Plastic roses lie broken and partially melted on the floor. Two people stand over their carcasses looking down. They can be of either sex.

ONE: I used to hate all plastic. The touch and rub. The sight and sound. But seeing plastic dead upon the ground is more than I can bear. These flowers, not I admit a fitting gift for a lover, still resemble something that exists no more.

TWO: How can you mourn the passing of a synthetic? You’re always saying plastic is death. That we’ll all end up in plastic coffins beneath plastic graves.

ONE: Even plastic beauty is better than none. Each day goes by and the world casts away another layer of truth from it. Each day we move further from the big bang towards the dead end. The people do not care and do not cry. They breathe in the acrid air and stare out at empty pictures. When those pictures go, when the plastic beauty dies there will be nothing left.

TWO: That’s the problem if you ask me. We don’t know what we want. We’re stuck half way between the past and the future and can’t tell which way to go. We need to disregard our previous ideals. Cast away our plastic roses and find something new to stare at. Something new to give. Forge a new beauty from the present and ignore the forced model of the past.

ONE: Where is the beauty? There’s no beauty here, only dead roses.

ONE picks up the dead flowers and cradles them in his arms.

TWO: We need to find the beauty in all the whirring. We need to find the beauty in the cloning. In the surfing. In the disconnection. Even a Yuppie can appear beautiful when looked at in the right light.

ONE: Only because there is beauty in emptiness.

TWO: The present is not empty.

ONE: Then why do we attack and destroy each other? Why do we take and compartmentalise the life blood?

TWO: None of that’s new. The past is not some sacred cow that must be worshipped. People have always died. People have always killed.

ONE: But now you can kill by pressing a button. Impersonal. Like these dead roses, separate and incomplete.

TWO: What is beautiful about roses? Nothing except that we see them as beautiful. We create our beauty, and to continue you must learn to see beauty evolve instead of remaining static.

ONE: I will not change. There is nothing beautiful left. All who change their eyesight and try to reach out for air that isn’t there lie. I will not become a liar.

TWO: What makes you so high and mighty?

ONE: The fact that the world has lost its way and I seem to be the only one who can see the brink.

TWO snatches the roses from ONE.

TWO: These aren’t needed anymore. It’s you who stand on the brink. You and all those who shake their heads and pine for moonlight when fluorescent lights stain the air.

ONE: It can’t remain this way. We must look back if we are to move forward towards the light.

TWO: Whose light should we step towards?

ONE: Mine.

TWO: Who are you to decide? Surely we must go the way of the masses.

ONE:The masses are blind. They know not what they do.

TWO: And you think you can show them the way?

ONE: I can see the path.

TWO: Who do you think you are?

ONE: I am the truth.

TWO: You are shit.

ONE: What about all the dead roses? The poor dead plastic roses.

TWO (moving in for the kill) They died for your beauty. They died for your truth. Change now or forever hold your peace.

ONE: I will not.

TWO: Then you will end as dead as your roses. As dead as the melted plastic that even now drips upon your body.

ONE: I would rather die than live in this lie.