Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28
INT. THE TREEHOUSE — NIGHT
Hannah, after apparently returning power to the Treehouse with Rich, sits next to the computers. She messes with the initial boot-up settings, maybe in an attempt to recover any data that might have been lost during the shutdown. Lounging nearby, Rich and Leo play Ghosts ‘n Goblins. The game was reset with the Treehouse lost power, and they take turns struggling with the same dragon that tortured Leo earlier.
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EXT. — CARPENTER BODY WORKS ROOF
Dirk and Shelly sit on a slightly rounded part of Carpenter’s roof, staring down at the lights of the festival. They seem calm, quiet, and thoughtful. But on a second glance, they appear to be talking quietly.
DIRK
I’m sorry…for not talking to you about…
you know, this mess…I should have asked for help.
Shelly waits a beat before responding. You can almost imagine how softly the festival sounds in that silence.
SHELLY
I’m still here, you know. I’m on your team.
DIRK
It’s just…
Dirk lets his sentence float away with a slight breeze that picks up the bits of trash and dust that have collected on the roof over these last empty years.
DIRK (CONT’D)
…Flori and I were working on
Hereafter with a nerdy guy named Jason.
Flori called him J.J. for some reason,
and he hated it. But what he really hated
was Flori — he was always in her shadow.
They made everything a competition.
Between those two, I was nothing. I was just
happy to be on a good project team —
I really thought I had it made. You know
how difficult it was for me, getting through school.
And here I was, at the last stretch, paired up
with people smart enough to take me too
the moon and back. And Flori was the best.
She didn’t care about how bad I was with theory,
as long as I could wire her circuits up.
Jason, though — he was the worst. He tried
to get me kicked off of the team one time,
for popping one of his capacitors.
I think he thought that I was dating Flori
or something stupid like that, but we were friends.
Just friends. And really only friends because
we liked to rip on Jason when he wasn’t around,
and we worked well together. All I needed
all along was someone who would tell me
what to do, and well, you’ve met Flori…
I felt like I was helping. And that felt good.
We were working on an afterversion
prototype, although we didn’t know
what it really was. The projects were
covered up like that, I don’t know why.
Covering someone’s ass, I guess. We didn’t know,
that’s what matters. All we were supposed to do
was make a system that could mimic a person
that we knew. I tried to make a better me —
Shelly laughs, somewhat ashamedly, but Dirk laughs too.
DIRK (CONT’D)
You can imagine how that went. Of course,
Flori made a model of herself,
and then Jason made an afterversion of
his mom, who had died a couple years before.
And Flori and Jason sort of got into
a competition to see who could make the best,
most realistic afterversion. It went on
for months. Now that I think about it, I think
that’s why we never noticed. It dragged out
too long. While Flori and I were working on
our afterversions — well mainly I was helping
Flori after I gave up on myself —
Jason was sitting just across from us,
tinkering with the model of his mom,
adjusting her responses, rewiring sensors,
and talking quietly, like his mom was there,
sitting there right next to him…alive.
All the time that he was testing her,
refining her, retesting her — she worked
on him. But it was something more than that.
The afterversion of his mom was too
uncanny. It’s like she was too real to be
as real as he thought she was. But we didn’t find out
about all this until it was too late.
Something happened, first. When Jason had
his wisdom teeth removed at the start of spring,
he accidentally overdosed on his
prescription painkillers. That’s what they called it:
an accident. But while he was away
from school for a while, Flori got ahold of
the afterversion of his mom. There was
some party going on that night, I don’t
remember what or why, but that’s where I was
when Flori called me. Things were just getting
started at the party, and I only had
two drinks before she called — a Miller Lite
and PBR, I still remember, and the lab
was just across the campus — so I drove.
I don’t know why I drove. I hate that I did.
But it sounded urgent, and it was two beers
in an hour — I wasn’t drunk. I thought I was fine…
I made it to the lab alright, at least,
and Flori was right to call. The afterversion
of Jason’s mom had downloaded itself
onto the other computers in the lab
the instant Flori turned it on, and she
needed some help isolating them.
It was scary, you know. We thought that Jason had
unleashed some sort of Skynet on the world.
But we got it done before it spread.
It took at least an hour. And all the time
we were working, Jason’s mom kept going on,
asking us where he was, and saying he
should be there with her now…it was obvious
what’d happened. Flori didn’t know what to do,
and you know I didn’t know either, so we
decided to take Jason’s work-station
back to Flori’s dorm. And Flori had walked
over to the lab, so we loaded all
of Jason’s stuff into my car and left…
That’s when it happened. You know I wasn’t drunk, then.
The party was hours ago. And you know what
happened with Hannah’s dad…it was like that.
We were driving around a curve, and then,
all suddenly, the steering wheel seemed broke,
and the car started to accelerate…
we jumped the sidewalk and then hit a tree…
it almost split the car in half…and I swear,
I wasn’t sure until dad told me what happened
to Hannah the other day, but I swear, I heard
the afterversion of Jason’s mom just before
we hit the tree, yelling at us, saying
that we had to find her son on the other side…
Shelly puts a hand on Dirk’s shoulder. Down below, the lights of the festival start to dim.
SHELLY (gesturing to the lights in the Treehouse)
You’ve done so much for Hannah. We couldn’t have put
all of this together without you.
DIRK
That’s not true —
Flori helped. That’s what I’m trying to say.
That’s why I’m telling you all of this, because
Flori’s a miracle. I don’t know when
exactly, but sometime during all that mess
after the crash, before I left the school,
I booted up the afterversion she made
of herself. Every little thing that was wrong
with Jason’s mom — the uncanny likeness, the sense
of something rotten lingering behind
the screen, the problems you still see today
on all the afterversions — because I stole
Flori before they could pull her apart,
and all they had to work on in the end,
when they shut up shop and shut us up,
me and all the profs, with all their NDAs,
was the afterversion of Jason’s mom —
Flori’s something more…she was smarter
than Jason, her afterversion actually worked,
and she’s real, Shelly. Maybe R.J., too —
what happened tonight was too strange to be
anything but real. I don’t know how
it happened, but that’s the truth, and Flori’s alive.
Dirk, caught up in his convictions, turns to Shelly, who seems unprepared to venture past sympathy. What more can she do? It is easy to imagine how difficult it would be to accept something so strange under such equally strange circumstances.
The door leading back down to the Treehouse opens suddenly behind them, making Shelly jump and breaking the silence. Hannah sticks her head out of the door and smiles.
HANNAH
Hey! I’m bringing everything back on.
Hannah leaves the door open and heads back down. Dirk and Shelly get up and anxiously follow her.
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