Two men are sitting in a white room on a bench. To their left is a door. To their right is another man seated on the floor with his back against the wall staring at the door opposite him.
Lyle: How did you get here? (To Stephen)
Stephen: I got run over by a car.
Lyle: I’m sorry, that’s kind of unlucky.
The man on the floor lets out a snort of degradation.
Hopcroft: (Sarcastically) ‘Cause of course the world runs entirely on luck.
Lyle: You wouldn’t say it is?
Hopcroft: I would not. If you go by your logic I should wake up every morning and let out a sigh of relief that all my organs worked during my sleep. But I don’t, because it is not by luck or chance that they are maintained it is because they are programmed that way, just like our lives and deaths.
Lyle: Well it’s a good thing you won’t be waking up anymore then isn’t it.
Stephen: How did you get here then? (To Lyle)
Lyle: Cancer. I just feel bad for putting my wife through what I did. I look back now and wish it had ended sooner.
Stephen: But it had to end when it did wouldn’t you say?
Lyle: Not necessarily, I could have killed myself long before it got really bad, it would have saved her some of the pain she went through in dealing with me.
Stephen: I’m sure you chose the right thing though. Staying with her may have been kinder, so that she got used to the fact that you’d be leaving soon and she got to be with you a while longer.
Hopcroft: I couldn’t help but over hear the crap you lot are talking about.
Stephen: Well that isn’t a surprise; you’re sitting five feet from us.
Hopcroft: And you’re being pathetic there’s nothing you could have done. You were supposed to die when you did and she was supposed to be upset, it’s pointless to worry about something that was out of your control.
Lyle: What? Who are you?
Hopcroft: I am exactly what the universe intended me to be.
Stephen and Lyle stare at Hopcroft puzzled.
Stephen: Why are you here?
Hopcroft: Because of a natural course of events, I am supposed to be here.
Lyle: (Getting angry) Stop being pedantic and tell us how you died!
Hopcroft: I shot myself. After shooting my wife and my two children.
Lyle: So you had a go at me because I felt guilty that I didn’t take my own life for my wife sake, when you felt so guilty about killing your family that you shot yourself!
Hopcroft: I didn’t kill myself out of guilt. Guilt is merely an illusion to make us feel as if we had a choice in our actions. What I did was simply the culmination of a long line of events that happened just as they were supposed to.
Lyle: Hate to break it to you, but you write your own life Hopcroft.
Hopcroft: You are merely a slave to a magician’s illusion. You’re being deceived.
Stephen: I’m not saying I disagree, but who’s the magician?
Lyle: There is no magician.
Hopcroft: He’s through that door waiting to greet us.
Stephen: He didn’t perform a trick on us though. He offered us a deck of cards and we could choose freely whichever card we wanted within that pack.
Hopcroft: Choice is simply part of his illusion. You had no choice in what you chose, it was chosen for you.
Lyle: You’re wrong. I was given the deck. It has many suits and infinite amount of numbers and I am free to choose any card I want.
Stephen: You chose yes, but the cards are offered to you, not given.
Hopcroft: Tis conversation is meaningless. Here we sit on the other side of a door in ignorance waiting to enter into enlightenment.
Lyle: You can’t go in there.
Stephen: You have to stay out here.
Hopcroft: Your reasons?
Lyle: You killed your wife.
Stephen: And your children.
Lyle: You won’t be allowed in, you will have to be punished for the wrong you have committed.
Hopcroft: Punished? Are you mad? I cannot be punished for something I had no control over. I was supposed to do what I did. I could not have done it any differently. How can he punish me for walking down the road he laid?
Stephen: Simple. You play poker I assume?
Hopcroft: On the odd occasion yes.
Stephen: Then you will understand that the cards given to you were what you were given, and the cards laid down were what were supposed to be laid. Their correspondence with each other was entirely fixed and ultimately determined the way in which the hand was going to progress. However, it was how you played that hand that determined your success or not. The importance is behind your betting style; games are won through the tactics of betting not just because of the cards dealt.
Hopcroft: When I sit down to play, and when I stand up at the end I have the same mind-set. I know that what will happen is supposed to happen, and what has happened has supposed to happen. Poker is pointless to me however, I do not dabble in it much.
Lyle: I don’t play poker. But either way, you’re not getting in after what you did. It was a terrible thing that you are held accountable for. I want to go through now. (Lyle stands up and goes through the door)
Stephen: What do you think is in there?
Hopcroft: What I think is irrelevant. It is what is in there that matters and I cannot hope for anything, that would be pointless. What is in there is in there. Nothing more nothing less, and we shall find out when we are supposed to.
Stephen: I feel I want to go too. Are you coming?
Hopcroft: I am not supposed to yet. When I do I shall come through. However, only when I should.
Stephen stands up and goes through the door, Hopcroft is left alone.
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