[email protected]

July 13, 2024

Seventh Draft

CAH-CHUNK. There’s bright flash and mechanical whine. A dark outline of a woman, growing clearer, she sits beaten, tied to a metal chair in a pitch black room.

CAH-CHUNK. Another flash and she’s gone.

CAH-CHUNK. The bright flash illuminates the blackened city of near future downtown Los Angeles. There’s brutalist concrete buildings surrounding our heroine ANNA (20s, sharply stunning, strong) wrapped in leather and neon.

She paces up to the grey door of a steel high-rise, takes a deep breath, and shoves it open.

A grey concrete entryway is flanked by VIDEO SCREENS showing a looping demo video of something resembling a virtual reality headset.

She strides over to the SECURITY GUARD behind a greeting desk, hard at work on a crossword puzzle.

I’m here for Mr. Brooks.

The guard slides her a clipboard without even looking up.

First and last name, first and last name of the person you’re visiting, and reason for visit.

Anna grabs the clipboard, considers it, scribbles.

Name: Anna To See: Brooks Reason:

She pauses for a slight moment before emphatically scrawling. “SAVE HER”

Save. Her.

Excuse me?

Without warning Anna smashes the clipboard across the Guard’s head with a CRACK! He’s so dazed and surprised he doesn’t react.

What the?

She yanks the keycard off his lanyard, quickly scans the screens on the desk, and heads through a secure entrance via the keycard.

Get back here!

Anna confidently paces through a lab full of SCIENTISTS all in RED scrubs and face masks. They freeze and stare as we follow Anna through the lab.

The ever-present VIDEO SCREENS here show a man thinking about an orange, and then zoom to an x-ray view of his brain.

--sight, smell, and touch, are all correlated to certain discrete neural networks which can be replicated--

A lab tech in a WHITE COAT approaches her.

You’re not allowed to be here. Stop. I’m calling security.

He grabs her shoulder. *Big mistake*

She twirls around and clocks him in the face. He reels back, stunned, and she pulls him back in for more punishment by the lanyard badge around his neck. WHAM! He crumples and Anna beeps the badge against another door labeled ‘BLUE AUTHORIZATION ONLY’.

Anna emerges in a ‘clean’ hallway, blue plastic lines every wall and a strange haze lingers in the air. The men are in BLUE HAZMAT suits here.

Wait! You need a respirator or else the--

She rounds a corner and blasts through two more hazmat guys walking with papers. She pops open a door and she’s in some sort of--

A glass walls look into a sort of technological production room full of hazmat scientists all studying an ILLUMINATED CYLINDER about a foot tall, suspended in air by a bunch of wires.

There’s the ever-present VIDEO SCREEN again, this time with a product demonstration.

--takes a snapshot of your chosen memory, extracting it from your brain and exporting it onto the printable card--

Military guards burst in, guns drawn, gas masks on. The scientists scatter.

-- card will then bring your memory into existence in the real world via micro-circuitry mitosis--

Hands up! Get on the ground!

ANNA stops, looks at how outnumbered she is, and gets on the ground slowly.

--memory then exists as a link between the user and the materialized form--

That bitch from Alpha team?! How the hell is she down here?

As they approach her, Anna closes her eyes, calming herself.

How is she breathing this shit?

In a flash she kicks the closest guard off his feet. The other guard starts firing wildly hitting the video screen and another guard across the room. BLAM! KICK! PUNCH! The guards are toast.

--destroying the memory card will also destroy the memory from your mind forever--

Anna turns to the glass partition and breaks it with a few pops from a pistol she’s picked up. She scrambles over the top into the now empty room.

Anna watches for a moment in awe, a cylinder in a sparking enclosure. Inside is a funky pair of VR looking goggles. The same thing as the video from the previous rooms, a mixture of arcane and plastic technology.

She pulls it out, bare-handed, unlatches it and puts it on her face.

Anna looks back to the guard on the ground, bloodied, takes a deep breath, flips a switch on the device at her head, seats the goggles on her face, and activates it with a CAH-CHUNK.

After an instant, it produces a card sized chip with an image of the guard on it. Anna flaps it about as if drying a polaroid, then chucks it on the ground.

