CONTACT Rewrite by Michael Goldenberg Based on the Novel by Carl Sagan Written by: Menno Meyjes Ann Druyan & Carl Sagan Michael Goldenberg Jim V. Hart September 8, 1995 UNIVERSE - EIGHT BILLION LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH The cosmos on the grandest scale we know. Clusters of galaxies strewn like sea froth; whorls and smudges of light representing hundreds of billions of stars each. MILKY WAY GALAXY A view from the edge. We DRIFT ABOVE the majestic, spiraling disk, tens of thousands of light years across. RING NEBULA (M57) - CONSTELLATION LYRA A local group of stars, the brightest of which is a point of hot, blue-white light... VEGA Rings of glowing gas and debris surround the giant, blue- white star... and then we notice something ahead of us in polar orbit. CLOSER An immense, world-sized construct gleams in Vega's blue light. Far too big to be artificial, by human standards -- but this wasn't built to human standards. Bowl-shaped transmitters cover the quicksilver gel-like surface of the polyhedron, forming then vanishing again. We DESCEND INTO one vast bowl as it deepens -- -- then silently convulses. A lost chord. We SWING AROUND, assuming a breathtaking, MOVING POV -- A message begins its journey. DISSOLVE TO: SUBTERRANEAN DARKNESS Shadows appear, dark and murky. Slowly we become aware of a MUFFLED, PULSING sound; like a DISTANT, BOOMING HEARTBEAT. Suddenly a bright light unzips the amniotic darkness; two great hands reach in to assist what we now realize is a Caesarean birth. ELLIE ARROWAY age five seconds, opens her eyes wide. In the b.g., we can see a nurse methodically giving CPR to the unseen mother; the decor beyond tells us we are in a small-town doctor's office. The DOCTOR holds Ellie as he calls softly to the nurse. DOCTOR You can call it, Nan. Mark time of birth as... 12:04 A.M. (looking down at the baby) Happy New Year, little lady. (to the nurse) Tell Ted he has a girl. TED ARROWAY stands watching through the window in the office door. Numb. BABY'S TINY HAND clasps its mother's finger. CUT TO: WIDE TABLEAU Ted, holding his newborn daughter, sitting quietly next to the bed where his sheet-covered wife still lies. EXT. MAIN STREET (NEHALEM, OREGON) - DAWN Ted, carefully holding little Ellie, walks down the empty street, his FOOTSTEPS ECHOING... DEEP SPACE - MESSAGE rockets through a black dust cloud where young stars are just beginning to glow. An icy worldlet evaporates, releasing gasses which blow away in spectral bursts of iridescent color... SURFACE OF ALIEN WORLD We are MOVING OVER an exotic, technological landscape; strange ALIEN SQUELCHES and SQUEALS become audible -- -- and then a child's hand reaches in and twists a giant dial on what we now see is an old shortwave RADIO. ELLIE (V.O.) CQ CQ WR2 GFO... WR2 GFO, come back. INT. ARROWAY HOUSE - NIGHT SIX-YEAR OLD ELLIE leans in towards a large microphone. ELLIE CQ WR2 GFO, do you copy? (calls) I'm not getting anything. Ted joins his daughter at the workbench where she sits in front of the short-wave, her feet dangling from the stool. He puts his hands on her shoulders. TED Small moves, Captain, small moves. ELLIE I can't move any smaller. TED Try again between the static and 'Hey Jude'; that's where they're hiding. Ellie bites her lip, tries again. Her little hand slowly turns the dial -- suddenly -- RADIO VOICE (V.O.) (filtered) Copy... WRS GFO... (off STATIC) W2P KLD talking... what's your handle, WR2 GFO? ELLIE What do I do? TED Talk to him. ELLIE But what do I say? TED Just be yourself, Captain. Find out where he is. Ellie tentatively reaches out and grasps the microphone. ELLIE Where are you calling from, W2P KLD, come back. RADIO VOICE (V.O.) (filtered) Pensacola, over. ELLIE Pensacola -- ! (beat) Where's Pensacola? TED Give you a hint: orange juice. MAP OF WORLD above the work area is dotted with colored pins; Ellie's finger traces the Gulf of Mexico, stopping at Pensacola. Ellie, breathless with wonder. Contact. EXT. ARROWAY BEDROOM - NIGHT The house in the woods dwarfed under the immense dome of night. INT. ELLIE'S BEDROOM - NIGHT Now in her pajamas, Ellie sits hunched over in bed, working intently on her latest masterpiece. A crayon behind her ear. ELLIE Could we hear to China? TED On that old shortwave? Maybe on a clear night. Come on now, under the covers. ELLIE Could we hear to the moon? TED Big enough radio, I don't see why not. ELLIE Could we hear God? TED Mmm, that's a good one. Maybe his echo... (then) Okay, no more stalling. ELLIE (coloring frantically) Okay, okay... there. She hands Ted the drawing. As he holds it up to the lamp we see it shows an idealized beach, palm trees. It glows in the light. ELLIE Pensacola. TED That's a beauty, Captain. (kisses her on the forehead) Now get some sleep. He carefully pins the drawing on the wall, turns out the light. As he starts out she says softly -- ELLIE Do you think there're people on other planets? Ted pauses, smiles at his daughter's inexhaustible curiosity. He returns, sits on the edge of her bed, now lit by starlight. TED Well let's see... the Universe is a pretty big place... And the one thing I know about nature is it hates to waste anything. So I guess I'd say if it is just us, an awful lot of space is going to waste. He tenderly brushes a stray lock of her hair behind her ear. TED Time to sleep now, Captain. But you can ask more questions in the morning, okay? ELLIE (sighs) Okay. He kisses her again, rises, goes to leave, stopping at the door to watch her. Ellie looks out the window at the stars... DEEP SPACE - MESSAGE A comet blows by. We chase it, riding its luminous tail of evaporating ice... TED'S CALLUSED HAND careful as a safecracker, slowly TURNS the DIAL on an ancient A.M. RADIO -- finally landing on an old HANK WILLIAMS TUNE. INT. TED'S TRUCK - MOVING - DAY Ted sits up, smiles in satisfaction. EXT. TRUCK - DAY The old red Ford trundles through the pines along a mountain road. INT. ARROWAY KITCHEN - DAY NINE-YEAR OLD ELLIE throws her schoolbooks on the table and goes to the refrigerator. As she starts to take out items we see her hand-drawn chart taped to the side of the fridge; Mondays and Thursdays say "Ellie Cooks!" EXT. MOUNTAINS - DAY A fawn is feeding. CUT WIDE to reveal it standing in the middle of an empty road, nibbling at the grass growing out of the old blacktop. The TWITTER of a BIRD; the wind in the trees... and then, far in the distance, we hear an ENGINE STRAINING. LOGGING TRUCK heads up the mountain road, its driver humming along to the same HANK WILLIAMS TUNE. INT. ARROWAY KITCHEN - DAY A stew of some sort bubbles on the stove. Ellie hums as she experiments with every spice on the rack. SERIES OF SHOTS A) Ted sings to the RADIO as he eases off the gas to take a bend in the road -- B) The fawn continues to graze, oblivious. We can now hear the RADIO in the DISTANCE. C) Ted look up as he rounds the bend -- sees the deer -- D) The logging TRUCK ROARS around a blind curve -- E) Ted swerves onto the wrong side of the road, misses the deer, sighs in relief -- F) The truck driver looks up, sees the Ford coming at him, Ted still looking over his shoulder at -- FAWN who suddenly looks up at the O.S. sound of a HORRIBLE CRASH -- -- then bounds off into the woods. INT. ARROWAY KITCHEN - DUSK The table is set. A stubby candle and some wildflowers in a peanut-butter jar. Ellie sits at her place, frowning. She glances up at the wall clock -- and then slowly stands as she sees something else THROUGH the kitchen window: A sheriffs' car is pulling up, lights going, siren silent. The sheriff looks up -- their eyes meet -- PUSH IN ON Ellie -- CUT TO: EXT. COUNTRYSIDE - NIGHT Little cones of light illuminate the darkness as NEIGHBORS search with their flashlights, calling: NEIGHBORS Ellie... Ellie...? EXT. ARROWAY HOUSE - NIGHT The sheriff stands in front of the house, shaking his head as he talks to a MINISTER. VOICES continue to CALL. We start to CRANE UP, HIGHER and HIGHER until we clear the house -- REVEALING Ellie lying on the roof, staring up at the stars. Her fingers grip the shingles... EXT. COUNTRY CEMETERY - DAY The Minister kneels next to Ellie, watching her knead another piece of bread into a ball before tossing it into a small fish pond. In the b.g. we see the sheriff and several relatives watching. MINISTER I'm so sorry, Ellie. More than I can ever say. Ellie keeps watching the pond. The clouds overhead are reflected in the patches of water between the lily pads. ELLIE Those lily pads must look like clouds to that carp, don't you think? The Minister frowns. Gently: MINISTER Ellie... this life doesn't last forever. Some day you and your Dad are going to be together again, in heaven. ELLIE (turns to him; equally gentle) He isn't in heaven; he's in the ground. We just put him there, remember? OFF the astonished Minister -- INT. ARROWAY HOUSE - NIGHT Relatives, townspeople, the Minister and sheriff mingle quietly. The kitchen table and counters are covered with a sea of casseroles. Ellie watches the gathered from a doorway, then slips away. INT. ARROWAY HOUSE - WORKSHOP AREA - NIGHT Ellie slowly approaches the darkened bench area where the SHORTWAVE is set up; the pin-dotted map above it. She TURNS it ON; the dial glows. She reaches out for the microphone, holding it tightly in both hands. Pushes the button. ELLIE CQ WR2, this is GFO, do you copy? (looking up) Dad, this is Ellie, come back. EXT. HOUSE - HIGH ANGLE - NIGHT Tiny Ellie is visible THROUGH the window, and as we begin to PULL UP and AWAY her emotion-choked voice continues, small and faraway... ELLIE (V.O.) This is Eleanor Arroway broadcasting on 9.2 megahertz. Dad, are you there? Come back. Come back. Come back... CUT TO: DEEP SPACE - MESSAGE -- rockets through the Rosette Nebula, a vast cloud of glowing red hydrogen illuminated by young hot stars a hundred times brighter than the sun. Their solar wind is blowing out an immense cavity in the interstellar gas and dust. PALM LEAF lies on the streetlamp-lit sidewalk. We hear the sound of a BUS PULLING UP, its door opening. After a moment a pair of sneakered feet tentatively step INTO FRAME. A suitcase is set down next to them as we hear the BUS WHEEZE OFF into the night. A hand reaches down, picks up the palm leaf. 22-YEAR-OLD ELLIE examines it, then looks up in apprehension at the old prewar Spanish structure of Cal Tech. INT. CAMPUS BUILDING - CORRIDOR - NIGHT Ellie's FOOTSTEPS ECHO as she walks down a corridor, its walls hung with portraits of Galileo, Copernicus, Hubble. She pauses at a photograph of Einstein standing outside the entrance we just saw. Sound up cut: THE RAMONES' "I Wanna Be Sedated" -- INT. DORM CORRIDOR - NIGHT An altogether different sort of hallway, reflecting the imagination and individuality of its occupants. The walls are covered with whimsical graffiti ("anthropocentrism is a 17 letter word;" "WATCH FOR FLYING POTATOES") and 3 A.M. paintings of alien sunsets; the MUSIC is coming from behind a door covered in Tolkien and comic book art. As Ellie enters this strange new world she begins to hear animated voices coming from a room at the end of the hall. VOICE #1 (V.O.) ... radio luminosity? VOICE #2 (V.O.) I dunno, maybe a post-spectral starburst or something. EVERYBODY (V.O.) Right, right -- VOICE #3 (V.O.) E+A is an elliptical? How can you tell it's being lensed? Pass me the Fruity Pebbles. VOICE #4 (V.O.) Well I guess you'd have to check other elliptical galaxies, Mr. Wizard -- INT. DORM ROOM - NIGHT As Ellie peers around the corner we see six or seven STUDENTS, mostly male, of mixed nationality and race, passing around cereal which they eat from the box. A primitive (circa 1980) home-built personal computer glows in the b.g.; a door opens onto a terrace and the California night beyond. They stop, look up at Ellie -- ELLIE I -- uh -- (clears her throat) I was looking for Koestler Hall? GUY (STUDENT) This is it. Hey, do you know the average radio-luminosity of an E+A elliptical galaxy? ELLIE Um... I'm not sure. (hesitates) Maybe you could deduce it from lensing a post-spectral starburst...? GUY (beat, then to his friend) See, I told you! (to