Sequence Read Online Free

Origin of Species
? No, that’s not it.
    MR. ADAMSON
    I was just wondering if your disability might have helped you. When you were starting out. A foot in the door.
    DR. GUZMAN
    Because my white cane might look good in class pictures.
    MR. ADAMSON
    I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—
    DR. GUZMAN
    You have the audacity to suggest my blindness is somehow an advantageous mutation? Do you have any idea what I’ve had to overcome to be here? The sacrifices I’ve made for
this
?
    DR. GUZMAN gestures to her lab.
    If
you
knew you were going to be completely blind within a year, what would you be staring at right now? Tropical sunsets? Impressionist paintings? Or test tubes?
    MR. ADAMSON
    Why don’t you just stop? Go see the world, before…
    DR. GUZMAN
    Before I can’t see the world? Because if I stop now, Mr. Adamson, I will have wasted my sight on a failed experiment and that would mean I earned an F. But, unlike you, I have no intention of spending my remaining days lying awake at night second-guessing my choices.
    MR. ADAMSON
    I don’t do that.
    DR. GUZMAN
    You never think about that chance rendezvous with the car? I don’t believe that.
    MR. ADAMSON
    I try not to. But you know what I do think about? All those little things I could have done that day that might have slowed me down half a step. If I had to tie my shoelace. Or even just sneeze. But what’s there to second-guess? How could I have known?
    DR. GUZMAN
    I knew. I saw the darkness creeping in from the corners. And I chose to lock myself in this basement lab. I chose science. Over sunsets.
    MR. ADAMSON
    Some people might second-guess that.
    DR. GUZMAN
    I am not some people. I knew I had the brains and the ambition and opportunity to attempt something significant. Better a bold F than a timid W. Only now, they’re calling me unstable! An intellectual liability. They’re looking for an excuse to put me out to pasture, while I work day and night to make my mark, before I lose the remaining eight per cent of my visual field.
    MR. ADAMSON
    Dr. Guzman, there’s a pub down the street. With a ramp. How about I buy you a drink?
    DR. GUZMAN
    Mr. Adamson, do you want to walk again?
    MR. ADAMSON
    I don’t need to walk again to have a meaningful life.
    DR. GUZMAN
    Answer the question.
    MR. ADAMSON
    I will walk again when God decides—
    DR. GUZMAN
    A. You want to walk again. B. You don’t.
    MR. ADAMSON
    A.
    DR. GUZMAN
    I may be able to help you.
    MR. ADAMSON
    I’m not interested in spinal-cord research.
    DR. GUZMAN
    Neither am I. I’m talking about something much bigger.
    MR. ADAMSON
    I don’t need your help.
    MR. ADAMSON makes a grab for his briefcase.
    DR. GUZMAN sees him just in time, thwarts him using her white cane as a weapon.
    She locks the door, puts the key back in her pocket.
    DR. GUZMAN
    I think you do. But first, I need to know something.
    Auditorium
    CYNTHIA
    What’s your secret?
    THEO
    I’m on a lucky streak. That’s all.
    CYNTHIA
    A lucky streak? How the hell do you have the audacity to go double or nothing on each flip, and that aside, how on earth do you get twenty consecutive coin flips right?
    THEO
    I’m a lucky man.
    CYNTHIA
    No. You’re not.
    THEO
    Time Magazine
called me the Luckiest Man Alive.
    CYNTHIA
    Give me a break. You can’t keep hiding behind luck.
    THEO
    Who’s hiding? The media follows my every move. There are cameras and reporters waiting outside the building right now. Do you have any idea what that’s like? Now if you’ll kindly give me back my briefcase—
    CYNTHIA
    Okay. Fine. Let’s say you are lucky. Why? Why are you so lucky? That’s what I want to know.
    THEO
    That’s what everyone wants to know.
    Pause.
    Even me.
    CYNTHIA
    I don’t understand why the casinos let you keep betting. Are they just hoping your luck is going to catch up with you sooner or later?
    THEO
    Are you kidding? Nobody will let me stop. The