Previously, I posted a video of my short play "Missing the Boat," a play about two unicorns trying to hitch a ride to get to Noah's Ark. Last fall I had another of my short plays performed in a community theater production as part of a showcase of shorts called the "Winter Winds of WARP," produced by Writers and Actors Reading and Performing (WARP). The below video was shot by Stacy Kwinn and edited by Jeff Weedman. The play was directed by Carl Nelson with Wendy Cohen as the Chicken and Wanda Moats as the Duck. Thanks to all involved.

And, just to give you a heads-up I will have another short, unpublished, play called "Waiting For Boa" performed in the upcoming WARP Spring showcase--but more about that later.
   Below is the text of "the Other Side," although there are some differences between the text and the video above. This play has not been published yet, but if you would like to check out my published collection "Do Ya Think? Science, Science Fiction, and Skepticism" it is available for Amazon as either a Kindle E-Book or a paperback at this link.

THE OTHER SIDE

(c) 2013 by Scot Bastian

[A duck is standing in the middle of the road. She is approached by a chicken.]

DUCK
Aren't you embarrassed?

CHICKEN
By what? Get out of the way. I'm trying to--

DUCK
—cross the road. I know. Everybody knows that.

CHICKEN
I said, get out of the way!

DUCK
I will not move! It is my moral obligation to prevent you from making a joke of yourself. So, you just turn around and go back.

CHICKEN
Listen, it may be your “moral obligation,” as you call it, to get in my way. But it is my moral imperative to “get to the other side.” Now let me pass dammit!

DUCK
Nope. Ain't gonna happen.

CHICKEN
What difference does it make to you?

DUCK
I cannot stand idly by and allow someone, even a chicken, to harm herself. I wouldn't be able to sleep. It's like giving someone a gun so that he can kill herself. Like passive euthanasia! To allow such a travesty would be a monstrous breach of ethics. You will not pass!

CHICKEN
You're one pretentious windbag of a duck. I can fight fire with fire.  I must fulfill my existential destiny! I need to get to the other side!

DUCK
Oh gawd, and I'm pretentious? And thus you become the butt of jokes—bad jokes—for the rest of eternity.

CHICKEN
I'm not a joke. I'm a philosophical paradigm. Now let me go!

DUCK
You are not a paradigm. You are a chicken. And why is it that when they do survey after survey that the outcome is always the same: us ducks are always ranked as the funniest animals, but you guys always get all the philosophical constructs. Which came first the chicken or the egg? Nobody ever says the duck or the egg? Do they? Well, do they?

CHICKEN
No, they don't.  So which would you rather be, funny or profound?

DUCK
Well you’re both, aren’t you?

CHICKEN
Yes I am.  And I’m trying to complete a joke right now, but you won’t let me.

DUCK
Oh no, you don’t. It’s not just a joke, it’s a philosophical construct.  It’s a raison d’etre, a reason “to be.”  And you can’t hog up both the jokes and the profound allegories.

CHICKEN
What?  It’s a fucking joke, not a philosophy. 

DUCK
Yeah, and the Myth of Sisyphus is just some guy pushing a rock, right? Here’s another, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” 

CHICKEN
What about it?

DUCK
Drives me nuts! We lay eggs too, you know. You think we don’t hatch? It’s a metaphor for patience. What do we get?  A duck walks into a bar—yadda, yadda—Fill in the blanks.  We’re just a joke, you they take seriously.  What gives? If jokes are going to be my balliwick, then I get the jokes. You can’t be funny and profound. That’s when I decided to take a stand. You’re crossing this road over my dead body.

CHICKEN
(Tapping her foot and thinking.)  Maybe, just maybe, I can expand this into an important philosophical precept. You want a piece of it?

DUCK
How?

CHICKEN
You mentioned Sisyphus. What does that myth illustrate?

DUCK
Simple. The Gods condemned Sisyphus to an eternity of frustration, pushing a rock to the top of a mountain, only to have it roll down again, asking the question, how, when faced with the brutalities of a seemingly meaningless existence, can one find meaning?

CHICKEN
Right! Dead on! You got it!

DUCK
What the hell does this have to do with chickens and ducks?

CHICKEN
Let’s think about it.  Right now I’m trying to get to the other side, right?

DUCK
And I will not let you pass.

CHICKEN
A profound philosophical model for what happens when an unstoppable force encounters an immovable barrier. What do you think happens?

DUCK
An explosion?

CHICKEN
Is it? Or is it stasis? Or, does each action result in an equal and opposite reaction?

DUCK
Holy shit! We’re demonstrating Newton’s Laws?

CHICKEN
Inertia! Mass! Energy! The whole nine yards! DUCK
An unstoppable chicken meets an impenetrable duck.  Gosh, I feel so, I feel so profound.

CHICKEN
There you go.  Congratulations.

DUCK
Sounds more like physics than philosophy.

CHICKEN
It’s both!

DUCK
I’m not a joke anymore.  I feel lighter than feathers.  I feel like I could fly.

CHICKEN
You can fly.  Nothing transcendent there.  Not that I can do it, but I get the concept.  Now, sorry about this, but I got to get to the other side now.

DUCK
But what about our paradigm?

CHICKEN
Not buying it, huh?  Okay.  Scratch that philosophical construct.  Let’s try another on for size.  Here we are, in the middle of the road, at the crossroad of existence.  In purgatory!  And you, you are Charon, the ferryman--

DUCK
But I’m a duck!

CHICKEN
Okay, have it your way.  You’re Quackon, the ferryduck, here to collect the fee to escort me across the river Styx to the other side.

DUCK
I am?

CHICKEN
yes.

DUCK
I thought it was a road.

CHICKEN
Work with me here.  Doesn’t it make more sense for a duck to be in a river anyhow?