Ellie) Want some Fruity Pebbles? Carcinogenic, but totally worth it. Ellie takes the box, and as she tentatively enters the room -- nibbles on the cereal -- she slowly sits. Smiles. The argument rages on. She's home. DEEP SPACE - MESSAGE We ROAR by a rapidly rotating, flashing pulsar. Cosmic dust filters the light into the shifting spectrum of colors... EXT. MOJAVE DESERT - DAY DAVID DRUMLIN, 42, fit, sardonic -- and the world's foremost radio astronomer -- leads a group of grad students past the first Jet Propulsion Lab radio telescopes at Goldstone. Ellie lags behind talking to PETER VALERIAN, who is about as good-looking as an astronomer should be allowed to be. ELLIE ... Drumlin said you're been down at Arecibo for the last year. PETER It's beautiful but it does get a little lonely. Sometimes I think the reason we build these things in such godforsaken places isn't to avoid excess radio traffic but because we're all such pathetic antisocial misfits... Speaking of which: How're you getting on with the old man? ELLIE He's an incredible prick but I never learned so much in my life. PETER (smiles) That's what they all say. In the b.g. we can see the majestic twin dishes tilted up toward the hard blue sky. An awkward moment, which Ellie fills by extending her hand. ELLIE Ellie. Arroway. PETER Peter Valerian. ELLIE Sounds like a Russian general. PETER Yavol. DRUMLIN (calling back) You're out of shape, Valerian. What's the matter, eat too many tacos down there in Puerto Rico? He pronounces it "tackos" in his distinctive Montana twang. ELLIE I read your paper on ETI's. It's brilliant. PETER (embarrassed but pleased) Keep it down, okay? Drumlin thinks I'm enough of a flake as it is. (then) Look -- everyone here has their little fetishes. Caven goes to topless bars, Vernon's got his carnivorous plants... mine just happens to be extraterrestrial intelligence. ELLIE What a coincidence. It happens to be my fetish too. A brief but electric moment between them. They both feel it. Drumlin calls back from the head of the group: DRUMLIN You two coming along or you just gonna do it right here in the sand? The other students laugh good-naturedly. Ellie and Peter, rather than being embarrassed, seem to be considering the idea. EXT. MOJAVE CLIFFS - LATE AFTERNOON A dusky orange sun hangs over the mountains, the Goldstone telescopes visible in the distance. Ellie and Peter walk along a windswept cliff overlooking a vast desert lake. ELLIE ... I'm just so sick of feeling defensive about the things I care about! Or being lumped in with the lunatic fringe by people like Drumlin, when if they'd just put aside their preconceptions for two seconds and look at the facts... PETER They can't. I think it's against human nature to admit to that level of... insignificance; to not see yourself as basically the center of the universe. ELLIE It's like the pre-Copernicans who swore the sun revolved around the Earth, or the Victorians at the end of the last century who concluded that all major discoveries had now been made. I mean... try to imagine civilization a thousand years ahead of us -- then imagine trying to explain... I dunno, a microwave oven -- to someone even a hundred years ago -- I mean the basic concepts didn't exist... PETER (murmurs) 'Any sufficiently advanced technology...' ELLIE (finishing it with him) '... is indistinguishable from magic.' A moment... and then Peter takes her hand like it's the most natural thing in the world. PETER I dunno. I know I should be objective, ice-cold hard-assed scientific about it, but just on an intuitive level -- what's the point of a universe so vast if we're the only ones it it? It'd just be such a... waste of space. Ellie stops, looks at him -- and then slowly, carefully leans in and kisses him. A pleasantly awkward beat. ELLIE Sorry. Peter laughs. EXT. DESERT - NIGHT A million stares blaze overhead as Peter and Ellie make love on an Indian blanket in the middle of the desert. Ellie looks searchingly up into Peter's face... and then her gaze drifts upwards to the canopy above... SQUIRREL gnaws on a beechnut as two enormous pair of feet walk by. ELLIE (V.O.) -- but I've already submitted my proposal! EXT. CAL TECH CAMPUS - DAY Ellie and Drumlin walk briskly, in heated discussion. DRUMLIN I'm sorry, Miss Arroway, not only is it too Speculative a subject for a doctoral dissertation, at this point in your career it'd be tantamount to suicide. ELLIE I'm willing to take that risk. DRUMLIN I'm not. You're far too promising a scientist to waste your considerable gifts on this nonsense -- ELLIE Dr. Drumlin, we are talking about what could potentially be the most important discovery in the history of humanity. There are over four hundred billion stars out there -- DRUMLIN And only two probabilities: One: there is intelligent life in the universe but they're so far away you'll never contact it in your lifetime -- ELLIE You're -- DRUMLIN Two: There's nothing out there but noble gasses and carbon compounds and you'd be wasting your time. ELLIE What if you're wrong? (as he starts to speak) No -- I'll grant you probabilities but as a scientist without all the evidence -- you can't deny the possibility -- and I believe even the remotest possibility of something this profoundly... profound is worth investigation -- and worth taking a few risks. DRUMLIN I disagree. ELLIE Then disagree but don't stand in my way! By this point they've gathered a small crowd. Drumlin regards her for for a moment; then, softly: DRUMLIN What is it that makes you so lonely, Miss Arroway? What is it that compels you to search the heavens for life when there's so much of it being neglected right here at home? Body blow. Ellie just stares, stunned. Finally: DRUMLIN I will approve a general thesis on the detection of radio signals from space but that's all. No E.T.I.s. Enough? Flushed, overwhelmed... Ellie nods. Enough. DEEP SPACE - MESSAGE Approaching a backwater area of the galaxy. A small, unspectacular yellow star comes INTO VIEW. PAIR OF HEADLIGHTS cuts through the night. A Jeep negotiates an overgrown mountain road. EXT. ARECIBO, PUERTO RICO - AERIAL SHOT - PRE-DAWN The two tiny beams from high above as we DESCEND OVER a mountainous jungle range, a hot-house of life that drops away to reveal an enormous white thousand-foot radio telescope, cradled in the natural bowl of the mountain valley. SUPERIMPOSE: ARECIBO, PUERTO RICO - 1992 EXT. ARECIBO - DAWN The mud-spattered Jeep pulls up in front of the living quarters of the primitive installation. Peter Valerian climbs out, looks up at the crude facilities in dismay. ELLIE lies asleep in bed. Peter sits quietly next to her, gently touches her face. Her eyes slowly open. She smiles. SAME - FEW MINUTES LATER Ellie is in the shower. Peter looks around her quarters; peeling paint, a few steps down from your average dorm room. ELLIE (O.S.) (calls from the shower) ... I keep telling myself okay, that's just the price, you have to do your time doing shitwork before you're allowed to get to the good stuff... but if I have to catalog one more quasar... (sticks her head out) God, I've missed you. PETER Any luck on the grant money? ELLIE Please. Any chance of that died the day David Drumlin was appointed head of the N.S.F. I have been in contact with a few other SETI people; we've been trying to find backing from private investors. I've even managed to scrounge a couple of hours of telescope time here and there... PETER And? ELLIE I've examined over forty stars of roughly solar spectral type but so far nothing. Still, we've barely started... Peter is silent. EXT. MT. ARECIBO (PUERTO RICO) - DAY Ellie and Peter walk along the periphery of the vast concave dish. A gentle breeze blows. ELLIE ... We've been going after some of the big multi-nationals but without much luck; got a donation from a New York dowager... We've even been thinking about selling T-shirts. PETER Ellie... even if you do manage to raise the money, have you thought about what it would really mean to follow through on this? I mean a college fetish is one thing, but we're talking about your career. You won't be publishing. You won't be taken seriously... and you could spend your entire life looking and never find anything at all. Ellie pauses; looks out at the endless ocean of green. Quietly: ELLIE If we lived at any previous time in human history we wouldn't even have the option of failing -- we'd have to wonder our whole lives, unable to do anything about it. This time, right now, is unique in our history, in any civilization's history -- the moment of the acquisition of technology. The moment when contact becomes possible. We've already beaten incredible odds by being lucky enough to be alive now. PETER (pausing) How close are you to getting this funding put together? ELLIE It's almost there. The hardest part is getting someone to sell us the telescope time. PETER What if I said I could get Drumlin to agree to sell you time in New Mexico? ELLIE (stunned) The V.L.A.? PETER Thirty-one linked dishes. You could search more sky there in a day than you could in a year here. ELLIE Peter -- if you can get him to do that for me he'd obviously do the same for you -- we could -- ! PETER Actually -- ELLIE We could be together again -- PETER -- I'm moving to Washington. ELLIE (confused) Greenbank? PETER I'm going on staff at the N.S.F. To work for Drumlin. ELLIE But what about your research -- ? PETER This is a chance to be of enormous help to other people's research -- to have the power to be a real advocate where David's got blind spots -- ELLIE But the work -- PETER 'The work,' Jesus, Ellie, can't there just once be more to life than the work? Okay, maybe that's the only way to get the recognition, win the prizes -- ELLIE Please, you're just as ambitious as I am, more -- PETER Maybe that's the problem. I want... a family, Ellie. I want kids. A townhouse on L street instead of still living like a college kid. A real life. Maybe that makes me a sellout but I don't care anymore. It's what I want. ELLIE And you think I don't want those things? You think I don't stay up half the night wondering if I've made the right choice living half a world away from you, wondering if any of this is worth what I'm giving up for it everyday? (as Peter is silent; suddenly) Let's get married. PETER Jesus -- ELLIE Right now -- we'll drive down to Ramey and get the base chaplain to marry us. PETER Ellie -- ELLIE I'm serious about this, Peter -- PETER Ellie -- I'm getting married. (off a stunned silence) Her name's Laura. She came up to Owens Valley to do her post-doc about six months after you left. ELLIE (stares) You sonofabitch. PETER That is true. But it's also true that if I really thought we wanted the same things, I'd follow you anywhere... but the truth is I don't think you want the company. (softly) Be honest, El. There's nowhere you'd rather be than sitting out at some remote corner of the world searching for the answers to the mysteries of the universe. And call me crazy, but I just can't compete with that... I'm sorry. There's nothing left to say. He rises, starts to make his way down. OFF Ellie, stunned -- DEEP SPACE - MESSAGE The yellow star is now definitely brighter than the rest. EXT. NEW MEXICO DESERT - AERIAL SHOT - NIGHT A 1967 T-Bird travels swiftly along a dirt road through the moonlit desert. The VIEW CLIMBS, WIDENS to include a huge radio telescope, and as we come around we see an even more stunning sight: 30 more of them. SUPERIMPOSE: SAPPORO, NEW MEXICO - 1993 EXT. VLA MAIN BUILDING - NIGHT The T-Bird pulls up in front of a bland, institutional building. Ellie climbs out, stretches, then pulls a single small suitcase from the back seat. INT. CAFETERIA/LOUNGE - NIGHT Over an ancient Mr. Coffee machine some hysteric has scribbled: "Someone has been drinking the coffee without leaving the .10c in the cup and WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE." Ellie drops her dime in. As she pours she hears a strange sound: a steady repetitive SSSHHH... SSSHHH... She follows the noise down the hall. INT. CONTROL ROOM - NIGHT The lights are off; the large room is illuminated