CPU (A post-apocalyptic electronic opera for the end of the world, in one act)

Prologue:

‘Imagine the prison of repetition
A pitch-perfect perpetual misery
Awaiting each player ignition
Is a blanket of unusable memory’

A ten song cycle for 1 actor, 25 iPads (in a circle surrounding the performer), 3 musicians and the last days on Earth.


Synopsis:

Guy meets girl. Girl falls for guy. Guy falls for girl.

Guy brings girl into a cyber/eco terrorist organization.
Together, they develop a virus that ends the planet, killing off all life on Earth.
They survive, trapped in a bunker. Girl is in a coma, infected with her own viral creation.
As guy works (tirelessly) to keep her alive, he is without food, without sleep, without rest.

[There is no hope. There is no rescue mission. There is nothing that can be salvaged. There is no future.]

Our story begins with a bright, loud explosion as the global power grid fails.
Guy is forced to manually maintain her brain function through repetitive tasks:
setting and resetting 25 independently timed video alarm clocks on light-emitting tablets.
As time goes on, the alarms become more difficult to retrigger, and his exhaustion begins to take over.

[If he misses an alarm reset, the alarm is disabled and it emits a tone that cannot be turned off.]
[If all 25 alarms are allowed to misfire, the opera immediately ends, regardless of the progress remaining.]


Set List:
CPU
Do You?
This Is Love
Out Of My Mind
Better Off
Relay
Face Forward
Are You?
Caution
Turnover
Pulsars
I Don’t Know
Home
Last Song