The Abyss Page #25

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They are picking up speed, swept along by a powerful current, into the mouth-

like opening.

INT. N.T.I. STRUCTURE 224

Bus stares around in awe as smooth, pearlescent walls blur past him. It is a

curving three-dimensional maze of tunnels, like a vast circulatory system,

where controlled currents of water become freeways in three-dimensional

space. Tunnels divide, narrow, and reenter main-routes hundreds of feet

across, as the pair race through in a dizzying blur.

INT. FINAL CHAMBER 225

Entering a smaller chamber they settle to the floor, and the NTI moves back a

few feet.

A shimmering plane or surface appears like a vertical curtain bisecting the

chamber. The seawater divides, like the Red Sea, into two rippling walls.

They move apart. Leaving Bud standing in a short, shimmering hallway.

Weakly, he uncouples his helmet and pulls it free. Drops to his knees.

Doubles over as spasms wrack him. Breathing fluid explodes from his lungs.

He lies gasping and coughing on the floor, dragging in deep breaths of what

he can only hope is air. It is.

Bud slowly recovers, sitting up. His head is clearing. This really is

happening. Beyond the shimmering, vertical surface of the water he sees the

NTI being joined by others, move or less identical, until a group of seven

is gathered watching him.

BUD:

Howdy, Uuuh... how you guys doin'?

His voice echoes metallically in the strange chamber. Soft laps of water

from the 'walls'.

In the air a pattern of glowing lines appears, a series of what appears to be

circuit diagrams. Bud staggers back from this strange 'screen' hanging in

mid-air. The image is about twenty feet across.

There is a rolling jumble of static and interference which resolves into...

the face of Dan Rather, doing the evening news. STATIC, then another

newscast. And another. Fragments of the same story. The world on the brink

of war.

BUD:

You watch out TV? That what you're trying to

say? That you know what's been going on up

there?

The NTIs are impassive. Static... then another newscast.

This time, we're allowed to focus on the story. An on-the-scene interview

outside a high-tech seismology lab. There is an air of hysteria about the

scene... technicians running across the background of the shot, people

shouting, the reporter jamming his mike at the harried-looking scientist.

REPORTER:

... a Caltech scientist who is among those

reporting an unprecedented disturbance in the

world's oceans. Dr. Breg, can you give us a

clearer explanation then we're getting?

Berg is edgy and distracted. People keeps handing him pieces of paper,

computer hardcopy. The biggest thing in his life is happening...

BERG:

They're acoustic shockwaves, like tsunamis, but

with no seismological source. The waves are

propagating toward the shorelines of every

continent--

An assistant runs up, face shiny with fear, beckoning. We see that Berg is

running scared. The impossible bringing the greatest terror to the rational

mind.

BERG:

Yeah. I'll be right there... I have to go.

Look, we don't know what it is! Okay? Not the

slightest goddamn idea!

The image dissolves into static, fades out. Bud turns to the NTIs.

BUD:

You're doing it! Right? That's what you're

telling me. Yeah, you can control water...

that's your technology. But why?

Static again, then a brilliant flash. Grainy stock film of a hydrogen bomb

test in the Pacific.

The film repeats, and then again, faster, and again until is merges into an

unbroken white glare. Bud gets the message.

BUD:

Hey, you don't know they're really gonna do it.

Where do you get off passing judgment on us,

when you can't be sure? How do you know?

The screen exploded into a staccato series of searing images, stark moments

from recent history...

US soldiers fighting in Vietnam, street warfare in Beirut, a car bomb in

Belfast, a suspect shot in the head in the streets of Saigon, burned and

bleeding children, grainy footage of corpses bulldozed into mass graves at

Auschwitz, Wermacht soldiers marching in goose-step review, a 13-year-old

contra with an AK-47... Just glimpses, strobing... a few frames of each.

But enough. The images continue.

HOLD ON BUD, as the lights flicker on his face, the ongoing indictment of

humanity.

CUT TO:

EXT. OCEAN FRONT WALK, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA -- DAY 226

A video news crew leaps from a Jet Ranger helicopter in a parking area and

runs to set up near the railing, facing the ocean. Pandemonium reigns around

them, people running, driving, evacuating inland.

On the horizon, out to sea, a dark line has appeared.

It grows in height as it comes closer, a wall of water stretching across the

horizon, already hundreds of feet high and growing.

EXT. NEW YORK -- DAY 227

LONG LENSE SHOT, looking seaward past the Statue of Liberty, out past the

Verazzano Narrows. Stacked up by perspective, the distant wave is a wall of

water impossibly high, still miles out.

EXT. NAVAL BASE, KAMCHATKA PENINSULA, U.S.S.R. -- NIGHT 228

The scene repeats on the eastern coast of the Kamchatka Penninsula in Russia,

where a full moon shimmers along the crest of a vast wave.

SIRENS wail as Russian sailors run from the docks of Petropavlovsk Naval Base.

Some stand rooted as the black glacier of water, a thousand feet high and

growing, thunders toward them in nightmarish slow motion.

EXT. OCEAN FRONT, SANTA MONICA -- DAY229

The minicam crew reporter is speaking rapidly, faltering with emotion, his

voice cracking like the famous broadcast from the scene of the Hindenburg

disaster.

REPORTER:

The horizon has gone dark... the crowd is starting

to run... some are just staring, unable to

move... the wave... the wave is... it's...

I don't know... maybe a thousand feet high

already... getting bigger as I'm watching...

still miles out... oh my God, Jesus... I can

hear it...

A roar fills the air, a thunder which drowns out the people's screams, even

the rotors of the news chopper as the camera teams scrambles aboard. They

leave the announcer standing transfixed, his face blank, eyes tracking upward

and upward as the ground begins to shake.

EXT. NEW YORK -- DAY 230

The Statue of Liberty looks like a souvenir figurine at the afternoon sun is

blocked out by the cresting tsunami, an escarpment of water 2500 feet tall.

EXT. SAN FRANSISCO -- DAY 231

LONG LENS SHOT -- The Golden Gate Bridge and the hills of the city, the

buildings downtown. Beyond, FILLING FRAME is the wall of sea green which

defies our comprehension. The image shakes with the THUNDER.

EXT. MALIBU -- DAY 232

A diehard surfer looks over his shoulder as the mountain of water which

transcends his worst nightmare. He lies paralyzed on his board.

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