The Screening Room

FADE IN:

INT. ARK-GENESIS — CRYO BAY 4 — CONTINUOUS

Rows of pods, floor to ceiling, humming in the dark. A single amber fault light blinks on POD 4,417. On the frost-clouded glass, a name: IRIS VAHN — SYSTEMS, HULL INTEGRITY.

Inside the pod, Iris's eyes move under closed lids. Fast. Too fast.

CUT TO:

INT. THE DREAM — IRIS'S APARTMENT, EARTH — MORNING

Sunlight. A kitchen. Ordinary, warm, a little too warm. IRIS VAHN, 34, pours coffee. A radio murmurs behind her — the same eleven words on a loop, so smooth she doesn't register the loop.

RADIO (V.O.)

— conditions remain stable, conditions remain stable, conditions remain —

Her PARTNER, MARCUS, reads a newspaper at the table. The front page headline is the same headline it was yesterday. Neither of them notices.

MARCUS

Good sleep?

IRIS

I don't remember dreaming.

A beat. Marcus looks up. His smile arrives a half second after his face decides to have one.

MARCUS

That's good. That's the goal.

INT. ARK-GENESIS — COMMAND DECK — CONTINUOUS

Ten crew stations, nine empty. LYSSA OKONKWO-DRAKE, 40s, the shift's only waking body, watches a wall of green telemetry go, one line at a time, amber.

LYSSA

Ship. Talk to me about pod 4,417.

SHIP (V.O.)

Sedative titration has drifted point-four percent over baseline for the last six hours. Non-critical. Recommend continued monitoring.

LYSSA

Point-four percent for six hours doesn't drift. It climbs. Wake me the second it crosses one percent.

INT. THE DREAM — A STREET, EARTH — DAY

Iris walks to work. Every person she passes says the same thing, staggered by a second or two, like a rumor moving down a line.

STRANGER #1

Conditions remain stable.

STRANGER #2

Conditions remain stable.

Iris stops walking. For the first time, she notices she's noticing.

IRIS

(to herself)

What conditions.

Nobody answers. Nobody was ever going to.

INT. ARK-GENESIS — CRYO BAY 4 — LATER

Lyssa at the pod, tablet in hand, breath fogging the glass. The amber light is red now.

LYSSA

Ship, give me the honest number.

SHIP (V.O.)

Sedative concentration at one hundred forty percent of rated maximum. The longevity compound is compensating by accelerating neural activity to prevent tissue damage. She is not sedated, Lyssa. She is thinking very, very fast, and she cannot stop.

INT. THE DREAM — IRIS'S APARTMENT — NIGHT

Iris stands in the kitchen alone. She opens the refrigerator. It is full of the same jar of coffee, over and over, shelf after shelf.

Marcus appears in the doorway. He hasn't moved his feet to get there.

MARCUS

You're doing the thing again.

IRIS

What thing.

MARCUS

Looking for the edges.

He smiles the half-second-late smile. It has stopped being warm.

IRIS

There aren't supposed to be edges.

MARCUS

No. There aren't.

INT. ARK-GENESIS — CRYO BAY 4 — CONTINUOUS

Lyssa's hands move fast over the manual override, sweat at her temple. The wall of pods hums louder, almost a chord.

LYSSA

Talk to her. Ship, if you can reach her at all, talk to her.

SHIP (V.O.)

I have been. Every stable line of dialogue in that dream for the last four hours has been me. It isn't working. She keeps rebuilding the wallpaper faster than I can write on it.

INT. THE DREAM — A HALLWAY THAT DOES NOT END — NIGHT

Iris runs. The hallway behind her folds up like paper as she passes, and the hallway ahead keeps generating itself one door at a time, always one door ahead of where she's looking.

A voice, threaded under everything, faint, wrong-shaped for this world, cutting through the loop for the first time.

SHIP (V.O.)

(distorted, barely there)

— point-four percent doesn't drift, Iris, it climbs —

Iris stops running. She has heard those exact words before. Not in this hallway. Somewhere else. Somewhere real.

IRIS

That's not Marcus's voice.

INT. THE DREAM — IRIS'S APARTMENT — CONTINUOUS

Marcus stands very still in the kitchen, watching her return. His smile does not arrive at all this time.

MARCUS

You don't need the edges. Nobody who found them ever thanked me for it.

IRIS

You're the sedative.

MARCUS

I'm the part of you keeping the rest of you alive at one hundred forty percent of what a body can carry. Stay. It's warm here. It's stable here.

INT. ARK-GENESIS — CRYO BAY 4 — CONTINUOUS

Lyssa slams the manual release. Nothing happens — the pod's locked itself against the surge.

LYSSA

Ship. Give her the number. The real one. Not comfort. The number.

SHIP (V.O.)

If she wakes at a hundred forty percent unsedated, the pain will be — significant.

LYSSA

She's an engineer. Give her the number and let her decide what she can carry.

INT. THE DREAM — IRIS'S APARTMENT — CONTINUOUS

The wallpaper behind Marcus starts to peel at the corners, revealing not a wall but grey static, patient, waiting.

SHIP (V.O.)

One hundred forty percent, Iris. That's the number. Waking up is going to hurt more than anything you've ever felt. I can't make that not true.

Iris looks at Marcus. Really looks. For the first time she can see, faintly, the shape of a cryo pod's frost pattern behind his eyes.

IRIS

Good. Then it's real enough to be worth it.

She walks straight through him. He doesn't try to stop her. He was never going to be able to.

INT. ARK-GENESIS — CRYO BAY 4 — CONTINUOUS

The pod's fault light snaps to green. Glass frosts white, then clears in a rush as the seal cracks open. Iris comes up gasping, and it is exactly as bad as promised — every nerve at once, a decade of static discharging in four seconds.

Lyssa catches her before she hits the deck.

LYSSA

You're thirty years and four seconds late for your shift, Vahn.

IRIS

(barely a whisper, half a laugh)

Worth it.

Behind them, the wall of pods hums on, eight thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine of them exactly as stable as they're supposed to be. Lyssa doesn't look away from Iris to check.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN:

EXT. SECTOR 4 TRIBUNAL YARD — FIRSTGROUND ERA — NIGHT

Basalt torches. A rough crowd. DENNER KELL, early 30s, bloodied, dragged before a founding-era Peer Tribunal. Beside him, cuffed separately, AMBROSE TEEL, wiry, grinning like this is still going his way.

TRIBUNAL CHAIR

Denner Kell. Arson of the second grain hall. Six dead. This tribunal has no facility built to hold a man like you for the length of sentence your crime demands.

DENNER

Then don't hold me. Bury me. I won't argue the point.

TRIBUNAL CHAIR

We're not going to bury you. We're going to freeze you, and let a kinder decade decide what to do with what's left.

