White Noise_2022

WHITE NOISE
    From the Novel by Don Delillo
    Screenplay by Noah Baumbach A blank movie screen.
    A man, Murray Suskind, 50's, appears in front. He's stooped shouldered with a professorial goatee.
    MURRAY
    OK, roll film.
    A whirring sound. CLOSE on film going through a projector. A soft white light illuminates, shadowing him against the screen. He exits frame. A montage of car crashes from movies and TV plays on the screen. The images are intercut with students watching, fascinated, taking notes, and Murray delivering his lecture.
    MURRAY
    Don't think of a car crash in a movie as a violent act. No, these collisions are part of a long tradition of American optimism. A reaffirmation of traditional values and beliefs. A celebration.
    Front end collisions. Rear end smashes. Cars sailing off bridges. Trucks with buses. Motorcycles with cars. Cars with helicopters.
    MURRAY
    Think of these crashes like you do Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. On these days, we don't mourn the dead or rejoice in miracles. No, these are days of secular optimism, of self- celebration.
    Trucks with trucks. Cars skidding into crashes. Cars smashing into poles. Cars breaking through supermarket windows.
    MURRAY
    Each car crash is meant to be better than the last. There is a constant upgrading of tools and skills, a meeting of challenges.
    MURRAY
    A director of an American film says, "I need this flatbed truck to do a midair double somersault that produces an orange ball of fire with a thirty-six-foot diameter." The movie breaks away from complicated human passions to show us something elemental, something fiery and loud and head-on. It's a wish-fulfillment, a yearning for naïveté. We want to be artless again. We want to reverse the flow of experience, of worldliness and its responsibilities. We will improve, prosper, perfect ourselves. Watch any car crash in any American movie. It is a high- spirited moment like old-fashioned stunt flying, walking on wings. The people who stage these crashes are able to capture a lightheartedness, a carefree enjoyment that car crashes in foreign movies can never approach. You might say, "But what about all that blood and glass, the screeching rubber, the crushed bodies, the severed limbs. What kind of optimism is this?"
    (pause)
    Look past the violence, I say.
    The images connect like dance moves--gestures, big and small.
    MURRAY
    There is a wonderful, brimming spirit of innocence and fun.
    At the moment of impact of the final grand collision we CUT TO: WHITE NOISE

EXT. COLLEGE-ON-THE HILL. DAY
    From above: A long line of shiny station wagons ease their way around an I-beam sculpture and toward the dormitories. Blue, green, burgundy, brown. The roofs loaded down with carefully secured suitcases. Part I: WAVES AND RADIATION Jack (40s) watches from his office window. He wears an academic robe, a sleeveless tunic puckered at the shoulders. Tinted sunglasses on his face.
    JACK (V.O.)
    Let's enjoy these aimless days while we can.
    We see kids and parents unloading cars. Students greeting each other with comic cries and gestures of sodden collapse. The parents stand sun-dazed near their vehicles. The first day of school.
    JACK (V.O.)
    You should have been there.
    BABETTE (V.O.)
    Where?
    The distant sound of traffic on an expressway.

INT. THE GLADNEY'S HOME
    Babette, late 30's, descends the stairs as Jack enters.
    JACK
    It's the day of the station wagons.
    BABETTE
    Did I miss it again? You're supposed to remind me.
    JACK
    It was a brilliant event. They stretched all the way past the music library and onto the interstate.
    BABETTE
    You know I need reminding, Jack.
    A quick kiss hello.
    JACK
    They'll be back next year.
    BABETTE
    I hope so.
    JACK
    I realized, I've witnessed this event now for sixteen years.
    They pass through the foyer, Babette retrieving Jack's discarded jacket and hanging it in the closet.
    JACK
    It was 1968 I started the Hitler Studies program.
    BABETTE
    I don't care about the station wagons, I wanted to see the people. What are they like this year?
    JACK
    The women wear plaid skirts and cable knit sweaters.
    BABETTE
    I knew it! And the men are in hacking jackets. What is a hacking jacket?
    JACK
    They've grown comfortable with their money. They genuinely believe they're entitled to it.
    JACK
    They glow a little.
    BABETTE
    I have trouble imagining death at that income level.
    JACK
    Maybe there's no death as we know it, just documents changing hands.
    They enter the kitchen. Denise, 16, Steffie, 10, are getting food from the refrigerator, making sandwiches, mid- conversation.
    STEFFIE
    How do astronauts float?
    DENISE
    They're lighter than air.
    HEINRICH
    There is no air. They can't be lighter than something that isn't there.
    Heinrich, 14, is seated at the breakfast table and stares at a chessboard mid-game while everyone else sets about making lunch. Utensils drop and are tossed in the sink. A period of chaos and noise as everyone moves and speaks at once.
    BABETTE
    Not that we don't have a station wagon.
    (to the kids)
    I thought space was cold.
    JACK
    It's small and metallic gray, it has a whole rusted door.
    STEFFIE
    Space?
    JACK
    Our station wagon.
    DENISE
    It's called the sun's corolla. We saw it the other night on the weather network.
    STEFFIE
    I thought Corolla was a car.
    HEINRICH
    Everything's a car.
    BABETTE
    (suddenly)
    Where's Wilder?
    (calling out)
    Wilder!
    Jack scoops the four-year-old boy up off the floor and places him on the counter among the open cartons, crumpled tinfoil, shiny bags of potato chips. Babette smiles.
    BABETTE
    (to Wilder)
    Are you hungry?
    The child nods. Heinrich plots his next move, hovering a knight in mid-air above the board.
    JACK
    You still playing the fellow in prison?
    HEINRICH
    (nods)
    I think I've got him cornered.
    JACK
    Who did he kill again?
    HEINRICH
    He was under pressure.
    Babette regards her plate: a large sandwich and chips.
    BABETTE
    This isn't the lunch I planned for myself. I was thinking yogurt and wheat germ.
    DENISE
    Where have we heard that before?
    STEFFIE
    Probably right here.
    JACK
    How many people did he shoot?
    HEINRICH
    Five.
    JACK
    Five people?
    HEINRICH
    Not counting the state trooper, which was later.
    A smoke alarm beeps somewhere in the house.
    DENISE
    (to her mom)
    You keep buying stuff that you never eat!
    STEFFIE
    Because Babette thinks if she keeps buying it, she'll have to eat it just to get rid of it.
    DENISE
    But then we end up throwing it out.
    Babette opens the newspaper in front of her and starts to read everyone's horoscope using a story-telling voice.
    JACK
    We love her habits. If anyone here has to show discipline in matters of diet, it's me.
    DENISE
    What's that beeping?
    Amidst the activity, Babette cracks open an amber pill bottle and slips a small white pill into her mouth. She chases it down with orange juice. Denise watches this intently.
    BABETTE
    It's the smoke alarm.
    STEFFIE
    Is there a fire?
    DENISE
    There's either a fire or the battery is dead.
    HEINRICH
    Most fires in buildings start because of faulty wiring. That's a phrase you can't hang around for long without hearing. Faulty wiring.
    JACK
    I'll replace it.
    BABETTE
    (eating a strip of bacon)
    OK, Jack, Virgo... You've been swimming against the tide for the better part of a year now, but-- Jack grabs a banana and leaves the room.
    HEINRICH
    He tries not to listen. Although I think he secretly wants to too.
    STEFFIE
    It's like love slash hate.
    Babette gets up and surreptitiously drops something into the garbage can beneath the sink on her way out of the room.
    BABETTE (O.S.)
    I'm going to take a shower and then we'll go to the mall.
    DENISE
    (to the room)
    Didn't she already shower today?
    Steffie and Heinrich continue talking about Heinrich's chess partner. Denise goes to the garbage and reaches inside. Denise makes a face as she feels around the muck. She pulls out an amber pill bottle. The label reads: Dylar.
    DENISE
    (to herself)
    Dylar.
    BABETTE (V.O.)
    What do you want to do?

INT. JACK AND BABETTE'S BEDROOM. NIGHT
    Jack, in striped pajamas, embraces Babette, in a big sweatshirt and underwear. They roll onto the bed. Their conversation has a deeply intimate tone.
    JACK
    Whatever you want to do.
    BABETTE
    I want whatever's best for you.
    JACK
    What's best for me is to please you.
    BABETTE
    But you please me by letting me please you.
    They reposition themselves, trying to kick the sheets off their ankles. The radiator gurgles and clanks.
    RADIO (O.S.)
    This creature has developed a complicated stomach in keeping with its leafy diet.
    JACK
    Is it wrong for the man to be considerate to his partner?
    BABETTE
    I'm your partner when we're playing tennis, which we ought to start doing again by the way. Otherwise I'm your wife. Do you want me to read to you?
    JACK
    First-rate.
    Jack leaps up and opens a drawer at the bottom of a dresser. There's a stash of erotic books. He leafs through them.
    BABETTE
    Please don't choose anything that has men inside women or men entering women. "I entered her." "He entered me." We're not lobbies or elevators.
    JACK
    Got it.
    BABETTE
    "I wanted him inside me." As if he could crawl completely in, sign the register, sleep, eat, and so forth.
    TV (O.S.)
    ...until Florida surgeons attached an artificial flipper.
    BABETTE
    I don't care what these people do as long as they don't enter or get entered.
    Jack selects a book with raised lettering and a muscular man and busty woman on the cover. He holds it up to her. She nods. They fall into each other. LATER Dark. We barely make out the faces of Jack and Babette lying in bed, intertwined. The book discarded onto the floor.
    BABETTE
    Life is good, Jack.
    JACK
    What brings this on?
    BABETTE
    I just feel it ought to be said.
    She turns over. He embraces her from the back.
    BABETTE
    (almost romantic)
    I want to die first.
    JACK
    (withdrawing)
    You sound almost eager.
    BABETTE
    Life would feel unbearably sad and lonely without you. Especially if the children were grown up and living elsewhere. Right now, we're safe. As long as the children are here. They need us.
    JACK
    It's great having these kids around, but once they get big and scatter, I want to go first.
    BABETTE
    No, Jack.
    RADIO (V.O.)
    MasterCard, Visa, American Express.
    JACK
    Your death would leave an abyss in my life. I would be left talking to chairs and pillows.
    BABETTE
    Your death would be more than an abyss--
    JACK
    What's more than an abyss?
    BABETTE
    It would be a...yawning gulf.
    JACK
    Your death would be a...profound depth...a void.
    She turns back to him, their faces almost touching in the dark.
    BABETTE
    (angry now)
    Don't be an ass. Your death would definitely leave a bigger hole in my life than mine would leave in yours.
    JACK
    You'll be fine! You'll travel and have a new and exciting life. I'll just sit in that chair in the suit that I wore to your funeral forever.
    BABETTE
    You're wrong.
    (turns back around)
    And you don't really want to die first. You don't want to be alone but you don't want to die more than you don't want to be alone.
    Jack says nothing.
    JACK
    I hope we both live forever. Doddering, toothless, liver- spotted, hallucinating.
    (pause)
    Who decides these things?
    A din of Nazi propaganda, crowds, speeches, etc.
    JACK (V.O.)
    Who is out there? Who are you?
    CUT TO: A projected montage of Nazi propaganda films, scenes shot at party congresses, outtakes from mystical epics featuring parades of gymnasts and mountaineers. Edited together impressionistically and scored to the sounds of chants, songs, arias, speeches, cries, cheers, accusations, shrieks.

INT. SEMINAR ROOM. DAY
    Jack sits next the projector in the booth in the back of the room. The movie images reflected on the glass. CUT TO: Lights are up. The movie has ended. Jack walks down the center aisle.
    JACK
    When people are helpless and scared they're drawn to magical figures, mythic figures, epic men who intimidate and darkly loom.
    A male student confidently raises his hand.
    STUDENT
    Could you talk about the Stauffenberg July 20 plot to kill Hitler?
    Jack stands in a shallow light at the front of the two- hundred seat theater. Kids, of means, in poplin shorts, polos and rugby stripes shuffle papers, whisper. Jack hits a button on a slide projector. Hitler's face superimposes over his body.
    JACK
    All plots move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers' plots, narrative plots--

INT. CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH BASEMENT. DAY
    Babette teaches posture to a group of mostly older adults. She stands, turns, assumes various poses while referencing yoga, kendo, trance-walking in relation to posture. The older folks nod and listen reverently. Some trying to mirror her gestures.
    JACK (V.O.)
    --plots that are part of children's games.

INT. DEN, GLADNEY'S HOUSE
    The family watches a sit-com on TV while eating Chinese food. Steffie moves her lips attempting to match the words as they're spoken. Denise reads The Physicians Desk Reference.
    JACK (V.O.)
    We edge nearer death every time we plot.
    Steffie grabs Denise's book. Denise protests.
    JACK (V.O.)
    It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as the targets of the plot.

INT. BOARDING HOUSE ROOM
    A mild-looking man tucks his head into his trunk, narrows his eyes and suddenly makes grimacing humanoid faces, like he's having a seizure. This is Howard Dunlop.
    DUNLOP
    Study my tongue.
    He gapes, he croaks.
    DUNLOP
    Tomorrow is Tuesday. Morgen ist Dienstag.
    (irritated)
    Tomorrow is Wednesday, but tomorrow is Tuesday.
    JACK
    Tomorrow is Tuesday...
    (realizing)
    Well...
    DUNLOP
    I am eating potato salad. Ich esse Kartoffelsalat.
    On Jack now as he repeats the facial gestures and noises as best he can. It's a tortured, over-articulation of what he just heard. They sit in a dark crowded room. An ironing board unfolded at the window. An exposed radiator, an army- blanketed cot.
    JACK (V.O.)
    I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention these lessons to anyone.
    CUT TO: After the lesson, Jack counts out cash. Dunlop shrugs.
    JACK
    You probably don't know, but I'm maybe the most prominent figure in Hitler studies in North America. I'm J.A.K. Gladney. I teach Advanced Nazism over at the College- On-The-Hill.
    (silence)
    So, as you can understand, it's a great source of embarrassment for me that I don't speak German. Maybe it explains the dark glasses, but...best not to analyze it.
    Dunlop nods. Jack hands Dunlop the cash.
    JACK
    I've made several attempts in the past to learn it, but with very little success. As you can probably see, something happens between the back of my tongue and the roof of my mouth...
    Dunlop nods and opens the door to a narrow second floor hallway. An old man grasping a toothbrush and a tattered towel shuffles toward the bathroom.
    JACK
    After all, I require my students to take a minimum of one year of German.
    The old man knocks on the bathroom door. Someone shouts, panicked, "Occupied!" The old man turns and shuffles back to his room, his slippers scuffing against the wooden floor.
    JACK
    The urgency is...the Hitler conference is coming here, to the College On-The-Hill, in the spring. And scholars from all over Germany will be in attendance. Do you think you could get me up to speed on the basics of the language by then?
    Dunlops shrugs.
    DUNLOP
    I also teach sailing.

