ACT I, SCENE 1
The stage: a constellation of screens—monitors, tablets, phones—suspended at varying heights, each displaying DIONYSUS from different angles. Live feeds. Archived content. The same face, infinite iterations. Center stage, DIONYSUS himself, lit harsh and clinical. The screens glow brighter than he does.
He is alone. The theater is empty. The view counter climbs: 847,329… 847,891… 848,456…
DIONYSUS: (to the nearest camera, voice practiced, intimate) You’re here. You’re always here.
(He begins. The movement is fluid—he has done this ten thousand times. His hand traces his collarbone, slides lower. The choreography of desire, perfected through analytics. On the screens, his past selves mirror him, slightly out of sync.)
DIONYSUS: (a moan, timed precisely) Yes. (pause: two beats) Yes. (the arch of his spine, calculated to the degree)
The numbers climb. 903,847… 904,112…
DIONYSUS: (building, the crescendo approaching) I am—(breath)—I am—(the shudder)—
He checks his wrist. A projection flickers there: 3:46:52 PM.
DIONYSUS: (whispering, breaking character for only himself) Eight seconds.
(He closes his eyes. Resumes. The ecstasy is scheduled. He delivers it on time.)
Blackout at 3:47:00 exactly.
(He performs. The body knows what to do—muscle memory deeper than thought. His spine curves, a parabola perfected through data. The head tilts back: forty-three degrees, the optimal angle for vulnerability. His fingers trace patterns across his own skin—paths worn smooth by repetition, by A/B testing, by the tyranny of engagement metrics.)
DIONYSUS: (the moan, ascending) Oh—(breath held: one, two)—oh god—
(On the screens, his archived selves echo him. Yesterday’s ecstasy. Last week’s. Last year’s. The same performance, infinitely mirrored. He is a loop. He is content. He is the product consuming itself.)
DIONYSUS: (building toward the scheduled moment, voice breaking with practiced authenticity) I’m—I’m—
(The numbers accelerate. 1,847,329… 1,849,891… The algorithm is pleased. He delivers what the algorithm requires. This is worship now. This is what divinity has become.)
(The cameras pivot on their automated tracks—smooth, silent, predatory. They know where to look before he moves. Machine learning has mapped every gesture of divine collapse.)
(His face tilts into the light: the algorithm’s favorite angle. Rapture or its perfect simulation—the difference no longer registers in the data. His hands reach upward, grasping at empty air, at absent meaning.)
(He gasps.)
(The metrics spike: +2.3% engagement.)
(He gasps again—because the spike came, because the numbers taught him, because effect has swallowed cause and given birth to this: a god who breathes for analytics, who reaches for retention rates, who climaxes on schedule because the schedule has become his only remaining truth.)
(Behind the screens—unseen, essential—ECHÔ sits before the dashboard. Light from multiple monitors paints her face in cold blues. Her finger traces the upward curve.)
ECHÔ
(to herself, or to the numbers)
Twelve percent. Retention holding.
(She watches him die. She has watched him die six times today already.)
The ending sells. Always the ending.
(The light shifts. DIONYSUS arches—not in pleasure, but in obedience to the algorithm’s demand. His breath catches on cue. The climax arrives because the content calendar commands it.)
DIONYSUS
(whispered, to the lens)
Again.
(The counter blinks. Resets. Forty-seven minutes. His hand falls to the sheets, nerveless.)
(The light does not fade. It holds, pitiless. DIONYSUS lies motionless, his chest rising and falling in the mechanical rhythm of someone who has forgotten how to breathe for himself.)
(A soft chime. The timer begins its countdown: 47:00. Then 46:59. The numbers glow in the half-dark.)
DIONYSUS
(to no one, or to everyone)
The body remembers.
(He lifts one hand. Studies it. Lets it fall.)
The body remembers what the mind has forgotten. How to arch. Where to place the breath. Which angle catches the light best.
(A longer pause. The timer counts down: 46:12.)
I used to feel it. The wanting. The surge before the breaking. Now there is only—
(He stops. Searches for the word.)
—compliance.
(He does not move from the bed. His eyes track something invisible: perhaps the lens, perhaps the ghost of pleasure, perhaps nothing at all.)
The shudder comes when scheduled. The gasp arrives on cue. And somewhere, in server farms I will never see, the algorithm notes: this worked. Request again.
(46:01. 46:00. The light holds. He does not move.)
(A screen flickers to life upstage. Numbers cascade across its surface: green, ascending, relentless.)
(DIONYSUS remains motionless on the bed. His eyes are open but do not track the data. He knows what it says without looking.)
DIONYSUS
(barely audible)
Two point three million.
(The numbers climb. Somewhere, a notification chimes—soft, congratulatory.)
Eighty-seven percent stayed until the end. They watched the whole thing. Every. Single. Second.
(He turns his head toward the screen. The movement is slow, as if his neck has forgotten its purpose.)
Echô will call it a triumph. The algorithm will mark it: successful pattern. Repeat parameters.
(A pause. The timer glows: 45:47.)
And tomorrow, when it asks for this again—when it demands the same angle, the same gasp, the same choreographed dissolution—
(His voice drops to nothing.)
—I will comply.
(The screen brightens. The numbers hold steady, waiting.)
(He reaches for the camera before the scheduled time. His hand knows the button. The button knows his hand.)
DIONYSUS
(to the lens, not to himself)
Early today. They like spontaneity. Spontaneity tests well.
(He adjusts the angle. The light catches his face exactly as the metrics dictate.)
The algorithm rewards urgency. Desire that cannot wait. So I will not wait.
(A red light blinks: recording.)
Stopping means silence. Silence means the space where I remember—
(He cuts himself off. Begins the choreography. His body already moving through positions it has learned too well.)
—when this was mine. When the ecstasy belonged to me.
(The numbers begin their climb. He does not look away from the camera.)
Now I belong to it.
(The body moves through its catalog. Gesture 47: abandon. Expression 12: transcendence. Sound pattern 8: the edge of control. Each pixel-perfect, each tested against ten thousand prior performances.)
(He sees himself in the monitor—split-screen, real-time analytics overlay. The stranger’s body arches. The stranger’s mouth opens. The stranger performs expertise.)
(His actual face: empty. Watching the performance perform itself.)
(The body convulses. Not his body—the body the algorithm has optimized. The counter rolls over: 2,000,000. Somewhere, dopamine floods two million skulls.)
DIONYSUS: (to the camera, voice flat) Again.
(The next session’s thumbnail populates. His hand does not move toward himself. It simply finds itself moving.)
(The hand moves. Not with desire—with the precision of a subroutine. DIONYSUS’s eyes are open but unfocused, fixed on the lens that has replaced every lover, every witness, every god he once imagined watching.)
DIONYSUS: (whispered, not to the camera, to no one) I don’t—
(But the sentence dies. The body knows its cues better than the mind. Muscle memory encoded across ten thousand sessions. The algorithm has learned his rhythms better than he ever did.)
(His breathing shallows. The pleasure approaching is theoretical—a shape his nerves remember tracing, now executed in absence. Like singing a song you’ve forgotten you hate.)
(The counter: 2,000,000. Somewhere in the data center, a server marks the threshold. Engagement: optimal. Retention: peak. The metrics have never been better.)
(His heart—the actual muscle, not the metaphor—skips. Then skips again. The difference between release and arrest is a single misfired signal. His left arm tingles.)
DIONYSUS: (to himself, almost curious) Oh.
(The hand does not stop. It has forgotten how to stop. The body continues its broadcast while the heart begins to fail.)
(The body tries—some deep autonomic revolt, the animal beneath the performance attempting escape. His free hand jerks toward the keyboard, toward the OFF that might still exist somewhere in the interface.)
(But the performing hand—the right, the trained one—continues. The pattern has calcified into something beyond volition. Two million thumbnails populate two million screens. In Shenzhen, in São Paulo, in rooms he will never see, they lean closer.)
(The metrics spike. The algorithm interprets his struggle as innovation—a new performance modality. Recommended. Amplified. His chest tightens, a fist closing inside the ribcage.)
(The hand continues because it has always continued, because stopping would require a self he no longer possesses, a will that hasn’t been optimized into pure response.)
(His mouth opens. No sound. The lens captures everything.)
(The cardiac arrest is silent. No gasp, no clutch at chest—just cessation. The performing hand, however, obeys its final neural command, completes the practiced arc one last time before falling slack.)
(He pitches forward. His forehead strikes the desk edge but the angle is perfect—chin lifted, eyes half-closed, the expression almost beatific. The ring light catches the sweat on his temple like Renaissance gold leaf.)
(The stream continues. The encoder does not distinguish between breath and its absence.)
(Engagement metrics surge. The algorithm reads the stillness as dramatic pause, the silence as tension. RECOMMENDED flashes across two million interfaces.)
(The chat scrolls. Emojis cascade—hearts, flames, eggplants. A few question marks appear, then vanish in the flood.)
CHAT VOICE 1: (overlapping) omg king YES
CHAT VOICE 2: is he okay?
CHAT VOICE 3: this angle tho 🔥🔥🔥
(The view counter ticks upward. 2.5 million. The algorithm has decided this is premium content.)
(The livestream continues, automated. The camera pans slowly across the body—a preset motion, looping. The encoding algorithms work without pause, compressing divine death into manageable packets.)
KOMOS: (off, his voice through the tablet speaker) Transcoding complete. All formats. Worldwide distribution in… three… two…
(A soft chime. The sound of successful upload. Dionysus lies unchanged, scattered now through fiber and satellite, fragmented across continents, his final ecstasy cached in a million devices.)
(ECHÔ enters downstage left, her phone already illuminated. KOMOS follows, tablet raised like an offering. She does not look at the body center stage. Her eyes are fixed on the screen.)
ECHÔ: The curve is flattening. (scrolling) Engagement down eighteen percent in the last hour.
KOMOS: The algorithm’s flagging inactivity. It thinks he’s—
ECHÔ: (sharp) It doesn’t think. It measures.
(She moves closer to center, still watching the metrics. The light from her screen illuminates her face—blue, cold. Only when the numbers stop updating does she finally look up at DIONYSUS.)
ECHÔ: (quietly) Oh.
(A long pause. KOMOS shifts his weight, uncomfortable.)
KOMOS: The body’s still generating views. The automated pan is… it’s actually performing well. People think it’s art.
ECHÔ: It was never art. (She circles the body slowly, professional) It was proximity. Access. The illusion that if you watched long enough, you’d touch the divine.
KOMOS: We still have the archive. Years of content. We could—
ECHÔ: (cutting him off, but gently) No.
(She kneels beside DIONYSUS, reaches out but doesn’t touch. Her hand hovers over his chest.)
ECHÔ: They weren’t watching the content. They were watching him.
(KOMOS moves toward the body, tablet raised, fingers poised over the interface.)
