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hi
This is the treatment for the first part (of 3- probly 90pgs in total) for a comic book I'm writing. It's the biggest thing I've attempted and i'd really appreciate any feedback as I'm writing the script and fallen into that dark hole where my self judgement has gone orf. thanks. don't worry about being harsh if harsh is called for. and let me know if you care enough to read part 2
we begin...
The surface dwellers that know of its existence call it Recycling Plant 5, the people forced to eke out their miserable lives there buried underground processing garbage call it The Squall.
Morning. You can tell by the screaming alarms. 15 minutes till First Drop. ELODIE sits astride QUINN; they’re trying to make love, gently, quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping figures of her brothers curled up on the second best bed. Alarms they don’t hear, kisses they do. She licks at his cheek ‘I’ll have a surprise for you later...’ He smiles ‘Please, I’m happy with this’.
MICAH and REN wake up and jump on the bed ruining the moment. Elodie chastises them for being late, they’re Pickers they should be out there, picking.
She moves around the room getting suited up. It is littered with the gadgets and half gadgets she has created, the walls are plastered with cut out maps, designs for her flying machine and pictures rescued from books, a mouldy multi coloured patchwork of little people with wings.
She tells Quinn not to go down to the Heap today. The bastard upworlder techs are down to monitor 'standards', last time Quinn couldn't keep his hate in place and there was a ruck. She doesn't want a repeat 'You're no good to me with broken limbs.' Elodie kisses them all goodbye and goes out into the Squall.
We see ReCyke 5 in all its terrible glory, The Heap-the mound of rubbish that dominates the central cavern added to daily by the drops, pickers standing waiting for the klaxons that herald a fresh load, eager to be first in, desperate for unlikely treasure. The shacks that spiral off in cancerous clumps, the rubbish that spills over everything and the slugs, rats and insects that know this world is really theirs. Elodie is nervous, today is the day everything she has worked for comes together, today is the day she fulfils her dead mother’s dream for them all. If she keeps her nerve, if she plays it right, if she is brave enough and strong enough, today is the day they can escape the Squall forever. First she must face her greatest fear, she must cheat the queen of the squall, she must outsmart The Yaga.
[Transition]
The Yaga is hideously misshapen, a melted waxwork of a woman. Skin like rotting pumpkin testifies to every disease she has shrugged off. She lost an eye, her teeth but nothing can kill her. Either that or she died a long time ago and her bodies been too scared to tell her.
The Yaga’s primary business was food waste. Even with Genetic Synthetics there's not enough to go around upworld and the price is high. She takes the leftovers and industrial surplus and processes it into Mulch, a disgusting but functional nutritional gloop available to lower class upworlders at ‘incredibly reasonable prices’. The Yaga has used this lucrative position to diversify, aggressively absorbing other guilds and families into her company till she effectively rules. She has long wanted Elodie to join her, she prizes her ingenious mind and Elodie's resolute independence galls her. Yaga doesn't want to be the girl with the most cake, she wants all the cake. Elodie hates her, she is the Squall in human form.
The Yaga deep in argument with the head of the upworlder technicians. He accuses her of cutting leftover Mulch back in with new food, diluting the quality beyond acceptable levels. Her 'masters' are not happy. The Yaga doesn't care for their happiness. Here she rules, she feels secure, they need her too badly. She complains that production targets are getting higher and the quantity of produce is getting lower, she has no option…but neither do they.
He warns her that alternative methods are being looked in to and she may find herself out of business soon. She scoffs cryptically 'You're trying that lunatic and his godless creatures again? They've never worked. Never will.' He shows her a vial of treacle black liquid, asks her to taste. She refuses 'Never touch the stuff. Don't consume what you sell, my mother's advice is good for you too'.
As the tech leaves he brushes past Elodie, we can see his wolf's grin through his protective mask.
[Transition}
Micah and Ren hurrying down to the Heap. The klaxons are screaming for the drop. They're late. A young kid, scrawny and slimy even by Squall standards stops them, tries to trade. They brush him off, TINO's always trying it on but this time he has something they do want. He holds out a book, the paper is practically liquid but the pictures…we see photographs of the Cottinley fairies. The boys are hooked, Elodie will love it. They sacrifice their knives, Micah more willingly than Ren. Tino runs off laughing at the brother's stupidity 'idiots'. The klaxons stop. The boys run.
[Transition]
Trying not to feel like dinner Elodie enters. She needs an Anti-Grav unit for the ship she has been secretly building The Yaga has access to them from maintenance contracts for the barges that make the drops but they are very expensive. She won't part with one easily. Elodie demonstrates her latest invention, a hand held version of a zapper that kills the acid slime slugs that are just one of the main miseries Squallers endure. Yaga is unimpressed, many products do the same. Then Elodie picks up the slug with her bare hands.
The charge neutralises the acid, something nothing else does. The Yaga is interested particularly when she hears the secret power source is something readily available that everyone thinks is useless in it's degraded state. But the zapper is just an intro, Elodie has another invention, something that will really blow The Yaga away but to make it she needs an Anti-Grav unit. They barter, Elodie allows herself to be beaten, flatters the witch lets Yaga think she wants to join her guild. That she was just waiting to prove herself. Everything she knows will belong to the Yaga. In return she gets the Yaga's workshops and the freedom to make what she likes. The Yaga agrees. Elodie breaks her first promise to her mother and submits to the brand. She doesn't scream as Yaga's mark sears the flesh of her hand.
