Key ideas: drama 8

Read the play.

Cast of Characters:
Alejandro: 15-year-old colonist at the Shackelton Crater Lunar Settlement
Dahlia: Alejandro’s 17-year-old sister, also a colonist

Scene One:
[DAHLIA and ALEJANDRO are dressed in their EMUs (extravehicular mobility units). You can see their rover in the background. They’ve been exploring an abandoned early lunar settlement. The colonists at Shackelton Crater call it “the ghost town”.]

Dahlia: Well, I guess “X” really does mark the spot. [pointing to a map and then to the door of an abandoned artificial habitat] This is Grandma’s old laboratory.
Alejandro: This place is creepy. I don’t think anyone’s been here since Grandma and her crew had to abort their mission 50 years ago. Why would she have wanted to come back here?
Dahlia: I don’t know. There must be something really important in there, or she wouldn’t have made a map. Should we go in?
Alejandro: Ummm. I don’t know if this is a good idea. [thinks for a moment] Well, OK, as long as you go first.

Scene Two:
[inside the old laboratory]

Alejandro: [staring in awe] I didn’t know this was going to be a greenhouse. [pointing] What are those trees? We don’t have any that look like that in our colony.
Dahlia: [examining the trees closely, then smiling] No one has trees like these anywhere! They're cocoa trees—they’re extinct. Look at the notes and charts on the walls. Grandma must have been trying to grow these trees on the moon since it became too hot to grow them on Earth.
Alejandro: Wait, cocoa trees as in chocolate? Chocolate is like a unicorn. It’s magical and everyone wants it, but it doesn’t exist. It’s been gone for two generations. Are you saying we can bring chocolate back to the world?
Dahlia: Alejandro, I’m saying that our grandmother already did. She just needed a little help from us to find the trees!