Event Horizon Page #3

VOICE:

Billy...

Weir opens his eyes.

VOICE:

I'm so cold...

Weir's grav tank opens.

WIDER TO REVEAL:

the seven bodies of the crew, suspended inert in the gel.

A sound:
DRIP... DRIP... DRIP...

Weir slowly walks to the Bridge.

VOICE:

I'm so cold...

INT. LEWIS AND CLARK - BRIDGE

A naked WOMAN sits at the helm, her back to us. Completely

still. Her skin is very pale. Water pools around her chair.

Weir stands behind her.

WEIR:

(tentative)

Claire?

She does not answer. She does not move. Weir reaches out to

touch her shoulder, then pulls his hand back, afraid.

WEIR:

Claire? I'm sorry. Claire?

He reaches out again. He touches her hair. She doesn't move.

Weir catches her reflection in the computer monitors.

Something wrong with her face... He starts to spin her around.

CLAIRE:

I'm so cold...

CUT TO:

INT. LEWIS AND CLARK - MEDICAL

Weir awakes with a jolt, in his grav couch. His mask has

slipped. His tank has filled with blood. He is drowning.

CUT TO:

INT. LEWIS AND CLARK - MEDICAL

Reality. Weir's eyes open. He presses against the glass of

the tank, trying to force it open, panicked. The others are

already stepping from open tanks.

Weir's tank opens with a HISS. He tumbles to the floor,

gasping, fluid streaming from his mouth.

Peters rushes to him.

WEIR:

(gasping)

Claire...

PETERS:

DJ!

(to Weir)

It's okay. You're okay. Just breathe.

Weir catches his breath. He looks up. The crew surrounds

him, concerned.

WEIR:

I'm alright now. I'm alright...

DJ helps him to his feet.

DJ:

Move slowly. You've been in stasis

for fifty-six days. You're going to

experience a little disorientation.

Weir nods.

COOPER:

Damn, Dr. Weir, don't scare us like

that. Coffee?

WEIR:

What?

COOPER:

Coffee.

WEIR:

No, thank you.

Cooper, still butt-naked and proud of it, grabs a metal

cylinder from the wall and pours a mug for himself.

COOPER:

Hey, Starck. You wanna dry my back?

Starck gives him a cool once over.

STARCK:

Maybe when you finish puberty.

Miller zips up.

MILLER:

Starck, why aren't you on the bridge?

STARCK:

I just finished drying...

MILLER:

Then what are you doing here? Come

on, people, let's go!

(to Cooper)

And Cooper... Put some pants on.

CUT TO:

EXT. INTERPLANETARY SPACE - LEWIS AND CLARK - MODEL

SILENCE. The Lewis and Clark drifts towards Neptune.

INT. LEWIS AND CLARK - QUARTERS

The crew has secured the quarters from flight status. Bunks

have been folded down, each alcove personalized with

photographs and pin-ups.

DJ moves around the cabin, checking the crew's radiation

badges.

Cooper and Justin sit on their bunks, tossing a handball

across the cabin.

Peters holds a "Watchman" video unit, watching a "video

letter"...

EXT. PETERS HOME - GARDEN (DENNY'S PARTY)

...from DENNY, her four-year-old son, a paraplegic, grinning

widely in his new wheelchair:

DENNY:

(video)

Play horsey, Mommy, play horsey...

IN THE VIDEO, Peters enters shot, scoops her child from the

chair.

PETERS:

(video)

Want to play horsey, do you...

(etc.)

INT. LEWIS AND CLARKE - QUARTERS

Weir sits huddled in a blanket. Miller takes a seat next to

him.

Starck and Smith enter. Starck sits next to Miller.

SMITH:

30 hours to Neptune orbit.

STARCK:

All boards are green, everything's

five by five.

MILLER:

That's good to know. Justin, you

wanna stow that?

Justin catches the ball, holds onto it.

MILLER:

Okay, listen up. As you all know by

now, we have an addition to our crew.

Dr. Weir, this is: Starck, navigation;

Smith, pilot, Justin, ship's engineer --

COOPER:

You can call him Baby-bear, he loves

that...

MILLER:

This is Cooper, what the hell do you

do on this ship, anyway?

JUSTIN:

Ballast.

COOPER:

(to Weir)

I am your best friend. I am a

lifesaver and a heartbreaker...

MILLER:

He's a rescue technician. Peters,

medical technician. DJ...

DJ:

Trauma.

MILLER:

And this is mission specialist Dr.

William Weir. We all know where we're

going. Dr. Weir is going to tell us

why.

Miller and the crew look at Weir, waiting. Weir clears his

throat.

WEIR:

What I am about to tell you is

considered code-black by the NSA.

The crew look at each other: they haven't heard that in a

mission briefing before.

JUSTIN:

That means top-secret, Cooper.

COOPER:

I heard it.

WEIR:

The USAC intercepted a radio

transmission from a decaying orbit

around Neptune. The source has been

identified as the Event Horizon.

STUNNED SILENCE. Then everyone talks at once:

STARCK:

That's impossible! She was lost with

all hands, what, seven...

JUSTIN:

Seven years ago, the reactor blew...

PETERS:

How can we salvage...?

SMITH:

Let the dead rest, man...

COOPER:

...cancel our leave and send us out

on some bullshit mission...!

MILLER:

EVERYBODY SHUT UP! Let the man speak.

In the quiet that follows:

WEIR:

What was made public about the Event

Horizon, that she was a deep space

research vessel, that its reactor

went critical, that the ship blew

up... None of that is true.

(beat)

The Event Horizon was the culmination

of a secret government project to

create a spacecraft capable of faster-

than-light flight.

The crew stares at Weir: he has just dropped another bomb on

them.

SMITH:

You can't do that.

STARCK:

The law of relativity prohibits faster-

than-light travel...

WEIR:

Relativity, yes. We can't break the

law of relativity, but we can go

around it. The ship doesn't really

move faster than the speed of light;

it creates a dimensional gateway

that allows the ship to

instantaneously "jump" from one point

in the universe to another, light

years away.

STARCK:

How?

WEIR:

Well, in layman's terms, you use a

rotating magnetic field to focus a

narrow beam of gravitons; these in

turn fold space-time consistent with

Weyl tensor dynamics until the space-

time curvature becomes infinitely

large and you have a singularity...

COOPER:

Laymen's terms.

Weir thinks of another way to explain it. He rips a pin-up

from Smith's locker.

SMITH:

Hey...

WEIR:

Say this paper represents space-time,

and you want to get from "point A"

here...

(marks it on the photo

with a pen)

...to "point B," here.

(marks point B)

Now:
what's the shortest distance

between two points?

The crew stares at him. Starck decides to play.

STARCK:

A straight line.

WEIR:

Wrong. The shortest distance between

two points...

Weir folds the paper, lining up point A over point B... then

THRUSTING his pen through both, skewering the pin-up.

WEIR:

...is zero. That's what the

singularity does: it folds space, so

that point A and point B coexist in

the same space and time. After the

ship passes through this gateway,

space returns to normal.

(hands the ruined pin-

up back to Smith)

It's called a gravity drive.

JUSTIN:

How do you know all this?

WEIR:

I built it.

Even Cooper is impressed.

COOPER:

I can see why they sent you along.

JUSTIN:

So if the ship didn't blow up, what

happened?

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