh Glena: Doctor, you’ve examined my client closely. You’ve delved into the very nucleus of this cell. You know what is in his genome. What can you tell us about the patient? What drives this cell?

Dr. Proteus: I have to say that this is one of the most fascinating cases I’ve seen in years. The most striking thing about the patient is how reduced he is. Ten years ago, we would have diagnosed a patient like this as “extremely primitive”. He has a relatively small genome. It’s so small that it doesn’t encode a lot of the proteins that you and I need to perform many ordinary tasks. He also doesn’t have mitochondria. I’ll remind you that our mitochondria convert food into useable ATP energy and store it. We consume this ATP in a variety of cellular processes. Even his protein making machinery is different from ours. His ribosomes are actually smaller than ordinary eukaryotic ribosomes. In fact, they are the same size as bacterial ribosomes. His remaining organelles, his endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi body are almost beyond recognition. Instead of acting as the protein transport and modfication centers of the cell, they form a unique system of tubules and vacuoles that allow the parasite to invade unsuspecting cells.

Dr. Proteus’ pseudopodia flail as she warms up to the subject of Nosema’s biology.

We used to think that microsporidia like Nosema descended from ancient eukaryotes that lacked mitchondria altogether. We were most excited when we found that microsporidia have organelles that are remnants of mitochondria called mitosomes. We also found mitochondrial DNA in the microsporidian nucleus. So, Nosema’s ancestors had mitochondria just like you and I, but they sort of wasted away over time. These days, microsporidia get their ATP directly from their hosts.

Hugh Glena: So it seems that a cell such as Nosema has a very one-track mind. He’s not much more than a nucleus and infective apparatus in a bag.

Dr. Proteus looks shocked.

Dr. Proteus: Excuse me sir, I wouldn’t go that far but I agree that microsporidia are perfect examples of obligate intracellular parasites that have undergone years of co-evolution with their hosts. Such an organism is completely dependent on its host to complete its life cycle.

Hugh Glena: Thank you Doctor. You can step down. The prosecution calls Dick Tyostelium.

Dick Tyostelium is a cellular slime mold. He’s very ordinary looking amoeba, not too bright. He looks unsettled as the bailiff swears him in.

Hugh Glena: Mr. Tyostelium, You say you saw the defendant at the scene on the night of the murder.

Dick Tyostelium: Yes. I work the night shift at the Agar Bar. I was just on my way home at about 12:30 am when I saw that man collapse. He was HUGE by they way. Then I saw Nosema coming out of that pool of um, you know, poo. I called the police right away.

Hugh Glena: That’s all, Mr. Tyostelium, thank you.

Perry Mecium: I’d like to examine the witness your honor.

Judge Phyte: Go ahead.

Perry Mecium: Mr. Tyostelium, you claim you were coming home from your place of work at around the same time the murder took place.

Dick Tyostelium: Y-y-yes, that’s what I said.

Perry Mecium: Well, I have footage from several security cameras from the Crypto Casino that shows you being escorted away from the craps table. Would you like to tell us again what you were doing on the night of Herbert Hostman’s death? Remember, you are under oath.

Dick squirms in his seat as he watches the security footage. His body is distorted in an expression of terror and he breaks into great convulsing sobs.

Dick Tyostelium: I’m sick. I have a gambling addiction. I was trying to leave it all behind. I borrowed ten grand from Gerry thinking that I would double the lot and pay off my other debts but I lost it all.

Flashback scene. Dick is in an office, bent over in front of a massive desk. He is flanked by two bulky cells and is pleading with the back of an executive chair. One of the hulking cells opens a wall safe behind a picture frame and hands him a wad of money. The scene shifts to the craps table where Dick is being dragged away.

Dick Tyostelium: Gerry told me that if I couldn’t pay the money back, he’d kill my family. I begged for mercy. He told me that he had a score to settle. If I went to this address that he gave me and told the cops that a microsporidia killed a guy, he’d forgive my debts and leave my family alone.

Perry Mecium: Do you mean Gerard ”Gerry” Lamblia, the mafia Don who owns the Crypto Casino? Don’t parasites like him cause giardiasis, a diarrheal disease?

Hugh Glena: Objection your honor, those questions are irrelevant. Mr. Lamblia certainly is capable of causing illness but he has never been convicted of any illegal activities. Moreover, the witness is clearly unfit to give testimony.

Judge Phyte: Objection sustained.

Hugh looks relieved. Perry appears unconcerned.

Perry Mecium: The defense calls coroner, Dr. Penelope Cillium to the stand.

Out from the crowd of spectators, Dr. Cillium, a fungus creeps towards the stand. As she moves, small greenish-grey spheres fall from her head.

Perry Mecium: Dr. Cillium…

Dr. Cillium: Please, call me Penny.

Perry Mecium: Ok, Penny. You performed the autopsy on the victim correct? Can you tell us how the victim died?

