Act I, Scene 2
Present Day
EXT. AN ABANDONED WAREHOUSE IN MANHATTAN
A taxicab weaves its way through the crowded streets in the busier sections of town, then finally makes a stop in a grimy abandoned industrial neighborhood. We hear a cab driver's voice through a rolled-down front window:
CAB DRIVER: You sure this is it, lady?
AGENT AMANDA HARKNESS, a smartly-dressed woman in a grey suit, gets out of the cab and ignores the driver's question, passing his a handful of bills without a backwards glance.
INT. AN ABANDONED WAREHOUSE IN MANHATTAN
Amanda strides into the warehouse, which is full of discarded boxes and piles of trash. Layers of graffiti and "THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED" fliers cover the walls, and puddles of filthy water cover the floor. Unfazed by her surroundings, she walks over to a little wooden crate in a corner, reaches into it, and taps a few buttons on a hidden keypad. Somewhere out of sight, a piece of machinery lets out a loud beep.
Amanda walks over to the center of the warehouse, and the section of the floor under her feet slowly begins to drop-revealing that it's a hidden elevator.
INT. SECTION 4: MANHATTAN OFFICE
The elevator takes Amanda down into a hidden room under a warehouse: the entrance to the Manhattan offices of Section 4, a secret Department of Defense task force dedicated to understanding and controlling "Extranormal Science" for the good of mankind.
Amanda walks up to the door at the end of the narrow entrance way, places her hand on a palm scanner, and speaks her name into a small microphone as the machine scans her hand.
HARKNESS: Agent Amanda Harkness. Authorization: "Four Eight Zeta Tau".
The door opens, revealing Section 4's nerve center in all its glory.
Section 4's Manhattan outpost is the polar opposite of the warehouse hiding it: walls of clean, pristine white plastic offset by black rubber walkways, holographic computer screens lighting up every corner, and employees wearing stylish cobalt blue zip-up jumpsuits milling around everywhere.
HARKNESS: Tell me there's something worth my time down here!
The dazzling sight of the base has long since lost its effect on Amanda, a veteran Section 4 agent.
AGENT CARR, a young man in a Section 4 jumpsuit, stands up from a bank of computers wearing a radio headset.
CARR: Agent Harkness! Doctor Storm just sent in the latest specs from the launch site!
HARKNESS: So we're calling it a launch site now? The last time I saw the place it looked more like a junkyard. We're sure we can get the thing in the air?
CARR: They say the top brass is meeting on it today.
HARKNESS: Meeting? Has anyone shown these people the damn schedule? We're a month behind as it is!
CARR: Orders, Harkness. I don't give 'em.
HARKNESS: What the hell do we have to discuss? We all know the mission. We've known it for years.
CARR: I hear Van Damme's been putting pressure on the brass for a while. Wants the mission delayed. You've seen the guy's stock holdings-he pulls serious weight in this outfit.
HARKNESS (muttering): Goddammit, leave Victor Van Damme out of this...
CARR: Richards is the one you need to talk to. If you can understand him.
Harkness sighs, massaging her eyelids. "So this is the guy we're leaving it all up to", her expression says.
HARKNESS: I thought it was your turn to talk to him.
Carr smirks.
CARR: Seniority, Agent. You're the big bird around here, remember?
HARKNESS: Right. Then why am I not shoving your sorry ass in that lab instead?
CARR: 'Cause it's a big honor, meeting the resident Einstein. I'm not worthy.
Harkness rolls her eyes.
HARKNESS: Just promise me he'll remember his pants this time.
CARR: I think that's Dunn's department. He called in sick today.
INT. REED'S LAB
Reed's lab is a spacious, octagonal room walled by tinted black glass. A large table, big enough to fit a microscope, a large computer and a set of binders, fills up the center. Papers are strewn around the table haphazardly, and we can clearly see a sleeping bag thrown into a corner. A set of photos is plastered to one wall:
In one photo, we see a twenty-something Reed posing in a sky-blue NASA uniform.
In another, a group of about four other men in NASA uniforms are greeting a surprised Reed with a birthday cake. The words "HAPPY BIRTHDAY REED!" are written in frosting, with a crudely drawn rocket ship drawn in frosting under that.
In another, Reed is standing with a twenty-something Ben wearing an NYU sweatshirt, doing his best to look cool (and failing in the most adorable way possible) while the two of them clink beer bottles together.
In another, Reed and Ben are posing together as kids (the same age as they were in the first scene) in the desert scrub in front of Reed's telescope.
In the final one, an adult Ben is wearing Army fatigues and posing with a group of similarly-dressed men in front of a set of barracks in a Middle Eastern desert. The words "Season's Greetings from Baghdad" are written across the picture.
We see REED, now in his mid-30s, reach across his worktable to grab a handful of Cheez Doodles. As he chews them thoughtfully, he fingers a computer panel on the underside of the table, bringing up a holographic 3-D map of the Solar System. Going over some papers spread across his table, he zooms in on a section of the 3-D map just between Earth and Mars, and we see a glowing cloud of dense gas—the same one from the opening sequence—come into view.
Harkness enters.
HARKNESS: Ten-hut!