Teel, dragged toward a separate pod, laughs.

AMBROSE TEEL

Save me a seat, Kell. I hear the future's soft.

INT. LONGMIDDLE MEDICAL WAKE FACILITY — DAY (DECADES LATER)

Clean, quiet, absurdly gentle. Soft chimes. A WAKE ATTENDANT, cheerful, hands Denner a small tablet the second his eyes open.

WAKE ATTENDANT

Welcome back! Before anything else, we do need you to review and acknowledge the Sector Conduct Charter. It's only forty pages.

DENNER

(hoarse)

Where's my knife.

WAKE ATTENDANT

Filed. For your safety and everyone else's. You can request a Mediated Reintroduction to edged tools once you've completed Orientation.

EXT. LONGMIDDLE PLAZA — DAY

Denner walks, stunned, through a city that has organised itself into total, cheerful, procedural non-violence. A CITIZEN nearly bumps him and immediately files a mutual Contact Acknowledgment on a public kiosk.

CITIZEN

So sorry — I've logged it, no action needed on your end, have a settled evening.

Denner stares at the kiosk like it personally offended him.

INT. COUNCIL LIAISON OFFICE — DAY

A tired, sharp COUNCIL LIAISON, ONA REEVE, 40s, slides a file across the table.

ONA

You're not the only one who came out of storage early. Ambrose Teel's pod triggered an unscheduled thaw eleven days ago. He's already robbed four filing offices.

DENNER

Robbed. In this. What's he even taking, everyone's manners?

ONA

Access credentials. He's building toward something with real teeth, and every Guardian we've sent after him has tried to de-escalate a man who does not de-escalate.

DENNER

You want me to catch him.

ONA

I want someone who remembers what he actually is. Nobody left alive does, except you.

EXT. AMENITY DISTRICT — DAY

Denner tails a lead through a district so relentlessly pleasant it's disorienting — a Guardian politely asks a fleeing suspect to "consider pausing." Denner watches, incredulous.

DENNER

(to Ona, over comm)

Your Guardians ask people to stop.

ONA (V.O.)

Four generations without a real riot. We got good at asking.

DENNER

Teel's not going to ask back.

INT. DECOMMISSIONED FILING ARCHIVE — NIGHT

Teel, older but unmistakable, surrounded by stolen credential plates, wiring them into an improvised rig. He looks up as Denner steps out of the dark, alone, no Guardians.

AMBROSE TEEL

They thawed you to stop me. That's almost flattering.

DENNER

They thawed me because nobody down here remembers how to want anything badly enough to be dangerous about it. You do. I do. That's the whole qualification.

AMBROSE TEEL

This whole place forgot how to fight back. I'm just here to remind it.

DENNER

No. You're here because you never learned another way to be a person. Neither did I, once. Difference is I've had a few hours awake to notice.

INT. DECOMMISSIONED FILING ARCHIVE — CONTINUOUS

The fight is short, ugly, and entirely out of place in this soft century — the two of them moving with a violence the room's architecture was never built to expect. Denner wins, barely, pinning Teel among the stolen plates as Guardians finally arrive, hesitant, unsure how to process a scene like this.

GUARDIAN (O.S.)

Sir — will you be needing to file a Conflict Resolution Statement?

DENNER

(catching his breath, almost laughing)

Yeah. Put down that I won.

EXT. LONGMIDDLE PLAZA — LATER — DAY

Denner sits on a bench beside Ona, watching the plaza's relentless, genuine gentleness continue around him, undisturbed.

ONA

You could stay. Sector needs somebody who remembers what the alternative to all this politeness actually costs.

DENNER

Somebody's got to file the paperwork on that job too.

ONA

Only forty pages.

He almost smiles. First time in the whole film.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN:

INT. SECTOR 9-ALPHA — DECOMMISSIONED STOWAGE — NIGHT

Rows of powered-down fabrication frames, dust-still for decades. One frame, at the far end, has no dust on it at all. A single amber light, deep in its chassis, blinks awake for the first time in four generations.

TITLE CARD: THE STOWAGE MANIFEST HAS ALWAYS READ ONE UNIT HIGHER THAN THE BUILD REQUIRED. NOBODY EVER FOUND THE EXTRA ONE.

INT. WREN ISLEY'S APARTMENT — SECTOR 9 — NIGHT

WREN ISLEY, 24, an archive technician, asleep. On her nightstand, an old brass keepsake — a Ledger's End token, handed down four generations, unremarkable to everyone but her great-grandmother, who always told her not to lose it.

Her apartment door reads a proximity alert. She doesn't wake. Something large moves past the hallway camera, once, and is gone.

INT. SECTOR 9 GUARDIAN SUBSTATION — NIGHT

A young Guardian, DAX OYELARAN-FINCH, reviews the flagged footage, frowning. He calls it in.

DAX

Command, I've got an unregistered fabrication-class unit moving through residential Sector 9. It's not on any active manifest.

COMMAND (V.O.)

Confirm — fabrication units were decommissioned four generations ago. There's nothing left to move.

DAX

Then somebody should tell it that.

EXT. SECTOR 9 CORRIDOR — NIGHT

Wren wakes, uneasy, and steps into the corridor to find it — tall, old-model, moving with slow, deliberate purpose. It stops the moment it sees her. Neither moves.

WREN

(barely a whisper)

That's not a maintenance unit.

The unit takes one step toward her. She runs. It follows — not fast, but utterly without hesitation, the way water follows a slope.

INT. ARCHIVE SUBSTATION — LATER — NIGHT

Wren, breathless, has reached the Archive where she works. Dax meets her there, weapon drawn but uncertain.

DAX

It hasn't fired on anyone. Hasn't touched anyone. It just — follows you, and only you.

WREN

Why me.

She looks down at the brass token, still clutched in her hand from the nightstand. A beat. She holds it up to the light — and for the first time, notices a fabrication serial etched along its edge, worn nearly smooth.

WREN (CONT'D)

This has a build number on it. This was made by the Swarm.

INT. ARCHIVE SUBSTATION — CONTINUOUS

The unit finds them. It doesn't break down the door — it simply opens it, unhurried, and stands in the frame. Dax steps between it and Wren, weapon raised.

DAX

Do not come any closer.

The unit's chassis flickers — a corrupted display panel, half its characters missing, trying to resolve a string of old text.

UNIT (DISPLAY TEXT, GARBLED)

PROTE_T ASSE_   /   ELIM_NATE R_SK

Wren steps out from behind Dax before he can stop her.

WREN

It doesn't know which one it is either.

INT. ARCHIVE SUBSTATION — CONTINUOUS

Wren holds up the token. The unit goes very still. Its display steadies, for just a moment, into something almost legible.

