Some Slime Reflects at The End of Time

I'm just starting to get some notions about this play I'm going to write, and this has maybe got something of the flavour I'm looking for. At the End of Time, a single bacterium looks back:


"What they used to call 'life'
Began (apparently) as sickness
When one decent, simple cell
Like you or me
A long time ago, got invaded
Quite by accident
By AN Other.

Monsters like that die, usually,
But they found, these mutual parasites,
That they rubbed along together pretty well.

They compartmentalised, specialised.
And when they or it
got fat and split,
Their offspring kept on
going with the arrangement.

With fortuitous adjustments,
They positively flourished -
Gobbling up the neighbours,
Combining novel elements!

I know!

These experiments!
These upstarts
With their new fangled hearts!
Their sugars and their phosphates
Their guts, their mouths
Their University degrees!

But, of course, inventing 'life'
They'd invented 'death' as well.
Devouring them secerally, jointly
And eventually - utterly.

Leaving one life,
us
immortal, invisible, identical
us
As was, is now, and ever shall be.

Is it just me or is it getting hotter?



Peter Arnott is Resident Playwright at the ESRC Genomics Forum April 2011 - April 2012. Appointed in partnership with the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, Peter will be hosting a number of public engagements as he explores ideas and seeks inspiration for a genomics related play.