c o n f l i c t s
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-written by-
s. craig zahler
-contact & editor-
julien thuan
united talent agency 310 860 3791
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
