Screenplay Stories
War Games
Perfect for a short film.Island In time
Artificial Intelligence Scapegoat or Killer
Shift World
War Games
"Sir, we're under attack."
"Chinese? Russians?"
"Negative sir. The Chinese Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles are still in their launch cradles. Russian ICBMs are on the ground."
"Who could do this? Terrorists?"
"Unknown, sir. But they are sure doing a fine job. New Orleans is gone. I suggest you call the President, sir."
"Bobby, Tommy, lunch."
"Aw, Mom!"
Island In Time
It is 1576 and the Spanish Carrack Isabel has hit a submerged rock in the Amazon River and is taking water. Her carpenter can't remove the rock. A diver goes over the side with an iron bar. The rock and diver are never seen again.
Isabel must get to anchorage or go to the bottom. Finding anchorage in a small island cove, strange things begin to happen. The men's beards don't grow. A new tattoo fades away.
The Isabel is never heard from again.
A year later Captain Gill is with the Admiral at the port of San Juan when is ordered to take his ship, the Carrack Anna, into the Amazon River to find the Isabel.
Captain Gill takes the Anna into the Amazon River and begins their search. Seeing a barrel floating they investigate and find that it has a canon tethered to it. Soon others are found and Isabel's wreckage is found in a cove on an island.
From shore an Indian woman watches the big canoe, as she calls ships, come into the cove and ground itself hard on the beach. She knows what the island will do to the crew.
From astern the watch yells, "Wave." The Pororoca1 is coming upon them and fast. It's wave will push the Anna into the cove at a speed that is too fast to be controlled safely. And it does. The Anna is marooned with no help to be had.
Soon strange things come to pass: men's beards stop growing, a sailors tattoo fades, at the near by wreck of the Isabel, sailors clothing is found containing the bones of children. Anna's crew becomes close to panic and a radical solution is found. The stern castle will be torn off and discarded. Hopefully that will lighten the ship enough so that the tide will float her because as she sits now her bow is high on the shore and stuck fast.
The men begin work. Even the cabin boy helps where he can, but to no avail. All the men die. The boy, the only survivor, is taken by the Indian woman to be cared for and raised as her son. The son she always wanted.
1) The Pororoca is a tidal bore, with waves up to 4 m (13 ft) high, that travels up to 800 km (500 mi) upstream on the Amazon River and its tributaries.
Artificial Intelligence Scape Goat or Killer
In Grandway, Pennsylvania, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) controlled loader bot kills two people and injures others. The ramifications are immediate, worldwide, and on Luna. Earth's moon base where an AI controls life support, communications, most everything else.
To get to the bottom of why the bot freaked out Dr. Jonathan Young from Mechanical Man corporation. He's hired to investigate. He brings with him three people: a software expert, a hardware expert, and an operating system expert.
Dr. Young's help is appreciated by everyone except Vondo. He feels that outside help is not required and that they can do it themselves. He does not consider the political and financial ramifications of his words. Or does he?
The investigation begins. The electricity to the data center is out because of an attack on its power station. The rooms of Dr. Young's team are searched. The bot is examined and found to have been tampered with.
The data center's power is restored and its computers are brought online. The communication software and hardware are verified. Finally, the software operating the loader bots is found altered. There are only a few people who have the know how and access to get past the AI's security.
Vondo is suspected. Further evidence is found when spend rifle cartridges are found outside the damaged power station. Cartridges that are the same as Vondo's target rifle. And he did not act alone to create this situation. All he wanted to do is embarrass AI. Maybe slow it down. They did not want anyone killed.
The conspirators flee the country. Vondo runs to Costa Rica where he's arrested and implicates the others. A worldwide manhunt results. Dr. Young and his crack team leave for home.
Shift World
In a dystopian society, in a city called Town, your worth is determined by the shift you work. The elites are the first shift. Next come the second shifters. They are engineers, supervisors and others of responsibility. The lowest class is the third shifters. 'Thirds'as they are called.
There is but one exception, rotating shift workers. These people have skills that are necessary; required. They can, and do, work any shift. When times are tough a rotating shift worker fixes what's wrong. They are admired by everyone.
Thirds, on the other hand, are beaten if found on the street. Given lousy food, lousy clothing, dangerous work, unheated housing. They walk, no matter how cold.
Bub, get assigned to the electric power. As he calls it and is befriended by Ted a rotating shift worker. Ted sees much of himself in Bub and befriends him.
At the power plant Bub runs afoul of Mr. Face who hates all thirds. Face is appointed and does not have the skills to do the job. Hence, he always has Ted around to cover for him. One day, bub asks Ted how he can move up to the second shift. This takes great courage as Ted could have him disciplined for even asking. And Bub would never do this if Ted were not a friend and one who did the same thing.
Ted tells him, but its risky, might result in Bud's death, and that he must weit for a situation so dire that Bub's involvement cannot be discounted.
Years later, Bub gets his chance. There is an outage to their most important customer and automatic controls fail resulting in an hours long outage. Ted orders dangerous actions that would kill people. Bub steps in. Solves the problem and returns the automatics to full operation.
Later Bub goes to Ted's home. He asks why Ted did it? Why turn off the automatics? Why cause the outage? You know what they can do to you.
Ted tells Bub that he's dying and that there's nothing they can do. And he wants to leave bub better off. All Bub hears is that his friend - his only friend is dying.
