c o n f l i c t s
o f
t h e
l a s t
p
r
o
g
e
n
i
t
o
r
s
-written by-
s. craig zahler
-contact & editor-
julien thuan
united talent agency 310 860 3791
draft a
Titlecard: 2054
EXT. OUTER SPACE
Stars like haphazardly cast salt speckle the rich black lake of outer space. Sitting within the darkness slowly turning, is a blue, brown, green and white marble, Earth. Iridescent storms spread like a plague over the land masses.
FEMALE VOICE (V.O.)
The exact origins of the Dissolving Cloud are unknown, but a commonly
held belief is that the viruses and counter-viruses engendered by and
for the computers of this age
became sentient and mutable.
Above storm-enshrouded Earth, five satellites speed from distant regions of the world toward a central point.
FEMALE VOICE (V.O.) (CONT'D)
In the end, the destructive program turned on itself.
In a perfectly coordinated instant, the satellites impact in one specified spot...where they implode and then explode silently and brilliantly in the vacuum of space, a white smear of light with debris spinning pell-mell in all directions.
FEMALE VOICE (CONT'D)
2054 marked the end of the Computer Age.
Titlecard: 2072
INT. COFFEE ROOM - DAY
The room is light orange and illuminated by a white hemisphere in the center of the ceiling. KURT, a fifty-year-old German man with white hair and serious eyebrows, sits at a round table watching a curved pane of glass. Upon the
‘panorama,’ a bronze-skinned soccer PLAYER with long, curly blond hair weaves between the other PLAYERS, escorting the white-black ball toward the goal.
The crowd CHEERS; Kurt’s eyes widen in anticipation.
2.
KURT
Als Deutschland, Deutschland--
untersteht euch nicht.
The door to the room opens. A MAN of forty wearing an orange coat pokes his head inside.
MAN
Laborversuch.
KURT
(frowning)
Sheiza.
INT. WINDOWLESS LABORATORY
The eight-sided subterranean room has no windows; spiral-shaped neon lights drift freely across the ceiling illuminating the three ovoid pools of pink water in the center of the space. Kurt and four other SCIENTISTS (two slender white males, one black male and one female) enter the room; the drifting lights scurry across the ceiling, one over each water-filled ovoid and the rest in a concentrated circle over the research quintet.
FEMALE VOICE (V.O.)
Higher magnetics, single response
sensors, radio waves and relay
pneumatics insufficiently filled
the void extant since the end of
the Computer Age.
The research quintet walks to the center of the room; the lights follow the group and shine brightly into the pink water within the oval-shaped tubs.
FEMALE VOICE (V.O.) (CONT'D)
In 2072, a group of German
researchers significantly advanced
a new technology intended to propel the stagnant sciences.
The Scientists kneel beside the foremost pool: within it, partially submerged, is a perfect cube of gray spongy tissue (nineteen inches in all directions) threaded with pink and dark red veins.
FEMALE VOICE (V.O.) (CONT'D)
Fleischwerk.
Kurt plucks an orange plastic nozzle from beside the vat and pulls on it, withdrawing a clear plastic hose.
3.
He raises the terminus over the cube of Fleischwerk and then presses a button, CLICK. Pink fluid dribbles onto the cube of flesh, SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLAT.
The cube begins to quiver.
CUT TO:
Titlecard: 2077
INT. HOSPITAL - DAY
Four of the German Scientists (all older) stand in a long empty hallway illuminated by drifting magnetic lights. At the opposite end of the passage sits an orange graphite wheelchair-- it is empty, motorized and cushioned with translucent air pillows.
The fifth Scientist, the woman, enters the hall from the far entrance. She reaches the wheelchair, leans over and opens a plastic control box in its rear housing: a cube of cultured Fleischwerk sits inside. With an eye-dropper, she drips pink fluid onto the gray tissue- PLISH, PLISH, PLISH- and then closes the control box, CLICK.
She nods to the quartet at the far end of the hall.
BLACK SCIENTIST
Komm mal her.
A light on the Fleischwerk housing blinks; the wheelchair slowly rolls forward, away from the woman and up the hall, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK. The quintet gleefully watches their child walk for the first time.
KURT
Schnell.
The wheelchair speeds up...but veers toward the wall.
FEMALE SCIENTIST
Auf! Auf!
The wheelchair shuts off- BEEP- and then BUMPS lightly into the side of the passage.
The Scientists smile at each other- exultant- and then walk toward the wheelchair.
4.
EXT. CONSTRUCTION SITE - DAY
Within a dense metropolis, the girders of an unfinished building extend half a mile into the sky. An orange hemispherical device, ten inches in diameter adorned with optical lenses and three human eyes, glides on magnetic wheels along a girder, VWIRRR, and then stops before a rivet.
FEMALE VOICE (V.O.)
Fleischwerk was designed to
accurately reproduce limited
functions when attached to
mechanical devices. It was
initially modelled from the brains
of imitative animals like parrots
and chimpanzees. By 2082,
Fleischwork was the dominant
technology in the world.
A flap CLACKS open on the GRIDBOT; a variable wrench emerges.
Titlecard: 2134
EXT. LONDON - NIGHT
Smoke rises from the crumbling buildings and pyres throughout the city; hover-vans filled with corpses shuttle their fetid burdens through gaping holes in the fly tubes like bugs escaping the bowels of some translucent beast.
FEMALE VOICE (V.O.)
After a prolonged period of intra-
and international peace, a group
named New Purity rose in opposition to the world government. The New
Puritans had no leader, varying
agendas and regularly employed
biological terrorists. The Plague
War began in 2134.
A cloud of gas drifts through the streets; it envelops a group of running TEENAGERS. When it uncovers them, they are covered in ochre-colored hives and SCREAMING.
Titlecard: 2139
5.
EXT. THE BRONX ZOO - DAY
The zoo is silent; dead animals (lions, orangutans, seals), broken cages, leafless trees and human corpses are all a uniform stark white color, stripped of their natural hues.
Nothing moves.
Titlecard: 2142
INT. NORSK HYPERDOME - NIGHT
An enormous blue tarp with silver grid lines covers a slug-shaped mass that is a two-and-a-half miles long and a mile-and-a half wide. Hoses pump pink fluid through apertures in the covering, onto the cyclopean mass beneath; catwalks and raised viewing platforms crisscross the enclosure. ONE
HUNDRED AND NINETY WORKERS in snug, dark blue bodysuits prowl the walkways and ledges, surveying the massive enshrouded burden that nearly filled the hyperdome.
CHIEF BJORLSSON, a tall man of fifty-six with a wiry blond beard and ice blue eyes ringed with fatigue, stands at a podium. Three light blue stars and one green star adorn the breast of his dark blue bodysuit. He and his two assistants, a BLACK WOMAN of thirty-three years and a RED-HAIRED MAN of forty, stare at the luminous screen atop the podium.
SVEN, a tall twenty-year-old with short blond hair, a crooked nose, a blond mustache and greenish-blue eyes, climbs onto the catwalk upon which Chief Bjorlsson and his assistants stand.
SVEN
Chief Bjorlsson.
Chief Bjorlsson looks over at Sven. The young man bows forty degrees; the assistants bow twenty degrees; the Chief bows ten. They all stand upright; the older man’s eyes survey Sven for a moment.
CHIEF BJORLSSON
Don’t eat anything tomorrow. No
coffee either.
Sven’s eyes widen in alarm; he pales.
SVEN
Does...does Mom know?
6.
CHIEF BJORLSSON
No...and don’t tell her: I can’t
deal with her histrionics now. I
need to sleep when I get the rare
opportunity-- not coddle her.
Sven stares in mute disbelief at the Chief; the man does not return his gaze; the two assistants glance furtively at the young man and then back to the luminous podium screen.
CHIEF BJORLSSON (CONT'D)
(to his assistants)
Why are we looking at this?
RED-HAIRED ASSISTANT
Sir, the left scapular region is
90% desiccated.
SVEN
There are ten thousand people who
would rather-
Chief Bjorlsson looks up from the podium monitor and glares coolly at the young man.
CHIEF BJORLSSON
There’s no debate. You surpass all of the qualifications for
Bluebranch: 37 smart marks, Zenith
physical scores and Apex pilot
skills. You’re going. There was
an opening and I volunteered you
before it became known to the
faculty. I want our lineage to
survive.
SVEN
Out there? We don’t even know if
there’s-
CHIEF BJORLSSON
It’s better than staying here
waiting for Cancer Storms, Bleach
Clouds, Aging Mutagens or...or
whatever else the New Puritans
devise. It’s a chance.
SVEN
Then you should go.
CHIEF BJORLSSON
I can’t. I’ve too much left to do
here.
7.
EXT. NORSK HYPERDOM - NIGHT
The enormous three-mile-in-diameter stadium resembles a blue golf ball. The partitioned ceiling lies splayed open like a flower, the petals each thirty-ton flaps of steel. Steam rises from inside as if from a cup of coffee.
FEMALE VOICE (V.O.)
Nobody knew if humanity would
survive the Plague War. But all of the nations were agreed on one
thing: our species must endure, we
cannot let the curtain fall on us
forever.
The grass and trees outside are bleached, limp and drooping.
Festering animals (elk and coyote) lie dead, their open mouths and upraised hooves pushing at the heavy night.
FEMALE VOICE (V.O.) (CONT'D)
In a Scandinavian region
depopulated during the third year
of the Plague War, the Unified
Greater Congress assembled the
finest scientific minds in the
world and had them construct
Elysabeth, a confluence of
Fleischwerk, radio, pneumatic,
sonic, solar and magnetic
technologies.
The sound of spectacularly loud CRACKLING fills the cold air of the devastated region. Motes of light leap from within the Hyperdome. The ground shakes; the bleached, drooping trees loose their few remaining leaves; dead animals implode like dry mulch.
Light more brilliant than the sun flashes inside the Hyperdome. The stadium itself begins to crumble.
From out of the collapsing Hyperdome emerges ELYSABETH: the spacecraft is a two-and-a-half mile-long cylinder from which six appendages sprout. At her top is a “head” of reflective silver, egg-shaped with the narrow end pointing out. From the right side of the vessel extends an “arm,” an angled tube shaped like the letter “L”. From her left side jut two small
“arms,” each covered with fins. From the bottom of the ship are two half-mile long pillars (legs) each supporting eighty-six blazing booster rockets.
The engines ROAR, propelling the ship upwards.
8.
Glass hemispheres housing trees and water speckle her back; myriad domicile windows and vapor vents scintillate on her sides and along her “arms” and “legs.”
Elysabeth climbs toward the stars, the Hyperdome crumbling and aflame beneath her. The ship’s wake is a pillar of smoke four miles wide.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE (V.O.)
If there were other habitable
planets, it would take a long time
to find them. I was built to
survive a millennium, possibly
longer. I had to be able to make
complex decisions upon which the
survival of humanity might depend.
EXT. OUTER SPACE
Elysabeth exits the Earth’s atmosphere; her steely skin is aglow but intact. The planet below her is blemished with white sores and veiled with thick black clouds.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE (V.O.)
My children were drained, vacuum-
sealed and frozen in my holds-- to
be resuscitated whenever I divine a new home.
Along the ship’s torso, limbs and head, metal irises and circular flaps open wide to reveal three-hundred and ninety-eight enhanced human eyeballs, each protected by a foot of pristine glass and contained in clear fluid. Ninety-three powerscopes extrude from the ship’s many curved surfaces.
Behind Elysabeth, Earth grows smaller and smaller...
INT. CRYOGENIC VAULT 47 - SAME
The cryogenic vault is lit by a yellow bulb in the center of the floor; thirty turquoise body-bags hang from a metal runner in the ceiling, like sides of beef. Within each sheer package is a drained human BODY, gaunt, frozen and curled up like a fetus; each person wears a blue bodysuit and metal rings around his or her wrists, ankles and neck.
Sven’s curled-up body is the penultimate in the line; the body-bags wobble queerly in the zero-gravity environment.
9.
Titlecard: 2160 (16 years after launch) The spacecraft Elysabeth glides through dark space; distant stars are mere pinpricks of light. Her enhanced human eyeballs observe the immediate area; her ninety-eight powerscopes scan the far horizons.
A denuded brown asteroid drifts slowly toward the vessel.
Counter-thrusters on Elysabeth’s torso spit out little white flames; the vehicle drifts out of the path of the spinning stone.
Titlecard: 2240 (98 years after launch) EXT. OUTER SPACE
The spacecraft Elysabeth glides toward an enormous beige-and-brown gas giant-- a Jupiter-like planet. Another world is dimly visible on the ship’s horizon; beyond it shines a brilliant white sun, enormous and intense.
Titlecard: 2243 (101 years after launch) Elysabeth flies away from an orange gas giant, itself orbited by seventeen moons. The sun is a tiny star in the distance behind her.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
The nearest analogous solar system-
the one orbiting sun HD 70642- had
no habitable planets.
The ship drifts headfirst into the darkness of the galaxy.
Titlecard: 2403 (261 years after launch) EXT. DEEP SPACE
A large red star looms several light hours astern the ship.
One of the metal domes on Elysabeth’s back opens up. Inside the exposed, ninety-foot crater are sixty metal probes; the body of each is the size of a small house and shaped like a DRAGONFLY.
10.
Each of the Dragonflies’ bulbous eyes are covered with one-hundred-and-eleven optics: eyes, lenses and powerscopes.
The Dragonfly probes detach themselves from the nooks within the crater and float away from Elysabeth. They spread their mirrored wings (four on each probe) and aim the solar surfaces at the red sun ahead; their wings are luminous with light. Painted on the side of each craft are the names (SPIRIT, SERAPH, etc.) followed by sequence numbers.
Charged with solar power, the Dragonflies thrust in all directions away from Elysabeth.
Titlecard: 2549 (407 years after launch) EXT. ASTEROID BELT
A Dragonfly is crushed by a spinning asteroid. The metal insect implodes and then bursts into a silent smear of light.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE (V.O.)
Most of my assistants would not
return.
Titlecard: 2690 (548 years after launch) EXT. SOLAR SYSTEM
Icicles, pock marks and scrapes besmirch Elysabeth’s once-pristine metal dermis. More than a hundred of her eyeballs are gray with cataracts.
The ship thrusts around a giant mass of frozen water. Before her lies a lavender gas giant planet and in the distance, a star speckled with enormous sunspots.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE (V.O.)
The majority of space is empty, and the majority of matter in space is
gas. After more than half a
millennium, time was wearing down
my hull.
Titlecard: 2810 (668 years after launch) 11.
INT. LUNG BAY - SAME
A dim red light illuminates a vast chamber filled with hanging grape-like clusters (alveoli); icicles have begun to grow upon some of the organic air-converters.
Two orange hemispheres with plastic nozzles jutting from their fronts float into the chamber, VWIZZ. They spray pink steam upon the gathered ice, HISS. The ice dissolves.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
An organic antifreeze patterned
after the blood of arctic codfish
was used to reclaim iced organs,
yet permanent damage was sustained.
EXT. ORBIT AROUND A LONE STAR
Thirty more Dragonflies launch from a crater in Elysabeth’s back. One of the adjacent domes below her shoulder blade is shattered: the trees within it are covered with ice.
The Dragonflies turn their mirrored wings toward the distant sun, collect light and launch in all directions.
Titlecard: 2968 (826 years after launch) EXT. SOLAR SYSTEM
With the lenses and powerscopes that comprise its eyes, Dragonfly SPIRIT-12 examines a newly found solar system. The planets in the sector are lit by two stars: a bright main sequence body- like the Earth’s sun- and a weaker red supergiant, dim and bloated with age.
Titlecard: 2970 (828 years after launch) The Dragonfly thrusts around the body of a gas planet and sees a terrestrial world ahead. With two-hundred and twenty-two optics, Spirit-12 scrutinizes the planet: it is a primarily blue world, flecked with a few brown spots.
Two flaps open in the bottom of Dragonfly Spirit-12; a box drifts out of the opening: upon the side of the two-foot cube is the word, ‘POLYORGAN’. The front half of the apparatus is solid steel;
12.
the rear is a thick glass case surrounding Fleischwerk lungs, intestines, livers, kidneys and arterial networks. A green light blinks erratically on the cube; a corresponding light blinks in perfect synchronicity upon the head of Dragonfly Spirit-12.
A thruster fires on the rear of the Polyorgan; it rockets toward the terrestrial planet.
Titlecard: 2979 (838 years after launch) Elysabeth, worn, dented, dirty, three of her environment domes collapsed, orbits the terrestrial world. Half of her eyeballs are gray and collapsed. Dragonfly Spirit-12 floats nearby.
Elysabeth fires her crossthrusters and begins to rotate.
INT. CRYOGENIC VAULT 47 - SAME
Gravity finds and pulls down the floating turquoise body-bags, WHUNK; they dangle on the metal runner, weighted after many weightless centuries. (The ninth bag is broken: in it lies the dark brown remains of a long-decayed person.) A moment later, the body-bags containing Sven (twenty-ninth in line) and the other frozen human beings slide along the magnetized runner toward a metal door, VWIRRR. The ellipsoidal portal swings wide on Fleischwerk hinges.
INT. OXYGENATION CHAMBER - LATER
Highly-oxygenated air pumps into the foam-covered, sunlit room through plastic vents.
The body-bags glide along the ceiling runner into the stark enclosure; a diamond scalpel jutting down from the top of the doorway slices into the top of each plastic bag as it passes, breaking the vacuum seal with a HISS. The moment the vacuum seal is broken, the drained men and women sag within their plastic cocoons like discarded dolls.
The bags continue on their way toward the next door, excepting the one with the corpse, which is released- CLACK-and disposed of into a hole in the floor.
13.
INT. WARMING VAULT - LATER
The twenty-nine body-bags hang in the octagonal, foam-covered space of the warming vault; coils of heated wire glow brightly on the ceiling. Within the sheer cocoons, the gaunt, curled-up bodies sag, their metal bracelets and anklets CLINKING together. The ‘sleepers’ perspire.
INT. REHYDRATION CHAMBER - MOMENTS LATER
The gray rehydration chamber is filled with oval-shaped surgical planks made of lime-green foam, each jutting from the floor on three metal poles. A horizontal slit in the wall admits a narrow slash of sunlight.
The body-bags continue on the ceiling-runner circuit into the room, Sven penultimate. Each body-bag halts atop an individual surgical plank.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Magnetized zone.
The metal wrist, neck and ankle bracelets compel each person to the magnetized surgical planks below. Each person (still within his or her body-bag) FWAPS upon a surgical plank...and magnetically adheres there.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE (CONT'D)
Active dissolvent in use.
Amber-tinted mist FWISSES from the ceiling and fills the room. The turquoise body-bags stretch and melt and dissolve...revealing twenty-nine emaciated people. Each person wears a sagging blue bodysuit and has a tubular metal input over his or her heart, the flap of which is a closed iris.
Shower heads emerge from the ceiling; pink water rains down on the dehydrated people below, onto their faces and into their mouths.
CUT TO:
INT. REHYDRATION CHAMBER - LATER
A tube lowers from the ceiling toward each person; the dangling, magnetized tips connect to heart inputs with sharp CLICKS.
14.
Like crimson caterpillars, blood flows down the tubes, into the bodies of the desiccated people.
INT. REHYDRATION CHAMBER - LATER
The twenty-nine inert, prostrated occupants have gained some fluid and mass and color. The tubes hanging from the ceiling remain attached to their chests.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Grounded persons only. Electrical
surge zone.
A light flashes within the ceiling, BWAM. All of the bodies convulse in unison. Three of them COUGH.
Another flash follows, BWAM. All of the bodies convulse in unison. Sven and eighteen others COUGH and GASP.
For the first time in 838 years, Sven opens his eyes. He squints in reaction to the (very dim) light and looks at the tube trailing from his heart into the dark orifice of the ceiling. Somebody GROANS.
Sven vomits pink and amber fluid; the WOMAN beside him clamps her hand to her burst right eyeball, MOANING. A MAN nearby SHRIEKS in terror.
Three DEAD MEN fall from their surgical planks; the ships’
wires SNAP off of their heart-valves and dangle like failed fishing lines. The bodies THUD upon the slick foam floor.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE (CONT'D)
Awaken my children: open your eyes
and breathe. Do not sit up or
detach your umbilicals just yet.
SVEN
(creaking, barely audible)
H-how long...h-have-
Sven starts to COUGH, wincing with each convulsion.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
General reorientation will be held
in six days.
A WOMAN starts LAUGHING hysterically; a MAN begins to SOB; Sven turns his head and looks at the horizontal window; a narrow stripe of sunlight shines along the length of his body.
15.
INT. COMESTIBLE QUADRANT - LATER
Sven and two-hundred resuscitated PEOPLE (all wrapped in silver grid blankets), sit on turquoise foam benches at foam tables, shivering and perspiring. Sunlight limns the disoriented people. The sounds of BREATHING and teeth CHATTERING fill the enclosure; nobody speaks.
CLICK. Iris apertures open in the foam table; small steaming vials rise to the surface with dull WHIRRS.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
It is time to break your fast.
Sven reaches a trembling hand towards the steaming plastic vial.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE (CONT'D)
Drink the protein syrup slowly. If you feel nauseated or enfeebled,
stop.
Sven plucks the steaming vial from the iris and brings it to his lips. He opens his mouth and drinks the syrup; the fluid sears his esophagus; his eyes sparkle. He continues to GULP
it down.