solely by the night sky and glowing banks of electronic equipment. Through the large panorama window we can see the silhouettes of the enormous radio telescopes in the moonlight. We make out a shape sitting in the darkness listening to the sounds, louder now: SSSHHH... SSSHHH... And then a voice calls out: VOICE (O.S.) Light's behind you, to the left. Ellie finds the switch, flips on the lights, revealing KENT CULLERS, 30's, wearing Raybans. ELLIE Dr. Cullers? KENT Kent, Kent for Chrissakes. You must be Eleanor. ELLIE (moving to the control panel) Ellie. Pulsar? KENT 1919+21. Found a glitch in the timing; probably a starquake. ELLIE Nice. Where? Kent types in a few commands and the computer screen lights up. It reads "Radio Sky" and it looks nothing like the ordinary optical sky; more like an elaborate oriental rug. Pointing: KENT Here, right around Centaurus A. ELLIE This is how you see the sky? KENT It's how I hear it. The display's just a little something I programmed for astronomers with the misfortune of sight. ELLIE It's beautiful. KENT Never seen the optical sky myself, but I hear it's nice too. MILLINGTON (O.S.) Yo, Ray Charles, time's up. Oh -- sorry -- KENT Doctors Millington, Curtain, Dr. Arroway. Ellie raises a hand in greeting to the two men in the doorway, they wave awkwardly back. KENT Rick's doing black holes at the center of galaxies; Tom's studying globular clusters in the e-band. (to the guys) And Dr. Arroway here will be spending her precious time listening for little green men. All yours, guys. As he rises MILLINGTON and CURTAIN move to take his place at the controls. They maneuver shyly around Ellie. ELLIE Um... should I... MILLINGTON/CURTAIN (way too fast) No, no, no -- have a seat. Kent smiles, exits. Ellie sits, looks over the control console, rubs her hands... DISSOLVE TO: INT. VLA CONTROL ROOM - DAY In the daylight we see the sad truth of the place: a character-free cinderblock box filled with a mishmash of equipment, aging and jerry-rigged alongside the spoils of the odd successful grant application. Through a wall of windows we can see the cafeteria/lounge area; an ancient Ping-Pong table. ELLIE (O.S.) Hey, Fish, has that pointing error in twenty-nine been fixed yet? FISHER It's a worm gear; still a little sluggish but it'll have to do. Ellie again sits at the main console, but time has clearly dissipated some of her initial enthusiasm. She frowns as she peers at the telescope THROUGH the windows... ELLIE J39 Z186...? WILLIE Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. ELLIE VB10's an M dwarf; Signa Draconis... too old. KENT (at the coffee machine) You've only searched -- what is it, sixteen hundred stars without a peep? Try not to take it too personally. ELLIE Thank you, Mr. Sensitive. (frowns) I'm coming at this wrong... missing something... something... DISSOLVE TO: PAIR OF HANDS pick up a think coil of cable. DUSTY PAIR OF SNEAKERS trek through the moonlit scrub desert, trailing cable behind them... EXT. DESERT - NIGHT Ellie sits cross-legged on the hard earth, hunched over with her fingers barely touching the pair of headphones she wears. We hear the faint arhythmic pulsing of STATIC... Ellie's eyes are closed; she leans forward, an expression of peculiar intensity on her face... CUT TO: EXT. DESERT - WIDE Ellie's tiny hunched-over figure is sitting about a thousand yards away from the main building, rocking slowly back and forth under the vast desert sky, back and forth,listening... DISSOLVE TO: EXT. NEW MEXICO DESERT - AERIAL SHOT - DAY A government sedan travels the dusty road to the VLA. EXT. VLA MAIN BUILDING - LATER AFTERNOON The sedan pulls up. WILLIE climbs out of the driver's side and comes around to get the bags as David Drumlin emerges, formidable and patrician as ever. Kent, Fisher, Millington, Curtain and a number of other scientists are there to greet him. DRUMLIN (hand at his back) Now I remember why I went into theoretical work. Kent. KENT Glad to have you, David. How's the new office? DRUMLIN Still settling in, really. (looking over the group) Where's Dr. Arroway? INT. VLA CONTROL ROOM - AFTERNOON Kent and Fisher lead Drumlin through the complex; his conservative suit out of place among the jeans and T-shirts; other scientists either smile obsequiously or avert their gaze. FISHER ... not that there's a whole lot in the way of entertainment around here but I guess it beats communing with washing machines. DRUMLIN What's that? KENT Nothing. (looking at Fisher; hesitates a long beat) Okay. Some of us have been a little... not concerned, exactly, but... DRUMLIN (almost gently) Tell me. KENT (hesitates again; finally) Last week, about 3 A.M., Fish -- Dr. Fisher -- was on a late shift, and he found her doing laundry. DRUMLIN So? KENT So... there wasn't any clothes in the machine. She was just sitting there on the floor with her ear pressed up against the Maytag. Listening. EXT. VLA LIVING QUARTERS - ESTABLISHING - DUSK Across a barren patch of desert lies a weathered residential outbuilding, something between a dormitory and a Motel Six. INT. ELLIE'S QUARTERS - DUSK Home. Painted cinderblock, a single star map up on the wall. An old lumpy couch, several monitors along a shelf on one wall that connects her to the control room. Headphones, listening equipment. Ellie is at the fridge. ELLIE Pepsi? Tequila? DRUMLIN No, thanks. He sits on the corner of the unmade bed. Ellie pops open a soda, unselfconscious. DRUMLIN Peter sends his regards. ELLIE (a little too nonchalant) Oh? How's he doing? DRUMLIN Very well; since my appointment he's been made interim director. ELLIE Really? Congratulations, by the way. DRUMLIN I'm surprised you even knew it was an election year. ELLIE 'President's Science Advisor' -- so what, you just spend all your time jetting around on Air Force One now...? DRUMLIN Now exactly. It's... complicated. ELLIE No doubt. DRUMLIN (a beat, then) Ellie... ELLIE (avoiding the inevitable) Did I tell you we've expanded the search spectrum? We're including several other possible magic frequencies -- not just the hydrogen line anymore. I was trying to get inside their heads, y'know? And I started thinking, what other constants are there in the Universe besides hydrogen, and then suddenly it was so obvious -- transcendantals, right? So we've been trying variations of pi... DRUMLIN You know why I'm here. ELLIE It's not enough having my search time systematically cut down -- you know I'm down to three hours a week now. DRUMLIN Ellie, I should have done this a long time ago, certainly before I left the N.S.F., but I wanted to give you every benefit of the doubt -- ELLIE You can't just pull the plug, David. DRUMLIN It's not like you've given me much choice. ELLIE Meaning... DRUMLIN Meaning I have to go defend a budget to the President and to Congress and you're out here listening to washing machines. ELLIE (quietly) I'm searching for patterns in the noise, that's all. Order in the chaos. I'm practicing listening -- DRUMLIN The point is, this isn't just scientific inquiry anymore -- it's turned into some kind of personal obsession. ELLIE The difference being what -- that I refuse to adopt the standard line, that I don't care about the results of my work? Well, I do care. Of course any discovery has to be verifiable, of course it must be subject to all rigors of scientific method, but I refuse to go around pretending I'm some kind of dispassionate automaton when it's obvious to anyone with a brain I'm just not. DRUMLIN No... You're not. But the price has just gotten too high. ELLIE Goddamnit, they are out there, David -- DRUMLIN Then why haven't you detected any signals? If, as you claim, there have been thousands, millions of advanced civilizations out there for millions of years then why hasn't one signal gotten through? (rising) It'll take a month or two for the paperwork to go through; you're welcome to stay until then. ELLIE David -- DRUMLIN It was a worthy experiment -- worthy of you; I was wrong about that part. But it's over now. He leaves. Ellie just stands there in the window, fighting back the emotion, watching the telescopes in the falling light... EXT. SPACE - MESSAGE approaches the out regions of our solar system; Neptune -- an austere, deep blue gas world with swirling clouds of methane. The message shoots by more worlds at the speed of light. Saturn. Jupiter. Closer. MESSAGE - TO EARTH - DESCENDING VIEWS Approaching the big blue and white marble, breathtaking against a backdrop of stars. We PLUNGE PAST the outer satellites, the Hubble telescope -- Space Station Mir. We ENTER the atmosphere, DESCENDING THROUGH layers of clouds, DOWN farther and farther, FASTER AND FASTER -- We RUSH DOWN TOWARD North America, the Southwest U.S., SMASHING DOWN TOWARD the tiny dot of the VLA, TOWARD the westernmost dish and INTO the antenna at its center -- INSERT - TV - LARRY KING LIVE The famous host's familiar features, pixilated in EXTREME CLOSEUP. LARRY KING (V.O.) (TV) My guest tonight is author and theologian Palmer Joss, 'God's diplomat' according to the New York Times. His new book -- Losing Faith -- is currently number one on that publication's bestseller list. Thanks for being with us, Reverend. Okay -- who's losing faith -- and why? Our first glimpse of Palmer Joss. He has a rumpled, rugged charm that has become just the slightest bit polished. No bullshit, agreeably ironic, he's ridden the wave of the New Spiritualism farther than even he ever imagined. JOSS (V.O.) Well, let me start this way, Larry. What has science done for you lately? LARRY KING (V.O.) Besides letting me broadcast this program all over the world? JOSS (V.O.) (smiles) Besides that. Or better, I'll give you that, but tell me this: Are you happier? Are we happier? Is our would fundamentally a better place? WIDEN SLOWLY to reveal: INT. VLA CONTROL ROOM - NIGHT Willie and Fisher sit at the command console, battling the ennui of their watch. BOB MARLEY plays on a battered BOOMBOX; Fisher watches Joss on a Watchman. JOSS (V.O.) (TV) Don't get me wrong -- we're smart, Larry. We shop at home, we surf the net... and we feel emptier and lonelier and more cut off from each other than at any other time in human history... Fisher eats a Baby Ruth and sips a Coke as he watches. Willie, heavy into his Gameboy, has a sudden epiphany. WILLIE Y'know who'd make great astronomers? Vampires. Think about it; the perfect synthesis of career and lifestyle. FISHER (engrossed in TV) Shut up, Willie. INT. ELLIE'S ROOM - NIGHT Ellie lies crashed out on the couch, headphones on. All we hear is STATIC... ... and then, beneath the static, we begin to hear another sound, barely audible but definitely there... A faint irregular PULSING, FADING IN AND OUT of reception. Ellie slowly swims up to consciousness. After a moment her eyes open. She sits up -- TIGHT ON BOOMBOX still playing REGGAE. A hand reaches in and turns it OFF. INT. VLA CONTROL - ROOM Willie and Fisher look up in surprise as Ellie goes to the main console, starts checking instrument readings. WILLIE Got a bogey, boss? ELLIE I'm not sure. You mind checking right ascension 18 hours, 34 minutes; declination plus 38 degrees 41 minutes? FISHER What's the frequency? ELLIE 4458.8 gigahertz. Fisher and Willie look at each other significantly. ELLIE It's probably nothing. They start typing in coordinates. THROUGH WINDOW - GIANT RADIO TELESCOPES turn one by one, fixing on the same point in the sky. INT. VLA CONTROL - CONTINUOUS ACTION Willie puts on headsets, flips a switch, twists a dial. WILLIE (in wonder) Hydrogen times pi... (calling to Ellie) Got it. Strong sucker. ELLIE Put it on speakers. He punches a button. An eerie, PULSING METALLIC SOUND. Willie and Fisher run their routine checks with a practiced calm -- WILLIE FISHER Could be AWACS from Glitch in number Kirtland; verifying seventeen. intensity. Wasn't Monochromatic, strong seventeen where we found too. That was twenty- that owl's nest last three, besides I got month? signal across the board. Around the room a few night owls are watching with growing interest. Ellie types rapidly on a keyboard, watching a monitor above her: SEARCH)STAR FIELD ORIGIN