(Lights on Megan.)

MEGAN:
"Serious Disk Error.
The file 'My New Play' cannot be printed
because a Serious Disk Error has occurred.
Okay?"

No, not okay. Definitely not okay. Bring it back. Bring it back! Print, goddamn you, print! Print!
Printing. Ahh.
Thank God. Thank the Lord. It's printing... It's printing...

It's printing asterisks! No! Thousands of asterisks, all arranged in Standard Play Format. This is not right. I did not write a play full of asterisks. I wrote words! Give me words, goddamn it!
Half a word: Pepper-asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. NO!

I grab the disk, I take it to the man, palms sweaty, tears forming.

"Excuse me. I can't get to this file because a Serious Disk Error has occurred. What should I do?"

"Relax," says the man. "Everything's fine. We'll just run this through the Norton software, get everything all fixed up. Your disk will be fine."

"What about the material on the disk? Will my files be okay?"

"Everything will be fi-i-i-ne."

I pace the floor, the nervous mother who waits while her child has open-heart surgery. Mrs. Carter, I'm afraid Billy won't be coming home from school today. A Serious Child Error has occurred. Okay?

"Well," says the man behind his glasses, " We were able to save one file."

"Which one?"

"This one here, called 'New Play Title Page.' How's that?"

"What about the other one? The big one."

"Well, our software isn't that sophisticated. You might want to try - "

"My baby! What about my baby?! I don't care about the title page. I need my play! Where is it?"

"Right now, it's gone."

Gone. Gone? This can't be happening; why is this happening? This is my child. My sixty-six and a half page child. My only one! My first! It hasn't even had a chance to be staged. No director has seen it, no theatre has rejected it. My baby hasn't even lived!

"The file 'My New Play' cannot be saved because a Serious Disk Error has occurred. Norton Software suggest removing all data and reformatting the disk. Okay?"

Why, God? Take me instead! I'm old, I've lived my life. Don't do this to my play. Do it to my short story if you want, but not my play!

"Take it to the Computer Center. They might be able to bring it back."

The Computer Center! My single bastion of hope! They can fix anything. The Computer Center is to me what the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota is to the rest of the world: Miracle workers.

The woman says, "May I help you?"

"My play! You have to save my play!"

I give her the traitor disk and she injects it into a machine. The same type of machine that ate my baby. I close my eyes. I can't watch. Too much is at stake here. I've worked too hard.

"Misss?"

"Yes?" Bracing, bracing. You'll write another play, you'll be all right, don't cry in the office, wait 'til you get home.

"Here ya go." She flops the disk onto the desk. Casual.

"Is it safe?"

"Yeah."

"Everything's on there? It's all right?"

"Yeah. Next!"

I collapse to my knees as all the air expels from my body in one giant, "PRAISE JESUS!" and the woman is looking at me with a satirical half-grin and the man behind me is impatiently coddling his wounded child and I run from the bowels of the Computer Center into the open air where I leap up high, and blood flows and hearts beat and lungs take in life!

And it is here
where I celebrate
the powers of modern medicine.

END.
"Serious Disk Error" IS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AND MAY NOT BE DOWNLOADED, TRANSMITTED, PRINTED OR PERFORMED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR

The script for "Serious Disk Error" is dated December 1, 1994 and was probably performed on December 2nd, 1994 by Megan Gogerty.

"Serious Disk Error" was performed at Best of No Shame on April 21, 1995.

[Back to: Library]