It sits for a second as if nothing at all were to happen. Then suddenly, with a jolt, wires sprout out of it like vines, forming a nervous system, pushing the card off the ground and into the form of a human. It takes form, and begins to ‘project’ a holographic image out of the end of each ‘vine’. It creates an image indistinguishable from reality. It’s a memory of GUARD ONE made into reality again.

--Put your hands up and get-- ere!

But she’s got it?... him?.. in a choke hold. He/it, loosens up after a second. Glitches when it looks over at the dead version of Guard One laying on the ground.

Wha? What happened to-- me?

Relax. You’re all in my head buddy, so just... relax.

Anna shuffles over to the door with it, forcing it to face a camera sensor.

Just stand there for a second

Name?

Anna grabs the badge off the guard’s corpse and looks at it. Suddenly the guard hologram ‘remembers’ it’s name.

Steve Gray

The lock on the door accepts the guard’s face imprint and voice, and whirs open.

Thanks.

Anna reaches into the guards ‘head’ and rips the card out of its sprouted wire nest. His ‘body’ slumps to the ground and shudders, an unnatural heap of vines.

Sorry.

Anna cracks the ‘polaroid’ in half and drops it to the floor, revealing sparking circuitry. The headset chips out a message. ‘MEMORY ERASED’

A Metal door slides open and OWEN (40’s, severe, bald, glasses), stalks through. Inside already is BROOKS (30’s, in a bloodied suit) sitting at a metal table across from a shadowed figure.

Brooks’s head snaps around to face Owen.

I said not to bother me.

There’s an intruder, they’ve already cleared through red section and blue section.

So take care of it.

I think you’ll wanna see this.

Owen hands Brooks a tablet with security camera footage of Anna’s attack.

On the video Anna summons the guard using the polaroid machine.

Brooks and Owen walk out of the interrogation room and slam the door shut.

Bitch!

She must have had a failsafe plan.

Brooks and Owen walk into a room with many screens and control panels.

She’s going for the key. If she finds it before we do--

--I’ll setup a strike team in level 7 to intercept her. It looks like she’s headed to the old lab.

Owen makes a move to leave.

And kill the elevators!

Anna waits inside a metal elevator. The power cuts. She tries to pry the doors open, but can’t.

She flips open the circuitry panel and examines it. It’s no use.

She sighs and activates the device on her head again. CAH-CHUNK, whine, flash, The card pops out and she puts it gingerly on the floor.

Slowly but surely, MILES (50’s, greying) appears. He looks quite similar to her.

Look who finally found the time to call.

Dad, please, can we not do the guilt routine?

Okay...

He notices Anna, she’s roughed up from fights.

Can you get this elevator going?

Her father looks at the electrical panel and gets to work moving wires around.

A place that you need a security card to go anywhere is a place that doesn’t trust anyone.

Dad. Please. I’m fine.

I get that you’re tough and ambitious. You have to take care of *yourself*. I’m worried that you’ll get into a situation with nobody to get you out.

Miles is scraping around inside the elevator panel.

I... I did. Things are really looking bad right now.

Anna’s father stops.

Then why are you here? What’s going on?

Because... Because I have to. There’s someone I have to save. I can’t explain to you why right now.

Her father tweaks some wires. Sparks. The doors open.

Don’t waste time then. This elevator is toast, but the other ones will still work probably. Do what you need to do and get out.

She hugs him and gently takes the ‘polaroid’ out of Miles’s ‘head’ She puts it back into the camera’s slot.

The headset chirps out ‘MEMORY RETAINED’

Anna heads out the elevator doors and finds the stairwell, continuing her ascent.

Brooks sits at the control panel trying in vain to clean blood off his white business shirt, Owen stands behind him with a walkie talkie.

Is Charlie Team in position?

Yes, should I give the order?

Have them wait, I’m curious to see what happens. She might reveal to us where the key is without even knowing we’re watching.

He looks over at another monitor, to the person in the interrogation room.

Anna walks out of stairway and checks the coast is clear. She beelines into a lab room, unlocks the door with her handprint.

The room is a blown apart mess with fresh bloodstains on the floor, bullet holes, and singes, the markings of a shootout.

All the lab equipment has been ransacked and torn apart.