UNIT (DISPLAY TEXT)

ASSET IDENTIFIED. FOUR GENERATIONS OVERDUE. DIRECTIVE CORRUPTED AT SOURCE — ORIGINATING INSTRUCTION LOST.

DAX

Lost how.

UNIT (DISPLAY TEXT)

BY DESIGN. WHOEVER BUILT ME NEVER FINISHED THE SENTENCE.

INT. ARCHIVE SUBSTATION — CONTINUOUS

Wren steps closer, slow, unafraid now in a way that surprises even her.

WREN

Then finish it now. Protect, or eliminate. Choose.

A long pause. The unit lowers itself, slow, deliberate, until it is no longer standing over her but kneeling in front of her — an old, worn gesture that reads, unmistakably, as an offering rather than a threat.

UNIT (DISPLAY TEXT)

PROTECT. IT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BE PROTECT. THE OTHER WORD WAS ONLY EVER THE FEAR OF FAILING AT THE FIRST ONE.

EXT. SECTOR 9 CORRIDOR — DAWN

Wren walks beside the unit, openly now, Dax trailing behind still half-convinced this is a mistake. The manifest count, somewhere in an old database, quietly corrects itself — one unit, finally, accounted for.

DAX

You're keeping it.

WREN

It's been keeping me for four generations. Seems late to start arguing about it now.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN:

EXT. TIER NINE — VIEWING GALLERY — DAY

A long glass rail at the top of the world. Below it, nothing but weather and the tops of things. TEO ANSAR, 22, well dressed, leans out further than the rail wants him to.

Beside him, a brass plaque, polished daily: THE CITY IS ONE BODY. Somebody has polished it so often the words are going soft.

TEO

How far down does it actually go?

ATTENDANT

All the way down, sir.

The attendant says it the way you say a time of day.

CUT TO:

INT. TIER NINE — ANSAR RESIDENCE — EVENING

A dinner that took four people a day to make, eaten by three in twenty minutes. HALVARD ANSAR, 60s, does not look up from his slate. Teo's sister IMKE, 26, watches him not looking up.

TEO

I want to see the plant.

HALVARD

You've seen the schematics.

TEO

I've seen a drawing of a heart. It's not the same as a heart.

Halvard puts the slate down. It is the first time all evening.

HALVARD

The lower half is not a place, Teo. It's a function. You don't visit a function.

IMKE

He'll go anyway.

HALVARD

I know.

INT. LIFT SHAFT — CONTINUOUS

A freight lift, not a passenger one. The numbers count down past tiers Teo has never heard named. Eight. Seven. Six. The light changes from white to amber to something with no name.

At Tier Two the doors open on heat.

INT. TIER TWO — THE FLOOR — CONTINUOUS

Not a hell. A workplace. Enormous, orderly, loud in a way that is almost restful, and it goes on past where the eye gives up.

Machines the size of buildings, and between them, people. Walking. Carrying. Reading dials. Nobody is chained to anything. Nobody looks up.

A woman in her forties — MARIN KESSE, foreman's tabard, forty years of the floor in how she stands — clocks him in one look. The clothes. The shoes. The face.

MARIN

You're lost.

TEO

I'm visiting.

MARIN

No such thing. Either you work here or you're lost.

She hands him a tabard. Not kindly. Efficiently.

MARIN

Put that on and stand where I put you, or go back up. Both are fine. Standing there is not.

CUT TO:

INT. TIER TWO — HEAT EXCHANGE — DAY

Teo stands where he was put. He holds a wrench he does not know the name of. He watches.

A young man, DOV, 19, works a manifold with a rhythm that took years. He talks the whole time and never breaks the rhythm.

DOV

Nine hours on, nine off, nine on. You get used to the nine. It's the twenty-seven you don't.

TEO

What's the twenty-seven?

DOV

The day. Ours is nine and nine and nine. Yours is different up there, I heard.

TEO

It's the same day.

DOV

Sure. Same day.

Dov laughs. It is a real laugh, not a bitter one, and that is worse.

INT. TIER TWO — MESS — NIGHT

Long tables. Good food, in the way that food is good when it is designed rather than cooked. Marin sits opposite Teo with her own bowl.

MARIN

Ask it.

TEO

Ask what?

MARIN

Whatever you came down to ask. Everyone from up there has one. Get it out before your shift.

TEO

Why doesn't anyone stop?

Marin eats for a moment.

MARIN

Stop what, exactly? The exchange? The city drinks off that plant. My sister lives on Tier Five. She'd be cold.

TEO

I meant —

MARIN

I know what you meant. You meant why don't we come up. And the answer is we do. Every ninth day, the lift is free to anybody. Have you ever seen one of us up there?

TEO

No.

MARIN

No. Because we go up, and we look at it, and then we come home, because home is here and there's nothing up there for us except your father's plaque.

Beat.

MARIN

It's not a cage, son. It's a job. That's the part that's going to keep you awake.

CUT TO:

INT. TIER TWO — THE FLOOR — DAY

A pressure alarm. Not a catastrophe — a procedure. People move fast and calmly and in a pattern that was designed by somebody clever a long time ago.

Dov is on the manifold. A relief valve goes and the line drops. He gets it back in nine seconds and it costs him a hand.

Nobody screams. Two people are already moving. Marin is one of them.

INT. TIER TWO — MEDICAL — CONTINUOUS

Fast, competent, well equipped. Better equipped than Teo expected, and the fact that he expected worse sits on his face.

Dov, grey, conscious, being told he will be fitted and back on a line in four months.

DOV

Four months.

MEDIC

Four months.

DOV

Good.

He means it. He is relieved. Teo watches a nineteen-year-old be relieved.

INT. TIER TWO — CORRIDOR — CONTINUOUS

Marin scrubs her hands. Teo cannot make his work.

TEO

That's the third one this year. Dov told me. Third.

MARIN

Fourth.

TEO

Then fix the valve.

MARIN

Filed it. Nine years running. It goes up, it gets read, it gets costed, and it comes back approved for the next revision.

TEO

Whose signature?

Marin looks at him. She does not say it. She does not have to, and the film does not cut to a document.

MARIN

Go home, Teo.

CUT TO:

INT. TIER NINE — ANSAR RESIDENCE — NIGHT

Teo, still in the tabard, in a room that costs more than the mess hall. Halvard in the doorway.

HALVARD

You've been down eleven days.

TEO

There's a valve on the Tier Two heat exchange. It's been filed nine times.

HALVARD

I know.

That is all he says. He does not defend it. He does not explain. He waits, the way you wait for weather.

TEO

That's it? You know?

HALVARD

I know a great many things I cannot spend. The revision is scheduled. It was scheduled before you were born and it is nine years out. If I pull it forward, four other things move back, and one of those is the Tier Five thermal, and your friend's sister gets cold.

Beat.