OF SIGNAL) FISHER Checking interferometric position. Somewhere in Lyra, I think... ELLIE Vega...? WILLIE That can't be right; it's only twenty-six light years away. ELLIE I scanned it at Arecibo; negative results, always. FISHER Linearly polarized; a set of moving pulses restricted to two different amplitudes -- WILLIE Air Force isn't supposed to be on this frequency. ELLIE That's what they always say; punch up the darks. Another display shows all satellites and major debris in orbit; "darks" glow in red. ELLIE (murmurs) How's the spying tonight, guys? WILLIE NORAD's not tracking any spacecraft in our vector including snoops; shuttle Endeavor's in sleep mode. FISHER Interferometry now rules out a Molniya-type orbit. WILLIE Confirming sidereal motion; whatever it is, it ain't local. Ellie fights to stay calm -- but the excitement rippling through the gathered is palpable -- ELLIE Display absolute intensity. On another monitor a sound spike leaps with each pulse. WILLIE Reading over a hundred janskys -- Ellie puts on headsets, shuts her eyes in fierce concentration as she listens -- for a moment only a signal echoes through the control room -- ELLIE Numbers. Those are numbers, each pulse is a set -- break it down -- Now with each pulse, long strings of zeros and ones appear. On the monitor: PROMPT: CONVERTING TO BASE 10) OPERATION COMPLETED MAIN DISPLAY With each pulse a number appears: 59 61 67 71 79 83 89 91 -- ELLIE 79 -- 83 -- 91 -- they're all primes, no way that's a natural phenomenon -- ! The room ignites. Ellie shouts over the din -- ELLIE Okay, let's just slow down. Pull up the starfield signal origin. KENT (O.S.) It can't be coming from Vega, the system's too young. Kent stands sleepily in the doorway, wearing Kermit the Frog pajamas and an old robe. Willie punches up a screen: ELLIE WILLIE Maybe they didn't grow up Constellation Lyra, there, maybe they're just brightest star Vega, visiting. A-zero main sequence dwarf, estimate several KENT million years old. The system's full of debris Distance 26 light years -- any spacecraft that accretion disk, no stayed for long would get known planets. clobbered. NEARBY SKEPTIC Not if they took evasive action and used their photon torpedoes. ELLIE Or if they're in polar orbit -- but no, you're right. If we go public and we're wrong, that's it -- it is over for us. (the room grows quiet) Vega will set in a couple of hours; it's probably already risen in Australia. Let's call Ian and see if we can get some verification on this. Willie picks up the phone and dials. All eyes on Ellie. ELLIE Okay. We have an intense, not very monochromatic signal, linearly polarized as if coming from an antenna, source moving with the stars so it can't be an airplane or spacecraft; on and only on a frequency whose only significance would be to an intelligence that wanted to be directed. If anyone can come up with any plausible or even implausible explanation besides ETI I want to hear it, now. Silence. Willie on the phone -- WILLIE Yeah -- yeah, just a sec -- He looks up at Ellie. She looks back -- EXT. CSCIRO RADIO TELESCOPE (AUSTRALIA) - DAY IAN (V.O.) (phone) ... We put it smack in the middle -- INT. CSCIRO CONTROL ROOM - CONTINUOUS ACTION IAN BRODERICK, head of SETI down under, reaches across a star map surrounded by other excited technicians -- IAN Vega. As his finger hits the map -- INT. VLA CONTROL ROOM - SAME TIME ELLIE (pausing) Thanks, Ian. Can you just keep tracking it as long as you can and we'll get back to you. (slowly puts down the phone, then) Get this out to every observatory and radio array on the planet. Um... and get me the President's Science Advisor. Outside the sun is coming up. They all look to the windows. The telescopes are silhouetted against the pale light. Ellie goes. They watch her -- then turn to look out at the rows of mechanical flowers pointing up at the new dawn. INT. ELLIE'S ROOM Ellie shuts the door behind her. She sinks to the floor, looks up, breathless -- ELLIE Hello, Pensacola... ELLIE'S E-MAIL as it types out on various screens at radio telescopes in exotic locations around the world; various teams gather round -- ANOMALOUS INTERMITTENT RADIO SOURCE AT RIGHT ASCENSION 18 34m, DECLINATION PLUS 38 DEGREES 41 MINUTES, DISCOVERED BY VLA SYSTEMATIC SKY SURVEY. FREQUENCY 4458.8 GIGAHERTZ, LYRA/VEGA SYSTEM. 174 AND 179 JANSKYS. EVIDENCE AMPLITUDES ENCODE SEQUENCE OF PRIME NUMBERS. FULL LONGITUDE COVERAGE URGENTLY NEEDED. E. ARROWAY, DIRECTOR, PROJECT ARGUS, SOCORRO, NEW MEXICO, U.S.A. Sound upcut: a JET ENGINE ROARS -- EXT. WHITE SANDS AFB - DAY AIR FORCE 2 lands with a SCREECH as Government Motor Pool cars speed toward it across the tarmac. National Security Advisor MICHAEL KITZ -- very sharp and serious as death -- steps out of the plane... followed momentarily by David Drumlin. He doesn't look happy. EXT. VLA - MAIN ENTRANCE - DAY Security guards stonewall two mobile TV news trucks. A handful of protesters picket the entrance carrying signs; "JUSTICE," "STOP THE COVERUP," "ROSWELL." PROTESTERS (chanting) U-F-O-s -- We want to know -- As Kitz, Drumlin and a small VIP delegation make their way in, Local News Reporters thrust microphones in their faces -- "Mr. Kitz, Dr. Drumlin --" KITZ The President will be making a statement in due time; until then we have no comment. INT. CONTROL CENTER - DAY Fisher leads Kitz, Drumlin and the rest of the delegation around the room. Coffee cups and cigarettes abound. Drumlin crosses over to Willie's console, studies the display. In the b.g. we hear the constant BEEPING of the MESSAGE. DRUMLIN What's the latest? WILLIE Forty-four stations worldwide now confirming the signal, sir. DRUMLIN (to an aide) Let's get some decryption people here, now. Dr. Lunacharsky's visiting at the University of New Mexico -- Kitz and others look at the main display as the primes continue to scroll. KITZ I don't get it. If this civilization is so advanced why the remedial math? SENATE DELEGATE Why don't they just speak English? ELLIE (O.S.) Maybe because seventy percent of the planet speaks other languages. All eyes turn to Ellie; she hasn't slept but you'd hardly notice. ELLIE Mathematics is the only truly universal language, Senator. We think this may be a beacon -- an announcement to get our attention. DRUMLIN If it's attention you want I'd say you've got it. (as Ellie turns to him) Just one thing: Why Vega? Everyone's looked at Vega for years with no results, and now, yesterday, they start broadcasting primes. Why? ELLIE It's hardly yesterday; the signal's been traveling for over twenty-six years. As for why... (meeting his gaze) I'm hoping your own expertise in decryption algorithms will help us find out -- to see if there's another message buried deeper in the signal. Drumlin frowns, effectively neutralized for the moment. KITZ Dr. Arroway -- DRUMLIN Michael Kitz, National Security Advisor. KITZ Dr. Arroway, let me first say -- ELLIE Before you do could you please ask the gentlemen with the firearms to wait outside? This is a civilian facility. Kitz pauses -- then gives a signal to dismiss the Berets. ELLIE Oh, and if you could ask them not to use their radios -- interference. Thanks so much. Drumlin warns her with a look, which she conveniently avoids. KITZ I'll come right to the point, Doctor. Your sending this message all over the world may well be a breach of National Security. ELLIE This isn't a person to person call, Mr. Kitz. I don't really think the civilization sending the message intended it just for Americans. KITZ I'm saying you might have consulted us; the contents of this message could be extremely sensitive... ELLIE You want to classify prime numbers? DRUMLIN Mike, because of the Earth's rotation we're only in line with Vega so many hours a day; the only way to get the whole message is to cooperate with other stations. If Dr. Arroway hadn't moved quickly we could have lost key elements. KITZ Okay, fine, they've got the primes -- but if you're right about there being another more significant transmission still to come -- ELLIE -- which we'll also need the network's help to receive and decode! KITZ You don't seem to understand that it's your interests I'm trying to protect -- ! Suddenly the steady BEEPING of the MESSAGE STOPS, replaced by terrible STATIC. On the various displays the prime numbers start to scramble. FISHER Oh shit. ELLIE Interference -- we're losing the signal. EXT. VLA CONTINUOUS ACTION - DAY Media choppers circle like buzzards: CNN, ABC, WGH Santa Fe, freelance weather choppers on the lookout for "Hard Copy" -- INT. VLA - CONTINUOUS ACTION - DAY The DRONE of the CHOPPERS continues in the b.g. KENT Can't we get rid of them? ELLIE (looks up at Kitz; slowly) It's a civilian facility. Kitz allows himself the barest hint of a smile -- then switches on his radio and speaks calmly into it. KITZ Colonel Jarrod, I'd like a twenty mile radio-silent perimeter put around this installation immediately. ELLIE And a hundred mile airspace. KITZ And a hundred mile airspace. EXT. VLA PERIMETER - DUSK In the extreme f.g. a heavy-duty aluminum post is thrust into the earth -- a fence is being erected. INT. VLA ROOM - DUSK Kitz stands in the former lounge/cafeteria; an improvised command center has been set up on the ping-pong table. Aides continue to hook up equipment as he talks on a red phone: KITZ ... under control for the moment but the longer we wait the more unstable the situation could become. I think you should consider coming here... INT. CONTROL ROOM - DUSK STEPHEN LUNACHARSKY, a high-strung Russian scientist, chain smokes as he types. Ellie and Drumlin stand over him, Kent next to him, others nearby. ELLIE ... could it be a nested code of some sort? DRUMLIN You must have checked the signal for polarization modulation already... Ellie hesitates. Drumlin looks at her. Whoops. ELLIE Dr. Lunacharsky...? LUNACHARSKY (takes a drag) Analyzing signal polarization shifts. He type in a series of commands. Something begins to happen on the main display -- LUNACHARSKY Bingo. POV - THROUGH WINDOW Kitz, on the phone, sees the activity around the console. BACK TO SCENE Lunacharsky types in commands as he talks. LUNACHARSKY A second layer, nested within the main signal; possibly... a picture? Product of three primes... KITZ (joining them) What. LUNACHARSKY ... definitely three dimensions, either a hologram or a two- dimensional picture that moves in time; a movie. DRUMLIN (dryly) Hope there's a cartoon. KITZ How is that possible? How could all that information be encoded in -- KENT Well, sir, some bits of the signal are bits that tell us how to interpret the other bits. Technically speaking. JURYRIGGED 35-INCH MONITOR Strings of zeros and ones fill the screen as the group assembles around it. ELLIE Enlarge. Willie types. Ellie moves closer, studying it. Intuitively: ELLIE Try plotting values in a three dimensional coordinate system. A pattern begins to emerge. DRUMLIN Throw a gray scale on it; standard interpolation. ELLIE Rotate 90 degrees counterclock wise. Willie enters commands. All are mesmerized by the shadows taking form on the screen. ELLIE It has to be an image. Stack it up, string-breaks every 60th character. On the screen a distinct black and white moving image forms; grays define it even further. The group is transfixed. Kitz whispers to an aide who makes a call in a hand radio. KENT Um... I've got an auxiliary sideband channel here. I think it's audio. An otherworldly RUMBLING GLISSANDO of sounds joins the image, sliding up and down the spectrum... and then the faint SWELLING MUSIC is heard. Ellie reaches over Willie and type more commands. The picture rotates, rectifies, focuses -- KITZ What in the hell...? DRUMLIN It's a hoax. I knew it! KENT Um, excuse me, but would someone mind telling me what the hell is going on? Other reactions range from astonishment to nervous laughter. Ellie and Peter stare in utter amazement. ON SCREEN A grainy black and white image of a massive reviewing stand adorned with an immense Art Deco eagle. Clutched in the eagle's concrete talons is a swastika. Adolph Hitler salutes a rhythmically chanting crowd. The deep baritone voice of an ANNOUNCER, scratchy but unmistakably GERMAN, BOOMS through the room. The dark absurdity of the moment plays over Ellie's face; helpless: ELLIE Anybody know German? Kent tilts his head, closes his eyes. KENT The Fuhrer... welcomes the world to the German Fatherland... for the opening of the 1936 Olympic Games. Hitler's face fills the screen. The crowd roars its approval. CUT TO: TELEVISED RIOT in Berlin. Police with hoses try to keep a mob of skinheads under control. GERMAN ANNOUNCER (V.O.) (in German) ... the signal from the American observatory depicting Adolph Hitler has brought about chaos in the streets of Berlin, where hundreds of neo-Nazis gathered to swear eternal fealty... Slowly WIDEN to reveal a monitor wall. A kaleidoscopic display of global news coverage of the event. Demonstrations in a dozen cities, commentary from pundits, Aryan leaders and Auschwitz survivors. A single figure sits before the monitors, taking in the cacophony. INT. VLA CORRIDOR - DAY A huddle of figures sweeps down a dark corridor, charged with power and purpose. FEMALE VOICE (O.S.) Forty million people die defeating that sonofabitch and he becomes our first ambassador to another civilization? It makes me sick. DRUMLIN (O.S.) With all due respect, the Hitler broadcast from the '36 Olympics was the first television transmission of any power that went into space. That they recorded it and sent it back is simply a way of saying 'Hello, we heard you --' KITZ (O.S.) -- Or 'you're our kind of people --' DRUMLIN (O.S.) -- It's extremely unlikely that they had any idea what they were looking at. FEMALE VOICE (O.S.) I can't believe that everything on TV is automatically broadcast all over the universe. 