Free The Role Players by Dorien Grey

and went to join Arthur McHam, now sitting in the second row.
    We followed Chris down the center aisle to the next-to-the-last aisle and took a seat. The entire cast and crew, with the exception of Max and Joe, filtered down to the first two rows as McHam rose and moved to stand in front of the stage to address the group.
    It was a combination pep talk and exhortation for maximum effort during this last week of rehearsal. Tuesday would be the first full run-through in full costume and makeup. When he had finished he looked toward the lighting booth and nodded.
    “All right, ladies and gentlemen, let’s go. Full run-through…. Places!”
    Everyone got up and moved backstage except for Cam, two other men, and a woman, who took their positions on the stage. Max’s voice came over the God mic, “We’re in stand-by please…to house...to half…and house out. Light 101 up...Sound!”
    As he gave the order, the houselights dimmed, then went out, followed by the dim pulsating light from the fixture over the center stage, and the soft thrumming. The light stopped pulsating but grew in intensity as did the thrumming until the light fully revealed the table and four people, creating an island of medium light surrounded by darkness. The thrumming stopped. Cam sat on one side of the table facing two seated men and a standing woman on the other side. The play began.
    *
    I don’t think I’d ever appreciated just how hard a stage manager’s job was. There must have been a half dozen minor interruptions in the first act alone, either from the director or from Max about blocking or missed cues or out-of-sequence dialogue.
    In a nutshell, the play was about a future time where society had eliminated crime, war, disease, hunger, and poverty—but also emotions. Time travel has been discovered, but to avoid the risk of a change to the past changing the future, all time travel is done under strict supervision of “The Board,” and only for the purpose of “intellectual research.” There are two cardinal rules, which must not be violated: only one person is allowed to travel to any given time period, and that traveler is forbidden to do anything that might change the future.
    Cam’s character, The Student, is sent back in time to observe certain major disasters of the 20th century: the sinking of the Titanic , the sinking of the Lusitania , and the explosion of the Hindenburg from the moment of the ships’ departures up to and through the disasters themselves. The Student’s duty was to absorb as much of the experiences as he could. Should people he had met and befriended prior to the disasters become separated and, searching for each other, ask The Student if he knew where they were, he had to deny knowing, even if he did. If someone was about to die in front of him, he was forbidden to try to save them or do anything at all that might prevent or alter the inevitable. At the instant where he himself would have perished, he is brought back to his own time, where he must report to The Board and share everything he’d seen and felt.
    On the Titanic he meets and is oddly attracted to a handsome young man (Brent) with whom he spends much of his time. They are together when the ship hits the iceberg, and the young man excuses himself to get something from his cabin—the last The Student sees of him. In his report to The Board he does not mention his attraction to the young man.
    When he travels back to the Lusitania , some four years after the Titanic ’s sinking, he is startled to run into the same young man! This immediately strikes The Student as either an extreme coincidence, or perhaps evidence that someone else was time traveling in the same period in violation of the rules. However, with only four years between the two disasters, and given the young man’s convincing explanation of how he’d managed to survive, he decides it is merely a tragic coincidence and sets aside his concern. The two renew their friendship and, when