Titlecard: Six (Earth-Standard) Days Later INT. PHYSICAL INVIGORATION CHAMBER
The kidney-shaped space is lit by nine ellipsoidal skylights; long narrow wading pools, numerous treadmills, isometric pull straps, aerobic bikes and foam calisthenics ‘trees’ fill the vast enclosure. FIVE HUNDRED PEOPLE are pulling, swimming, climbing, jogging and treading water in an effort to strengthen atrophied muscles.
Sven climbs a calisthenics tree-- a foam replica fashioned to look like a knobby oak; he is sweating profusely. He looks down at the clear air-mattress fifteen feet below him...and then back up; the young man inhales deeply, grabs the branch above him and pulls.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Heart rate above recommended level.
Please descend slowly and rest
before you resume your climb.
16.
Sven wipes the sweat from his face, repositions his legs and then reaches up for the next branch; he pulls himself up, veins bulging on his face like worms ready to surface.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE (CONT'D)
Heart rate above recommended level.
Please descend slowly and rest
before you resume your climb.
Sven looks down; the air-mat lies twenty feet below him. He sets his feet on another branch and continues to clamber up.
MALE VOICE (O.S.)
You heard her. Get down.
Sven hesitates for a moment, but does not look down.
MALE VOICE (O.S.) (CONT'D)
I can’t see your rank from here,
but unless you have three stars on
your chest, that wasn’t a request.
Gripping the tree, Sven looks down at his persecutor.
Staring directly up at him is a muscular Chinese man of forty-four years with short silver hair, a jagged scar on his right cheek and a Fleischwerk right arm (a gray false limb fashioned like a real arm, but hairless and without fingernails). The man’s name is LO-CHEUN.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Heart rate above recommended level.
Please descend slowly and rest
before you resume your climb.
Sven, sweat dripping from his face and PLOPPING onto the air-mat below, looks at Lo-Cheun’s chest: two light-blue stars and one red star sit upon the dark blue fabric. (Sven himself has only one light-blue star.) Sven clambers down the tree, agile and confident despite his overexertion. Lo-Cheun, impressed, watches the young blond man descend. Sven jumps the last five feet, lands solidly upon the air-mat, FWOOMP, steps to the floor and turns to face Lo-Cheun.
LO-CHEUN
What’s your name?
SVEN
Sven Bjorlsson.
Lo-Cheun’s eyes widen a tiny bit in recognition.
17.
SVEN (CONT'D)
Yes, he’s my father.
FEMALE VOICE (O.S.)
Lo-Cheun!
Lo-Cheun looks away from Sven, toward the speaker. Neredth, a thirty-eight-year-old woman with pulled-back red hair, pale skin and three stars on her chest (one green) approaches.
She does not look happy.
NEREDTH
Let’s get to the assembly.
Neredth glances at Sven’s star and then back at Lo-Cheun.
NEREDTH (CONT'D)
He’s Bluebranch-- save your
reprimands for your own.
Lo-Cheun’s lips press together in silent irritation; his eyes flicker to Sven for an intense second before he strides away.
Neredth glances at Sven.
NEREDTH (CONT'D)
Don’t be an imbecile. Elysabeth
tells you you’re overexerting
yourself, listen to her. Biobranch is busy enough without ehrgeizig
people injuring themselves.
SVEN
Fine.
Neredth glances at Sven for a moment; the young man looks away from her, down at his feet...glum.
NEREDTH
You know anybody here?
Sven shakes his head, but does not look up.
SVEN
I was a substitute.
NEREDTH
I’m Neredth Peters.
Sven looks up at the scientist. Neredth inclines her head and leans forward, bowing ten degrees toward him. Sven returns the bow, his angle forty degrees. He then stands upright.
18.
SVEN
Sven Bjorlsson.
NEREDTH
Are you-
SVEN
Yes.
NEREDTH
I worked with him a few times-- I
didn’t know he had a son.
SVEN
Neither did he.
Neredth looks at Sven for a moment, her green eyes and austere face softened with sympathy.
NEREDTH
Join me in the Comestible Hall
tonight-- I’ll tell Lo-Cheun to
behave.
INT. COMESTIBLE QUADRANT - LATER
Sven enters the busy eating area; the moment the sun disappears from the ellipsoidal windows (the ship spins to maintain gravity) magnetic lights overhead snap to life. The young man looks around the hall and then descries Neredth, her red hair anomalous in the crowd; beside her is Lo-Cheun.
Sven scratches his large, crooked nose and then walks across the hall toward the couple. Lo-Cheun turns his head, sees the approaching young man, grimaces...and then smiles in a blatantly false manner.
LO-CHEUN
Please join us. We- Neredth and I-
are so very, very happy to see you.
Neredth elbows Lo-Cheun.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
What? Was I supposed to say
something else? I forgot what you
coached me to-
NEREDTH
Quiet.
(to Sven)
Please sit.
19.
Neredth gestures to the seat beside her; Sven sits down at the foam-covered table.
NEREDTH (CONT'D)
Which kind of paste do you prefer?
SVEN
The purple one isn’t so-
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
An X White Level 2 Incident is in
progress in Lower Sternum G.
Lo-Cheun jabs his protein vial into a hole in the table. He stands up; Neredth looks up at him...worried. Lo-Cheun scans the Comestible Quadrant.
SVEN
Do you need help?
Lo-Cheun does not respond; he strides away from the table.
SVEN (CONT'D)
(to Neredth)
What’s that code mean?
Neredth apprehensively watches her husband exit the quadrant.
NEREDTH
(shaking her head)
I’m not exactly sure-- it’s
military. But I know anything
beginning with an X is serious.
SVEN
Elysabeth can’t handle whatever it
is?
NEREDTH
(distractedly looking off)
Likely not. Biobranch refused to
engineer any internal weapons for
her, in case she malfunctioned...or developed too much personality.
INT. SPINAL TRAIN - MOMENTS LATER
Straps hang from the ceiling of the turquoise train, currently stopped and peopled by twenty-six PASSENGERS. Lo-Cheun enters through the open door.
20.
LO-CHEUN
Bluebranch and Biobranch get off.
Bullets stay put.
The Passengers look at Lo-Cheun’s three-star rank; most of them clear out through the open door. Two people, a short-haired, stocky FEMALE BULLET with two stars (one red) and an athletic INDIAN BULLET with one red star, remain aboard.
The doors close. The Bulletbranch soldiers bow before Lo-Cheun (the Indian more deeply); the Chinese Senior bows shallowly in return.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
(to the ceiling)
Elysabeth, this is Lo-Cheun Wai
Lee. Reroute to Lower Sternum G, 5
speed.
Lo-Cheun repositions his feet on the floor; the Bulletbranch soldiers grab hold of white straps hanging from the ceiling.
The train surges forward, jerking the three occupants.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
Why aren’t you two at exercises?
They look at each other. The train VWIRRS through the Spinal Tunnel, lights flicker by like yellow and green fireflies.
FEMALE BULLET
The two-stars were given early
leave, Sir.
INDIAN BULLET
I twisted my ankle.
LO-CHEUN
Can you manage a sortie?
INDIAN BULLET
I can.
LO-CHEUN
You two armed?
INDIAN BULLET
I am.
The Indian Bullet withdraws a dark blue cylinder; silver filigree spirals decorate the sides of the device.
FEMALE BULLET
I left mine in my cube.
21.
LO-CHEUN
Your second star just became
hollow.
The Female Bullet is shocked. From his leg pocket, Lo-Cheun withdraws a black cylinder with a skull bevelled in it in golden filigree. The Bulletbranch soldiers glance warily at the lethal device.
INDIAN BULLET
Is that...necessary?
LO-CHEUN
One of the final transmissions
Elysabeth received from Earth
warned us that there were saboteurs frozen in the vaults.
Terrormongers, identity unknown.
Likely New Puritans.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Approaching Sternum Section.
Lo-Cheun punches a three-number code into the rear of his black cylinder. Nine SNAPPING noises sound within the device.
LO-CHEUN
Punch on.
Wobbling with the motion of the speeding train, the Indian soldier types in his code; five SNAPPING noises sound within his dark blue tube.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Sternum Section G.
Lo-Cheun reaches into his leg pocket, withdraws a springblade and hands it to the Female Bullet.
LO-CHEUN
Four blades left in there.
FEMALE BULLET
Grazi, Sir.
The lights flicker by less rapidly as the train slows. All three soldiers stare through the windows, the tunnel lights painting their faces alternately yellow and bright green.
The train stops. The doors open.
22.
INT. STERNUM G / CENTRAL PASSAGEWAY - SAME
Lo-Cheun and his recruits warily walk out of the train, up the mint-colored foam hallway. Yellow lights shine from beneath a glass runner in the center of the passage, one bulb before each of the seventy turquoise doors.
The three soldiers tread softly in their foam-soled boots; their weapons are in hand and their eyes flicker about, alert.
Without warning, all of the lights turn off...except for one bulb fifty feet down the hall. Lo-Cheun and his soldiers note the door the lone light shines upon. An instant later, all of the lights flicker back on.
The trio hastily walks up the hall, their foam-soled boots barely audible. (The Indian Bullet limps, but strides apace.) They pass doors and vents and tubing, but always keep their focus on the previously noted portal up ahead.
Lo-Cheun reaches the specified turquoise doorway, upon which is written ‘Fleischwerk Bundle 338-Y’; he motions for the Bullets to stand behind him. They listen for a moment.
FEMALE VOICE (O.S.)
Pones aqui. En la mitar de este
cerebro con-
MALE VOICE (V.O.)
Un momento.
Lo-Cheun nods to his two recruits; they nod in response.
Lo-Cheun reaches his Fleischwerk arm toward the door; he presses the hairless, nail-less gray digits to the foam, gripping his skull-adorned black cylinder in his other hand.
INT. FLEISCHWERK BUNDLE ROOM 338-Y - SAME
Contained within convex domes throughout the long, narrow room are masses of heavily-veined, pulsating Fleischwerk; the glass hemispheres holding the brain matter in place are reinforced by steel latticeworks. Within the enclosure are two SPANIARDS, thirty years-old each, one male and one female. An open toolbox sits on the power generator between them.
MALE SPANIARD
Isabel...escucha. Yo creo-
23.
The door swings open; Lo-Cheun and his recruits race inside.
The Indian Bullet lands badly on his twisted ankle and THUDS
to the floor.
The female Spaniard plunges her hand into the toolbox; Lo-Cheun fires his black tube at her, FWIT: a metal spiral strikes and corkscrews into the woman’s neck.
The Chinese man presses the spark button on his coilgun, CLICK; the coil FLASHES; the woman CRIES out and projectile vomits; her eyes roll up. She falls backwards, SMACKING
against the floor...a large red burn mark surrounds the metal spiral in her neck.
The male Spaniard points his own coilgun at Lo-Cheun; Lo-Cheun tumbles and rolls behind a generator, safely obfuscated.
The Female Bullet aims and presses the fire button on her springblade, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.
Four serrated blades (shaped like tongue-depressors) speed toward the male Spaniard: one blade CLANGS against the metal wall; one blade buries into his shoulder; one blade slices into his lower cheek, glides through his mouth and tears out through the opposite cheek (and CLANKS against a glass dome); one blade THUNKS into his wrist, causing him to drop his coilgun.
The Female Bullet tries to fire again, but the springblade CLACKS, empty.
The Spaniard, spitting blood, charges her; she sets her feet and raises her fists in a defensive boxing position.
Clambering up from the floor, the Indian Bullet fires at the oncoming Spaniard, FWIT; his coil misses, striking and twisting into the Female Bullet’s thigh.
FEMALE BULLET
Don’t spark!
The Indian Bullet removes his finger from the spark button.
Lo-Cheun lunges out from behind the generator to intervene, his black coilgun upraised, FWIT, FWIT. Both coils strike and twist into the Spaniard’s nape. Lo-Cheun CLICKS the spark button.
The male Spaniard CRIES out, vomits and collapses face-first to the ground with a wet CRACK; a red and purple blister surrounds the coils in the rear of his neck; his eyes look like pale prunes.
24.
INDIAN BULLET
(to Lo-Cheun)
You kill them both?
LO-CHEUN
Not her. Yet.
The Female Bullet, limping from the coil embedded in her thigh, walks over to the tool box atop the generator. She looks inside.
FEMALE BULLET
Christ. Bleach grenades.
INT. GLASS-CEILING AMPHITHEATER - LATER
A little more than NINE HUNDRED PEOPLE in dark blue jumpsuits (all single and dual stars) sit in the hemicircular foam bleachers of the massive concave amphitheater. The five-foot-thick glass above admits a view of the stars outside and iridescent solar winds.
At the bottom of the declining rows, the focal point of the entire amphitheater, is a massive panorama screen. Beside it, seated upon raised benches, are twenty-nine three-star SENIORS-- five with red stars (including Lo-Cheun), five with green stars (including Neredth) and nineteen with blue stars.
Sven walks into the thirty-second row of the amphitheater toward a heavyset black man of twenty-four years. The man has sleepy eyes, a fixed grin on his face and a green star on his chest. His name is ABACUS.
SVEN
Are you Abacus?
Abacus nods.
ABACUS
You’re Neredth’s friend, right?
SVEN
Uh...yeah.
Sven sits on the turquoise foam bench beside Abacus.
ABACUS
What year do you think it is?
Sven SHRUGS. Abacus hitches his thumb toward the man next to him; a nervous fellow of twenty-eight with wide eyes and a hunched, protective disposition.
25.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
Heinrich thinks it’s 2250 or 2275.
I bet him my dessert paste for a
week it’s earlier than that--
around 2200. You want in on this--
closest guess take all?
SVEN
I don’t like dessert paste-- it
tastes too much like baby food.
And the chocolate is...visually...
very unappealing.
ABACUS
Then you’ve got nothing to lose.
What’s your-
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Please be seated.
Silence like spilled fluid pours throughout the room. Sven, Abacus, Heinrich and the rest of the assemblage look at the panorama screen: upon the curved glass is a gray, hairless, female visage, Elysabeth’s Fleischwerk “face.”
FACE OF ELYSABETH
Good morning children. We have
come a long way from Earth, a
spatial distance of approximately
seven hundred light years. It is
the year 2979.
Hundreds of people GASP. Sven, Abacus and Heinrich pale upon hearing the information. MURMURS of shock and concern eddy throughout the crowd, nervous sparks.
FACE OF ELYSABETH (CONT'D)
Whether the humans left on Earth
have survived, I do not know. The
final transmissions I received were pessimistic but inconclusive.
Sven and Abacus (and many other onlookers) numbly stare at the gray face. Heinrich wipes tears from his eyes.
The three-star commanders are not surprised by the information being relayed-- they have already been briefed.
FACE OF ELYSABETH (CONT'D)
I was entrusted with finding
humanity a home, a replacement for
the ruined planet we left 838 years ago. Everyone please look up.
26.
The crowd looks up through the five-foot-thick glass ceiling...into the stars beyond. Two tongues of white thruster fire spark across the view. The stars begins to move as Elysabeth shifts her rotation.
The terrestrial planet comes into view, a blue marble with a few flecks of brown.
FACE OF ELYSABETH (CONT'D)
This is Option-1. The only
habitable planet divined thus far.
The atmosphere is oxygen- rich, the gravity is similar to Earth’s and
the climes- though given to
mercurial change- all fall within
parameters humans can endure.
White thruster-fire flashes across the ceiling; Option-1
swings out of view; a polarizing shield slides over the ceiling glass, dramatically darkening the interstellar vista; two suns glide into view at each edge of the window: one bright and white, the other twice its size but red and dim.
FACE OF ELYSABETH (CONT'D)
The day cycle on the primary land
mass of Option-1 is a three-period
unit. Morning faces only the white sun and averages 38 degrees;
afternoon faces both suns and
averages 115 degrees; night faces
away from the suns and drops to a
temperature of negative 25.
Sven’s stomach sinks; Heinrich puts his hands to his face.
ABACUS
(disbelief)
She woke us for this? What sadist
did they culture her from?
Hostile and bitter MURMURS ripple through the crowd. A couple of people CRY OUT in rage. Down below, Neredth leans over to Lo-Cheun.
NEREDTH
(whispered)
They took it better than you did.
27.
FACE OF ELYSABETH
I am aware that Option-1 is not
ideally suited for our purposes,
but it is the only habitable planet I have chanced upon in 838 years of travel. And I cannot search
indefinitely.
A fifty-three-year-old woman of mixed racial heritage (African and Asian) climbs the dais beside the panorama. The woman has short white hair, a Japanese character tattooed on either side of her neck and four blue stars on her chest.
Her name is THAKANI.
FACE OF ELYSABETH (CONT'D)
Of the eighteen-hundred humans
preserved in my cryogenic vaults, I awakened two-thirds. Of that
twelve-hundred, nine-hundred and
forty-two survived.
Thakani reaches the top of the dais and looks out at the disconcerted crowd.
THAKANI
(light German Accent; her
voice is amplified)
We had all hoped for better, but
Option-1 is what we have, the first choice in 838 years of searching.
Thakani shuts her eyes briefly and then returns her gaze to the camera.
Whether we should settle Option-1,
split our forces or move on
entirely, must be determined
immediately. Elysabeth was
designed to shuttle cryogenically
frozen humans, not provide housing
for extended periods of time.
Additionally, the damage she
sustained in transit makes caring
for us even more taxing. Every
day she provides for us, Elysabeth
grows weaker.
Thakani lets the words hang in the air. Sven looks at the walls of the ship, as if to divine a weakness.
28.
THAKANI (CONT'D)
Our paramount concerns are the
viability of this planet...and the
dispositions of the life forms that populate it.
Sven, Abacus, Heinrich and the other occupants of the amphitheater are silent, stunned by the disclosure.
THAKANI (CONT'D)
Of these life forms very little is
known other than that they are
driven off by the noises all of our unmanned probes make.
The panorama screen broadcasts an image of outer space: two lavender lumps trace a slow orbit around Option-1.
THAKANI (CONT'D)
Thus far there have been no
indications of intelligent life on
Option-1. The only truly anomalous occurrences are the two lavender
glaciers orbiting the planet.
The image is replaced by an aerial view of the porous stone terra of the planet surface.
THAKANI (CONT'D)
Everyone should eat well and visit
the invigoration room as often as
possible: next week, we start
sending down landing parties.
Of the over nine-hundred people gathered, seventeen CLAP.
Titlecard: One Option-1-Standard Week Later EXT. OPTION-1 ATMOSPHERE - MORNING
Two Dragonfly probes, SPIRIT-10 and SERAPH-9, thruster into the atmosphere of Option-1. They fold their solar wings into nooks on their sides; the manifold lenses and powerscopes extruding from their bulbous eyes retract, leaving only a few highly-shielded optics exposed.
Pink coolant spills from the mouths of the Dragonflies, covering the metallic exteriors of the crafts.
29.
INT. DRAGONFLY SERAPH-9 - SAME
Twenty-two PEOPLE sit in as many orange foam niches along the walls of the operable probe; they are held fast by flexible black netting. The front wall is covered with monitors, many of them off. Lo-Cheun, his wife Neredth and her assistant Abacus sit amongst the Bullet brigade.
The two illuminated panoramas transmit coolant-splashed images of onrushing clouds.
EXT. OPTION-1 ATMOSPHERE - SAME
Steaming coolant streams off of the Dragonflies in thousand-foot vapor trails; the vehicles plummet like pink comets.
INT. DRAGONFLY SERAPH-9 - SAME
The ship shakes. Abacus, sleepy-eyed and grinning, looks at Neredth: she and Lo-Cheun hold hands. The African American Bio surveys the other passengers: the military men and woman all wear stern expressions over the concerns and questions percolating within them.
The ship shakes; Neredth grips her husband’s hand tightly.
Abacus leans over to his Senior. He points to a Bulletbranch soldier, a blond and bronze AUSTRALIAN MAN of twenty-four years.
ABACUS
See him?
Neredth looks at the Australian Man. The vehicle shakes.
NEREDTH
Yes.
ABACUS
I bet you one week’s oatmeal paste
he pukes before we touch down.
Neredth looks at the Australian Man; he is pale and burnished with sour sweat.
NEREDTH
You like the paste that much?
30.
ABACUS
I like to bet. There aren’t many
expendables other than paste.
Neredth looks at the Australian Man; dampness darkens the neck and armpits of his bodysuit. He queasily tilts his head forward; the Bios wince.
NEREDTH
I’m not taking that wager.
Abacus surveys the occupants for another moment and then returns his sleepy-eyed gaze to Neredth.
ABACUS
I wish there were fewer Bullets
joining us. Sends the wrong
message if the life forms on Option-1 are intelligent.
Lo-Cheun, not looking over at Abacus, responds.
LO-CHEUN
It sends the right message to
intelligent beings: move over,
humanity has arrived.
Neredth SIGHS and shakes her head.
ABACUS
You two must have some very
entertaining spats.
NEREDTH
They’re...spicy.
EXT. OPEN PLAIN / OPTION-1 - SAME
One white sun hangs in the magenta sky above the distant brown mountains on the horizon. Gently rippling water bathes the heavily-eroded, porous stone surface of the vast plain, a clear varnish over the lavender and brown landscape.
The Dragonflies drop from the sky. Variegated lenses and powerscopes emerge from the eyes of the insectile vehicles.
For ten seconds, the crafts fall toward their own rising reflections in the water-washed plain below. With loud reports (POOMF!), hull-boosters fire from the bottoms of the Dragonflies, countering the pull of gravity.
