The Abyss Page #23

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LINDSEY (V.O.)

We're right here with you, Bud. Your depth is

3800 feet. You're doing fine.

Bud comes upon the twisted wreckage of the crane, hanging against the wall

like a forty-ton yo-yo at the end of the umbilical.

INT. COMMAND MODULE 199

Everyone is grouped around the monitor screen, watching Bud's telemetry. Bud

types out:
GOOD DEAL ON SLIGHTLY USED CRANE. They watch the depth meter

counting down.

MONK:

4800 feet. It's official.

LINDSEY:

Bud, according to Monk here, you just set a record

for the deepest suit dive. Bet you didn't think

you'd be doing this when you got up this morning.

The screen print out: CALL GUINESS. They laugh. So far so good. Seconds

later...

HIPPY:

One mile down and still grinnin'.

EXT. THE WALL 200

WIDE SHOT. Bud is a tiny spider dropping down the wall in a pathetic little

pool of light. The wall is sterile brown-gray, devoid of life at this depth.

LOOKING DOWN, as the light shrinks to a star and vanishes in the blackness

yawning below.

INT. COMMAND MODULE 201

Lindsey has the microphone gripped tightly, and the lightness in her voice is

a bit brittle.

LINDSEY:

8500 feet, Bud. Everything okay?

MONK:

Ask him a pressure effects. Tremors, vision

problems, euphoria.

LINDSEY:

Ensign Monk want to know how you feel.

ON THE SCREEN, printing out: COLD.

LINDSEY:

Big baby.

Then:
HANDS SHAKING. HHARD TO TYPE.

MONK:

It's starting. It hits the nervous system

first.

ONE NIGHT:

Keep talking, Lindsey. Just let him hear your

voice. It doesn't matter what about.

LINDSEY:

Don't forget Bud, you're being graded on spelling

as well as sentence structure, so concentrate,

okay?

(long pause)

Bud, I... uh, there's some things I want to say.

It's hard for me. I'm not of those softy, gooey-

center-type people. It's not easy, you know,

being a cast-iron b*tch. It takes discipline

and years of training. A lot of people don't

appreciate that.

Lindsey has somehow tuned out the others in the room. In her mind she is

with Bud, out in the darkness.

LINDSEY:

But is wasn't all bad. I know that. You

remember that bike trip... we rode the Honda

up through Oregon? It took me a week to get my

hair untangled, but I've never been happier. It

was the most... free... I've ever felt. I'm

sorry I can't tell you these things to your face.

EXT. THE WALL 202

Bud is visibly trembling, gritting his teeth... holding on as the vise-grip

of pressure takes him.

LINDSEY (V.O./filtered)

It's pitiful. I have to wait until you're

freezing in the dark and there's ten thousand

feet of water between us. I guess I'm babbling.

I'm sorry.

Bus struggles with his keyboard.

INT. COMMAND MODULE 203

ON THE SCREEN:
YOU ALWAYS DID TALK TOO MUCH

Somehow's she's smiling and on the verge of tears at the same time.

HIPPY:

Two miles down and still grinnin' Comin' up on

the big ten thou'.

ONE NIGHT:

Bottom's still a mile and a half down.

EXT. THE ABYSS 204

BLAM! Bud jerks as his dive light implodes. He still has Geek's floodlights.

He falls on.

INT. CONTROL MODULE 205

HIPPY:

12000 feet. Jesus, I don't believe he's doing

this.

LINDSEY:

Shut up, Hippy. Bud, how you doing?

He types:
SE LUMINUS THINNGS

Everyone snaps suddenly alert.

HIPPY:

Uh, oh...

LINDSEY:

What kind of luminous things, Bud?

CATFISH:

Maybe it's... you know... them.

The screen prints out: ITS OK. SQUID. GLOWING SQUID.

EXT. THE ABYSS 206

Bus is in an enormous school of bioluminescent squid, graceful, attenuated

creatures less than a foot long. Thousands of then glide in ghostly arcs

around him, filling the black void as far as the eye can see. He stares at

them in wonder. Reaches out and touches one, catches it, lets it go. Are

they really here? He can no longer be sure of his own perceptions.

INT. CONTROL MODULE 207

Another message from Bud: THINK THEYR REAL.

MONK:

He's losing it. Talk to him. Keep him with us.

LINDSEY:

Bud, it's the pressure. Try to concentrate.

Concentrate on my voice. Just listen to my voice.

EXT. THE ABYSS 208

Bud emerges from the school of squid. As he falls, they form a luminous plane

of swirling colors above him. He stares upwards, transfixed. BUD'S POV, the

ghostly blizzard of luminescence above him. A spectral form takes shape in

the patternless glow... resolving into Lindsey's face, a hundred feet wide.

Gazing down at him, her expression sad. Her image receded away from him into

the darkness above as he falls.

DOWN ANGLE ON BUD, reaching up in anguish.

INT. CONTROL MODULE 209

Lindsey watches as Bud haltingly types out: YOUR GOING AWAY

LINDSEY:

I'm not going away, Bud. I'm right here, right

here with you. This is Lindsey, Bud. I'm right

here.

ONE NIGHT:

Signal's fading.

HIPPY:

We're losing juice... kill everything we don't

need. Catfish, knock out those lights.

Everyone hustles to comply. The room is plunged into darkness, the faces of

the group lit only by the ghostly CRT screen.

ONE NIGHT:

Run it through the digital processor, cook it as

much as you can.

CATFISH:

Seventeen thousand feet. Good Christ Almighty,

this is insane.

EXT. THE ABYSS 210

Bud is shaking violently, as if with palsy. His eyes keep rolling back, and

he's having a hard time staying conscious. He tries to type a message and he

can't. The tons of pressure per square inch are short-circuiting his nervous

system. Suddenly K-BAM! Little Geek's pressure hull implodes. Its lights

go out. BLACKNESS.

INT. CONTROL MODULE 211

ONE NIGHT:

Little Geek just folded.

HIPPY:

Bye, little buddy.

MONK:

He can still make it.

LINDSEY:

I know how alone you feel... alone in all that

cold blackness... but I'm there in the dark

with you, Bud you're not alone...

Lindsey seems not to be in the room, but to be with him, seeing what he sees.

She is oblivious to the others.

EXT. THE ABYSS 212

Blackness. Then a bright light appears... he's lit a MAGNESIUM FLARE.

It's fierce, flickering glare lights his plunge. Bud discards the stalwart

little ROV and free-falls like a skydiver without a chute. Out of control, he

hits a ledge and rolls off. Tumbles forward in a cloud of debris. He hits

another outcropping, limp as a rag doll. Rocks and sand rain down with him

as he continues his descent.

Bud us quivering, teeth locked in a titanic rigor.

He pulls his arms and legs slowly into a fetal position.

In the plunge toward death he has gone he has gone full circle, returned to

the womb in which we all breathe the water of life before we know the world of

air and light. Still, there is Lindsey's voice, faintly in his helmet.

LINDSEY (V.O.)

You remember that time, you were pretty drunk,

you probably don't remember... the power went

out at the old apartment, the one on Orange

Street... and we were staring at that one little

candle, and I said something really dumb like

that candle is me, like every one of us is out

there alone in the dark in this life...

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