'Hard Copy'... Rickie Lake'... (paling) Oh God, the '60 Minutes' interview. The huddle bursts through a door and out into the dazzling New Mexico morning, revealing the PRESIDENT and her entourage: Drumlin, Kitz, Secret Service, and fighting to keep up, Ellie. A sea of press awaits them as they move toward the podium, which has been set up with the 31 enormous radio antennas in the b.g. As the CHIEF OF STAFF takes the podium Ellie looks over her note cards, then nervously out at the crowd. CHIEF OF STAFF Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. President Helen Lasker addresses the crowd. She's an American version of Margaret Thatcher. PRESIDENT LASKER (FEMALE VOICE) My fellow Americans, citizens of the world, ladies and gentlemen of the press. At 7:09 A.M. Eastern Standard Time yesterday morning, American scientists detected a radio signal from space. This message was largely mathematical, and in spite of some of the headlines I've seen today, so far seems to be completely benign in nature. To better explain the extraordinary events of the last 24 hours, I'm turning you over to... Doctor David Drumlin. Ellie looks up in surprise. Drumlin doesn't miss a beat as he strides to the podium. DRUMLIN Good morning. In 1936 a very faint television signal transmitted the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games as a show of German superior technology. That signal left Earth at the speed of light and twenty-six years later arrived on Vega, which they then sent back to us hugely amplified. As evidence of intelligence this is indisputable -- As Drumlin continues we see Fisher ease onto the dais from behind, approach Ellie and surreptitiously hand her a note. DRUMLIN Whoever or whatever they are, they're clearly move advanced than we... Ellie reads it, looks up at Fisher in surprise -- then quietly slips away. A murmur among the press as they notice; the President and then Drumlin as well -- DRUMLIN ... maybe only decades or centuries, maybe much further along than that... INT. VLA CONTROL ROOM - DAY Ellie hurries into the control room -- then stops dead. POV - MAIN MONITOR The incredibly complex geometric pattern we see flashing on the screen will be referred to as hieroglyphics -- but they are like no hieroglyphics ever seen before; chillingly otherworldly, they are the first visual artifact of an alien civilization. The scientists stand stunned and silent. BACK TO SCENE ELLIE What... LUNACHARSKY (softly) In ancient times when parchment was in short supply people would write over old writing... it was called a palimpsest. ELLIE A third layer. A phalanx of officials led by Drumlin, Kitz and the President hurry in... and also stop at the sight of the hieroglyphs. PRESIDENT LASKER Oh my God... KITZ What is it? ELLIE I think we just hit the cosmic jackpot. KENT It's incredibly rich. We've been cataloging it in frames or 'pages'; right now we're on 10,413. PRESIDENT LASKER What does it say? ELLIE It could be anything. The first volume of some Encyclopedia Galactica... KITZ ... instructions to acquaint us with their colonization procedures. KENT Moses with a few billion new commandments... KITZ Ms. President, in the interest of national security, I strongly recommend we militarize this project immediately -- ELLIE Pardon me, but you can't do -- ! KITZ If at some later date the message proves harmless, we can discuss sharing it with the rest of the world, but until then -- ELLIE That's terrific, but there's one problem: we don't have the means to receive all the data on our own. PRESIDENT LASKER Is that true? DRUMLIN The only way would be if we had a radio telescope in orbit. PRESIDENT LASKER We don't? Why don't we? ELLIE Because you cut it from the budget three years running. PRESIDENT LASKER How soon will you be able to decode it? LUNACHARSKY There's no way of knowing. Without a key -- a primer, to help us, maybe never. ELLIE Maybe it'll be at the end of the data when the message recycles. PRESIDENT LASKER Well. That would seem to decide it. Like it or not, for the moment, anyway, it looks like we're all in this together. KITZ But -- PRESIDENT LASKER That's it, Mike. Last time I checked, I was still running the country. Although it seems that for the moment, Dr. Arroway is running the planet. The President looks up at the screen and involuntarily shivers. PRESIDENT LASKER Let's get out of here. CUT TO: MONITOR WALL (LOCATION UNKNOWN) - DAY More global news coverage, private surveillance camera feeds; also some disturbing pornographic images. On one monitor, a moment from the President's VLA press conference plays over and over -- the moment when Drumlin stepped up to the podium in front of Ellie. A gnarled hand pushes a button on a console and the image enlarges -- we see Ellie's expression of shock and hurt, over and over. Over and over. On the next monitor over is live CNN coverage of the scene outside the VLA -- we begin to PUSH IN ON it -- WOLF BLITZER (V.O.) ... There had been speculation on the part of psychologists that the proliferation of depictions of aliens in movies and on television in recent years might make for an almost blase acceptance of the news. MATCH CUT TO: EXT. DESERT (NEW MEXICO) - DAY The road leading to the VLA is jammed with vehicles, RVs, vans, busses, as far as the eye can see. More people walk on the side of the road. WOLF BLITZER (V.O.) But the truth is, it turns out, is far stranger than anything Hollywood might have dreamed up -- and here, today, the prospect of extraterrestrial intelligence if no longer science fiction -- it's the best show in town. The VIEW CLIMBS, REVEALING campfires, BBQs, tents of all shapes and sizes littering the plains surrounding the telescope array. Signs and banners reading "Watch the Skies" and "There are Aliens Among Us." Woodstock 1998. VOICE (O.S.) ... I know you're angry -- we're all angry. About the lies. The corruption. About the cancer of despair spreading through every aspect of our lives. But Rome will fall, my friends; everywhere now are the signs of closure. Even now the end begins. EXT. VLA ENTRANCE - CONTINUOUS ACTION Various preachers and new age gurus speak to gatherings all along the new cyclone fence surrounding the VLA. We become aware of a crowd concentrated around a young man speaking on a small stage: JOSEPH. He has the appeal of a rock star, albeit a compelling well-spoken one. His AMPLIFIED VOICE RINGS OUT: JOSEPH The millennium is upon us. God has fulfilled his promise, sending us this herald to warn the faithless -- the scientists who tell us He doesn't even exist -- and to promise us, the faithful, we will be saved. Beyond Joseph we can see through the shiny new cyclone fence to the VLA building, now surrounded by tents and temporary structures. JOSEPH (O.S.) I don't know what this voice from the sky says -- but I do know that if history has taught us anything, it's that the politicians and the scientists are lying to us, right now, for their own good! Are these the kind of people you want talking to your God for you -- ? INT. VLA CONTROL ROOM - DAY Outside, the panorama window searchlights fan, CROWDS CHANT frightening rhythms. Inside, the numbing, never- ending pulses of the signal and scrolling numbers. The former lounge/cafeteria has been turned into decryption central: dozens of personal workstations, populated with Silicon Valley's finest assortment of techno-wizards, crashed out on cots in a 'round-the-clock effort to break the code. Ellie sips her coffee as she walks briskly through the chaos; Drumlin matches her stride for stride. DRUMLIN ... Arrangements also have to be made for the V.I.P.s coming in, mostly religious leaders... ELLIE What? Why? DRUMLIN The theological ramifications of all this are obvious; the President feels we need to include religious interests rather than alienate them. She's also named Palmer Joss as their liaison; he's requested a meeting with you. ELLIE With me. DRUMLIN Apparently he's genuinely interested in science. This could be a chance to win him over. ELLIE I'm going to convert Mr. Science-is- the-root-of-all-evil? This is absurd, David. We have work to do here, I don't have time to play babysitter to the God Squad. DRUMLIN (low and dangerous) Ellie -- Ellie looks at him in surprise as he grabs her by the elbow. DRUMLIN I want you to listen to me, carefully. The minute the implications of this message became clear, this stopped being simply a scientific matter and became a political one -- an extremely complex, extremely volatile one. There are forces at work here you don't understand; I can help you up to a point, but only up to a point. ELLIE (in innocent wonder) Are you threatening me? DRUMLIN It's not a threat, Ellie, it's a fact -- if you're not careful, you may find yourself out in the cold very quickly. Play ball. Really. It's good advice. Ellie stops as she notices through the windows, Lunacharsky stepping out of the decryption area. He's looking right at her. ELLIE Excuse me. ANGLE As Ellie approaches Lunacharsky, something in his eyes tells her there's more to his weary look than just fatigue. ELLIE What? LUNACHARSKY We've repeated. A few minutes ago the message cycled back to page one. ELLIE And? LUNACHARSKY No primer. ELLIE (incredulous) How can that be? LUNACHARSKY I don't know. Maybe there is a fourth layer in there somewhere, but if there is, I sure as hell can't find it. Ellie stares at him -- turns to look at Drumlin -- then walks out of the room. INT. ELLIE'S ROOM - NIGHT Bleary-eyed, three days with no sleep, Ellie sits at her terminal, staring at the hieroglyphics, more impenetrable then ever. In the corner, the TV DRONES. BERNIE SHAW (V.O.) ... And with church attendance at record highs, a coalition of religious leaders are using their increased political capital to challenge the very legality of radio astronomy itself, claiming the message and its contents subvert the moral climate of their constituencies. More after this... A CNN special report logo -- "The Message," dazzlingly vulgar with its own graphics and there. A COMMERCIAL CONTINUES in the b.g.: COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCER (V.O.) In the air, under the sea, in the depths of D.N.A. itself, Hadden Industries is at the frontier... Ellie, chin on forearms, stares at her screen, willing herself to find a pattern. Suddenly she blinks -- something is changing. A dot appears in the middle of the screen. It begins to grow, revealing