a million billion pieces

David James Brock, Gareth Williams

• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Year: 2022
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780369103376
• Subtopic: Canadian Drama
• Index: Literature

It's time to make every moment count.

Sixteen-year-olds Pria and Theo—or as they know each other online, the aspiring opera singer PriaSoprano and outer-space aficionado Eagle19—have decided to have sex. There's just one catch… they both have life-threatening genetic disorders that may cause them to explode from one another's touch. But they won't know what will happen until they try. Sick of being told what to do their whole lives, they rebel against their reality and meet at a motel. But while Pria is more or less accepting of her fate, Theo has hopes for the future, and what was planned as a simple meeting becomes much more intimate as they open up about their experiences. The fate of their lives comes down to one decision…

This teen romance space opera explores our willingness to live, what it means to belong, and the necessity of emotional and physical relationships.

a million billion pieces

prologue

Black. We hear PriaSoprano’s vocal exercises building from somewhere far off and gradually getting closer.

Song 1: Vocal Exercise A

A sudden light reveals an excited Eagle19, who interrupts the vocal exercise. He is an eagle in a NASA-style astronaut suit. Through the following he is punching holes in a long strip of paper, almost at random.

Eagle19

Anyone out there tonight?

Beat.

My family treats me like a canary.

They think I’m . . . sensitive.

Eagle19 calls up a photo of his uncle Carlos.

I got an uncle, Uncle Carlos, and I hardly know Uncle Carlos, and if you’re anything like me, maybe you have an uncle you don’t know all that well and who doesn’t know you all that well, and if you’re reading this, Uncle Carlos, I don’t care because—

Whatever. You ain’t reading this.

Eagle19 removes the photo of Uncle Carlos.

This one time, my fam is over at my house—family meal. Chicken. Me, my parents, Uncle Carlos. A dozen cousins. A dozen chickens. Everyone’s gotta eat.

The whole place smells like family and chickens and it’s hot as a star birth because the oven’s been roasting chickens all day. Jam a family in a small space and things’ll get star-birth hot. And then . . .

Theo coughs through the following.

I cough and the entire family stops to watch me cough. You all know how that goes, heh?

See, everyone knows I’m sick. Born sick. Knows about the coughing fits. I’m sensitive. A disease of the month. Somethin’ you run a 10K to find a cure for.

The fit lasts a minute—sometimes coughing fits last a minute—and that’s a long time to have a room stop and pay attention to you when your life goal is to . . . blend.

The coughing stops.

After my fit, it’s mad silent.

Fam is surprised I haven’t fallen apart.

Cue Uncle Carlos, who cuts the silence, yells to my mother, whose name is Rosa, “Crack a window, Rosa. Your boy’s a canary in a coal mine, and soon we’ll all be hacking up a lung.”

Canary in a coal mine. It’s a thing I’ve never heard. So later that night, house em...

Table of contents

• copyright
• acknowledgements
• playwright’s note
• production information
• notes
• characters
• setting
• set
• a million billion pieces
• songs
• about the author
• about the composer