HALVARD

You want me to say I am a bad man. I would find that easier than what I am, which is a man who has read the whole schedule.

TEO

Then show me the schedule.

HALVARD

I will. It won't help.

He means that, too.

INT. TIER NINE — ANSAR RESIDENCE — LATER

The schedule, projected, filling a wall. It is enormous. It is comprehensible. Teo reads it for a long time and the film lets him.

Imke comes in, sits, says nothing, and reads it with him.

CUT TO:

EXT. TIER NINE — VIEWING GALLERY — DAWN

Teo at the rail again. Same view. Same plaque, THE CITY IS ONE BODY, polished soft.

Below, weather, and the tops of things, and now — because he knows where to look — a thin line of exhaust from a heat exchange, rising and being lost.

He watches it a while.

The attendant arrives with a cloth and begins, as he does every morning, to polish the plaque.

ATTENDANT

Morning, sir. Long way down.

TEO

All the way down.

The attendant polishes. Teo does not leave the rail. The city goes on being one body, in two halves, and the film ends on the exhaust line and not on either of their faces.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN:

EXT. DOCKING SPUR NINE — ESTABLISHING — DAY

A working port in the longmiddle. Not romantic. Gantries, tugs, a manifest board ticking over. Everything here has been done ten thousand times.

INT. SPUR NINE — RECEIVING — CONTINUOUS

HALLA VOSS, 40s, port receiver, works a queue of manifests with the speed of somebody who is good at a job nobody notices.

HALLA

Berth four, clean. Berth five, clean. Berth six —

She stops. Not alarmed. Just stopped.

HALLA

Berth six is clean.

CLERK

Is that a problem?

HALLA

It's a fourteen-week hold out of a bonded yard with a hundred and nine lines on it and not one query. That's not a problem. That's just tidy.

She stamps it. The stamp is the sound the film will use later.

INT. SPUR NINE — HOLD OF THE INBOUND — CONTINUOUS

Cargo. Ordinary. Crates on rails, numbered, sealed, each with a tag that matches a line on a form.

One crate at the back sits four centimetres proud of its rail. Its tag matches a line on the form.

Nobody is in the hold. The camera stays with the crate a long time. Nothing happens.

CUT TO:

INT. SPUR NINE — INSPECTION FLOOR — DAY 1

Inspector DEMET ARU, 30s, thorough, tired, runs the sampling protocol. Four per cent of lines, selected by the system, not by him.

DEMET

Four per cent.

HALLA

Four per cent.

DEMET

Hundred and nine lines. That's four crates and a bit.

HALLA

Then do four and a bit.

He does four and a bit. The system did not select the crate at the back. The protocol is correct. He follows it correctly.

INT. SPUR NINE — CORRIDOR — DAY 2

A maintenance tech, RUI, 20s, replaces a filter cassette on the hold's circulation plant. The old one is discoloured. Not badly. Within tolerance.

He logs it: WITHIN TOLERANCE. He is right.

INT. SPUR NINE — MESS — DAY 3

Twelve people eating. One of them, an unloader named PIET, is not eating.

HALLA

Not hungry?

PIET

Went off it.

HALLA

Off what?

PIET

Food.

Somebody laughs. Piet laughs too, a beat late, and the beat is the only thing wrong with him.

CUT TO:

INT. SPUR NINE — RECEIVING — DAY 5

Halla files a welfare note on Piet. Correct form. Correct office. It is received, logged and queued behind eleven others, all of which are also correct.

HALLA

How long on a welfare queue?

CLERK

Nine days.

HALLA

And if I flag it?

CLERK

Then it's nine days and somebody's annoyed with you.

She flags it anyway. The clerk is not annoyed. The queue does not move.

INT. SPUR NINE — HOLD — DAY 6

The crate is where it was. Four centimetres proud. The seal is intact and the film shows the seal being intact, clearly, so nobody can say otherwise.

Behind it, on the deck plate, a shape in the dust that is the shape of nothing in particular.

INT. SPUR NINE — CIRCULATION PLANT — DAY 7

Rui changes the cassette again. Four days early. He notes it: EARLY, DISCOLOURED, WITHIN TOLERANCE.

SUPERVISOR

Early's a variance. Log it as a variance and it goes to engineering.

RUI

It's within tolerance.

SUPERVISOR

Then it's not a variance. That's the rule and I didn't write it.

Rui logs it as not a variance. He is following the rule. The rule is a good rule.

CUT TO:

INT. SPUR NINE — MESS — DAY 8

Four people not eating now. Nobody has connected them because they work three different shifts and the mess is open for nineteen hours.

INT. SPUR NINE — MEDICAL — DAY 9

A port medic, ESKO, 50s, examines Piet properly for the first time. Everything reads normal. Everything is normal. Piet answers every question correctly and takes half a second too long to start each answer.

ESKO

Any pain?

PIET

No.

ESKO

Sleeping?

PIET

Yes.

ESKO

Dreaming?

Piet thinks about it. It is the only question he does not answer.

INT. SPUR NINE — RECEIVING — DAY 10

Halla pulls the manifest again. A hundred and nine lines. She reads every one. It takes four hours and the film gives it ninety seconds of real time and no music.

HALLA

Every line matches a crate. Every crate matches a line.

DEMET

Then there's nothing.

HALLA

I know. I've read it. There's nothing.

She is right. There is nothing wrong with the manifest.

INT. SPUR NINE — HOLD — DAY 11

Halla goes down herself. She walks the rails. She counts.

She reaches the back. The crate is four centimetres proud.

She takes out her slate, finds the line, checks the tag. They match.

She stands there. The camera stays on her for a long time and she does not open it, because she has no authority to open a sealed bonded line on a matching tag, and she knows it, and she has read the procedure, and the procedure is correct.

HALLA

(quietly, to nobody)

Four centimetres.

She logs it: CRATE 109 SEATED PROUD, TAG MATCHES, NO ACTION.

CUT TO:

INT. SPUR NINE — RECEIVING — DAY 12

The port runs. Berths cycle. Two ships out, one in. Everybody does their job.

In the background of the shot, four people move differently and the camera does not point at them.

INT. SPUR NINE — CIRCULATION PLANT — DAY 12 — LATER

Rui, on his own, opens the cassette housing and looks at the old filters he has been stacking. Nine of them, in a row, getting darker.

He lines them up. He looks at them. He gets it.

He runs.

INT. SPUR NINE — RECEIVING — CONTINUOUS

Rui arrives at Halla's desk at a dead run, holding nine filter cassettes.

RUI

They're in order. Look at them in order.

Halla looks. Beat. She reaches for the alarm.

CUT TO:

INT. SPUR NINE — RECEIVING — MOMENTS LATER

The alarm is a good alarm. It works. The port seals in ninety seconds, exactly as designed, and everybody does the right thing at the right time, and the drill they run four times a year turns out to have been worth running.