a complex fractal shape. It splits, enlarges, splits again, the shapes finally revealing themselves as... English letters. Which read: "TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER" Ellie stares -- ELLIE Someone's broken into the system, someone's compromised the fucking -- ! She quickly type in: "Who are you?" The fractals reform" "I'VE GOT A SECRET." Ellie types again: "WHO ARE YOU?" The fractals reform: "YOUR PLACE OR MINE?" Ellie stares -- more fractals form as she grabs a pen and paper -- EXT. VLA - NIGHT National Guardsmen have established a perimeter around the compound; soldiers are posted on the main road as well. As Ellie ROARS through the gate in her 1967 T-BIRD, our VIEW RISES: the new Woodstock nation is, for the moment, asleep. EXT. HIGHWAY (NEW MEXICO) - NIGHT Ellie's tense face lit by the dash. She picks up a piece of paper with scribbled directions on it. Turns onto a dirt road. EXT. HIGHWAY (NEW MEXICO) - LOW ANGLE POV - NIGHT of Ellie's CAR ROARING by SWINGS to reveal a jackrabbit sitting at the side of the road, its nose twitching. EXT. DESERT - NIGHT Ellie's car approaches a small, private airstrip; a black, unmarked helicopter is waiting. HIGH ABOVE UTAH - DAWN The strange rock formations of southeastern Utah almost resemble another planet. EXT. LARGER AIRSTRIP (UTAH) As the helicopter sets down, we see two Lear jets and another Helicopter... service vehicles for the enormous Russian transport plane that sits beyond them. A dark-suited Japanese MAJOR DOMO helps Ellie out of the helicopter. MAJOR DOMO You should be flattered. He hardly lands for anyone. INT. TRANSPORT PLANE The Major Domo leads Ellie down a corridor of the plane's custom interior. Through one door we can see into a room where several very beautiful, very young women sit watching TV with vacant eyes. Ellie only catches a glimpse before the Major Domo nods for her to enter the main room and takes his post outside. Ellie cautiously enters the interior of what appears to be a flying Dascha; dark, heavy on the chintz. Bookshelves, an exercise machine... and a wall of monitors, filled top to bottom with scrolling hieroglyphics. Ellie reaches out to them -- HADDEN (O.S.) Dr. Arroway, I presume. Ellie turns to see S.R. HADDEN. Thick glasses, wearing a cardigan, he stands by a silver samovar. ELLIE S.R. Hadden... (beat) You compromised our security codes. HADDEN Once upon a time I was a hell of an engineer. Please, sit, Doctor. I have guests so rarely, it's important to me they feel welcome in my home. (turns to the samovar) Did you know this was once Yeltsin's flying dascha? That dent is where he threw a bottle of vodka at the pilot. At least that's what the people who sold me the plane said... As he speaks, he slowly and with great effort raises a glass to the samovar, fills it with tea. ELLIE You live here. HADDEN I find it convenient to keep my interests... mobile. Anyway, I've had my fill of life on the ground. After spending much of this century pursuing the evils and pleasures the world has to offer -- after outliving three wives and two children... (a bare flicker of emotion) I find I've had quite enough of planet Earth. ELLIE Why am I here, Mr. Hadden? HADDEN (smiles) The infamous, unfashionable bluntness. (turning) You're here so we can do business. I want to make a deal. ELLIE What kind of deal? HADDEN The powers that be have been quite busy lately, falling over each other to position themselves for the game of the century, if not the millennium. Perhaps you've noticed. (as Ellie reacts, Hadden smiles) Perhaps I could help deal you back in. ELLIE I didn't realize I was out. HADDEN Oh, maybe not out -- but definitely looking for you coat. (beat) I understand you've had some difficulty locating the -- what are you calling it? The 'primer' that will make decryption possible... (he turns to her, simply) I've found it. ELLIE You've... found it. (catching her breath) What could I possibly have that you would want, Mr. Hadden? HADDEN I've had a long time to make enemies, Dr. Arroway. There are many governments, business interests, even religious leaders who would like to see me disappear. And I will grant them their wish soon enough... But before I do, I wish to make a small contribution -- a final gesture of goodwill toward the people of this little planet who've given -- from whom I've taken so much. ELLIE If I knew you any better I'd say that doesn't sound like you. HADDEN (a dazzling smile) That's my girl... (then) Lights. The lights dim. The wall monitors take center stage. HADDEN Forgive the theatrics, it's a weakness. Hadden pulls on a pair of gloves for an imaginary VR keyboard. He gestures for Ellie to sit beside him, facing the monitors. He begins to type as the monitors scroll hieroglyphics -- HADDEN Page after page of data -- over sixty-three thousand in all, if I'm not mistaken... and at the end of each... ELLIE A page-break signal. A period. HADDEN Not if you think like a Vegan. ELLIE You're saying... there is no separate primer in the message -- because it's on every page so the recipient can decipher it wherever he is -- HADDEN -- even if he doesn't receive the entire transmission. Heaven is the mustard seed. Hadden ghost-types a series of commands. The monitor wall syncs into a giant vidscreen -- The hieroglyphics begin to enlarge. An almost invisible dot in the lower right corner of the screen -- the page- break signal -- grows larger and larger, until it reveals a level of complexity and detail greater than that of the hieroglyphics themselves. ELLIE (breathless) Holy shit... These new symbols begin to mutate change... something is happening, Hadden leans in to Ellie. HADDEN You'll like this part. A little flashy... ON SCREEN The symbols metamorphose into strange, fractal shapes; like crystals, they begin to grow and shift, interacting in a stunningly beautiful and intricate ballet -- ELLIE Some kind of circuitry...? HADDEN Very good, Doctor. I've also detected structural elements, back references, a general movement from the simple to the complex -- all of which would seem to indicate instructions -- an enormously complicated set of instructions -- for building something. ELLIE A machine. (off Hadden's nod) But a machine that does what? HADDEN (smiles) That would seem to be the question of the hour. (turning to her) I want to build it, Doctor. Of course I'm already lobbying through the usual channels of influence and corruption -- but as I said, my colorful past has made many of those channels... difficult to navigate. I need someone on the inside. ELLIE And in return? HADDEN In return... you get the primer -- and with it the power to stay in the game. Do we have a deal? Ellie pulls herself away from the hypnotic display. ELLIE Mr. Hadden, I'm a scientist; I don't make deals... But. If you wish to give me, in good faith, access to your information, I can assure you that I will exert all reasonable efforts to promote your cause wherever it doesn't conflict with the best interests of science... or my better judgment. HADDEN (delighted) That's my girl. Done. Ellie turns to watch the screens as the fractals continue to coalesce. Dazzled -- CUT TO: EXT. CAMP DAVID - AERIAL SHOT - DAY The snow-covered Presidential retreat in its forest setting. INT. CAMP DAVID - BRIEFING ROOM - DAY Charts display a decoded periodic table, the slice of circuitry; monitors scroll through hundreds of decoded pages. ELLIE ... And while its function remains, for the moment, a mystery, my best guess is that it represents a transport of some kind. PRESIDENT LASKER A transport. So are they coming or are we going? KITZ (interrupting) The transport theory is only one hypothesis, Ms. President, and in my view a rather naive one. It could just as easily be some kind of Trojan Horse. We build it and out pours the entire Vegan army. CHAIRMAN OF JOINT CHIEFS Why even bother to risk personnel? Why not send some kind of doomsday machine? Every time an emerging technological civilization announces itself by broadcasting radio waves into space they reply with a message. The civilization builds it and blows itself up. No expeditionary force needed. ELLIE Ms. President, this is communist paranoia right out of War of the Worlds. There is no reason whatsoever to believe the ETIs intentions are hostile. We pose no threat to them -- it would be like us going out of our way to destroy microbes on a beach in Africa. DRUMLIN Interesting analogy. And how guilty would we feel if we happened to destroy some microbes on a beach in Africa? KITZ (turning to Ellie) I hope you're right, Doctor. But right now my job is to protect American lives from any plausible threat, and in that regard I have to assume the worst. RICHARD RANK From a non-secular perspective, I'm forced to agree. All heads turn to RICHARD RANK, a surprisingly young and well-spoken spokesman for the religious right. RANK My coalition's phone lines have been flooded with calls from concerned families, wondering if this message signifies the end of the world or the advent of the rapture. (smiles) We feel that U.S. policy in this matter wants to be extremely conservative -- if there's any chance of danger or threat to our way of life perhaps the message and its contents should simply be disregarded. ELLIE This is absurd. Drumlin shoots her a warning look; Rank ignores her. RANK The Bible states that God made man in His own image. From everything I've been told it's highly unlikely the creatures who sent this message resemble human beings in any way, shape or form, ergo, they are not of God; and therefore by definition evil. My constituents simply want to know what their government plans to do to protect them -- ELLIE Ms. President, forgive me but I thought this was to be a serious discussion of policy and technical issues, not a war council against Satan's minions -- PRESIDENT LASKER Mr. Rank's organization represents the point of view of tens of millions of families, Dr. Arroway. Feel free to disagree, but there won't be any suppressing of opinions here today. ELLIE Yes -- of course -- all I'm saying is, this message was written in the language of science -- mathematics -- and was clearly intended to be received by scientists. If it had been religious in nature it should have taken the form of a burning bush, or a booming voice from the sky... JOSS (O.S.) But a voice from the sky is just what you say you've found. Palmer Joss sits forward in his chair. JOSS I agree with Mr. Rank that there are unavoidable religious implications here -- but I don't think it justifies taking an alarmist position. Dr. Arroway is right -- their chosen means of communication was a scientific one, and a scientific approach is probably appropriate, at least until the theological dimensions of the problem become more apparent. ELLIE And where exactly does that put your position...? JOSS I'd have to say I don't know enough to have one yet. For the moment I don't believe the two approaches have to be mutually exclusive. Ellie looks at him, impressed in spite of herself. PRESIDENT LASKER What's the status of the decryption effort? ELLIE Well -- DRUMLIN We're continuing around the clock, but the amount of data is enormous. It's difficult to tell when we'll find the key that will tell us the machine's purpose -- maybe tomorrow, maybe next year, maybe never. PRESIDENT LASKER I want to know the minute you find anything. DRUMLIN Of course, Ms. President. We'll keep you fully informed. That's the cue; most of the gathered begin to rise, make their way to the door. As Ellie collects her things Drumlin accompanies her out -- then starts to shut the door behind her -- DRUMLIN The President wants to discuss a few matters in private. As Ellie looks beyond she sees that Kitz, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Joss still remain. ELLIE But -- But it's too late. The door closes on the inner circle. INT. NATIONAL SCIENCE MUSEUM - RECEPTION - NIGHT Captains of industry, social editors, minority leaders. At least for tonight, scientists are the hottest show in town. Ellie stands with a group of dignitaries, straining to make small talk. As she glances up a familiar