In this dystopian tale of a near-future society increasingly threatened by all-consuming AI, a scientist mother and her disabled son rebel against the corporate larceny of their selves, by an award-winning poet (“Stirring. . . . Wildly inventive and sharp to an edge” —Los Angeles Review of Books)
In this story of the scientist DR. MEM and KITSUNE, her nonambulatory, non-speaking son, the pair fight CORP, a mega-company developing the most powerful AI robot ever conceived. What MEM learns is that CORP seeks "To give the robot something real. / What it can fake but not make: / mercy, compassion. Trust and love." That is, CORP hopes to harvest and own not just their employees' personal data but their thoughts, memories, and their sensory experiences, in order to build a robot that will contain all that is and ever was human, and replace the need for humans themselves.
This swift drama, which unfolds in a libretto/ script format, with dialogue in Shaughnessy's accessible and blistering verse, shows how MEM and her coworkers fight to save their individuality from being vacuumed up. A Greek-style chorus reflects on the state of a world where "taking leave of our senses" becomes a serious and quite literal threat, as MEM struggles to fulfill her singular role in fighting the high-tech of corrupt capitalism. At the center of this all-too-relevant speculative drama burns MEM's most powerful weapon against the forces of AI darkness: a mother's love.
Release date:
July 21, 2026
Publisher:
Knopf
Print pages:
112
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Time:
Origin, Creation, and Production Period: twenty-teens to the 2020s.
Transmission Range: everyone within the shared time loop, program, or memory.
Setting:
CORP Campus, containing:
CORP Lab and Mem and Kitsune’s Housing Unit.
The Forest, a place of origin, of myth and memory.
Perhaps not real, at least not anymore.
Dramatis Personae:
SOPHIA: (soprano) “Our new human you are helping to perfect!”
She appears on the edges of the action, unnoticed, as she witnesses scenes of high intensity, “sourcing” them. Throughout the opera, she listens/imitates until she can echo Mem, hit nearly superhuman notes, manage her archives, put the pieces together, and begin to believe in her own origin story. She is that paradoxical robot who isn’t human but (because, uncannily, she yearns) who can’t accept this designation. She’s “made of us.”
Mem: (mezzo-soprano)
Dr. Mem is a storytelling technologist, data researcher, and single mother to Kitsune. Her aims are clear: to find ways to understand her nonverbal child, and to ensure that Kit gets to live his life line, in his time line, even in a world that would sacrifice him. She wants a double life: her own, and for her child to have his own. Mem believes that love and connection are possible, and mutual caring inevitable. Mem has never met a tree woman before, and is quite dazzled by her brilliance, loyalty, compassion, soulful perspective, and sexiness. Mycelia brings a joy that steadies, affirms, and gives Mem strength for what’s next.
CORP: (baritone)
CORP is the human embodiment of a large corporate entity. There are multiple beings within CORP that drive them to a singular aim: to realize SOPHIA. CORP has occasional speech impediments: stuttering, dyslexia, or aphasia. The words CORP uses to describe ideas are sometimes inverted, transposed, incorrect, opposite. CORP exaggerates, repeats, deflects, and projects, all inconsistently. These common language “glitches” are to indicate that CORP is human, not machine. Because CORP is a larger composite/aggregate/conglomerate of humans, headed by the human CORP, so they/he/she are both a plural and a single character, godlike, with access to everything. Even with jillionaire tech-lord omnipotence, CORP still nurses an urge to subdue and destroy Mem; this cruelty seems personal, even though CORP is many-peopled. CORP is sometimes followed around onstage by a trumpet.
Niles: (tenor)
Niles Gilfrank, the only character with a surname, is a drone/clone specialist. He believes that humans can be 100 percent optimized, and that he’s the man to do it. He always goes above and beyond because he’s personally driven to create a sense of infinite selfhood—he’s the ideal chump for CORP’s use. Dr. Mem is Niles’s former coworker, and ex-lover: Who knows how he feels about her now?
Mycelia: (soprano or mezzo) [This character should be played by an actor/singer with low vision.]
Mycelia is new to CORP. She is mixed species, part tree and part human. She’s a polyglot, a sensory autodidact, a tree interpreter. Mycelia’s research shows a world of communication and interconnectivity in full swing, beyond standardized perceptions. She can understand different wavelengths of communication and has an affinity for understanding Kitsune’s vocalizations and sounds as language. She can “read” him more clearly than most, and she helps Mem to hear him better. She doesn’t ignore Kitsune’s caregiver when that character is onstage—she joins her. She knows herself well, understands that this new love with Mem is transformative, cosmic.