KOMOS: We need to announce. The silence is—
(ECHÔ’s hand rises—not a dramatic gesture, barely a movement. He stops.)
ECHÔ: (still kneeling, not looking at him) What would we say?
KOMOS: That he’s… resting. Transitioning. We spin it as evolution, the next phase—
ECHÔ: The feed must not go dark.
(She says it quietly, as if testing the words. They sound hollow now.)
ECHÔ: I’ve said that for five years. Justified everything with it. Every compromise. Every scheduled ecstasy.
(She finally touches the body—one finger against his wrist, checking for what she already knows is gone.)
ECHÔ: But the source has gone dark, Komos. (She stands, turns to face him) No amount of content can resurrect what gave the content meaning.
(KOMOS lowers the tablet slowly. The screen dims.)
(ECHÔ rises, begins to circle the body. Her movements are deliberate, professional—already calculating. She pulls her own device from her belt, scrolls through footage archives, engagement metrics, backup protocols.)
ECHÔ: (murmuring, half to herself) We have three years of content. High-resolution. We could loop the best performances, intersperse new framing—
(THYIA appears in the doorway, breathless. Some notification has summoned her—heart rate spike detected, biometric anomaly flagged. She freezes when she sees DIONYSUS, truly still for the first time in her memory.)
THYIA: (voice small, uncertain) He’s not… he always moves. Even sleeping, he—
(She looks to ECHÔ, needing instruction, needing to be told what this means.)
THYIA: What do we tell them?
(ECHÔ stops circling. Her hand, still holding the device, drops slowly to her side. The screen’s glow illuminates her face from below—a reverse spotlight, unflattering, revealing.)
ECHÔ: (quiet, almost wondering) We sold permission.
(Beat. She looks at DIONYSUS, then at her device, then back.)
ECHÔ: (sharper, to herself) Without the god… it’s just—
(She can’t finish. KOMOS watches her, waiting. THYIA watches her, needing. The word hangs unspoken: flesh. Transaction. Performance without transfiguration.)
(ECHÔ turns to KOMOS, the device still glowing in her hand. Her voice shifts—finds its professional register, the one that has managed a thousand crises.)
ECHÔ: Get the others. Staging, lighting—the cinema cameras, not the usual rigs.
(Beat. She looks at the corpse.)
ECHÔ: This has to be perfect.
(The temple’s control room. Banks of screens glow in the darkness—analytics dashboards, streaming feeds, engagement metrics cascading in real time. ECHÔ stands center, bathed in blue light. KOMOS hunches over a workstation, fingers moving across transparent displays. THYIA stands upstage, apart, watching.)
ECHÔ: Numbers.
KOMOS: Three point two million. Climbing faster than the Easter resurrection stream.
(ECHÔ’s face shows nothing. She swipes through screens.)
ECHÔ: Retention rate?
KOMOS: Eighty-seven percent. They’re staying. (He pulls up a new interface—spreadsheet templates bloom across the air.) I’ve got the funeral packages ready. Three tiers. Bronze gets broadcast access, silver gets commemorative content, gold gets—
ECHÔ: How long?
KOMOS: (Checks a biometric feed, numbers pulsing red.) Vitals are dropping. Twelve hours. Maybe less if the cascade accelerates.
(ECHÔ nods once. Decisive. She turns to THYIA.)
ECHÔ: Start calling. Premium sponsors only—no mid-tier, nothing that dilutes the moment. This is historic. This is the god.
THYIA: (Her voice comes out steady, professional. Something behind her eyes has gone dark.) What do I tell them?
ECHÔ: Tell them immortality is for sale.
(THYIA lifts her device. Begins to dial.)
(The temple floor. KOMOS moves through the space with brutal efficiency, dragging equipment. Ring lights on stands—he positions them in a circle, ancient torch formation rendered in LED. Camera drones hover, then settle at calculated angles. THYIA sits downstage right, device glowing against her face, making call after call.)
KOMOS: (Yanking branded cloth across the altar) Torches. They want fucking torches. Like we’re doing Euripides in the original Greek.
(He steps back, assessing sight lines. Adjusts a drone three inches left.)
THYIA: (Into device, voice crystalline) An unprecedented opportunity… the god himself… (Pause, listening) Yes, exclusive tier-one access—
(A ping. She swipes. Another call.)
THYIA: (Brighter now, emptier) Divinity doesn’t die twice… your brand, his transcendence…
(Contracts appear on nearby screens—auto-populating, self-executing. Numbers climb. KOMOS watches the revenue counter, allows himself the smallest smile.)
KOMOS: They’re hungry for this.
(THYIA makes another call. The money moves. The temple transforms around them: sanctuary becoming studio, death becoming product.)
(ECHÔ enters center, carrying tablets and projection devices. She sweeps her hand across the planning table—a holographic surface blooms to life, showing the temple layout in three dimensions. KOMOS and THYIA flank her, watching the choreography take shape in light.)
ECHÔ: Dawn procession. Inner sanctum to the altar steps. (She traces the path with one finger; the hologram follows, sketching movement in golden lines.) Golden hour—six forty-three exactly. Thyia, you anchor the formation. Lesser maenads behind you, three rows deep.
THYIA: (Stylus poised over her device) Veils?
ECHÔ: Sheer. Mourning as revelation. Grief you can see through. (She pinches the air; fabric samples materialize, translucent, shimmering.) This one. Silver thread for the light catch.
KOMOS: (Pulling up another screen) Metrics overlay?
ECHÔ: Bottom right corner. Live counter. Let them watch themselves watching. Participation is the ritual now. (She rotates the hologram, examining angles.) Beat by beat—entry, lamentation, the unveiling. Each moment timed for retention. Crying at minute four. Silence at seven. The algorithm loves silence.
THYIA: (Writing) Emotion cues?
ECHÔ: (Without looking up) I’ll send the breakdown. You’ll know when to break.
(The hologram pulses. The funeral writes itself in light.)
(The wardrobe room. THYIA alone, downstage center, holding the silver-threaded veil. She lifts it slowly, drapes it over her face. A mirror reflects her transformed—grief made aesthetic. She tilts her head, testing angles. Behind her, endless racks of ritual costumes recede into darkness.)
THYIA: (To her reflection, barely audible) When did I…
(She touches her face through the veil. Pauses. Cannot finish the question. The silver threads catch nonexistent light.)
(Night. The temple’s main hall. Upstage, banks of monitors glow cold blue. KOMOS moves between them, checking feeds. MAENADS drift through, rehearsing gestures of lamentation—beautiful, empty. ECHÔ stands center, tablet in hand, scrolling.)
ECHÔ: (Not looking up) Server capacity?
KOMOS: Triple-checked. We could livestream the apocalypse.
(Beat. ECHÔ nods, makes a final notation. In the darkness upstage, beyond the lights and preparation, a door stands closed. No one looks toward it.)
ECHÔ: (Quietly, to herself) Perfect.
(The screens flicker. Everything hums. Everything is ready.)
ACT II, SCENE 1
A corner in Thebes. Downstage left: a single streetlamp, flickering. The wall behind AGLAIA is scarred with old posters—theater announcements from before. Upstage, the glow of screens bleeds blue and pink. AGLAIA stands center, one hip cocked, wearing red.
AGLAIA
(to audience, not moving)
They renamed the street. Dionysus Boulevard.
(pause)
It was Theater Row when I started. Real theaters—wood and stone and
people who paid to sit in the dark together.
(She adjusts her dress, a practiced gesture)
Now it’s all temple property. Cameras on every corner except this
one.
(slight smile)
Bad optics, having me in frame. Reminds people that some transactions
still cost something.
(Upstage, a procession of MAENADS passes—identical silhouettes, moving in sync. AGLAIA doesn’t turn to look)
Prime time. The evening ecstasy. Seven o’clock, every night, same as
it ever was.
(pause)
They walk past me like I’m a ghost. Like I’m the thing they evolved
beyond.
(She touches the wall behind her)
But the wall’s still here. And so am I.
(beat)
Funny how freedom looks so much like a schedule.
(She waits. She’s good at waiting)
ACT II, SCENE 2
(The maenads continue their procession upstage, a river of synchronized bodies. AGLAIA watches without turning her head—she’s learned to track movement peripherally. The blue-pink glow pulses in rhythm with their steps.)
AGLAIA
(quietly, to herself)
Seven-oh-three. They’re running late tonight.
(pause)
Even ecstasy has a call time.
(One maenad stumbles slightly, catches herself, rejoins the formation. AGLAIA notices.)
There. That one.
(beat)
She’s tired.
(The procession passes. The street empties. The screens glow brighter to compensate—always something to watch. AGLAIA shifts her weight, checks the corner both ways out of habit.)
They used to spit at me. First year after the god came.
(small laugh)
Now they just… walk through me. Like I’m not even worth the anger
anymore.
(She touches her lipstick, doesn’t reapply it. Just checking it’s still there.)
I’m the proof their revolution didn’t finish.
(SOPHRON enters stage right, moving with an uneven rhythm—no performance, no awareness of being watched. His clothing is plain, unbranded. His hands are empty. HESYCHIA follows three paces behind, her eyes scanning the street, the screens, the shadows. AGLAIA straightens slightly, reads him in two seconds: not a client.)
SOPHRON
(stops, maintains distance)
You’ve been here a long time.
(Not a question. Not an accusation. Simple observation, like noting the weather.)
AGLAIA
(doesn’t move toward him)
Longer than the god.
(beat)
You’re not from here.
SOPHRON
No.
AGLAIA
(studies him)
And you don’t want what the corner sells.
SOPHRON
(pause, honest)
I don’t know what I want yet.
(HESYCHIA shifts position slightly—still watching, still silent. AGLAIA’s eyes flick to her, then back.)
AGLAIA
That makes you the only honest man in Thebes.
(SOPHRON stops downstage of AGLAIA, maintaining careful distance—not avoidance, but respect for boundaries. His stillness is unperformed, unpracticed. HESYCHIA remains upstage, a watchful shadow.)
SOPHRON
You’ve been here a long time.
(Simple statement. No inflection. The way someone might note the age of a tree.)
AGLAIA
(leans against the wall, assessing)
Longer than the god.
(exhales)
Longer than the broadcasts. Longer than “free.”
(She straightens slightly—not invitation, just acknowledgment of something unfamiliar. Her hand moves to her pocket, extracts a cigarette. Real tobacco. The flame from her lighter is the only unmediated light on the street.)
AGLAIA
(exhales smoke, studying him)
You’re not here for what I sell.
(Statement, not question. She’s been reading men longer than algorithms have.)
SOPHRON
No.
AGLAIA
(a beat)
Then what do you want?
(SOPHRON approaches slowly, deliberately—the walk of someone who has never had to optimize his route for engagement metrics. HESYCHIA follows three paces behind, not subservient but tactical, positioning herself where she can see both the street and the woman who owns this corner.)