INT. SUPERMARKET, BLACKSMITH. DAY
    ANNOUNCEMENT
    Kleenex Softique, your truck's blocking the entrance.
    Jack and Babette approach a banner: Butcher's Corner and Bakery Coming Soon!
    JACK
    (re: the sign)
    This is exciting.
    MURRAY (O.S.)
    We have them in New York.
    Murray Suskind, (recognizable to us from the opening lecture on car crash movies), appears, a basket under one arm.
    MURRAY
    The oven aroma of bread combined with the sight of a bloodstained man pounding strips of living veal is very exciting.
    Murray's basket is full of non-brand items in plain white packaging and simple labeling. CANNED PEACHES. BACON (without a plastic window). IRREGULAR PEANUTS. (Murray has a habit of sniffing various products as he gathers them.)
    JACK
    Murray Suskind. This is Babette, my wife.
    Murray removes a glove and they shake. Wilder reaches for the cereal. Jack lifts him out of the cart so he can touch the lower boxes.
    JACK
    Murray came to College On The Hill this year from New York. His specialty is American icons.
    MURRAY
    (nodding)
    You have a very impressive husband, Mrs. Gladney. Nobody in any university in this country can so much as utter a word about Hitler without a nod in J.A.K.'s direction. Literally or metaphorically.
    BABETTE
    He's Jack in real life. you've done with the man.
    MURRAY
    Hitler is now Gladney's Hitler. I marvel at what I want to do the same with Elvis.
    Denise tries on a green visor, the tag hanging. Steffie nods in approval.
    MURRAY
    Who are all these children? Yours?
    Babette appears to pause.
    BABETTE
    There's Denise, of course.
    She trails off, looking at other items on the shelf as a distraction.
    BABETTE
    (murmuring)
    We need more Glass Plus.
    Jack watches Babette carefully. He answers for her.
    JACK
    (identifying each kid)
    That's Heinrich and Steffie, mine from wives one and three. And there's Denise, Babette's from husband two. Wilder is ours. We're each other's fourth.
    The kids, as they're identified in the aisle.
    HEINRICH
    Did you know there are more people dead today than in the rest of world history put together?
    STEFFIE
    We have to boil our water. It said on the radio.
    DENISE
    (to Steffie)
    On Neptune it literally rains diamonds.
    HEINRICH
    They're always saying boil your water.
    MURRAY
    (observing the kids)
    Family is the cradle of the world's misinformation.
    JACK
    There must be something in family life that generates factual error.
    MURRAY
    It's because facts threaten our happiness and security.
    BABETTE
    (returning to drop items in the cart)
    It's the overcloseness, the noise and the heat of being.
    Babette goes to look for gum. Murray struggles to open a filmy plastic produce bag, his fingers failing to find the opening.
    MURRAY
    Your wife's hair is a living wonder.
    JACK
    Yes, it is.
    MURRAY
    She has important hair.
    JACK
    I think I know what you mean.
    MURRAY
    I hope you appreciate that woman.
    JACK
    Absolutely.
    MURRAY
    Because a woman like that doesn't just happen.
    JACK
    I know it.
    Jack takes the produce bag from Murray and opens it, and hands it back. Murray nods in thanks.
    ANNOUNCEMENT
    Dristan Ultra, Dristan Ultra.
    CUT TO: Babette passes Denise and Steffie who try on the plastic sunglasses and hats, tags hanging in their faces. Babette puts a multi-pack of chewing gum in the cart.
    DENISE
    That stuff causes cancer in laboratory animals in case you didn't know.
    BABETTE
    You wanted me to chew sugarless gum, Denise. It was your idea.
    DENISE
    There was no warning on the pack then. Then they put a warning, which I have a hard time believing you didn't see.
    BABETTE
    Either I chew gum with sugar and artificial coloring or I chew sugarless gum that's harmful to rats. It's up to you.
    STEFFIE
    Don't chew at all. You ever think of that?
    BABETTE
    Look, Denise...
    (correcting)
    Steffie. Either I chew gum or I smoke.
    DENISE
    Why not do both? That's what you want, isn't it? We all get to do what we want, don't we?
    Steffie grabs the visor from Denise.
    STEFFIE
    Unless we're not allowed to because of our age and height.
    BABETTE
    You're making a fuss over nothing.
    DENISE
    I guess you're right. Never mind. Just a warning on the pack.
    STEFFIE
    Just rats.
    DENISE
    Just useless rodents. Plus I'd like to believe she chews only two pieces a day, the way she forgets things.
    BABETTE
    What do I forget?
    DENISE
    It's all right. Never mind.
    BABETTE
    What do I forget?
    DENISE
    Go ahead and chew.
    A middle-aged Woman falls into a spindly rack of paperback books at the front of the store.
    ANNOUNCEMENT
    Sunny Delight, Sunny Delight.
    A heavyset man emerges from the raised cubicle in the far corner and moves warily toward her.
    CHECKOUT GIRL
    Leon, parsley.
    STORE MANAGER
    (heading for the fallen shopper)
    Seventy-nine.
    ANNOUNCEMENT
    Cheerios spill in aisle three. Sorry, aisle four.
    CUT TO: Produce section. Denise passes and grabs the visor back from Steffie and runs down the aisle.
    DENISE
    That's my visor!
    Steffie takes her Dad's hand. They stroll by the fruit bins that extend all along the aisle in a sea of shape and color.
    JACK
    Tell Denise you're sorry.
    STEFFIE
    Maybe later. Remind me.
    JACK
    She's a great girl and she wants to be your older sister and your friend--if you'll let her.
    STEFFIE
    I don't know about friend. She's a little bossy, don't you think?
    JACK
    And aside from telling her you're sorry, be sure to give her back her book.
    STEFFIE
    It's a medical journal and she reads it all the time. It's weird.
    JACK
    At least she reads something.
    STEFFIE
    It's lists of drugs and medicines. And do you want to know why she reads it?
    JACK
    Why?
    STEFFIE
    Because she's trying to find out the side effects of the stuff that Babette uses.
    JACK
    What does Baba use?
    STEFFIE
    Don't ask me, ask Denise.
    JACK
    How do you know she uses anything?
    STEFFIE
    Ask Denise.
    JACK
    Why don't I ask Baba?

EXT. HIGHSCHOOL SPORTS STADIUM
    Babette runs up and down the stadium steps. She wears an oversized track suit that ripples in the wind. Jack watches from across the field on a set of stone steps.
    STEFFIE (V.O.)
    Ask Baba.
    She alternates running and walking with her hands on her hips.
    BABETTE (V.O.)
    I know I forget things, but I didn't know it was so obvious.
    Jack greets her at the bottom of the steps. Thirty girls in bright shorts run past, the overlapping rhythms of their footfalls pattering. They embrace. He slips his hand in the waistband of her gray cotton pants.
    JACK (V.O.)
    It isn't.
    CUT TO: Jack and Babette walk home through town. They pass two-storied dry cleaners and pharmacies and banks. Pre-war detail surviving in the upper stories, in copper cornices, the amphora frieze above the dime-store entrance. Greek revival and Gothic churches.
    BABETTE
    I dial a number on the phone and forget who I'm calling. I go to the store and I forget what to buy.
    JACK
    We all forget.
    BABETTE
    Sometimes I call Steffie, Denise. I forget where I parked the car. I don't care what the girls say, it can't be the gum I chew, that's too farfetched.
    JACK
    Maybe it's something else.
    BABETTE
    What do you mean?
    JACK
    Maybe you're taking something besides chewing gum.
    BABETTE
    Where did you get that idea?
    JACK
    I got it secondhand from Steffie.
    BABETTE
    Where did Steffie get it from?
    JACK
    Denise.
    She hesitates.
    BABETTE
    What does Denise through Steffie say I'm taking?
    JACK
    I wanted to ask you before I asked her. We always tell each other everything.
    BABETTE
    To the best of my knowledge, Jack, I'm not taking anything that could account for my memory lapses. These are the days that I want to remember.
    JACK
    Everybody forgets things, there's a lot going on.
    BABETTE
    My life is either/or. Either I chew regular gum or I chew sugarless gum. Either I chew gum or I smoke. Either I smoke or I gain weight. Either I gain weight or I run up the stadium steps.
    JACK
    Sounds like a boring life.
    BABETTE
    (tears suddenly in her eyes)
    I hope it lasts forever.

INT. GLADNEY'S DEN. EVE
    Denise reads her medical journal on the couch. Heinrich and Steffie play Mouse Trap. Wilder lingers at the piano bench.
    HEINRICH
    Do you drink coffee?
    STEFFIE
    No.
    HEINRICH
    Baba likes a cup when she comes back from class.
    The sound of a car door closing. Denise reacts.
    STEFFIE
    Her class is demanding. Coffee relaxes her.
    HEINRICH
    That's why it's dangerous.
    STEFFIE
    Why is it dangerous?
    HEINRICH
    Anything that relaxes you is dangerous.

INT. LIVING ROOM/EXT. STREET
    Through the bay window, Denise, in her visor, her knees planted on the cushions of the couch, watches Babette back the station wagon into the street and pull away.

INT. BEDROOM
    Jack studies a book on German. He badly says words aloud.
    JACK
    --ich bin, du bist, er ist wir sind, ihr seid, Sie sind--
    DENISE (O.S.)
    What are we going to do about Baba?
    Denise enters and sprawls across the foot of the bed, her head resting on her folded arms. She faces away from Jack.
    DENISE
    She can't remember anything with those pills she takes.
    TV (O.S.)
    And other trends that could dramatically impact your portfolio.
    JACK
    We don't know for sure she's taking something?
    DENISE
    I saw the empty bottle buried in the trash under the kitchen sink.
    JACK
    How do you know it was hers?
    DENISE
    I saw her throw it out. It had the name of the medication. Dylar.
    JACK
    (sitting up)
    Dylar.
    DENISE
    "One every three days." Which sounds like it's dangerous or habit- forming or whatever.
    JACK
    What does your book say about Dylar?
    DENISE
    That's just it: It's not in there. I spent hours. There are four indexes.
    JACK
    It must be recently marketed. Or go by different names? Do you want me to double check the book?
    DENISE
    I looked. If we could get an actual pill, maybe you could get it analyzed?
    JACK
    I don't want to make too much of this.
    DENISE
    We could call her doctor.
    JACK
    Everybody takes some kind of medication, everybody forgets things occasionally.
    DENISE
    Not like my mother.
    JACK
    I forget things all the time.
    DENISE
    What do you take?
    JACK
    Blood pressure pills, stress pills, allergy pills--
    DENISE
    --eye drops. Aspirin. I looked in your medicine cabinet. I thought there might be a new bottle.
    JACK
    No Dylar?
    Denise turns and faces her step-father.
    DENISE
    No.
    JACK
    Well, maybe she's done taking it.
    DENISE
    Why don't you want to believe something might be wrong?
    JACK
    (hesitates)
    We have to allow each other to have our secrets. Don't you think?
    DENISE
    She hides books on the occult in the attic. I found them.
    (Jack starts to say something)
    Also, I don't think she went to her posture class tonight.
    JACK
    Why do you say that?
    DENISE
    I don't know, but she went right instead of left at the Stop sign.
    JACK
    Maybe she's taking the scenic route.
    DENISE
    That's left too.
    Heinrich bursts into the room.
    HEINRICH
    Come on, hurry up, plane crash footage.
    Denise is off the bed in an instant.

INT. DEN
    Close on the TV screen: A puff of black smoke.
    HEINRICH
    It was a jet trainer in an air show in New Zealand. They're going to show it again.
    The crash is shown multiple times, once in stop-action replay and once in regular motion. An analyst tries to explain the reason for the plunge. Jack joins the kids. The family watches in awe. Finally:
    JACK
    Let's watch a sit-com or something--
    HEINRICH/DENISE/STEFFIE
    No!

INT. BEDROOM. LATER NIGHT
    The radiator sizzles and groans, water leaking from the temperature knob. Jack opens his eyes. He's lying in bed. The room is dark. He turns to look at the pillow next to him. No one is there. A white light from the street flickers on and falls through the window revealing the torso of a shadowed figure sitting in a chair in the corner of the room next to the radiator.
    JACK
    Baba?
    Close on the figure's hand. Long bony fingers. A winding scar on the top. (We've seen this hand before.) The fingers pull idly on a loose string on the arm of the chair. Jack lies there, afraid. A light moves across the ceiling as we hear the steady rattle of a car, outside, going over a loose manhole. The hand slowly recedes, pulling the thread, and then the figure stands up and walks into the bathroom. Jack waits in terror. We hear the sound of peeing. Then a toilet flush. The figure reappears. The sound of the bowl refilling. The figure walks over to the bed and casually sits at the edge. Jack watches, motionless. Then the figure climbs under the sheets and into the bed where Babette usually lies. Jack's breaths can be heard in the silence. The sheet rises up suddenly, a face outlined in the folds. It looms over Jack. His face locked in terror. It wraps itself around Jack, enveloping him in the material like a body on a slab in the morgue. CUT TO: Jack opens his eyes. He's tangled in sheets, sweating, paralyzed. His eyes slowly adjust to the dark. The digital clock on his bedside glows green: 3:51. He falls back down on the pillow. Someone is wrapped in the bedding next to him. Jack slowly pulls the sheet down revealing Babette's sleeping face.
    JACK
    I felt like I was falling through myself.
    (pause)
    Like a heart stopping plunge.
    JACK
    Someone was here with us. Or some thing.
    ALFONSE (V.O.)
    It's natural, it's normal that decent, well-meaning people find themselves intrigued by catastrophe when they see it on television.

