On the Bridge

(ROBERT is sleeping.  There’s a KNOCK.  Nothing.  Another KNOCK.  ROBERT sits up in bed.  He looks at the clock.  He looks at the door.  Another KNOCK.  ROBERT gets out of bed, goes over to the door, and answers it.  We can’t see the person on the other side of the door yet.)

ROBERT:  Lore?

LORE:  Hey Rob.

ROBERT:  Is everything—

LORE:  Can I come in?

ROBERT:  It’s, like, three am—

LORE:  Should I go?

ROBERT:  No, no.  Just come in.

(ROBERT stands aside, and LORE enters the room.  She goes right to the bed and sits down.  ROBERT closes the door.)

ROBERT:  Do you want some, like, water, or—

LORE:  No, no, I’m—No.

ROBERT:  Okay.

LORE:  This is a nice room.

ROBERT:  Thanks.  They wanted me closer to the bridge.

LORE:  Oh right, your promotion.  Good for you.

ROBERT:  Thanks.

LORE:  I’d hate being close to the bridge.

ROBERT:  Well, it’s convenient for me, so—

LORE:  But does it make you nervous?

ROBERT:  Nervous?

LORE:  Yeah.

ROBERT:  Why would I be nervous?

LORE:  Because, you know, the bridge is where everything happens.

ROBERT:  Right.

LORE:  It’s just—I don’t know.  I don’t know what I’m saying.

ROBERT:  I work on the bridge.

LORE:  Yeah, I don’t know how you—I don’t know how you do that.

ROBERT:  Well, it’s what I’m trained to do.

LORE:  No, yeah, no…yeah.

ROBERT:  What’s going on with you?

LORE:  I had, uh…I had a dream.

ROBERT:  Okay.

LORE:  I had a dream we got blown up.

                (A beat.)

ROBERT:  Okay.

LORE:  And it—I mean, it was really real.

ROBERT:  Dreams can feel that way.

LORE:  And we just got into that fight a week ago.

ROBERT:  It wasn’t much of a fight.

LORE:  They hit us.

ROBERT:  They just got a few shots in.  There was barely any damage.

LORE:  Didn’t that guy Randy lose an arm?

                (A moment.)

ROBERT:  Well, you know I can’t talk about that.

LORE:  I’m just saying, that’s major.

ROBERT:  It’s—I really can’t talk about it, Lore.  I’m sorry.

LORE:  I’m just saying it’s something that would make people worry.

ROBERT:  If it happened.

LORE:  Did it…not happen?

ROBERT:  No, I—I really can’t say either way.

LORE:  What is that—like some Big Brother thing, or—?

ROBERT:  No, it’s just—there are reasons we can’t—there are reasons, but it’s not like we’re going to keep it, uh, what happened, you know—under wraps.  Forever.

LORE:  That’s…comforting.

ROBERT:  But you don’t have anything to be afraid of.  We beat—that other ship in the—skirmish.

LORE:  But they could have beat us.

ROBERT:  They really didn’t have the ability to do that.

LORE:  But what if we go against a ship that does?

ROBERT:  That’s where tactical maneuvering comes in.

LORE:  And if the other ship knows about tactical maneuvering?

ROBERT:  Then—I don’t know.  We out-maneuver their maneuvering.

LORE:  This isn’t funny.

ROBERT:  I’m not trying to be funny.  That’s a legitimate answer.

LORE:  That’s scary.  If that’s the best answer you have, that’s really—

ROBERT:  You should go back to your room.  Try to get some sleep.

LORE:  My roommate snores.  You’re so lucky you don’t have a roommate anymore.

ROBERT:  I had a roommate for a long time.

LORE:  I know.

                (A beat.)

ROBERT:  I’m sorry.  Of course you—of course you know.

LORE:  It’ll be two years in January.

ROBERT:  Do you ever have dreams about him?

LORE:  Not as often as I’d like.

                (A beat.)

ROBERT:  That was a freak accident, Lore.  It was—bizarre.  And nothing like it is ever going to happen again.

LORE:  Forgive me if I don’t find that soothing.

ROBERT:  No, of course you wouldn’t, I just meant—

LORE:  I mean, it doesn’t change—

ROBERT:  No, no, I know it doesn’t.

LORE:  But I—I do understand that it was…just a…an awful thing.

ROBERT:  It was.  And that fight with the other ship last week was an awful thing.

LORE:  Yeah, but that’s been happening more and more.

ROBERT:  We’ve been going through a rough territory.  Eta 7-1 is notoriously difficult to get across, but we’re only going to be stuck here for a couple more months.

LORE:  I looked up the statistics.

ROBERT:  What statistics?

LORE:  To see how many ships make it through Eta 7-1.

                (A beat.)

ROBERT:  Why would you look those up?

LORE:  They’re public record.  Anybody can.

ROBERT:  It just seems like a weird thing to do.

LORE:  Did you know about them?

ROBERT:  I knew…I had heard—

LORE:  One in three disappear.  One in three.

ROBERT:  I—those statistics are—they’re very unreliable.

LORE:  Robert, if three ships go in on a regular basis, and two ships come out on a regular basis—

ROBERT:  I don’t know how anybody could really measure that.

LORE:  What are you talking about?

ROBERT:  I mean, the lost ships could surface eventually—

LORE:  Eventually?

ROBERT:  --Or they could have wound up in a galaxy where communication is problematic.  We can’t assume that the ships just exploded.

LORE:  But they could have.

ROBERT:  I’m sorry, Lore, I really don’t do hypothetical’s.

LORE:  Did we blow up that other ship?

ROBERT:  What?

LORE:  The other ship.  Did we blow it up?

ROBERT:  We…responded.

LORE:  What does that mean?

ROBERT:  It means we took appropriate action.

LORE:  People saw them blow up.

ROBERT:  All I can say is that they were bad people, and they got—

LORE:  Bad people?  Really?

ROBERT:  If we hadn’t done—

LORE:  --Then they would have blown us up.

                (A beat.)

ROBERT:  You should go back to your room.  The doctor can probably give you something to help you sleep.

                (He goes to the door.  He opens it.)

I have an early day tomorrow, so…

LORE:  Okay.

                (She walks to the door, stops, and looks at him.)

Good luck on the bridge.

ROBERT:  (Smiles.)  Thank you.

(She exits.  He closes the door.  He goes over to his bed, sits, and covers his face with his hands.  He takes his hands away and tries to remember something, but he can’t.)

                End of Play