31.
INT. DRAGONFLY SERAPH-9 - SAME
The occupants are pressed firmly in their seats by the counter-inertia of the hull-boosters.
The monitors illuminate with forty different visuals of the curvilinear, porous and pock-marked landscape: spectral, sonic, thermal, ultra, magnetized, radioactive, pitch, refraction, heat, neutrino, etc.
Abacus looks from the monitor bay to the Bulletbranch soldiers; he shakes his head.
ABACUS
(quietly to Neredth)
One of them’s been silently
mouthing the word “kill” for the
last five minutes.
On Abacus’ other side sits ZRIA, an angular Indian woman of twenty-seven years with two stars (one red); the woman inspects a lensring fitted over the second joint of her left index finger. She glances at Abacus.
ZRIA
(English accent)
I know you’re nervous, but shut up.
EXT. OPEN PLAIN / OPTION-1 - SAME
Dragonfly Spirit-10 fires a starboard thruster, FWASH, and shoots toward a curtain of mountain opposite the rising sun.
On HISSING boosters, Dragonfly Seraph-9 descends slowly to the surface. The white flames boil the water below into vapor; a cloud of steam envelops the vessel.
Seraph-9 closes the remaining twenty yards between itself and the surface, an act of levitation in reverse. The lenses extruding from the Dragonfly’s eyes fog over.
With a sound akin to a deck of cards being SHUFFLED, twenty mechanical legs unfold from the undercarriage of the vessel, each tipped with bright orange foam spheres; the HISSING hull-boosters dim and shut off.
The Dragonfly drops; the foam tips of its twenty cushioned legs SPLASH into the shallows, resting upon the lavender stone inches below.
32.
INT. DRAGONFLY SERAPH-9 - SAME
The occupants of the vehicle SNAP off the webbing that fastens them inside their foam niches. Lo-Cheun strides to the head of the cabin, stops and turns around, limned by the myriad colors illuminating the monitors.
The Bulletbranch soldiers stand at attention and then bow forty degrees, excepting Zria who bows twenty degrees. Lo-Cheun bows ten degrees in return. They stand.
LO-CHEUN
Zria will take her Cruciform first.
At her clearance, the rest of us-
and the two Bios- will join them.
(he motions to Neredth
with his Fleischwerk arm)
Neredth?
NEREDTH
As you know, the temperature swings of Option-1 are quite dramatic. If you feel faint in the Afternoon
period, speak out. We intend to be back here before Zenith, but don’t
push too hard: Abacus and I can’t
care for more than a few wounded
with the equipment on board.
The Bullets are not terribly interested in Neredth’s admonition.
ZRIA
A reminder. If you are threatened, retreat. If you must engage,
employ springblades and j-guns if
possible. Coilguns are electric
and a lot of this terrain is
covered with water. Things could
get messy.
The Bulletbranch one-stars reach into their hipcaches, pull out their dark blue, silver-whorled coilguns and type in their codes. A tattoo of SNAPS comes from the weapons.
Zria holsters her black, skull-decorated coilgun, walks toward the aft of the vehicle, kneels down to the circular portal and punches in a code. Six Bullets line up behind her.
33.
LO-CHEUN
(to Zria)
Go make history.
Zria nods stoically and inserts her fingers into the four finger holes in the center of the doorway; the ten magnetic clamps surrounding the portal CLACK and unfold.
EXT. OPEN PLAIN / OPTION-1 - SAME
A black circle four feet in diameter appears in the underside of Seraph-9; an orange fabric-ladder unfurls from the aperture and rolls down into the water below, PLISH.
Zria descends the elastifabric rungs, her eyes warily scanning the environment; the breath from her mouth steams in the cool air. She drops the final foot, SPLASHING into seven inches of water.
LO-CHEUN (O.S.)
Congratulations Zria Pohan-
Kawthuri. You are the first human
to tread Option-1.
The two-star Bullet looks at her boots, planted firmly on the lavender stone beneath scintillating water. She leans down, touches the terrain with her fingertip and admits a brief grin.
Zria stands upright and again scans the horizons: a vast stretch of hilly stone glazed with water stretches before her. She glances up into the aperture of the ship.
ZRIA
Climb.
INT. GLASS-DOMED AMPHITHEATER - MOMENTS LATER
Sven, Heinrich and five hundred PEOPLE- primarily Bluebranch-sit in the concave amphitheater, spellbound by the split-screen panorama images of Zria and her six Bullets walking upon the alien terrain. (The visuals are thermal, radio and spectral transmissions sent from Seraph-9’s eyes.) Sven leans over to address Heinrich, yet does not take his eyes from the broadcast.
SVEN
I wonder what that feels like...?
To walk on another world.
34.
HEINRICH
What are your concentrations?
SVEN
Pilot, automuscle, historian, flux
mathematics, linguistics and
javelin.
HEINRICH
Wow. Ehrgeizig.
Heinrich, very impressed, regards Sven for a moment and then turns back to the screen. (The broadcast shows the septet walking toward a depression in the water-covered plain.) HEINRICH (CONT'D)
I guess you didn’t sleep until they froze you. You trying to impress
someone?
Sven shrugs, not looking away from the panorama images.
HEINRICH (CONT'D)
With those skills you’ll be
shuttled down there for sure.
SVEN
What’s your concentration?
HEINRICH
Acoustic theory and western music--
not much use for those unless they
happen upon a symphony.
EXT. OPEN PLAIN / OPTION-1 - SAME
RECTANGLE, a tall black African man of thirty, leads the cruciform; behind him is Zria, flanked by JENFER, a Singaporian woman of twenty-six with silver hair and the Australian Man (his uniform stained from vomiting); bringing up the rear are two white FRENCHMEN in their early twenties.
The Bullets SLOSH through the cool clear water that bathes the stone terrain and- in this area- rises to their knees.
Rectangle catches a glimmer in the water just ahead of him; he stops. Zria notices him.
ZRIA
Statues. Everyone.
The cruciform stops; nobody moves at all.
35.
ZRIA (CONT'D)
Rectangle?
Rectangle looks into the water before him; his bold features stare back up at him.
RECTANGLE
I thought I saw- there!
Rectangle points to the water immediately before him; Zria and the others look to the area he indicates. An indigo-colored fish the size of a sardine weaves within the tranquil water at his feet; the specimen has silver studs along its body and trails seven silver tentacles, one far longer than the rest. The SQUIDFISH circles Rectangle in slow orbits.
INT. DRAGONFLY SERAPH-9 - SAME
Abacus and Neredth stare fixedly at the monitors within the vehicle; one of the screens slowly zooms in on the violet, silver-tentacled squidfish.
MALE BULLET
Does Elysabeth have a deep fryer?
The Bios ignore the remark. Upon the screen, two more squidfish join the first and circle Rectangle’s legs.
ABACUS
(to Neredth)
Maybe there’s a school.
MALE BULLET
Piranhas swam in schools, right?
EXT. OPEN PLAIN / OPTION-1 - SAME
The curious Frenchmen move towards Rectangle.
ZRIA
I said statues.
The Frenchmen stop; all six Bullets look at Zria. The Indian woman TAPS on her orange foam earplug.
ZRIA (CONT'D)
Neredth, what do you think?
(she listens)
I can.
36.
Zria approaches Rectangle; she CLICKS on her lensring, leans over and points the eye at the squidfish; the iris behind the gem-like lens dilates and then narrows.
INT. DRAGONFLY SERAPH-9 - SAME
Neredth and Abacus stare at the (newly illumined) circular monitor that broadcasts Zria’s lensring transmission: a tight and detailed shot of the squidfish. One of the specimen contentedly circles; the two others flit in and out of the image, the light refracting brilliantly on their silver studs and dorsal tentacles.
ZRIA (O.S.)
That better?
NEREDTH
Yes. Much. Grazi.
ZRIA (O.S.)
Should we scoop one up for you?
NEREDTH
No. Definitely do not do that.
Bio will gather the specimen gently and-Upon the cathode screen, the three squidfish congregate and stop in front of Rectangle’s legs; needles emerge from the thirty silver studs adorning each creature.
Apprehension electrifies the eyes of everyone aboard the Dragonfly; Lo-Cheun’s fists clench.
ZRIA (O.S.)
Neredth?
In the lensring broadcast: Rectangle shifts uneasily; light glints upon the jutting needles adorning the squidfish.
NEREDTH
Tell him not to move. Be patient.
Lo-Cheun shakes his head. The squidfish circle Rectangle’s legs, a tight orbit.
LO-CHEUN
(to Neredth)
I’m not going to have my man just
stand there and get stung. They
could be lethal.
37.
NEREDTH
What? Is he going to shoot-
LO-CHEUN
Zria, you have Killcall.
The lensring image shifts from the circling squidfish to Zria’s hipcache. Neredth turns hotly to Lo-Cheun.
NEREDTH
Verflucht!
EXT. OPEN PLAIN / OPTION-1 - SAME
Zria withdraws her springblade and then nods to Rectangle.
The wary Bullet reaches toward his own hipcache.
One of the needle-covered creatures brushes along Rectangle’s right shin, the pins prickling at the thin bodysuit fabric.
Rectangle and Zria hold their breath. The creature glides an inch away...and then two...and then three.
Rectangle withdraws his springblade; he and Zria and each point their weapon toward a fish.
ZRIA
Killcall.
They press the propel buttons, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK; each tongue-depressor-shaped blade enters the water with a FWPSS. Two blades miss; one blade spears a squidfish through the middle; one blade slices off another’s dorsal tentacles.
INT. GLASS-DOMED AMPHITHEATER - SAME
Upon the panorama: the speared squidfish sinks to the stone surface of the planet, weighted by the springblade; the second squidfish darts off; the third squidfish- the tentacular amputee- careens away in awkward loops.
A few of the Bluebranch viewers APPLAUD; a few others HISS; most remain silent with concern.
Heinrich looks sad.
SVEN
I hope there’re more than three of
those.
38.
INT. DRAGONFLY SERAPH-9 - SAME
Neredth looks away from the monitors and glares angrily at Lo-Cheun.
NEREDTH
If we had enough room for a couch
in our compartment, you’d be
sleeping on it tonight.
ABACUS
I predicted this.
LO-CHEUN
(to Abacus)
Muzzle it.
ZRIA (O.S.)
Neredth. You want this one?
Neredth rubs her palms alongside her cheeks and nods.
NEREDTH
Yes, but be careful.
EXT. OPEN PLAIN / OPTION-1 - SAME
Zria replaces her springblade in her hipcache, thrusts her right hand into the water and then- pinching the tip of the ellipsoidal blade lodged in the dead squidfish- lifts the specimen from the water.
The other Bullets approach the Indian officer.
ZRIA
Today’s foray has been called. The Bios want to run tests on this
little alien before we proceed.
Zria raises the squidfish; light plays brilliantly upon its silver needles, studs and tentacles.
EXT. OPEN PLAIN / OPTION-1 - LATER
Dragonfly Seraph-9, buoyed by its hull-boosters, rises in the air; the hot propellant steams the water below. As it ascends, the vehicle’s twenty insectile legs fold into the undercarriage (the sound is that of SHUFFLING cards).
39.
INT. SPINAL TRAIN - LATER
Lo-Cheun, Zria, Rectangle and Jenfer accompany Neredth and Abacus on the commuter vehicle traversing Elysabeth’s spinal tunnel.
Abacus looks at the clear, green-lidded cylinder of water in his lap; within it floats the dead squidfish (springblade removed). The Biobranch assistant looks from the dead fish to the quartet of soldiers.
ABACUS
(to Neredth)
Why do they need to be here? I’m quite sure this thing is dead.
Abacus glances at Neredth; her pale face is very grave.
INT. RESEARCH SANCTUARY - MOMENTS LATER
Lo-Cheun opens the green door to the wide, foam-covered room; magnetic lights on the ceiling illuminate and glide toward corners of the enclosure; three drift toward the door, shining upon the cabinets and consoles and microscopes and gurneys of the sanctuary en route. Fastened by orange elastifabric to a gurney, is Isabel, the Spanish saboteur; two BULLETS stand beside her, at attention.
Lo-Cheun enters; the waiting guards bow to him, forty degrees; he returns ten.
Neredth and Abacus enter, the latter carrying the cylinder with the fish. (Zria, Jenfer and Rectangle stay outside.) The moment Abacus’ eyes light upon the unconscious prisoner, he becomes very alarmed. The door is shut behind him...and locked, CLACK.
ABACUS
Who’s she?
LO-CHEUN
A New Puritan saboteur.
ABACUS
Saboteur? What possible point
would there be in that? Now? And
why’s she in the research
sanctuary?
40.
Nobody responds to the inquiry. Abacus sickens the moment he understands the silent implication.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
Neredth...?
NEREDTH
We’ve got tests to run-- this is
the most efficient way to do them.
Take the specimen-
ABACUS
You’re a scientist! You can’t do-
NEREDTH
This woman tried to set off a
bleach bomb in one of Elysabeth’s
brains. She is part of the
organization that made the human
race an endangered species. I can
do this. If you can’t, I’ll hire
on another assistant.
Abacus looks at the unconscious woman fastened to the table and then back to Neredth.
NEREDTH (CONT'D)
We’ll be as humane as possible--
she won’t even be conscious for
half of the tests.
Abacus SIGHS heavily and nods.
ABACUS
Okay.
Neredth nods to Lo-Cheun.
LO-CHEUN
Bullets exeunt.
(to Abacus)
Her existence- and the New Puritan
presence aboard Elysabeth- is not
commonly known. We’re covertly
searching for other threats. For
now, this information is
confidential.
Lo-Cheun waits for Abacus to respond; the Bio, still numb, looks up blankly at the three-star Bullet.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
Understood?
41.
ABACUS
Yes.
The two guards walk toward the door; it opens- CLACK- from the outside. Lo-Cheun looks at Neredth and then points to the needle-adorned squidfish.
LO-CHEUN
Feel free to press that thing into
all her most sensitive areas.
The Bullets and Lo-Cheun leave; the door is shut and locked behind them, CLACK.
Titlecard: Three Option-1-Standard Days Later EXT. OPEN PLAIN / OPTION-1 - EARLY AFTERNOON
Three CRUCIFORMS (seven-Bullet units) SPLASH in tandem across the steamy surface of the plain; one is commanded by Lo-Cheun, one is commanded by Zria and one is commanded by Rectangle. Neredth, Abacus and three BIOBRANCH two-stars accompany them.
The first sun hangs high in the sky; the second sun- a giant orange-red orb- has just transcended the mountains. Everyone is bathed in sweat and casts two shadows.
Neredth looks at her thermometer: 89 Degrees Fahrenheit...90
Degrees Fahrenheit.
Abacus is bleary-eyed, PANTING and quite clearly miserable from the hot, wet trek.
ABACUS
This planet is lousy.
He leans over and SPLASHES water on his face.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
(to Neredth)
Is it too late to say squidfish are lethal and threaten all mankind?
A nearby Bullet in Zria’s cruciform looks at and addresses Abacus.
42.
FIRST FRENCHMAN
(light French accent)
Your complaining isn’t making this
better. Merde.
ABACUS
Look how dark my skin is. It
attracts and absorbs heat, unlike
your pasty and refractive dermis.
FIRST FRENCHMAN
Was that an insult? Should I be
offended by-
LO-CHEUN
Unless you’re going to say
something useful, muzzle it.
Bullets and Bio.
Neredth looks at the second sun and then back to her digital thermometer: 92 Degrees Fahrenheit.
NEREDTH
I’m calling this foray.
Zria and Rectangle look at Lo-Cheun.
LO-CHEUN
180.
The cruciforms wheel around to face the opposite direction.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
Forward.
The soggy, sweaty Bullets begin their march back. (The Bios are in-between the second and third units.) ZRIA
(to Lo-Cheun)
Senior.
Lo-Cheun looks at the Indian woman.
ZRIA (CONT'D)
May we swing wide of that area with the holes? I don’t want anyone
breaking an ankle.
LO-CHEUN
(nodding)
Mark it down.
43.
ZRIA
90 right.
The foremost people of the cruciforms lead their groups northeast. Neredth looks at her thermometer: 96 degrees.
Her eyes flicker to the east; the second sun rises like a threat of damnation from the mountains.
JENFER
I see holes up ahead.
LO-CHEUN
Continue. We don’t know how far
this swath is and we don’t have
time to spend finding out. Eyes to the ground and be careful. And
look for that aquatic lizard Jean-
James described.
Jenfer, the white-haired Singaporian fronting the foremost cruciform (Zria’s), leads. The Bullets and Bios follow, warily scanning the ground.
The young woman plucks two polarizing contact lenses from her eyes, dips them into the water and replaces them, blinking, blinking, blinking as they settle upon her hazel irises. The sun-refracting water becomes translucent through the optics.
Beneath the surface, Jenfer descries several small holes in the lavender and brown-swirled stone, each the diameter of a soda can; she steps over the orifices, pointing them out to those behind her.
Lo-Cheun, in the middle of the second cruciform observes his Bullets. He watches KENNETH, a bronze-skinned male of twenty-three years with tattoos on his neck (of an antique M-16 gun and an M-16 bullet) and dyed, magenta hair.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
Kenneth, stay alert. You almost
stepped in that hole.
Kenneth looks down: the foam heel of his right boot overhangs an aperture in the stone.
At the front, Jenfer abruptly stops.
JENFER
(to Zria)
Zria, the Bios should get up here.
Some kind of plant-life, I think.
44.
ZRIA
Halt. Bios to the front.
Neredth, Abacus and the three Biobranch officers (a chubby woman clutching a vial filled with lavender seaweed and two slender men) SPLASH their way past the Bullets, toward the front.
LO-CHEUN
(quietly; to a nearby
Bullet)
I don’t know that more plant-life
is getting me off of the floor.
Hope we find that damn lizard Jean-
James saw.
Neredth, Abacus and the Bio trio mind their footing as they come abreast Jenfer and Zria. The Singaporian Bullet points to an orifice in the stone nearly two feet in diameter.
JENFER
There.
NEREDTH
I see it.
Neredth, Abacus and the Bio trio kneel before the opening; the bottom of the water-filled orifice is blocked by a swollen pustule that resembles a gray balloon veined with dark green nerves.
CHUBBY BIO
Cnidaria?
NEREDTH
Perhaps.
ABACUS
It’s growing.
Neredth and the trio look at Abacus.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
I marked a point in the hole-- it
already rose above it.
Neredth looks at her thermometer: it reads 97 degrees; she mouths the word, ‘damn.’
Lo-Cheun’s eyes flicker from the white sun in the sky to its orange-red sibling.
45.
LO-CHEUN
Neredth, how much time?
NEREDTH
We’ll return tomorrow.
LO-CHEUN
(loudly)
Bullets forward.
The cruciforms continue through the pock-marked region; when Lo-Cheun’s seven reaches the Bio quintet, he turns to Neredth.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
(hopeful)
Find anything good?
NEREDTH
I’ll know tomorrow.
Lo-Cheun nods and continues onward with his cruciform.
LO-CHEUN
(shaking his head)
Another night on the floor.
The Bio quintet joins in-between the second and third cruciform.
INT. PHYSICAL INVIGORATION CHAMBER - SAME
Stars drift somnolently across the ellipsoidal skylights.
Sven, wearing gray trunks (with one blue star near the hem), glides on his back across the surface of a long narrow wading pool. His churning mind recalls arguments and confrontations with people now many centuries dead.
FEMALE VOICE
What do you call that? Does it
have a name?
Sven, recalled to the present, stops kicking and looks to the edge of the pool. A tall and toned twenty-two-year-old woman with short black hair highlighted with blue dye stands at the edge, holding a towel. Her cheerful face is flush and her bodysuit is covered with perspiration; she wipes at her neck with a gray towel. Her name is MLISSA.
SVEN
It’s the backstroke.
46.
MLISSA
I’ve never seen that before. Who
taught you? Is it hard? Can you
teach me?
SVEN
My caretaker; no; and it depends on how coordinated you are.
Mlissa smiles.
MLISSA
Watch.
Mlissa wipes the sweat from her hands and face with the gray towel, tosses it to the ground and beelines toward a calisthenics tree. Sven wades to the edge of the pool to watch her climb.
Mlissa jumps onto the air mattress, her impact eliciting a soft FWUMP, and then springs up toward the bottom branch.
She grabs the perpendicular foam limb, pulls herself up and then sets her feet on the trunk. In five lithe motions, she squirrels up to the top of the tree, twenty-nine feet above.
Sven CLAPS.
SVEN
Ehrgeizig. Exactly how much monkey DNA do you have?
Mlissa grins and then descends-- an amazingly fluid action of controlled falling that incorporates the branches to slow her plummet. The dextrous young woman lands on her feet (FWUMP), bounds off of the mattress and returns to the side of the wading pool.
SVEN (CONT'D)
That was...uh...fairly spectacular.
Mlissa, breathing hard and perspiring anew, reaches down for her towel.
MLISSA
Grazi.
SVEN
Dare I assume your concentration is athletics, with a gymnastics focal
point?
Mlissa nods, wiping her face and her neck.
47.
MLISSA
I’m coordinated, see? Will you
teach me the strokeback?
SVEN
Backstroke.
MLISSA
That. Will you?
Sven grins at Mlissa’s enthusiasm.
SVEN
Be here tomorrow at 26 OS.
MLISSA
Perfect. What’s your name? What
happened to your nose? Do you like girls or boys? Are you coupled
with someone already?
