Two hundred years into the future... Global warming is a past reality. Polar ice caps have melted and water covered the Ohio and San Fernando Valleys. With the rising water levels, little green bottles arrive out of nowhere. Tens of thousands of them. People just pick'em up from their doorsteps. These were the bottles buried 200 years ago in a Norwegian fjord by Ardalang Broichung, a leader of the radical environmentalist World Now! movement. In these bottles, there is a devastating disclosure that will rock all nations across the world... We see a mosaic of confrontations in a dozen households after the little green bottles are opened and their contents are read. Household #1 A young woman in her 30s walks into the room of her wheelchair ridden mother still holding the green bottle and slaps the elderly lady across her mouth. Household #2 Three elderly guys sitting around a table in their pajamas and wife-beater undershirts. At the center of the table, three green bottles. All of them have the contents of the bottles in front of them, one message per guy. None of them is talking. One of them lifts a gun and pulls the trigger rapidly towards both of them, in quick succession. But there is no bullet in the gun. All three take one look at one another and then... they throw their heads back and start to howl with joy and laughter. Household #3 A smiling painter is painting a 6 feet by 9 feet portrait of his own green bottle, perched on a stool. It is an ambitious and religious painting with a classical interpretation, resembling the best of Rubens. After every brush stroke, a few other coordinated brush strikes appear automatically on the canvas. It looks as though this painting is practically painting itself, with a little help from the blissful artist. The opening day of The International Conference on Divine Intervention in Paris. The posters pasted all over the city is showing the same little green bottle, rendered in different styles by different graphic artists. Under the dome of the Conference Hall, all nations are allowed a separate desk with their small flags implanted on them. Delegations from 249 nations are present, waiting for the opening keynote speech by Prof. Glumdlund, the head of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences. Prof. Glumdlund, holding one of the little green bottles up high on the podium for the benefit of all the wireless cameras trained on him, begins by saying that never has there been a moment like that in world history in which the humanity faced the prospects of either jumping several millennia ahead or imploding on itself with a last gasp of resignation. He closes his eyes for a second. There is an absolute silence for a moment. Then the authorized members of the national delegations start vote silently on something that has not been articulated yet. It is as though they are full aware of the day's agenda and they are voting on an unspoken proposal by quietly raising or lowering their hands. A giant electronic score board is updating in real time the progress of the voting by categories that is not commonly seen in scientific research: Yes 45, May Be 14, Changing Mind 24, Never 6, I Dare You 27, Lying 30... CUT TO: Prof. Glumdlund summarizing the result of the tally: Our answer is NO! A big NO! Back to the first three households... Household #1 A young woman in her 30s is now the one who is strapped to a wheelchair and holding the green bottle. Her elderly mother walks into the room and slaps her daughter across her mouth. Household #2 Three elderly guys sitting around a table in their pajamas and wife-beater undershirts. At the center of the table, three green bottles. All of them have the contents of the bottles in front of them, one message per guy. None of them is talking. One of them lifts a gun and pulls the trigger rapidly towards both of them, in quick succession BANG!!! BANG!!! Both guys are blown away in a carnage of blood. Household #3 A painter is painting a 6 feet by 9 feet portrait of his own green bottle, perched on a stool. It is an ambitious and religious painting with a classical interpretation, resembling the best of Rubens. Then the painter clutches his chest and knocks over the can of green paint while collapsing to the floor. What are consequences of No to the little green bottle's message and what does that mean for the future of the world? Which part of it is real and which part is illusionary, just a mental projection on a global screen? A mystical sci-fi thriller a la Tarkovsky. ------------------------------ |