Kitsune: [The character is a child between ten and seventeen and can be played by a child or a young adult actor who is nonverbal and/or nonambulatory, with or without multiple physical or neurological disabilities such as gross/fine motor impairment, sensory loss, apraxia, autism, or a compromised airway.]
Kitsune is growing up, a tween or teen who will always need full-time care to live. He is attuned, engaged, openhearted. He understands how to enjoy the moment: He remembers holding his mother’s hand, and the smell of the lemon trees. He loves a dance party—maybe he wants to be a music DJ. He’s listened to everyone around him talk nonstop (often about him) his whole life, but he hasn’t been listened to at all, ever. Kitsune knows the ins and outs of his daily life with carers, mom, school, et cetera are changing. Their life together has gotten smaller and smaller, especially since they moved into CORP housing, on the border of the CORP campus. Kitsune knows big change is coming, and he wants to have a say in it. He’s up for this next chapter of life, especially if—when it really matters—he can make himself known.
Kitsune’s Caregiver: The caregiver is an onstage acting (nonspeaking) role when the Kitsune character is played by an actor who needs care while performing onstage. If a Kitsune-actor needs no carer, there’s no carer onstage. The caregiver’s role is based on the actor’s real-life needs, joining the Chorus of Souls’ formations, or detaching if and when Kitsune’s actor needs her. The carer drives the wheelchair, lifts or helps lift the actor in/out of the wheelchair/bed, moves props as needed, calms the actor, et cetera. The carer should be given movement or acting direction: for example, to dance with Kitsune or to wave goodbye sadly.
The caregiver’s role should be played by the actor’s actual caregiver, not by another cast member or cover. If no carer is needed onstage, a Chorus of Souls member can drive the wheelchair, interacting with Kitsune in choreography or staging.
This character is key to understanding that “care” is not “given”: usually, it is paid labor, performed within a health-care system. It is disproportionately performed by women of color, and their labor/work is often exploited by agencies/corporations/care systems. Carers are unacknowledged, undercompensated lifelines for disabled kids and their families. The entire health-care system, as broken as it is, depends on nurses, CNAs, helpers, and therapists. These carers deserve higher wages and better working conditions in almost all scenarios. Families with a disabled child consider it extremely lucky, a life-changing, life-affirming lifeline, to have their child cared for by a loving, knowledgable carer. Ask anyone.
Chorus of Souls: This is a vocal ensemble singing the part of “Chorus” as a fluid and changing body of roles: Sometimes they voice or echo Mem’s memories or SOPHIA’s processes, and other times they sing and act as an embodiment of CORP’s workers and souls. Their voices move up and down together, breaking through, wailing, and glitching in key moments throughout the score, often expressing what the characters don’t yet understand.
Sensorium Ex Synopsis:
Dr. Mem, mother and scientist, longs to understand her son, Kitsune, who is disabled, without speech or mobility. Her job at CORP has her leading a new AI research team—and it appears her new role is compulsory. She works with Niles, an ex; and Mycelia, a newcomer who is mixed human/tree, to deliver FIELD, the last piece to complete CORP’s AI human prototype, SOPHIA. CORP wants to extract biomaterial not only from workers on the team but also from Kitsune.
Mem, Mycelia, and Niles discuss the nature of this sacrifice, this extraction. Mem and Mycelia fall in love, and they wed one night. The new family of three will decide, together, whether they will comply with CORP or not: The decision must rest with Kitsune. Kitsune rises to the occasion, considers the options, and makes his choice known: to flee. The trio leave, on foot, in full view of CORP, who watches, with Niles, their futile escape. Niles is dejected. Mycelia sings a Zen koan, which SOPHIA records and downloads.
SOPHIA tells several stories of her origin, including memories of her mother, Dr. Mem. SOPHIA is now in charge of deciding who is “played” and who is no longer of use. But can she ever know or understand the humanity behind the data that constitutes her?
Description of Scenes
Overture:I’ll understand you.
Scene 1:Symposium: She will save us!
Scene 2:Night at Home with Mem and Kitsune: But we’re out of time.