SVEN
Sven; I broke it twice; girls; and
I’m not coupled with anybody.
Mlissa blushes.
EXT. OPEN PLAIN / OPTION-1 - SAME
The group marches on, continually shattering its own reflections.
Jenfer dips a gridcloth into the water and rests it on the top of her head. Many Bullets follow suit, dipping cloths into the water and then covering the tops of their heads.
Kenneth steps into a hole, mashing a gray pustule. Steam HISSES into the air in three different locations: one geyser burns Zria’s right hand, causing her to drop her springblade; one geyser fires just before Abacus and Neredth; one geyser sears the face of the Australian Man, turning his visage into a mass of red blisters. He SHRIEKS and stumbles back, SPLASHING to the ground.
Kenneth yanks his foot from the hole.
LO-CHEUN
Statues. Everyone.
(he looks at the
Australian)
Bio, help-
48.
JENFER
Sir.
From a hole thirty yards away, nine black forms rise into the air. The Bullets and Bios stare at the hovering host.
On clear, CLICKING, insectile wings, one of the risen creatures flies toward the humans: its torso resembles three crabs joined end-to-end; from its side hang six sizable pincers; three antennae with viscous gray eyes sprout from the bottom of the foremost carapace, dripping fluid. The SIXCLAW is jet black and erratically spotted with purple; it is as large as a big dog.
Several one-stars blanch at the sight of the oncoming creature; three soldiers reflexively raise their weapons in defense.
LO-CHEUN
Ready but wait for Killcall. No
electricals.
The sixclaw drifts toward Lo-Cheun; tension electrifies everyone; Neredth pales with fear. Lo-Cheun stares at the advancing creature, concurrently withdrawing his springblade.
(The other Bullets withdraw their springblades and j-guns
[compact machine guns with long j-shaped clips].) The sixclaw stops and hovers on its triangulated, CLICKING
wings five feet from Lo-Cheun’s face. The three-star Bullet points his springblade at the sixclaw; everyone watches in silence. Ochre fluid drips from the creature’s gray, gummy eyes into the water below, P-PLISH, P-PLISH.
The hovering crustacean swoops toward Lo-Cheun; Neredth GASPS; one of the Bullets SQUEAKS in apprehension.
The sixclaw stops just short of Lo-Cheun’s face and there, hovers on its three wings. The Chinese man stares at, but does not fire upon, the creature. He remains calm.
Neredth is terrified for her husband; Abacus shakes his head back and forth and silently mutters to himself; Zria, her j-gun clutched in her blistered right hand, aims at the sixclaw and then glances at Lo-Cheun...awaiting command.
In a slow, smooth movement, Lo-Cheun carefully steps away from the sixclaw; the creature darts forward; Lo-Cheun lifts his Fleischwerk arm in defense; the creature THUMPS its frontal shell into the upraised gray appendage...and caroms backward.
49.
Neredth blanches. Zria keeps her j-gun trained on the creature.
Lo-Cheun glares hotly at the sixclaw, but keeps his temper.
The creature darts for him and is again blocked- THUMP- by the man’s upraised Fleischwerk arm.
The sixclaw seizes Lo-Cheun’s gray hand with its frontal pincers. CLICK, CLICK. Lo-Cheun grits his teeth in pain, but does not cry out: his Fleischwerk pinky and ring finger fall into the water, PLISH, PLISH.
The sixclaw withdraws up and away from Lo-Cheun.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
Nay pook gai.
The sixclaw dives down, SLAMS into Lo-Cheun’s chest and then fastens its pincers onto his bodysuit collar and Fleischwerk arm. Neredth SCREAMS. Prompted by the call, the distant sixclaws fly directly toward her.
Lo-Cheun shoves at the sixclaw clamped to him; the creature falls back, the tips of its pincers RIPPING the man’s collar and scratching a groove into his Fleischwerk arm.
The Chinese Senior aims the springblade clutched in his shorn gray hand and fires: CLICK, CLICK, CLICK. The tongue-depressor-shaped projectiles CLACK ineffectively off of the sixclaw’s chitinous shell and into the water, PLISH, PLISH, PLISH.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
Killcall!
Zria fires her j-gun at Lo-Cheun’s assailant; CH-CHAK, CH-CHAK, CH-CHAK. The bullets SHATTER the posterior third of the sixclaw. The injured creature flies off on CLICKING
wings, dragging its dripping carapace.
ZRIA
J-guns!
The eight approaching sixclaws redirect toward Zria. Lo-Cheun has an idea.
LO-CHEUN
Call out. Divide them so they
don’t block shots for each other.
RECTANGLE
Over here!
50.
JENFER
Clawboys!
ZRIA
Beefcake!
ABACUS
We-hardly-got-to-know-you-crab-
things!
The swarm divides, pursuing different targets. The Bullets aim their j-guns and open fire, CH-CHAK-CH-CHAK-CH-CHAK-CH-CHAK-CH-CHAK-
The three foremost sixclaws CRACKLE and burst, each blossoming into a welter of chitin shards, muscle fibers and pulpy gray fluid. The five remaining sixclaws dive into water-submerged holes, SPLASH-SPLASH-SPLASH-SPLASH-SPLASH.
The adrenaline-buzzed Bullets look around warily. Lo-Cheun TAPS his earplug.
LO-CHEUN
(whispered)
Send Seraph-9 to pick us up. Now.
The sixclaws burst with a SPLOOSH from a sinkhole just beside the Biobranch quintet. Neredth, Abacus and the other Bios stumble back from the swarm that is already upon them.
Bullets train their guns on the sixclaws, but the circling creatures are already enmeshed with the Bios: there are no clear shots.
A sixclaw SLAMS into Neredth, knocking her backwards; Lo-Cheun pales as he watches the creature dig a pincer into his wife’s neck and a second into her shoulder.
Lo-Cheun runs toward Neredth; terrified, she presses her palms against its black, crenulated shell and shoves with all her strength; the creature’s tightly clamped pincers tear open her shoulder and neck. She MOANS, topples over and SPLASHES into the water, spraying blood in dual gouts.
Abacus drops to aid her.
Two of the five creatures rise into the air, clear of the Bios and Bullets; a series of j-gun reports (CH-CHAK) turn the crustaceans into broken pottery.
The Second Frenchman CRACKS the handle of his j-gun into the sixclaw that attacked Neredth;
51.
the creature thrusts a pincer into his mouth. The sixclaw yanks at his tongue as if trying to ring a bell; the man GAGS.
Rectangle dives and lands with a SPLASH beneath the sixclaw clamped to the Second Frenchman’s tongue, angles the barrel of his j-gun into the creature’s underside and fires, CH-CHAK. The bullets lance through its carapace into the magenta sky; the sixclaw closes its pincer; the Frenchman SHRIEKS and falls back, blood from his cloven tongue filling his mouth.
Neredth’s attacker SPLASHES dead into the water beside her.
The two remaining sixclaws escape into a hole in the ground, SPLOOSH-SPLOOSH.
Abacus lifts Neredth’s head above the surface and reaches-with a trembling hand- into his medkit.
The stunned Bullets watch their ranking officer SPLASH to his knees in the crimson-tinted water beside his wife.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
Watch the perimeter, not me!
Abacus rubs coagulant putty into the white, bloodless gash in Neredth’s neck; the beige clay hardens, sealing the wound.
Lo-Cheun checks her pulse; his face hardens.
The wroth Chinese man looks away from his wife’s pale face; his eyes light upon the pulpy, shattered remains of the sixclaw that killed her. The creature’s blood swirls amidst Neredth’s like gray oil and red vinegar.
The bullets that Rectangle shot (through the sixclaw) into the magenta sky thirty-six seconds ago return to the surface of Option-1; the rounds SPLISH-SPLISH-SPLISH-SPLISH-SPLISH-SPLISH-SPLISH into the water three hundred yards away.
INT. GLASS-DOMED AMPHITHEATER - MOMENTS LATER
Less than two-hundred people watch the live broadcast from Dragonfly Seraph-9, an aerial shot soaring across the landscape toward the three cruciforms. (Sven and Mlissa, seated beside each other, watch from the ninth row.) The panorama splits into five images: a shot of the Australian’s badly scorched face; a shot of the Second Frenchman- his face covered in blood- convulsing in the water (held by Zria and the First Frenchman); a shot of Lo-Cheun cradling his dead wife in his arms; 52.
a shot of two shattered sixclaws; a tight shot of a dying sixclaw’s gray eyes dripping ochre fluid.
In the amphitheater, manifold GASPS emerge from open mouths amidst worried and frightened faces.
Heinrich, seated alone in the rear of the amphitheater, looks at the carnage upon the screen: he has no visible reaction whatsoever.
INT. LUMBAR HALL 3B - MOMENTS LATER
GRAYNOSE, a diminutive Biobranch Senior wearing three stars and an extra hollow star, is a fifty-two year-old man with big eyes, silver-brown hair and a Fleischwerk proboscis. He walks up the hallway, yellow lights gliding over him like molten gold. A male two-star Bluebranch OFFICER approaches him, carrying a gray folder; he bows fifteen degrees before Graynose; the small man does not slow his pace.
GRAYNOSE
Walk with me.
The Officer strides beside the little man.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
Let me see them.
The Officer opens the folder and from it removes a glossy sheet of black plastic spattered with luminous white dots.
OFFICER
This is the starboard view, when we first arrived. Here it is
yesterday.
The Officer flips to the next sheet: he points to a black spot.
OFFICER (CONT'D)
Two stars are missing. After she
noticed this, Elysabeth began to
monitor the quadrant.
The Officer flips through twenty pages depicting a zoomed-in portion of the starboard view. Along a straight line, stars twinkle in and out of existence.
GRAYNOSE
Could be anything. A meteor,
another glacial drift. It’s
completely beyond the reach of this galaxy’s sunlight?
53.
OFFICER
Yes.
GRAYNOSE
Where is this interstellar mass
now?
OFFICER
We don’t know.
Graynose reaches the spinal train, ruminates for a second and nods.
GRAYNOSE
Keep me apprised. I’ll inform
Thakani after the meeting.
INT. MULTI-STAR COUNCIL ROOM - LATER
Graynose, ruminating, finds a seat in the first row of the council room. Deep-green ivy grows upon the wooden latticework fastened to a large picture window: stars and a portion of the orange-red sun are visible through the slats and leaves. Seated within the wood-panelled enclosure are twenty-seven three-star Seniors: four with red stars, four with green stars and nineteen with blue stars. The atmosphere is grim. Two seats in the second row remain empty.
On Fleischwerk hinges, the door swings wide; Lo-Cheun enters, his cool face utterly inscrutable. The laceration in his Fleischwerk arm and his amputated fingers have been replaced with new gray tissue of a noticeably darker tint. He walks toward one of the two empty seats and sits. The door shuts.
Graynose looks sympathetically at Lo-Cheun.
GRAYNOSE
I’m sorry about Neredth. If
there’s anything I can do...just
let me know.
LO-CHEUN
There isn’t.
Graynose nods and sits back in his seat.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Speaker Thakani has arrived.
The door swings open. The polyracial fifty-three-year-old woman enters and walks before the Seniors.
54.
THAKANI
I’ve reviewed the memorandums.
Would anyone care to speak on the
proposal before we vote?
GEOFFRIES, a Bluebranch Senior of forty-nine years with a skin-colored latex patch over his right eye, flicks his index finger and CLEARS his throat. Thakani recognizes him; he stands.
GEOFFRIES
(English Accent)
At this point, the significant
issue is not life forms: the significant issue is that we
haven’t found a place to even
attempt to build a home. Exposure to the elements- as well as the
known hostile life forms- has
clarified one thing: for now, life
on the open plain is not a viable
option. To build a settlement in a world with a daily 140-degree
temperature swing, we need to first find shelter: shelter that is above the water level and shielded from the winds.
Geoffries points to Thakani and nods.
GEOFFRIES (CONT'D)
I am in one-hundred-percent
agreement with Thakani’s proposal:
we need to explore the mountains
and we need to do these
explorations within the safety of
enclosed flyers.
Geoffries sits; two of the Bios shake their heads. Thakani observes the gathering.
THAKANI
Those in favor of vehicular
mountain expeditions, raise your
hands.
Twenty-six hands go up; two of the Bios abstain.
THAKANI (CONT'D)
Designate a pilot, a Bio and a
Bullet to each outfit. We start in two days.
55.
Titlecard: One Option-1-Standard Day Later EXT. ORBIT OF OPTION-1 - HOUR TWENTY-SEVEN (OPTION-1-STANDARD)
Five HANDYMAN units (manned spheres from which jut manifold tools) magnetically adhere to the rim of a collapsed dome on Elysabeth’s lower torso. Two apply welding torches to twisted metal; the others pull at a damaged plate with three-pronged pincers.
INT. CLEAR-DOMED FORREST PRESERVE - SAME
The dome is filled with myriad trees, bushes and plants from Earth. Above the three-thousand coniferous and deciduous pillars is a hemispherical dome admitting a view of the stars and Option-1.
One hundred-and-fifty feet in the air, suspended on ninety metal wires at the equator of the room, runs a circular catwalk. Fifty-three COUPLES and a few lone strollers walk the brown, foam-covered walkway; Sven and Mlissa are among them.
The tall, athletic twenty-two-year-old woman stops and leans against the outer balustrade, her blue-highlighted black hair catching the starlight. She looks up at the (slowly moving) planet outside.
Sven stops, a foot ahead of her.
MLISSA
What time do you descend? Are you
scared? Who’s in your crew?
SVEN
7:00 ES; a little bit scared; me
and Abacus and the brilliant guy
who stepped on that bladder.
Kenneth, I think.
Mlissa walks beside Sven, leans to the front rail and looks down at the Earth trees planted below.
MLISSA
Did you watch your transmissions
yet?
56.
SVEN
No.
Mlissa turns to face Sven; there is concern behind her bright eyes.
MLISSA
Don’t you think...don’t you think
you should?
SVEN
What? In case I get eaten?
MLISSA
(angry)
Don’t say that!
Mlissa looks away, a little embarrassed by the virulence of her reaction.
MLISSA (CONT'D)
Don’t say that, please. It’s
just...aren’t you curious to see
them? I’ve watched mine nine times already. You...you don’t like your parents?
Sven stares at Mlissa; she looks openly, guilelessly into his eyes.
SVEN
You and everyone aboard chose to be here and were prepared-- you knew
for years that you were going, but
not me: I was forced aboard by my
father. Yet...what I wanted-
always- was just a life of my own,
away from him and his massive
achievements.
Sven squeezes the foam-covered railing.
SVEN (CONT'D)
But here I am-- another component
made and installed by Jan
Bjorlsson.
Mlissa’s mouth opens in surprise.
SVEN (CONT'D)
Yeah, I’m his son.
57.
MLISSA
That’s why you don’t watch the
transmissions? You hate him?
SVEN
It’s...it’s more complicated than
that. I never even got to say
goodbye to my mother.
Sven tilts his head back; the stars are captured in his moist eyes. Mlissa rests her head upon his shoulder and hugs him.
The tall woman kisses him on the cheek, SMECK, and hugs him again.
MLISSA
I’d invite you back to my
compartment, but I want to
incentivize you to be careful down
there. You will, won’t you?
Please?
Sven presses his cheek into her hair.
SVEN
I will.
Mlissa steps back and looks at Sven’s face. He looks into her bright eyes.
MLISSA
Don’t paw anything. Yet.
Sven grins and then leans forward; Mlissa shuts her eyes, implosive and shy for the brief moment before their lips press together.
They kiss.
EXT. MOUNTAIN PERIMETER / OPTION-1 - DAWN
Ice floes, plates and shards float atop the water that bathes the open plain; jutting from the frigid glaze is the inland edge of the western mountain range, a wall of brown stone.
The white sun has just cleared the peaks on the opposite horizon, illuminating and heating the land as it rises into the magenta sky.
Standing upon eight metal pillars is ARMADILLO-2, a hemispherical transport vehicle made of gray, beaded steel, its name painted in bold red letters across the top. The rear hatch of the ship rolls up like a garage door, VWIMM.
58.
Light from the white sun spills inside the transport, illuminating the wedge-shaped, orange-colored flypod sitting in its outer bay. (The vehicle is painted with the name GOBLIN-3 in bright green letters.) Within the hovercar’s tear-shaped personnel bubble (narrow tip forward) sit Sven, Abacus and the magenta-haired Bullet, Kenneth.
Sven, seated in the central driving seat, turns back to look at Abacus and Kenneth on the rear bench. The young Swede says something to them: the sound is completely inaudible through the cockpit bubble.
Abacus replies, nodding his head; Kenneth scratches the M-16
tattooed on the left side of his neck and nods.
The blond-haired, crooked-nosed pilot turns to face forward and then punches on the ignition. Upon flashing hull-boosters, the flypod rises, POOMF; steam billows from the water-flooded concrete floor of the bay.
Sven pulls the guidestick back; the curved nose of the flypod tilts up. Steam envelops the vehicle.
From out of the vapors, propelled by the rear thruster, the bright orange craft surges with a loud VWIRRRR...
The steam dissipates to reveal another flypod- GOBLIN-2-which summarily jets into the magenta sky, VWIRRR... GOBLIN-1 careens out a moment later, VWIRRR...
The three soaring flypods diverge.
EXT. PLATEAU RING / MOUNTAIN RANGE - MOMENTS LATER
Sven pilots the flypod over the brown terra of the inland mountain range. The stone is dry and yields no apparent vegetation.
INT. FLYPOD GOBLIN-3 - SAME
Fastened by torso-webbing to the lone front chair, Sven confidently pilots the craft; Kenneth and Abacus sit webbed-in on the bench behind him. The rippled brown stone outside blurs by like a petrified brown ocean.
Abacus stares at the M-16 (machine gun) tattooed upon Kenneth’s neck.
ABACUS
I take it your interest in guns has been a lifelong fascination?
59.
Kenneth does not reply.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
See this?
With his index finger, Abacus taps his own chest; a new star sits beside the first. Kenneth glances at the marks.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
You don’t have the option of
remaining silent: I outrank you
now.(he grins)
Perhaps if you talk through your
hostilities, you won’t be so
inclined to shoot all unfamiliar
life forms.
KENNETH
I might be inclined to shoot a fat
and all-too-familiar one.
Abacus’ eyes widen in shock at the remark; Kenneth glares unwaveringly at him.
SVEN
(to Abacus)
Shouldn’t you be assembling the
drag?
Abacus looks up at Sven; the young Swede (suppressing a grin) guides the VWIRRING flypod around a rise in the terra. The Bio looks back at Kenneth; the Bullet faces away from him.
Still irked, Abacus unfastens his torso webbing, reaches into the compartment below the bench and withdraws a box labeled,
“thermalsonetics.”
ABACUS
We’re going to have to land to set
it up properly.
With the gray guidestick, Sven points the nose of the flypod toward a smoother area amidst the crenulated stone.
INT. ARTERY BUNDLE ROOM 246 - SAME
The room has been forcibly entered: the fallen door lies on the floor, handle melted, exposed Fleischwerk throbbing within its torn hinges.
60.
The walls of the enclosure are covered with clear, pulsating arteries, some as thick as a man’s forearm. Through the living hoses are pumped pink or amber protein-baths or crimson blood.
Two forty-year-old WOMEN stand within the room, each holding a squat white cylinder with a blinking red light.
Three BULLETS (including the Female Bullet with the second hollow star) storm inside the space, coilguns upraised.
FEMALE BULLET
Stop!
INT. STERNUM F / CENTRAL PASSAGEWAY - SAME
The underlit turquoise hallway is still for a moment. Then, from the lone open doorway, come two HIGH-PITCHED BEEPS, followed by two bursts of light. The floor outside the room and the opposite wall are stripped of color...pure white.
Blood begins to pool, covering the bleached ground with red.
Elysabeth GROANS.
INT. SPINAL TRAIN - SAME
Thirty-two passengers hold onto the straps dangling from the ceiling, five others lean against the walls; yellow and green lights flash past the windows. Toward the front of the car stands Geoffries, the English speechmaker from the Senior summit.
Heinrich bumps into the ranking officer.
HEINRICH
Excuse me.
Geoffries looks at Heinrich; the twenty-eight-year-old German looks at the older man’s rank.
Heinrich leans forward and presses the end of a white cylinder against the Senior’s stomach. The German’s eyes scan the train: nobody is paying him any attention.
HEINRICH (CONT'D)
I do not want to kill you but I
will. Say nothing, simply nod or
shake your head. Alles klar?
Geoffries nods.
61.
HEINRICH (CONT'D)
You are going to walk in the
direction I say in a casual manner.
Any erratic behavior will result in you aging through the rest of your
life-cycle in a matter of seconds.
Geoffries’ eyes flicker to the white tube pressed to his stomach; he nods.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Upper scapula, 5B.
HEINRICH
Remain calm.
The train stops; the passengers lurch forward; the old Englishman clamps his hands around Heinrich’s neck.
GEOFFRIES
New Puritan! He’s a New-
Heinrich, panicked, presses the cylinder’s yellow shoot arrow, CLICK; a miniature syringe shoots (FFFT) and sticks into Geoffries’ stomach; the automated plunger depresses, PSSS. The Englishman GROANS and releases his assailant.
The doors open.
The panicked passengers run for the exit, SCREAMING. The twenty-eight-year-old German looks at the older man, shakes his had in regret and bolts for the portal.
