The Beginning of Nothing

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EXT. COSMIC EVENT - 1947

A celestial change is occurring just outside the Kuiper belt in interstellar space.

Our Milky Way galaxy is the first to meet the boundaries of the universe. It is physically collapsing into a black hole.

A small dark alien planet has become the first to be affected by the event. As shock waves inundate the planet and begin to shake it apart, a space craft exits the doomed planet at a high rate of speed locked in on a faint radio single from afar.

INT. THE BEDROOM - EVENING 2015

Professor Shirley Banes dreams of she and her father walking through a cave out into a world she has never seen before.

Her father hands her a rock as he fades away.

The wind gently eases through her bedroom window and an ominous image slides along the floor and hovers over a dark colored rock sitting on a night stand.

As Shirley lies on her back, she begins to dream of darkening red clouds and strange beings frantically moving about and reaching for her.

A bright reddish glow consumes her mind.

In her mind, a glass falls off the dresser to the floor and she awakenings to a stench and briefly sees an image in her room.

With her eyes still closed, she becomes terrified and gasp for air.

The image appears to look at her then disappears into the ceiling.

She physically awakens and becomes slightly startled to her dog licking her face.

She looks at the clock and realizes that she is running late for a conference meeting.

As she gets out of the bed and steps on the floor, she cuts her foot on a small piece of broken glass and begins to ponders about the strange dream she had.

She cleans the wound, showers and starts to dress. She stares at a bottle of medication sitting on the sink and reluctantly attempts to take it, but ends up throwing the bottle into her purse. She has been seeing a psychiatrist every since her father left.

Before she steps out of her front door, she picks up a picture of her daughter who has been staying with her mother for the summer. She briefly thinks of better times with her in the past.

EXT. THE DRIVE - MORNING

As the woman walks towards her vehicle in the driveway, she pauses and looks up at her bedroom window and notices a silvery mass leading upward to the roof.

Her cell phone rings in her purse. She quickly retrieves and answers it. It is one of her colleagues calling to see if she is still coming to the conference.

PROFESSOR SHIRLEY BANE

Yes, I’m on my way.

She gets in to the vehicle, pulls out of the driveway and drives through the neighborhood.

As she exits the neighborhood, a vagrant walks in front of her vehicle and points to the sky.

VAGRANT:

It’s coming. It’s coming I tell ya. We all gone die.

She watches the vagrant as he walks away. She looks over to the drivers side of the vehicle and see’s a brief image of her father holding his hand out.

The vehicle moves forward and nearly hits a cyclist.

The cyclist gives her an angry look, but keeps going.

She pauses to regain her composer and continues to drive.

INT. HOTEL CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY

As she enters the hotel banquet room, an announcement comes over the intercom system

ANNOUNCER:

Introducing Dr. Shirley Bane, professor of Geo-morphology.

She touches up her hair by hand and hurries across the banquet room and stops at the podium to give a briefing to her fellow colleagues about her work on identifying the reason for the sudden string of strange dark rocks appearing in her home town.

Slightly apprehensive, she approaches the podium microphone, takes a deep breath and begins to speak.

PROFESSOR SHIRLEY BANE

Good evening fellow scientist. I really appreciate being invited to this annual event. However, I do realize that it is somewhat uncommon for someone in my field of study to be presenting information that has not yet been proven nor is it based on hard evidence. Nevertheless, the concern or interest may present some surprising results according to the research I have conducted so far. Ancient civilization believed that….

Professor Bane is briefly interrupted by a loud cough.

PROFESSOR CANDOR

Excuse me Dr. Bane, but I read an article the other day that you submitted to the local news paper.It seemed to reference rocks mysteriously changing form over night. Now we all know that this is impossible due to the physical nature of our world. Are you implying that somehow some mystical forces are at play.

PROFESSOR SHIRLEY BANE

No, not likely but if I may continue, thank you. Ancient tribes have recorded many things they saw and reported based on what they understood. For example, if something caught fire in front of them during bad weather, they blamed it on the gods. If the ground trembled and caused rocks to fall, they may have seen the event as some evil spirit perhaps. We have only recently began to understand the structures at Stonehenge and Easter Island. Nonetheless, science has evolved to dispute and prove otherwise that things aren't always what they appear to be.

PROFESSOR Williams

Professor Bane, are you implying that some strange apocalyptic event is coming.

PROFESSOR SHIRLEY BANE

No, not entirely, look I'm really concerned that something is affecting the earth's magnetic field at a rapid rate. Exactly what or why is unclear at the moment, but I am simply encouraging a concerted effort to fund my project. Thank you.

EXT. MOUNTAIN RETREAT- NIGHT

An aging astrophysicist Gary Bryant sits in a rocking chair on the porch at a cabin in the smoky mountains of Gatlinburg, Tennessee gazing into the night sky.

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