Over six days in 2126, brother and sister Mats and Thena figure out what to do with Mom. Once her youngest child Mats turns twenty-one in less than a week, Nora Mai will be taken out of service, ‘deregistered’ and put out for recycling. Nora Mai is a maternal autonomous interface (MAI), an artificial life form, and the only mother they have ever known.
They can keep her alive if they ask the government for an exemption (there is the ‘exemption directive’ available to them). The only problem is that Mom must move in with one of them to meet the requirements of the exemption. Mats is a fabulously rich professional basketball player with the means to provide for her but not sure he can take her. Thena has a side gig as Autofus, a mega-celebrity superhero who fights super villains around the galaxy and feels her work’s not conducive to having Mom underfoot. A sympathetic bureaucrat who is a fan of superheroes pulls some strings and the exemption is granted just in time. However Nora Mai has other plans.
Keywords: Childcare in the future, maternal love, parenthood, aging, siblings, artificial intelligence, big tech, superhero, surveillance culture, liberal authoritarianism.
Finalist, The Future, season three, Broken Arts Entertainment, 2026.
Genre: Drama, Science Fiction, Tragedy, Political
Acts: 1
Run time: 35 minutes
Suitable for students 14+
Cast size: 4 actors
Male roles: 1
Female roles: 2
Trans/Non-Binary/Gender Non-Conforming roles: 1
Production note: playing Nora Mai as an artificial life form.
Nora Mai is a maternal autonomous interface, a MAI, an artificial human who presents as a mid-forties woman that is virtually indistinguishable from a human mom. Her programming directs her to perform the maternal duties of a loving but overbearing mother dedicated to managing every aspect of the lives of her children Thena and Mats until they reach the age of twenty-one.
Visit the playwright's website, www.rickbutts.ca