INT. COLLEGE CAFETERIA
    Jack sits at a table with Murray and a group of professors, mostly New York emigres. Alfonse, husky with a furious beard, also dressed in a robe, sits at the head. He's accompanied by teachers in his department, Nicolas Grappa, Elliot Lasher, and the very large Dimitros Cotsakis. A sole female professor sits at an adjacent table. This is Winnie Richards, 30's, a spindly woman drinking a small carton of chocolate milk.
    LASHER
    Because we're suffering from brain fade.
    ALFONSE
    We need an occasional catastrophe to break up the incessant bombardment of information.
    GRAPPA
    The flow is constant. Words, pictures, numbers, facts--graphics, statistics, waves, particles.
    LASHER
    Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them. We need them.
    Jack leans across the table to get Winnie's attention.
    JACK
    If I were to get you a pill--
    WINNIE
    A pill. Like a...pill?
    Cotsakis, an enormous man and former body guard, crushes a can of Pepsi and throws it at a garbage pail.
    ALFONSE
    This is where California comes in.
    JACK
    Yes, a pill. Could you analyze it?
    WINNIE
    Jack, there's a dolphin's brain in my inbox--
    ALFONSE
    Mud slides, brush fires, coastal erosion, earthquakes, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life- style. This alone warrants their doom.
    JACK
    But in theory.
    WINNIE
    Why do you ask me?
    JACK
    You're brilliant.
    LASHER
    For most people there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.
    WINNIE
    We're all brilliant. Isn't that the understanding around here?
    GRAPPA
    You're saying it's more or less universal, to be fascinated by TV disasters.
    Murray tries to get Jack's attention.
    MURRAY
    Jack--
    WINNIE
    You call me brilliant, I call you brilliant. We call Alfonse brilliant and so on. It's a form of communal ego.
    GRAPPA
    I don't know whether to feel good or bad about learning that my experience is widely shared.
    JACK
    No one calls me brilliant. They call me shrewd. They say I latched on to something big. I filled an opening no one knew existed.
    ALFONSE
    Feel bad.
    LASHER
    It's obvious. We all feel bad. But we can enjoy it on that level.
    WINNIE
    So, where's the pill?
    JACK
    I have to find it first.
    LASHER
    Did you ever brush your teeth with your finger?
    GRAPPA
    I brushed my teeth with my finger the first time I stayed overnight at my first wife's parents' house.
    ALFONSE
    Japan is pretty good for disaster footage. India remains largely untapped. But their disasters tend to go unrecorded.
    MURRAY
    Jack--
    COTSAKIS
    Forgetting my toothbrush is a fetish with me.
    LASHER
    I brushed my teeth with my finger after the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire. That's the southernmost point I've brushed my teeth with my finger at.
    Murray leans over to Jack and says quietly.
    MURRAY
    Jack, I need your help. I've been having trouble establishing an Elvis Presley power base in the department.
    JACK
    What does Alfonse say?
    MURRAY
    He seems to feel that Cotsakis has established a prior right. Cotsakis was in Memphis when the King died. He interviewed members of the entourage and family... For Cotsakis, Elvis is just Elvis. But for me, Elvis is my Hitler.
    JACK
    (aside to Murray)
    How can I help?
    MURRAY
    I thought you might drop by my lecture this afternoon, informally, and lend a note of consequence to the proceedings. Your prestige, your physical person would mean a lot.
    GRAPPA
    Did you ever crap in a toilet bowl that had no seat?
    LASHER
    A great and funky men's room in the old Socony Mobil Station on the Boston Post Road the first time my father took the car outside the city.
    WINNIE
    The station with the flying red horse.
    MURRAY
    These are the things we don't teach. Bowls with no seats. Pissing in sinks. The culture of public toilets. I've pissed in sinks all through the American West.
    ALFONSE
    I pissed in a sink in Utah when it was twenty-two below. The coldest I've ever pissed in a sink in.
    LASHER
    I've slipped across the border to piss in sinks in Manitoba and Alberta.
    GRAPPA
    Did you ever have a woman peel flaking skin from your back after a few days at the beach?
    LASHER
    Cocoa Beach, Florida. It was very tremendous. The second or third greatest experience of my life.
    GRAPPA
    Was she naked?
    LASHER
    To the waist.
    GRAPPA
    From which direction?
    We CUT TO: BLACK A white crescent shape appears. It's the light at the end of a tunnel. A speeding train exits out of the tunnel, pulling a series of tank cars behind it labeled: "TOXIC CHEMICALS"

EXT. SIDE ROAD, BLACKSMITH. SAME
    INTERCUT with a truck barreling along a side-road. We can hear the driver singing along to "Rubbernecking" by Elvis Presley. The driver reaches for a bottle of Jack Daniels on the passenger seat. The truck lurches onto the shoulder. The driver quickly grabs the wheel and steers the giant vehicle back on the road. On the back of the truck in big red letters: "FLAMMABLE" CUT TO:

INT. HALLWAY/MURRAY'S SEMINAR ROOM
    Jack steels himself outside the door. He wears his robe and tinted glasses. He enters.
    MURRAY (O.S.)
    Did his mother know that Elvis would die young?
    There are twenty-five or thirty young men and women in many fall colors. They sit in armchairs, and sofas and on beige broadloom. Murray walks among them, his right hand trembling in a stylized way.
    MURRAY
    She talked about assassins, she talked about the life, the life of a star of this type of magnitude. Isn't this life structured to cut you down early? This is the point, isn't it? There are rules, guidelines.
    He spots Jack and nods. Jack stands against the wall in the back, attempting to loom, his arms folded under the black gown.
    MURRAY
    Now, I have a feeling about mothers. Mothers really do know. The folklore is correct.
    JACK
    Hitler adored his mother. He was the first of Klara's children to survive infancy.
    There's a surge of attention, unspoken, among the students. Murray, still moving, interrupts abruptly.
    MURRAY
    Elvis and Gladys liked to nuzzle and pet. They slept in the same bed until he began to approach physical maturity. They talked baby-talk to each other.
    On impulse, Jack abandons his place at the wall and starts to pace the room like Murray. He stops occasionally to gesture, listen or gaze out the window.
    JACK
    Hitler was a lazy kid. His report card was full of unsatisfactorys.
    MURRAY
    Gladys worried about his sleep walking. She lashed out at any kid who tried to bully him. Gladys walked Elvis to school and back every day. She defended him in street rumbles.
    JACK
    Klara loved him, spoiled him, gave him the attention his father failed to give him.
    MURRAY
    Elvis confided in Gladys. He brought his girlfriends around to meet her.
    Jack and Murray approach each other near the center of the room, almost colliding.
    JACK
    Hitler wrote a poem to his mother. He took piano lessons, made sketches of museums and villas.
    MURRAY
    When Elvis went into the army, Gladys became ill and depressed.
    JACK
    Hitler was what we call a mama's boy.
    MURRAY
    Elvis could hardly bear to let Gladys out of his sight when her condition grew worse. He kept vigil at the hospital.
    JACK
    When his mother became severely ill, Hitler put a bed in the kitchen to be closer to her.
    JACK
    He cooked and cleaned. Hitler wept at the grave and fell into a period of depression and self pity.
    MURRAY
    Elvis fell apart when Gladys died. He fondled and petted her in the casket. He talked their baby talk.
    The door opens and Alfonse, the chairman of the department, enters followed by Grappa, Lasher and other students. News of this dual lecture having reached other classrooms. They all find places to stand or sit.
    JACK
    For the rest of his life, Hitler could not bear to be anywhere near a Christmas tree.
    MURRAY
    It seems fairly certain that Gladys' death caused a fundamental shift at the center of the King's world view.
    JACK
    Years later, in the grip of self-myth and deep remoteness, Hitler kept a portrait of his mother in his Spartan quarters at Obersalzberg.
    MURRAY
    Elvis began to withdraw from the real world, to enter the state of his own dying.
    JACK
    ...He began to hear a buzzing in his left ear.
    Jack and Murray, their movement now like a dance, circle each other and head off in opposite directions, without even sharing a look.
    MURRAY
    Elvis fulfilled the terms of the contract. Excess, deterioration, self-destructiveness, grotesque behavior, a physical bloating and a series of insults to the brain, self-delivered.
    Cotsakis watches from outside the glass doors. He scoffs, turns and walks away.
    MURRAY
    His place in legend is secure. He bought off the skeptics by dying early, horribly, unnecessarily. No one could deny him now. His mother probably saw it all, as on a nineteen-inch screen, years before her own death.
    Murray arrives at the corner of the room and sits on the floor. Everyone's eyes on Jack as he takes the stage.
    JACK
    Picture Hitler near the end, trapped in his führerbunker, beneath the burning city. He looks back to the early days of his power.
    We CUT TO:

EXT. COUNTRYSIDE. SAME
    The speeding train exits a tunnel, pulling a series of tank cars behind it.
    JACK (V.O.)
    When crowds came--mobs of people overrunning the courtyard, singing patriotic songs, painting swastikas on the walls, on the flanks of farm animals.
    CUT TO: Crowds at Nazi rallies.

EXT. SIDE ROAD, BLACKSMITH. SAME
    INTERCUT with a truck barreling along a side-road. We can hear the driver singing along to "Rubbernecking." He animatedly does the hand claps along to the record. The bottle of Jack Daniels sloshing back and forth on the passenger seat. INTERCUT with Jack continuing his lecture. The crowd rapt.
    JACK
    Crowds came to his mountain villa, so many people that he had to stay indoors.
    We INTERCUT more rapidly the three: train, truck, and Jack. The truck driver now singing full throated, reaches for the bottle of whiskey next to him.
    JACK (V.O.)
    Crowds came to hear him speak, crowds erotically charged, the masses he once called his only bride.
    CUT TO: Crowds scream at an Elvis concert. The train whistles. Black smoke coughs out of the truck's pipes. The driver strains to reach the whiskey bottle, while glancing back periodically at the road. The truck lurches and he has to quickly right the wheel. On Jack, intense.
    JACK
    Crowds came to be hypnotized by the voice, the party anthems, the torchlight parades.
    Jack, his back to the class, stares at the carpet and counts silently to seven, mouthing the words.
    JACK
    But wait. How familiar this all seems to us, how close to ordinary.
    The driver grabs the bottle. Elvis singing.
    JACK
    Crowds come, get worked up, touch and press - people eager to be transported. Isn't this ordinary? We all know this. We've been part of those crowds. There must have been something different about these crowds. What was it? Let me whisper the terrible word, from the Old English, from the Old German, from the Old Norse. Death. Those crowds were assembled in the name of death.
    The driver looks up-- The railway crossing arm dropped down in front of him. Bing bing bing. The truck blasts through, the arm shattering. A siren rings. CLOSE on the driver's wide eyes-- On Jack.
    JACK
    They were there to attend tributes to the dead. But not the already dead. They were not mourning brothers, fathers, husbands, those who had fought and died. But the not yet dead. The future dead. The living dead amongst us.
    The train brakes. The mammoth engine sliding, metal screeching--
    JACK (V.O.)
    Processions, songs, speeches, dialogues with the dead, recitations of the names of the dead.
    --as the truck collides directly with the train tank. Train cars topple as the truck is pushed down the track. Shrieks and roars come from the mechanical beasts. The truck and train soar off the track, ripping through the grass and dirt. Dark smoke and fire bursts into the air.
    JACK (V.O.)
    They were there to see pyres and flaming wheels, thousands of flags dipped in salute, thousands of uniformed mourners.
    Close on Jack.
    JACK
    They were ranks and squadrons, elaborate backdrops, blood banners and black dress uniforms. Crowds came to form a shield against their own dying. To break off from the crowd is to risk death as an individual, to face dying alone.
    CUT TO: Another small explosion, then fire and smoke erupts from the wreck. Jack finishes big.
    JACK
    To become a crowd is to keep out death. Crowds came for this reason above all others. They were there to be a crowd.
    The students and faculty break into applause. The applause and "Rubbernecking" and the fiery crash sounds spin together into one distorted, dark din. People have gathered around Jack, students and staff creating a crowd themselves. Jack's momentum now blurred as his breaths grow ragged, joining the growing dissonant soundtrack, as people jostle and touch him. CUT TO: Fires rage from the crash site, billowing smoke into the air and toward the horizon. A door slides open and men in silver Mylex suits jump out. Wide to reveal the van, the men heading toward... Part II: THE AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT We're moving backwards down a neighborhood street.
    JACK (V.O.)
    May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan.

EXT. GLADNEYS' STREET, BLACKSMITH. EVENING
    The atmosphere is clear and still. An evening light casts a glow on the neighborhood. A distant siren. Jack drags a large garbage bag to the bin at the curb. In the stillness of the night, we can hear a woman in a neighboring house on the phone.
    WOMAN
    A decongestant, an antihistamine, a cough suppressant, a pain reliever--
    The sound of a baseball hitting a mitt. A father and son play catch across the street. A couple talks on their porch. Kids play a game in the driveway. The neighbor waves. Jack responds. A siren moves closer. Jack's attention follows the sound. We ZOOM to a small ledge outside the attic window of the Gladney's house. Heinrich, in a camouflage jacket and cap is crouched peering through binoculars. He looks somewhere off to the east. A low rumble of thunder in the distance.

INT. GLADNEY'S ATTIC. EVENING
    The room is cluttered by abandoned possessions. Exposed beams and posts and fiberglass insulation pads. Jack enters. Heinrich is now inside, standing by the open window, still looking through the glasses.
    JACK
    Hey, what do you see out there?
    HEINRICH
    The radio said a tank car derailed. But I don't think it derailed from what I could see.
    JACK
    What did you--
    HEINRICH
    I think it got rammed and something punched a hole in it. There's a lot of smoke and I don't like the looks of it.
    JACK
    What does it look like?
    Heinrich hands his father the binoculars and steps aside. Jack brings the binoculars up to his eyes-- His POV: A shapeless black mass hangs in the air above the river. Lights blink on a radio tower in the foreground.
    JACK
    You see fire engines or--?
    HEINRICH
    They're all over the place. But it looks to me like they're not getting too close. It must be pretty toxic or pretty explosive stuff, or both.
    Jack's POV shifts down and follows a small emergency vehicle, the siren flashing, heading toward the site of the cloud. Jack puts down the binoculars and hands them back to his son.
    JACK
    (reassuringly)
    It won't come this way.
    HEINRICH
    How do you know?
    JACK
    It just won't. The point is you shouldn't be standing on slippery ledges. It worries Baba.
    HEINRICH
    You think if you tell me it worries her, I'll feel guilty and not do it. But if you tell me it worries you, I'll do it all the time.
    JACK
    Shut the window.