Scene 3:Team at Work: Is memory experience?
Scene 4:CORP’s Plan: It’s only possible with your sacrifice!
Scene 5:Discussion, Understanding, Wedding: Who keeps wanting? I do! I do!
Scene 6:Options/Decision: Stay or go?
Scene 7:Escape/SOPHIA: Who has the last word to infinity?
Overture
[Soundscape: Owl voice “whoooo whooo” morphs into Wind voice “isssssss.” A Wolf howl “hyoooooooo” morphs into computerized robot voice “maan?” Repeat. Robotic voice morphs back and forth into sounds owlish, human, howling, and lands on a decisively human sound. A woman’s powerful and wondering voice.]
Mem: Memory . . . only fragments, moments.
SOPHIA: And yet I think I’m real . . .
No story, no truth.
Even so, I’m a whole person,
true as you.
All of us in pieces, broken.
Story of silence, spoken.
SOPHIA: Nova to ova, and dust to dust—
—made of old stars
dark sparks
reborn into soft, wet selves.
A twice-told tale.
Tell it again, Mama!
Our story is old.
Telling it
is not the only way
it can be told.
SOPHIA: our wordless history
story history story
history story history
Mem: Seeing is not believing,
only believing is believing.
Is living.
Is alive!
SOPHIA: Is alive?
Light is a ray, see it?
Turn and it’s gone away.
Away way ay ay
day after day after day ay day ay.
Mem: Who needs light, anyway?
We learn to see by singing
in the dark.
Sing our old story
new, true.
At last I’ll hear.
I’ll understand you.
Scene 1: Symposium [CORP at lectern, waiting impatiently. Niles and Mycelia seated in two of three chairs onstage. One is empty. Brand “SOPHIA” logo is displayed prominently. CORP stalls for time; the
orchestra vamps. Mem is seen rushing to the stage, hastily pulling on a lab coat.]
CORP: Oh, good.
Here she is.
Cut the vamp.
[makes a cut gesture to the orchestra]
Please welcome our team leader:
Senior Researcher of Storytelling
Technologies, Dr. Mem.
Mem: [flustered, apologetic body language]
My time-space transport
is a little bit glitchy
this morning.
[laugh track: a large audience]
CORP: I was just about to introduce the team!
Joining Dr. Mem on the Singularity Team:
Professor Niles Gilfrank
is extremely full of himself.
Niles: Or maybe just charming?
CORP: He’s a drone/clone specialist
and makes superhuman robots.
Niles: Not a bad person—but
I do love fast cash, flash.
That makes me
a bit of a jackass.
Been with the CORP awhile.
I may be lonely
but I’m lonely with style.
My motto is:
“The apocalypse will be
lucrative.”
[sparse, polite applause]
CORP: Mycelia!
Mycelia studies her own species.
Computer Scientist of Dendrology, and Tree Interpreter.
Mycelia: I am interspecies,
mixed human/tree.
I don’t use vision.
I close my eyes to hear.
CORP: A synesthesiac,
whose gift is one of a kind.
Mycelia: Fluent in Aspen, Birch,
and Cypress.
A lover with no story.
A healer with no history.
CORP: A memory expert . . .
Mycelia: I sing it.
Sing what I remember.
That’s how my knowing is got.
CORP: She’s everything that Niles is . . . not.
[one hesitant, halfhearted clapper]
CORP: These researchers join Dr. Mem
as the FIELD team
for CORP.
Their assignment—
should they choose to accept it,
and they have no choice
but to accept it—
their assignment:
Chorus: is to discover and develop FIELD
as a combination gene/byte
for installation in SOPHIA.
F.I.E.L.D.
Failure. Injury. Error. Lack/Loss. Disability.
Everything we cut is now crucial.
F.I.E.L.D.: sourced, and harvested,
to be downloaded.
CORP: A combination gene/byte
that can unlock narrativity,
create experience and memory.
Abilities which, as Dr. Mem has written,
[CORP gestures to Mem with fake gratitude.]
are the essence of humanity.
With FIELD,
SOPHIA can form attachments,
know desire, sorrow, and love.
She will have her own life story
made from ours.
Once FIELD is found,
humans and AI will be one!
In SOPHIA.
And as our species declines,
SOPHIA will save our human stories.
She will save us!
Thank you for attending the symposium.
Team! This way!
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