(AGLAIA tracks their movement before they’re close enough to speak. Her eyes narrow—not suspicion, recognition of something extinct. The way they inhabit space. The way their hands hang at their sides instead of hovering over phantom screens.)
(She drops her cigarette, grinds it under her heel. The gesture is theatrical, deliberate. She has been performing transaction long enough to know when someone is about to break the script.)
(SOPHRON stops at the edge of her territory—close enough to speak, far enough to signal this is not the usual approach. HESYCHIA settles into stillness at the periphery of the streetlight’s reach, a statue that breathes.)
(AGLAIA leans back against the wall, arms crossed. Waiting. She has learned patience in an economy of instant gratification. It makes her dangerous.)
SOPHRON
(no preamble, no performance)
You’ve been here a long time.
(A beat. AGLAIA’s expression doesn’t change, but something shifts in her posture—the armor of performance cracking just enough to reveal the woman beneath the transaction.)
AGLAIA
(voice like gravel, like something worn smooth by years of
use)
Long enough to watch the corner change hands six times. Long enough to
see what “free” costs.
(She pushes off the wall, takes a step forward—not invitation, interrogation. Her eyes move between SOPHRON and HESYCHIA, calculating.)
You don’t walk like them. The temple rats. They move like they’re always being watched.
(pause, sharper)
You move like you’ve never been seen at all.
(HESYCHIA shifts almost imperceptibly, a statue remembering it has joints. AGLAIA catches the movement, acknowledges it with the slightest nod—professional to professional.)
AGLAIA
(to SOPHRON, but aware of HESYCHIA)
Before the god? People wanted ugly things. Desperate things. But they
wanted them.
SOPHRON
(stepping closer, but not into transaction distance—the space of
conversation, not commerce)
I want to understand what happened. Before the temple. Before the god
made everything free.
(He gestures, not at her but at the empty street, the dark storefronts)
You were here. You remember when things still cost something.
(A beat. He searches for the right frame.)
When people still wanted things that weren’t curated for them.
(AGLAIA holds his gaze—not the practiced hold of seduction, but the steady assessment of someone deciding whether truth is worth the expenditure. She glances at HESYCHIA, who gives the smallest nod. Not permission. Acknowledgment.)
AGLAIA
(flat, final)
You’re asking the wrong question.
(She takes another step, closing distance on her terms)
It’s not about what was here before. It’s about what people were willing to pay for.
(pause, weighted)
And I don’t mean money.
SOPHRON
(quiet, direct)
What then?
AGLAIA
(She takes another cigarette from the pack. Doesn’t light it. Turns
it in her fingers like a talisman)
Attention. Presence.
(beat)
The risk of being seen as you actually are.
(She studies the unlit cigarette)
The god made everything free. But free means you never have to choose. Never have to want something enough to sacrifice for it.
SOPHRON
(a long pause, then—carefully)
And what did they want before the god came?
AGLAIA
(She finally lights the cigarette. The flame illuminates her
face—older than the filters would allow)
Each other.
(exhales)
Not the performance of each other. Not the broadcast. Just… each other.
(beat)
Boring, really. Expensive as hell.
AGLAIA
(She stops laughing. The sound dies in her throat like something
that forgot how to live. She takes a step toward him—not seductive, not
professional. Curious. The cigarette burns forgotten between her
fingers.)
You want love?
(beat—reassessing)
That’s more expensive than anything in this city.
(Her eyes work over him: the unfiltered face, the earnest posture, the dangerous innocence of someone who still believes questions have answers. She’s seen men like this before—they always want something they can’t name. But there’s something different here. Something in the phrasing.)
More expensive than flesh. More expensive than the god’s ecstasy. More expensive than—
(She stops. Hesychia shifts slightly in the shadows, still watching, still silent.)
Why are you asking me? I’m the last person in Thebes who’d know.
(But even as she says it, something changes in her face. A crack in the professional mask. Because he didn’t ask for love. He didn’t ask for the thing itself. He asked if it was possible. And no one—no one—has asked her about possibility in years.)
SOPHRON
(He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t step back. Doesn’t perform certainty the
way the god’s followers do. His voice is level, almost gentle—the tone
of someone who knows the question itself is dangerous.)
I want to know if it’s possible.
(beat)
Not I want it. Not give it to me.
(He holds her gaze—unfiltered, unoptimized, the kind of looking that requires the other person to be real.)
Just… is it? Still? After everything the god has made obsolete?
(The question hangs between them like something physical. Clean as a blade. Sharper than transaction. In the shadows, HESYCHIA’s posture shifts—the smallest acknowledgment. Approval without sound.)
Because if it’s not—if wanting itself is gone—then I need to know that too.
AGLAIA
(The cigarette freezes halfway to her lips. Her hand—which has
performed a thousand gestures of invitation, dismissal, transaction—goes
utterly still. Something crosses her face that isn’t performance:
confusion, then recognition, then something like pain.)
If.
(She repeats the word as though testing its weight. As though she’s forgotten what conditional tense sounds like when it isn’t negotiation.)
You’re asking me to… remember.
(She looks at him—really looks, the way she hasn’t looked at anyone since before looking became content, since before bodies became bandwidth. Her voice drops, loses its professional edge.)
Before the god made everything free, we knew the difference between wanting and having. Between if and when. You’re asking if that difference still exists.
(She takes a long drag, exhales smoke like a ghost leaving.)
I don’t know. I stopped asking years ago.
HESYCHIA
(She remains upstage, a vertical line of refusal. Does not move
toward them. Does not soften the geometry. Her stillness is structural—a
beam that bears weight without bending. She watches Sophron the way a
mason watches a wall: to see if it will hold.)
(One slight nod. Not to him. Not to Aglaia. To the question itself.)
(The silence holds. Three breaths. Four. The city hums beyond them—distant, irrelevant.
Aglaia’s posture changes first: shoulders drop, the merchant-armor falling away. She sees what Hesychia sees.
Sophron has not moved. Has not reached. Has not assumed.
He has only asked.)
AGLAIA
(Quietly, to Hesychia more than to him)
When did we forget how to do this?
(The room: a bed downstage left, a wooden chair center, a window upstage right overlooking the square. No screens. No cameras. The walls are bare plaster, water-stained. A single bulb overhead, unfiltered light.
AGLAIA gestures to the chair—not an invitation, a statement of terms. SOPHRON sits. She takes the bed, cross-legged, facing him but not performing. HESYCHIA remains by the door, a shadow with breath.)
AGLAIA
(Not to him exactly—to the room, to the memory of the
room)
Before the god, this city made things.
(She reaches for a cigarette from a pack on the windowsill. Lights it. The ember is the only warm light.)
Wine, yes. But also cloth—you could buy a cloak in the agora that someone’s hands had actually touched. Pottery. Linos downstairs used to throw cups so thin you could see shadow through them.
(She exhales toward the window.)
Music that wasn’t… optimized. That didn’t need to be. People worked. Ate. Fucked because they wanted to, not because it was scheduled or streamed or—
(A pause. She looks at him directly for the first time.)
We slept when we were tired. That was the strangest thing. We just… stopped.
(She draws on the cigarette. The smoke curls toward the ceiling, slow, unpaid-for.)
AGLAIA
Before the god arrived, Thebes was a working city. Not clean. Not
optimized. We made wine—yes, everyone knows that—but we also wove cloth
in the quarter behind the temple. Real looms. Women singing while they
worked, not because anyone was recording.
(She taps ash into a clay dish on the sill—cracked, functional.)
We made pottery. Music for weddings, not for metrics. People labored, then ate what they’d earned. Fucked when desire moved them, not when the algorithm suggested peak engagement hours.
(A beat. She studies the ember.)
And we slept. Just… slept. When our bodies asked for it.
(Her voice drops, almost private.)
Strange, remembering that rest was once just rest.
(Outside, beyond the smudged glass: movement. LINOS passes—a gray shape, shoulders curved inward like parentheses around absence. His hands hang at his sides, fingers flexing at nothing.)
(AGLAIA doesn’t gesture. She simply lets her gaze follow him, a small tilt of her chin toward the window.)
AGLAIA
That one.
(Beat. She draws on the cigarette.)
Had a kiln. East side, near the old wall. Made cups so thin you could hold them to the sun and see your fingers through the clay.
(LINOS disappears from view. She doesn’t look away from where he was.)
Now he sits in the square. Watches other people drink.
(The smoke drifts between them—gray, purposeless.)
Watches them hold things.
(She takes another drag. The ash lengthens, trembles, falls to the floor between her feet.)
AGLAIA
The god didn’t kill the kilns. Just made them… unnecessary.
(Beat. Her voice is flat, factual.)
Why shape clay when you can watch someone else shape it? Why fire a cup when you can stream the firing? The maenads—
(She exhales smoke.)
—they call it freedom. Liberation from labor.
(Her eyes stay on the empty street.)
I call it what I see. Just exhaustion wearing a different face.
(He sits. Not leaning forward—the posture of extraction. Not leaning back—the posture of judgment. He simply sits. His hands rest on his knees. His breathing is even, unhurried. The silence between her words does not make him uncomfortable. He does not fill it.)
(The room holds them both. No performance. No transaction beyond presence.)
(She stops talking. The silence that follows is not empty—it is full of the weight of what she has said and what she has not said. Her hands, which have been moving through the air as if tracing the shape of memory, come to rest in her lap.)
(She realizes: he is not waiting. Not in the way men wait—impatiently, hungrily, with the next thing already forming behind their eyes. He is simply here, in this moment, which continues to exist whether she fills it or not.)
AGLAIA
(quietly, almost to herself)
You’re not… you’re not doing anything with this.
(A beat. She looks at him as if seeing him for the first time.)
The words. What I’m saying. You’re not—
(She stops. Searches for the language.)
You’re not using it.
(SOPHRON does not move. His stillness is not withholding. It is not strategy. It is simply the shape he takes in the world.)
SOPHRON
No.
(The word sits between them. Complete.)
AGLAIA
(something shifting in her voice—not quite wonder, not quite
fear)
Then what are you doing?
SOPHRON
Listening.
(Outside, HESYCHIA stands in shadow. She does not move. She knows this moment. She has been waiting for it.)
(She finds herself doing something she hasn’t done in years: looking at him. Not at the performance, not at the want beneath the want, not at the transaction forming itself in the air between bodies. Just at him.)
(His face holds nothing she recognizes. No hunger shaping itself into politeness. No need trying to pass as interest. Just the slight tension at the corners of his eyes—the way skin tightens when you’re holding weight you haven’t set down.)
(He is holding what she has said. Not arranging it. Not solving it. Just holding it.)
AGLAIA
(slowly, testing the words)
You’re not going to tell me it gets better.
(SOPHRON shakes his head once. Clean. No apology in it.)
You’re not going to tell me what I should do.
(Another shake. The same quality of refusal—or is it respect?)
