1 - Starship
In a dream sequence: the unnamed world, as seen from space. We glide into a low-hanging dark cloud generated from spewing volcanoes. An intense battle rages on an alien landscape. Carnage on a planetary scale. A modern space epic fighting under the cloak of night. Swirling fire embers flake the sky.
Lightning-swift silhouettes dart in the smoke. Screams of the dying echo landscape. Rounds of fire exchange the battlefield. Scattered infernos illuminate the feral fight.
We see a hulking FIGURE running through pitched battle. Bodies everywhere, strewn on the ground. Humans and titans. The figure keeps running, dodging death itself. A PLASMA LASER BOLT whizzed by, missing narrowly. Running, desperate - hearing enemy footsteps. There’s another body the person runs past, impaled. This is a perfect Hell.
Seven-foot GIANTS flirt in the shadows with inhuman speed and agility. Disorienting glimpses of the adversaries while plasma laser lance across the field.
DADAU (45 years old, male), salt-pepper hair matted from combat. His light caramel skin shone with sweat. You would feel confident in him at a glance. Pinned down, Dadau returns fire. In combat, when life is devalued and the desire to kill grows, a war animal is born, as witnessed in Dadau as he fights.
Horrific carnage as the dead lay around.
He’s the last man standing. A fellow combatant careens awkwardly nearby him, as fire and explosions deafen him. He reaches out of reflex and pulls the body. As he yanks the soldier behind cover, he sees-
Two giants approach. Wreckage lies scattered on the ground like bits of toilet tissue. He scans for a way out. Nothing. He looks at the soldier. He’s dead.
Dadau stands, ready. He rather dies on his feet than on his knees. A third giant appears out of nowhere and slashes Dadau’s face, creating a future scar. Dadau marks the three titans. Another group appears in the haze. Then another mob of giants emerges smoothly from the smoke and fires. The sounds of war cease with ABRUPT silence.
The enemy’s eyes are insane with blood lust. As each adversary approached, Dadau readied himself for his final fight. His sweat accentuates his clenched jaw and stubble. This is it. He will take as many as possible to the gates of hell.
Then SHE appears --
--AGÑASIÑA (AG-ÑAh-SI-ÑA), young-seeming forties. Her olive skin glistens. Her war cry is loud. Her green eyes are soul-piercing. Her long, dark hair is matted with sweat. Strikingly beautiful. She is the epitome of a Pacific Islander.
-BLUR OF MOTION
She enters firing a gun and slicing with a sword-shaped like a scythe. She is the angel of death, sent personally to retrieve the shadows of giants. Her fury unleashed. A mob of combatants against one woman in close-quarters combat. Brutal. Extremely violent. A group of panthers versus a honey badger-wolverine hybrid.
The initial three adversaries are relentless with their attack on Agñasiña. The first combatant knees her in the face, and her body crumples to the ground. A foot comes up from the ground and kicks her, causing her to curl up. The second giant picks her up and is about to finish her off when-
- Agñasiña smashes its head into the second giant and drives her thumb into its eye. Her body slams against a wall, sending dust into the air. They fight on. Vicious.
We watch as three savages beat the living hell out of Agñasiña on this foreign land. Everyone’s clothes are wet with blood.
The first GIANT leaps for a fallen weapon, but Agñasiña is there to stop him. They struggle for the firearm and roll across the ground. She takes her blade and slices. Fingers severed and spiral to the ground are squished by someone’s foot.
Dadau cannot make out who is roaring and screaming in the contest. Violence becomes a maelstrom in Agñasiña.
The first giant pounds his fists into her. She escapes the barrage by CRACKING his head against a structure, just as the second enemy raises his pistol to her head. She uncoils her body, thrusts her legs, and launches the second combatant backward into the dazed first giant. They both crumple into each other. Her ferocity meets her sword action.
She SLAMS the blade into the two foes with one hand, while simultaneously firing into each face with her other hand. Blood splatters as she ends their lives. Calmly, she pulls the sword and turns to the mob of assailants. She picks up a second pistol from the floor, then steps past the bodies. Pulling grenades from a giant’s belt, she activates them and lobs them into the gaggle.
As the explosion ERUPTS, she turns back to Dadau. Look at him. With a chiburi movement, she moves on wordlessly. Agñasiña never looks back.
He stands riveted. He turns and walks over to the fallen soldier. He stares at the trooper, shaken, for a long beat. Dadau looks around, no one is here. He bends down and cleans the bloody mud from the broken faceplate. He removes an identity tag and gives a moment of silence. He sheds tears without shame. He stands, turns, and heads back into the war.
