turns to her granddaughter, sitting next to her.) Do you remember the date?
ZOE (16, expression tense, hunched as though trying to disappear, quiet)
I … I’m not sure.
INGRID
Just check the date on your video—you know, that first one? (Pridefully to the camera) She was the first to get a sighting! They used her video for the nightly news.
ZOE
Okay. (Fumbles with her phone until she finds it.) Exactly three weeks ago, on the vernal equinox.
LEE (41, town manager)
I tell people: manage this right, and you’ll secure the future of your children and the future of their children.
You’ve read the headlines in the Globe and seen the reports on TV. My days are packed with meetings: the President, Boeing, the Commonwealth Energy Commission, Westinghouse, DRACOGRID, Caterpillar, BaySTAR … everyone wants a piece of Mannaport! This is easily the largest rush in decades.
You’ve seen nothing yet. Just wait till the gigawatt-class ones show up—
INGRID
Right. On the vernal equinox.
It’s not as bad as some people make it sound. I had Ron—that’s my son-in-law—and Zoe put in some heavy curtains on the bedroom window to muffle the noise. I hardly know they are there now.
ZOE
(Takes a deep breath to calm herself.) I … like having them around.
I keep the windows open a crack at night to hear them.
INGRID
All the ones we’ve seen so far are pretty small. (Turns to Zoe.) Not like the ones you used to draw.
ZOE
(Looks away from the camera.)
ALEXANDER (35, eyes so intense they seem to glow on their own)
I want them gone! They’ll have to put me in jail if they expect me to put up with—
HARIVEEN (53, self-described “inventrepreneur,” has an LED clip in her hair that flashes “Free energy isn’t free”)
Nobody knows where they’re from. Or how they came to be here. Or why.
But that’s not the problem. The problem is that no one is even thinking about the right questions.
[Montage of shaky phone footage: silver scales scintillating between docked boats; a serpentine tail disappearing under a thick lilac bush; the crimson clouds of a seaside sunrise interrupted by a loud roar—reptilian, avian, saurian?—the camera swerves to reveal half-glimpsed leathery wings—like kites plunging out of the sky—vanishing behind sandy dunes; a screaming crowd scattering from a baseball field, pursued by dozens of flying creatures swooping low, emitting high-pitched screeches—bats? birds? flying lizards?]
Town of Mannaport, Commonwealth of Maine and Massachusetts, population 7,000 (dragon, estimated)
HARIVEEN
[We are in a garage, something like a modern Da Vinci’s workshop, except messier, dirtier, noisier, and devoid of the patina of romanticized history. Wheels and gears spin; belts rumble; chains rattle; cranks and pistons goose-step in formation.]
These are prototypes, so a bit crude-looking. But I assure you they’re all based on proven, centuries-old designs—like this one, first built by Étienne Lenoir—with lots of patented improvements from me, of course. I’ve got some that run on coal, some on petroleum or gas—the idea that internal-combustion engines require pure alcohol is a shameless lie spread by the energy conglomerates. If I could just get the funding …
Are you still filming?
Never mind. I know how I sound. Even if you shoot everything I show you, they’ll figure out a way to discredit me. Can’t let the public know about real alternatives to the draconic energy monopoly, can we?
More than a century ago, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford teamed up to lock us into electricity as our dominant power source, and we’ve been racing nonstop to generate more electricity from dragon breath. Bit by bit, we have grown to depend on these creatures, and now all our politicians are in the pockets of the draconic energy-industrial complex, with no way out.
No, no, don’t worry; I won’t challenge the orthodoxy that dragons are completely safe—I’ll keep the interview uncontroversial.
So … how do I explain my opposition to our energy policy without …?
It’s like this. Everyone sees that air routes and shipping lanes are planned along dragon migratory routes; metropolises survive and thrive based on their dragon population; countries compete mercilessly to attract the giant beasts that drive GDP.
We speak of university dragon endowments and the national strategic reserve—but the language is designed to make us feel better; it’s misleading. Dragons are free to come and go as they like, and empires rise and fall at the whim of creatures we have no hope to understand or tame. Did you ever read Guns, Germs, and Dragons? The hypothesis is that the rise of the West was largely due to the good fortune of the presence of fire-breathing dragons in Europe. East Asia fell behind in the Industrial Revolution because their dragons breathed cold mist and water, not fire. It wasn’t until Long Ruyuan of Tianjin, inspired by the work of Robert Stirling, invented the yin-yang engine, powered by both fireand mist-breathing dragons, that the shift of the power to Europe stopped. And even today, the prevalence of city-states and small countries has to do more with our dependence on dragons than culture or politics.
(A deep sigh.)
I want to free us from this addiction to cheap energy from dragons. We celebrated when the Warsaw Pact fell as their dragons decided to depart en masse, but how do we know that dragons won’t do the same to us here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Maine one day? We forget history at our peril.
For my troubles, people call me a crank, a fool.
ZOE
[There’s a fresh lightness of spirit in her—not quite joy, but perhaps a tentative step toward it. She’s still shy and speaks haltingly, but she’s talking a lot more than before.]
The pictures? (Laughs nervously.) No, I don’t think so. Just childish scribbles. I’ve no idea if they’re even around; I didn’t save them.
I want to talk about real dragons.
Some complain about the noise and