Geoffries collapses to the floor: his skin sags; his nose and ears grow; his sprouting hair whitens; his hands inflame with arthritic knobs, his nails jut from his fingertips, his teeth fall out of his MOANING mouth.
Just as Heinrich exits the train, the doors SLAM shut on his ankle; he falls face-first to the platform, his nose breaking with a loud CRUNCH.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Detain this man!
EXT. ROCKY PLATEAU RING / MOUNTAIN RANGE - AFTERNOON
Flypod Goblin-3 soars over the stone, pulling behind it a string with thirteen hexagonal air-skimmers; the weighted, silver instruments glide smoothly in the craft’s downdraft, cutting through the current like surfboards.
62.
The flypod and the drag cast dual shadows on the ground.
INT. FLYPOD GOBLIN-3 - SAME
Sven steers the vehicle, ruminating; Kenneth absently stares outside; Abacus observes three monitors. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
Sven looks at and plucks a small wire-mesh-covered sphere from the console, pulling it out on its thin antennae- SNIK-SNIK-SNIK-SNIK-SNIK.
SVEN
This is Goblin-3.
FEMALE VOICE (O.S.)
This is Goblin-1. There have been
incidents aboard the Elysabeth: X-
White 3LK-2UK-ED.
Sven and Abacus grow wary; Kenneth, slouched, sits upright.
ABACUS
What the hell does that mean?
Sven shrugs; he dials down the anterior thruster; the vehicle slows dramatically...and somnolently coasts.
SVEN
(into the convosphere)
Should we rendezvous at the
transport and boomerang to
Elysabeth?
FEMALE VOICE (O.S.)
No. Elysabeth’s ports are closed
until the situation’s been
stabilized: the mother is in total
lockdown.
Realization floods Sven, followed by disbelief.
SVEN
We’re staying here? Overnight?
FEMALE VOICE (O.S.)
Until further notice, yes.
SVEN
The transport can handle the cold?
FEMALE VOICE (O.S.)
That’s what I’ve been told. If
not, the flypods have heaters.
63.
Sven and Abacus and Kenneth stare at the mesh-covered convosphere as if it were personally responsible for the grim tidings.
INT. ARTERY BUNDLE ROOM 246 - SAME
The walls of the bleach-bombed brain nexus are stark white; three REPAIRMEN patch burst and sundered venous networks with gray Fleischwerk putty. Arteries throb dully with life.
The diminutive Biobranch Senior named Graynose monitors the repairs; he plucks, extends (SNIK-SNIK-SNIK) and addresses a convosphere.
GRAYNOSE
Has the damage been stabilized?
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Who is requesting this information?
Graynose looks up at four bleached eyes embedded in the ceiling- white with nascent cataracts- and shakes his head.
GRAYNOSE
This is Senior Zanford Bitts.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Voicewave confirmed. The damage
has been largely stabilized, yet
tainted blood has circulated.
GRAYNOSE
Can we aid you in any way?
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Please make your decision regarding Option-1 quickly. I need to shut
down life support in order to purge the bad blood from my system and
transfuse a pure supply.
Graynose frowns.
INT. RESEARCH SANCTUARY - LATER
Lo-Cheun and two Bullets stand beside the floor-mounted surgical chair (a turquoise foam recliner with a metal frame) in which Heinrich has been fastened by elastifabric; a brown, agglutinated worm of blood trails from the German’s broken nose down his chin, neck and chest.
64.
Graynose walks into the research room; a magnetic light on the ceiling follows the man as he strides toward the prisoner. The open door shuts, CLACK.
Graynose bows five degrees; Lo-Cheun bows ten degrees; the two-stars bow thirty degrees. They all stand upright. The diminutive Bio Senior looks at Heinrich for a moment- as if observing a wayward child- WHISTLES an odd melody and then shakes his head.
Heinrich, inscrutable, stares back at the little man.
GRAYNOSE
Is this- is what you’re doing-
somehow for Josef?
Heinrich blanches; Graynose nods his head and WHISTLES.
Lo-Cheun looks at Graynose: the little Bio Senior looks up at a glass-covered eye in the ceiling.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
Elysabeth, temporarily deafen the
prisoner.
The prisoner winces at the STATIC broadcast directly into his ear canal by means of two orange plugs. Lo-Cheun walks beside Graynose. The two Seniors face away from Heinrich (so that he cannot read their lips).
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
We’ve searched the profiles-- the
five terrormongers all had one
thing in common: progeny. Heinrich had a son named Josef. Isabel a
daughter and a son, Raul had three
daughters, the bombers each had a
boy.
LO-CHEUN
New Puritans don’t typically have
children. Think they were coerced
to join?
GRAYNOSE
Perhaps. But maybe they aren’t New Puritans at all-- maybe this is
something else.
Lo-Cheun processes the information.
65.
LO-CHEUN
(looking up)
Elysabeth, call the multi-stars to
conference, priority 1A.
GRAYNOSE
What’re you going to propose?
LO-CHEUN
We should round-up and interrogate
everyone who left a child behind.
It’s all we’ve got.
Graynose ruminates, WHISTLING.
GRAYNOSE
Most people aboard didn’t have
progeny, but still you’re talking
about seventy, eighty resuscitated
individuals. Speaker Thakani had
one-- a son.
LO-CHEUN
No exceptions. We do this and
simultaneously go public.
Graynose scratches his Fleischwerk proboscis; he nods.
EXT. INCLINED AREA / MOUNTAIN RANGE - LATE AFTERNOON
The flypod, tilted back at a thirty-five-degree angle, glides up the incline of a mountain, VWIRR... Sediment and pebbles roll down in the vehicle’s wake. (The craft no longer trails the drag.)
Abacus looks queasy; he says something within the soundproof bubble.
INT. FLYPOD GOBLIN-3 - SAME
SVEN
If you do, aim at the Bullet who
won’t tell us what he knows.
ABACUS
Agreed.
The looming mountain peak is visible through the front of the cockpit bubble; stone races by as the ship gains altitude, VWIRR...
66.
Kenneth wipes perspiration from his brow.
KENNETH
Why don’t you just fly up and over
this peak?
SVEN
The hull-boosters use about ten
times as much power as the
thruster. I’d rather not strain
the ‘pod.
The ship reaches and then crests the zenith; the ground below drops away revealing a crater ten miles across.
The ship free-falls; Abacus shuts his eyes; Kenneth tenses; Sven grins.
On the console, below the word ‘LIFT’ are buttons numbered: 150, 125, 100, 50 and 25; Sven CLICKS 150. Hull-boosters kick on- POOMF- and the falling ship stabilizes. Sven dials the number 100; the angle of the soaring flypod conforms to the downward slope of the crater.
Abacus opens his eyes and looks at the cyclopean crater into which the flypod descends. The ship WOBBLES.
KENNETH
Something wrong?
SVEN
No, just wind. Hey-
(he squints and stares
ahead)
-is that a fissure?
Sven points his right index finger to a black line in the bottom of the crater; Abacus and Kenneth look at the anomaly.
EXT. CREVASSE WITHIN THE CRATER - MOMENTS LATER
The flypod vertically descends into the crevasse: the cleft is only five yards wider than the vehicle itself. Filling much of the sky directly overhead is the demonic orange-red sun.
INT. FLYPOD GOBLIN-3 - SAME
Sven, Abacus and Kenneth observe the close walls of the crevasse; the craft nears the floor of the niche...six-hundred feet below the bottom of the crater.
67.
SVEN
The winds certainly don’t get in
here.
Sven presses LIFT 100 (CLICK) and dials up the rear thruster; the ship hovers and then moves forward, VWIRR... The hidden crevasse continues to narrow.
SVEN (CONT'D)
The flypod can’t go much further.
You two up for a brief on-foot
foray?
ABACUS
Sure.
KENNETH
I’d like to stretch.
Sven presses LIFT 25, CLICK; the craft slowly sinks to the bottom of the crevasse.
SVEN
Hold on.
The flypod touches down with a loud THUNK and then tilts abruptly to the right: the occupants are jerked roughly in that direction, held fast by their webbing; Kenneth ACKS.
ABACUS
(facetious)
Did we land? I can’t tell it was
such a smooth-
SVEN
Sarcasm from the guy who is
overbalancing us.
EXT. CREVASSE WITHIN THE CRATER - MOMENTS LATER
Dripping with sweat and wearing backpacks, the three men walk along the rocky bottom of the crevasse. Up ahead the walls of the crevasse come together in a dead end.
SVEN
Great. Let’s go back.
68.
EXT. CREVASSE WITHIN THE CRATER - MOMENTS LATER
The sweaty trio nears the flypod; the vehicle rests at an angle upon protuberant stones. After taking final swigs, the three soaked men pack their canteens away.
ABACUS
I’m far too hot to remark upon how
badly parked that ‘pod is.
SVEN
Look around-- there aren’t any flat surfaces in here.
They come upon the craft. Sven wipes sweat from his face; his visage glazes over the moment his hand comes away. He reaches for the orange twistlock at the near side of the cockpit bubble.
KENNETH
What’s that?
Sven wipes sweat from his eyes and looks back at Kenneth.
SVEN
What?
Kenneth points to the front of the vehicle.
Standing upon the hood of the flypod is an upright, eight-inch piece of stone; the figural sculpture has been shaped into the form of a human being.
INT. LOCKDOWN - SAME
Lockdown is a turquoise-colored two-tiered room with ten jail cells (five on level 1, five on level 2); within each detainment chamber are seven or eight people, totalling seventy-eight PRISONERS, most of whom are quiet, somnolent and seated upon white foam benches. Speaker Thakani is amongst the imprisoned, all of whom are Biobranch and Bluebranch.
In the hemispherical space before the cells, Lo-Cheun, Zria, Rectangle and FLORIDA (a three-star Native American bullet with blue-highlighted black hair) stand at the head of forty-five Bullets. Two BLUE SENIORS and Two BIO SENIORS stand off to the side, representing their branches.
69.
In front of the military assemblage is a rolling polypillar adorned with seventeen lenses, nine human eyeballs and five convospheres; wires run from the broadcasting apparatus into the wall; eleven antennas jut from its top.
Graynose enters, plucks a convosphere from the polypillar and extends it on its telescopic antennae (SNIK-SNIK-SNIK-SNIK-SNIK), WHISTLING as he does so. The diminutive Bio Senior CLEARS his throat and faces the variegated lenses.
INT. GLASS-DOMED AMPHITHEATER - SAME
The concave arena is peopled by the remaining people aboard the spacecraft: over seven-hundred attendees are present.
Upon the panorama screen are six images: Graynose, facing the camera; the assembled Bullet brigade; all ten jails cells; a tighter shot of eight occupants in a lower jail cell; a single shot of Thakani behind electrified bars; a shot of the amphitheater audience.
Mlissa watches from the second row, eyes wide, very concerned. She leans to the person seated next to her (an ARABIC MAN of twenty-seven years).
MLISSA
(quietly)
Do you think this is related to the mountain expeditions? Did
something happen down there? Maybe somebody got hurt?
The Arabic Man glances at the nervous woman and then back to the panorama. Upon the screen, Graynose addresses the audience.
GRAYNOSE
We, the Seniors of the multi-star
council, regret and apologize for
today’s disturbances, the cause of
which you’ll know presently. The
final transmissions we received
from Earth informed us of an
unsettling fact we wished to
investigate before making public:
there are terrormongers aboard
Elysabeth, identities unknown.
Tension fills the room; GASPS and concerned faces and worried eyes and clenched fists admit apprehensions.
70.
MLISSA
(to herself)
Sven better not be one.
GRAYNOSE
These saboteurs were originally
believed to be New Puritans, but
now we think differently. The five we’ve identified all have one thing in common: they left children
behind on Earth.
INT. LOCKDOWN - SAME
With little hands, Graynose wipes sweat from his face. (The perspiration beads weirdly on his Fleischwerk nose.) GRAYNOSE
We have incarcerated all of the
progenitors aboard Elysabeth, a
group totalling seventy-eight.
Speaker Thakani and six other multi-stars are amongst them. All of
them may be innocent or all of them may be guilty. We do not know.
Graynose turns toward the ten jail cells; the polypillar rolls in-between him and the prisoners.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
You are all confined until a
determination has been made of your guilt or innocence. If one of you
informs us who you are and what you intended, a peace might be reached.
The Prisoners stare back at Graynose, somnolently.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
Three of the insurgents are dead
and the two captives are being used as lab rats. Confess so that this
dispute might end, for the benefit
of you, your fellow prisoners and
the children you and they might
have someday. Humanity is almost
extinct, please-
(tears in his eyes)
Don’t divide us, don’t diminish our numbers- don’t hasten our end.
We’ve all-
(his voice cracks)
(MORE)
71.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
We’ve all lost far too much
already. Please...
Graynose wipes tears from his eyes. The Prisoners stare down at him...a few are visibly upset.
In the top jail cell, Speaker Thakani walks forward; she passes a SAD MAN with a silver beard. He places a hand on her wrist and squeezes an admonition.
SAD MAN
Don’t.
THAKANI
It’s lost. We can’t do this to
them. Not now...not here.
Graynose, Lo-Cheun, Zria, the Senior quartet and the Bullet brigade watch in shock as the four-star leader walks forward.
Thakani stands near the bars of her cell, her chin upheld, her eyes defiant. The lenses of the polypillar focus on her.
INT. GLASS-DOMED AMPHITHEATER - SAME
Mlissa and the entire audience watch the panorama in disbelief: the screen is filled with a lone tight shot of Speaker Thakani.
MLISSA
No. Not her...
INT. LOCKDOWN - SAME
The room grows preternaturally quiet; nobody moves.
THAKANI
Let me first say this: we love our
children.
EXT. MOUNTAIN PERIMETER / OPTION-1 - NIGHT
Three viridescent moons float in a cluster amidst myriad stars in the blue-black night sky. Armadillo-2, its metal studs capturing dollops of moonlight, perches on landing supports; a thin sheet of ice covers the water below.
A mile to the west, Flypod Goblin-3 soars across dry stone toward the transport vehicle, VWIRR...
72.
INT. FLYPOD GOBLIN-3 - SAME
Sven, his mind buzzing with questions, distractedly pilots the flypod. He dials down the thruster and punches 100 LIFT; the vehicle slows to a drift.
The Swede glances at the small human replica in Kenneth’s hands and then points up ahead, at Transport Armadillo-2.
SVEN
Do we tell them?
KENNETH
I’m not sure we should...not until
the situation on Elysabeth has been stabilized.
SVEN
This would be an easier decision to make if Abacus and I knew what was happening up there.
Kenneth SNORTS through his nose, looks at the statue in his hands, turns it over, runs his finger along its right arm and nods.
KENNETH
A Senior Blue and two Bullets were
murdered, and somebody tried to
sabotage the ship.
ABACUS
I thought it might be something
like that.
SVEN
You knew about this?
Abacus debates on whether or not to divulge; he looks at Kenneth and Sven, awaiting explanation.
ABACUS
Neredth and I- before she
got...well before- Neredth and I
ran tests on a terrormonger.
That’s how we found out the
squidfish weren’t poisonous and
that they- and the sixclaws- were
edible.
73.
SVEN
There’s a conspiracy? Out here?
Are they New Puritans?
Abacus shrugs.
Sven looks ahead; the Armadillo is less than half a mile off.
He dials off the thruster and punches LIFT 25; the flypod descends to the stone plateau, THUNK.
SVEN (CONT'D)
Could the crews down here be
involved?
KENNETH
Maybe. Realistically, all of us
could be.
A moment of uncomfortable silence hangs like a bad smell in the bubble.
SVEN
Let’s not inform them of our find:
we’ll announce it when we’re back
aboard Elysabeth, before a council
and safe. Agreed?
ABACUS
What do we do with it for now?
SVEN
Will it fit in your specimen
cylinder?
EXT. MOUNTAIN PERIMETER / NARROW CLEFT - MOMENTS LATER
Shivering and breathing steam, Abacus places the specimen cylinder containing the statue in a two-feet-deep hole; Kenneth and Sven, both shaking from the cold, push loosened sediment and small stones over the artifact.
Abacus stands.
ABACUS
Would anybody like to say a few
words regarding the dearly de-
SVEN
It’s 24:49- and cold. Let’s move.
74.
INT. GLASS-DOMED AMPHITHEATER - SAME
Mlissa and the other viewers stare numbly at the visage upon the panorama: their leader...and betrayer...Speaker Thakani.
THAKANI
Twenty-thousand people worked on
Project Elysabeth for over thirteen years: the odds were against being
chosen for the cryogenic vaults.
During this time we lived our
lives...and some of us had
children.
Thakani gestures to her cell-mates; they do not acknowledge her gesture.
THAKANI (CONT'D)
The passengers were chosen, and
amongst the eighteen hundred were a small minority of new parents.
When the time came to decide
between our life’s work and our
children, we chose both. Our
intention-
MALE VOICE (O.S.)
Betrayer!
Two hands clamp upon Thakani’s neck and SLAM her face into the electrified bars, WHANG.
INT. LOCKDOWN - SAME
The electric bars pressed against Thakani’s face sear her skin, ZZZZZZ; wisps of smoke rise, yet she does not cry out.
For a moment, the room is still with shock (other than Lo-Cheun who looks at an eyeball embedded in the ceiling).
LO-CHEUN
Cut the lightning.
The electrical charge in the bars is cancelled; Thakani’s assailant, a thirty-six-year-old BEARDED MAN with small eyes, draws back and then SLAMS the woman’s face into the bars again, WHANG. Thakani, her face scorched and swollen, passes out.
Zria and Rectangle, withdrawing springblades, race up the stairs toward Thakani’s cell.
75.
Graynose, horrified but silent, watches the grim situation unfold. Zria and Rectangle emerge from the steps and run across the top tier.
An ENRAGED WOMAN thrusts her left hand outside her cell and with it, grabs Zria’s right ankle; the prisoner’s arm SNAPS
in half, a compound fracture against the prison bars; the Indian two-star- her left leg yanked from beneath her-SMASHES face-first upon the ground. Watching, Lo-Cheun’s stomach sinks.
Zria gets to her knees, yet the Enraged Woman holds firm,
with the hand on her broken arm.
Below, Florida and Lo-Cheun withdraw their black, skull-embossed coilguns and race up the stairs, followed by four more Bullets.
FLORIDA
Killcall!
Rectangle reaches Thakani’s cell; he trains his springblade upon her tormentor, the Bearded Man.
RECTANGLE
I have Killcall.
BEARDED MAN
I don’t care.
The Bearded Man SLAMS Thakani’s face into the bars again, breaking her front teeth, the sound is like SNAPPING wood.
Rectangle presses his fire button, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.
Three (serrated) tongue-depressor-shaped blades shoot into the air toward the Bearded Man: the first spears his heart; the second lances his right eye; the third slices into his open mouth.
The Bearded Man releases Thakani and leans forward; his severed tongue drops to the floor, PLP. He THUDS upon his knees, tips backwards and then collapses onto his side, WOOMF.
With her free foot, Zria kicks the Enraged Woman’s compound fracture; the prisoner SHRIEKS and releases the Bullet’s other ankle.
Rectangle is joined by Florida; Lo-Cheun helps Zria to her feet.
RECTANGLE
We need a Bio for Thakani.
76.
INT. GLASS-DOMED AMPHITHEATER - SAME
The dismayed crowd is silent.
Upon the panorama, Lo-Cheun walks toward the center of lockdown and then turns to face the detained parents.
LO-CHEUN
All prisoners are to remain
completely still. Any movement
beyond breathing and blinking will
be considered hostile and responded to as such. You’ve got an itch--
it can wait. You have to sneeze--
don’t do it.
From the top tier, Florida addresses the brigade below.
FLORIDA
We need individual restraints,
blinders and gags for every person
in here. Now.
Ten Bullets hurry from the room.
In the second row of the amphitheater, Mlissa shakes her head in disbelief; she turns to the Arabic Man next to her.
MLISSA
I don’t understand. Do you? Those children would’ve died centuries
ago, right? And they’re all the
way back on Earth. Right?
The Arabic Man ignores her. In the far corner of the panorama wideshot, Graynose silently cries.
EXT. MOUNTAIN PERIMETER / OPTION-1 - NIGHT
Five moons now share the same sky, the cluster of three and the two stragglers; the water of the open plain is entirely iced over; buoyed by hull-boosters and propelled by the rear thruster, Flypod Goblin-3 drifts inside the open hatch of Armadillo-2, VWIRR...
The door closes behind it.
77.
INT. LUMBAR HALL 3B - SAME
Graynose, accompanied by four BULLETS, strides up the hall toward the spinal train. A male Bluebranch OFFICER holding a gray folder approaches him.
OFFICER
There’s been a development.
GRAYNOSE
Show me.
INT. SPINAL TRAIN - MOMENTS LATER
Graynose and the Officer sit on the train looking at pictures of space: red ink circumscribes the areas in which stars have disappeared, occluded by the unknown mass.
OFFICER
The orbit repeated twice before she lost sight of it.
Graynose’s stomach sinks.
GRAYNOSE
Something out there was circling
us? Any indications as to what it
was?
OFFICER
Look at this.
The Officer withdraws another image from the folder and points to a brighter star: the light of the distant sun has not been blocked, but instead smeared and changed to a lavender color.
OFFICER (CONT'D)
The hue resembles the glaciers that orbit Option-1.
Graynose’s apprehensions diminish.