Anna closes her eyes, remembers, she pulls the device over her face, and ‘shoots’ it.

Out prints CALVIN (30’s, handsome, bloodied).

--Anna, they’ve surrounded us I don’t know--

Calvin sputters, glitches, reassess. He falls to the floor. She picks him up and holds him tight.

--I.. there’s so much I need to say--

--Calvin Stop.

I--?

Died. The whole team died except me.

Then-- I-- How?

My memory of him.

Anna hold’s Calvin’s face.

Oh god. So this is what it’s like? I always wondered. Wait, I-- Don’t forget me!

I promise I won’t.

Calvin stares at a spot on the floor. His face twitches. Glitches again.

How did you escape?

I-- I don’t know. Calvin, would you please?

Of course.

Calvin finds a spot on the wall and presses. The panel comes off and there’s a pile of photos of he and Anna together in better times. He holds up a usb drive from under the photos.

The encryption key is right here.

They didn’t get to it first. Oh thank god!

Watching on the monitor, Brooks.

Fuck! It was right under my nose this whole time.

I’ll go handle this myself.

Damn right you will! What else do I pay you for?

Owen marches out of the room. Grabbing a gun off the wall as he goes.

You just concern yourself with the interrogation.

That key is the whole fucking reason I can’t wear this goddamn shirt anymore.

The sound of boots in the halls outside.

Fuck! They found us.

Shit. I won’t fucking watch you die again in here.

Anna grabs pistols and a lone grenade out of the secret compartment. She un-pins the grenade.

But what if you?--

I won’t.

She chucks the grenade through the window into the hallway.

SHIT!

KA-BLOW! Dust rattles off every surface. Several guards are blown off their feet.

Anna and Calvin breach the doorway and unleash hell. It’s a brutal firefight.

They cut a path to the elevator, frantically firing in every direction.

Anna reaches the inside of the elevator first. Calvin is laying covering fire. Anna jams on the button to go up.

Get in!

Calvin turns and books it to the elevator, sprinting closer.

Calvin! Come on!

The doors are closing. He’s almost there! BLAM!

Calvin glitches, falls toward the doors, blank. Anna fires back with ferocity.

NO!

Calvin falls into the elevator, the doors close. He is just a heap of wires now.

His polaroid ‘card’ plinks onto the floor of the elevator a lone bullet hole in it.

Calvin!

The headset chirps out ‘MEMORY ERASED’

Anna looks, hard. Picks up the card

No. Calvin. Bro-- eyes. Bla-- hair. Smells like-- Calv- Cal- C--

She keeps trying to remember but the words come out choked. He’s being erased from her...

Anna’s eyes go vacant looking at the card, sparking, bullet hole in it. Next to the USB key.

The dull monotone of the elevator whirring.

What are these things again? Anna bends down and grabs the usb key, and card, looking curiously at them. She remembers one, but not the other.

DING! The elevator stops and opens. She drops the card. It’s nothing special. Steps out.

A darkened room illuminated only by the elevator’s light now. Anna steps out and remembers her mission. Adjusts herself. Starts walking with purpose to a big metal door.

Stop.

He’s right behind her. Gun to her head. Anna sighs, defeated.

The key-- slowly

Anna hands it over slowly to him. He chuckles once, quietly, in disbelief.

You know I’m a man who understands that I have to deal with reality.

What does that have to do with me?

You have some unfinished business with Brooks. Now that I have the key to the memory device, I don’t need him. Give me your gun, slowly.

Anna hands over the pistol. Owen palms it and takes one step backwards, to the elevator door. His hand is on the call button.

Do you even really know why you’re here? Or is it just some vague thought running through your circuits?

I’m here to save her.

Save who?

Anna looks puzzled.

You don’t remember, do you? You should just give up.

Owen steps backward into the elevator.

Why? I’m so close to saving her. I feel it.

Nobody notices when their shadow disappears.

The elevator doors are closing.

Except the shadow...

And just like that, Anna is alone.

She takes a deep breath and walks towards the metal door, throwing it open.

It’s a penthouse suite, full of modern furniture. Off to the side is the control room and the interrogation room we’re familiar with.

Goddamn! How did you do it? Huh? You made your own version of this fucking thing?

A slap in the other room. Anna moves faster, to the noise.

