Metal Ducks in a Shooting Gallery From Butterfly Effect by Todd Wallinger

A cocktail party turns into a game of one-upmanship as an ambitious young barrister attempts to sabotage his arch-rival’s chance at getting a big promotion.

PHILIP, barrister HENRY, senior partner RODDY, arch-rival

PHILIP: Mr. Pemberton, I'd like to have a word with you. HENRY: Certainly, my boy. What about? PHILIP: It's about your position. HENRY: I'm sorry. Would you prefer if I stood over here? PHILIP: No, no, sir. I don't mean your position per se. I mean the partnership. HENRY: Oh, that. PHILIP: I know we haven't always seen eye to eye, but I hope to persuade you I'm the best man for the job— HENRY: I'm sorry, Bottomsley, but I've already made up my mind. PHILIP: You have? HENRY: Oh, yes. I'm giving the position to— RODDY: (ENTERS, waving a stack of cocktail napkins.) Ta-da! PHILIP: Oh, bloody Nora! RODDY: I was just about to drive away when I realized I had some cocktail napkins in the glove box. PHILIP: Who puts cocktail napkins in their glove box?

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RODDY: Can I keep the pound note? HENRY: Roddy, I'm glad you're here. RODDY: What is it, sir? HENRY: Bottomsley here was just explaining why I should give him the partnership. PHILIP: In actuality, sir, I was— RODDY: Perhaps you should. HENRY: What? PHILIP: What? RODDY: It just sounds like an awful lot of work, is all. HENRY: Of course, it's an awful lot of work. You'd be a partner. RODDY: See, that's just it. I've never thought of myself as the partner type, sir. And besides, I don't really buy into the whole workaday thing. You know, put your shoulder to the grindstone and all that. The way I look at it, we're all just metal ducks in a shooting gallery, waiting for the universe to take its shot at us. HENRY: That's a rather depressing way of looking at things. RODDY: Doesn't mean it isn't true. PHILIP: Don't tell me you're one of those loonies who believe that great men like Wellington and Churchill weren't masters of their own fates, that they're just victims of historical forces. RODDY: Certainly not. PHILIP: Thank heavens for that. RODDY: I believe they're victims of completely random forces. HENRY: I say, this is a rather novel philosophy of yours, Roddy. RODDY: It may be novel, sir, but it isn't mine. An American mathematician by the name of Lorenz came up with it. HENRY: Never heard of him.

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RODDY: Neither had I. But I just read an article about him, and I've got to tell you, his Butterfly Effect makes Einstein look like a piker. HENRY: Butterfly Effect? What's that? Some new rock and roll band? RODDY: Oh, no, sir. It's a theory about how the universe works. HENRY: I don't understand. RODDY: It's really quite simple. Lorenz, you see, was trying to create a computer program that would predict the weather. HENRY: Why didn't he just watch the telly? RODDY: That's just it, sir. He wanted to find a way to make the television forecasts more accurate. So he created a computer model simulating the atmospheric conditions at each point on the globe. The first time he ran it, he entered a series of three-decimal numbers to represent the initial conditions: 506.179 or something like that. HENRY: Yes, yes. Go on. RODDY: The next time he ran it, he got a bit lazy and rounded off one of the numbers to an integer: 506. Less than a tenth of a percent difference. And yet it resulted in completely different weather conditions. HENRY: How does a butterfly enter into all of this? RODDY: I'm just getting to that, sir. Lorenz's computer model proved that a very slight change in the initial conditions can have a huge effect on the final results. In other words, a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas. HENRY: That's brilliant. PHILIP: Brilliant? Brilliant? It's bloody bonkers is what it is. HENRY: Why do you say that, Bottomsley? PHILIP: Because butterflies aren't that strong! Their little wings would tire out long before the tornado got started! RODDY: It doesn't have to be a butterfly. It could be anything, really. PHILIP: Like what? RODDY: Well, take your olive there. Seems perfectly harmless, doesn't it?

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PHILIP: I should hope so. I bought them at that little shop on Downey Street. RODDY: Yes, well, under the right circumstances, that olive could change the course of your entire life. For example, you might choke on it and die. Or you might get a violent case of food poisoning from it and die. You might even crack your tooth on it, and after your dentist patches it up, you step out of his office only to have a piano fall on you and you die.

To purchase the entire play, email the playwright at [email protected].

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