Story: 'The Millennium Bug' (Dialogue)

[Mantaspook 14]

A “three minute romantic science fiction radio drama”

 

No descriptions, just dialogue, I hate dialogue.

 

The Millennium Bug.

 

“Do you love me?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, of course I love you.”

 

“You never tell me anymore.”

 

“I do, I love you twice as much as yesterday and half as much as I will tomorrow.”

 

“Not that one! Tell me the other one – the one about the stars.”

 

“Oh all right, I love you more than all the stars in the universe, blah, blah, blah etc- ouch! That hurt!”

 

“You deserved that!”

 

“Talking of stars, just look at them! I’ve never seen so many.”

 

“Makes you fell small and insignificant doesn’t it?”

 

“Nah! That’s my boss’s job; I bet he’ll be panicking like mad about now”

 

“You’re a naughty programmer! How dare you desert the poor man just as the Millennium bug is about to strike!”

 

“It’s his own fault, I’ve worked for months without a day off and then he turns around and says ‘You can’t carry your unused holidays over to next year’ – so here we are! And tonight we’re gonna party like it’s nineteen ninety nine – how long to go now?”

 

“About another four minutes – do you think the world is really going to come to an end?”

 

“Oh don’t you start! I’ve had it up to my hind teeth with prophecies of doom and destruction, do you know we scanned the entire building and system network only one thing would be affected”

 

“Go on.”

 

“The central heating boiler - One minute it’s going to be in 1999, then it’s going to think it’s in the year 1900 but it’ll still turn the heating on like it does every morning”

 

“Maybe it’s a clever boiler, maybe it’ll think to itself ‘Oooh its 1900, I was built in 1980 therefore I don’t exist’ and a metaphysical dichotomy will cause the world to explode.”

 

“That’s exactly what the boss thought; he only wanted to replace the entire system! Timer, boiler, radiators, the lot! What an idiot!”

 

“Thank god he retires next year eh?”

 

“Amen to that – are you warm enough?”

 

“I’m fine. What’s that star called up there? The one just above the lighthouse?”

 

“That’s called Betelgeuse, constellation of Orion, a red supergiant approximately 400 light years from earth”

 

“I’m impressed! Is there anything you don’t know?”

 

“Hey, I used to write programs for an astronomer….do you know my dad owned a light house years ago..…it blew away”

 

“Very funny.”

 

“And then he bought a paper shop…you think he’d learn…”

 

“Shut up silly! Two minutes to go, hey look - fireworks! Someone has jumped the gun.”

 

“Maybe your watch is slow…”

 

“No its not… I’ve got to admit this is one of your better ideas, the smoke in the pub was really aggravating my asthma.”

 

“It’s good here isn’t it? Nothing but the sea and the stars, god that sky is fantastic…”

 

“Twenty seconds to go, kiss me Mr Programmer, I want to start the new millennium how I mean to go on…what are you doing down there?”

 

“What does it look like? I’m doing this properly…Sarah, will you please do me the honour of agreeing to be my wife? Will you marry me?”

 

“Oh David, I had no idea…”

 

“…Because you REALLY do mean more to me than all the stars in the universe and I can’t imagine life without you – will you please marry me? What do you say Sarah?”

 

“Yes! Yes you great idiot, of course I’ll marry …OH MY GOD! LOOK!”

 

“Sarah? What’s wrong?”

 

“Look at the sky!”

 

“Why? No it’s not possible… I don’t believe it!”

 

“David… the stars are going out… one by one…”

[pattricia 574]

You certainly write dialogue well,to say you dont like it. But then you write everything well.

[Jabberwocky 46]

Hmmmmmm very Arthur C Clark and a very good story!

I love the short, sharp ones like that.

[Mantaspook 14]

But then you write everything well.

 

Gee thanks Pattricia My bank manager agrees, only this morning he sent me a letter praising me for my prodigious writing of cheques and said he is so impressed with the creative & imaginative use of his banks funds that they want to name a branch after me…

 

Hmmmmmm very Arthur C Clark

 

You’re right. "The nine billion names of God" by Arthur C Clarke starts in New York (?) and the middle bit is in a in a Tibetan monastery. But the ending almost exactly the same… that’s where I got the idea – well spotted Jabba, you win a beer flavoured JPEG.