Conflicts of the last progenitors

The young woman plucks two polarizing contact lenses from her eyes, dips them into the water and replaces them, blinking, blinking, blinking as they settle upon her hazel irises. The sun-refracting water becomes translucent through the optics.

Beneath the surface, Jenfer descries several small holes in the lavender and brown-swirled stone, each the diameter of a soda can; she steps over the orifices, pointing them out to those behind her.

Lo-Cheun, in the middle of the second cruciform observes his Bullets. He watches KENNETH, a bronze-skinned male of twenty-three years with tattoos on his neck (of an antique M-16 gun and an M-16 bullet) and dyed, magenta hair.

LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)

Kenneth, stay alert. You almost

stepped in that hole.

Kenneth looks down: the foam heel of his right boot overhangs an aperture in the stone.

At the front, Jenfer abruptly stops.

JENFER

(to Zria)

Zria, the Bios should get up here.

Some kind of plant-life, I think.

44.

ZRIA

Halt. Bios to the front.

Neredth, Abacus and the three Biobranch officers (a chubby woman clutching a vial filled with lavender seaweed and two slender men) SPLASH their way past the Bullets, toward the front.

LO-CHEUN

(quietly; to a nearby

Bullet)

I don’t know that more plant-life

is getting me off of the floor.

Hope we find that damn lizard Jean-

James saw.

Neredth, Abacus and the Bio trio mind their footing as they come abreast Jenfer and Zria. The Singaporian Bullet points to an orifice in the stone nearly two feet in diameter.

JENFER

There.

NEREDTH

I see it.

Neredth, Abacus and the Bio trio kneel before the opening; the bottom of the water-filled orifice is blocked by a swollen pustule that resembles a gray balloon veined with dark green nerves.

CHUBBY BIO

Cnidaria?

NEREDTH

Perhaps.

ABACUS

It’s growing.

Neredth and the trio look at Abacus.

ABACUS (CONT'D)

I marked a point in the hole-- it

already rose above it.

Neredth looks at her thermometer: it reads 97 degrees; she mouths the word, ‘damn.’

Lo-Cheun’s eyes flicker from the white sun in the sky to its orange-red sibling.

45.

LO-CHEUN

Neredth, how much time?

NEREDTH

We’ll return tomorrow.

LO-CHEUN

(loudly)

Bullets forward.

The cruciforms continue through the pock-marked region; when Lo-Cheun’s seven reaches the Bio quintet, he turns to Neredth.

LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)

(hopeful)

Find anything good?

NEREDTH

I’ll know tomorrow.

Lo-Cheun nods and continues onward with his cruciform.

LO-CHEUN

(shaking his head)

Another night on the floor.

The Bio quintet joins in-between the second and third cruciform.

INT. PHYSICAL INVIGORATION CHAMBER - SAME

Stars drift somnolently across the ellipsoidal skylights.

Sven, wearing gray trunks (with one blue star near the hem), glides on his back across the surface of a long narrow wading pool. His churning mind recalls arguments and confrontations with people now many centuries dead.

FEMALE VOICE

What do you call that? Does it

have a name?

Sven, recalled to the present, stops kicking and looks to the edge of the pool. A tall and toned twenty-two-year-old woman with short black hair highlighted with blue dye stands at the edge, holding a towel. Her cheerful face is flush and her bodysuit is covered with perspiration; she wipes at her neck with a gray towel. Her name is MLISSA.

SVEN

It’s the backstroke.

46.

MLISSA

I’ve never seen that before. Who

taught you? Is it hard? Can you

teach me?

SVEN

My caretaker; no; and it depends on how coordinated you are.

Mlissa smiles.

MLISSA

Watch.

Mlissa wipes the sweat from her hands and face with the gray towel, tosses it to the ground and beelines toward a calisthenics tree. Sven wades to the edge of the pool to watch her climb.

Mlissa jumps onto the air mattress, her impact eliciting a soft FWUMP, and then springs up toward the bottom branch.

She grabs the perpendicular foam limb, pulls herself up and then sets her feet on the trunk. In five lithe motions, she squirrels up to the top of the tree, twenty-nine feet above.

Sven CLAPS.

SVEN

Ehrgeizig. Exactly how much monkey DNA do you have?

Mlissa grins and then descends-- an amazingly fluid action of controlled falling that incorporates the branches to slow her plummet. The dextrous young woman lands on her feet (FWUMP), bounds off of the mattress and returns to the side of the wading pool.

SVEN (CONT'D)

That was...uh...fairly spectacular.

Mlissa, breathing hard and perspiring anew, reaches down for her towel.

MLISSA

Grazi.

SVEN

Dare I assume your concentration is athletics, with a gymnastics focal

point?

Mlissa nods, wiping her face and her neck.

47.

MLISSA

I’m coordinated, see? Will you

teach me the strokeback?

SVEN

Backstroke.

MLISSA

That. Will you?

Sven grins at Mlissa’s enthusiasm.

SVEN

Be here tomorrow at 26 OS.

MLISSA

Perfect. What’s your name? What

happened to your nose? Do you like girls or boys? Are you coupled

with someone already?

SVEN

Sven; I broke it twice; girls; and

I’m not coupled with anybody.

Mlissa blushes.

EXT. OPEN PLAIN / OPTION-1 - SAME

The group marches on, continually shattering its own reflections.