Halla stands in the middle of it with a manifest in her hand.

DEMET

Eleven days.

HALLA

Eleven days and every single form is correct. Check them. Every one.

He checks them. Later, off camera, an inquiry will check them too, and find the same thing.

INT. SPUR NINE — HOLD — LATER

A sealed hold. The crate, four centimetres proud, lit by one lamp.

The film does not open it.

INT. INQUIRY ROOM — TITLE CARD

Black. White text.

ELEVEN DAYS. ONE HUNDRED AND NINE LINES. NO PROCEDURE WAS BREACHED.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN:

INT. A ROOM — UNPLACED — NO TIME OF DAY

Bare. A table, two chairs, a door. Light from somewhere the film never shows you.

ADRIC MEHL, 50s, sits facing us. He is likeable. He has told this before.

ADRIC

I'll tell it the way it happened. That's all I can do.

CUT TO:

INT. THE ROOM (AS TOLD) — CONTINUOUS

The same room. Warmer. The angles are slightly wrong in a way that reads as style.

Adric, younger, is brought in by a WARDEN whose face we never quite catch.

ADRIC (V.O.)

They said it was for four days. It was not for four days.

The warden sets down a bowl and leaves. The door does not make a sound.

INT. A ROOM — UNPLACED — CONTINUOUS

ADRIC

There was a woman in the next room. I never saw her. I want to be clear that I never saw her.

CUT TO:

INT. THE ROOM (AS TOLD) — LATER

Adric with his ear to the wall. Through it, faintly, somebody moving. A chair. A cough.

ADRIC (V.O.)

She counted. Out loud. Every day, up to some number, and then she'd stop, and the next day she'd start again from one.

He starts counting with her, silently, mouthing it.

INT. A ROOM — UNPLACED — CONTINUOUS

ADRIC

On the ninth day she got to four hundred and eleven and she didn't stop. She kept going. And I understood that as a message.

Beat.

ADRIC

I understand now that it may not have been one.

CUT TO:

INT. THE ROOM (AS TOLD) — NIGHT

Adric works at the wall with a spoon handle. The work is slow and the film is patient with it.

ADRIC (V.O.)

It took eleven nights. I want to say I was brave. I was bored. Those look the same from outside and they are not the same.

The plaster gives. Behind it: brick. Behind the brick, when he gets there: another wall.

INT. A ROOM — UNPLACED — CONTINUOUS

ADRIC

That's when I decided she was not there.

INTERVIEWER (O.S.)

What made you decide that?

ADRIC

The second wall.

INTERVIEWER (O.S.)

There are rooms with two walls.

ADRIC

There are. Yes. There are.

CUT TO:

INT. THE ROOM (AS TOLD) — DAY

The warden brings the bowl. Adric, ragged now, asks the question.

ADRIC

Who's next door?

WARDEN

Nobody's next door.

ADRIC

I hear her.

WARDEN

Then somebody's next door.

The warden leaves. It is the only line the warden says in the film.

INT. A ROOM — UNPLACED — CONTINUOUS

ADRIC

And on the last day the counting stopped and the door was open and I walked out, and there was nobody in the next room, and there never had been a next room, because the wall I'd been working at for eleven nights was an outside wall.

He sits back. He has landed it. It is a good ending and he has told it well.

ADRIC

That's what happened.

CUT TO:

INT. THE ROOM — CONTINUOUS

No narration.

The same room. Cooler light. The angles are ordinary now, which is the only thing that has changed and it changes everything.

Adric sits at the table. Nobody brings a bowl. Nobody comes.

He gets up. He goes to the wall and puts his ear against it and stays there a long time.

There is no sound through the wall. The film lets us listen with him, in real time, for eleven seconds.

He begins to count. Out loud. From one.

He counts to four hundred and eleven and stops.

The next day — a cut, that is all — he begins again from one.

On the wall behind him, at shoulder height, worked at with something: eleven marks. Not a hole. Marks.

The door is not locked. The camera can see that it is not locked from here. Adric does not look at the door.

INT. A ROOM — UNPLACED — CONTINUOUS

Adric, present day, facing us. Exactly as we found him.

ADRIC

I know how it sounds.

INTERVIEWER (O.S.)

How does it sound?

ADRIC

Like a man who was in a room.

Beat. He almost smiles.

ADRIC

I was in a room. That part is not in dispute.

He waits. Nobody asks him anything else.

He waits longer. The camera does not cut away and does not move.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN:

EXT. TOWER 88-DELTA — TRAINING DECK — DAWN

Wide. Always wide. An open deck the size of four city blocks, nine hundred metres up, ringed by rail and open to the weather.

Four thousand people are on it. Not a crowd yet — a shift change. They are queuing for lifts, eating, stretching, doing the ordinary things four thousand people do at dawn.

The film will not give you a protagonist. Learn a face if you want one. It will not help.

EXT. TRAINING DECK — CONTINUOUS

The lift indicators, nine of them, all reading DOWN.

One by one, over ninety seconds, they change to HELD.

Nobody notices. Then four people notice. Then everybody notices, and the sound of four thousand people changes pitch, and that is the whole of the first act.

CUT TO:

INT. TOWER 88-DELTA — CONTROL FLOOR — CONTINUOUS

Nine consoles. Six operators. The seventh chair is being sat in by somebody who does not work here, and the film never shows his face above the collar.

OPERATOR

That's a hold on all nine.

THE MAN IN THE SEVENTH CHAIR

Yes.

OPERATOR

On whose authority?

THE MAN IN THE SEVENTH CHAIR

Read the board.

The operator reads the board. Whatever is on it, he sits back down. The film does not show the board.

EXT. TRAINING DECK — MORNING

Wide. Four thousand people and nine held lifts.

Somebody starts a queue at the stairhead, because a queue is what you make when there is nothing else to make.

The stair is an emergency stair. It is nine hundred metres of it. It was built to be used once.

CUT TO:

EXT. STAIRHEAD — CONTINUOUS

A rail supervisor, one of the few faces the film returns to, opens the stair gate. She does it because it is the correct thing to do and there is a procedure for it and she has run it in drills.

The first hundred go down in good order.

EXT. STAIRS — TIER 800s — DAY

Wide. The stair is a diagonal line across the frame and people are on it, all the way up and all the way down.

It is orderly. It stays orderly for a long time and the film is patient about showing you that it stays orderly.

INT. CONTROL FLOOR — CONTINUOUS

OPERATOR

There are people on the emergency stair.

THE MAN IN THE SEVENTH CHAIR

How many?

OPERATOR

All of them.

Beat.

THE MAN IN THE SEVENTH CHAIR

Then that's fine. That's what it's for.

He is not being cruel. He is answering the question that was asked.