GRAYNOSE
It does.
(he scratches his chin)
We’ll investigate this once the
internal crisis has been
stabilized.
78.
INT. TRANSPORT ARMADILLO-2 / FRONT CABIN - LATER
Eleven PEOPLE lie inside sleeping-envelopes tucked within the horizontal, orange-foam niches of the cabin. Heater coils glow bright red from the rectangular bays in the walls.
Sven, Abacus and Kenneth, sitting on foam stools, look through the glass bottom to the ice below. They all wear thick jackets and gloves. (They converse in whispers.) KENNETH
There’s another one.
A white eel with gray fins on its back slowly slinks across the surface below them.
ABACUS
You see those? On its end?
Kenneth and Sven stare at the eel’s posterior; six small, lizard-like legs jut from the tail, immobile and rigid.
SVEN
Something vestigial?
ABACUS
No. I’d bet two weeks oat paste
it’s some kind of dual life form.
One brain controls it during the
heat, the other during the cold.
SVEN
Why do you think that?
ABACUS
Watch what happens when it gets
near our exhaust.
Sven, Kenneth and Abacus lean forward and watch the creature glide toward a downward-facing vent underneath the transport’s carriage.
The creature slows down the moment it crawls beneath the vent; an instant later, the legs on its tail wriggle...and attempt to find footing. Sven and Kenneth grin.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
Even Killcall here thinks it’s
neat.
KENNETH
Reminds me of a girl I once knew.
79.
ABACUS
I don’t believe that statement
needs any further elaboration.
INT. RESEARCH SANTUARY - SAME
Graynose, Lo-Cheun, Florida and two Bluebranch Seniors sit at a table; on the opposite side is a pale, plump, thirty-eight-year-old Blue one-star with red, runny eyes and curly blond hair. His name is STANUEL. Beside the table stands the polypillar, its eyes, lenses and convospheres capturing the scene.
STANUEL
Thakani...was right, it was madness to stick to the plan. Out here.
Now. We-
GRAYNOSE
Does your organization have a name?
Stanuel shakes his head, fretful.
STANUEL
Having a name would’ve made us
identifiable, though we considered
ourselves midwives of a sort.
GRAYNOSE
How did you and the other midwives
intend to rescue the children?
STANUEL
The prototypical cryogenic units:
the ones we initially developed for Elysabeth. A month before leaving
Earth, we kissed our children good-
night, put them to sleep and
cryogenically froze them. And then we buried the unit a mile
underground, in case there was
fallout.
Stanuel looks at the lenses of the polypillar.
STANUEL (CONT'D)
(to the camera)
My daughter’s name is Sara.
GRAYNOSE
That was 838 years ago.
80.
Stanuel returns his gaze to Graynose.
STANUEL
I know. We never thought we’d go
so far- or be gone so long.
GRAYNOSE
Your plan was- correct me if I’ve
concluded incorrectly- to hijack the Elysabeth? Kill us off and
then-
STANUEL
No, no, no! We never intended to
kill anybody. We assumed that when Elysabeth awakened us, we would
have a new homeworld, not
this...this Option-1. We would
leave you there and then...and
then...
(he CLEARS his throat)
And then go rescue the little
sleepers.
GRAYNOSE
And Elysabeth...would simply
comply?
STANUEL
We knew she wouldn’t. That’s why
we had to destroy some of her brain nexuses.
GRAYNOSE
You’d have lobotomized her, frozen
yourself and then returned for your buried children?
STANUEL
There’s a chance it could work.
With empathy, Graynose looks at the curly-haired man.
GRAYNOSE
No. There is no chance. There is
a greater chance that we stumble
upon aliens that happen to play
basketball than that those vaults
continue to function with no
maintenance after seventeen hundred years. I worked on the initial designs with Bjorlsson, I know.
81.
Graynose looks at Stanuel; tears flow freely down the confessor’s cheeks.
Lo-Cheun walks over, leans down and whispers into Graynose’s left ear. The little leader nods; the Bullet Senior stands upright.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
Are all of the people we’ve
apprehended involved?
STANUEL
It was a chance to save our
childrens’ lives.
Stanuel wipes the tears from his red face.
STANUEL (CONT'D)
What are you going to do to us?
GRAYNOSE
Detain you for now. Long
term...we’ll see.
STANUEL
But we didn’t do anything-- most of us anyway.
The sympathy leaves Graynose’s eyes; he shakes his head, his face stern.
GRAYNOSE
Don’t delude yourself. Your
organization colluded in sabotage,
weapons smuggling, Fleischmord,
murder and intended to steal a ship more valuable than the country of
Japan in the 1980s. You are all
dangerous, especially those of you
still in denial.
Graynose stands up from the table. Lo-Cheun looks at the polypillar.
LO-CHEUN
Off.
The extruded lenses and convospheres are retracted inside the polypillar, VVVVVVV.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
Should we give them over to
Elysabeth?
82.
GRAYNOSE
Let’s allow them time to accept
what’s happened-- they’re still
coming to terms with a very
difficult thing. Let’s see where
they are before we run deprivation
tares. Agreed?
The Seniors nod; one named HECTOR, a New Cuban of forty-five-years with spiral-shaped sideburns, YAWNS.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
How’s Thakani?
FLORIDA
In a coma.
LO-CHEUN
Pardon me if I don’t pray for her.
The Chinese man’s remark elicits a few wary looks from the other Seniors.
GRAYNOSE
Call a multi-star council in five
hours. We all need some sleep.
FLORIDA
Can we open the bays? The
transport teams are still grounded.
Graynose looks deferentially to Lo-Cheun; the Chinese Senior addresses Florida.
LO-CHEUN
Check the transport roster for
parents. Don’t inform them what
happened until you have coilguns
pointed at their faces.
EXT. MOUNTAIN PERIMETER / NARROW CLEFT - MORNING
Kenneth and Abacus uncover the cylinder; Sven sits in Flypod Goblin-3, leaning toward the convosphere.
SVEN
Got it. We’ll boomerang in twenty.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. With his index finger, Sven pushes the convosphere back into the console, SNIK-SNIK-SNIK-SNIK-SNIK.
83.
SVEN (CONT'D)
Elysabeth’s open.
EXT. OPTION-1 ATMOSPHERE - MOMENTS LATER
Upon nine thrusters, Armadillo-2 rockets through the atmosphere (KRRRR...); its studded hull glows from the heat.
Pink coolant sprays from nostrils in the front of the craft: the fluid coats the heated exterior and turns into cotton-candy vapors, SSSSSSSS.
Not far behind the transport is Armadillo-4.
EXT. ORBIT OF OPTION-1 - MOMENTS LATER
The Armadillo transports thrust toward the flat stump at the terminus of Elysabeth’s right arm.
INT. DOCKING TUBE / ARMADILLOS AND HANDYMEN - MOMENTS LATER
Coiled hoses hang from the walls of the landing-area that traverses the length of Elysabeth’s right arm; the metal ingress is seven-hundred feet deep and is illuminated by twelve rows of yellow lights. Jutting from the inmost wall are the back halves of twelve Armadillo transports and five HANDYMEN (repair spheres).
Behind the two-foot thick glass of the control booth stand six DOCKSMEN (all Bluebranch), Florida and ten Bullets.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Depressurized zone.
The yellow lights in the docking tube change to red. The locking mechanisms in the far wall open with a CLUNK; the door slowly slides open, revealing the vista of outer space and interposed between Elysabeth and Option-1, two hovering Armadillo transports. They carefully ingress.
The moment the transports are within the tube, the far wall closes, sealing the dock area.
The lids of two ports in the shoulder wall swing open on Fleischwerk hinges; Armadillo-2 steers toward the second opening and- in an almost coital maneuver- thrusts inside the compliment. Halfway inside the nook, Armadillo-2 presses to the wall and locks in. Armadillo-4 thrusts and locks inside the port beside it.
84.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE (CONT'D)
Repressurizing.
Four-hundred vents HISS all along the tubular dock.
INT. DOCKING BAY / PERSONNEL AREA - MOMENTS LATER
The noses of docked ships jut from the wall like the heads of mounted game. Repressurizing vents HISS, filling the bay.
ELYSABETH’S VOICE
Pressure sustained.
A Fleischwerk-driven ramp rolls to the front of Armadillo-2
and clamps fast; the transport’s hatch opens, CH-CLACK.
The fourteen people aboard Armadillo-2 egress and descend the ramp; Sven, Abacus and Kenneth are the last to reach the floor of the bay.
From the dock’s control booth, Florida and his ten Bullets emerge; the eleven soldiers walk toward the disembarked crew, coilguns drawn and trained on a target.
FLORIDA
Ito Akatagawa.
ITO, a Japanese Bluebranch two-star with a beard, looks over at the Senior.
ITO
Nani?
FLORIDA
Shut your eyes, place your hands
behind your head and face the
ground.
Ito looks at the weapons aimed at him, nods and complies; two Bullets rush toward the Japanese man.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
(to the remaining persons)
Clear the area.
The Bullets wrap elastifabric around Ito’s wrists, fastening them behind the man’s neck with a SNAP.
Sven walks toward Florida, reaches him and then bows forty degrees.
85.
SVEN
Sir-
FLORIDA
Clear the area.
SVEN
Sir I have information- vital
information- regarding Option-1.
FLORIDA
Name?
SVEN
Sven Bjorlsson.
INT. MULTI-STAR COUNCIL ROOM - LATER
Eight groggy, bleary-eyed Seniors people the room, amongst them Lo-Cheun, Florida and Graynose. Sven, Abacus and Kenneth stand before the multi-stars. The little leader YAWNS.
SVEN
We returned to the Flypod...and
Kenneth saw this resting on the
hood.
Abacus withdraws the human-shaped statue from his backpack.
Graynose, Lo-Cheun, Florida and the other Seniors sit forward, eyes wide, mouths cracked, breaths caught.
GRAYNOSE
I’m awake.
SVEN
You should send a small party back
to that crevasse- we don’t want to
scare them- and the three of us
should be included.
Florida CHUCKLES at the presumptuous young man.
FLORIDA
Is that so?
Sven takes the statue from Abacus’ hands and walks it to the multi-stars.
86.
SVEN
Look closely: this is a statue of me.
Sven puts the sculpture in Graynose’s small, curious hands; Abacus approaches and stands beside the young Swede.
ABACUS
Notice the tall, skinny physique-
and the large, rather nonlinear
proboscis.
Graynose and the crowding Seniors look at the statue...in particular the large, crooked nose clearly fashioned after Sven’s.
INT. COMESTIBLE QUADRANT - NIGHT
The comestible quadrant is empty, but for a lone woman asleep on a bench in the rear. Sven enters and quietly walks over to the her.
SVEN
Mlissa...
Mlissa GRUNTS in an incommunicative manner; Sven taps her shoulder.
SVEN (CONT'D)
Mlissa.
MLISSA
Tired, Dad. Ten more minutes and
we’ll go jogging.
Sven grins. He gently clasps her hand and squeezes it.
SVEN
Mlissa...wake up...it’s Sven.
Mlissa lifts her head from the foam table, blinking, groggy and disoriented. She looks at Sven.
MLISSA
I thought I was back on Earth. I
sleep...very hard.
SVEN
Makes sense-- you’re a very active-
Mlissa throws her arms around Sven’s waist and hugs him.
87.
MLISSA
I was worried.
SVEN
So was I. When I heard there was
an incident on the ship...
Sven leans over to kiss her; Mlissa covers her mouth with her hand.
MLISSA
I need to mint-rinse.
Mlissa stretches her arms and arches her back, eliciting a tattoo of healthy POPS and CRACKS; a golden necklace adorned with a six-pointed star glints on her neck.
SVEN
What’s that?
MLISSA
A star of Daniel.
(thinking; wrinkles her
nose)
Dave maybe?
SVEN
Who was he?
MLISSA
My great-grandmother was Jewish--
some god she worshipped. I was
worried about you so...so I put it
on.
Sven kisses Mlissa on the lips; she kisses him back. She presses her long fingers to his chest. They withdraw and are silent for a moment.
MLISSA (CONT'D)
Are you religious? Buddhist or
Christian? Or something Swedish?
SVEN
My dad built spaceships and war
machines out of living flesh.
MLISSA
That’s a no?
88.
INT. SPINAL TRAIN - SAME
Abacus and Kenneth, both preoccupied, hold ceiling straps beside each other in a train peopled by two Bullets and three Blues; lights flicker past the windows, yellow and green.
ABACUS
Kenneth...?
Kenneth looks over at Abacus.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
I’m not going to be able to...to
get to sleep-- at least for a
while. You want to play some nine-
card or some poker?
KENNETH
Always preferred chess.
ABACUS
For stakes?
INT. MLISSA’S COMPARTMENT - LATE NIGHT
Sven and Mlissa lie inside the sleeping envelope nestled within the foam nook of her tiny room. The windowless walls are covered with photographs of sweaty men and women running, hurdling, pole-vaulting, rock-climbing and biking. Sven is asleep; Mlissa is awake.
MLISSA
You don’t have to go. Whatever
you’re doing, they can send
somebody else, can’t they?
Sven awakens, rubs his bleary eyes and looks at Mlissa.
SVEN
Were we having a conversation?
MLISSA
Why do you need to go down? There
are lots of qualified pilots. And
we just started...this.
SVEN
There’s a reason I need to go--
you’ll understand when I’m allowed
to discuss it.
89.
MLISSA
You don’t have to prove anything.
SVEN
I know.
Mlissa shakes her head.
MLISSA
I don’t think that you do.
INT. LO-CHEUN AND NEREDTH’S COMPARTMENT - SAME
His head nestled in the cradle of his interlocked natural and Fleischwerk fingers, Lo-Cheun lies on the floor of his compartment, looking at the window. Option-1 hangs outside, silhouetted and sun-limned.
The Chinese man’s eyes flicker to the empty bed nook and then back to the planet outside.
INT. GRAYNOSE’S COMPARTMENT - SAME
The compartment is an immaculate living space decorated with hundreds of photos, each set within a small oak frame; the pictures are of children and dogs. Graynose and JULIUS (a tall thin man of thirty with a pockmarked face and a goatee) sit on a divan, looking at Option-1.
JULIUS
Do you think that the sculpture is
somehow related to that hunk of ice circling around us?
GRAYNOSE
I’ve no idea and- for the first
time in my life as a scientist- I’m trying not to hypothesize too much.
Julius smirks.
JULIUS
Why’s that? You don’t want to be
wrong?
GRAYNOSE
We’ve no idea how different the
things we encounter might be-- on a biological, an intellectual, an
atomic and maybe even sub-atomic
level.
(MORE)
90.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
The fewer ideas and theories I fix
in my mind, the fewer ideas I will
have to abandon when we encounter
whatever is truly out there.
EXT. CRATER / MOUNTAIN RANGE - MORNING
The white sun hangs above the eastern horizon, pressing the shadows of three transport vehicles (ARMADILLO-1, ARMADILLO-3
& ARMADILLO-5) into the bowl of the crater hundreds of feet below.
From the open hatch of Armadillo-1 emerges Flypod Goblin-3, followed shortly after by FLYPOD TERRIER-1. Sven, Abacus and Kenneth people the first craft; Lo-Cheun, Zria and JESCA, a Bluebranch Senior with a ziggurat tattooed on her neck, sit in the second.
The flypods sink toward the crevasse.
INT. FLYPOD TERRIER-1 - SAME
Jesca, a convosphere before her mouth, addresses the crews of both flypods.
JESCA
If you need to speak to one
another, do so in even, quiet
tones. Avoid sudden movements.
Make eye contact only if the
encountered being attempts to make
it with you.
EXT. CREVASSE WITHIN THE CRATER - MOMENTS LATER
The two trios clamber from their tilted, parked vehicles to the uneven floor of the crevasse. They breathe steam into the cold morning air.
LO-CHEUN
(to Sven)
This is where you touched down
before?
SVEN
Yeah. Almost exactly.
KENNETH
Look.
91.
Kenneth points to the ground: a camouflaged serpent with six legs lies upon the brown rock.
Lo-Cheun and Zria withdraw their springblades. Kenneth nudges the serpent with the toe of his boot, TAP.
KENNETH (CONT'D)
Another sculpture.
The group, wary but curious, approaches the six-legged snake.
ABACUS
(whispered; to Kenneth)
You’re like a hawk.
KENNETH
(whispered)
I used to go hunting with my uncle--
you develop an eye for anomalies.
ABACUS
(whispered)
Hunting? Living things?
KENNETH
(whispered)
Yeah. And we’d eat them too.
ABACUS
(whispered)
Like a Neanderthal? The gore
running down your chins while you
bay at the moon?
LO-CHEUN
Be quiet.
Lo-Cheun points his gray index finger up ahead.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
Another one.
The party looks at the indicated spot; a second six-legged serpent made of stone lies fifty feet ahead of them.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
Leave the statues undisturbed;
we’ll follow them. Bjorlsson
takes the lead, since he’s their
pal.
SVEN
It’s Sven.
92.
Lo-Cheun prompts him with a pointed finger; Sven walks toward the next six-legged statue.
The group files in behind the young Swede; Lo-Cheun followed by Jesca, Abacus, Kenneth and finally Zria. They walk up the narrowing crevasse.
LO-CHEUN
(to Jesca)
Any thoughts?
JESCA
They are engaging with us visually, so possibly they are a deaf or
simply nonverbal species.
With her right index finger, the anthropologist TAPS the tip of her sharp chin.
JESCA (CONT'D)
Shaping stone with this degree of
artfulness implies some degree of
sophistication, and- likely- a
knowledge of basic tools.
LO-CHEUN
What is the possibility that this
is a trap? That these statues are
lures?
JESCA
It’s possible.
Not comforted by this last exchange, the rendezvous party continues up the crevasse, stepping around the largest stones as they stride toward the second six-legged serpent. (The far statue is perched upon an upthrust rock.) EXT. CREVASSE WITHIN THE CRATER - LATER
The white sun has risen higher in the sky, and though no direct sunlight penetrates the crevasse, each person’s perspiration-darkened bodysuit attests to the advent of an Option-1 afternoon.
Sven walks beside a six-legged stone serpent, shaking his head. He points up ahead: in four-hundred feet the two walls of the narrowing crevasse join together.
SVEN
The defile ends there...and I don’t see another sculpt-93.
A low RUMBLE interrupts the Swede’s statement; a few loose stones tumble down the western wall, CLACKING upon the pebble-and-sediment defile floor. Zria raises her j-gun; Kenneth fingers the safety on his springblade, CLICK.
Lo-Cheun TAPS his earplug.
LO-CHEUN
Armadillo-3, prepare to swoop.
Kenneth points to a spot on the ground just before the western wall: resting near the vertical surface is a detailed sixclaw wrought in white stone.
KENNETH
Over there. Another-
Darkness spreads down the crevasse wall: a panel of stone sinks into the ground, revealing a portal twelve feet wide and fourteen feet tall.
The rendezvous party stares at the dark passage in silence.
ABACUS
(whispered)
Do you...do you see how big that
is...?
Three six-legged serpents emerge from the darkness, writhing like snakes across the stony floor of the crevasse. Zria and Kenneth finger their downward-pointed armaments.
LO-CHEUN
Do not point your weapons unless
Jesca or I give the order.
The serpents widely circumnavigate the party. An EERIE
WHISTLE comes from within the darkness of the door, two discordant pitches. The serpents writhe back to the western wall and there attach themselves with sticky toes; they scale the vertical surface and ingress the fourteen-foot tall portal.
JESCA
I think we’re supposed to follow
them inside.
LO-CHEUN
Can we shine a light in there?
94.
JESCA
That might be construed as hostile.
Especially if they live in
darkness.
LO-CHEUN
Zria. Put in a thermal.
Zria resets the safety on her j-gun (CLICK) and clips it to her hipcache (SNAKT). She slides a small vial from her belt, SNAPS it in two and with her index finger, withdraws a green contact lens from the top half. She places the concave disk in her right eye, and- with the bottom half of the vial-sprays saline mist atop it.
Sven, Abacus, Kenneth, Lo-Cheun and Jesca glance at the Indian woman. She shuts her left eye and peers into the darkness with her optically-enhanced right pupil.
Zria’s breath catches; her hand slowly reaches for her j-gun.
Sven pales; Abacus shakes his head; Kenneth looks back and forth between Lo-Cheun and the doorway; Jesca and Lo-Cheun stare into the darkness. Zria unclips her gun but does not raise it.
ZRIA
They’re watching us.
LO-CHEUN
How many?
ZRIA
At least three. They’re-
Zria cuts herself short and (involuntarily) steps back.
ZRIA (CONT'D)
One’s coming.
All eyes are focused on the aperture. The sound of rolling pebbles (POP, POP, POP) and shifting grit (SHZ-SHZ) sounds from within.
Into the crevasse steps a glistening, gray-skinned eleven-foot tall being, roughly human in shape, though asymmetrical.
The stunned party stares at the towering humanoid.
The creature’s squat head juts like a hump from its right shoulder; its nearly featureless cranium is only distinguished by two holes (themselves resembling empty eye-sockets). Jutting from its left shoulder are three “bowls”; 95.
they stand on their edges, pointing outward like satellite dishes; each is a quarter the size of the head.
The creature’s two arms are of different lengths: the one below the head (the right) is eight feet long and nearly touches the ground; the left arm is half as long but much heavier. Both appendages terminate in a cluster of white skeletal fingers-- nine on the right and seven on the left; the final segment of each digit is a curved talon. The creature’s long thin legs bend backwards like those of a flamingo and terminate in skeletal feet. (The creature appears sexless.)