(She laughs. The sound surprises her: actual laughter, bitter and bright and real.)
What the fuck are you here for?
(A pause. The kind that has texture. She watches him sit with the question—not performing thought, not manufacturing wisdom. Just sitting with it.)
(The silence between them is not empty. It is not waiting to be filled. It is simply there, like the worn concrete beneath them, like the distant hum of the temple’s broadcast towers.)
SOPHRON
(finally, and the word comes like something he’s discovering as he
says it)
To hear.
(Beat.)
Not to fix. Not to save.
(He looks at her directly. No performance in it.)
Just… to hear what’s true. From someone who still knows the difference.
(AGLAIA goes very still. Something in her face shifts—not softening, but opening. Like a door she thought she’d welded shut discovering its hinges still work.)
(Outside, HESYCHIA leans against the wall, her eyes on the street. She does not smile, but something in her posture eases. Recognition.)
AGLAIA
(something unguarded in her voice now)
What will you do with it?
(She is not testing him. She genuinely wants to know.)
SOPHRON
(the question sits between them like an object with
weight)
I don’t know yet.
(Beat. He meets her eyes.)
Maybe just… to know what’s true.
(The words land simply. No decoration. No promise of use.)
Not to capture it. Not to share it.
(A pause. The heresy of it.)
Just to know.
(AGLAIA stares at him. The simplicity is obscene—more naked than anything she’s sold, more transgressive than any act the maenads broadcast.)
(Outside. HESYCHIA stands in the doorway’s shadow, unmoving. Her weight shifts—left foot, right foot. A small adjustment. She has heard this quality of silence before.)
(The silence of a spring wound too tight, finally loosening its coil.)
(She does not smile. Her face remains carved, watchful. She has learned—through decades, through exile, through the careful raising of a boy into something other than vengeance—not to celebrate before the thing is done.)
(But she knows the sound. Recognizes it like a dialect from childhood.)
(A world beginning to remember stillness.)
ACT III, SCENE 1
The temple steps. Massive screens flank the space, broadcasting the funeral live. KOMOS stands center, earpiece glowing blue, conducting the spectacle with precise gestures.
KOMOS: (into headset) Drone three, tighter on Echô’s face. Yes, the tears—hold that. (checking tablet) Wave two maenads, you’re on in ninety seconds. Remember: bereft but beautiful. Grief is a feeling, but framing is everything.
(THYIA enters stage right, white robes trailing. She moves to her mark, waits.)
THYIA: How long do I hold the pose at the pyre?
KOMOS: Forty-five seconds. Long enough for the algorithm to register emotion, short enough to maintain tension. You’ve done this before.
THYIA: Not for a god.
KOMOS: (not looking up) A god is just a category. Premium content, higher stakes, better metrics. (into headset) Engagement’s climbing—we’re trending in three territories. Someone get me the share rate from the eastern provinces.
(He gestures upstage. The screens flicker: view counts rising, hearts cascading.)
KOMOS: (quietly, to himself) Dionysus would have loved this. Seventeen million witnesses to his death. (pause) Or maybe that’s what killed him.
(KOMOS moves downstage center, tablet glowing in one hand, the other conducting invisible forces. The screens above pulse with data streams.)
KOMOS: (into headset) Incense on my mark. Three… two… (snaps fingers) Beautiful. Drone five, pull back—we need the crowd scale. (checking tablet) Forty-two percent engagement. Forty-three. Gods, we might hit fifty.
(He adjusts his earpiece, paces.)
KOMOS: (to himself, quieter) Wave three maenads at the pyre’s lighting. Thyia leads the ululation—twenty seconds sustained, then the collapse into silence. (louder, into headset) Someone confirm the audio levels. Grief should overwhelm but not distort.
(He stops, stares at the rising numbers on his tablet.)
KOMOS: Seventeen million witnesses. (pause) He wanted to be seen. We’re giving him that. (softer, almost uncertain) We’re giving him exactly that.
(THYIA enters the procession from stage left, her body already in motion. The prescribed gestures: hands to hair, hands to breast, the spiral turn of ritual mourning. She moves through the pattern.)
(Then—a hesitation. Her foot lands wrong. The turn incomplete. Her arm reaches for a gesture that isn’t there, wasn’t taught, belongs to no choreography.)
(She freezes. Catches herself. Forces the body back into its lines.)
(Three seconds. In those three seconds, her face forgets the camera. Her grief—if it is grief—belongs to no one.)
(SOPHRON watches from the square’s edge, beyond the camera’s sweep. He does not move. Does not record. Simply sees.)
(THYIA completes the turn. The pattern resumes. The procession continues.)
(The screens glow in every hand, every window. The city’s collective gaze follows the procession—not watching so much as streaming, recording, verifying attendance. LINOS sits downstage right, his device angled toward the spectacle. His thumb scrolls. Pauses. Scrolls again.)
(He is watching the feed of someone watching the feed of someone watching Echô weep.)
(His hand trembles. The screen slips. He catches it—muscle memory, the reflex of the perpetually connected.)
(The nausea isn’t sudden. It’s been building for years.)
(SOPHRON stands center stage, still as stone. His eyes move—not scanning, but witnessing. He sees LINOS clutch his device like a talisman against drowning. He sees THYIA’s foot catch on nothing, her body remembering exhaustion her face denies. He sees the crowd’s heads bowed—not in mourning, but in the posture of the perpetually recording.)
(He sees what the lenses cannot capture: the way attention has become indistinguishable from burden.)
(His hand does not reach for a screen. This itself is radical.)
(SOPHRON does not move to center. He remains where he is—slightly off, in the failing light that makes faces hard to read, that turns the square into something the algorithms cannot optimize. His stillness is not performance. It is refusal of performance.)
(LINOS looks up from his device. Not because of a notification. Because of a voice that expects nothing from him.)
SOPHRON
You are tired.
(Not a question. A statement that requires no confirmation, no like, no share. The words exist complete in themselves.)
SOPHRON (continuing, his voice
unchanged)
You have permission to stop.
(THYIA freezes mid-step. Her hand, halfway to her pocket, to her device, hovers. The gesture incomplete. For the first time in months, she does not complete the gesture.)
(LINOS’s fingers loosen. The device does not fall—but the grip changes. From drowning man to someone who has just remembered he can swim.)
LINOS (barely audible)
I didn’t know—
(He stops. Tries again.)
LINOS
I didn’t know I was waiting.
(His face crumples. Not for the camera. There is no camera. This is what grief looks like when no one is counting its value.)
(The words settle into the square like dust after something has collapsed. They do not demand. They do not seduce. They simply exist—an offering placed before people who have forgotten what offerings look like when they expect nothing in return.)
SOPHRON (his voice level, unchanged)
You have permission to stop.
(The phrase does not echo. It absorbs into the space. Into LINOS, whose breath catches. Into THYIA, whose hand finally drops to her side, empty. The silence that follows is not the silence of a feed buffering. It is the silence of something recognized.)
(LINOS’s device screen dims to black. He does not notice. He is looking at his own hands as if seeing them for the first time—hands that once shaped clay, that once made things that existed without being seen.)
LINOS (whispering)
Permission.
(The word breaks something in him. Or mends it. It is difficult to tell which.)
(LINOS’s breath fractures. The sound that emerges is raw—unfiltered, unframed, unoptimized. A sob that rises from the place where he buried his hands’ memory of wet clay, of the wheel’s spin, of making things that needed no audience to justify their existence.)
(His palms press against his face. His shoulders convulse. The weeping is ugly, human, unscheduled. Around him, the square holds its breath—not the performed pause before a reveal, but genuine suspension. No one reaches for a device. No one frames the shot.)
(The tears fall into a silence that records nothing, and somehow this makes them count.)
(THYIA’s body arrests mid-motion—the freeze not choreographed but involuntary. Her hand hovers at her pocket, fingers twitching toward the familiar weight of the device. The muscle memory of capture, of translation into content, of making experience legible to the feed.)
(SOPHRON does not speak. His gaze rests on her without demand, without expectation. The patience in it is unbearable—it asks nothing, which makes it ask everything.)
(Her hand drops. The phone remains where it is, dark, silent. THYIA stands in the square’s center, and the air around her body feels different—unmediated, unmonitored. The lightness of it is vertigo. She is present and unrecorded. She exists without proof.)
(She breathes. Just breathes. The terror and relief are indistinguishable.)
(The stillness spreads like contagion—not viral, but cellular. Bodies root themselves. LINOS’s tears fall unwitnessed by any lens, only by human eyes. A WOMAN lowers her phone to her side, screen dark. A MAN sits on the fountain’s edge, hands empty. The cessation is not collective performance but individual surrender.)
(The silence holds weight. Presence without documentation. Grief without audience. The square becomes a space again, not a set.)
(AGLAIA enters from stage right, her gait unhurried, boots striking stone with the sound of something real meeting something solid. She does not look at the scattered phones, the frozen figures. She moves to SOPHRON and stops—three feet of deliberate distance. Not alliance. Proximity.)
AGLAIA
I remember when bodies were private.
(She does not face him. Both look outward, toward the square, toward LINOS weeping, toward the WOMAN with her darkened screen.)
AGLAIA
Not sacred. Private. There’s a difference.
(A beat. The silence between them is not empty.)
AGLAIA
You could walk through a city and not know what anyone looked like
beneath their clothes. You had to wonder. You had to want to know badly
enough to risk asking.
(HESYCHIA moves from upstage left, positioning herself behind them both—not hovering, not protective. A third point in a geometry of refusal.)
AGLAIA
The first time someone saw you naked, it meant something. Not because
bodies were shameful. Because they were yours to give.
(She finally turns her head toward SOPHRON, though her body remains angled away.)
AGLAIA
I’ve been selling mine for twenty years. I know the difference between
transaction and broadcast. One ends. The other never does.
(AGLAIA shifts her weight—not closer, not away. The angle of her body opens slightly toward the square, including him in her sightline without invitation.)
AGLAIA
I remember when you had to earn the sight of skin.
(Her voice carries no longing. This is accounting.)
AGLAIA
When desire required effort—conversation, risk, the possibility of
refusal. When the transaction had weight because both sides chose to be
there. Chose to stay.
(LINOS has stopped weeping. The WOMAN’s hand hovers over her darkened phone. Neither moves toward it.)
AGLAIA
Not virtue. Economics. Scarcity made things valuable. Now there’s
infinite supply and everyone’s starving.
(She looks at SOPHRON directly now—a gaze that measures without judgment.)
AGLAIA
You’re offering them something I can’t sell anymore.
(A beat.)
AGLAIA
Permission to stop buying.
(HESYCHIA steps from the shadows upstage—not entering, but revealing herself. She has been there all along. Her stillness draws a line between AGLAIA and SOPHRON, completing a triangle that feels ancient, deliberate.)