Reed, lost in thought, flinches at the sudden intrusion, sending papers and Cheez Doodles tumbling in every direction.
REED: Uh...
HARKNESS: Richards, with that all-too-fat salary we're paying you, you goddamn well better have something better to give me than a stutter.
REED: Well, if you just—
HARKNESS: You got taxpayer dollars paying your salary here, Richards. It's simple: you show me progress or you're gone.
(Beat)
Harkness notices the cloud of gas on the 3-D map.
HARKNESS: Jesus. Is that...?
Reed adjusts his glasses and taps a command into his computer panel. The model of the cloud begins to rotate, showing it from every angle.
REED: Best model of the thing I could come up with.
He rifles through a pile of papers, all of which show color photographs of the cloud tagged with serial numbers.
REED: We've been in touch with Hubble since it started. They got us the pics. Artemis got us everything else.
HARKNESS: And?
REED: Next we gotta study the radiation on that thing. That's where the tissue cultures came in.
He keys in another command into the terminal, bringing up logged video footage of microorganisms undergoing mitosis.
HARKNESS: And?
REED: Uh... Well, that's just it. It screws with cell division patterns. Never affects it the same way twice. There's no form of radiation we know of that affects living matter like this.
HARKNESS: And?
REED: Well, uh... Then there's the speed of division. It's like sometimes it just slows mitosis to a crawl, and sometimes it speeds it up faster than we can measure. The way not even an enzyme can. It's like...it's like it finds some way to screw with time. Here.
He brings up a logged image of a single cell.
HARKNESS: What am I looking at?
REED: A single cell. On a sample that used to have over ten thousand of them.
HARKNESS: And?
REED: Well...complete reversal of mitosis. That just...that just doesn't happen.
HARKNESS: So. Can you tell me something worth keeping you around for?
REED: You've seen what the probes have brought back, right? Sensor readings don't make any sense when we try to get a bead on that cloud. Its like the radiation up there screws with their sense of direction.
As an example, he pulls up archived footage from a space probe, which quickly dissolves into static.
REED: Time, space, direction... Nothing make sense when that thing's involved.
HARKNESS: And?
REED: You realize that this means, right? We need eyes on it. Firsthand study.
HARKNESS: So that's what I pay you for? Telling me to throw away more tax dollars on space gas?
REED: Harkness, you don't get it, do you? This is why I joined up with Section 4 in the first place. For a shot at a mission like this, I'd...
HARKNESS: Yeah, Richards. I know. And Storm's had his eye on you from Day 1. God help us all if you're the best lab rat he could find for this thing.
REED: You're telling me. Cheez Doodle?
He offers Harkness one, but she ignores him. Harkness turns to exit Reed's lab, and Reed follows her out into the main nerve center of the base, trailing her heels like a puppy.
REED: Hey! Somebody said you had test footage of the launch site!
HARKNESS: And?
REED: Can't I get a look?
HARKNESS: Just look up, Richards.
Reed looks up at the nearest monitor in the base. A video feed shows a rocket ship-sleek, gleaming, elegant and powerful-is on a launchpad in an underground hangar.
HARKNESS: What for? You know, if Van Damme has his way, no one's going up there.
REED: What?
HARKNESS: That's what his lapdogs told me. They say he's pushing for an unmanned mission. Done completely with the automated probes his company built.
REED: Unmanned? Jesus, all the time we've spent studying this thing from the ground, and he wants to keep us here?
HARKNESS: It's more than just that. Van Damme was a giant before we brought him onto Section 4. The guy's a genius, but you don't make it as far in the private sector as he did by playing fair. Information's currency. He knows that more than anyone. An unmanned mission's easier to control.
REED: He works for us, though. Doesn't he?
HARKNESS: That's what it says on the books. Storm's never trusted him, though.
REED: Why'd he agree to bring him on, then?
HARKNESS: Damage control. If we left him to himself, Van Damme Industries would be making this voyage, not us. Hell, with the salary Victor used to give his science geeks, I'm surprised you never ended up working for him.
REED: I got an offer once, after I finished my Master's Thesis. Me and Victor go way back. We published our first paper together back in grad school. I just kind of lost track of him after he went corporate.
HARKNESS: You got offered a job at Van Damme Industries and you turned it down? Christ, Richards! You know how many lab rats would kill for a job like that?
REED: I had to! Dr. Storm offered me a job here. And he's the one who got me into the training program when I was a kid. Didn't I ever tell you the story about—
HARKNESS: —about the space probe that fell from the sky? Yeah, Reed, you've mentioned it once or twice.
As Reed and Harkness make their way through the base, we see a video feed of a space probe-almost identical to the one from the first scene-being constructed by a group of white-coated technicians.
REED: Space is the only frontier left. Don't you realize that? Scientists are the last true explorers left in the world.
HARKNESS: Yeah, that was how we saw it in the '50s. Then the Cold War had to muck things up. All those scientists' dreams were just tools for guys like Kennedy and Krushchev. And that "frontier" of yours was just occupied territory. Why do you think we planted a flag on the moon?
Reed looks up at the nearest monitor, where his 3-D model of the cloud is now being displayed to the personnel on the main floor. Reed points to it.
REED: You want to try planting a flag on that thing?