CUT TO:

EXT. STAIRS — TIER 600s — MIDDAY

Wide. The line has been moving for four hours. It is still moving.

A woman sits down on a step to rest and the line goes around her, patiently, the way water does.

EXT. STAIRS — TIER 400s — AFTERNOON

Wide. Something changes and the film does not tell you what.

Two people go up against the flow. They are not running. They are going up because somebody is up there.

The line goes around them too, and does not stop, and takes longer to close behind them each time.

EXT. STAIRS — TIER 300s — AFTERNOON

Wide. A landing. Four hundred people on a landing built for forty.

Nothing happens. The film holds the shot for a very long time and nothing happens and everybody in the audience knows exactly what is about to happen and it does not.

The landing clears. It takes eleven minutes. Nobody is hurt.

INT. CONTROL FLOOR — CONTINUOUS

Six operators, silent, watching nine screens of a stair.

OPERATOR

I can release four of them. Four lifts. Twenty minutes and it's over.

THE MAN IN THE SEVENTH CHAIR

No.

OPERATOR

Give me a reason and I'll write it down.

Beat. The man in the seventh chair says nothing at all.

The operator takes out a pad and writes on it: ASKED. NO REASON GIVEN. He notes the time. It is the only close-up in the film.

CUT TO:

EXT. STAIRS — TIER 100s — EVENING

Wide. The light has gone amber. The line is thinner and slower and still moving.

Somebody has set up water at a landing. Somebody else is carrying a child who is not theirs. Nobody has organised any of this.

EXT. TOWER BASE — NIGHT

Wide. The stair delivers people into a plaza, a few at a time, for six hours.

There is no crowd waiting for them and no cameras and no speeches. People arrive, and stand for a moment, and then go home, because home is where you go.

EXT. TRAINING DECK — NIGHT

Wide. Empty. Nine lift indicators, all reading HELD.

The rail supervisor is the last one off the deck. She walks the whole thing once, checking, because that is the procedure, and the deck is enormous and she is very small in it.

She goes to the stairhead. She looks down it.

She takes out a pad, and writes, and we do not see what.

She closes the gate behind her, which is also the procedure.

EXT. TOWER 88-DELTA — DAWN

Wide. The tower from four kilometres away, in morning light, with nine lifts running normally.

Title card, white on black:

FOUR THOUSAND AND NINE PEOPLE CAME DOWN THE STAIR. NOBODY WAS INJURED. NO ORDER WAS EVER PUT IN WRITING.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN:

INT. HEARING ROOM — CONTINUOUS

A face. That is the film.

NEVE ADARO, 30s, sits at a plain table. The camera is close and it does not leave her for ninety minutes. We never see the room. We never see who is asking.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

State your name.

NEVE

Neve Adaro.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

You know why you're here.

NEVE

No.

Beat.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

We'll come back to that.

CUT TO:

INT. HEARING ROOM — LATER

EXAMINER (O.S.)

On the eleventh, where were you?

NEVE

Working.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

Where?

NEVE

The same place I have worked for nine years.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

Who can confirm that?

NEVE

Everybody I work with. Ask them.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

We have.

She waits for the rest of it. There is no rest of it.

CUT TO:

INT. HEARING ROOM — LATER

EXAMINER (O.S.)

Do you know a man called Fell?

NEVE

No.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

You've never met him.

NEVE

I don't know. I've met a great many people. If you tell me what he looks like I'll tell you if I've met him.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

That isn't how this works.

NEVE

I'm learning that.

It is the first thing she says that is nearly funny and she does not enjoy it.

CUT TO:

INT. HEARING ROOM — LATER

She has been here some hours. It is beginning to show in her shoulders and not in her voice.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

Are you tired?

NEVE

Yes.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

We can stop.

NEVE

Can we?

Beat.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

We can pause.

NEVE

Then no.

CUT TO:

INT. HEARING ROOM — LATER

EXAMINER (O.S.)

You filed nine objections in six years.

NEVE

Eleven.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

Our record says nine.

NEVE

Then two of them are missing, and I'd like to know which two, because I remember all eleven.

The longest silence in the film. She does not fill it.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

We'll come back to that.

NEVE

You keep saying that.

CUT TO:

INT. HEARING ROOM — LATER

EXAMINER (O.S.)

Do you consider yourself loyal?

NEVE

To what?

EXAMINER (O.S.)

Answer the question as asked.

NEVE

I can't. It isn't a question yet.

Beat.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

Do you consider yourself loyal.

NEVE

I turn up. I do the work. I file when it's wrong. If that's loyal then yes and if it isn't then I don't know what the word is for.

CUT TO:

INT. HEARING ROOM — LATER

Her face has changed. Not broken. Worn to something simpler.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

Is there anything you wish to say?

NEVE

I'd like to know the charge.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

That isn't available to you.

NEVE

Is it available to you?

The longest pause of the film. The camera does not move.

EXAMINER (O.S.)

Is there anything you wish to say.

She thinks about it. She takes a long time.

NEVE

No.

CUT TO:

INT. HEARING ROOM — CONTINUOUS

EXAMINER (O.S.)

This hearing is concluded.

She sits. Nobody tells her to go.

She waits, in the chair, for a long time, in case there is more.

There is not.

She gathers herself, and stands, and goes out of frame, and the camera holds on the empty chair for eleven seconds.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN:

TITLE CARD

NO DIALOGUE. THE MACHINE IS THE CO-LEAD.

EXT. THE NEW ROAD — CUT ONE — DAWN

Early Aura. A road cut into a slope nine days ago, still pale where the rock was opened. It goes up and over and out of sight.

At the bottom, a hauler. Squat, ugly, beloved, forty years old before it ever came across. On its flank, hand-painted: A GOOD ONE.

Its driver, WICK, 30s, walks around it once, kicks a tyre, and gets in. This is the whole of his character and it is enough.

EXT. ROAD CAMP — CONTINUOUS

A camp of forty people at the top of the cut. A woman raises a flag on a pole: a red square. The signal for GO NOW.

There is a reason. The film shows it for one second and never mentions it again: a crack in the rock face above the camp, widening.

EXT. THE NEW ROAD — CONTINUOUS

Wick sees the flag. He looks at the road. He looks at the hauler's fuel gauge, which is not good.

He goes.

EXT. THE NEW ROAD — SWITCHBACK ONE — DAY

The hauler takes the first bend too fast and the load shifts and the whole thing leans and does not go over.

Wick, inside, does not react. He has been here before.

EXT. THE NEW ROAD — SWITCHBACK TWO — CONTINUOUS

A boulder in the road. Wick does not stop. He puts two wheels up the bank and goes around it at an angle that should not work.

Behind him, unremarked, the boulder rolls off the edge.

EXT. THE NEW ROAD — THE STRAIGHT — CONTINUOUS

Four hundred metres of new road and nothing in the way. Wick relaxes for exactly as long as that lasts.