face catches her eye: Peter Valerian. He looks up, sees her too. A beat... he whispers something to the young woman he's standing with; she looks up too. They excuse themselves to Drumlin, make their way over. PETER Ellie. ELLIE Peter. Peter extends his hand. They shake. PETER My wife Laura... ELLIE/LAURA Nice to meet you. PETER (an awkward pause, then) You look wonderful. ELLIE You dress up pretty good yourself. (another awkward silence) How's... the baby? LAURA Wonderful. She's almost four now. ELLIE Really. Well. That's wonderful... (a really horrible silence) Well. If you'll excuse me -- I'm paid to mingle... I don't believe I just said that. Peter and Laura laugh. Some of the tension is diffused. Some. PETER It's good to see you, Ellie. ELLIE You too. She manages a smile, quickly hurries away. AT THE BAR Ellie has never needed a drink more in her life. ELLIE Champagne please. JOSS (O.S.) Make that two. Ellie turns to find Joss, looking terrific in his tux. JOSS Want to fight some more? A long, extremely complex pause, then -- ELLIE Yes. INT. ANOTHER PART OF MUSEUM - NIGHT Their voices and FOOTSTEPS ECHO as they walk past old spacecraft. They sip their champagne. JOSS ... What I'm curious about are the wilderness years. You're out there all alone, no money, mocked by the skeptics. It must have taken tremendous faith. ELLIE I'd say logic more than faith. The odds were on my side. JOSS And what would you have done if the odds had gone against you? ELLIE I guess I would've felt sorry for the universe. JOSS Spoken like a true believer. ELLIE What about you? Doesn't all of this shake your faith at all? JOSS How do you mean? ELLIE Well it's been a while, but I don't recall the Bible saying too much about alien civilizations. JOSS (thinks, then) 'My father's house has many mansions.' ELLIE Very smooth. It's Palmer, right? Where I came from a palmer was a person who cheated at cards. (as Joss laughs) Really though... the Bible describes a God who watches over one tiny world a few thousand years old. I look out there and see a universe of hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars... I mean burn me for a heretic, but your God seems awfully small. Joss looks at her -- challenged, intrigued. Slowly: JOSS Who was it who said -- it was a scientist I think -- that one's sophistication is determined by the ability to tolerate paradox -- to hold contradictory ideas at the same time... They approach a circular brass railing surrounding a circular mosaic below; at its center is a Foucault pendulum; a basketball-sized iron sphere suspended from the ceiling. They lean on the railing. JOSS ... which I suppose is as good a definition of faith as any. (getting an idea; smiles) Care to test yours? He takes her champagne glass, sets it down on the floor alongside his, then climbs under the rail. At her surprise -- JOSS It's okay. I'm a preacher. He offers her his hand. She takes it, climbs under the railing. Joss helps her down into the circular space below. JOSS Your 'faith' tells you that the distance a pendulum swings from the vertical can never get bigger, only smaller. ELLIE That's not faith, it's physics. The second law of thermodynamics. Joss places his arms around the metal ball and walks it over to the outer rim of the circle, right in front of Ellie's nose. JOSS And you believe this law with all your heart and soul. ELLIE And mind, yes. What are you -- JOSS So if I let the pendulum go, when it swings back you wouldn't flinch. Ellie pauses. Then, almost curiously. ELLIE No. Joss lets go. We see the ball fall away and reach the opposite railing. As it slows and then reverses direction it appears to approach much faster than we expected. JOSS Don't lean forward. Not even a hair. As it careens towards her, the ball grows alarmingly in size. We understand completely when the pendulum almost reaches her and she instinctively moves. But Ellie can't believe it. ELLIE I flinched. JOSS Only a tiny bit. Even the most devout believer is allowed a little doubt. ELLIE That's not doubt. That's four hundred years of science fighting a billion years of instinct. (studying him) I always wondered what you religious types did with your free time. JOSS Now you know. EXT. NATIONAL SCIENCE MUSEUM - NIGHT Stars shine down as Ellie and Joss walk along the portico. The party continues inside. The mood is subdued, intimate. JOSS ... It's an old story. I grew up in South Boston, more or less on the streets. By the time I was thirteen I'd tried my first hit of heroin, by fifteen I'd stopped using but I was dealing full-time. By the time I was nineteen I decided I didn't want to live any more, at least not in a world like that. One day I got on a bus; I got as far as Ohio before my money ran out, and after that I just kept walking. Didn't eat, didn't sleep... just walked. I ended up collapsing in a wheat field. There was a storm... I woke up... (beat) And that's about as far as words'll go. ELLIE Can you try? JOSS I had... an experience. Of belonging. Of unconditional love. And for the first time in my life I wasn't terrified, and I wasn't alone. ELLIE (delicately) And there's no chance you had this experience simply because some part of you needed to have it? JOSS Look, I'm a reasonable person, and reasonably intelligent. But this experience went beyond both. For the first time I had to consider the possibility that intellect, as wonderful as it is, is not the only way of comprehending the universe. That it was too small and inadequate a tool to deal with what it was faced with. ELLIE (a beat, then softly) You may not believe this... but there's a part of me that wants more than anything to believe in your God. To believe that we're all here for a purpose, that all this... means something. But it's because that part of me wants it so badly that I'm so stubborn about making sure it isn't just self-delusion. Of course I want to know God if there is one... but it has to be real. Unless I have proof how can I be sure? JOSS Do you love your parents? ELLIE (startled) I never knew my mother. My father died when I was nine. JOSS Did you love him? ELLIE (softly) Yes. Very much. JOSS Prove it. Ellie stops and looks at him, truly disarmed. And then, inside, a COMMOTION is heard. INT. NATIONAL SCIENCE MUSEUM - NIGHT The party is suddenly and dramatically breaking up; Senators on cell-phones, getting their coats. Something has happened. Ellie finds Drumlin in the chaos, also on a cell-phone; he hangs up as she approaches. ELLIE What is it? What's happened? DRUMLIN We've cracked it. Lunacharsky found it. ELLIE You mean -- DRUMLIN You were right, Ellie. You were right all along. As Ellie stares at him -- CUT TO: EXT. U.N. PLAZA - DAY Media, onlookers, crowd control -- and delegates from over 100 countries swarm as the World Machine Consortium is called to session. TV lights and demonstrations. Huge banners read "DON'T BUILD SATAN'S CHARIOT!" and "WHO WILL SPEAK FOR EARTH?" INT. U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY HALL Full house. From various HEADSETS and MONITORS we hear the POLYPHONY of a hundred simultaneous TRANSLATIONS. On a large screen behind the SECRETARY GENERAL'S podium and on monitors all over the darkened room we see a single, striking image: A human figure inside a rotating dodecahedron. SECRETARY GENERAL A human has been summoned. In the darkened hall we FIND the U.S. delegation: Kitz, Joss, Drumlin -- and Ellie. We begin to PUSH IN ON her -- SECRETARY GENERAL Who will that person be? How will this ambassador be chosen? We see it in her eyes -- she wants to go, more than anything. INT. U.N. - LATER An INDIAN DELEGATE concludes her remarks. In the audience Ellie, deep in thought, isn't paying attention. INDIAN DELEGATE ... of course none of us would be here if it weren't for the scientist who first discovered the history- making message and who has led this effort from the very beginning -- Dr. Eleanor Arroway -- ELLIE looks up in surprise. The applause grows, becoming deafening. People motion for her to stand. Dazed, she does so. The ovation continues. Ellie leans over to speak into her mike. ELLIE Um... thanks... Thanks very much. I'm not sure what I did to earn that response; I just happened to pick up the phone when they called. A big laugh, more applause. Ellie squints into the lights. EXT. U.N. PLAZA - DUSK Floodlights illuminate the building; if anything, there are now more onlookers and media. The woman BBC Reporter and her camera crew try to shoot their report amid the noise and chaos. BBC REPORTER ... and as the curtain falls on the first day of the symposium the question remains: who will build this machine, if it indeed will be built -- and if it is, who will be selected as the Earth's first ambassador to another world. This is Marjorie Blake, B.B.C.3, at the U.N. She holds -- VOICE (O.S.) We're clear. And the Reporter instantly sags. INT. U.N. LOBBY - SAME TIME The event is breaking up; people making their way out. Ellie waits for Drumlin to come out; goes after him -- ELLIE David -- DRUMLIN Ellie. ELLIE Do you have a minute -- ? DRUMLIN Actually I'm running late -- ELLIE It'll just take a moment. Drumlin reluctantly stops; Ellie takes a deep breath. ELLIE David... I know we've had our differences... but I've always thought of you as a fair man, even when we've disagreed -- and It's in that light I'm hoping you'll consider my request... DRUMLIN I don't understand. ELLIE I'm asking for your help, David. I want to go. (quickly) They'll need someone relatively young, unattached -- and probably a scientist. As the President's Science Advisor you have enormous weight... I'm asking if you'll support my candidacy. DRUMLIN (slowly) Ellie... you should know that I'm no longer the President's Science Advisor. ELLIE What? DRUMLIN As of three o'clock this afternoon. I submitted my resignation. Ellie's eyes open wide as the depth of his betrayal dawns. ELLIE You... DRUMLIN (hesitates, then) Excuse me, I'm late for a meeting. He turns and walks away, leaving Ellie to stare after him. PRESIDENT LASKER (V.O.) ... And as our parents did a generation before us... INT. U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY HALL Packed to the rafters. President Lasker makes the speech of her lifetime, her booming, amplified voice going out to the world. PRESIDENT LASKER ... I believe we should dedicate ourselves, by the end of this decade -- to build this machine that our brothers from across the vastness of time and space have asked us to build -- ! In the darkened hall the American delegation sits watching. PUSH IN ON Ellie. Drumlin. The crowd roars. THREE APACHE HELICOPTERS fly low over the endless Texas landscape, blue-gray in the light of pre-dawn. Below a convoy of military vehicles moves down an empty road. PRESIDENT LASKER (V.O.) To meet with courage and determination the challenges of this new day -- ! The CROWD ROARS LOUDER in VOICE OVER. MOVING WITH the convoy... AFS Berets sit stone-faced, barely visible. UP ahead the twinkling lights of an installation becomes visible. The convoy passes through a security gate in the first perimeter. AFS officers check I.D. and cargo. As the convoy continues our VIEW begins to RISE, REVEALING three more checkpoints beyond -- PRESIDENT LASKER (V.O.) To greet with hope the dawn of this new Century! Out VIEW continues to CLIMB, REVEALING an immense sprawl of lights and buildings. Concentric electric fences surround the rambling facility; new roads are still being added to old ones. Encircling the installation is a vast graveyard of discarded aircraft -- the detritus of Twentieth Century war-making. And in the center of it all lies an enormous open area, its very emptiness full of danger and promise. Orange surveying FLAGS RUFFLE in the BREEZE. PRESIDENT LASKER (V.O.) And to raise our voices to the heavens as one world, one people, in one ringing, defiant declaration -- bring on the millennium! The ROAR of the CROWD is deafening. The sun begins to rise over the new Los Alamos. HARD CUT TO: INT. OBSERVATION FACILITY (MACHINE, TEXAS) - DAY An enormous multi-tiered room bustling with activity. The main floor consists of