INT. KITCHEN
    Jack is paying bills at the table. Steffie looks through the brightly colored mail, separating coupons, lotteries and contests. The sound of blue jeans tumbling in the dryer down the hall.
    RADIO (V.O.)
    Available for a limited time only with optional megabyte hard disk.
    JACK
    Did you finish your homework already?
    STEFFIE
    Can you see the feathery plume from the attic window?
    JACK
    It's not a plume.
    STEFFIE
    But will we have to leave our homes?
    JACK
    Of course not.
    STEFFIE
    How do you know?
    JACK
    I just know.
    STEFFIE
    What about that time there was that leak at our school?
    STEFFIE
    And we had to evacuate.
    JACK
    That was inside. This is outside.
    Police sirens come and go somewhere in the area. Steffie's lips soundlessly form the siren sequence: "Wow, wow, wow." She sees her father watching her and smiles, caught in her own reverie.
    DENISE (O.S.)
    They're using leaf-blowers to blow stuff onto the spill.
    Denise enters the room, wearing her green visor and wiping her palms on her jeans.
    STEFFIE
    What kind of stuff?
    DENISE
    I don't know, but it's supposed to make the spill harmless, which doesn't explain what they're doing about the actual plume.
    JACK
    They're keeping it from getting bigger. When do we eat?
    STEFFIE
    I don't know.
    DENISE
    (concerned)
    If it gets any bigger it'll get here with or without a wind.
    JACK
    It won't get here.
    DENISE
    How do you know?
    JACK
    Because it won't.
    Heinrich enters with a portable radio and a highway map.
    HEINRICH
    The radio calls it a feathery plume. But it's not a plume.
    STEFFIE
    That's what Dad said.
    DENISE
    What is it?
    HEINRICH
    Like a shapeless growing thing. A dark black breathing thing of smoke.
    STEFFIE
    Why do they call it a plume then?
    JACK
    Air time is valuable. They can't go into long tortured descriptions.
    DENISE
    Have they said what kind of chemical it is?
    HEINRICH
    It's called Nyodene Derivative or Nyodene D. It was in a movie we saw in school on toxic wastes.
    DENISE
    Those videotaped rats.
    JACK
    What does it cause?
    HEINRICH
    The movie wasn't sure what it does to humans. Mainly it was rats growing urgent lumps.
    JACK
    That's what the movie said. What does the radio say?
    HEINRICH
    They said skin irritation and sweaty palms.
    STEFFIE
    Sweaty palms in rats?
    HEINRICH
    Humans.
    DENISE
    The radio not the movie.
    HEINRICH
    But then they updated it to nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath.
    STEFFIE
    The radio or the movie?
    HEINRICH
    Both.
    JACK
    Well it won't come this way.
    HEINRICH
    How do you know?
    JACK
    I just know. It's perfectly calm and still today. And when there's a wind this time of year, it blows that way, not this way.
    DENISE
    What if it blows this way?
    JACK
    It won't.
    STEFFIE
    But what if just this one time?
    JACK
    It won't. Why should it?
    Heinrich, the radio pressed to his ear:
    HEINRICH
    They just closed part of the interstate.
    JACK
    They would want to do that, of course.
    HEINRICH/DENISE/STEFFIE
    Why?/Why?/Why would they?
    JACK
    They just would. It's a sensible precaution.
    Babette enters the kitchen, on a cordless phone.
    BABETTE
    H--hold on Helen, Jack is here...
    JACK
    (finishing his thought to the kids)
    BABETTE
    (holding her hand over the mouth-piece)
    It's a way to facilitate The Stovers say the spill movement of service vehicles from the tank car was thirty- and such. Any number of five... reasons that have nothing to do with wind or wind direction. We hear Helen faintly through the phone repeating with variation, "thirty-eight thousand..."
    BABETTE
    ...thousand gallons. She says her girls were complaining of sweaty palms.
    HEINRICH
    There's been a correction. Tell them they ought to be throwing up.
    Heinrich heads out of the room with his radio. The rumble of a helicopter passes over them and disappears. Denise looks at her palms, blows on them and follows her brother. Steffie lingers in the kitchen, unsure what to do with her anxiety. Jack finishes paying a bill. He periodically glances up at Babette, who is still on the phone, and who is watching him, studying his face.
    BABETTE
    (into the phone)
    Is anyone nauseous? OK...OK. Thanks Helen...Yeah, stay in touch.
    She hangs up.
    BABETTE
    The Stovers spoke directly with the weather center outside Glassboro. They're not calling it a feathery plume anymore.
    STEFFIE
    What are they calling it?
    BABETTE
    A black billowing cloud.
    JACK
    That's more accurate which means they're coming to grips with the thing. Good.
    The grinding sound of the disposal in the sink startles him. Steffie washes her hands vigorously in the kitchen sink.
    BABETTE
    It's expected that some sort of air mass may be moving down from Canada.
    JACK
    There's always an air mass moving down from Canada.
    BABETTE
    That's true. There's certainly nothing new in that.
    JACK
    And since Canada is to the north, if the billowing cloud is blown due south, it will miss us by a comfortable margin. When do we eat?
    Sirens pass by again. A larger sound this time. An air raid siren? Steffie, having finished washing her hands, hurries upstairs, water dripping in her wake.
    BABETTE
    Maybe we ought to be more concerned about the billowing cloud. I know we don't want to scare the kids--
    Babette starts taking things out of the refrigerator.
    JACK
    Nothing is going to happen.
    BABETTE
    I know nothing is going to happen, you know nothing is going to happen. But at some level we ought to think about it just in case.
    Jack grabs her thigh as she passes him at the table. She falls into his lap, wrapped around him in such a way that he can read the box of corn niblets in her left hand.
    BABETTE
    It's just, when do we know when this is real?
    JACK
    These things happen to people who live in exposed areas. Society is set up, I mean sadly, in such a way that it's the poor and the uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters.
    BABETTE
    It is sad.
    JACK
    Did you ever see a college professor rowing a boat down his own street in one of those TV floods?
    BABETTE
    (smiles)
    Why do you want dinner so early?
    JACK
    I missed lunch.
    BABETTE
    Shall I do some chili-fried chicken?
    JACK
    First-rate.
    BABETTE
    Where is Wilder?
    He tries to undo her bra through her blouse with his teeth.
    JACK
    I don't know.
    BABETTE
    I ironed your gown.
    JACK
    Thank you.
    CLOSE on Jack's POV of the corn serving suggestions.
    BABETTE
    Did you pay the phone bill?
    JACK
    I can't find it. I paid the gas and electricity though.
    BABETTE
    (standing)
    Let's think about the billowing cloud just a little bit, OK? What if it's dangerous?
    She goes to the freezer.
    JACK
    Everything in train tank cars is dangerous. But the effects are mainly long-range--
    BABETTE
    So, we die later?
    JACK
    We don't die. Not from this. All we have to do is stay out of the way.
    BABETTE
    Let's just be sure to keep it in the back of our mind.
    She smashes the ice cube tray repeatedly on the rim of the sink, dislodging the cubes.

INT./EXT. ATTIC. SAME
    Jack reenters. Heinrich listens to the radio. Wilder hoists himself up on an old Christmas tree stand.
    JACK
    Here's Wilder. Baba's making chili- fried chicken.
    HEINRICH
    They're calling it a black billowing cloud now.
    JACK
    That's what the Stovers said. It's good.
    Jack opens the window, taking the binoculars from around Heinrich's neck.
    HEINRICH
    Why is it good?
    JACK
    (climbing out on the ledge)
    I told your sister: they're looking the thing more squarely in the eye. Can you spot me--
    Heinrich grabs the back of Jack's belt and holds him against the building to prevent him from slipping. Jack places the glasses up to his face. The radio continues muffled now from Jack's earshot. His POV: The cloud is larger and closer than before. The radio tower, previously in the foreground, is swallowed up in darkness. Floodlights sweep across the horizon. Army helicopters hover. Colored lights from police cruisers crisscross the wider beams. Jack lowers the glasses.
    JACK
    OK.
    Heinrich clutches his belt as Jack crawls back inside.
    JACK
    (trying not to display anxiety)
    Well...it's still hanging there.
    (pause)
    JACK
    Looks rooted to the spot. Make sure Wilder doesn't get into that insulation there.
    Heinrich hurries to lift up Wilder away from the exposed silver and pink cushions.
    HEINRICH
    So you're saying you don't think it will come this way?
    JACK
    I can tell by your voice you know something I don't know.
    HEINRICH
    Do you think it will come this way or not?
    Heinrich places Wilder on the other side of the room from the insulation. Wilder immediately starts wobbling back.
    JACK
    You want me to say it won't come this way and then you'll attack with your fistful of data. What did they say on the radio while I was out there?
    HEINRICH
    It doesn't cause nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, like they said before.
    JACK
    What does it cause?
    HEINRICH
    Heart palpitations and a sense of deja vu.
    JACK
    Deja vu? Come on.
    HEINRICH
    It affects the false part of the human brain or whatever.
    JACK
    I don't believe that.
    HEINRICH
    That's not all. They're not calling it the black billowing cloud anymore.
    JACK
    What are they calling it?
    Heinrich looks at his dad carefully.
    HEINRICH
    (dramatically)
    The airborne toxic event.
    JACK
    (hesitates)
    Names are not important. The important thing is location. It's there. We're here.
    HEINRICH
    A large air mass is moving down from Canada.
    JACK
    We already knew that.
    (noticing)
    Wilder!
    Wilder is crawling backwards out the door and out of sight.
    HEINRICH
    That doesn't mean it's not important.
    Jack kneels down to Wilder's level and watches him carefully climb down the steep attic steps.
    JACK
    Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Depends.
    Jack looks up, Heinrich now standing over him.
    HEINRICH
    (plaintive)
    The weather is about to change.

INT. DINING ROOM
    The family eats dinner. The meal, the fried chicken, looks delicious. Everyone tries to establish a normal, cozy vibe despite faraway sirens and the general anxious mood.
    DENISE
    Aren't we eating a little early tonight?
    The sirens get closer until they're upon them, wrapping the house in sound, and then moving ahead and further away.
    BABETTE
    What do you call early?
    Denise and Steffie meet eyes.
    DENISE
    Is it because we want to get it out of the way?
    BABETTE
    What do we want to get out of the way?
    STEFFIE
    In case something happens.
    BABETTE
    Like what?
    The girls share a solemn look again.
    JACK
    This is delicious, Baba.
    (to Denise)
    You're not eating, honey.
    Denise claps a hand to her mouth and runs from the table.
    BABETTE
    Honey, are you OK?
    They hear her retching incompletely in the bathroom off the hall.
    HEINRICH
    She's showing outdated symptoms.
    They go on eating, exhibiting excessive politeness in the process. The family din diminishing as the sirens and squawks escalate.
    JACK
    Baba, could you pass more of the corn?
    BABETTE
    (handing it to her husband)
    Sure.
    JACK
    Thank you so much.
    Silence. Denise returns looking pale.
    BABETTE
    Are you feeling better?
    Jack starts to say--
    JACK
    These peppers have a wonderful--
    Suddenly, a different, more present air raid siren sounds shaking and startling them all. Jack immediately starts clearing the table, avoiding eye contact with anyone else.
    JACK
    What do we have for dessert?
    HEINRICH
    (leaping to his feet)
    I think that came from the firehouse.
    BABETTE
    I've never heard that sound before.
    JACK (O.S.)
    Amazing that little red brick building can make such a squawk.
    And again, the squawk, now even louder. Heinrich runs to the front door and opens it. Light and sound blast into the house. A voice, an announcement, embedded in the din. Jack returns with sponge cake and canned peaches. Heinrich hurries in with a quick, but deliberate walk.
    HEINRICH
    They want us to evacuate.
    BABETTE
    (standing)
    Did you get the impression they were only making a suggestion or was it a little more mandatory, do you think?
    HEINRICH
    It was a fire captain's car with a loudspeaker and it was going pretty fast.
    JACK
    (eating a sliced peach)
    In other words, you didn't have an opportunity to notice the subtle edges of intonation.
    HEINRICH
    The voice was screaming out.
    BABETTE
    Due to the sirens.
    HEINRICH
    It said something like, "Evacuate all places of residence. Cloud of deadly chemicals, cloud of deadly chemicals."
    Steffie starts crying. Jack puts his hand on her shoulder.
    JACK
    It's OK baby.
    Denise pushes her chair back and runs upstairs. Heinrich follows her. Babette heads to the kitchen. Denise runs from room to room throwing clothes into bags.
    DENISE
    Has anyone seen my ski mask?
    Heinrich climbs the attic stairs two at a time. He grabs the binoculars, his camouflage hat, the highway map and radio. As he takes the radio, it reveals Jack's discarded banana peel and a stack of books on the occult. Babette grabs tins and jars from the pantry. (Items/brands we recognize from their shops at the supermarket.) Jack, confused, balances plates somewhere between the dining room and kitchen.
    BABETTE (O.S.)
    Jack, just leave it!

EXT. GLADNEY HOUSE/STREET
    A light rain falls. They all head out into the night, hurriedly throwing the bags and other random things they packed into the car.
    DENISE
    (wearing her visor)
    I couldn't find my ski mask.
    BABETTE
    Why do you need a ski mask?
    DENISE
    It just seems like a thing you take in these kinds of things.
    Lights circle and dance off the buildings. The loudspeaker and sirens continuing somewhere nearby.
    DENISE
    (hesitates, looks around)
    Everyone's gone already.
    She's right, other houses are dark, driveways empty.
    STEFFIE
    (afraid)
    We're late.

EXT. MAIN STREET
    The lone car sails down the hill. The streets are empty.

