Conflicts of the last progenitors

A dim red light illuminates a vast chamber filled with hanging grape-like clusters (alveoli); icicles have begun to grow upon some of the organic air-converters.

Two orange hemispheres with plastic nozzles jutting from their fronts float into the chamber, VWIZZ. They spray pink steam upon the gathered ice, HISS. The ice dissolves.

ELYSABETH’S VOICE

An organic antifreeze patterned

after the blood of arctic codfish

was used to reclaim iced organs,

yet permanent damage was sustained.

EXT. ORBIT AROUND A LONE STAR

Thirty more Dragonflies launch from a crater in Elysabeth’s back. One of the adjacent domes below her shoulder blade is shattered: the trees within it are covered with ice.

The Dragonflies turn their mirrored wings toward the distant sun, collect light and launch in all directions.

Titlecard: 2968 (826 years after launch) EXT. SOLAR SYSTEM

With the lenses and powerscopes that comprise its eyes, Dragonfly SPIRIT-12 examines a newly found solar system. The planets in the sector are lit by two stars: a bright main sequence body- like the Earth’s sun- and a weaker red supergiant, dim and bloated with age.

Titlecard: 2970 (828 years after launch) The Dragonfly thrusts around the body of a gas planet and sees a terrestrial world ahead. With two-hundred and twenty-two optics, Spirit-12 scrutinizes the planet: it is a primarily blue world, flecked with a few brown spots.

Two flaps open in the bottom of Dragonfly Spirit-12; a box drifts out of the opening: upon the side of the two-foot cube is the word, ‘POLYORGAN’. The front half of the apparatus is solid steel;

12.

the rear is a thick glass case surrounding Fleischwerk lungs, intestines, livers, kidneys and arterial networks. A green light blinks erratically on the cube; a corresponding light blinks in perfect synchronicity upon the head of Dragonfly Spirit-12.

A thruster fires on the rear of the Polyorgan; it rockets toward the terrestrial planet.

Titlecard: 2979 (838 years after launch) Elysabeth, worn, dented, dirty, three of her environment domes collapsed, orbits the terrestrial world. Half of her eyeballs are gray and collapsed. Dragonfly Spirit-12 floats nearby.

Elysabeth fires her crossthrusters and begins to rotate.

INT. CRYOGENIC VAULT 47 - SAME

Gravity finds and pulls down the floating turquoise body-bags, WHUNK; they dangle on the metal runner, weighted after many weightless centuries. (The ninth bag is broken: in it lies the dark brown remains of a long-decayed person.) A moment later, the body-bags containing Sven (twenty-ninth in line) and the other frozen human beings slide along the magnetized runner toward a metal door, VWIRRR. The ellipsoidal portal swings wide on Fleischwerk hinges.

INT. OXYGENATION CHAMBER - LATER

Highly-oxygenated air pumps into the foam-covered, sunlit room through plastic vents.

The body-bags glide along the ceiling runner into the stark enclosure; a diamond scalpel jutting down from the top of the doorway slices into the top of each plastic bag as it passes, breaking the vacuum seal with a HISS. The moment the vacuum seal is broken, the drained men and women sag within their plastic cocoons like discarded dolls.

The bags continue on their way toward the next door, excepting the one with the corpse, which is released- CLACK-and disposed of into a hole in the floor.

13.

INT. WARMING VAULT - LATER

The twenty-nine body-bags hang in the octagonal, foam-covered space of the warming vault; coils of heated wire glow brightly on the ceiling. Within the sheer cocoons, the gaunt, curled-up bodies sag, their metal bracelets and anklets CLINKING together. The ‘sleepers’ perspire.

INT. REHYDRATION CHAMBER - MOMENTS LATER

The gray rehydration chamber is filled with oval-shaped surgical planks made of lime-green foam, each jutting from the floor on three metal poles. A horizontal slit in the wall admits a narrow slash of sunlight.

The body-bags continue on the ceiling-runner circuit into the room, Sven penultimate. Each body-bag halts atop an individual surgical plank.

ELYSABETH’S VOICE

Magnetized zone.

The metal wrist, neck and ankle bracelets compel each person to the magnetized surgical planks below. Each person (still within his or her body-bag) FWAPS upon a surgical plank...and magnetically adheres there.

ELYSABETH’S VOICE (CONT'D)

Active dissolvent in use.

Amber-tinted mist FWISSES from the ceiling and fills the room. The turquoise body-bags stretch and melt and dissolve...revealing twenty-nine emaciated people. Each person wears a sagging blue bodysuit and has a tubular metal input over his or her heart, the flap of which is a closed iris.

Shower heads emerge from the ceiling; pink water rains down on the dehydrated people below, onto their faces and into their mouths.

CUT TO:

INT. REHYDRATION CHAMBER - LATER

A tube lowers from the ceiling toward each person; the dangling, magnetized tips connect to heart inputs with sharp CLICKS.

14.

Like crimson caterpillars, blood flows down the tubes, into the bodies of the desiccated people.