Much later, a Hispanic man (20s) walks like a drunkard within a starship’s cool, sleek corridor. He falls, blacks out. He looks old in his haggard state. A SYNTHETIC MAN (20s) picks up the man easily. The synth moves, a tattoo pulsing light from its neck to luminescent eyes.
It peers up to watch for human responders down a hallway. We stare at the interior of an immense organism from the synth’s point of view. An ocean of peoples BUSTLING. Humanity, where all races and cultures amalgamated to form a multi-ethnic society. As people in bright attire flow through the crowd, periodic flashes of color are seen. Androids commonly intermingle in a sea of motion.
Along the hallway are hundreds of living spaces, worn with age, in contrast to futuristic nano-foundry embedded in the walls.
Sea-green foliage and eggplant-colored climbing vines cling everywhere. An idyllic fusion of advanced, interactive technology and natural beauty. Organic architecture melded with corning glass and crystals. Earth in a bottle.
The Synth takes the man to crew quarters. A powder-blue light softly coats them. The interior wall seamlessly curves with an 88-inch 8K OLEDs’ flex-tech television frame. A relaxing image plays. The strangeness of the room comes from a midnight-blue light emitting from a pattern in the floorboards.
As the Synth lays the man on his bed, a groan slips from him. He looks weaker. As the Synth turns and departs the room, vines sink into the man’s skin at his last breath. The same plant coats the walls of a hospital-white lab with thicker tendrils.
ATARAH (30 years old) waves her hands expressively. Pristine E-textiles make up her lab coat. She looks perfectly put together. Her Cambodian defiance is on full display. She vociferously argues with Joaseen, a co-worker. She unconsciously uses sign language. Her tears are full of anger.
Atarah inhales and exhales through parted lips. Furious at the loss of words to describe her fury at what Joaseen has done. The tension is palatable in the air. In rising anger at having to admit a Pyrrhic victory.
ATARAH
“There’s a flaw in it.”
Atarah aggressively runs her hands through her hair as Joaseen steeples her fingers and raises her eyebrows, along with an enigmatic smile. JOASEEN looks younger than twenty-six years in her red and black “cheongsam with high collar” styled E-fabric as she stares at Atarah. Her self-confidence teeters on presumptuous, and her body language shouts that fact.
Her eyes and auburn hair flicker with annoyance. This unperturbed Ebony goddess responds with no B.S.
JOASEEN
“It’s pristine, Atarah. You’re the one that made the damn thing. C’mon, wetware science has no better creator than you. You’re a maestro with “blood music”. No flaw. Astonishingly pristine.”
She calls the situation as she sees it. She does not lose a dose of gravitas in her body language. Joaseen wears a tight-lipped smile.
Joaseen shuts down equipment. A centrifuge slowing down shortly distracts her. She walks away. In the background, TECHNICIANS (of various ages) watch their two bosses argue. All that is missing is popcorn.
ATARAH
“Tell me you didn’t do anything with it!”
Joaseen whirls back to Atarah with a withering stare. She looks through every molecule in Atarah. Atarah takes umbrage at her attitude.
ATARAH
“You did. What was it, Joaseen? What?”
Joaseen leaves without a word. Atarah stands confused and angry. The betrayal quicksands in her core. With INTENSITY in her eyes, she storms toward the technicians. Without a word, they leave before the forest fire blazes them.
In a modest E-fabric dress, Agñasiña stands regal bearing in a rotating hub at a different part of the ship. Her cascading silver-black hair moves in the breeze of departing people. She stands in a doorway, exchanging demure pleasantries with her warm accent. As the last person leaves, she shuts the door and pauses.
Almost absently, Agñasiña’s hand goes to her neck, and her fingers lightly touch a pendant that hangs from a slender chain. She looks across the hall, a WOMAN, twenties, and blonde slumps against the wall. Her head on her knees. She’s one of the lab technicians from earlier. Agñasiña’s silky attire whispers as she approaches the woman. She radiates fever and appears to have a pounding migraine. She breathes as if barbed wire is in her lungs.
The woman feels Agñasiña’s cool hand touch her. The woman lifts her head to focus on Agñasiña. Her angst is palatable.
AGÑASIÑA
“What’s wrong?”
WOMAN
“The...is...it wasn’t... meant to...”
AGÑASIÑA
“Wait here, I’m going to get help.”
Agñasiña reaches into a porthole close by and taps an emergency call button.
WOMAN
“It’s too late. The disease... released.”
The woman crumples. Emergency Responders sprint to the fallen woman. Agñasiña is shooed away. As she leaves, she overhears them declaring the woman’s death.