[Transition}
First pick is the best and worst job, you get first dibs but it is disgusting dangerous work. Air Barges make drops from a great height and everything comes down together, food, electrical, organic, and inanimate. Micah and Ren run up the Heap looking for power sources for the slug zapper. As they're struggling to free one a circle forms around them. Yaga’s mob. You can see the brands burnt into the back of their hands. They want the battery. It's no use to them but they want it anyway. The Pickers close by stop, 'Finders Keepers' is the closest thing they have to a law and the Yaga has decided she's big enough to try breaking it. The boy's resist, the leader of the gang mocks them, says if they get their sister and she asks him nice he might consider letting them go. Micah throws the first punch. The fight starts.
[Transition}
Leaving Yaga Elodie follows the head tech to his temporary dome. She’s doused with Chanel no. 15,000 chemicals in the airlock, buckets of mites and grubs tumble dead from her hair and clothes. The upworlders loathe Squallers but like all deep revulsion it can mutate into a fetish of longing. There is a game some of the techs like to play, to possess, become one with their disgust and then take 18 showers and an armful of booster injections and return to their wives and kids. Elodie has held out against all offers and on a couple of occasions force so she is especially prized.
If you're tired of life in the Squall and want to leave there are many exits. Most of them will send you back, plus a few burns from high-energy weapons but mercifully minus life. The tech has an electronic map for her, the network of ducts, vents, chambers and tunnels that could lead 'safely' or at least undetected to the surface. 'You won't go, if you go you won't make it and if you do get to the city they'll find you and send you back in the next drop'.
'I'm not staying in the city. I'm going outside'
He laughs. ‘Then it really doesn't matter. You're already dead'
The 'transaction' is horrible but then life in ReCyke 5 is. It's horrible but it's just a deal and her mind is filled with her mothers voice, her and her brothers out in the sunlight, out in the trees. One glorious word. Escape.
[Transition]
Suddenly the klaxons scream again. People panic, look to the 'sky' and run for their lives. Someone screams ‘DOUBLE DROP!’. The fight stops. Everyone runs, surfing down junk landslides, scrabbling over muck, unscheduled debris rains from the sky crushing everyone beneath them.
Those too slow, those who paused to grab the fridge unit they've been waiting for, those who tripped…Well. This is ReCyke 5. Nothing is wasted... and now at least there's more to go around.
The brothers stand at the edge, survivors scream the names of those lost under the deluge…one of the oldest pickers is angry at the junk, 'Medical waste!?! What are we to do with Medical waste?' he shakes a powerless fist at the closing ceiling 'That's Recyke 8 you incompetent bastards!' We see a small hand sticking out of the bursting bags of body parts, it holds a knife. Ren rescues it. The Squall gives, The Squall takes away.
[Transition]
She runs to tell Quinn the news that finally they can all just go. She bursts in to finds him sitting listlessly in the gloom. "I told you I'd have a surprise for you…' she breaks off as she notices something is wrong. Cajoles him into breaking his heavy silence. He lifts his shirt to show her. At the base of his spine angry red welts cluster into heads of muddy pus. 'It's all over for me now'.
They call it 'The Sickness' and once you have it there are two choices, let the poison liquefy your insides or burst the sores and bleed to death as the toxins prevent coagulation. There is no cure.
She shows him the brand tells him she has the Anti-Grav, shows him the map. 'They can leave!'
'And go where?'
'Where is there no death?'
Her mother told her stories of long ago, the way the world used to be, the way the world should be. A lush verdant paradise before the city virus infected it and spread like a cancer eating up all before it. Her mother told her of The Fay, a race of beings that existed in the woods that covered the world, told her of the powers they had to heal and the eternal life they lived of pleasure and harmony. Told her of a gateway to the world behind this where the Fay escaped as the city's hunger overwhelmed them and the magic words that would unlock it. Elodie has found evidence, secrets, clues hidden in the junk that falls down on them every day. That is where they can go, that is where they can be safe. Beyond death.
He realises how she got the map but he makes her tell him anyway. Explodes at her, rains everything down upon her, screams at her for her faithlessness, her stupidity, there are no fairies, there is no kingdom, her inventions wont work, she won't survive the journey, there is no escape just sickness and the pickers stripping the bodies like they did to her equally stupid mother. The Squall eats you up, shits you out and finds 101 uses for whatever is left. That is all there is.
She flees him, runs through the maze to home as the klaxons sound for the fatal double drop.
At home she finds the brothers haven't set the grill screens and the slugs are crawling over everything. She loses it. Trashes the place. Kicks over the prototypes, tears down the stained blueprints, plans, maps and fairy pictures. When her brothers come in she is in their pitiful shower struggling to wash it all away, homemade slug zapper in one hand getting any that slime in.
She starts to take it out on them, they show her the book, show her the photograph. The Fay. Real. She cries with joy, with despair, with hope and they hug.
{Transition}
She returns to the Yaga to collect the Anti-Grav, at the same time her brothers drop copies of the plans for her inventions with the Yaga's rivals. Not exactly the same plans. The one's Elodie gives The Yaga are inaccurate, filled with mistakes, missing crucial details. A final goodbye, flood the market, if they ever return she'll kill them. They pack up the components for the plane but leave most of everything else. Micah pastes their most treasured pictures and stories of the Fay along with the fading photographs of their mother into a scrapbook.
By the time Quinn comes over to beg forgiveness the shack is dark, empty... except for the slugs.
End Part One |
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