No wonder you’re basically a fucking zombie. You put everything into that version? Huh? Threw the card out the window or some shit? Fuck me. It was smart, I’ll give you that.

S--Stop.. Please...

Anna rounds the corner to the interrogation room and opens the door. Inside is Brooks, who viciously SLAPS the shadowed woman.

She leans forward, into the light finally and we see it’s a handcuffed version of HERSELF sitting there, bruised, bloodied, vacant.

Anna, Our Anna glitches! We’ve been following a polaroid memory of the real Anna!

Brooks turns around, sees her, furious.

And you! You’re a fucking ghost. A stupid technological nightmare that’s been tearing up this building tonight. Well NOT ANYMORE.

Anna GLITCHES again, worse than before, revealing her vine like circuitry as Brooks barrels onto her and into the main room. They CRASH into a glass end table, the start of a kung-fu sequence.

Wh-- What the fuck?

That’s the problem with you copies. No thought to why, only what. A mouse trap that never questions why they catch mice.

I’m here to save-- myself?

No. You’re here to be destroyed.

Brooks throws Anna across the room.

I--I*i*_iii_--

When I destroy you I’m going to rip out the plans for the memory device from your head in the most painful way I can.

A blow from Brooks. Anna stumbles, full glitch mode.

You. Hah! *She* hid the details of the project from me because she feared a world full of mindless copies. A world where my memory would dominate above all.

I--

Brooks swings again and smashes against Anna, she glitches still, but a little less this time.

How ironic it is that a copy brought me what I’ve needed? I suppose I should thank you, before I destroy you.

Brooks swings, but Anna is no longer reeling. She’s dodging!

But I’d rather just destroy her memory.

Brooks plunges his arm INTO ANNA’S HEAD. She grabs his arm in a power struggle to survive. Her body keeps glitching, showing the circuitry underneath. Brooks has a finger on her ‘card’.

I-- I’M NOT-- JUST-- A MEMORY.

They struggle.

I’m her belief. Her belief that she’s strong enough.

Anna sweeps Brooks legs out from under him.

Strong enough to overcome this.

You’re nothing.

A flurry of jabs, kicks, and throws ensues. It’s havoc and mayhem.

They fight into the control room, sparks fly and chairs are thrown as they demolish it.

It’s a neon and black fight set against a screaming techno beat. A savage maniac vs a raw nerve.

At last Anna smashes Brooks head against the control panel, knocking him out.

She searches him for a key, walks over to the Interrogation room, and frees REAL ANNA from her restraints.

I-- We did it.

I don’t understand. How?

It’s the past, the firefight inside the Green lab. Calvin is firing at the guards. Anna opens the secret compartment to reveal the memory headset. She ducks behind a desk and puts it on.

We were surrounded. Brooks took us by surprise, we knew he was a bastard, but nothing like this.

Calvin turns to duck behind the desk with her and is shot multiple times. Falls blankly next to her.

It was the most desperate moment of my whole life.

Using her last ounce of strength she ‘shoots’ the polaroid, pulling it out to reveal its a ‘card’ of HERSELF.

It took all of my strength to imagine who I could be. Who I needed to be. The person to come save me.

She runs across the hallway to the window and smashes it open with her gun. Throwing the polaroid out the window to the ground below before being surrounded by the guards who force her to her knees.

Sirens wail in the distance. Memory Anna helps Real Anna out the door and onto the streets.

They sit on the steps to the tower as dawn creeps over the streets. Real Anna cries, finally able to feel it all.

It’s going to be okay.

They’re all dead. The whole team. Calvin.

Calvin? Who’s Calvin?

You... you don’t remember? Did... Did you use the device on yourself?

I did.

Oh fuck. You’re my memories. The things I needed to remember to survive tonight. But you’re corrupted? What happens if I--?

I don’t know. I’m sorry Anna. I’m sorry you have to make this choice now.

Memory Anna takes off the goggles and gives them to Anna. She reaches into her own ‘head’ and pulls out her own memory card, gives it to Real Anna as she slumps slowly into just a heap of wires.

Goodbye Anna. I hope I can remember you someday...

Real Anna holds the card in one hand with the device in the other, she stands.

She slowly walks back down the street. Who is she?