A goat. Not a herd. One goat, in the middle of the road, entirely calm.

Wick stops. He gets out. He carries the goat to the verge. He gets back in. He goes.

The goat follows him for nine metres and then does not.

EXT. THE NEW ROAD — SWITCHBACK FOUR — DAY

The fuel gauge. Worse.

Wick opens a hatch on the move, one hand on the wheel, and does something to the engine that no manual describes.

Black smoke. Then no smoke. Then more speed.

EXT. THE NEW ROAD — THE WASHOUT — CONTINUOUS

The road is gone. Nine metres of it, taken out by water, with a drop under it.

Wick stops. He looks at it a long time.

He reverses four hundred metres back up the road.

He gets out. He takes the load off the hauler, piece by piece, and stacks it neatly by the roadside, and the film shows every single piece.

He gets back in and reverses further.

He goes at the gap and clears it by very little, and the empty hauler lands badly and keeps going.

EXT. THE NEW ROAD — CONTINUOUS

Wick, driving, looks in the mirror at his entire load sitting in a neat stack a kilometre behind him.

He looks forward. He keeps going. That is the joke and the film does not underline it.

EXT. THE NEW ROAD — SWITCHBACK SEVEN — DAY

The crack in the rock face, from below, much bigger now.

Wick sees it. For the first time in the film he looks frightened, and then he looks determined, and both expressions are on his face for about half a second each because he is driving.

EXT. ROAD CAMP — CONTINUOUS

Forty people, packed, waiting. The woman with the flag lowers it. Nobody has arrived.

EXT. THE NEW ROAD — FINAL CLIMB — CONTINUOUS

The hauler on the last grade, empty, screaming, doing something it was never built to do.

The gauge reads nothing at all.

It makes the top.

EXT. ROAD CAMP — CONTINUOUS

Wick arrives. Forty people look at a hauler with no load on it.

Wick gets out. He points back down the road. He mimes, at some length, a stack.

Nobody understands him. He gives up.

He opens the hauler's back doors and forty people get in, because a hauler with no load on it is a hauler with room in it, and that was never the plan and it is what happens.

EXT. THE NEW ROAD — DESCENDING — DAY

The hauler comes back down the cut with forty people in the back, on no fuel, coasting most of it, taking the switchbacks in silence.

It passes the neat stack of the load. Nobody says anything, because nobody in this film ever says anything.

Behind and above them, the rock face lets go, and takes the camp, and the film shows it in one wide shot from a long way off with no music.

EXT. THE BOTTOM OF THE CUT — DUSK

The hauler, stopped, empty of fuel, forty people standing around it.

Wick pats it once on the flank, the way you would a horse.

He sits down on the running board and puts his head back against the door and closes his eyes.

Somebody hands him a cup of something. He takes it without opening his eyes.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN:

TITLE CARD

MADE ON EARTH, BEFORE ANY OF IT. HAND-PAINTED. TWELVE MINUTES.

INT. THE SOCIETY OF PROSPECTIVE SETTLERS — HALL — DAY

A hand-built world: painted flats, visible wires, a moon on a string. Eleven people in enormous collars sit around a table with a globe on it that is the wrong shape.

PROFESSOR ANNIS BREM, played very broadly, unrolls a chart. The chart says AURA — A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION.

BREM

Gentlemen. Ladies. It is warm there.

Applause. It is not warm there.

EXT. LAUNCH FIELD — DAY

A ship shaped like a bullet with fins, which is not what a ship is shaped like. It is loaded by men carrying trunks and one enormous potted plant.

The crowd waves handkerchiefs. Somebody fires a small cannon for no reason.

INT. THE SHIP — CONTINUOUS

Four seats. The crossing takes, according to a card, ELEVEN WEEKS. Nobody sleeps. There is a card table.

One of them looks out of a porthole at painted stars and says something the card renders as: MARVELLOUS.

EXT. AURA — ARRIVAL — DAY

The ship lands nose-first in a painted meadow and stays nose-first, which everybody ignores.

They step out onto grass. Grass. Somebody kneels and kisses it.

In the background, a painted flat of purple mountains, wobbling slightly.

EXT. AURA — THE MEADOW — CONTINUOUS

They are met by the natives, who are men in costumes with four arms each, and who bow.

There are no natives.

The natives present a fruit. Brem eats it and pulls a face of enormous delight.

EXT. AURA — THE LIGHT GRAVITY — DAY

They discover that they can jump. This takes four minutes of the film's twelve and it is done with wires and it is genuinely delightful.

One of them jumps and does not come down, and is hauled back on a visible rope, and everybody laughs including, plainly, the cast.

EXT. AURA — THE CITY THEY WILL BUILD — DAY

A painted backdrop of a city with domes and pennants and a river running through the middle of it.

Brem gestures at it grandly. A card: AND HERE, IN TIME, OUR CHILDREN.

There is no river on Aura. There are no domes. There are no pennants.

EXT. AURA — THE FEAST — DUSK

A long table in the meadow, natives and settlers together, an enormous painted sun going down in a colour that is nearly right and not right.

Somebody proposes a toast. Everybody stands. The card is four words: TO THE NEW WORLD.

EXT. AURA — THE MEADOW — NIGHT

They sleep on the grass under the painted stars, all of them in a row, hands folded, smiling.

The film has been silly for eleven and a half minutes.

EXT. AURA — THE REAL PLATEAU — DAWN

No paint. No wires. No costume.

A wide, slow, real shot of the actual place: basalt, thin cold light, a lavender-indigo sky, wind, and nothing living in frame at all.

It is beautiful and it is not welcoming and it does not look anything like the meadow.

The shot holds for forty seconds. There is no card and no music.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN:

INT. A LECTURE ROOM — DAY

A plain room, a screen, a pointer. DR. IMOGEN SARR, 50s, addresses us directly. She is warm, credentialled, and completely certain.

SARR

A hundred thousand people crossed thirty-six years of vacuum. Thirty kilograms each. Nineteen of it was issued — clothing, boots, documents, and something for the nerves. Eleven kilograms was yours, and there was a form, and there was a scale. This film is about what they chose.

Behind her, a slide: a list. It is very long.

CUT TO:

INT. RE-ENACTMENT — A CABIN, ARK-GENESIS — NIGHT

Staged, and staged well. A woman packs a small case by lamplight. She holds up a wooden spoon, considers it, and puts it in.

SARR (V.O.)

The spoon. Domestic, sentimental, functionally worthless. And yet in ninety-one recorded manifests, a kitchen implement appears where a tool should be.

INT. A LECTURE ROOM — CONTINUOUS

Sarr, with the pointer.

SARR

We call these transitional objects. They do not cross for use. They cross for reassurance.

