Implied Consent: Act I, Scene IV

A Play on the Sanctity of Human Life, in Four Acts

This is a part of Mr. Stolyarov's play, Implied Consent. To navigate through the various parts of the play, go here.



(Enter RAYMOND NEVILLE and EDWARD MARK after a hovermobile flight to one of the clandestine laboratories owned by the Estate of Grummond. There is an abundance of trees in the vicinity, enough to obscure direct view of the stage except where NEVILLE and MARK are located. The entrance to the glassy structure is situated immediately behind them.)

MARK: Where are we?

NEVILLE: Grummond Laboratories. This is one of the complexes where some of the groundbreaking genetic research which Mr. Grummond sponsored took place. It is said that the key to curing cancer was found in this very building.

MARK (aside): Hmmm... could it be that a cure to some other affliction is being developed there as we speak? (To NEVILLE) This does not look like the optimal place to attract publicity.

NEVILLE: You will see why. What goes on beyond these doors is more than the public knows, and more than we can safely afford to let it know. Even the value of curing cancer took some time to effectively communicate to some of the neo-Luddites in the mainstream. Then it took some years of argumentation to demonstrate that genetic engineering and artificial DNA enhancement were not the identity destroying abominations that popular fears portrayed them to be. The undertakings Mr. Grummond has commissioned to occur here presently, are even more... experimental... than that.

(They begin to approach the entrance.)

MARK: But what regard do you have for the... ethics of the matter, as they call it?

NEVILLE: There is a sense of ethics to everything we do here, though it is a different ethics than the mainstream mindset will permit. After all, would such a tremendously successful entrepreneur ever attain his prominence if he believed only what the masses believed? Would any man function solely on the ideas the majority happens to hold at any given time? You, Mr. Mark, surely had to think in a fundamentally different way from the rest of the population in order to achieve your own prosperity.