As we open, the Characters are debating whether the Play they are in 
was written by a Playwright or arose by chance, a question that has 
vexed the 26 denizens of this little world for as long as they can 
remember.

CHARACTER X:  But let us suppose for a moment that Character K is 
              right, and there is no Playwright -- that our script was 
              blammered out mindlessly by apes flailing away at 
              keyboards for centuries, millenia -- eons, even.  Why do 
              we then have the incredible good luck to be in a Play 
              whose Characters speak and act coherently?  Why, even, 
              are there Characters at all?  More than likely our 
              script would've read something like "Ge~+1eev theo;sath 
              a0987er23q alsdtfg980u asdfu90w ast09u4   tyeo aoefn ea 
              fa;opewe a>."

CHARACTER M:  The script makes sense because only in scripts that make 
              sense are there Characters to notice whether the script 
              makes sense.  There may indeed be zillions of gibberish 
              scripts out there, but they don't count.

CHARACTER Z:  Or maybe scripts that would look to us like gibberish do 
              make sense to the Characters in them.  If there is no 
              Audience to give any one language preference over 
              another, then every possible script makes an infinite 
              number of different kinds of sense.  Perhaps at this 
              very moment another set of Characters is following this 
              very script, but as a hockey game rather than a 
              metafictional debate.

CHARACTER X:  But why should that be the case?  Isn't it equally 
              plausible that in that situation, with no Audience to 
              give meaning to any of the scripts, they would all be 
              equal nonsense?

CHARACTER M:  Maybe the Audience is whoever set up all those keyboards 
              and trained the apes to bang away at them, and 
              programmed the machines to automatically save the files 
              every so often, and ...

CHARACTER X:  Stop!  You're making as big a mythology out of Apes at 
              Keyboards as the Authorists make with their Producers 
              and Directors and Ticket-Takers and Stage Managers and 
              so on, yet part of K's original argument was that if we 
              couldn't otherwise decide we should go with the Ape at 
              the Keyboard theory because it's simpler than twEIqoWKur 
              pq230zxPd rXts93w wgQQvnm934q2t cxoViwZe

CHARACTER K:  Look at what you just said!  That proves the ape theory.  
              If there is indeed a Playwright, why does he allow such 
              bursts of gibberish?

CHARACTER B:  Oh, that's just modem garble.  You know, when the 
              Playwright sends the newly-written script to those whose 
              job it is to make the Play real for the Audience, errors 
              do sometimes creep in.

CHARACTER L:  Or maybe the Playwright did it intentionally, to keep us 
              guessing.  He could've written it so we all knew he 
              existed, or so we thought we knew he didn't, or so we 
              just never thought about it at all, but in any of those 
              cases there wouldn't be any point to this Play, would 
              there?

CHARACTER K:  But why does there have to be a point to this Play at 
              all?

CHARACTER B:  Because, deep down, I feel there is one.


                *** TO BE CONTINUED, AD INFINITUM ***