Conflicts of the last progenitors

The tall woman kisses him on the cheek, SMECK, and hugs him again.

MLISSA

I’d invite you back to my

compartment, but I want to

incentivize you to be careful down

there. You will, won’t you?

Please?

Sven presses his cheek into her hair.

SVEN

I will.

Mlissa steps back and looks at Sven’s face. He looks into her bright eyes.

MLISSA

Don’t paw anything. Yet.

Sven grins and then leans forward; Mlissa shuts her eyes, implosive and shy for the brief moment before their lips press together.

They kiss.

EXT. MOUNTAIN PERIMETER / OPTION-1 - DAWN

Ice floes, plates and shards float atop the water that bathes the open plain; jutting from the frigid glaze is the inland edge of the western mountain range, a wall of brown stone.

The white sun has just cleared the peaks on the opposite horizon, illuminating and heating the land as it rises into the magenta sky.

Standing upon eight metal pillars is ARMADILLO-2, a hemispherical transport vehicle made of gray, beaded steel, its name painted in bold red letters across the top. The rear hatch of the ship rolls up like a garage door, VWIMM.

58.

Light from the white sun spills inside the transport, illuminating the wedge-shaped, orange-colored flypod sitting in its outer bay. (The vehicle is painted with the name GOBLIN-3 in bright green letters.) Within the hovercar’s tear-shaped personnel bubble (narrow tip forward) sit Sven, Abacus and the magenta-haired Bullet, Kenneth.

Sven, seated in the central driving seat, turns back to look at Abacus and Kenneth on the rear bench. The young Swede says something to them: the sound is completely inaudible through the cockpit bubble.

Abacus replies, nodding his head; Kenneth scratches the M-16

tattooed on the left side of his neck and nods.

The blond-haired, crooked-nosed pilot turns to face forward and then punches on the ignition. Upon flashing hull-boosters, the flypod rises, POOMF; steam billows from the water-flooded concrete floor of the bay.

Sven pulls the guidestick back; the curved nose of the flypod tilts up. Steam envelops the vehicle.

From out of the vapors, propelled by the rear thruster, the bright orange craft surges with a loud VWIRRRR...

The steam dissipates to reveal another flypod- GOBLIN-2-which summarily jets into the magenta sky, VWIRRR... GOBLIN-1 careens out a moment later, VWIRRR...

The three soaring flypods diverge.

EXT. PLATEAU RING / MOUNTAIN RANGE - MOMENTS LATER

Sven pilots the flypod over the brown terra of the inland mountain range. The stone is dry and yields no apparent vegetation.

INT. FLYPOD GOBLIN-3 - SAME

Fastened by torso-webbing to the lone front chair, Sven confidently pilots the craft; Kenneth and Abacus sit webbed-in on the bench behind him. The rippled brown stone outside blurs by like a petrified brown ocean.

Abacus stares at the M-16 (machine gun) tattooed upon Kenneth’s neck.

ABACUS

I take it your interest in guns has been a lifelong fascination?

59.

Kenneth does not reply.

ABACUS (CONT'D)

See this?

With his index finger, Abacus taps his own chest; a new star sits beside the first. Kenneth glances at the marks.

ABACUS (CONT'D)

You don’t have the option of

remaining silent: I outrank you

now.(he grins)

Perhaps if you talk through your

hostilities, you won’t be so

inclined to shoot all unfamiliar

life forms.

KENNETH

I might be inclined to shoot a fat

and all-too-familiar one.

Abacus’ eyes widen in shock at the remark; Kenneth glares unwaveringly at him.

SVEN

(to Abacus)

Shouldn’t you be assembling the

drag?

Abacus looks up at Sven; the young Swede (suppressing a grin) guides the VWIRRING flypod around a rise in the terra. The Bio looks back at Kenneth; the Bullet faces away from him.

Still irked, Abacus unfastens his torso webbing, reaches into the compartment below the bench and withdraws a box labeled,

“thermalsonetics.”

ABACUS

We’re going to have to land to set

it up properly.

With the gray guidestick, Sven points the nose of the flypod toward a smoother area amidst the crenulated stone.

INT. ARTERY BUNDLE ROOM 246 - SAME

The room has been forcibly entered: the fallen door lies on the floor, handle melted, exposed Fleischwerk throbbing within its torn hinges.

60.

The walls of the enclosure are covered with clear, pulsating arteries, some as thick as a man’s forearm. Through the living hoses are pumped pink or amber protein-baths or crimson blood.

Two forty-year-old WOMEN stand within the room, each holding a squat white cylinder with a blinking red light.

Three BULLETS (including the Female Bullet with the second hollow star) storm inside the space, coilguns upraised.

FEMALE BULLET

Stop!

INT. STERNUM F / CENTRAL PASSAGEWAY - SAME

The underlit turquoise hallway is still for a moment. Then, from the lone open doorway, come two HIGH-PITCHED BEEPS, followed by two bursts of light. The floor outside the room and the opposite wall are stripped of color...pure white.

Blood begins to pool, covering the bleached ground with red.

Elysabeth GROANS.

INT. SPINAL TRAIN - SAME