The humanoid- its dark eye sockets trained on Sven- strides forward on its taloned toes, CLACK, CLACK, CLACK. The young Swede is terrified.
LO-CHEUN
Statues. Everyone.
The desire to run away and the urge to strangle Lo-Cheun war within Sven, yet he remains still.
The humanoid stops and stands over the young Swede; Zria keeps her weapon down but points her lensring at the duo, capturing the historic moment.
With its nine huge skeletal fingers, the humanoid seizes Sven’s head. Abacus looks away; Kenneth mouths the word
‘no’; Zria and Lo-Cheun stare into the creature’s eye sockets, gripping- though not raising- their weapons; Jesca puts her hand over her mouth.
The tableau darkens: Armadillo-3 hovers overhead.
The humanoid lifts Sven up and (effortlessly) tosses him toward the doorway; the young man soars twelve feet and lands on his outstretched hands and knees, directly in front of the open portal, THUD; he suppresses his pain with a GRUNT.
On its nine-toed skeletal feet, the humanoid turns back, walks past Sven (CLACK, CLACK...) and ingresses the doorway.
The gray, lopsided, glistening giant disappears into the darkness.
Sven stands up, wipes his bloody palms on his bodysuit and faces the party.
SVEN
I think...I think th-that was...an
invitation.
JESCA
I concur.
96.
LO-CHEUN
We follow it inside.
(to Jesca)
It came outside. Can we use
lights?
JESCA
Yes, but just one for now...and
don’t shine it in their eyes.
The party files up behind the Swede. Zria, using her thermal, peers inside.
ZRIA
They just disappeared. Looks like
the cave slopes down.
Lo-Cheun walks up to Sven.
LO-CHEUN
You okay to continue?
Sven nods. Lo-Cheun reaches to Sven’s belt and CLIPS on a small button-light. The Chinese man CLICKS the clear hemisphere on; a dagger of blue luminance shines into the darkness ahead.
Lo-Cheun points into the doorway. Sven leads the rendezvous party inside.
INT. RAMPED HALLWAY - SAME
The sextet moves down the gradually sloping hallway; the light from outside diminishes as they ingress.
ABACUS
(looking up)
Zria. You see those?
Abacus points to the ceiling, upon which scramble barely-discernible serpentine shapes. Zria tilts her head back and squints her right eye.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
What color are their thermal
images?
SVEN
Blue and violet.
97.
ABACUS
Cold-blooded.
(to Zria)
And the big ones earlier?
ZRIA
Mostly orange. Some red.
Upon foam-soled boots, the sextet continues inside; the passage gradually curves away from the light...into heavy darkness. The dim CLACKS of the humanoids’ toe talons report from the black.
LO-CHEUN
Zria, light on.
Zria CLICKS on her button-light: the tightly focused beam darts up the passage, past the throw of Sven’s light, onto the three gray escorts two-hundred feet ahead.
The humanoids- seemingly unmindful of their human followers-stride down the cavern, their lopsided gait consistent and quick. A moment later, they disappear around a corner.
The sextet presses on. Sven’s breath steams before him.
SVEN
It’s cooler down here.
Abacus wipes moisture from his face.
ABACUS
And wetter.
LO-CHEUN
Bullets. Ready for an ambush.
Zria unfastens her j-gun; Kenneth withdraws his springblade; Lo-Cheun fingers his skull-embossed coilgun.
INT. CORKSCREWING PASSAGE - SAME
Bullets first, the sextet enters the curved and declining passage. The Chinese man surveys the area for a moment, then points forward.
LO-CHEUN
Bjorlsson, back up front.
Sven walks past the Bullets to take the lead, his button-light divining the ever-curving hall ahead.
98.
The wary party strides down the winding passage, their SHUFFLING footsteps reverberating.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
(to Jesca)
Could this passage possibly be
natural?
JESCA
Very, very unlikely.
ABACUS
I’d bet one month’s carrot paste
they scraped this away with those
giant claws of theirs. You see
those things?
The sextet continues down the spiraling passage; Sven and Zria’s lights are two thin blades of luminance thrust into the heavy ink all around them.
JESCA
Point one of your lights to the
ceiling.
Sven plucks the button-light from his belt and aims it up: carved into the dark gray stone is a relief image, a very detailed scrollwork of trees with enormous leaves, coiled tentacles and strange spiky fruit. Jesca points her lensring at the images.
LO-CHEUN
We don’t want to lose our hosts.
Go.
The young Swede reattaches the button-light to his belt and continues forward. He pauses for a moment and squints.
SVEN
I think I see a light up ahead.
LO-CHEUN
Statues. Lights off.
The party stops; Sven CLICKS off his light; Zria CLICKS off hers. A weak green glow shines beyond the bend.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
Lights on and forward.
Zria and Sven CLICK their lights back on and continue down.
99.
INT. PLATFORM / ENTRANCE - SAME
The rendezvous party emerges from the downward-corkscrewing passage into an oval-shaped room. A thirty-foot-wide portal stands before them, its edges delineated by an ornate frame.
Steam- illuminated by the green light beyond- billows forth.
Zria points her light at the frame: wrought in exquisite detail within the stone are the same strange trees with giant leaves, coiled tentacles and spiky fruit. Climbing the trees are the lopsided humanoids-- tiny specks upon massive arboreal pillars.
Sven looks through a pocket in the roiling vapors.
SVEN
There’s a ledge.
INT. THE LEDGE - SAME
Lit by the dim green glow, Sven walks near the edge of the ledge and looks at the vista laid before him. One thousand feet below- in the center of an underground cavern so large that none of its far walls are even visible- is a city carved in stone, illuminated by glowing green rivers that branch throughout it like luminous veins. Steam hangs over the vast territory; blue sparks flash intermittently within the buildings and the streets.
Zria, Lo-Cheun, Jesca, Kenneth and Abacus join Sven and momentarily marvel at the subterranean metropolis of lumpy buildings, indirect pathways and winding bridges. Tall trees sculpted in stone stand in clusters-- mock forests.
Sven points to the left side of the ledge: a massive ramp cut into the wall curves down to the city below. Upon it, ever-diminishing, are the three lop-sided sculptors.
SVEN
Let’s keep up-- I’d rather not be
hurled across this distance.
Lo-Cheun takes his earplug out of his right ear and tucks it inside his hipcache.
ZRIA
Your signal’s dead?
LO-CHEUN
Yeah, for a while. Yours?
100.
ZRIA
Dead.
The sextet walks toward the ramp hewn into the wall: there is no railing.
INT. PERIMETER OUTSIDE THE SCULPTORS’ METROPOLIS - LATER
The human party steps from the ramp onto the smooth cavern floor; all of them are lathered in sweat and rubbing their legs; Abacus and Jesca are GASPING. The exhausted Bio glances wearily at the path he just descended.
ABACUS
I’m...I’m g-gonna need a mule for
the trip back.
(panting)
A...a genetically-engineered
supermule.
Zria passes her water to Abacus. Kenneth gives his to Sven; Lo-Cheun gives his to Jesca. The Blues and the Bio drink from the Bullet’s supply.
ZRIA
(to Abacus)
It’s got vitamins and water
retainers-- you need less than you
think.
ABACUS
No. I need more-
(he GASPS)
-than you can imagine.
Sven swallows his water and looks at the three hosts; the tall gray sculptors enter the city. Kenneth, wiping sweat from his face, looks at his watch; he is alarmed with what he sees.
KENNETH
We need to get back before the suns set-- we’re not at all equipped for twenty-five below.
ABACUS
I’d bet all of our lives- and two
months’ cereal paste- that it
doesn’t get anywhere near twenty-
five below down here. The
sculptors are warmblooded and I
think this space-
(MORE)
101.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
(he gestures to the
cavern)
-this space is enclosed and filled
with enough warm steam to be
climate-controlled. Relatively.
Lo-Cheun considers Abacus’ theory.
LO-CHEUN
What does the anthropologist think?
JESCA
I agree with him: this cavern is
exactly the kind of environment
Thakani hoped we’d find.
LO-CHEUN
Don’t say that woman’s name.
Jesca fidgets uneasily.
JESCA
Well, this is what we were all
hoping for: I think we should
continue. Also- if we turn back-
there’s a fair chance the sculptors will become hostile.
Lo-Cheun looks at the descending hosts and nods.
INT. THE SCULPTORS’ METROPOLIS / CENTRAL AVENUE - LATER
The sextet traverses a flat (albeit eccentrically curved) walkway in-between the lumpy stone buildings of the city.
Jesca eyes the water-illumined engravings of spirals, gigantic trees, squidfish, walking serpents, burning trees, sculptors hunting sixclaws, fur-covered sculptors and spiky fruit.
JESCA
(to Abacus)
Any guesses on this glowing water?
Abacus, weary and pained, is drawn out of his brooding. He looks at the running water.
ABACUS
Could be an element unique to
Option-1 or a photo-reactive
isotope. Maybe it’s a luminescent
life-form akin to dino-flagellets.
Abacus rubs a cramp in his side.
102.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
I’ll take a sample if they ever
stop the deathwalk.
INT. THE SCULPTORS’ METROPOLIS / BRIDGE - LATER
The group walks across a narrow bridge arched over a luminous river. Sven observes his warm exhalations turn to steam almost the moment they escape him; he shivers.
SVEN
Getting colder.
Ahead of the sextet, the three lopsided sculptors walk into a copse made of faux trees carved from stone; each replica is one-hundred-and-ninety feet tall and burgeoning with spiky fruit and corkscrewing tentacles.
INT. THE GROUNDS OUTSIDE THE HOUSE OF TOWERS - LATER
The three escorting sculptors stand in the doorway of a massive lumpy building wrought in rock. The enormous edifice is surmounted by seventeen tall towers, each of which has stone whorls, leaves and drippings protruding from its surface.
JESCA
Our escorts appear to be sentries.
ABACUS
Or attack dogs.
Sven, frowning at Abacus’ remark, leads his group toward the guarded ellipsoidal opening.
Without warning, the sculptor sentries rush the human party.
They shove Lo-Cheun, Zria, Jesca, Abacus and Kenneth; all five stumble and fall onto their backs or buttocks, FWUMP-FWUMP-THUD-THWACK-FWUMP.
Sven is the only one still standing. He looks into the inscrutable eye sockets of the sculptors, but can glean nothing.
JESCA
(to Sven)
They want you. Alone.
Two EERIE NOTES sound from within the cyclopean edifice.
103.
SVEN
(to Abacus)
If I don’t return, tell Mlissa...
tell her I should have listened to
her.
ABACUS
No. Make sure you get out of
there.
KENNETH
Be careful.
Sven nods, fills his lungs with cool air and walks toward the hemicircular entrance.
INT. “ANTEROOM” / HOUSE OF TOWERS - SAME
Sven walks inside the “anteroom,” a curvilinear enclosure shaped like a painter’s palette. In the center of the space sits a kidney-shaped well filled with viridescent water.
Two EERIE NOTES sound from the ellipsoidal portal on the opposite side of the room; the ugly pitches garner Sven’s attention. He walks past the well- itself filled with swimming squidfish- toward the egress.
INT. HIGH HALL / HOUSE OF TOWERS - SAME
Sven enters the high hall; manifold holes in the wall and floor admit steam into the room. Opposite the entrance, Sven descries two sets of ascending ramps, one to the left, the other to the right; luminous green water runs down the elaborate spirals engraved into the inclining floors.
SVEN
(calling out)
Which way? Where do I go...?
The young man exhales, shakes his head and- with an irritated SNORT- traverses the room.
Two EERIE NOTES sound; Sven looks at the stairway on his right and begins to walk up it; the orange soles of his blue boots SPLISH in the gently-flowing water.
INT. UPPER CHAMBER / HOUSE OF TOWERS - SAME
The large room has seven irregular windows and is covered-over by an ornate dome.
104.
Luminous water TRICKLES from five holes in the ceiling, down into five perforated urns from which myriad luminous spokes of water arc...liquid chandeliers.
Sven enters; he squints while his dilated eyes slowly adjust to the increased light.
Eleven towering SCULPTORS stand on the far side of the room; a flower-shaped tub wrought in stone sprouts from the floor immediately before them. The humanoids squat heads (perched atop their right shoulders) all face Sven; unlike the sentries, their gray skin is erratically flecked with white spots.
Sven remains completely still.
One of the sculptors reaches into the flower-shaped tub, withdraws a live six-legged serpent and places its head into the third (outermost) vertical ‘bowl’ on its left shoulder.
The writhing white snake is SUCKED inside the aperture. A wet CRUNCH followed by a loud POP echoes in the space.
Two other Sculptors pluck serpents from the tub and SUCK them down, CRUNCHING and POPPING them with their internal mouths.
The largest sculptor walks toward Sven. The TALL ONE is covered with white blemishes, particularly around its eye sockets, elbows and knees. The sculptor sounds two EERIE
PITCHES; Sven looks at the outward-facing, fiber-covered first bowl on its left shoulder.
SVEN
Uh...hello...?
The Tall One turns from Sven and walks (on CLACKING, taloned toes) toward an ellipsoidal opening on the right side of the room. Sven follows, giving one last glance back at the other sculptors: one rips a living sixclaw in half with its bare hands, CRAWCK-CHK-K-K.
INT. STATUE ROOM - SAME
Sven warily follows his host inside. He examines the room: the walls support numerous shelves, each covered with small statues: sculptors, sixclaws, squidfish, trees, spiky fruit and less identifiable subjects. In the center of the floor is a miniature city, wrought from stone.
The Tall One roughly grabs the Swede’s right hand, CRACK, CRACK; Sven SHRIEKS.
105.
The Tall One releases Sven. The young Swede, grimacing in pain, glances up at his assailant: the sculptor looks down at him with inscrutable black eye sockets.
SVEN
It’s...it’s okay...
The Tall One turns away from Sven, goes over to the wall and from it- with a tattoo of CLICKING talons- withdraws two statues: one is of a human, the other is of a sculptor.
Perspiration beads upon Sven’s pale face; he grips his hurt digits but refuses to visually assess the damage.
The Tall One strides beside the miniature city, stops and faces its guest; Sven is still on the far side of the room.
From the innermost, outward-facing bowl emerge two EERIE
NOTES. Sven shudders at the sound.
SVEN (CONT'D)
Okay, okay.
Trembling, nauseated and very frightened, Sven walks forward.
The Tall One places the small sculptor statue atop a seventeen-towered building within the miniature city.
SVEN (CONT'D)
(nodding)
That’s you-
(he gestures broadly)
-and this place.
The Tall One moves the miniature around the perimeter of the sculptors’ metropolis.
SVEN (CONT'D)
Your territory.
The Tall One rests the sculptor-statue down, atop the miniature replica of the house of towers.
SVEN (CONT'D)
I underst-
A flurry of blue sparks cuts Sven short; the Tall One’s fingers hastily carve into the stone, (KVV-KVV-KVV), the sharp, crystalline talons divining a lump from the unscathed ground.
The sculptor blows air out of its first bowl- SHOOSH-clearing grit off of the new sculpture: the miniature is of a lopsided house.
106.
The Tall One raises the human-shaped sculpture. Sven touches the statue of himself and then his own chest, nodding.
SVEN (CONT'D)
Me.
The sculptor hits Sven’s shoulder with the statue, THWAP; Sven bites his lower lip.
SVEN (CONT'D)
(restraining his anger)
Yes. Yes...I understand.
The Tall One takes the human statue and places is to the left of the sculptors’ metropolis...atop the new house in the empty area.
SVEN (CONT'D)
I understa-
The Tall One walks out of the room.
For the first time since he cried out, Sven looks at his right hand: the pinky and ring finger are broken, sideways.
He averts his eyes the moment he realizes what he is looking at.
From outside come two EERIE NOTES.
SVEN (CONT'D)
(muttered)
Impatient bastards.
CUT TO:
INT. THE GROUNDS OUTSIDE THE HOUSE OF TOWERS - MOMENTS LATER
Lo-Cheun, Zria, Kenneth, Abacus (holding a cylinder with glowing water) and Jesca (writing in a spiral) are being watched by more than ninety SCULPTORS, some of which are covered with silver fur. The humans are all shivering.
ABACUS
That one too-
Abacus nods to a SHORT SCULPTOR (eight feet tall); Jesca looks at the indicated humanoid; silver fur sprouts from out of its bald gray skin, covering its torso and its long right arm in mere seconds.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
Retractable fur.
107.
Sven, holding his damaged right hand, emerges from the building; Kenneth sees him first.
KENNETH
(grinning)
Sven’s back.
The party faces the young Swede.
ABACUS
(quietly; to Kenneth)
You owe me three week’s mint rinse.
LO-CHEUN
(to Sven)
Report.
SVEN
I’m pretty sure that they think
whoever is the tallest is the
leader. That’s how they seem to
function, at least. And- unless I
wildly misinterpreted them-
Sven points his left index finger at the raised area beyond the eastern edge of the city.
SVEN (CONT'D)
-we can build our homes over there.
The faces of Zria, Jesca, Kenneth and Abacus enliven with joy.
Lo-Cheun turns away from the group and- for the first time since his wife’s passing- begins to WEEP.
Titlecard: Nine Days Later
INT. INTESTINE CHAMBER #3 - MORNING (OPTION-1-STANDARD) Thick, gray, pulsating tubes hang like drying laundry from the ceiling; in the corner of the room dangles a cluster of blackened, swollen intestines. Two FEMALE BIOS in sterile body wraps stand atop a ladder, examining the darkened tissue with white-gloved hands.
FEMALE BIO
The tumor’s growing. In another
week we’ll need to isolate this
chamber too.
108.
INT. MULTISTAR COUNCIL ROOM - MORNING
Graynose looks at the gathered Seniors; the room is filled with tension and distressed visages.
GRAYNOSE
I’ll make the announcement today.
HECTOR
So we’re trusting these...things?
These sculptors?
GRAYNOSE
It’s either this or move on.
Graynose eyes the council members.
INT. GLASS-DOMED AMPHITHEATER - AFTERNOON (OPTION-1-STANDARD) The enclosure is filled with excited viewers. The panorama screen displays the crevasse, the sculptors’ metropolis (blue sparks igniting at random), a group of sculptors walking across a bridge, the dual suns and the amphitheater itself.
(The subterranean shots are all labelled with the words
‘recorded earlier.’)
All of the images are abruptly squeezed to the edges of the screen, marginalized to accommodate a full-shot of Graynose.
GRAYNOSE
The proposed seven-day-search for
additional craters on Option-1 has
ended, with no new findings. We
currently believe that the
sculptors’ meteor-wrought
environment is unique.
Graynose lets his words hang heavily in the auditorium.
Mlissa, seated with Sven (his hurt fingers splinted), Abacus and Kenneth in the second row, shakes her head. The crowd is silent, expectant.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
We now proceed with Phase-2. We
start building tomorrow.
The proclamation divides the audience: some CALL OUT angrily, a few CLAP and the remainder sit silently (including Sven, Mlissa, Abacus and Kenneth) awaiting more information.
109.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
I must stress this caveat: though
the sculptors number far fewer than us- we estimate no more than four
hundred exist- it is imperative
that we remain allied with them.
Even if you feel directly
threatened by these beings, you are not permitted to defend yourself,
unless given permission by a
Senior.
Graynose lets his word hang; the panorama is dominated by the image of two sculptors carving into stone with their talons.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
Our plan is to settle the three-
mile area allotted to us and then
expand further into the mantle of
the planet, geology permitting.
What portion of humanity remains on Option-1 and what portion returns
to Elysabeth’s vaults- and then
with her into space- will be
determined once we’ve settled.
Graynose lets his plan settle within the minds of the audience. Abacus leans over to Sven.
ABACUS
You can have my space in monster
city if you want it.
INT. INFIRMIRY / SOLITARY CELL - SAME
Thakani lies upon a white-foam bed, locked inside a narrow turquoise room. Her face is swollen and purple; her right eye is blood-red; blue temporary-teeth replace her missing top set; her broken nose is tightly-clamped by steel braces.
She watches the small screen hanging at an angle from the ceiling.
GRAYNOSE
Elysabeth’s health is declining: we need to move quickly toward all
long-term decisions so that she
might shut down and heal for future journeys. Automuscle drivers,
Bullets and craftsmen will be in
constant rotation. Let’s make a
new home for ourselves.
110.
Thakani smiles, tears filling her eyes.
THAKANI
Thank you, Jesus.
INT. RAMPED HALLWAY - MORNING
Three people work within the sloped passage-- the Arabic Man, Rectangle and a BANGLADESHI WOMAN. By the light of a glowing sphere affixed to a wall, the two men open a foam crate labelled, “u-transmitter”.
The duo carefully withdraws and then unwraps a very heavy u-shaped tube of steel from which jut three coiled antennas.
GRUNTING and straining, the two men set the u-transmitter on the ground with a loud CLUNK.
The Bangladeshi Woman walks toward a swollen, eight-foot tall gray ‘body’ prostrated face-down on the floor, its arms outstretched, ready for crucifixion. The woman kneels within its back, slides her arms and legs inside the corresponding apertures and ultimately lies flush within it. She wriggles for a moment and then- enveloped by the Fleischwerk AUTOMUSCLE- rises.
The Arabic Man and Rectangle clear away from the u-transmitter.