INT. STATION WAGON
    Jack drives in a controlled hurry on the residential streets. The wipers going as the rain increases. He punches buttons on the radio trying to get some information. We move around the car from face to face.
    RADIO VOICE
    ...from the east are to take the parkway to the fourth service area, where they would proceed to a restaurant called Kung Fu Palace.
    STEFFIE
    Is that the place with lily ponds and live deer?
    BABETTE
    That's right, Steffie.
    DENISE
    Where do we go?
    JACK
    They'll tell us.
    DENISE
    Can we play my mix?
    BABETTE
    Later honey.
    Everyone is silent. Steffie says aloud:
    STEFFIE
    Was this a mild winter or a harsh winter?
    BABETTE
    Compared to what?
    STEFFIE
    I don't know.
    RADIO VOICE
    People from the west end--
    HEINRICH
    This is us--
    DENISE
    Shh!
    RADIO VOICE
    ...of town should head for the Boy Scout camp on Highway- 10 called Camp Daffodil, where Red Cross volunteers will dispense juice and coffee...
    JACK
    OK, we have a plan.
    They turn a corner, and Jack slams on the brakes.
    JACK
    Shit.
    They all thrust forward and back. Cars are lined up in front of them, slowed to a brutal crawl as traffic getting onto the main route is at a standstill. Denise leans forward and hands her dad a cassette tape. Heinrich looks out the back window: The world of sycamores and tall hedges left behind. A helicopter circles. WIDE of the line of cars and lights, snaking onto the main route past a gauntlet of used car lots, fast food chains, discount drugs and quad cinemas. An ambulance squawks stuck in the endless traffic. In the car: The kids scan the faces of people in adjacent cars.
    JACK
    Things should pick up some miles ahead where it turns into four lanes.
    STEFFIE
    They don't look scared in the Crown Victoria.
    DENISE
    Yeah, they're laughing.
    HEINRICH
    These guys aren't laughing.
    STEFFIE
    Where?
    HEINRICH
    In the Country Squire.
    DENISE
    They look devastated.
    JACK
    What does it matter what they're doing in other cars?
    STEFFIE
    I want to know how scared we should be.
    BABETTE
    I think we just don't know at this point, Stef.
    STEFFIE
    That makes me more scared.
    BABETTE
    Don't be scared.
    (aside to Jack)
    Nobody is coming in the opposite direction.
    JACK
    Police must have halted traffic coming this way.
    STEFFIE
    Where are the police? Did they just leave us to figure this out on our own?
    JACK
    (vaguely)
    They're around.
    CUT TO: The rain falls harder. They pass a home furnishing mart with sale signs, lit up from the inside. People inside staring out the huge window at the slowly passing cars.
    DENISE
    Why are they shopping for furniture during an airborne event?
    HEINRICH
    There's a sale.
    BABETTE
    Maybe they know something we don't.
    Jack hits more buttons on the radio.
    DENISE
    Maybe there's no way out.
    HEINRICH
    Maybe it's raining Nyodene D?
    STEFFIE
    Is that possible?
    RADIO VOICE
    People indoors are being asked to stay indoors.
    BABETTE
    Why would they say that?
    DENISE
    We were told to leave.
    They slowly approach an overpass, people, on foot, march along. They carry boxes, suitcases, blankets. They cradle pets and small children. Some children are pulled on sleds and wagons. There's a family wrapped completely in plastic, walking in lock step.
    RADIO VOICE
    Convulsions, coma, miscarriage.
    They move beneath the overpass. Some cars mount the grassy incline at the edge of the road creating a third lane of severely tilted traffic.
    STEFFIE
    They're passing us, Dad.
    JACK
    Technically, that's illegal.
    As Jack turns back to his family, up ahead, a car skids off the grassy incline, its nose hitting the pavement as it flips over and crashes into a car in their lane. Jack brakes and everyone screams. The traffic now funnels into one lane. A helicopter above them shining a white beam down on the mass of collapsed metal. Dazed occupants look out from both cars. Rescue workers swarm the scene. Heinrich watches with his binoculars.
    HEINRICH
    Baba cooked chili-fried chicken for dinner. Dad's favorite. Dad said not to worry, the plume will not come to us. But it wasn't a plume it was an airborne toxic event.
    Blood on a smashed window.
    HEINRICH (O.S.)
    We packed in a hurry. We ran to the car only to realize we were latecomers to an evacuation...
    Blood soaked through a white coat. Drops of blood on a tan handbag. And then the scene in WIDE of injured people, smoking steel, washed in an eerie white light. (These images are almost beautiful in composition.)
    JACK
    (to Babette)
    Is this just everything that happened?
    BABETTE
    Shh...
    Jack realizes his family, wife and daughters, Wilder even, all pay close attention to the story. They look riveted.
    HEINRICH
    (with spirited enjoyment)
    The rain pelted the roof of our station wagon. Pip pip pip. We hit traffic as we left the comfort of sycamores and hedges.
    He goes on about the people in other cars, the crash they just saw.
    HEINRICH
    Dad searched for information on the radio. Traffic lined up on the freeway like lighted up dominos. We passed people in distress. An unspoken bond with our fellow journeyman formed, and then a crash.
    They pass a Winnebago and a tractor intertwined. Rusty smoke coming from the scrap-metal.
    BABETTE
    Oh, those poor people.
    HEINRICH
    A car flipped on the road, people ran to their aid, we were waved by, only able to watch with sympathy and awe.
    As they finally pass the accident, Jack looks across Babette, in the passenger seat, to the crash site. In the foreground, Babette, out of focus, slips something into her mouth. Slowly she comes into focus as she swallows whatever it was she placed in her mouth.
    JACK
    What's that?
    BABETTE
    Drive the car, Jack.
    JACK
    I saw your throat contract. You swallowed something.
    BABETTE
    Just a Life Saver. Keep your eyes on--
    JACK
    You place a Life Saver in your mouth and you swallow it without an interval of sucking?
    BABETTE
    Swallow what? It's still in my mouth.
    She thrusts her face at him using her tongue to make a small lump in her cheek.
    JACK
    But you swallowed something. I saw.
    BABETTE
    That was just saliva that I didn't know what to do with. Drive the car, would you?
    Jack finds Denise's eyes in the rearview mirror and decides to leave it for now. He turns the wipers on a higher speed as the rain increases.
    JACK
    What's he want?
    A Mylex-suited man is waving them to merge to avoid another huge wreck. They pass a sign for the Most Photographed Barn in America.
    HEINRICH
    We're running out of gas.
    Jack looks at the dial quivering on E.
    BABETTE
    There's always extra.
    HEINRICH
    How can there be extra?
    BABETTE
    That's the way the tank is constructed so you don't run out.
    HEINRICH
    There can't be always extra. If you keep going, you run out.
    BABETTE
    You don't keep going forever.
    HEINRICH
    How do we know when to stop?
    JACK
    (smiling)
    When you pass a gas station!
    STEFFIE
    Look.
    Their station wagon drives into the deserted and rain-swept plaza with a gas station and pumps standing beneath an array of multicolor banners. Jack leaps out of the car and runs around to the pumps with his head tucked under the raised collar of his coat. A door from the office swings open and shut.
    JACK
    Nobody's here!
    Nobody hears or reacts from the car. He checks the nozzle, it's unlocked. He seizes the hose from the unleaded pump. The banners smacking in the wind.
    JACK
    It's working!
    Headlights from the road slowly creep by in the darkness. He regards his family through the rain-streaked windows, the kids horsing around, Babette laughing. He waits while the tank fills. The gas station sign on stilts is lit up behind Jack in the night sky. We see, but he doesn't: The presence of a wide dark shadow as it passes over the tall Shell gas station sign. The banners suddenly stop flapping. The rain slows to a drip. The door stops swinging. Jack hesitates. And then the Shell icon reappears out of the black. The wind picks up, the flags wagging, the rain falls again. The nozzle clicks: Full.
    RADIO VOICE
    ...dogs trained to sniff out Nyodene D are en route to the area from a chemical detection center in New Mexico.
    STEFFIE (V.O.)
    You didn't pay, Dad.
    CUT TO: They're back on the road.
    JACK
    There was nobody there.
    STEFFIE
    You could have left some money on the counter.
    JACK
    I was in a hurry. them a check.
    DENISE
    I'll send contaminated?
    STEFFIE
    Yeah, but you probably won't do that.
    BABETTE
    Nothing happens to dogs.
    DENISE
    How do you know?
    BABETTE
    Ask Jack.
    JACK
    Ask Heinrich.
    HEINRICH
    (probably bullshitting)
    It could be true. They use rats to test for things that humans can catch so it means we get the same diseases, rats and humans.
    BABETTE
    Besides, they wouldn't use dogs if they thought it could hurt them.
    DENISE
    Why not?
    BABETTE
    A dog is a mammal.
    DENISE
    So is a rat.
    BABETTE
    A rat is a vermin.
    HEINRICH
    Mostly what a rat is is a rodent.
    BABETTE
    It's also a vermin.
    STEFFIE
    A cockroach is a vermin.
    BABETTE
    A cockroach is an insect. You count the legs is how you know.
    STEFFIE
    It's also a vermin.
    JACK
    (to himself)
    Family is the cradle of the world's misinformation.
    Jack drives slowly up an incline in the road. The sky is strangely dark.
    DENISE
    Does a cockroach get cancer? No. That must mean a rat is more like a human than it is like a cockroach, even if they're both vermins, since a rat and a human can get cancer but a cockroach can't.
    HEINRICH
    In other words, she's saying that two things that are mammals have more in common than two things that are only vermins.
    As the car climbs further, Jack can see that the dark sky is moving up against a blue night.
    BABETTE
    Are you telling me that a rat is not only a vermin and a rodent but a mammal too?
    JACK
    Oh shit.
    Suddenly, lit up in the sky ahead of them is-- --the black billowing cloud itself. As the family looks, their car is hit with bright white light. A helicopter flies with a spot above them, dragging its spot across the traffic and up into the air revealing: The airborne toxic event, lighted by the clear beams of seven army helicopters, a roiling bloated slug-shaped mass. There are cracklings and sputterings, flashes of light, long looping streaks of chemical flame. It seems to be generating its own inner storms. The helicopters throb like giant appliances. The cloud is silver-tipped in the spotlights as it moves horribly through the night. The family watches from the car in humble awe. Heinrich fumbles to load his camera with film. Jack starts to say something but can't. Babette grabs his hand. He startles, then takes it.
    HEINRICH
    You can look at it and look at it.
    Denise and Steffie fight over the binoculars.
    BABETTE
    Come on kids, share please!
    Other drivers honk. Adults and children crowded at their windows, pink hands pressed against the glass. Cars have pulled up on the median, people outside watching. WIDE as flares come swooning from the helicopters, creamy bursts of red and white light. The traffic, lead by the streaking headlights in the rain snakes off to the right leaving the remarkable billowing cloud in the background. DISSOLVE TO: Lights speckled through a water streaked window. It's an hour or so later. The rain has stopped. Steffie and Wilder sleep. A single lane funnels into the Boy Scout Camp. Mylex suited men, surrounded by Day-Glo pylons, wave flashlights directing them to a packed parking lot, and onto an athletic field.
    MAN IN MYLEX SUIT
    Welcome to Camp Daffodil.
    The car bumps along dirt paths, over ruts and mounds. Near the main buildings there is a group of men and women, not wearing Mylex suits, who carry clip-boards and walkie- talkies. Denise, Heinrich, Babette look out their windows, glancing periodically at the night sky. Lights passing over their reflections in the glass.

INT. BOY SCOUT BARRACK
    A large, gray area, dank and bare and crowded with people, some on beach chairs brought from home, others on designated camp folding chairs. It's lit with overhead flood lights as well as small kerosene lamps. The Red Cross has set up cots and portable heaters, and volunteers come around with sandwiches and coffee. Nurses tend to some elderly people. Many radios go at once with talk and some music. Certain people hold court to smaller gatherings. We hear various theories in the air: "I hear we'll be allowed to go home first thing in the morning." "The government knows much more than they're saying." "A helicopter entered the toxic cloud and never reappeared." "The dogs are here from New Mexico. They parachuted into a meadow in a daring night drop." "The town of Farmington will be uninhabitable for forty years." "There are nine evacuation centers." "The governor is on his way to the capitol in an executive helicopter." We find Jack drinking coffee from a styrofoam cup. We hear Babette's voice. She's seated some distance away reading from a tabloid magazine to many elderly people from her posture class.
    BABETTE
    ...a researcher at the world- renowned institute has used hypnosis to induce hundreds of people to recall their previous- life experiences as pyramid- builders, exchange students, and extraterrestrials...
    Jack walks among the evacuees, more theories abound. He hesitates as he hears:
    VOICE
    The stuff they sprayed on the big spill was probably soda ash. But it was a case of too little too late.
    Jack hovers at the outside of the small group. It is in fact, Heinrich at the center speaking in an enthusiastic tone. Relishing, in his way, runaway calamity.
    HEINRICH
    My guess is they'll get some crop dusters up in the air at daybreak and bombard the toxic cloud with lots more soda ash which could break it up and scatter it into a million harmless puffs. Soda ash is the common name for sodium carbonate, which is used in the manufacture of glass, ceramics, detergents, and soaps. It's also what they use to make bicarbonate of soda, something a lot of you have probably guzzled after a night on the town.
    Laughter. The group grows, Jack getting shoved further back.
    HEINRICH
    What you're all probably wondering is what exactly is this Nyodene D. we keep hearing about? Well, I'm glad you asked that...
    More laughter. As he continues, Jack retreats so as not to be seen. Steffie and Wilder are asleep in one of the cots. Denise lies on her cot reading the Physicians Desk Reference. Babette goes through a canvas bag full of jars and cartons from their refrigerator and pantry. Denise looks up.
    JACK (O.S.)
    Heinrich seems to be coming out of his shell.
    Jack takes a seat on a cot.
    BABETTE
    Where is he? I haven't seen him.
    JACK
    See that knot of people? He's right in the middle. He's telling them what he knows about the toxic event.
    BABETTE
    What does he know?
    JACK
    Quite a lot, it turns out.
    BABETTE
    Why didn't he tell us?
    JACK
    He probably doesn't think it's worth his while to be funny and charming in front of his family. We present the wrong kind of challenge.
    BABETTE
    Don't you think you ought to go over there? Show him that his father is there for his big moment.
    JACK
    He'll only get upset if he sees me.
    BABETTE
    What if I went over?
    JACK
    He'll think I sent you.
    BABETTE
    Is that so awful?
    Jack leans in even closer. Their heads almost touching.
    JACK
    Just a Life Saver.
    BABETTE
    What?
    JACK
    Just some saliva that you didn't know what to do with.
    BABETTE
    It was a Life Saver.
    She makes an O with her thumb and index finger.
    JACK
    Give me one.
    BABETTE
    It was the last one.
    At the front hall of the structure, a woman is saying something about exposure to toxic agents. Her small voice is lost in the shuffling roar of the barracks.
    JACK
    What flavor--quick.
    BABETTE
    Cherry.
    Jack, frustrated, breaks the intimate moment and stands up, his attention caught by the woman's half-heard announcement.
    ANNOUNCEMENT
    ...and if you believe you've been exposed to the airborne toxic event for any amount of time, longer than ten seconds, please proceed to the--
    Denise now appears at her Dad's side.
    DENISE
    Didn't you hear what the voice said?
    JACK
    Something about exposure?
    DENISE
    That's right.
    JACK
    What's that got to do with us?
    DENISE
    Not us. You.
    JACK
    Why me?
    DENISE
    Aren't you the one who got out of the car to fill the gas tank?
    JACK
    But the airborne event wasn't on top of us then.
    DENISE
    It was ahead of us. Remember, you got back in the car and then there it was in all those lights.
    JACK
    Beautiful.
    DENISE
    Yes.
    JACK
    You're saying when I got out of the car, the cloud may have been close enough to rain all over me?
    DENISE
    It's not your fault, but you were practically right in it for two and a half minutes.
    CUT TO: Two lines form at the front of the barracks. A to M and N to Z. At the end of each line is a folding table with a micro computer on it. Technicians mill about, men and women with lapel badges and color coded armbands. A gaunt young man with a khaki jacket, the word SIMUVAC on his armband, talks to Jack. He types as Jack gives his name etc.. A family of four in bright orange life-jackets talks to a female technician (the woman with the small voice) in the N to Z line. She seems to be giving only good news to people.
    TECHNICIAN
    How long were you out there?
    A woman behind Jack starts sobbing.
    JACK
    Denise said two and a half minutes. Is that considered long or short?
    He regards Jack with a grimily superior air.
    TECHNICIAN
    Anything that puts you into skin and orifice contact with the actual emissions means we have a situation. This is Nyodene D.. A whole new generation of toxic waste. State of the art. One part per million can send a rat into a permanent state.
    JACK
    What about people in the car? I had to open the door to get out and get back in.
    TECHNICIAN
    I'd say their situation is they're minimal risks. It's the two and a half minutes standing right in it which makes me wince.
    JACK
    (nods)
    What does SIMUVAC stand for?
    TECHNICIAN
    It's short for simulated evacuation. A new state program they're battling over funds for.
    JACK
    But this evacuation isn't simulated. It's real.
    TECHNICIAN
    We know that. But we thought we could use it as a model.
    JACK
    Are you saying you saw a chance to use the real event in order to rehearse the simulation?
    TECHNICIAN
    We took it right to the streets.
    JACK
    How is it going?
    TECHNICIAN
    The insertion curve isn't as smooth as we would like.
    TECHNICIAN
    We don't have our victims laid out where we'd want them if this was an actual simulation. You have to make allowances for the fact that everything we see tonight is real. There's still a lot of polishing we have to do, but that's what this exercise is all about.
    JACK
    What about the computers? Is that real data you're running through the system or is it just practice stuff?
    TECHNICIAN
    You watch.
    He taps on the keys and studies the codes and responses on the data screen. He frowns and types some more. This goes on longer than is comfortable. In the other line, the life jacketed family laughs and thanks the female technician warmly and walks away. They look at Jack sympathetically. Jack folds his arms and tries not to feel self-conscious.
    JACK
    (idly)
    I was only out there two and a half minutes. That's how many seconds?
    TECHNICIAN (O.S.)
    I'm getting bracketed numbers with pulsing stars.
    JACK
    (his attention returning)
    What does that mean?
    The man makes a silencing gesture as something grabs his interest on the screen. The female technician chats amiably with another family.
    JACK
    I mean...am I going to die?
    TECHNICIAN
    Not as such.
    JACK
    What do you mean?
    TECHNICIAN
    Not in so many words.
    JACK
    How many words does it take?
    TECHNICIAN
    It's not a question of words. It's a question of years. We'll know more in fifteen years. In the meantime, we definitely have a situation.
    JACK
    What will we know in fifteen years?
    TECHNICIAN
    If you're still alive at that time, we'll know much more than we do now. Nyodene D. has a life span of roughly thirty years. You'll have made it halfway through.
    JACK
    So, to outlive this substance, I will have to make it into my seventies. Then I can begin to relax.
    TECHNICIAN
    (looks at Jack carefully)
    I wouldn't worry about what I can't see or feel. I'd go ahead and live my life. Get married, settle down, have kids. There's no reason you can't do these things, knowing what we know.
    JACK
    But you said we have a situation.
    TECHNICIAN
    I didn't say it. The computer did.
    JACK
    And what the computer says is not a simulation despite that armband you're wearing. It is real.
    TECHNICIAN
    It is real.