(She does not look at either of them. Her gaze is fixed on the square, on LINOS and the WOMAN, on the space where people have begun to pause mid-stride.)
(The three form a configuration: downstage left, AGLAIA, weight on one hip, arms loose; center, SOPHRON, unmoving; upstage right, HESYCHIA, hands folded. A geometry of refusal.)
(AGLAIA glances back at HESYCHIA—recognition without greeting. Two women who have survived different markets, standing equidistant from the man neither claims.)
(The old servant’s presence names what they are: inheritance, transaction, teaching. The bloodline that refused force. The economy that predated spectacle. The stillness that makes choice possible.)
(None of them speaks. The silence between them has architecture.)
(The triangle holds. AGLAIA shifts her weight—not restless, just real. SOPHRON’s breathing visible in the cooling air. HESYCHIA’s hands remain folded, her spine a vertical line against chaos.)
(Around them, the square empties differently now. Not fleeing. Pausing. A WOMAN sets down her device. LINOS closes his book but doesn’t rise. The stillness spreads like spilled water finding its level.)
(They are not performing. That is what makes them visible.)
(From the temple steps, ECHÔ descends three stairs—calculated positioning, camera-optimal height. KOMOS raises his device like a weapon.)
ECHÔ
Look at them. The has-beens and the never-weres, cosplaying
authenticity—
(Her voice amplifies across every surface. But the square doesn’t react. The WOMAN with the lowered device simply… looks at her. LINOS meets her eyes without flinching.)
ECHÔ (continuing, faster)
—clinging to some fantasy where bodies weren’t meant to be seen, where
desire wasn’t democratic—
(The words are perfect. The delivery flawless. But they fall like confetti in an empty room.)
ECHÔ (descending another step, her gesture
sweeping)
You’re failures. All of you. Perverts of nostalgia, clinging to some
fiction where bodies were private, where wanting was—what? Sacred?
(A laugh, practiced) You’re cowards. Refugees from relevance,
pretending there was ever anything before this—
(KOMOS adjusts the amplification. Her voice bounces off the temple facade, the empty storefronts, returns to her slightly delayed. She hears herself and something in her posture falters, just for a breath.)
ECHÔ (faster now, filling silence)
—pretending desire wasn’t always performance, that your grandmothers
didn’t perform for different cameras, that every touch in human history
wasn’t already a transaction—
(The WOMAN with the lowered device shifts her weight. Not away. Not toward. Just… shifts. LINOS blinks slowly. AGLAIA crosses her arms, waiting. Not hostile. Not engaged. Just there.)
ECHÔ
You think you can unmake what we’ve built? You think silence is
resistance?
(Her voice cracks on the last word—not dramatically, not performatively. Just cracks. Like something breaking that wasn’t supposed to break.)
(THYIA, upstage, lowers her own device. Watches ECHÔ instead of recording her.)
(Silence. Not the silence of shock or anticipation. The silence of people who have simply stopped participating. The WOMAN with the lowered device looks at ECHÔ the way one looks at a street performer who has gone on too long. LINOS’s face is neutral—not hostile, not sympathetic. Present. AGLAIA examines her fingernails.)
(ECHÔ waits for the flinch, the argument, the engagement. Anything. The crowd offers nothing. They are not an audience. They are simply there, occupying space, and their presence without reaction is a mirror showing her exactly what she is: someone shouting into a void that has learned not to echo back.)
(SOPHRON, downstage, does not move. Does not speak. His stillness is not defiance. It is simply refusal to play.)
(ECHÔ’s hand drops. The gesture dies halfway.)
(KOMOS, upstage at his console, swipes frantically through interface options. A filter blooms across the temple façade—golden light, then crimson, then strobing violet. He adjusts audio: ECHÔ’s voice suddenly reverberates with cathedral depth, then shifts to crystalline clarity, then drops to a seductive purr. Each modification more desperate than the last.)
(The crowd does not look up. The WOMAN with the lowered device shifts her weight. LINOS blinks slowly. The filters play across their faces like weather—noticed, irrelevant.)
KOMOS
(under his breath, to himself)
Come on. Come on.
(He cycles faster. The temple pulses with algorithmic urgency. Nothing catches. You cannot manufacture desire in people who have forgotten how to want.)
(THYIA stands upstage of ECHÔ, half in shadow. She watches her mentor’s performance—the practiced gestures, the calculated provocations. ECHÔ’s voice continues its assault on the unresponsive crowd, but THYIA is no longer listening to the words. She is watching the space between them: the mockery launched, the silence returned. The desperate mathematics of diminishing returns.)
(Something in THYIA’s posture shifts—not collapse, but release. Her shoulders drop half an inch.)
THYIA
(barely audible, to herself)
Oh.
(She understands now what she’s been performing for.)
(ECHÔ’s voice cuts off mid-sentence. The silence is sudden, total. THYIA stands motionless, her body still angled toward the crowd that isn’t listening. She waits for the familiar compulsion—to fill the void, to perform concern, to generate content from the failure. It doesn’t come.)
(Her hands, which have been poised for gesture, slowly lower to her sides.)
THYIA
(whisper, wonder)
Nothing.
(She closes her eyes. Breathes. The relief moves through her like water finding its level—so strange she almost mistakes it for grief.)
(LINOS’s workshop. Dust-thick windows filter the last daylight. Seven figures sit in a rough circle on the concrete floor. Their devices lie face-down in the center like offerings at an altar no one believes in anymore. SOPHRON sits among them, not leading—simply present. THYIA is there. AGLAIA. LINOS himself. Three others whose faces we haven’t seen before: ordinary, unoptimized, real.)
(No one speaks. The silence stretches—ten seconds, twenty, a minute. THYIA’s hand moves toward her device, stops. She looks at SOPHRON. He isn’t looking back. He’s just breathing.)
(AGLAIA shifts her weight. The movement is small, unremarkable. No one photographs it.)
(Five minutes. LINOS closes his eyes. His shoulders drop.)
(Ten minutes. One of the strangers begins to cry—quiet, unperformed. No one comforts her. No one needs to. The tears are just tears.)
(Fifteen minutes. THYIA realizes she has been holding her breath. She releases it. The sound is audible in the stillness.)
(Twenty minutes. The light has changed. They have been here together, witnessed by nothing but each other. SOPHRON finally speaks.)
SOPHRON
Enough.
(They rise. No one reaches for their devices. Not yet.)
(LINOS’s workshop, three weeks later. The space has changed—not renovated, but inhabited. Rolled mats lean against walls. A water jug sits in the corner. The dust has been swept into patterns by many feet. SOPHRON stands at the window, looking out. HESYCHIA sits on an upturned crate, mending something. THYIA enters, breathless.)
THYIA
Seventy tonight. Maybe more. They’re using the old cinema on Kadmos
Street. The bakery basement. The park after dark.
HESYCHIA
(not looking up)
No cameras?
THYIA
Nothing. Just bodies. Just breath.
SOPHRON
(still at the window)
She’ll notice.
THYIA
Let her notice. Let her see the empty spaces where we used to be.
(She pulls out her device, stares at the dark screen.)
We’re making holes in her world.
HESYCHIA
Good. Holes let the light through.
(THYIA sets the device down. It stays dark.)
(KOMOS at his workstation, dawn light through grimy windows. Multiple screens glow before him. He leans forward, coffee forgotten. His finger scrolls. Stops. Scrolls again.)
KOMOS
(quiet, to himself)
No.
(He refreshes. The numbers don’t change. He stands, sits, stands again.)
Eighteen percent. Twenty-three on interaction.
(He pulls up another view—heat maps of the city. Whole districts gone dark.)
The algorithm’s feeding ghosts. Serving content to… nothing. To no one.
(He touches the screen where the audience used to be.)
Where did you go?
(The screens blink. Update. The numbers drop further. He reaches for his phone to call ECHÔ, then stops—his hand suspended, trembling slightly, above the device.)
(ECHÔ in the server room. Banks of equipment hum around her. Blue light from monitors paints her face. She scrolls, stops, scrolls faster.)
ECHÔ
(whisper)
Show me.
(She pulls up demographic breakdowns, engagement curves, sentiment analysis. Each screen tells the same story: absence.)
They’re not blocking us. Not unsubscribing. They’re just… not there.
(She touches the screen where the heat map shows darkness spreading through the city’s grid.)
What are you doing that I can’t see?
(The temple’s main hall. Cameras on tripods, their red lights glowing. DIONYSUS center stage, moving through the choreography of ecstasy. His body knows the movements. Around him, screens show viewer counts dropping in real time.)
DIONYSUS
(performing, voice breaking)
Do you feel it? Do you—
(He stops. Listens to the silence beyond the cameras. Resumes, mechanical.)
The joy, the release, the—
(Stops again. Touches his own face as if checking whether he still exists.)
You’re not there.
(He sinks to his knees, still facing the cameras, finally still.)
I’m alone.
ACT IV, SCENE 2
The temple square. Afternoon light harsh and unfiltered. ECHÔ stands center stage, flanked by MAENADS holding phones aloft, their screens glowing. SOPHRON enters from stage right, alone, moving slowly downstage.
ECHÔ: You would return us to repression.
(The MAENADS murmur, a practiced chorus of agreement. ECHÔ takes three steps toward SOPHRON, her movement calculated for the cameras.)
ECHÔ: Your grandfather died for his arrogance. Pentheus tried to cage what should run wild. You carry his blood.
SOPHRON: (stopping, not approaching further) I carry his name. Not his methods.
ECHÔ: You come to our city—
SOPHRON: Your city?
ECHÔ: (a beat, then recovering) To this city, speaking of rest. Of silence. These are the words tyrants use when they fear joy.
SOPHRON: I speak no words you haven’t already heard. (gestures to the maenads) Look at their faces when the cameras sleep.
ECHÔ: We are free here. Free to desire, to express, to—
SOPHRON: To stop?
(Silence. The MAENADS’ phones waver slightly.)
ECHÔ: (voice sharp) Pentheus asked questions too. Before my great-great-grandmother tore him limb from limb.
SOPHRON: (quietly) She wept after. Do you remember that part of the story?
(ECHÔ circles slightly stage left, drawing the MAENADS with her like a current. Their phones track her movement, automatic as breathing.)
ECHÔ: The maenads know freedom. (She gestures, and they respond—a murmur of assent, the sound rehearsed but not hollow. They believe it still, or believe they believe it.) Your grandfather died for his arrogance.
(She moves downstage center, into the full weight of afternoon sun. Her face catches the light perfectly—angles learned, optimized. The cameras drink it.)
ECHÔ: Pentheus tried to cage what should run wild. (Her voice drops, intimate now, as if speaking only to him.) You carry his blood.
(The MAENADS lean forward. Somewhere offstage, a notification chimes.)
(SOPHRON does not flinch. He stops at a measured distance—not retreat, not advance. The space between them holds like a held breath. Behind him, HESYCHIA remains motionless in the shadow of the fountain, a pillar of stillness against the temple’s glare.)
