Bathroom Monologue: Show me Your I.D., OR, I’ll need two forms of I.D. with that, OR, Get Over This Pun, John

Amin Tech was way ahead of the curve on genetic engineering, producing the first self-sustaining waves of biological nanomachines. These weren’t metal and they didn’t have silicon processors – they were too small for such clunky stuff. Instead, Olivia and Micah Amin lovingly spliced DNA and turned bacteria to good use. They spliced so much DNA that they had ligases named for them (even if nobody in the press knew what ligases were).

Olivia and Micah programmed behavior patterns to the bio-nanos, so that they swarmed and could deal with complex problems in the human body. One booster shot of the buggers could clear out a blocked heart valve in minutes.

Through careful mapping of bio-nano DNA, they could even stimulate the production of healthy proteins in the human body, so that any ligament or muscle could be repaired. Once the job was underway, the bio-nanos would break down and become part of the protein in the healthy new tissue.

But the final development was accidental.

Late one night, Micah thought she noticed strange wave patterns moving in a dish of bio-nanos. Sharing of the wave patterns seemed to correlate between unprogrammed changes in their behavior, specifically making them swarm. Since bio-nanos could only do their jobs if they followed the programs, this innovation was worrisome. Were they self-organizing? Were they talking to each other?

Micah worked to dawn developing a device to decode the mysterious waves. She was stunned over what she read. She paged Olivia, who grumpily drove over to the lab.

Olivia thought Micah was nuts, but mid-argument the two noticed another series of inexplicable wave patterns. Micah switched the device on in time to decode only the last wave, which formed one last sentence: “All that aside, I don’t believe in intelligent design.”

Bathroom Monologue: This Monologue Brought to You by: Food Poisoning

Everybody expected Yusef Amin Jr. to quit after a week. Half a month at the most. He was a spoiled teen riding a trust fund. He came from money, slept in money, and didn’t need to go to college or worry for his future. He was destined for luxury. That he wanted to work in a soup kitchen was just a phase. He’d signed up on a moral kick, for the emotional high of feeling good for doing good. He’d be back on X-Box Live as soon as he felt better about himself.

But he lasted a week. Then two. Then an entire month. His co-workers were shocked to see him return after the time a patron stabbed him in the kidney. The patron had waited outside, hearing about Yusef Jr.’s wealth. He carjacked him and left him with a flesh wound for his troubles. Police never found the assailant. Yet Yusef Jr. came back, and he came back to the same kitchen. He came back with a vengeance, doubling his hours at the local shelter (while wearing cheaper clothes to work). He came back maxing out credit cards to keep blankets in the shelter and chicken on the menu.

Yusef Amin Jr. was stabbed three times over his entire career of hands-on philanthropy. The attacks were unrelated to each other, mere hazards of working in bad areas.

Exiting the hospital for the third time, he saw a guy playing his guitar with his case lying suggestively on the sidewalk. Yusef Jr. dropped his pocket change in. Yusef Sr. chastised that giving to the poor only encouraged them to remain as they were.

Jr. responded, “Yeah, dad, I’m sure this ninety cents will totally validate his life’s dream of wearing bags over his feet and not knowing if he’ll have a roof over his head tonight.”

Then Jr. dropped the contents of his wallet into the case.

Sr. cut Jr. off financially. It did not last, not with Mrs. Amin worrying about her son, but it sent a clear message.

So Yusef Jr. went to college, studying politics and social studies, while keeping up social work as an extracurricular. The story of his third attack circulated so much that he inevitably had to explain why he kept coming back to shelters. He said he was born with a deep-seated terror of poverty. He was not afraid that the guy lying on the pavement would mug him, or that the needy veteran on the steps would go crazy if he approached. If anything, Yusef Jr. was terrified of the notion of people being poor. It chilled him; just thinking about it made his hands cold. For him, helping out at a soup kitchen was entirely selfish, just as everyone said, except that the selfishness manifested in needing to feel he did something. That was his moral kick, and he would never stop kicking.

Bathroom Monologue: What do you get him for Father's Day?

Yusef was a very wealthy man. He was born into money, grew up in money, went to college to learn how to make even more money, and the summer after graduation he made such an embarrassing amount of money for his father's company that the few people who had tolerated him in college stopped talking to him, to focus on their screenplays and jobs at McDonalds. Yuseff inherited his father's company, and built himself a palatial mansion. He had symmetrical swimming pools, a private lake (not for swimming, but to repopulate a couple of endangered species his daughter thought were cute; his children got whatever they asked, no matter what), a private road, and a private airport (which sported its own symmetrical swimming pools that Yuseff and his family could take a dip in if they didn't feel like flying once they got there).

But Yuseff was unsatisfied. Sure, he had a platinum-plated wrist protector that kept his gold watch from chaffing, and a road no one else could drive on, but he didn't have enough. Consumer culture was too small for him. He lost sleep and spent an increasing amount of time away from his wife and kids trying to create something worth having.

One night, inspiration struck. A map. The world's first real map. Not a flat one, not a globe, not one that made Greenland look accurate in size, nor even one of those adjusting zigzag maps in the background of all the movies about the White House or U.N. Building. A map of total accuracy. A map that would have every coastline accurate to the kilometer, every building represented, and a key that read "1 Mile equals 1 Mile." That would show Capitalism how it was done!

Immediately he hired thousands of scientists who were very relieved to be employed after all that time in college with their parents asking what they would do with their lives. They experimented on how to get paper to fold extra times, on refractive light and holographic technology, and spent an awful lot of time surveying. Meanwhile, Yuseff handled the logistical end, trying to secure a place for his map. He wanted to try the moon, but his close advisors apologetically informed him that it was smaller than the earth, and even with cutting edge paper-folding technology, the map would probably knock the moon out of orbit. He almost licensed the sun for storage space, but it was informed that it was a poor locale, even if it was well-lit, and that if he tried to claim property on the sun, the Russians would probably declare war. And then, while he was filing the patents, he heard a nasty rumor and almost sued Google Earth for trying to steal his idea.

Early one morning he got a call from his wife. She was worried about their youngest daughter, Anita. The girl had been acting strangely for months, had been coming home covered in white paint, and wasn't playing with the other children. Yuseff begrudgingly cancelled his afternoon meetings and flew home to meet his daughter, who ran into his arms, her hands and face smudged with white paint. Yuseff asked her what this was all about and what was wrong with her, but her first reply was only to point at an industrial paint machine, usually applied for making lines on football fields. Before he could ask further, she dragged him to the roof of the mansion, where a telescope was fixed. After she threatened to cry if he didn't humor her, he looked through. Every so often in the distance of all four directions were large, white line segments, all perhaps fifty feet across, each row emanating from their property.

Yuseff gave his daughter a flabbergasted look, to which she responded, "One Mile equals One Mile!"

He blinked, looked through the telescope one more time, turned back to her, and hugged her to his side, saying, "Well, that'll do."