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.