A Certain Logic

INTERSTELLAR (Revised).

ACT ONE, SCENE ONE. FRONT PORCH OF THE COOPER FARMHOUSE.

STRANGER: Mr. Cooper?

COOPER: Uh, yeah?

STRANGER: We're a poly-dimensional human being from your distant future, and we have an equation for Murph.

COOPER: ...What?!?

STRANGER: Murph, your daughter. This equation will give humans a new paradigm for gravity, and save the species. We've written this down on paper; please give it to her.

COOPER: This paper here?

STRANGER: It's a primitive medium, we know, but much better than our first idea. We were going to have you spell out the equation via morse code, by manipulating the second hand on a wrist watch.

COOPER: That is the most half-assed thing I've ever heard.

STRANGER: We know! It's hard to say what prompted us to be so foolish. After all, we're poly-dimensional; we can do pretty much anything. Paper's easy.

COOPER: But... why give it to Murph? She's a kid. Smart n'all, but still....

STRANGER: Because Murph will understand this equation in 20 years.

COOPER: Why not give it to someone who can understand it now?

STRANGER: Oh. We hadn't thought of that. We must have been blinded by our concept of love as a universal force that can transcend space and time.

COOPER: And that is the newest most half-assed thing I've ever heard.

MURPH: [Arriving at the front door]: Wait! If you're poly-dimensional, then time has no meaning for you, right?

STRANGER: Well... it had no meaning until we started this conversation.

MURPH: So why give the equation to somebody now? Why not give it to someone in the past, someone who can change their future and prevent this environmental crisis?

STRANGER: There is a certain logic to that, yes.

MURPH: Go back to the 1920s, and give it to Planck, or Einstein, or Niels Bohr. Give it to all of them!

STRANGER: Done! [Vanishes.]

COOPER: What the hell just happened, here?

MURPH: Dad, for a NASA pilot, you're pretty damned clueless.

COOPER: Clueless or not, I gotta do the chores.

MURPH: No, dad, don't leave me! Don't leave!

COOPER: Murph --

MURPH: If you leave me now, I'll resent you for the rest of my life.

COOPER: I'm only goin' to the barn.

MURPH: Don't even dream of it!

THE END.