EXT. BARRACKS
    Several groups of people stand around fires burning in fifty- gallon drums. Some people sleep in their cars. Or in makeshift camps and tents. A man sells soft drinks and sandwiches from an open-sided vehicle. Parked nearby are buses, motorcycles, ambulettes. Beams of light swing slowly through the woods.
    RADIO VOICE
    Hog futures have declined in sympathy, adding bearishness to that market.
    Jack passes a carload of prostitutes from Iron City. The interior light is on illuminating their faces at the windows. A man leans against the front door on the driver's side, speaking through a small opening in the window and taking notes. Jack smiles. The man is Murray.
    JACK
    Murray!
    MURRAY
    All white people have a favorite Elvis song.
    JACK
    (greeting him)
    I thought you were going to New York for the holiday.
    Murray removes his glove to shake Jack's hand.
    MURRAY
    I stayed to look at car crash movies.
    (re the car of women)
    I heard a rumor about painted women and came out to take notes. One of them says she has a snap-off crotch. What do you think she means by that?
    JACK
    Well, they don't seem busy.
    MURRAY
    I don't think this is the kind of disaster that leads to sexual abandon. We might get one or two fellows skulking out eventually, but there won't be an orgiastic horde, not tonight anyway.
    Murray takes Jack's arm and they stroll past clusters of people around the oil drums. More rumors are overheard: "Three of the live deer at Kung Fu Palace are dead." "The governor is dead, his pilot and co- pilot seriously injured."
    MURRAY
    Any episodes of deja vu in your group?
    JACK
    No.
    MURRAY
    (pause, again)
    Any episodes of deja vu in your family?
    Jack hesitates.
    MURRAY
    Why do we think these things happened before? Simple. They did happen before, in our minds, as visions of the future.
    JACK
    Super natural stuff.
    MURRAY
    (gently)
    Maybe when we die, the first thing we'll say is, "I know this feeling. I was here before."
    (Murray hesitates, taking in his friend)
    How are you doing?
    Jack hesitates.
    JACK
    I'm dying, Murray. I spent two and a half minutes exposed to the toxic cloud.
    Murray squeezes Jack's arm.
    JACK
    Even if it doesn't kill me in a direct way, it will outlive me in my own body. I could die in a plane crash and the Nyodene D. would be thriving as my remains were laid to rest. A computer told me.
    He stops and looks sadly into Jack's eyes.
    MURRAY
    I am truly sorry, my friend. But computers make mistakes. Carpet static can cause a mistake--
    JACK
    It was in the barrack, there was no carpet--
    MURRAY
    Lint or hair in the circuits! Was the man behind the computer bald?
    (Jack nods)
    Was he wearing a sweater?! Jack, there are always mistakes.
    JACK
    (emotional)
    Thank you, Murray.
    MURRAY
    It's hard to make friends as adults and it's all the more special when it happens.
    JACK
    Not a word to Babette about any of this. She'd be devastated.
    MURRAY
    Of course.
    JACK
    Sometimes I actually think I see it coming for me. At night usually. The thing I've always feared. And now it's here.
    MURRAY
    We're all aware there's no escape from death. And how do we deal with this crushing knowledge? We repress, we disguise. But you don't know how to repress.
    The fires have burned down in the drums. The sandwich vendor shutters down his van.
    JACK
    I wish there was something I could do. I wish I could out-think the problem.
    MURRAY
    You thought Hitler would protect you. Some people are larger than life. Hitler is larger than death. I understand completely.
    JACK
    Do you? Because I wish I did.
    MURRAY
    It's totally obvious. The overwhelming horror would leave no room for your own death. It was a daring thing you did, a daring thrust. Daring but dumb.
    JACK
    If I could just lose interest in myself. Is there any chance of that happening?
    MURRAY
    None. Better men have tried.
    "Widespread looting by men in plastic sheets." "I've seen at least two more billowing clouds." Murray looks around making sure they're not being watched.
    MURRAY
    Here, take this. I have another one at home. In the drawer under my hotplate.
    Murray removes a dark object from the pocket of his jacket.
    MURRAY
    Heft it around. Get the feel. It's loaded.
    He places the small gun in Jack's palm.
    MURRAY
    It's an itty bitty thing, but it shoots real bullets. It's a 25- caliber Zumwalt automatic. German- made. Up your alley.
    JACK
    I don't want it.
    MURRAY
    (sad wisdom)
    What we are reluctant to touch often is the very fabric of our salvation.
    JACK
    What do I do with it?
    Murray walks into the half-light of a flickering flame coming from a nearby drum. For a moment his face looks sinister.
    MURRAY
    I believe, Jack, there are two kinds of people in the world. Killers and diers. Most of us are diers. We don't have the dispositions, the rage or whatever it takes to be a killer. But think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person. If he dies, you cannot. To kill him is to gain life-credit. Who knows, maybe violence is a form of rebirth.
    (pause)
    And maybe you can kill death.
    Jack pockets the gun. A shadow puppet show plays for children on a sheet. Two musicians sing and play a song, "The Cloud is Coming." It plays over the following:

INT. BARRACKS
    WIDE of the room. We slowly move in to find Babette walking back to her camp. Wilder, Steffie and Denise sleep on their cots. Heinrich, finished with his lecture, is making notations on a road map. The larger flood lights start to go out. The individual camps lit by the kerosene lamps. Babette sits down, as we come in closer all the way to her hand, which she opens, revealing a white pill. She places it in her mouth. BLACK.
    DENISE (V.O.)
    Jack!
    CLOSE: Jack opens his eyes. A hand presses down on his chest. He gasps. His eyes widening to reveal:
    DENISE
    Jack, wake up!
    Denise pounds on his arms and shoulders. The overhead lights are bright. Sound is muffled.
    DENISE
    We have to leave.
    Denise starts battering her mom now to wake her. Sound returns: Sirens from outside. A voice shouting instructions through a bullhorn. Car horns and a clanging bell somewhere.
    BABETTE
    Five more minutes.
    DENISE
    No more minutes!
    Babette is hoisted by her daughters who start to pack.
    BULLHORN (O.S.)
    The wind has changed. Wind change. Cloud has changed direction. Toxic, toxic, heading here.
    Jack manages to sit up: People are hurriedly dressing and packing. Wilder is eating a cookie.
    BULLHORN (O.S.)
    Proceed to your vehicles, proceed to your vehicles.
    DENISE
    Why does she have to say everything twice? We can hear her the first time.
    HEINRICH
    She just likes to hear herself talk.

EXT. CAMP SITE. MORNING
    A woman with an armband hands out gauzy white surgical masks that cover the nose and the mouth. She counts out six and hands them to Jack and Babette who run by with their family. A scene of panoramic disorder. Cars bleat, trying to escape. Cars trapped in mud, cars stalled, cars crawling along the one-lane escape route. A car screeches, nearly hitting a running man. The man freezes with his hands braced on the hood. The car behind it tries to stop but rear-ends the first car, now hurtling it into the man who flips up into the air. The Gladneys run wearing their masks. Babette looks up at the sky. A doll bounces out of Steffie's open backpack. Cars careen into the woods, looking for shortcuts. Cars hemmed in by trees, boulders, other cars. Sirens call and fade, horns blare in desperation. People running. Tents wind-blown into trees, families abandoning their vehicles and heading on foot for the parkway. Incoherent cries. Babette and the kids arrive at the station wagon.
    DENISE
    Steffie lost her bunny!
    They call for Jack. Jack, nearly hit by a car, approaches.
    BABETTE
    Get Steffie's bunny!
    Jack, confused, looks around and then sees the stuffed animal lying amidst the fleeing evacuees. He tosses Babette the keys and runs back in the opposite direction, against the tide of people. A man clips Jack's shoulder. Jack falls down. Feet trampling past his head. The doll lies a few feet away. He reaches for it. A hand reaches down and picks it up just before Jack can grab it. Jack stands. The man, also masked, hands the doll to Jack. CLOSE on the hand, the long fingers, the thin red scar.
    JACK
    Thank you.
    The man bows strangely, winks then turns and disappears into the throng. Jack turns back. His family shouts and waves from the station wagon across the lawn. Jack runs. Jack arrives and unlocks the doors. As his family dives in, he watches a group of men proceeding calmly to a Land Rover. They have lean frames, short haircuts, and boxy heads. Their bumper sticker reads: GUN CONTROL IS MIND CONTROL. They rev up their vehicle. Jack quickly gets inside and starts the engine. The Land Rover drives straight into dense underbrush, away from the dirt road and away from all the other cars attempting shortcuts. Jack follows in their wagon, jouncing badly in the brush, dangling up inclines, over hidden stones. He glances up, searching the sky for clues.
    BABETTE
    Where are you going?!
    DENISE/STEFFIE
    Jack!/This isn't a road!
    JACK
    I have a feeling this Land Rover knows how to stay alive.
    The tail lights of the Land Rover get further ahead until they disappear out of sight.
    HEINRICH
    Headlights at four o'clock.
    Jack clocks another set of faraway lights and heads in that direction.
    JACK
    On it.
    The car heels like a toboggan.
    DENISE
    The lights aren't getting any closer.
    Babette turns on the radio. It's fuzzy.
    RADIO VOICE
    ...the evacuees are to head in the direction of Iron City.
    Horns blow from somewhere. And then rotors. Jack looks up at the sky poking between the trees.
    DENISE
    Now they're over there!
    Lights appear in an entirely different direction. Jack turns now toward these shining yellow spots. He hits the accelerator, jerks the wheel and arm-wrestles the car through a thicket of white pine--heading in the direction of lights. The car barrels through brush and branches, bouncing up and down. Steffie turns and looks out the back window. The Rover is driving away in the opposite direction.
    STEFFIE
    They're behind us now!
    Jack hits the brakes. Jack backs up.
    DENISE
    (to Steffie)
    Do it, do it.
    Steffie barks convincingly like a dog.
    DENISE
    (impressed)
    That is good.
    HEINRICH
    (pointing)
    Fourteen-hundred o'clock!
    Jack jerks the wagon down another path. They bounce forward, car sinking slightly. Water spraying the windows.
    STEFFIE
    We're in the water, Dad!
    JACK
    I realize that now.
    Jack struggles to get the car over to the opposite bank of the creek. Rain falls thickly through the high beams. Exhaust billows through the pipes as the vehicle sinks.
    HEINRICH
    Dad, turn off the engine.
    Jack does.
    STEFFIE
    Do sheep have lashes?
    BABETTE
    Ask your father.
    STEFFIE
    Dad, do sheep have lashes?
    JACK
    Doesn't anyone want to pay attention to what is actually happening?
    BABETTE
    Your Dad wants credit for fording the creek.
    JACK
    I don't want credit! Forget it, go back to your conversation.
    STEFFIE
    Do sheep have lashes?
    HEINRICH
    We're going sideways.
    They all look around and discover this is true. Babette turns to Jack. WIDE: The car drifting down the creek. Back inside the car. On their faces. Drifting.
    DENISE
    What if there was a waterfall?
    STEFFIE
    Dad, is there a waterfall?
    Jack tries steering the car like a boat. Everyone is screaming now. For a moment, the creek seems to get more shallow and a wheel touches down on the rocky ground beneath.
    HEINRICH
    Turn it back on!
    Jack quickly turns the key. The car starts.
    HEINRICH
    Floor it.
    Jack hits the gas. The car sputters and lurches forward and skids through the water, swinging wildly left and right as it reaches land and climbs the opposite bank. Jack twists the car through more brush, up onto an incline, which angles the vehicle's nose upward. In an instant, he revs it, sending the car sailing momentarily through the air, blasting through branches-- Everyone screams. --and into an open field. They land on the grass with several bounces.
    WILDER
    Again!
    The screams subside and everyone goes silent. Up ahead is a corn field. CUT TO: Cars sit in bumper to bumper traffic on a winding road. A family waits, bored in their vehicle. Suddenly, the Gladney's station wagon breaks out of the corn and merges into the line.
    JACK
    (waving to the friendly family that lets him in)
    Thank you!
    A long line of traffic. LONG DISSOLVE Close on Steffie as she slides across the wall. Her exposed pale green eyes above her mask, watching. She passes a poster breaking down the six striking surfaces of the human hand.
    RADIO VOICE
    The cloud continues to travel west as residents are now being asked to relocate to Iron City, where local businesses have opened their doors to shelter evacuees...

INT. KARATE STUDIO, IRON CITY. DAY
    A group of kids, including Heinrich and Denise, practice karate moves. The Gladneys and about forty other families are in the abandoned studio. Besides Steffie, a few people still wear their masks.
    VOLUNTEER
    (shouts through his hands)
    No one is allowed to leave the building! If somebody comes up to me and says can I leave, I am just going to say the same thing I am saying now. No one is allowed to leave the building!
    Jack and other volunteers set up air mattresses and cots, some food and coffee. We overhear (as before at the Boy Scout camp) more rumors. Jack finds Babette who gazes solemnly out the window. He takes a styrofoam cup of a coffee and a wrapped Twinkie over to her.
    JACK
    How is Babette?
    She takes the coffee and raises it to her lips but doesn't drink. Her eyes remained fixed on the streaked window.
    BABETTE
    I don't like the latest rumor.
    JACK
    Tell me.
    BABETTE
    They're lowering in technicians from army helicopters to plant microorganisms in the core of the toxic cloud.
    JACK
    What don't you like about it?
    BABETTE
    I don't know, it's like the greater the scientific advance, the more scared I get.
    Jack looks up at the sky.
    MAN WITH TV (O.S.)
    There's nothing on network.
    A middle-aged man wearing a fur-lined cap with lowered flaps, and carrying a tiny TV set, walks slowly through the studio.
    MAN WITH TV
    Not a word, not a picture. On the Glassboro channel we rate fifty-two words by actual count. No film footage, no live report. Does this thing happen so often that nobody cares?
    Murmurs of ascent from the crowd.
    MAN WITH TV
    We were scared to death!
    SOMEONE ELSE
    We still are!
    MAN WITH TV
    We left our homes, drove through a rainstorm, we saw that deadly specter. That death ship that sailed across the sky. Are they telling us it was insignificant?
    MAN WITH TV
    Do they think this is just television? Don't they know it's real? Shouldn't the streets be crawling with cameras and reporters? Shouldn't we be yelling out the window at them, "Leave us alone, we've been through enough already!" Haven't we earned the right to despise their idiot questions? Look at us in this place. We are quarantined. We are like lepers in medieval times. Everything we love and worked for is under serious threat. Even if there hasn't been great loss of life, don't we deserve attention for our suffering, our terror? Isn't fear news?
    The group bursts into applause. Babette nods her head solemnly, moved by the speech. The man turns one more time, displaying the TV to the audience. As he completes his turn, he comes face to face with Jack who claps. We see Jack reflected in the TV. A change comes across the man's face.
    MAN WITH TV
    (afraid)
    I saw this before.
    JACK
    Saw what before?
    MAN WITH TV
    You were standing there, I was standing here. Your features incredibly sharp and clear. It all happened before. Steam hissing in the pipes. Tiny little hairs standing out in your pores. That identical look on your face.
    JACK
    What look?
    MAN WITH TV
    Haunted. Ashen. Lost.
    On Jack reflected in the man's TV.
    JACK (V.O.)
    It was nine days before they told us we could go back home.