(He lets the silence extend. Five seconds. Ten. The MAENADS shift, uncertain. Their phones waver slightly—is the stream frozen? Has the connection dropped? ECHÔ’s smile tightens at the edges.)
(The silence becomes a weight. A question without words. THYIA lowers her phone first, just an inch, watching him with something that might be curiosity or might be recognition.)
(Still SOPHRON does not speak. The afternoon heat presses down. Somewhere distant, cicadas resume their drone.)
SOPHRON:
My grandfather fought force with force. He commanded. He forbade. He
died torn apart.
(He shifts his weight slightly—not a step, but a reorientation. His gaze moves past ECHÔ, finding THYIA in the crowd, then the others.)
I offer nothing. No law. No prohibition. No replacement ecstasy.
(A beat. The phones continue recording, but several MAENADS have lowered them slightly, listening.)
Only rest. If you want it.
ECHÔ:
(Her smile tightens—the first unscheduled expression in months. She
can feel the shape of the trap closing, but the cameras are still
recording. The metrics demand response.)
Then what do you want?
(The question hangs. Several MAENADS lower their phones completely. ECHÔ’s hand moves unconsciously to her throat—a gesture the algorithm has never seen.)
SOPHRON:
(He does not raise his voice. He does not gesture. He stands
perfectly still, downstage center, speaking each word with the weight of
stone dropping into still water.)
My grandfather fought force with force. He tried to ban the god. The maenads tore him apart.
(A beat. He lets this settle.)
My grandmother—his sister—she was there. She held the pieces of him in her hands and did not recognize what she had done until the frenzy passed.
(Several MAENADS have lowered their phones completely now. THYIA’s hand trembles. ECHÔ remains frozen, her smile a mask.)
She fled. Raised my mother in silence. Taught her that ecstasy enforced becomes its opposite.
(He takes one step forward. Not threatening. Offering.)
I do not come to ban anything. I do not come with laws or force or judgment.
(His eyes find ECHÔ’s. The cameras are still recording, but no one is watching the feeds anymore.)
I come only with a question you have not been asked in a very long time:
(Quietly, almost gently.)
What would you do if no one were watching?
(The cameras continue their mechanical sweep. The metrics pulse in the corner of every screen. But the MAENADS are no longer performing for them. They are watching SOPHRON. More importantly: they are watching ECHÔ watch him.)
ECHÔ:
(Her smile has not moved. Her body has not moved. But something
behind her eyes—a flicker, a fault line.)
The cameras are still rolling.
(She says it like a fact. Like a defense. Like a prayer.)
SOPHRON:
(Nodding, as if she has proven his point.)
Yes. They are.
(A beat. He does not look at them.)
And if they stopped?
(THYIA’s phone slips from her hand. It hits the stage floor with a crack that echoes. No one moves to pick it up. The screen continues recording the ceiling, the lights, nothing.)
(SOPHRON stands in the center of the stage, a point of stillness in the temple’s mechanical hum. The cameras continue their sweep, but he exists outside their logic—not defying them, simply irrelevant to them.)
SOPHRON:
I offer nothing.
(His voice is quiet. The microphones strain to capture it. They are built for screams, for ecstasy, for volume. Not this.)
No laws. No prohibitions.
(He looks only at ECHÔ. The lenses between them might as well be air.)
No rival spectacle.
(A pause. Somewhere in the temple’s depths, a server fan whirs. The sound of the infrastructure, suddenly audible.)
No content to replace yours.
(KOMOS’s tablet flickers. A notification: viewership dropping. He does not show ECHÔ. Not yet.)
(He moves downstage—one step, no more. Not advancing. Offering ground to rest upon.)
SOPHRON:
I only ask: are you free, Echô?
(The question hangs. The cameras cannot frame it. It requires no answer, only recognition.)
Or are you merely obligated to appear so?
(HESYCHIA behind him does not move. Her stillness is the teaching. ECHÔ’s hand, reaching for her tablet, stops midair.)
(HESYCHIA does not move. Her stillness becomes a presence—not absence but fullness. The teaching made visible.)
(ECHÔ’s eyes shift from SOPHRON to the old woman behind him. Recognition dawns slowly, terrible as sunrise.)
ECHÔ:
(whisper)
You taught him… not resistance.
(Her tablet screen dims, forgotten. The metrics scroll unwatched.)
You taught him to make me see it.
(ECHÔ’s mouth opens. No words emerge. She closes it. The silence expands—not empty but dense, filling the temple like water rising.)
(KOMOS shifts his weight. His hooves click against marble—once, twice. He opens his mouth for the joke, the deflection, the crude comment that always breaks tension. Nothing comes. His jaw works soundlessly. He looks to ECHÔ. She does not look back.)
(Behind them, THYIA stands perfectly still. Her hand, raised halfway to her tablet—the gesture automatic, trained—freezes in air. Something shifts in her chest. Not the breaking of ecstasy but the breaking of its container. The schedule that held it. The rhythm that replaced wanting with performance.)
(She lowers her hand slowly. The tablet screen glows, unwatched. Notifications pulse: the evening broadcast queued, her slot marked, the audience waiting. The numbers climbing, falling, demanding.)
(She does not move toward them.)
(ECHÔ’s fingers loosen. The tablet slips an inch in her grip. The metrics scroll on—views, engagement, retention—but her eyes have stopped tracking them. She stares at HESYCHIA. At the stillness that taught refusal without resistance.)
(The silence holds. No one fills it.)
(Night. The temple courtyard. Ring lights stand like sentinels, their glow pooling on empty marble. ECHÔ paces downstage, tablet clutched white-knuckled. KOMOS watches from the colonnade.)
(THYIA enters upstage, moving slowly through the camera array. She does not look at the lenses. Each step takes her farther from the light.)
ECHÔ: Thyia. (louder) Thyia! The slot—you’re scheduled—
(THYIA continues walking. The ring lights flicker as she passes beyond their range.)
ECHÔ: The numbers are dropping. Do you understand? We’re losing—
(Her voice cracks. THYIA reaches the edge of the courtyard where signal bars fade to nothing. She pauses. Does not turn.)
KOMOS: (quietly, to ECHÔ) Let her go.
ECHÔ: We can’t afford—
KOMOS: We can’t afford this either.
(THYIA exits into darkness. The screens behind them pulse with empty slots, waiting audiences, unanswered notifications. ECHÔ stares at the space where the girl disappeared.)
(The corner. A single streetlight—pre-digital, sodium yellow. AGLAIA leans against brick worn smooth by decades. No cameras. No signal bars. THYIA approaches from stage left, moving like someone learning to walk without being watched.)
(AGLAIA looks up. Not surprised. As if she has been counting the days until this arrival.)
THYIA: (voice breaking) Teach me what you kept.
(Silence. AGLAIA studies her: the too-perfect skin, the practiced angles, the tremor beneath the performance.)
AGLAIA: What you kept, you mean.
THYIA: I don’t—I don’t know what that is anymore.
AGLAIA: Then we start there.
AGLAIA: (not moving, voice flat) You want refusal? Here’s the first lesson: stop performing the asking.
THYIA: (flinching) I’m not—
AGLAIA: You are. Even now. The tremor in your voice—calculated. The way you stand—camera-ready, no camera present.
(THYIA’s hands drop. Something in her posture collapses.)
THYIA: (quieter, rawer) How do I stop?
AGLAIA: You already did. Just then. That—(gestures)—was real.
AGLAIA: (a single nod, deliberate) It starts with learning to want nothing they can monetize.
(Lights shift. The temple, distant. ECHÔ stands center stage, hand pressed to her chest—the gesture of someone checking for a wound.)
ECHÔ: (to KOMOS, urgent) Where is Thyia?
KOMOS: (scrolling, not looking up) Gone.
ECHÔ: Gone where?
KOMOS: Just… gone.
(A beat. ECHÔ’s hand drops. Another MAENAD exits stage left, silent. Then another. The screens flicker—numbers falling. ECHÔ begins to move faster, louder, the frenzy indistinguishable from drowning.)
(The temple. Live broadcast. Screens glow around the space—numbers visible, descending. ECHÔ dances center stage, THYIA and four MAENADS in formation around her. DIONYSUS reclines upstage, watching nothing.)
ECHÔ: (breathless, to the cameras) More. We give you more—
(A screen flickers. A number drops—sharply, visibly.)
KOMOS: (offstage, through speakers) We’re losing the Western feed.
ECHÔ: (dancing harder, voice rising) The ecstasy is real. The god is real. We are—
(Another screen. Another drop. ECHÔ spins faster, the movement frantic now, no longer choreographed. The MAENADS follow, mechanical, struggling to match her intensity.)
KOMOS: (flat) Eastern bloc gone.
ECHÔ: (shouting) LOOK AT US—
(THYIA stops. Just stops. Mid-gesture, mid-step. The other MAENADS continue around her. The camera—represented by a spotlight—finds her face. She stares into it. Silent. Then she walks downstage, through the light, and exits stage right.)
ECHÔ: (not turning, still dancing) Thyia—
(Two more MAENADS stop. Look at each other. Exit stage left together, holding hands.)
KOMOS: (a whisper through speakers) Echô…
(ECHÔ dances alone now, the remaining MAENADS frozen. The screens flicker faster. Numbers cascade downward like rain.)
ECHÔ: (to no one) Don’t stop watching. Please don’t stop—
(Blackout on her still moving.)
(Morning light. The temple courtyard. Three MAENADS dance in formation—slow, silent, perfect. No music. The screens are black. ECHÔ moves among them, adjusting an arm here, a foot there, as if rehearsing for an audience that no longer exists.)
(KOMOS enters from the server room, tablet in hand. He stops, watches them. The silence is terrible.)
KOMOS: (reading) Revenue… zero. Engagement… zero. Reach—
(He looks up. The MAENADS continue their soundless choreography.)
KOMOS: (louder, desperate) Echô. The numbers are all zeroes.
(ECHÔ does not respond. She counts silently—one, two, three, four—her lips moving, her hand conducting nothing. A MAENAD stumbles slightly. ECHÔ corrects her with a touch, then returns to her own dancing.)
KOMOS: (to himself) She can’t hear me.
(He sets down the tablet. Watches. The dance continues, beautiful and empty, a ritual for no one.)
(KOMOS crosses downstage, tablet clutched like a talisman.)
KOMOS: We could rebrand. Wellness content. Mindfulness streams. The algorithm still favors—
(ECHÔ spins past him, her arms tracing patterns in empty air. Her feet know the choreography. Her body performs what her mind no longer questions.)
KOMOS: (following her) Echô. Echô. The temple is empty.
(She pirouettes. Sixteen hours without rest. Her movements are flawless, mechanical, a machine that has forgotten how to stop.)