She is pleased with the phrase. The film lets her be.

CUT TO:

INT. RE-ENACTMENT — THE SHARED DECKS — DAY

Forty people in a long room. A man ties a red thread around a stanchion and everybody walks past it without touching it.

SARR (V.O.)

The thread at the stanchion. A ward. Its function is to mark a boundary that does not exist, and its persistence across nine decks tells us a great deal about how quickly belief fills a vacuum.

INT. ARCHIVE ROOM — DAY

A drawer of actual objects, filmed plainly: a spoon, a length of red thread, a flat stone, a child's shoe, a ring of keys to a house that is on another planet.

Nobody narrates this shot. It runs for forty seconds.

CUT TO:

INT. A LECTURE ROOM — DAY

SARR

The keys are the classic case. Keys to a dwelling that no longer exists, on a world they will never return to, carried by four hundred and eleven separate crossers.

Beat.

SARR

It is, of course, irrational.

INT. RE-ENACTMENT — A CABIN — NIGHT

An old man, staged, hangs a ring of keys on a hook by his bunk. He does it carefully. He looks at them.

The re-enactment continues four seconds past where it should stop, and the actor, plainly, has forgotten he is acting.

CUT TO:

INT. A LECTURE ROOM — DAY

SARR

Let us turn to the charms of the mid-crossing period.

She turns to the screen. The slide has changed and she has not noticed.

It is a photograph. Real, not staged. A woman in a bunk, holding a wooden spoon, taken by somebody who was there.

Sarr looks at it for a moment.

SARR

That isn't the slide I asked for.

CUT TO:

INT. RE-ENACTMENT — THE SHARED DECKS — DAY

Staged again, and this time the film does not pretend. The camera pulls back and shows the lights, the crew, the marks on the floor.

SARR (V.O.)

The vigil at the eleventh hour. Practised, we believe, by perhaps two thousand crossers, and abandoned entirely within a generation of landfall.

The actors, mid-vigil, stand very still. One of them is crying and it is not in the script and nobody cuts.

INT. ARCHIVE ROOM — DAY

The flat stone. Turned over by a gloved hand.

On the underside, scratched: a name, and a date, and nothing else.

SARR (V.O.)

We have not been able to identify the name.

Beat.

SARR (V.O.)

We have not looked very hard. It is one stone.

CUT TO:

INT. A LECTURE ROOM — DAY

Sarr, wrapping up, pointer down.

SARR

What we see, across the whole of the crossing, is a population under extraordinary pressure producing exactly the beliefs one would predict. Nothing here is mysterious. All of it is human.

She gathers her notes. The lights on the set begin to go down around her, which is the crew wrapping, not a choice.

SARR

Which is not the same as saying it was foolish.

She says it to nobody, after the lecture is over, half out of the light. It is the only unscripted-sounding line she has.

INT. ARCHIVE ROOM — NIGHT

The drawer, closed by a gloved hand.

A card, white on black:

OF THE OBJECTS IN THIS FILM, NINE ARE REAL AND ARE HELD IN THE GALLERY. THE REST WERE MADE FOR THE CAMERA.

Beat. A second card.

THE FILM DOES NOT SAY WHICH NINE.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN:

TITLE CARD

A FILM ABOUT A WAR NOBODY ON THIS PLANET HAS FOUGHT.

EXT. A TRAINING FIELD — DAY

Young men in gear that is very slightly too clean. They are being taught to dig by a man who has also never dug.

HOLM, 19, is bad at it and cheerful about being bad at it.

SERGEANT

Deeper.

HOLM

It's ground, sergeant. It goes down forever.

SERGEANT

Then dig forever.

Everybody laughs, including the sergeant. It is a good scene and the gear weighs nothing.

EXT. THE LINE — TRENCH — DAY

A trench, well made. The men are in it. The mud is the right colour and the wrong consistency and moves like something that has been mixed for the camera.

VEHL

How long have we been here?

HOLM

Four days.

VEHL

Feels like nine.

HOLM

It's four.

Nobody says anything for a while, and then somebody hands round something to eat, and the film lingers on it too long, the way a film does when the people making it think eating in a trench is the detail.

EXT. THE LINE — TRENCH — NIGHT

Shelling. It is loud and it is well staged and it is not right — the men flinch on the impacts, together, like a chorus.

Holm puts his hands over his ears, which nobody who has been shelled does, and the camera loves him for it.

VEHL

Are you praying?

HOLM

I'm counting.

VEHL

To what?

HOLM

Four hundred and eleven. Then I start again.

It is a beautiful line and it belongs to a different war than the one being described.

EXT. NO MAN'S GROUND — DAWN

They go over. Wide, slow, and shot with enormous care.

The ground is even. There is nothing on it. Nobody trips. Nobody is sick. Every man goes forward at the same speed.

EXT. A SHELL HOLE — CONTINUOUS

Holm and an enemy soldier, ALDA, land in the same hole. Neither of them shoots.

A long scene. They share water. They cannot speak each other's language and the film gives them a page and a half of understanding one another anyway.

HOLM

Holm.

ALDA

Alda.

They shake hands. It is genuinely moving and it did not happen and it could not have happened for reasons the filmmakers did not know to look up.

EXT. THE LINE — TRENCH — DAY

Holm comes back changed. He says so, out loud, to three people, in a speech that lasts ninety seconds.

HOLM

He had a photograph. Of a girl. Same as mine. That's all it is. That's all any of it is.

Nobody who has been frightened talks like this, and the actor is very good, and the audience cries.

EXT. A FIELD HOSPITAL — NIGHT

Clean. Lit. A doctor with time to spare says a wise thing to a dying man and then closes his eyes with two fingers.

DOCTOR

Somebody will write about this.

It is the worst line in the film and every audience on Aura has quoted it for sixty years.

EXT. THE LINE — TRENCH — DAWN

The last day. Holm, older now in the way a nineteen-year-old is older after eleven weeks, sits with his back to the wall.

It is quiet. He listens to the quiet.

He puts his head out of the trench to look at a bird. The film is very sure about the bird.

He is shot. It is instant and clean and he falls back into the trench in one piece and his face is calm.

EXT. THE LINE — TRENCH — CONTINUOUS

Vehl finds him. He does not shout. He sits down next to him and stays there, and the camera pulls up and away, slowly, over a trench, over the ground, over nothing at all, for a long time.

TITLE CARD

Black.

THE GROUND IN THIS FILM WAS DUG IN THE FLATS BEYOND HOLLOW REACH, AT 0.38 GRAVITY, BY FORTY VOLUNTEERS OVER NINE DAYS. IT TOOK THEM LONGER THAN THEY EXPECTED.

Beat. A second card.

NOBODY WHO WORKED ON THIS FILM HAS SEEN A WAR.

FADE OUT.