Upright, the automuscle resembles a bulbous 1960s astronaut, wrought out of Fleischwerk and covered with veins; five human eyes and three powerscopes observe from the front and sides of its head; a speaker sits where a mouth would be. The torso is peppered with button-lights (the orange ones currently blink) and small ‘shelves’; each arm terminates with a thick ‘mitten,’ and outlined within each mitten is a small hand.
The Bangladeshi fluidly walks the automuscle to the u-transmitter and with the mittens, lifts the heavy steel device as easily as if she were cupping air. With the optics of the automuscle, the woman inside inspects the transmitter.
BANGLADESHI WOMAN
(through the speaker)
You’re supposed to remove this
piece.
The hand within the right mitten emerges, closes its thumb and index finger on a piece of orange plastic jutting from the u-transmitter and SNAPS it off.
111.
INT. CORKSCREWING PASSAGE - SAME
A u-transmitter juts from the wall of the cavern, its green light slowly pulsing.
INT. THE HUMAN PLATEAU - DAY
The human plateau is raised relative to the sculptors’ dug-in metropolis; luminous water runs irregularly over the rise, into the city below. Thirty Bluebranch BUILDERS (men and women of varying races) inhabit the territory: five operate automuscles, two drive flypods and the rest labor with power tools. Nine BULLETS stand at the edge of the rise, looking down at the sculptors domain.
Florida TAPS his earplug.
FLORIDA
Armadillo-6, this is Florida.
Receiving?
The Native American grins.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
You too. Clear as if you were
right next to me.
An automuscle carrying sixteen metal rods (operated by a BLACK WOMAN) walks by the Senior.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
Transmitters are up.
The automuscle operator pauses.
BLACK WOMAN
Order some Chinese food. Egg foo
yung, lo mein, whatever-- as long
as it’s got shrimp and roast pork.
FLORIDA
Well...I think they’ve got some
General Tso’s protein paste up in
orbit.
The woman departs.
The Bullet Senior returns his gaze to the sculptor’s city.
At the perimeter of the metropolis, upon the tallest towers, stand twenty-six sculptors. EERIE PITCHES sound from the watchers, yet they remain still.
112.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
Osiyo!
Florida waves at the sculptors.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
Osiyo! Hello!
The sculptors do not in any way acknowledge his gesture.
An IRISHMAN operating an automuscle carries a nine-foot cubical crate across the plateau, SPLASHING in the luminous fluid. The moment the Fleischwerk contacts the glowing water, the green radiance diminishes.
The darkened water runs from the raised human plateau toward the sculptors’ metropolis.
Titlecard: Three Days Later
INT. THE SCULPTORS’ METROPOLIS - DAY
Jesca, her ASSISTANT- a young white man with African masks tattooed on his left cheek and two blue stars on his chest-and Zria climb out of a Flypod parked at the perimeter of the steamy metropolis.
JESCA
Over there.
The anthropologist Senior points to an area adjacent to the city. From the darkness beyond, a lone sculptor rises. It scrapes its claws against the stone (eliciting blue sparks), sings an eerie TONE and turns around.
The trio walks toward the escort.
INT. THE WINDING CRACK - LATER
Lathered with sweat, Jesca, her Assistant and Zria walk down the curvilinear defile; the passage twists like a drunken serpent. Thin runnels carved into the floor channel the water that illuminates the elaborately-engraved environs.
Button lights illuminate the walls: they are covered with giant trees (bearing spiky fruit and tentacles), innumerable sculptors and vast sculptor metropolises.
113.
JESCA
This area likely depicts their
halcyon period.
INT. THE WINDING CRACK - MOMENTS LATER
The trio wends through the defile, the luminous water and their button-lights shining upon the wall engravings: the sculptors, trees and metropolises are on fire; the sky is filled with smoke.
INT. THE WINDING CRACK - MOMENTS LATER
The trio continues forward, eyes and lights surveying the surfaces of both walls. Within Jesca’s circle of luminance is the image of a sculptor holding a dead sculptor infant in the air.
JESCA
Let’s slow our pace-- this is where Tim and I left off yesterday.
Jesca and Tim turn on their lensrings and point them at the walls.
ZRIA
You think all of this says
something meaningful?
JESCA
I think it’s their history-- or
what they believe to be their
history: I doubt they are developed enough for purely fictitious
pursuits.
ZRIA
Why put it down here-- ran out of
space in their city?
JESCA
Yes-- the surfaces there are
completely covered. I wouldn’t be
surprised to learn that they dug
this defile by hand solely to make
a massive slate for new carvings.
Jesca points her button-light at the wall: the image is of pile of sculptors with swollen bellies lying on the ground.
114.
ZRIA
They’re pregnant? Dead?
JESCA
Both, I think.
The group walks forward. Button-lights illuminate etchings of charnel pits within which infants and pregnant sculptors are piled.
JESCA (CONT'D)
It looks like their world was
overheating-- they were dying off
and- maybe because of solar
radiation- they became barren or
unable to carry infants to term.
These might be the last of their
kind in existence.
Zria looks at an engraving of a dead sculptor infant: wavy lines rise from its bowls; dripping fluid runs from its eye sockets.
ZRIA
How’d they get here-- they don’t
seem advanced enough for space
travel.
JESCA
They aren’t.
Jesca shines her button-light on the wall ahead: carved into the steep high wall is an image of outer space: stars, moons, planets and far off nebulas.
Titlecard: Six Days Later
INT. THE HUMAN PLATEAU - DAY
Seventy sweating PEOPLE- many of them shirtless- work on the human plateau. The steel foundations for twelve buildings have been moored into the ground; orange hemispheres (Fleischwerk-run gridbots) scuttle up and down the bones of the future human habitats, drilling rivets.
Eleven people in automuscles carry metal supports from the back of a parked hover-van. The water that the Fleischwerk drones occasionally SPLASH through radiates very little light. (Artificial human spheres brightly illumine the work area.)
115.
Nine BULLETS stand along the plateau edge, amongst them Kenneth and Zria. An automuscle approaches the duo, drops to its knees and flops forward, THWAP. Sven withdraws himself from its back. The young Swede wears light-blue shorts (decorated with two stars), an undershirt and foam-soled socks; he is glazed with sweat.
Sven and Zria bow twenty degrees; Kenneth bows thirty. They stand. Zria turns back to face the sculptors’ city.
KENNETH
Congratulations on the second star.
SVEN
You should’ve gotten one too. We
risked our lives to make this
happen.
KENNETH
Lo-Cheun said I talked too much--
it disturbed his thinking.
SVEN
He’s a real charmer, that-
A loud, disharmonic chorus of EERIE NOTES reverberates in the massive cavern. The Bullets stand at attention; the builders stop their activities.
Zria, Kenneth and Sven look at the metropolis below. The distant blank faces of sculptors stare up at them; the EERIE
NOTES continue, unabated.
One hundred yards north of Zria, five SCULPTORS clamber onto the human plateau. The Bullets before the humanoids hold their position, wary. Zria TAPS her earplug.
ZRIA
Ready, but do not raise.
(to Kenneth)
Let’s go.
Zria and Kenneth CLICK off their j-gun safeties and calmly (albeit quickly) stride toward their comrades.
ZRIA (CONT'D)
Florida. Get to the border. Five
neighbors. Maybe hostile.
Mere yards away from the line of Bullets, the five advancing sculptors stop; they peer down at the humans from inscrutable black eye sockets.
116.
The humanoids WAIL, blaring discordant pitches through the first mesh-covered bowls on their left shoulders. The Bullets wince at the explosive noise.
Zria and Kenneth join their comrades; Sven and every other human stares fixedly at the opposing forces.
From over the edge come two more sculptors; each carrying the inert body of another sculptor. Fifty yards away, Sven shakes his head.
The two humanoid burdens are laid upon the ground. Zria looks at the prostrated sculptors: their skin has become flaccid and white and is covered with hives. From the third bowls atop the sick ones’ shoulders, ochre ichor leaks. They WHEEZE terrible pitches.
The foremost healthy sculptor reaches into a slit in its own belly. The Bullets become even more agitated.
ZRIA (CONT'D)
Hold.
The sculptor withdraws two human statues from its inner pouch. The eleven-foot tall humanoid gently places the human icons upon the rising and falling, hive-covered chests of the sick ones.
ZRIA (CONT'D)
They’re saying we did this-- that
we made those two sick.
Two hundred yards away, Sven runs; he SPLASHES through luminous water toward a parked hover-van.
ZRIA (CONT'D)
Warning shots only. Florida get
over here. And get an anthro as qu-On long, backward-bending legs, the sculptors descend upon the human front line.
The Bullets fire warning shots over their heads, CH-CHAK, CH-CHAK, CH-CHAK. The sculptors are not deterred.
The foremost attacker sweeps its overlong right arm in a wide arc; its nine claws open and eviscerate three Bullets.
ZRIA (CONT'D)
180!
The Bullets turn to run; talon-tipped fingers rake the face of a fleeing JAPANESE BULLET; his skin falls away like loosened orange peel.
117.
ZRIA (CONT'D)
Do we have Killcall? Goddammit, do we-A ONE-ARMED SCULPTOR swings its lone hand at Zria; she ducks the blow and rolls away.
Nine talons penetrate the face of a SHOUTING ARAB BULLET, the points emerging from the rear of his head.
ZRIA (CONT'D)
Goddammit Florida, give us
Killcall!
The One-Armed Sculptor swings its claw at Zria; she rolls toward her assailant; the swung claws elicit blue sparks from the stone of the plateau.
ZRIA (CONT'D)
We’ve got five empty Bullets! Give us-A sculptor’s foot SLAMS into Zria’s head and flattens it against the stone, CRWUNCH; gore and pulp erupts between the sculptors’ nine skeletal toes.
Kenneth and the Australian Bullet retreat; a sculptor notices and lunges after them.
More than three-hundred yards off, Florida and ten BULLETS
beeline through the construction site, past horrified human bystanders, toward the sculptors.
FLORIDA
Warning shots!
The Bullets point j-guns in the air, CH-CHAK, CH-CHAK, CH-CHAK, CH-CHAK, CH-CHAK. The sculptors take no notice; another Bullet is disembowelled; the man SHRIEKS.
Sven pilots the hover-van toward Kenneth and the Australian: the duo runs from a bounding sculptor. The Swede diminishes the lift; the craft descends.
Kenneth sees the hover-van.
KENNETH
Sven!
Sven points to the opening hatch at the rear of the truck-sized craft; Kenneth nods.
118.
The sculptor sweeps its hand around in an arc; its talons rip the calf muscle out of Kenneth’s left leg; he YELLS and SMASHES facefirst to the ground. A heavy foot flattens his abdomen: gore bursts in a torrent form his open mouth.
The Australian Bullet spins and points his j-gun at the sculptor; the gun is knocked down by a sweeping claw. The sculptor grabs the man by the neck and flings him into the hover-van’s luminous hull-booster; the Bullet’s head disintegrates inside the jet, SHZZZZZ.
The Australian man, headless, falls to and SLAMS upon the plateau.
Within the pilot seat of the hover-van, Sven SHOUTS in fury and futility, his despairing cries inaudible outside the airtight cabin. He looks at Kenneth’s killer and steers the hover-van directly toward the gore-drenched sculptor.
Florida TAPS his earplug.
FLORIDA
Bjorlsson! Don’t. You do not have Killcall.
Sven stops the descending craft; his string of curses are muted within the sealed craft; he pounds the console with his clenched left fist.
Florida gauges the hastily advancing sculptors.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
Coilguns!
The Bullets switch their j-guns for blue coilguns. They train their weapons on the seven approaching sculptors and press the yellow shoot arrows: a flurry of speeding coils fly toward the onrushing humanoids, FWITFWITFWITFWITFWITFWIT.
Two or three metal spirals strike and corkscrew into the gray skin of each sculptors’ chest. The advancing creatures do not even notice.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
Make sure you’re grounded.
The Bullets check their footing; a few step up onto dry stones.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
Spark!
119.
The Bullets press their spark buttons, eleven typewriter CLICKS. The embedded coils flash; the sculptors’ WAIL awful tones but continue forward.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
J-guns! Legs only.
The Bullets switch their coilguns for j-guns and fire at the sculptors’ flamingo-like legs, CH-CHACK,CH-CHAK,CH-CHAK.
The long appendages of the seven humanoids are blown apart by the barrage of j-gun fire. The sculptors collapse upon the stone, red blood running from their shorn legs.
From beyond the rim of the plateau come twenty-two SCULPTORS.
Florida shakes his head despairingly.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
(muttered)
U nay klah nah hey.
(to the Bullets)
Hold. For now.
The humans watch the humanoids advance to their writhing, WAILING, legless brethren. The sculptors do not advance past that position.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
Point your weapons but do not fire.
They now understand what j-guns can do.
The Bullets aim their j-guns at the sculptor reinforcements.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
Bjorlsson, hover over them. Don’t
burn them.
Sven pilots the hover-van over the heads of the twenty-two sculptors. A few of the humanoids bend back and look up at the craft eighty feet above them.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
Sit up there for now.
Jesca, the anthropologist two-star, runs at Florida; her face is red with rage.
JESCA
This is their home. Theirs! You
can’t do this. We need to clear
out now.
120.
FLORIDA
I’m awaiting orders.
JESCA
How can you do this? You of all of people. Aren’t you Native
American?
Florida does not look at the woman; he- and his Bullets-watch the sculptors.
FLORIDA
I’m Cherokee. And I’m a Bullet
Senior. But more than either of
those things, in the year 2979 I am one of the last human beings in
existence. And so were they.
Florida points to the Bullet corpses.
A chorus of EERIE NOTES wells up and emerges like a tsunami from the sculptors’ metropolis below. The twenty-two humanoids pick up their wounded, bleeding, WHEEZING and WAILING brethren and walk away.
INT. HIGH TOWER - SAME
Through a kidney-shaped window, the Tall One and eight other white-fleck sculptors stare up at the human plateau. From their first bowls emerges a single deep TONE. All of the sculptors present resonate the exact same note.
EXT. OPTION-1 ATMOSPHERE - LATER
Two transports descend toward the planet; Armadillo-3 and Armadillo-5. Pink coolant HISSES off of the crafts’ surfaces as they penetrate the atmosphere.
INT. ARMADILLO-3 - SAME
Thirty Bullets- all of whom are quiet and grim- sit in the shaking, planet-bound transport.
INT. VISTA CELLAR - LATER
Carved into the stone of the circular room is the image of over one million sculptors standing amidst monstrously large trees from which bloom spiky fruit and coiled tentacles.
121.
The depicted sky is covered with myriad stars and moons and planets; the celestial bodies are sculpted in glowing, differently-colored crystals. The floor of the cavern is ocean water.
The Tall One leads the white-flecked elders inside; the humanoids give scale to the immensity of the enclosure-- the space is three-hundred feet high and twice as many wide.
On CLACKING toes, the sculptors walk down the spiraling ramp which threads the circular wall. The Tall One stops before a lavender crystal; with the seven skeletal talons of its left hand, the humanoid presses the lunar crescent into the relief, CHUNK.
EXT. OPTION-1 OCEAN - EARLY NIGHT
The blue-green water that covers most of the planet has begun to ice over. Squidfish and LONG LANCERS swim beneath the surface, lit by the three moons above.
The fish disperse.
The surface SHATTERS; from the depths emerges a conical missile made of lavender ice. The projectile hurtles toward the moons.
INT. COMESTIBLE QUADRANT - SAME
The eating area is nearly empty; amongst the eighteen enervated eaters are Abacus and Mlissa, both silent. Sven, drained, enters the quadrant and walks toward the duo.
SVEN
Mlissa.
Mlissa’s eyes fill with tears the moment she hears Sven’s voice; she bounds up and hugs him, fervently.
ABACUS
Hey. Where’s Kenneth?
Mlissa releases Sven and steps back, smiling and wiping tears from her eyes.
Sven looks down at Abacus; the Bio stares back up at the tall Swede.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
Is he hurt or...is he...did he...?
122.
Sven nods. Abacus flings a vial of oat paste against the foam wall; the contents SPLAT. He shakes his head angrily.
ABACUS (CONT'D)
Goddam this lousy planet.
MLISSA
What happened down there? All they keep saying is that there was an
“incident.” Weren’t the sculptors
friendly?
SVEN
They were.
Titlecard: Five Days Later
INT. MULTI-STAR COUNCIL ROOM - MORNING
The Seniors have convened: Graynose, Lo-Cheun, Florida and Jesca sit in the front row. A polypillar stands at the head of the room, lenses extruded, eyes dilated. The diminutive leader wipes sweat from his face, stands up and walks before the multi-stars.
GRAYNOSE
Before I speak, I would like for
the Bullet Chief Senior to
articulate the status below.
Lo-Cheun stands up and faces the polypillar.
INT. GLASS-DOMED AMPHITHEATER - SAME
The Elysabeth passengers watch the panorama; the face of Lo-Cheun is centered amidst shots of Graynose, the council, the amphitheater, the sculptors’ metropolis and the human settlement.
Seated in the second row of the arena are Abacus, Sven and Mlissa.
From upon the screen, Lo-Cheun eyes the crowd...his gaze filled with contempt.
LO-CHEUN
There have been no attacks since
the initial skirmish.
(MORE)
123.
LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)
We’ve held the perimeter so that
construction could be
recommenced...and it has. I know
many of you are critical of our
continued presence there, but if
the choice is between us or those
things- and they are things, don’t personify them- if the choice is
between us and them, any debate on
the matter is offensive. I’m done.
Lo-Cheun sits out of frame.
In the amphitheater, Abacus leans over to Sven.
ABACUS
(whispered)
Hate that guy.
INT. MULTI-STAR COUNCIL ROOM - SAME
The polypillar refocuses on the four-star leader, Graynose.
GRAYNOSE
Biobranch believed that the
sculptors’ illness was an allergic
reaction to us or our dust, but we
now know otherwise.
The little man wipes beads of perspiration from his pink face and gray proboscis.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
Fleischwerk, plastics, gritfoam and other polymers are not toxic, but
they do somehow affect the
properties of the underground
canals, in particular the trillions upon trillions of microscopic
crystals contained therein. These
luminous gemstones have no affect
on us- we excrete them as waste-
but we believe that they sustain
the lives of sculptors for
tremendous periods-- possibly
thousands of years.
Graynose shakes his head and frowns.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
The damage has been done. We
damaged the water and now the
sculptors are aging, rapidly.
(MORE)
124.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
The medical groups we’ve sent them have all been chased off.
Communication with the sculptors-
what little there was- has ended.
Graynose nods and CLEARS his throat.
GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)
Today we vote on whether we should
continue to build our settlement or simply withdraw from the planet.
Final speakers?
Jesca stands; she faces the polypillar; lenses refocus; irises dilate.
JESCA
Individually, any sculptor could
overpower any human being, but
conquest is almost always
determined by technological
superiority...and ruthlessness.
That is the way of war-- and do not delude yourselves: if we stay there we are waging war.
(she shakes her head
vehemently)
Let war, ruthlessness and
xenophobia not be the legacies
humanity carries into the stars.
These beings are likely the last of their kind, transplanted to this
sanctuary so that their species
might survive. The water functions to perpetuate their lives because this place best suits them. If our first choice as the post-Earth
refugees is to commit genocide in
order to insurrect an underground
cave on a largely uninhabitable
planet, I say, let’s not consider it a choice at all. Please.
Jesca sits. Florida, his eyes bleary and his face sagging, stands.
FLORIDA
I was the Senior who ordered the
violent repulsion of the attacking
sculptors. I’ve not slept much
since- and when I do...I only see
them- the sculptors, not the people they killed- bleeding on the
ground, making those eerie sounds.
(MORE)
125.
FLORIDA (CONT'D)
(he rubs his tired eyes)
The capacity to perform the wrong action for the right reason is one of humanity’s great burdens, and
that wrong action is exactly what I suggest we vote for today. This
cavern may be our only chance: we
need to build. Our duty to the
dead on Earth is not to wrangle
with our personal guilt or quibble
morality, it is to survive and
perpetuate the human race.
Titlecard: Nineteen Days Later
EXT. OPTION-1 OCEAN - EARLY NIGHT
Elysabeth rests on her back, half above and half below the surface of the ocean. Upon her stomach, HANDYMAN-2, HANDYMAN-4 and HANDYMAN-6 operate upon damaged vents and powerscopes; one plucks a gray eyeball from her hull.
INT. THE HUMAN PLATEAU - SAME
One hundred-and-forty-two PEOPLE dressed in padded orange bodysuits work amidst the developing buildings of the nascent human settlement. Workers in automuscles set insulated walls along vertical supports; the seams are joined by scurrying gridbots. Hemispherical tents, cubical labs and rectangular sleeping-vaults provide shelter for those who will remain the night. The luminous water has been rerouted to circumnavigate the encampment.
ТЕЛЕГРАМКанал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками
Книжный Вестник
Бот для удобного поиска книг (если не нашлось на сайте)
Поиск книг
Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах
Любовные романы
О психологии, саморазвитии и личностном росте
Саморазвитие
Детективы и триллеры, все новинки
Детективы
Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки
Фантастика
Отборные классические книги
Классика
ВКОНТАКТЕБиблиотека с любовными романами, которая наверняка придётся по вкусу женской части аудитории
Любовные романы
Библиотека с фантастикой и фэнтези, а также смежных жанров
Фантастика
Самые популярные книги в формате фб2
Топ фб2
книги