Dr. Cillium: Well, first of all, the victim showed signs of dehydration and malnourishment. These symptoms are common in people experiencing microsporidiosis. However, only people who are severely immunocompromised usually die from the disease. I had my lab run a few tests and we found that the victim had a T-cell count well below 100 cells per microliter. The victim, Mr. Hostman was dying from AIDS.

Perry Mecium: Doctor, did you notice any other abnormalities in the victim’s cells? Here’s a micrograph from the autopsy report.

Perry holds up the micrograph in front of the jury, allowing them to examine it carefully. He then places it on a projector for all to see. We can hear a few gasps in the audience. Perry continues. The image shows neat, tiny holes in the plasma membranes of a few intestinal cells.

Perry Mecium: How would you interpret these wounds Dr. Cillium?

Dr. Cillium: Well, the approximate shape of the wound corresponds to a sharp, thin, tubular object. The dimensions of the defendant’s polar filament roughly match the size of the entry wound.

The camera pans over to Hugh Glena. He looks pleased.

You see, the polar filament is a sort of coiled tube that shoots out of the microsporidian spore and penetrates the host cell. Immediately, the contents of the spore are fed into the host cell through the filament. Multiple rounds of cell division occur and many new microsporidia break out of the victim’s cell and spread. The only way Nosema could have gotten out of those cells is by bursting out. A handful of microsporidian infections have crossed my table and the cells rupture completely after infection.

Dr. Cillium demonstrates an exploding cell by waving her hyphae, the slim, graceful threads that make up her fungal body then stops suddenly. She has just realized that she made a grave error in her examinations.

Perry Mecium: So, the cells should not have remained intact if Nosema had infected them, correct?

Dr. Cillium: Yes. I never thought about that since Nosema was found on the scene. We usually just diagnose microsporidiosis when we find microsporidia in the victim’s stools.

Perry Mecium: So you’re saying it’s possible that some other pathogen could have caused Mr. Hostman’s demise?

Dr. Cillium: Yes, it’s possible.

Perry Mecium: That’s all Dr. Cillium, thank you.

The courtroom breaks out in discussion in light of this new evidence. Judge Phyte hammers her gavel.

Judge Phyte: Order in the court! Order!

The room gradually falls silent.

Perry Mecium: I have no further questions your honor.

Judge Phyte: Well, I think we have heard all the arguments. I’d like to hear any closing statements.

The camera pans over to Hugh Glena. Hugh is stunned.

Hugh Glena: The prosecution has nothing more to say.

Perry Mecium: I would like to make a closing statement your honor.

The judge nods and gestures towards the jury.

Judge Phyte: Go ahead.

Perry begins pacing in front of the jury box. One by one, he makes eye contact with each of the jurors. Some of them try to avoid his piercing looks.

Perry Mecium: Members of the jury, when you leave this courtroom you will be deciding the fate of a cell. I need you to put your prejudices aside. Imagine yourselves in Nosema’s cell wall. All your life, other organisms have looked down on you or even feared you because you’re a parasite. Even other fungi, your own closest relatives can’t stand the sight of you. It’s not your fault. You don’t choose to depend on others for your survival, things just ended up that way. If that isn’t bad enough, your host has died and you’re out there in a fetid box of kitty litter. The next thing you know, you’re lying in a pool of human waste next to a dead man and you have no recollection of being in a mouth or even passing through an intestinal tract. You want to explain the situation to the police but you can’t because you haven’t got the energy, you’re in your resting state.

Perry pauses for a moment. His cilia beat rapidly as he delivers his passionate address.

Now, if you can say without a shadow of a doubt that Nosema is the killer, I urge you to follow your inclinations. However, if you have even the slightest doubt, you need to do the right thing. After all, it is better that ten guilty cells escape rather than let one innocent suffer.

Judge Phyte: Court is adjourned until 3pm when the jury will give us their decision.

The jury shuffles wordlessly out of the courtroom. At 3pm, they return. The jury chair rises.

Jury Chair: Your honor, we find the defendant not guilty.

Hugh Glena slaps his flagellum on the desk in anger. The scene skips to the outside of the courthouse. Reporters are jostling about trying to get a statement from Perry Mecium and Nosema. Suddenly, a gunshot rings out. Nosema collapses onto the ground just as he was about to duck into a car. The stunned crowd looks around to find the assailant. A shiny black town car stops behind a local news van. We catch a glimpse of Gerard Lamblia in the back window. He wears dark sunglasses but a smug look steadily creeps across his face. The window rolls up smoothly and the car drives away.

END SCENE

Keeling, P.J. and N.M. Fast. Microsporidia: Biology and Evolution of Highly Reduced Intracellular Parasites. Annu. Rev. Microbiol. 56:93-116. 2002.

Keeling, P.J. and C. H. Slamovits. Simplicity and Complexity of Microsporidian Genomes. Eukaryotic Cell. 3(6): 1363-1369. 2004.