A script I'm wirting...

ESCHATON







Written by
Arthur Donenfeld














January 12th, 2006








FADE IN:

TEXT: “If there were no god, it would be necessary to invent him. - Voltaire”

FADE OUT.

FLASH FADE IN:

EXT. SPACE.

Descending across the screen; a dark object drops into the view.
Continuing to approach, the object resolves into an unknown space station.
Moving slowly across the screen;
An unknown space station; Its engines offline, barely running on emergency power, with its massive amounts of weight, slowly and silently, it seems to be just floating in space, lost and desolate, as if it were a ghost ship.
It is actually orbiting earth.

CUT TO:

INT. SPACE STATION. CONTROL ROOM – SPACE.

No lights, it looks and feels as if the whole space station has been evacuated.
We can see Earth smiling upon us from the control room window view.
The room is dimly lit by the glow of the distant sun; its gentle penetrating rays are filtered through the tinted glass.
A large room infested with high-tech equipment, a jungle filled with consoles, computers, monitors, complex wiring and random wires hanging and snaking all over the place.
We hear the hiss and humming of operating computers, ticks, beeps and sounds of letters running across monitors.
The camera moves to and closes up on a specific monitor:

ON COMPUTER SCREEN:

POV is so close that the monitor has no boundaries.
A green neon blinking cursor begins pulsing in the darkness.
Data now slashes across the screen:

Scanning…
Receiving transmission…
Calculating coordinates.
Setting new course.
Destination confirmed.
Transmission complete.

(Pause)
The monitor refreshes to a blank screen.

Starting…
Running P.O.S.T.
Running diagnostics…
(In red) Engine malfunction.
Switching to reserve.
Rerouting power.
Emergency systems activated.
Systems are 24 percent operational.
Welcome to the Minerva Space Station.

• From this point, the space station had begun moving towards earth, to its newly set destination. We don’t know this yet only after the player reaches the control room.

(Short pause)

SMASH CUT TO:

BLACKNESS.

INT. MINERVA SPACE STATION. CRYOGENIC STASIS LAB – SPACE.

A large room with high, dark ceiling crisscrossed by metal girders holding aged flickering fluorescent lighting strips.
The room is mostly dark, lit only by the faint green luminescence of consoles and monitors.
Its nearly pitch black behind the pods, where only trailing and hanging wires and pipes are visible.
High up on the wall behind our cryogenic pod, there’s a wide tinted window; it is reasonable to believe there’s a room (an observation deck) behind that window which allows observation on everything that’s going on in the lab.

(Blackness)
First person point of view, as if we were looking through the player’s eyes; everything is silent for a couple of seconds, then slowly, bullet-time-like, the sound fades in and we begin to hear the humming of computers, electric whiz, console beeps, ticks and clicks.
We hear a continuous pulse beep from a vital signs monitoring machine connected to our cryogenic pod.
We begin to hear sounds of simultaneous series of commands being acknowledged (beeps and ticks), after a short pause, we instantly we hear a big, heavy piece of metal, being pulling away from us, and a couple of other moving machinery sounds.
The player’s vision slowly fades in, but instead of gaining focus, everything goes blindingly white for a couple of seconds as if a light projector was pointed directly into our eyes.
A couple of seconds later, slowly, everything slides into focus.

The player awakes with a start, gasping for breath, your body cold and numb.
Your eyes burn, you have never used them before.
You feel an explosion of pain in your forehead as you jolt upward, cracking your head into something you cannot see in the dark... gasping for panicked breaths after nightmares you cannot remember, you hear the hiss of pneumatics, and feel cold air wash over your body...
Reaching forward tentatively, you feel cold glass moving away from you, the lid of the container you lay within folding sideways...
You instinctually step forward on weak, unsteady legs, stumbling forward with force, crashing on the ground nearly smashing your jaw on the metal floor.
You get up gazed and dizzy, feeling a sense of weightlessness and headedness; look at yourself up and down to see that you are fully naked with nothing covering your sore and aching body.
Casting your gaze around the dark, dimly lit room, you decide to move around, examine your surroundings and get your bearings...
For some reason; you could not remember... anything?

Examining the five other CryoPods, you find that you had risen from number three.
Number one contained a... dead body, of a man you did not know and could not remember, limp and pale in the faint light with his mouth soaked and chest covered in blood as if his insides had ruptured as he slept.
His wide, bright eyes stare blankly up at the ceiling…
His Life Support screen is smashed.
The second pod looks devastated, with a big hole in it as if something forced itself out of it, with metal chunks and broken glass scattered on the floor around the pod.
Just the image of the pod being torn into pieces, surrounds the player with fear, he clearly isn’t alone.
Forth and sixth are empty, with the fifth containing a sweet looking girl of no more than twenty, with vivid red hair spread about her head within the pod.
She breathes softly and sleeps peacefully.
Her EKG machine pulses, its rhythm perfect.
It calms you down, warms your heart and makes you feel safe just by watching her sleep.
You quickly look away when you realize you were staring at her chest.
There had been something horrible in your dreams though... it was a relief to wake up.

After examining the dark room once more, the player notices a door with a little console on the side bracketed to it.
The player punches in a couple of random numbers, but no budge, “unauthorized access” message pops up on the monitor each time.
The door just won’t open and he gives up.
Stepping backwards, turning over and watching the room, maybe he is missing something?

CUT TO:

We suddenly hear two beeps and an “authorized access” type of sound being punched in.
The door opens. But who opened it?
Curious of the unknown and not knowing what to expect, the player cautiously begins moving towards the door.
In an instant, the player’s reverie was broken and his terror intensified when he saw the coldness of a shadow pass through the corridor.
A chill run down his spine, his fingers curled tightly into balls, his knuckles white, tense and ready to face an attack as he continued walking forward.
But there was nothing there, no cause for the shadow, but the feeling lingered with him and the sound of a hatch door closing down the corridor compelled him.
Down the hallway, shaking wildly, his eyes unable to focus, the sound of intense silence ringing in his ears, the player was walking up to the door he had heard shut.
He reached out with his hand, unable to keep steady, placing his palm on the cold, rough steel in front of him.
He took a deep breath but felt himself holding onto it, refusing to let go; his hands on the authorization console panel could not bring himself to open the door.
Like a shriek against the silence, the player took a deep breath, concentrating himself, then slowly exhaled and let his trembling palm push the touch screen, having no clue as to the danger he was walking straight towards.

INT. MINERVA SPACE STATION. LOCKER ROOM – SPACE.

He hesitantly steps inside the cold, harsh room which is lit only by a few wane fluorescent lighting strips.
The stench of decay was everywhere, filling the room, overpowering the air.
He felt lightheaded from the smell and the darkness and from his rude awakening.
The player pulled open a random locker door, and was horrified at what he saw.
The locker door opened, revealing a small dusty and scratched mirror, backtracked behind the locker door.
He was looking at himself for the first time.
His reflection was clearly not what he expected; his face, his chest, his entire body was covered; cybernetic tattoos, implants buried beneath his skin, some protruding out of the surface, his veins glowing brightly, ethereal blue green and prominent.
He took a step backwards into the darkness, unable to breathe as the world suddenly started to spin; his heart started pounding and adrenaline surged his body as the pressure built
Horrified at what he was staring at, unable to completely grasp that this image was him.
Slowly catching his breath, he begins to regain focus and gets his bearings again.
He examines the locker once more; there is some kind of a suit inside the locker, it’s a jumpsuit.
The player wears it.
It feels nice and warm.
The player begins to examine himself; stretching his arms, feeling the nice polymeric-padded suit covering his skin.

*******************************************
*******************************************

Thats all for the moment...