tables devoted to various constituents of the international selection committee; each area devoted to a different discipline: medical, psychological, philosophical, religious, diplomatic/political, and military/communications. The room is dominated by ten enormous overhead viewscreens, each monitoring the activity of one of the ten machine candidates while also displaying telemetry readouts of their vital signs. One candidate is undergoing a psychological evaluation, another is visible via infrared camera in a sensory deprivation tank; another on a treadmill, another sleeping (EEG displayed); we also catch brief glimpses of Ellie and Drumlin. All are watched with great interest by the committee members swarming on the floor. A level above the floor and looking out over it THROUGH large floor to ceiling windows is the pool media area; a group of REPORTERS and camera crews allowed limited access, with blue-badged MACHINE SECURITY carefully monitoring their every word. As we MOVE THROUGH the maelstrom we COME ACROSS a familiar face... REPORTER I'm here with Peter Valerian, recently named David Drumlin's replacement as Science Advisor to the President. Doctor, there were loud complaints from the international community last week when it was announced that three of the ten candidates -- were to be Americans. How do you defend that decision? PETER (a bit nervous) I believe the response was somewhat disingenuous; when it was determined that national interests would be represented on a pay for play basis it was understood that the U.S., by shouldering close to one third of the financial burden, would be entitled to commensurate representation. INSERT - TV MONITOR REPORTER (V.O.) You've addressed the political side of the coin but what about the larger issues? On what basis do you choose a human being to represent humanity? We begin to WIDEN REVEALING our location in the back of a news van, crammed with broadcasting equipment. An engineer monitors the signal. PETER (V.O.) It's a good question. Who do you send? An athlete? A religious leader? A philosopher? A soldier? If you don't know what the Olympic event will be, you send a decathlon champion -- REPORTER (V.O.) And if the event turns out to be chess? PETER (V.O.) Yes... well, ultimately it was decided that the representative should be somebody fluent in the language the message was sent in -- science. If you'll excuse me -- We have continued to WIDEN, finally PULLING OUT the back of the van and CRANING UP to reveal -- EXT. MEDIA CITY (MACHINE, TEXAS) - DAY A vast encampment of vans, tents, reporters and satellite dishes; print and video journalists from every nation. Competing twenty-foot high skyboxes from various networks overlook the action. Our VIEW continues to CLIMB until finally in the distance, wavy and hard to make out THROUGH the LONG LENS, we can see a structure beginning to rise. Our first glimpse of the machine. CNN REPORTER ... and if you look closely you can just see the superstructure beginning to take shape. Construction on this trillion dollar plus effort has been complicated by the nearly unprecedented scale... INT. OVAL OFFICE - CONTINUOUS ACTION - DAY President Lasker leans back, watching the same wavy image on the television. Also visible are a number of closed- circuit monitors showing candidates. Kitz standing behind her, also watching. CUT TO: EXT. MACHINE, TEXAS - SERIES OF SHOTS - DAWN Bulldozers break earth as the human-designed support structure continues to rise. Trucks emerge from huge transport planes, carrying enormous curved reflectors. INT. LAB (MACHINE, TEXAS) Two robotic arms holding flasks of liquid are maneuvered over a petri dish. Scientists watch THROUGH the safe- chamber window as a drop from each flask is carefully placed in the dish. Another robot arm takes the dish and slides it under an electron microscope. ELECTRON MICROSCOPE VIEW Tiny crystals are forming in familiar, unearthly fractal patterns. Something is growing. EXT. MACHINE SITE - DAY An enormous high-tech crucible has been erected; gantries and support structures rise above it. From behind a series of protective plastic veils we see the same chemicals we saw in the lab again being carefully mixed together, this time in much larger proportions. WIDE SHOT - MACHINE SUPERSTRUCTURE - DAY PULL BACK to reveal Ellie standing at the window of her quarters, wearing a white jumpsuit. She slowly folds her street clothes as she looks out at the machine. INT. CENTRIFUGE ROOM - DAY One by one the candidates are whipped around the centrifuge, subjected to higher and higher G-forces. A hard-eyed NASA COMMANDER watches carefully, checks the control panel. INT. OBSERVATION FACILITY - DAY The two hundred members of the ISC watch each of the candidates' reactions. FEATURE Joss, studying the screens intently -- For CAPTAIN JOHN RUSSELL, a classic chiseled Astronaut type, this is as easy as breathing. For Drumlin it's not quite that, but he takes it, stoically. A flaxen-haired male candidate -- the French semioticist (JEAN-CLAUDE) -- looks like he's about to throw up. Ellie seems to be enjoying her self tremendously. INT. CORRIDOR - DAY Ellie, Drumlin and the eight other candidates, several still a bit wobbly, follow the Commander down a corridor. Jean-Claude wipes his face with a towel as he sounds off. JEAN-CLAUDE You realize how absurd this is. There are no precedents here; all training models are useless. Trying to turn us all into astronauts is a pathetic waste of time. The Commander turns to him. COMMANDER You know what, sir? You're right. We have no idea whatsoever what one of you may encounter. That leaves us with two options: we can sit around and do nothing and hope for the best, even if that includes a few things that feel a little silly. And if one of these 'silly' exercises ends up saving your life I'll have done my job. Jean-Claude raises an amused eyebrow, smokes his Gauloise. HUGE MULTI-TENTACLED BEING flashes on the screen, followed immediately by another and another -- a rapid series of images of creatures waving grotesque stalked appendages, horrific and bizarre. ANGLE ON ELLIE sitting alone in a single chair, watching the images flash on an enormous screen. Hardened. INT. OBSERVATION FACILITY - CONTINUOUS ACTION - DAY A panel of PSYCHOLOGISTS closely monitor Ellie's reaction on the monitors. A PROJECT OFFICIAL approaches, watches the monitors as he sips from a Styrofoam cup. PROJECT OFFICIAL How long now? PSYCHOLOGIST Going on five hours. PROJECT OFFICIAL Ugly little suckers. PSYCHOLOGIST Yeah. And those are only the ones that live on the human body. We MOVE AWAY FROM them to find another figure, standing silently watching the screens. Joss. INT. CONFERENCE ROOM - SERIES OF DISSOLVES - DAY/NIGHT as we CIRCLE the table, CONDENSING MONTHS of arguments and discussions. Trays of uneated food pile up, whiteboards become colored with scribbled questions -- NIGERIAN CANDIDATE ... but even if somehow it has faster than light capacity it is still twenty-six years to get to Vega -- ELLIE That's from the point of view of someone on Earth -- from the traveler's point of view it'll only seem like two years... RUSSELL ... the fact is, nobody here knows what's gonna happen when one of us enters that thing. We can guess all we want, but in the end... we just don't know... INTERCUT WITH: INT. OBSERVATION FACILITY - SERIES OF DISSOLVES The members of the philosophical committee watch, make notes, argue passionately. The discussion continue on screen: DRUMLIN (V.O.) (on screen) ... Two years is still a hell of a long time -- and as far as we can tell there aren't any provisions in the machine design for storing food, water, even air... ELLIE ... I can't believe they wouldn't take something as basic as our biological needs into account... RUSSIAN CANDIDATE Based on what evidence? As far as we know all they know about us is what they've learned from watching three minutes of German television... even if they do not mean to do damage they may do so inadvertently. Look at the impact they've had on the world by simply sending the message... ELLIE (V.O.) (on screen) ... we're not looking at this from their point of view. It's the first time this has happened to us but it's highly unlikely that's true for them as well. Chances are they've been doing this for thousands if not millions of years... CUT TO: SAME - REAL TIME DRUMLIN They knew our level of development. If, as you say, they've done this many times they'd be well aware of the implications. ELLIE Maybe they are. Maybe this is all part of the package. The building of the machine has demanded international cooperation on an unprecedented scale. Maybe requiring us to come together in this way was, in effect, part of the plan. JEAN-CLAUDE Very well. Assume this is true. Assume they have only the best of intentions. Suppose they decide to just step in and solve all our problems for us. You have no objection to them so flagrantly intervening in human affairs? ELLIE We've just lived through a century of incredible violence and self- destruction. Do you call it 'interventionist' when you stop a toddler from walking in front of a truck? Before anyone can reply an out-of-breath ASSISTANT enters. ASSISTANT Sorry to bother you but they just got some tape in from Japan -- I think you're gonna want to see this. INT. MAIN TESTING HANGER (MACHINE, TEXAS) - DAY The vast hanger serves as home for a series of new labs and testing areas -- state of the art, gleaming and high- tech. Engineers, scientists, security, and technicians wearing blue jumpsuits and security badges are everywhere. FEMALE P.A. VOICE (V.O.) Component test C-4-90 commencing in T-minus three minutes. All personnel clear bay twelve; repeat, clear bay twelve -- We FIND Ellie. Drumlin and the rest huddled around a large monitor. Also present is TEAM LEADER -- cool, level-headed, solid. The ultimate line producer. TEAM LEADER This just came in from systems integrations in Hokkaido. He presses play. The monitor shows a large, apparently empty lucite chamber. A clock showing tenths and hundredths of a second is inset into the screen. TEAM LEADER The chamber contains an exotic substance manufactured according to message specifications. In its normal state it appears as you see it, a transparent gas which is apparently breathable. As you'll see, it also has some other... unusual properties. A Japanese technician places his hand inside a waldo, picks up a REVOLVER. He aims it into the chamber, FIRES -- -- as then we see the bullet slow, coming to a dead stop in mid-air. We see the same thing again, this time in slow motion. As we watch, the air in the chamber seems to thicken around the bullet, changing from a gas to liquid, from gel-like colloidal to diamond-hard solid in a tenth of a second. TEAM LEADER The substance appears to have intelligent multiphasic properties; able to shift states at will. We believe it may function as some sort of transport medium. DRUMLIN Now I know why the Japanese gave up having a candidate in exchange for licensing rights... ELLIE How does it work? TEAM LEADER We have no idea. According to all known physical laws it shouldn't. ELLIE (murmurs) Magic... TEAM LEADER (looks at her, then) What you haven't seen is what occurred when a technician went into the chamber to retrieve the bullet... As I said, the substance had already been deemed breathable after extensive tests on laboratory animals. DRUMLIN What happened? The Team Leader pushes play. We see the action as he describes it: TEAM LEADER There was apparently an aqueous residue covering part of the chamber floor. The technician slips. As he falls the substance hardens around him, breaking his fall... We see the technician as his fall slows -- and then he suddenly convulses -- and then stops, suspended at an odd angle slightly above the ground. He doesn't move. Ellie, Drumlin and the other candidates watch in horror. TEAM LEADER ... and solidifying in his lungs and bloodstream, killing him instantly. ELLIE (shaken) Maybe... maybe it was an anomalous reaction. Maybe when it's correctly integrated with other components of the machine... She looks again to th