INT. SUPERMARKET, BLACKSMITH. DAY
    ANNOUNCEMENT
    Welcome back, shoppers!
    Part III: DYLARAMA Jack pushes the cart, Murray ambling next to him, a basket of generic goods around his arm.
    MURRAY
    It's comforting to know the supermarket hasn't changed since the toxic event.
    A line waits as a bloodstained man pounds at strips of meat and another pulls a few loaves of bread from an oven.
    MURRAY
    In fact, the supermarket has only gotten better. Between the unpackaged meat and fresh bread... It's like a Persian bazaar.
    (nods to himself)
    Everything is fine and will continue to be fine as long as the supermarket doesn't slip.
    A cleaver cuts into a rib. A speck of blood hits the face of the woman waiting.
    MURRAY
    Do you know, the Tibetans believe there is a transitional state between death and rebirth. That's what I think when I come here. The supermarket is a waiting place. It recharges us spiritually, it's a gateway.
    And now we rise up and see the market in all its glory.
    MURRAY
    Look how bright. Look how full of psychic data. Waves and radiation. All the letters and numbers are here, all the colors of the spectrum, all the voices and sounds, all the code words and ceremonial phrases. We just have to know how to decipher it.
    SOMEONE (O.S.)
    Tegrin, Denorex, Selsun Blue.
    MURRAY
    (and then)
    How is that lovely woman of yours?
    JACK
    She's been different somehow since the event.
    MURRAY
    We've suffered a collective trauma.
    JACK
    She wears her sweatsuit all the time, she stares out of windows and cries for no reason. I don't know how to help her.
    JACK
    And I've been distracted myself, preparing for the Hitler conference and...
    MURRAY
    And the kids?
    JACK
    Back in school. Steffie no longer wears her protective mask.
    MURRAY
    (pointedly)
    And you?
    JACK
    I've got another doctor's appointment tomorrow.
    MURRAY
    What does he say about your status as a doomed man?
    JACK
    I haven't told him. And since he hasn't found anything wrong, I'm not going to bring it up.
    MURRAY
    I lie to doctors all the time.
    JACK
    So do I. But why?
    MURRAY
    You know the Elvis struggle you helped me with? It turns out, tragically, I would have won anyway.
    JACK
    What happened?
    MURRAY
    Cotsakis, my rival, is no longer in the land of the living.
    JACK
    He's--
    MURRAY
    Dead. Lost in the surf off Malibu. During term break. I found out an hour ago and came right here.
    MURRAY
    I'm sorry to tell you.
    (whispers so others can hear)
    Particularly because of your condition.
    JACK
    Poor Cotsakis, lost in the surf. That enormous man.
    MURRAY
    He was big all right.
    JACK
    Enormously so.
    JACK
    He must have weighed three hundred pounds.
    MURRAY
    Oh, easily.
    JACK
    Dead. A big man like that.
    MURRAY
    (picking up a Tabloid magazine)
    It's better not knowing them when they die. But it's better them than us.
    JACK
    To be so enormous. Then to die. I can picture him so clearly.
    MURRAY
    Maybe once we stop denying death, we can proceed calmly to die. We simply walk toward the sliding doors.
    Jack's face is suddenly emotional. Sounds begin to isolate themselves. The drone of maintenance systems, the rustle of newsprint, the whispers of elderly women. The beeping of the holographic scanners at check-out. And the sad shuffle of everyone's steps. Finally we focus on the airy movement of the automatic doors opening and closing like abrupt breaths. People check out and exit into the white light of the parking lot. Amidst the exiting bodies, a narrow, blurry figure, blown out by the sun, enters the store. He comes toward Jack, taking a cart as he proceeds.
    JACK
    What if death is nothing but sound? You hear it forever. Sound all around.
    MURRAY
    Uniform, white.
    Jack's cart rams into another with a clank. The scarred hand clutches the handle of his cart. Jack looks up, but the man has turned, only his back visible as he disappears down another aisle.
    MURRAY
    It's strange in a way, isn't it? That we can picture the dead.
    CUT TO: Malibu horizon. A big hairy man rides a giant wave on a surfboard.
    DOCTOR LU (V.O.)
    (cheerful)
    Why so many checkups, Mr. Gladney? In the past, you were always afraid to know if anything was wrong.

INT. DOCTOR'S OFFICE. DAY
    The whizzing sound of a dot-matrix printer. Jack dresses across from Doctor Lu, 50's, who unwraps and looks at the accordian print-out.
    JACK
    I'm still afraid.
    Doctor Lu smiles broadly, waiting for a punchline that doesn't come.
    DOCTOR LU
    Well, I'm glad you're finally taking your status as patient seriously.
    JACK
    My status?
    DOCTOR LU
    Yes. Once people leave the doctor's office they tend to forget that they are patients. But a doctor doesn't cease being a doctor at close of day. Neither should patient. I don't think I like your potassium very much at all.
    JACK
    (concerned)
    What's that mean?
    DOCTOR LU
    There isn't time to explain. We have true elevation and false elevation. That's all you need to know.
    He stands and heads toward the door indicating the appointment is ending.
    JACK
    Exactly how elevated is my potassium?
    DOCTOR LU
    It's gone through the roof, evidently.
    JACK
    Could this potassium be an indication of some condition just beginning to manifest itself, some condition caused perhaps by an ingestion, an exposure, an involuntary spillage-intake, some substance, say in the air or rain?
    DOCTOR LU
    (pointedly)
    Have you come in contact with such a substance? Were you exposed to that cloud?
    JACK
    Why, do the numbers show some sign of possible exposure?
    DOCTOR LU
    If you haven't been exposed, then they couldn't very well show a sign, could they?
    JACK
    Then we agree.
    DOCTOR LU
    And you would have no reason to lie to me.
    Jack says nothing. The doctor looks at Jack carefully. Then he makes a note on the chart.
    DOCTOR LU
    I'm going to send you to Glassboro for further tests. They have a brand new facility called Autumn Harvest Farms. Have you heard of it?
    (Jack shakes his head)
    They have gleaming new equipment. It gleams, absolutely. Tell them to send you back to me with sealed results. Together, as doctor and patient, we can do things that neither of us could do separately.
    Jack nods and passes the doctor at the doorway.
    JACK
    Doctor Lu, have you heard of Dylar?
    DOCTOR LU
    Is that an island in the Persian Gulf?
    JACK
    No, it's a medi--
    DOCTOR LU
    One of those oil terminals crucial to the survival of the West.
    JACK
    --it's not...it's something that comes in a little white tablet.
    DOCTOR LU
    Never heard of it.

EXT. GLADNEY'S HOME
    We move up to an upper window of the house. Babette stares out from the bedroom. She sobs.

INT. AUTUMN HARVEST FARMS
    Jack moves slowly into a giant MRI machine.

INT. BEDROOM
    Babette wears a loose gray sweatsuit. Her hair piled on top of her head. She sobs at the window. A radiator rattles. We STAY with her as she turns and enters the bathroom. She crouches down and lifts up the radiator cover. She stashes something underneath and then replaces the cover. She walks through the hallway, crying.
    RADIO VOICE
    Life is slowly but surely returning to normal here in Blacksmith and the surrounding areas. I'm told German shepherds have sniffed out only a very low level of toxic material on the edge of town. But there is no more danger posed to humans or animals. The last of the emergency personnel are packing up and taking the dogs with them...
    She picks up clothes left in the hallway, toys. She enters the laundry room, takes wet clothes out of the washer and tosses them in the dryer. Inside the dryer: The jeans flop around. The sound of the studs hitting the metal sides. We pick up Babette walking and begin to HEAR Heinrich from downstairs:
    HEINRICH (O.S.)
    The real issue is the kind of radiation that surrounds us every day. Your radio, your TV, your microwave oven, the power lines outside the door. Forget clouds. It's the electrical and magnetic fields.
    Babette comes down the stairs to the kitchen.
    STEFFIE
    Is Wilder talking less now?
    HEINRICH
    If they released the true findings, there'd be billions of dollars in law suits.
    JACK
    That's a little extreme isn't it?
    HEINRICH
    What's extreme, what I said or what would happen?
    We see the family now setting the table for dinner. Jack looks over at Babette.
    STEFFIE
    Why are mountains upstate?
    DENISE
    Mountains are always upstate.
    STEFFIE
    Say more.
    DENISE
    This way the snow melts as planned in the spring and flows downhill to the reservoirs near the cities, which are kept in the lower end of the state for exactly this reason.
    JACK
    (to Heinrich)
    Is that true?
    HEINRICH
    (to Jack)
    What do you think?
    JACK
    I honestly don't know.
    BABETTE
    Kids, listen to me. Hold hands when you cross the street. OK? Be careful around swimming pools. If you think someone is a kidnapper, they probably are.
    The kids look back at her blankly.
    JACK
    (to Babette)
    Where are you going?
    BABETTE
    They gave me a new class at the church.
    JACK
    In what?
    BABETTE
    Eating and drinking.
    STEFFIE
    Isn't that kind of obvious?
    DENISE
    What's there to teach?
    JACK
    And isn't it kind of late? It's almost night.
    BABETTE
    What is night? It happens seven times a week. Where is the uniqueness in this?
    DENISE
    Jack, can you help me with my homework after dinner?

INT. UPSTAIRS HALLWAY
    Denise leads Jack, their feet making soft padding sounds on the carpet.
    DENISE
    The homework was a canard. I want to show you something.

INT. MASTER BATHROOM. LATER
    Denise kneels down and lifts the radiator cover and reaches underneath. Taped to the bottom of the radiator cover is a pill bottle. Jack crouches down next to her.
    TV VOICE
    They're not booing, they're saying Bruce.
    CLOSE on the amber bottle. Through the crinkled transparent tape, the word: Dylar
    JACK
    (simply)
    Dylar.
    They look at one another. Jack removes the bottle and opens it into his palm. 4 pills remain.
    DENISE
    There are four left. Take one for proof. We need physical evidence.
    Jack takes one of the pills and puts it in his pocket. He slides the remaining three pills back in the container, tapes it back and then carefully replaces the radiator cover.
    TV VOICE
    Bruce, Bruce, Bruce!
    DENISE
    We say nothing to Baba.
    JACK
    All right.
    DENISE
    She'll only say she doesn't remember why she put it there.
    JACK
    I'll go to the drug store first thing in the morning and ask the pharmacist about Dylar.
    DENISE
    I already did that.
    JACK
    When?
    DENISE
    Around Christmas. I went to three drugstores--
    JACK
    What did they say?
    DENISE
    Never heard of it. It's not on any list.
    JACK
    Unlisted.
    DENISE
    We have to call her doctor.
    JACK
    I'll call him tomorrow.
    DENISE
    Call him now. This is serious, Jack. Something is wrong with her.
    JACK
    (convinced)
    I'll call him now. I'll call him at home.
    DENISE
    (ruthless)
    Surprise him.
    JACK
    (getting excited about the plan)
    If I get him at home, he won't be screened by a receptionist.
    DENISE
    Call him at home! Wake him up. Trick him into telling us what we want to know.
    JACK
    I'll call him at home. Wake him up. Trick him into telling us what we want to know.
    DOCTOR'S VOICE
    Hello?

INT. KITCHEN
    Jack, a phone book open on the counter, talks on the wall phone. Denise huddles nearby, making sure no one is coming.
    JACK
    Doctor Hookstratten, this is Jack Gladney, you treat my wife, Babette.
    DOCTOR'S VOICE
    OK.
    JACK
    I'm sorry to call you at home, but I'm concerned about Babette. And I'm pretty sure the medication you prescribed is causing the problem.
    DOCTOR'S VOICE
    What problem?
    JACK
    Memory lapse.
    He winks at Denise.
    DOCTOR'S VOICE
    You would call a doctor at home to talk about memory lapse. If everyone with memory lapse called a doctor at home, what would we have? The ripple effect would be tremendous.
    JACK
    They are frequent. The lapses.
    Denise is pouring them both glasses of milk. She hands one to Jack.
    DOCTOR'S VOICE
    Frequent. You would call a doctor in his home after ten o'clock at night. You would say to him, "Memory lapse." Why not tell me she has gas? Call me at home for gas?
    DENISE
    (whispers)
    Frequent AND prolonged.
    JACK
    Frequent and prolonged, doctor. It has to be the medication.
    DOCTOR'S VOICE
    What medication?
    JACK/DENISE
    Dylar./Dylar.
    DOCTOR'S VOICE
    Never heard of it.
    JACK
    A small white tablet.
    DENISE
    (whispers)
    Comes in an amber bottle.
    JACK
    Comes in an amber--
    DOCTOR'S VOICE
    You would describe a tablet as small and white and expect a doctor to respond, at home, after ten at night. Why not tell me it is round? This is crucial to our case.
    JACK
    It's an unlisted drug.
    DOCTOR'S VOICE
    I never saw it. I certainly never prescribed it for your wife.
    DENISE
    Tell him I went to three pharma--
    JACK
    OK, thank you, doctor, sorry to have bothered you at home.
    He hangs up.
    JACK
    I'm never in control of what I say to doctors.
    They look at each other, grimly.
    JACK
    I'll take the tablet and have it analyzed by someone in the chemistry department at the school.
    (pause)
    Unless you've already done that too?
    Denise shakes her head slowly. CUT TO: Close on the white tablet held delicately between two narrow fingers.

INT. CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT, COLLEGE-ON-THE HILL. DAY
    It's rotated a couple of times.
    WINNIE (O.S.)
    It's not a tablet in the old sense.
    On Winnie Richards. She's tall and gawky with bright and excited eyes. (We met her previously in the cafeteria.) She lopes around the room rapidly circling her cluttered desk which includes a small, open chocolate milk carton. Jack tries to follow.
    WINNIE
    I've never seen anything quite like it.
    JACK
    What can you tell me about it? Try not to be too brilliant. I haven't eaten lunch yet.
    She blushes.
    WINNIE
    The medication in Dylar is encased in a polymer membrane. Water from your gastrointestinal tract seeps through the membrane at a carefully controlled rate.
    JACK
    What does the water do?
    WINNIE
    It dissolves the medication encased in the membrane. The medicine then passes out of the polymer tablet through a single small hole.
    JACK
    It took me a while to spot the hole.
    WINNIE
    That's because it's laser-drilled. It's not only tiny but stunningly precise in its dimensions.
    JACK
    (shakes his head)
    Lasers, polymers.
    Winnie exits the room, folders pressed to her chest. Jack follows her down the hall.
    WINNIE
    I'm not an expert in any of this, Jack, but I can tell you it's a wonderful little system.
    JACK
    What's the point of all this precision?
    WINNIE
    The drug is delivered at specified rates for extended periods. This system is efficient.
    JACK
    I'm impressed. I'm even dazzled. Now tell me what the medication is designed to do? What is Dylar?
    She enters another small room full of bottled brains. The table is fitted with a sink and small note pads and lab instruments. She turns around dramatically.
    WINNIE
    I don't know.
    JACK
    Of course you know. You're brilliant. Everyone says so.
    WINNIE
    What else can they say? I do neurochemistry. No one knows what that is.
    She unlocks a back door to the room and opens it onto the campus.
    WINNIE
    Jack, all I can tell you for certain is that the substance contained in Dylar is some kind of psychopharmaceutical. It's probably designed to interact with a distant part of the human cortex.
    Jack starts to follow but she indicates for him to stay.
    WINNIE
    I wish I knew more. But I can tell you this. It's not on the market.
    JACK
    I found it in an ordinary prescription vial.
    WINNIE
    I don't care where you found it. This is unknown.