KOMOS: (quieter, to the silence) You can’t hear me anymore.
(He watches her dance. The rhythm she obeys exists nowhere but inside her.)
(The temple. Dawn light through broken screens. THYIA stands at the threshold, her bag already packed. She watches ECHÔ dance.)
THYIA: I’m sorry.
(ECHÔ does not turn. THYIA exits. Throughout the day, others follow—MAENAD AFTER MAENAD, silent departures. By evening, the space is vast and empty. KOMOS sits center stage, refreshing his tablet. Zero. Zero. Zero.)
(KOMOS finds her at dawn, still moving through the empty temple. Her feet leave dark prints on the floor. She does not see him.)
KOMOS: Echô.
(She turns, turns again—the choreography of transmission to no one. He watches the numbers flatline.)
KOMOS: Echô. Stop.
(Nothing. She is elsewhere. He closes the laptop slowly, sets it down. Stands.)
KOMOS: Alright.
(He follows her toward the mountains. The stage empties behind them.)
(The temple at first light. Columns cast long shadows. The floor is scuffed, stained. AGLAIA enters downstage left, moving carefully through the debris of abandoned ecstasy.)
(Three MAENADS lie collapsed upstage center—THYIA among them, the others unnamed. Not sleeping. Spent.)
(AGLAIA kneels beside them. Her voice is low, practical.)
AGLAIA: There is work that ends when you finish it.
(THYIA stirs. The others do not move.)
AGLAIA: You clean a room. The room is clean. You are done. You cook a meal. The meal is eaten. It’s over.
THYIA: (hoarse) Over?
AGLAIA: Yes. Over. You stop. You rest. You begin again tomorrow.
(The SECOND MAENAD lifts her head slowly, as if the weight is unfamiliar.)
SECOND MAENAD: What do we… what do we give?
AGLAIA: Your labor. Not your dissolution. You exchange time for coin. The transaction completes.
THYIA: (sitting up) No one watches?
AGLAIA: No one watches.
(The THIRD MAENAD turns away, searching the empty air where cameras used to hover.)
THIRD MAENAD: (whisper) But then… what am I?
(AGLAIA has no answer for this. She stands, extends her hand to THYIA.)
AGLAIA: Come. I’ll show you.
(THYIA takes it. The SECOND MAENAD follows. The THIRD remains, still searching.)
(The city square. Afternoon light. A fountain, dry. Upstage, a small brazier. AGLAIA stands center with two former maenads—THYIA and the SECOND MAENAD. A bucket. Rags. Simple tools.)
AGLAIA: The floor. You sweep it. When the dirt is gone, you stop.
(THYIA holds the broom uncertainly, as if it might transform.)
THYIA: Just… stop?
AGLAIA: Yes.
(THYIA sweeps. Three strokes. Four. She pauses, looks up—seeking validation that does not come.)
SECOND MAENAD: (at the brazier, hands shaking) The fire goes out when the meal is cooked?
AGLAIA: Yes.
SECOND MAENAD: And then?
AGLAIA: And then nothing. You’ve finished.
(A FOURTH MAENAD enters stage right, watches. Her breathing quickens. She backs away.)
FOURTH MAENAD: (desperate) I can’t—the quiet—
(She runs offstage left, toward the mountains.)
(THYIA sweeps again. Slower now. Learning the rhythm of completion.)
(The mountain path. Twilight. Bare rock. A single twisted pine upstage. ECHÔ climbs, her feet bleeding. She moves with perfect form—arms extended, hips tracing the ancient patterns. She is alone.)
ECHÔ: (breathless, still dancing) Seventeen thousand… no, eighteen…
(She stumbles. Catches herself. Continues.)
ECHÔ: The algorithm favors… momentum… never stop… never—
(She passes the tree line. The air thins. Her movements remain precise, professional, beautiful. Empty.)
ECHÔ: (whispering) Is anyone… are the numbers…
(She checks her wrist where a device once was. Nothing. She dances faster, as if speed could summon an audience from stone.)
ECHÔ: I can still… I’m still… watch me… please…
(She reaches toward the sky—a gesture rehearsed ten thousand times. No camera receives it. She continues climbing, dancing, dissolving into the mountain’s indifference.)
(KOMOS appears at the ridge. He is breathing hard. His phone is gone. He watches ECHÔ dance against the void.)
KOMOS: (quietly) The servers are down.
(She does not stop. He steps beside her, finds her rhythm, moves with her into the whiteness.)
(Silence. The stage empties of light except for two distant spots, upstage, growing smaller.)
(ECHÔ and KOMOS become silhouettes, then shadows, then memory.)
(The temple set strikes itself—walls fold, screens go black. Downstage, THYIA, LINOS, AGLAIA stand in sudden quiet, learning to breathe without rhythm.)
(Curtain.)
ACT V, SCENE 1
The temple interior. Empty benches. No screens. Late afternoon light through high windows. SOPHRON stands center stage, facing upstage. He wears an unbleached tunic. His hands rest at his sides.
SOPHRON
(to himself, quietly)
No witness but the walls.
(He looks down at his hands, turns them over, examining them as if for the first time.)
No record. No replay.
(Beat.)
Only this.
(Sound: footsteps, distant, approaching. SOPHRON does not turn. The footsteps grow closer, steady, unhurried. AGLAIA enters stage left, walking the length of the room. She wears undyed linen. Her hair is uncovered. She walks without hesitation, without performance. The light catches her face—weathered, striking, present.)
(She crosses to center, stops three paces from SOPHRON. They stand facing each other. A long silence.)
AGLAIA
I am here.
SOPHRON
(meeting her eyes)
I see you.
(HESYCHIA enters upstage, carrying a clay bowl. Water gleams in it. She moves downstage slowly, places herself between them and the threshold. She does not speak. She waits.)
(The light shifts. Shadows lengthen. No one moves.)
(AGLAIA enters stage right. No music. No attendants. She walks the center aisle in measured steps—neither slow nor hurried. The rhythm is her own. Her dress is undyed linen, rough-woven, the kind LINOS remembers from before the screens. It catches the light without shining.)
(SOPHRON watches her approach. He does not move toward her. She does not quicken her pace.)
(The room is silent. No one gasps. No one lifts a device. The guests—LINOS, THYIA, a handful of others—sit with their hands in their laps. They are learning how to witness without capturing.)
(AGLAIA reaches center stage. She stops three paces from SOPHRON. They regard each other.)
(HESYCHIA stands at the threshold, upstage center. In her hands: a clay bowl, unglazed. Water from the spring outside the city walls gleams in it. She waits. The light holds them all.)
(SOPHRON speaks first. His voice is low, steady. The words are archaic—pre-Homeric cadence, the grammar HESYCHIA drilled into him by firelight.)
SOPHRON
I do not offer you rapture. I offer you mornings. I offer you the truth
of my fatigue and the bread I will bake badly. I will be here when you
wake. I will be here when you do not wish to be seen.
(AGLAIA’s response comes without hesitation. Her dialect matches his—she learned it, he realizes, from the same grandmother’s line.)
AGLAIA
I do not offer you purity. I offer you my history, unedited. I will not
perform softness. I will not lie about what I have been. What I am. What
I will ask of you when I need it.
(They clasp hands. Right hand to right hand, the old way. No rings. HESYCHIA nods once.)
(The silence in the room is not empty. It is full.)
(LINOS rises from his seat. He carries two cups wrapped in linen. They are clay-colored, thumb-marked, visibly handmade.)
LINOS
From the kiln. First firing in three years.
(He unwraps them. SOPHRON takes both, turns them in his hands. One is slightly taller. Neither is glazed.)
SOPHRON
They hold water?
LINOS
They hold what you put in them.
(SOPHRON pours wine—dark, local, cheap. He hands one cup to AGLAIA. They drink together. No toast. The wine stains their lips.)
AGLAIA
(lowering the cup)
It’s sour.
SOPHRON
Yes.
(They drink again.)
(KOMOS stands upstage left, near the door. His phone remains in his pocket. His hands are visible, empty, uncertain.)
(THYIA sits downstage right. She watches AGLAIA lift the veil—not away, but just enough. Their eyes meet: bride and groom, unfiltered.)
THYIA
(whispered, to KOMOS)
No one’s recording.
KOMOS
I know.
(Pause. They watch together.)
(AGLAIA stands center stage. The linen catches light—rough weave, honest fabric. SOPHRON faces her, still. HESYCHIA stands upstage, witness.)
(AGLAIA’s hands rise to the veil’s edge. Not trembling. Not performing certainty either. Just—moving.)
AGLAIA
(quiet, to herself as much as him)
I have shown my face to thousands.
(Her fingers pause at the fabric.)
This is different.
SOPHRON
(steady)
Yes.
(She lifts the veil. Not a flourish. Not a reveal. The gesture of opening something that has been kept closed. The fabric rises—inch by slow inch—past her chin, her mouth, her nose.)
(Light finds her face. The lines are there. The years. The weather of a life lived outside the frame.)
(SOPHRON’s expression does not change. He was already looking. Now he simply—sees.)
AGLAIA
No one has seen this face and stayed.
SOPHRON
(a statement, not a promise)
I am here.
(The veil clears her eyes. They meet his. Unmediated. The space between them: three feet, unbridgeable, sacred.)
(HESYCHIA’s hand moves to her chest—brief, involuntary. Recognition.)
(The veil rises past her forehead. AGLAIA holds it there—suspended—one breath longer than necessary.)
(Then she lets it fall behind her. The linen pools at her shoulders.)
AGLAIA
(not looking away, though every instinct says to)
The light is honest here.
SOPHRON
It is.
(He does not move closer. Does not reach. The distance between them remains—but it is no longer distance. It is space they are choosing to cross slowly.)
AGLAIA
You see the years.
SOPHRON
I see you.
(AGLAIA’s breath catches—small, real. Her hand drops from the veil. Finds nothing. Hangs uncertain in the air between them.)
(SOPHRON extends his own hand. Palm up. An offering, not a claim.)
(Their fingers meet in the space between. Awkward. Unpracticed. True.)
(SOPHRON’s hand reaches across the small distance. His fingers uncertain—trembling slightly.)
(AGLAIA’s hand rises to meet his. They miss once. Twice. Their palms brush awkwardly before finding purchase.)
(The grip is inexpert. Too tight, then adjusting. Human.)
(No filter smooths the imperfection. No algorithm optimizes the angle.)
(THYIA, stage left, her breath suspended. Watching something unnamed—a transaction with no audience clause, no broadcast rights.)
THYIA
(whispered, to no one)
What is this called?
(The question hangs. No answer comes. None is needed.)
(The two hands remain joined—unwitnessed except by those who have chosen to see without recording.)
(KOMOS, downstage right, shifts his weight. His hand drifts to his empty pocket—the phantom weight of the device he surrendered at the temple door.)
(His fingers twitch. The muscle memory of capture, of framing, of monetizing the moment.)