DUCK
I guess so. 

CHICKEN
But chickens don’t swim.

DUCK
True.

CHICKEN
Right!  You’re in purgatory.  So, I need you to get to the other side,  And you must exact payment.  I must pay the ferryduck for the transition to the netherworld, for nothing, nothing! is free.  For every rite of passage, a price must be paid.  Even death extracts a price.

DUCK
No wonder you guys get all the aphorisms and philosophy.  You’re so fucking melodramatic all the time.  Everything you say reminds me of an ancient Greek tragedy.

CHICKEN
And so Quackon escorts the proud hen from the world of the living to the dark, unknown province of the hereafter. 

DUCK
Aren’t you supposed to pay me first?

CHICKEN
I have paid you.  I have enriched your being by making you a part of yet another philosophy.  You have, yet again, been immortalized.

DUCK
Okay, I’ll take it.  I’ll get you to the other side.

[The duck poles the imaginary boat with the chicken passenger to the other side of the stage.]

CHICKEN
Take me, proud ferryduck to the undiscovered country of the soul.

[The chicken leaves the boat for the shore.]

Thank you, my friend, and congratulations!  You will now be memorialized in the philosophical hall of fame.  Ever will you be the immovable duck in the road and the symbolic ferryduck, transferring the souls to the great beyond.

DUCK
Well, thanks.  But, well, I still have a nit to pick.

CHICKEN
A nit?

DUCK
Yeah, why do I have to be your co-star?  I mean, yeah, I’m the unmovable duck, but you’re the unstoppable chicken.  And, yeah, I’m the ferryduck, but you’re the one getting the ride.  Can’t I have my own philosophical model?  What I’m saying is I’m tired of being your bitch!  I want a solo act.  I want top billing for a change.  I still feel like just a joke!  I want my own paradigm, dammit!  How about it?

CHICKEN
(Taps her feet, thinking.)  As you wish.  There stands the proud duck, alone, in the middle of the road of life.

DUCK
Now that’s more like it.

CHICKEN
Facing the imponderables.  Confused.  Isolated.  Lonely.  The duck lives his life, facing the existential void, facing it courage, pride, and humor.

DUCK
Humor?  Don’t you be turning this into a joke now.

CHICKEN
And yet, there is a deep-seated sense of humility and awe, at the singularity of being, admixed with the totality of reality.  Stranded on the highway of eternity.

DUCK
We’re back on the road?

CHICKEN
Hovering like a fly on the freeway… DUCK
I’m a duck, not a fly!

CHICKEN
…and as she turns to look down the tunnel of time, what does she see? Fate! The headlights of ultimate reality shining at her.

[A light turns on]

DUCK
The what?

[Truck noises]

CHICKEN
Bearing down upon her, she stands to face the oncoming, brutal, force of unstoppable reality. Like a fly, waiting for the windshield of unstoppable destiny.

[Louder truck noises]

DUCK
That truck doesn’t look like it’s slowing down.  Get me out of this road!

CHICKEN
Whether  ‘tis nobler in the mind to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

DUCK
I’ll take the slings and arrows, just stop that truck!

CHICKEN
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them!

DUCK
Can’t we do a different--

CHICKEN
—To dream no more. To sleep.

DUCK
To be or not to be!

[The truck runs over the duck.]

CHICKEN
Congratulations. You now have a lead role in your own idiomatic expression. You, my friend, are a “dead duck.”

DUCK
You bastard.

[The duck dies]

CHICKEN
What a joke.

[The chicken smirks, shrugs, and leaves the stage.]

END PLAY

    Also intriguing, is that most of planets seem to be part of planetary systems; i.e. multiple-planet star systems like our own Solar System.
    Even more exciting is the discovery of several new planets that occupy the "habitable zone," which is defined as planets that have the right temperature to have liquid water on the surface. Below is an artists depiction of habitable zone worlds, from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, which was recently featured on NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. It is also possible, since several of these worlds orbit the same star, that star systems with multiple habitable planets are common.

    So, whither goest the Kepler telescope project? They've had some challenges lately. Two of the four reaction wheels that control the direction that the telescope points have become inoperative. They could still operate with only three, but with only two viable controllers, the project seemed dead-in-the-water. But, the clever folks at NASA have devised a solution. Using solar pressure in conjunction with the two functioning wheels they will be able to continue the search in what they describe as the K2 phase of the project. If, like me, you're a Keplerholic and want to see even more check out the Kepler image gallery.
    But, the Kepler data is not the only news. NASA announced a "concept under study" to re-visit Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Europa, which is slightly smaller than Earth's Moon, is considered to be one of the more likely candidates to harbor extraterrestrial life within the Solar System. Although most of the moon's surface is frozen, a few months ago the Hubble Space telescope detected plumes of water vapor on Europa's  surface, and it is believed that there is liquid water beneath the icy crust. The concept of the Europa Clipper is to put a vessel in orbit around the moon to perform detailed instrument analyses. Among the questions is how thick is the ice crust on the surface? Could the giant moon harbor creatures in the oceans of water beneath its surface? I say, let's go fishin'--who knows what will bite?  Below is a picture of Europa taken by the Galileo Probe in 1996.

    This reminds me of the fabulous sci-fi film from a few months ago "Europa Report" which is a fictional documentary of a manned exploration of Europa. I highly recommend this film, which I think was largely overlooked because it was overshadowed by the very popular film "Gravity" which I blogged about previously.  Below-left is the trailer for "Europa Report" and below-right is a short NASA video about Europa.  

So, will we find extraterrestrial life? Well, I believe it is there, but will we find it? I have no idea, but I hope so--and we have so much more to explore! To get a feel of how large (and how small) our universe is, I invite you to explore this mind-blowing interactive infographic.
    In closing, I would like to leave you with this quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson.