Delos 1 - Westworld
Page 7
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Robot gun as the safety unit is pulled off the barrel.
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Blane and Martin stagger out of the broken saloon, and cross the street. In contrast to the Medieval World, the western street is pretty quiet. The Gunslinger lazily gets out of his chair, going toward them. Blane and Martin continue walking.
BLANE: Oh, my head . . .
The Gunslinger, blocking their path.
GUNSLINGER: Hold it.
MARTIN: You again?
BLANE (irritable with hangover): Let me do it this time . . . it’ll be a pleasure.
Martin steps away. The Gunslinger smiles sadistically.
BLANE (cool): Make your move.
The Gunslinger draws, full speed.
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Blane drawing full speed, and being hit and dropping like a damp rag. Plop. Striking for its lack of drama. Blane lies writhing in agony in the dust, clutching his chest.
BLANE: I’m shot! I’m shot!
MARTIN: Hey, Blane. . .
Martin is smiling, convinced his friend is putting him on. He moves toward Blane.
MARTIN: Hey, Blane, okay, that’s funny, now let’s get—
Martin freezes. Blood seeps around Blane’s fingers as he clutches his chest.
MARTIN (utterly serious): Hey, Blane . . .
Blane stops writhing, sags, relaxed, dead. Martin looks up at the Gunslinger.
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The Gunslinger and Martin. The Gunslinger has holstered his gun, now holds his hand ready. His face has a newly sadistic smile as he says:
GUNSLINGER: Draw.
Martin stares, looks to Blane, back to the Gunslinger, then backs off, trying to decide whether to draw or not, then,
MARTIN: Oh my God—
As he spins away and the Gunslinger fires at him. Martin scrambles away, rolling and twisting but really scared and not graceful at all. He hides behind the corner of the building, gets up and tries to pull his gun out of his holster but can’t; it’s jammed, so he just turns and runs.
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Central control room is electrified with this development.
THIRD SUPERVISOR: Shut down! Shut down immediately!
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The banquet hall as the battle is progressing, more or less as we have left it, until suddenly the Black Knight strikes a telling blow, gashing the Knight-guest’s arm. The Knight-guest looks up in surprise for a brief instant—before his head is lopped off by another blow, and rolls across the stone floor.
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Central control. Panic.
SUPERVISOR: Shut down! Shut it all down!
TECHNICIAN: Circuits don’t respond, sir!
SUPERVISOR: Then cut the robot power!
ANOTHER TECHNICIAN: Power cut!
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The Roman villa. The Middle-Aged Woman is watching her two lovers fight each other to the death. She screams.
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The western street. The Accountant comes out into the street, which is disorderly, panicked.
ACCOUNTANT: What’s going on here?
He is gunned down.
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Central control. The TV screens show the surface activity. It continues as before. The Supervisor, staring in helpless horror.
SUPERVISOR: They’re not responding.
TECHNICIAN: Should we cut the main power grid, sir? It’ll kill the life-support systems but—
SUPERVISOR: Shut it all down!
We see switches being thrown, buttons punched, and then central control is plunged in near darkness. A few emergency lights remain on, and the TV monitors.
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The TV monitor of Western World. Action still continues.
SUPERVISOR (watching screen): They’re running on stored charge out there.
TECHNICIAN: How long can they go?
SUPERVISOR: Depends on the robot and the model. Some can go a full twelve hours. The others will begin to run down in an hour or so . . . Turn the main grid back on.
ANOTHER TECHNICIAN: The relays must be frozen. We can’t get back our power.
The Supervisor picks up a telephone.
SUPERVISOR: Hello—
It’s dead; he hangs up in disgust.
TECHNICIAN: How are we going to get out of here? All those doors are electrically powered.
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The doors around the central control room. Close on a TV screen of Western World.
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Western street with Martin running like a frightened kid along the back of the main street. He is gasping for breath, terrified.
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The Gunslinger lazily following Martin, in no particular hurry.
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Central control, where the atmosphere is anything but lazy.
THIRD SUPERVISOR: Get those doors open before we suffocate!
TECHNICIAN: Sir, we have no control over the robots at all. We can’t protect the guests.
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Castle dungeon as two burly, grotesque attendants drag a guest down the steps into the dungeon. The guest shouts and struggles. They move past, several figures chained to the dungeon bars, and continue on to a bizarre rack (as in “The Rack”).
The chained figures stare in horror as the guest is clamped onto the rack. We see all the details of the preparation. Perhaps the attendants are dressed in black, like executioners.
GUEST: Hey, come on now, for Pete’s sake, hey, you guys have got to be kidding . . . (trying a joke in his panic) . . . Listen, I’m paid up in advance, come on . . . (the guest begins to laugh hysterically) Are you guys kidding? (as the last clamp goes over his wrist) Ouch, that hurts. Hey, can’t any of you stop this?
The attendants continue their quick but methodical preparations. Then one of them begins to twist the large steering wheel at one end of the rack, stretching the guest.
The guest screams. Pan away from the guest to the stairs.
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Castle corridor. The screams become fainter. Camera pans up to show an elderly woman slumped against a tapestry. She clutches her chest. Camera continues pan up to medieval faces on tapestry.
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Roman World. A comely maiden in a toga comes running out from among some pillars, with a greedy-looking man in hot pursuit. Both pass the camera. A moment later, a guest (the Middle-Aged Woman) comes running, similarly pursued. And scared.
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Martin runs like hell along the western street.
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Close shot of Gunslinger’s face.
Panning with him, then a head-on close shot of his face as he blinks his mechanical eyes.
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The Gunslinger’s point of view. What he sees, as he sees it: a bizarre, computerized image of the world. The predominant tones are red and black, but overlaid on this are perspective lines, and flashed-up calculated figures, and shifting green tones which apparently represent shifts in the Gunslinger’s concentration. In brief, we are seeing Weltanschauung of a computer; its image of the physical world. The traveling point of view rounds a corner.
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Martin getting onto a horse, galloping out of town as the Gunslinger watches him go.
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The Gunslinger’s point of view, which is red and black. Several snap zooms give higher and higher magnification. Then overlay cross-hairs on Martin’s back.
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The Gunslinger has taken out his gun to shoot, but decides against it. He holsters his gun, mounts up, and follows Martin out of town. We see two rifles in saddle slings. The Gunslinger is not hurried; he rides easily. No sweat.
This sequence will have established the convention of the Gunslinger’s point of view, so that it is readily identifiable to us whenever it appears.
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Back to TV image of the western main street.
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The darkened central control room. Shadowy figures move about the room.<
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TECHNICIAN: Temperature elevated ninety-eight degrees.
TECHNICIAN TWO: Oxygen seventeen percent and dropping.
SUPERVISOR: Get that power on so we can open the doors.
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Pan to show the shut doors. One of the technicians is pounding on it.
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Roman World. A woman is picked up bodily, screaming at the top of her lungs, and flung into a stately pillared pool.
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Underwater view as she smashes into the water.
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The woman.
WOMAN (splashing): I can’t swim! I can’t swim!
All around her, there is panic and pandemonium.
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The desert. It’s very quiet, in contrast to what we’ve just seen: Martin, riding hard out into the desert.
He looks back over his shoulder as he rides, but sees nothing.
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The Gunslinger loping along easily.
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The Gunslinger’s world. Following an easy set of black hoofprints in a red world.
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Martin rides along the upper rim of a canyon. He is moving fairly quickly.
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The Gunslinger some distance behind. He looks up, sees Martin on the ridge. He reins up.
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Martin riding along.
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The Gunslinger. He takes out his rifle, holds it to his eye.
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The Gunslinger’s point of view. It’s a red world with Martin a tiny speck in the distance. Snap zoom closer. Then again . . . then again . . . super concentric circles, a bull’s-eye.
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The Gunslinger. He fires.
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Martin. His hat flies off his head; he looks back.
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The Gunslinger’s point of view of Martin. A tiny speck.
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Martin riding off more quickly.
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The Gunslinger riding off slowly.
SALESMAN (voice over): . . . In the end, we constructed three great fantasy environments: the rugged lawlessness of the American West;
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The Salesman giving his pitch in the same opulent conference room we’ve previously seen.
SALESMAN: the romantic chivalry of medieval Europe;
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The listening audience. It’s different this time. Every businessman is Japanese.
SALESMAN (voice over): the decadent parodies of Imperial Rome. The principle was that all this was like television or movies—
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The Salesman.
SALESMAN: except that you didn’t watch it, you participated in it. You were part of it. We believed that modern men, living in a civilized world, needed to escape into—
Abruptly, the Salesman stops. Cold, rigid, frozen.
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The Japanese businessmen, startled.
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The Salesman, still frozen in his last words, unmoving.
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The room, as everyone stands in confusion, and a man in a white coat enters from the back and says:
MAN: I’m sorry, gentlemen, but there has been a breakdown in power supplies and we have to cancel our meeting. If you’ll come this way, we will escort you back to your helicopters . . .
The Japanese men reluctantly start to leave.
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The Man at the door, as the Japanese leave, smiles politely, nods. Another man in a white coat comes up and speaks in his ear.
SECOND MAN: We’re still not able to get power to the underground control center. Their exit doors are jammed and unless we can start oxygen and air conditioning in a few minutes, they’re going to expire.
FIRST MAN: What’s going on on the surface?
SECOND MAN: Total panic. I think most of the guests are dead. The machines are running on batteries.
FIRST MAN (utterly calm): I think we might as well evacuate all of our personnel in this unit until we have some better understanding of the situation.
SECOND MAN (not calm): You mean walk out—
FIRST MAN (hissingly quiet): That’s exactly what I mean.
To confirm his point, he jerks his head over his shoulder back toward the stage. The Second Man looks.
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The robot Salesman, frozen in mid-gesture.
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The two Men at the door. The last of the Japanese leave, and they leave too, closing the door behind them.
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A long shot from the back of the deserted conference room toward the stage. The Salesman remains frozen. We expect something to happen, but nothing does.
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Martin entering another canyon, with high rocks above him on both sides. He rides and looks up.
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The Gunslinger just riding along. Pan with him and as he passes us we see the same canyon in front of him. He rides on.
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Martin looking back as he rides. He has passed a sharp-angle bend in the canyon wall, and so is out of vision of anyone following him. Abruptly, he leaves the path, rides up a short distance, dismounts, and positions himself for an ambush.
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The Gunslinger on the far side of the bend. The Gunslinger rides casually forward, body relaxed, apparently unaware of any danger. He approaches the bend . . . and then stops. We move in close on Gunslinger’s face as he stares forward intently.
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Gunslinger’s point of view. A bizarre world of red, with flashing parameters and guidelines. And a hissing sound. Pan back and forth—the parameters alter, shift, turn—as he tries to locate the sound.
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Martin waiting, gasping for breath more out of tension than fatigue. He isn’t breathing very hard, but this is the sound the Gunslinger is picking up.
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The Gunslinger’s face in profile. Push in on his ear and he smiles and
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What the Gunslinger sees now: Paralle lines bouncing off walls, and focusing down for him to a point around the corner.
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The Gunslinger riding forward a few steps toward the bend. Then he dismounts and takes his rifle out of his saddle sling.
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Martin waiting tensely, blinking with sweat and strain . . . waiting . . . waiting . . . And suddenly he is inundated with murderous gunfire; all around him the rocks spit up fragments like live yellowstone geysers. He presses his face to the ground but the shots are almost continuous and the spray of chips from the rocks is frightening and so he gets up and makes a break for it. He mounts and rides off while the shots continue.
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Martin riding.
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Martin as he rides away from us, out of sight.
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The Gunslinger getting lazily back on his horse, and riding forward in pursuit. He comes around the bend, and goes directly to the spot where Martin tried to ambush him. He stops and peers down at the site.
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Gunslinger’s point of view: a cluster of boulders, streaked by ricochets, and blood on the ground. Zoom in and out intermittently to observe details.
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The Gunslinger as he smiles, turns his horse and rides away from us.
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Another desert area. Martin, riding along, very tired now. He looks over his shoulder.
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Martin’s point of view. An empty desert. No sign of the Gunslinger.
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Martin riding up onto a sort of ridge, to get altitude to look back.
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Martin’s point of view. No sign of the Gunslinger.
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Martin turning away, looking forward down the ridge and staring at a man in coveralls fixing a flat tire on an electric cart of the sort we’
ve previously seen. The Man is obviously a resort employee. Martin rides down to him, quickly, pulling up by the cart.
MARTIN: Hey.