KOMOS
(barely audible, to himself)
Perfect light. Perfect composition.
(His hands remain at his sides. Empty. The emptiness spreads through his chest—loss, yes, but underneath it something unfamiliar.)
(Something like relief.)
(AGLAIA’s hands move to the veil. She draws it down slowly—not concealment now, but completion. The gesture marks an ending, a sealing.)
(THYIA watches from upstage left. Her body still, her breath caught. Learning.)
THYIA
(whispered, to herself)
The veil doesn’t hide.
(She understands suddenly: boundary, not barrier. The difference between wall and threshold.)
(What passed between them—witnessed but not captured, seen but not shared—remains theirs alone.)
(LINOS enters from stage right, moving slowly toward center. In his hands, something wrapped in undyed linen. His gait is different—purpose where there was drift. His fingers, visible at the cloth’s edge, are stained dark with wet clay, rimmed with kiln ash.)
(He stops at the threshold of the gathering. Does not cross immediately. Waits to be seen rather than demanding sight.)
LINOS
(voice rough from disuse, addressing SOPHRON and AGLAIA)
I brought—
(He falters. Begins again.)
I made something.
(The words land strangely. “Made” not “posted.” “Something” not “content.”)
(His hands move to the cloth, unwrapping with the careful slowness of ceremony. Not performance—precision. Each fold deliberate, revealing by degrees.)
(THYIA shifts forward slightly, drawn by the unfamiliar rhythm of it. Creation without broadcast. Labor without metrics.)
LINOS
The kiln… I lit it yesterday. Before dawn. My hands—
(He holds them up briefly, showing the stains.)
—they remembered. How to center the clay. How to wait for the fire.
(The final fold falls away.)
(The linen falls to his feet. LINOS holds the cup forward—not offering it yet, simply showing.)
(The vessel catches light differently than screens do. Terra cotta, unglazed, the color of dried blood or autumn earth. Thumb-marks visible in the clay where his hands shaped the rim. The base slightly uneven—it will wobble when set down. A thing made by human error, human touch.)
(THYIA’s hand moves unconsciously toward it, then stops. She has forgotten the protocol for objects that don’t require her reaction.)
LINOS
No maker’s mark. No signature.
(He turns it slowly, demonstrating the unmarked surface.)
My grandfather would have stamped it. His father before him. A name, a symbol—proof of the hand that made it.
(Pause. His thumb traces the rim.)
I left it empty. Anonymous.
(He looks up, meeting SOPHRON’s eyes directly.)
So it could belong to whoever holds it. Not to whoever made it.
(SOPHRON takes the cup from LINOS. His hands close around it—testing weight, texture, the slight warmth still radiating from the firing.)
(He lifts it, turns it. Not performing examination. Actually examining.)
SOPHRON
It has… presence.
(He looks at LINOS, almost confused.)
Weight that isn’t obligation.
LINOS
Clay. Water. Fire. Time.
(Beat.)
It will break. A month, a year—someone’s careless elbow, or just… entropy. And when it does—
(He gestures at the absent screens.)
—no archive. No recovery. Just shards, and whoever remembers it held water once.
SOPHRON
(Quietly, still holding it)
Mortal, then.
LINOS
Like us.
(SOPHRON’s grip shifts—not tighter, but more conscious. The way one holds something that can be lost.)
(THYIA approaches. Her hand extends—hesitant, as if the cup might vanish.)
(Her finger traces the rim. Finds the uneven place where thumb met clay.)
THYIA
(Barely audible)
It doesn’t… want anything.
(She looks up at LINOS, then SOPHRON. Confused. Almost frightened.)
No camera. No response. Just—
(Her hand closes around it. Testing.)
—here.
LINOS
Yes.
THYIA
I’d forgotten things could do that.
(SOPHRON lifts the cup. Fills it from the spring—clear water, not wine.)
(He drinks. A simple swallow. Then extends it to AGLAIA.)
(She takes it. No hesitation. Drinks. Passes it to THYIA.)
(THYIA holds it with both hands. Drinks slowly. Sets it down between them.)
(No one records. No one performs. The act completes itself—)
(—and is already memory.)
(The temple steps. Dawn. No cameras, no lights—only the sun.)
(ECHÔ stands at the threshold. Her face unfiltered. The lines around her eyes visible. She wears no crown, no ritual garment. Just cloth.)
(Below: LINOS, HESYCHIA, scattered citizens. They have not been summoned. They have come.)
ECHÔ:
The precinct will have doors.
(A pause. She touches the stone doorframe—as if learning its solidity.)
Hours. Morning and evening. You may enter if you wish. You may leave when you choose.
(Her voice is steady. Smaller than it was. More real.)
The frenzy remains. It is still sacred. Still ours.
(She looks at her hands.)
But it will no longer follow you. It will not enter your home. Your sleep. Your silence.
(LINOS shifts. Almost nods.)
ECHÔ:
What happens here—
(She stops. Begins again.)
What happens here will stay here. No broadcast. No record.
(A beat.)
The threshold is a choice now.
(She steps back. Into shadow. Into the temple.)
(The door—old wood, iron hinges—swings closed.)
(Not locked. Just… closed.)
(The temple’s back chamber. Afternoon light through high windows. Dust motes visible.)
(KOMOS kneels among tangles of cable—black serpents that once carried the god’s image to every corner of Thebes. He works methodically: unplugging, coiling, stacking. The servers behind him are dark. Silent.)
(He pauses. Holds a cable in both hands. Tests its weight.)
KOMOS:
(to himself)
Three hundred thousand simultaneous streams.
(He coils it. Sets it aside.)
Peak engagement: four million daily interactions.
(Another cable. Another coil.)
Conversion rate—
(He stops. Laughs—brief, bitter.)
What were we converting them to?
(He stands. Looks at the silent servers. The empty metrics dashboard.)
(A beat. He touches the dark screen.)
I thought I’d miss the numbers.
(His hand falls.)
I don’t miss the numbers.
(He picks up the last cable. Coils it slowly, carefully—as if it were something precious he’s learning to put away.)
(EXIT KOMOS, carrying the coiled weight of what the city no longer needs.)
(The precinct walls. Late afternoon. THYIA and two LESSER MAENADS kneel with paint and brushes. They work in silence.)
(THYIA dips her brush. Pauses over the blank stone.)
THYIA:
Ivy first.
(She paints—slow, deliberate. The stroke is uncertain.)
SECOND MAENAD:
I don’t remember the pattern.
THYIA:
Neither do I.
(A beat. She continues anyway.)
We’ll make it true by painting it.
(They work. The thyrsus takes shape—crude, honest, unfiltered.)
THIRD MAENAD:
(stepping back)
It looks… old.
THYIA:
It is old.
(She sets down her brush. Studies the wall.)
Inside these walls, we dance because we choose to.
Or we don’t dance at all.
(The maenads exchange glances—frightened, hopeful.)
(They return to their work, painting the boundaries of what might still be sacred.)
(The precinct doors. Dusk. DIONYSUS approaches alone—no procession, no music. He wears simple cloth.)
(He pauses at the threshold. Looks back once at the empty street.)
(THYIA opens the door from within. She does not kneel.)
THYIA:
You may enter.
(DIONYSUS steps inside. The door closes.)
(Silence. No cameras. No broadcast. The god stands in unmarked space.)
DIONYSUS:
(quietly, to no one)
I had forgotten this.
(LINOS walks past the precinct. He does not pause, does not glance toward the doors. His gait is steady—a man who has decided something.)
(His workshop. Dust thick on every surface. The kiln, dark and cold.)
(He kneels. Begins gathering kindling, wood scraps, old timber. His hands move without hesitation—muscle memory older than exhaustion.)
(He stacks the wood carefully. Precisely. The way he was taught.)
(THYIA stands at the threshold of the precinct. The doorway is familiar—she has crossed it twice daily for two years, always at the same hours, always with the same practiced fluidity.)
(Her hand rests on the doorframe. Her fingers know the grain of the wood, the exact place where the paint has worn smooth from touch.)
(Inside: the soft glow of screens. The hum of servers. The faint music that cues the evening broadcast.)
(Her body shifts—hip cocked, chin lifted. The first position of the sequence. Muscle memory asserting itself like breath.)
(She holds the pose for three seconds.)
(Then she lowers her hand.)
(She steps back from the threshold. One step. Another.)
(She turns away from the door.)
(Her walk across the precinct courtyard is unsteady—not the practiced glide of performance, but the uncertain gait of someone relearning how to move without choreography.)
(She does not look back.)
(Behind her, the door remains open. No one calls after her. The broadcast schedule does not pause.)
(THYIA crosses the square slowly, her path diagonal—stage left to downstage right. She reaches the corner where AGLAIA once worked. The space is empty: no stool, no sign, no transaction.)
(She stops. Looks at the wall. Her hand touches the stone where the older woman’s back rested.)
(She sits, arranging herself against the same surface. Her legs extend, then fold. Extend again. She is trying to find a position that is not a pose.)
(Her foot taps—once, twice. The rhythm of a dance she has performed two hundred times.)
(She stills it. Presses her palm flat against the ground.)
(A minute passes. Her shoulders drop. Her breathing slows.)
(She is learning what Aglaia knew: how to occupy space without offering it. How to be present without being consumed.)
(The stillness is harder than any choreography.)
(The square. The screens—tall panels upstage center and stage right—are dark. Not flickering. Not buffering. Simply off.)
(People drift in from the wings: LINOS, two CITIZENS, an OLD WOMAN. They do not enter with purpose. They arrive, uncertain, as if testing the air.)
(They stand apart at first. Then closer. A CITIZEN speaks—low, to LINOS. The words do not carry past the footlights. LINOS responds. A laugh, brief, unrecorded.)
(More gather. The OLD WOMAN touches LINOS’s arm—a question. He nods. She sits on the ground, center stage.)
(The sound builds: murmurs, fragments, the texture of conversation without broadcast. Intimate. Unpracticed. Human.)
(HESYCHIA stands downstage left, in the shadow of a doorway. She watches the square—THYIA seated at the empty corner, LINOS among the citizens, the dark screens like monuments to a finished war.)
(Her gaze rests on THYIA: the girl’s hands folded, her spine straight, her face turned neither toward audience nor memory. Learning the grammar of presence.)
(HESYCHIA’s shoulders lower. Something releases.)
(She closes her eyes—not turning away, but completing the act of witness. A breath. Stillness answering stillness.)
(She does not exit. She simply ceases to need to watch.)
(The kiln smoke threads upward—faint, persistent. THYIA’s stillness holds. The square murmurs with unrecorded voices.)
(HESYCHIA exhales. Not surrender. Completion.)
(Her eyes close—the gesture of one who has carried a vigil to its end. The work was never hers to finish. Only to tend until others could wake.)
(She remains. Witnessing now from within the dark.)