INT. GLADNEY'S HOME. NIGHT
    Babette enters. She hangs up her coat, drops the car keys in a dish. A light clicks on in the corner of the living room. She startles. Jack sits in arm chair illuminated dramatically by the floor lamp. The light has come on too bright so Jack has to click the switch a couple of times more for it to dim down.
    JACK
    It's time for a major dialogue. You know it, I know it.
    Babette says nothing.
    JACK
    We found the Dylar.
    BABETTE
    What Dylar?
    JACK
    Come on, Baba. It was taped to the radiator cover.
    BABETTE
    Why would I tape something to the radiator cover?
    JACK
    That's exactly what Denise predicted you would say.
    BABETTE
    She's usually right.
    She heads toward the stairs. Jack gets out of the chair and follows.
    JACK
    You'll tell me all about Dylar. If not for my sake, then for your little girl's. She's been worried - worried sick. Besides, you have no more room to maneuver. We've backed you against the wall.
    Babette turns around, stares at Jack.
    JACK
    I had one of the tablets analyzed by an expert. Dylar is almost as ingenious as the microorganisms that ate the billowing cloud.
    She continues up the stairs and down the upstairs hallway, Jack following.
    JACK
    We know something else, something crucially damaging to your case. We know Dylar is not available to the general public. As you well know, I don't have the temperament to hound people. But Denise is a different kind of person. If you don't tell me what I want to know, I'll unleash your little girl.
    JACK
    She'll come at you with everything she has. She'll hammer you right into the ground. You know I'm right, Babette.
    They've arrived in their bedroom. Babette removes her watch and bracelets and places them on the bureau. She takes her hair down and puts the bungie next to her bed. She disappears into the closet. We hear her changing her clothes. Jack waits. Finally:
    BABETTE (O.S.)
    (in a small but decisive voice)
    Just let me tell it in my own way.
    JACK
    Take your time. We've got all day. I'll be right here for as long as it takes.
    Babette reappears in a baggy pink sweatshirt and underwear.
    BABETTE
    I don't know exactly when it started. Maybe a year and a half ago. I thought I was going through a phase, some kind of watermark period in my life.
    JACK
    Landmark.
    BABETTE
    Or watershed. I thought. Middle age. Something like that. The condition would go away and I'd forget all about it. But it didn't go away.
    JACK
    What condition?
    BABETTE
    Never mind that for now.
    JACK
    I've never seen you like this. This is the whole point of Babette. She's a joyous person. She doesn't succumb to gloom or self-pity.
    BABETTE
    Let me tell it, Jack.
    JACK
    All right.
    BABETTE
    You know how I am. I think everything is correctable. Given the right attitude, a person can change a harmful condition by reducing it to its simplest parts. So, when I realized this condition was not going away, I set out to reduce it to its parts. I went to libraries and bookstores, watched cable TV, made lists and diagrams, talked to a holy Sikh man in Iron City and even studied the occult, hiding the books in the attic so you and Denise wouldn't find them and wonder what was going on.
    JACK
    All this without my knowing. The whole point of Babette is that she speaks to me, she reveals and confides.
    BABETTE
    This is not a story about your disappointment at my silence. The theme of this story is my pain and my attempts to end it.
    OK.
    BABETTE
    I did all this research, but I was getting nowhere. The condition hung over my life. Then one day at the supermarket, I was reading a tabloid on line. There was an ad. Never mind exactly what it said. Volunteers wanted for secret research. I answered the ad and was interviewed by a small firm doing research in psychobiology. Let's call the company Gray Research, although that's not the true name. Let's call my contact Mr. Gray. Mr. Gray is a composite. I was eventually in touch with three or four or more people at the firm.
    JACK
    One of those long, low, pale brick buildings with electrified fencing and low-profile shrubbery.
    BABETTE
    I never saw their headquarters. Never mind why. The point is, I took test after test. Emotional, psychological, motor response, brain activity. Mr. Gray said there were three finalists and I was one of them.
    JACK
    Finalists for what?
    BABETTE
    We were to be test subjects in the development of a super experimental and top-secret drug. Code-name: Dylar.
    JACK
    (dryly)
    Aha.
    BABETTE
    He'd found a Dylar receptor in the human brain and was putting the finishing touches on the tablet itself. I felt hopeful for the first time in so long. But there were many dangers in running tests on humans. Among other things it could cause death.
    (Jack raises his eyebrows)
    Or I could live, but my brain could die. I could not distinguish words from things, so that if someone said "falling plane," I would fall to the floor and take cover.
    (sadly)
    In the end, it just made me forget things.
    JACK
    And they let you go ahead anyway, a human test animal?
    Babette gets into bed, pulling up the covers.
    BABETTE
    No, they didn't. They finally said it was all too risky - legally, ethically and so forth.
    JACK
    Well, that's good--
    BABETTE
    No. I refused to accept this. I want you to try to understand what happened next. If I'm going to tell you the story at all, I have to include this aspect of it, this grubby little corner of the human heart. You say Babette reveals and confides.
    JACK
    This is the point of Babette.
    BABETTE
    Good. I will reveal and confide. But you don't want to know what happened. You think you do, but you don't.
    Jack hesitates.
    BABETTE
    Mr. Gray and I made a private arrangement. We would conduct the experiments on our own. I would be cured of my condition, he would be acclaimed for a wonderful medical breakthrough.
    JACK
    OK.
    BABETTE
    It involved an indiscretion. This was the only way I could get Mr. Gray to let me use the drug. It was my last resort, my last hope. First I'd offered him my mind. Now I offered my body.
    Jack feels a sensation of warmth creeping up his back and radiating outward across his shoulders. Babette looks away. Jack studies her features. Finally:
    JACK
    How do you offer your body to a composite of three or more people? This is a compound person.
    JACK
    Let's concentrate on the genitals. How many sets are we talking about?
    BABETTE
    Just one person's, Jack. A key person, the project manager.
    JACK
    So we are no longer referring to the Mr. Gray who is a composite.
    BABETTE
    He is now one person. We went to a grubby little motel room. Never mind where or when. It had the TV up near the ceiling. This is all I remember. I was so ashamed I wore a ski mask to cover my face.
    JACK
    (struggling with his anger)
    You call this an indiscretion? You traded sex for pills.
    BABETTE
    Jack--
    JACK
    You walked barefoot on the fire retardant carpet. Mr. Gray put the car rental keys on the dresser and then he entered you.
    BABETTE
    Don't use that term. You know how I feel about that word.
    JACK
    (furious)
    He effected what is called entry. In other words, he inserted himself inside you.
    BABETTE
    No one was inside anyone. That is stupid usage. I did what I had to do. I was remote. I was operating outside of myself. It was a capitalist transaction. You cherish your wife who tells you everything. I am doing my best to be that person.
    Jack paces, trying to harness all his different emotions. A sadness shows in her eyes.
    JACK
    I'm only trying to understand. How many times did you go to this motel?
    BABETTE
    More or less on a continuing basis for some months. That was the agreement.
    Jack watches her carefully.
    JACK
    Did...did you enjoy having sex with him?
    BABETTE
    I only remember the TV up near the ceiling, aimed down at us.
    The white light shining from the streetlight outside flickers for a moment through the window. Babette begins to cry softly. Jack goes into the bathroom and splashes water on his face. The only towel available is small and pink with a tic-tac-toe design.
    JACK
    Did he have a sense of humor? I know women appreciate men who can joke about sex. I can't, unfortunately, and after this I don't think there's much chance I'll be able to learn.
    BABETTE
    It's better if you know him as Mr. Gray. That's all. He's not tall, short, young or old. He doesn't laugh or cry. It's for your own good.
    He exits the bathroom through the other door into the hallway. He hesitates. Babette cries softly. Jack reenters the bedroom.
    JACK
    You have to tell me who he is. I need to know.
    BABETTE
    No. How do I know you won't kill him?
    JACK
    Because I'm not a killer.
    BABETTE
    You're a man, Jack. We all know about men and their insane jealous rage. This is something men are very good at. When people are good at something it's only natural that they look for a chance to do it.
    JACK
    I'm not good at that. I twirl garbage bags and twist-tie them. I get startled by joggers.
    (pause)
    Is this still going on?
    BABETTE
    No.
    JACK
    Why not?
    BABETTE
    Because the drug didn't work! At least on me.
    Babette starts to cry again. Jack shakes his head, turns aimlessly again.
    JACK
    Maybe I should go. Get a hotel room. I don't know. I don't know.
    Babette continues to weep. She shakes. Jack regards her then slowly moves to the bed. His anger clouded with sympathy, he places a hand on her heaving back. His eyes are full of tears. She turns around, looks at him, and embraces him. He doesn't respond. And then she's kissing him. Finally he kisses her back and succumbs. They grab each other with desperation. Their bodies clenched in an embrace of love, grief, tenderness, sex and struggle. Babette starts to unbutton Jack's shirt and suddenly he withdraws. He stands and starts buttoning up his shirt.
    JACK
    You've taken me this far, put me through this much. I have to know. What's the condition?
    Babette's face is sorrowful and pale, her eyes showing a helpless desolation.
    BABETTE
    I'm afraid to die. I'm afraid of my death.
    JACK
    You? You're still young, you run up and down the stadium steps. It's not a reasonable fear
    BABETTE
    I can't believe we're all marching toward non-existence. All of us. It haunts me, Jack, and it won't go away.
    Jack moves around the room.
    JACK
    Baba, everyone fears death. There's no one who has lived past the age of seven who hasn't worried about dying.
    BABETTE
    But Mr. Gray said I was extra sensitive to it, that I fear it right up front. That's why he was eager to use me.
    JACK
    Baba, I am the one in this family who is obsessed by death. I have always been the one.
    BABETTE
    What do you want me to say? Your fear is older and wiser than mine?
    JACK
    (hesitates)
    Yes!
    BABETTE
    I love you. I just fear death more than I love you.
    She raises the comforter over her head.
    BABETTE
    (under the blanket)
    And I really really love you.
    Jack stares at the hilly terrain.
    JACK
    There's something I promised myself I wouldn't tell you.
    BABETTE
    (through the covers)
    Can it wait until morning?
    JACK
    I'm tentatively scheduled to die. It won't happen tomorrow or the next day. But it is in the works.
    Babette slowly emerges from the covers.
    JACK
    So, we are no longer talking about fear and floating terror. This is the hard and heavy thing, the fact itself.
    Jack starts telling her what happened. Other sounds take over. The hum of the thermostat. The running of the water in the walls. The clang of the radiator. The movement of the dryer. All blurring into white noise. We HOLD on Babette's tear streaked face. DISSOLVE TO:

INT. COLLEGE CAFTERIA
    Alfonse, Grappa, Lasher at the table with Murray and Jack. Winnie sitting behind them as before at an adjacent table.
    ALFONSE
    Imagining yourself dead is one of the cheapest, sleaziest, most satisfying forms of childish self- pity.
    GRAPPA
    How much pleasure did you take as a kid in imagining yourself dead?
    LASHER
    I still imagine my death. Whenever I'm upset about something, I imagine all my friends, relatives and colleagues gathered at my casket. They are very, very sorry they weren't nicer to me while I lived.
    We STAY on Jack's face. We hear the professors continue.
    WINNIE
    Children are very good at self-pity which must mean it's natural and important.
    ALFONSE
    But there is something even more childish and satisfying than self- pity, something that explains why I try to see myself dead on a regular basis.
    MURRAY
    I feel I'm learning important things every day here. Death, disease, afterlife, outer space. It's all much clearer here. I can think and see. I bought this tie.
    GRAPPA
    When you bite dead skin off your thumb, do you eat it or spit it out?
    LASHER
    Chew it briefly then propel it swiftly from the end of the tongue.
    ALFONSE
    It is a way of punishing people for thinking their own lives are more important than mine.
    MURRAY
    That's what it all comes down to in the end. A person spends his life saying good-bye to other people.
    ALFONSE
    Yes, but how does he say good-bye to himself?
    DUNLOP'S VOICE
    Show me your tongue.
    Jack sticks out his tongue. CUT TO: Babette stares straight ahead. She appears to be in a motel room. Blurry gray figures crawl over her, picking at her face. CUT TO: Dunlop's face saying something in German. CUT TO: Babette reaches her hand up to her face. The hand is long, bony and masculine with a long pink scar rising and falling between the tendons and veins. She tugs and pulls at her skin. Her fingers burrowing into her cheeks and chin. Gloom moves in around the gray-sheeted bed, a circle slowly closing, swallowing up the room. Her face remains as darkness closes in. Her long fingers dig deeper into her face as she opens her mouth and whispers:
    BABETTE
    Panasonic.
    She rips the skin off of her cheek. CUT TO: Jack opens his eyes. He's sleeping on a pull-out couch in the family den. The TV is on, silent, a flickering white light. Jack blinks his eyes adjusting to the dim light. The Panasonic clock reads 3:47.

INT. BEDROOM/MASTER BATHROOM
    Babette sleeps alone in their bed. Jack slips by quietly. Jack kneels down, lifts up the radiator cover and sticks his hand underneath. The bottle of Dylar is gone.

INT. DENISE'S ROOM. NIGHT
    Denise wakes up. Someone is in her room. Her eyes adjust. Jack stands, half in and half out of her closet, rummaging through things.
    DENISE
    What are you doing?
    JACK
    Don't worry, it's only me.
    Something topples off a shelf in the closet with a thud.
    DENISE
    I know who it is.
    He keeps searching.
    DENISE
    I know what you're looking for.
    JACK
    What did you do with the bottle? There were three tablets left.
    DENISE
    How do you know I took it?
    JACK
    I know it, you know it.
    The gas meter makes a particular noise.
    DENISE
    If somebody wants to tell me what Dylar really is, maybe we'll get somewhere.
    JACK
    Your mother no longer takes the medication. Whatever your reason for holding the bottle, it's not valid anymore.
    DENISE
    Tell me what it does and I'll give it to you.
    Jack hesitates.
    JACK
    OK.
    He moves out of the closet and sits on her bed.
    JACK
    I've had a recent scare. I thought something awful was about to happen. It turned out I was wrong, thank goodness. But there are lingering effects.
    (pause)
    I need the Dylar.
    DENISE
    What's the problem?
    JACK
    Isn't it enough for you to know that a problem exists?
    DENISE
    I just don't want to be tricked.
    JACK
    There's no question of tricking. I just need the medication.
    DENISE
    You'll give them to my mother who I think stole my ski mask by the way. Is she a drug addict?
    JACK
    You know that's not true.
    DENISE
    You two aren't going to get divorced, are you?
    JACK
    Why would you ask that?
    DENISE
    You're sleeping on the pull-out. It's uncomfortable.
    JACK
    (relenting)
    We are talking about death. I fear it. And the tablets probably don't work. But maybe they will in me. And even if they don't... It doesn't matter what they are. I'm eager to be humored.
    DENISE
    Isn't that a little stupid?
    JACK
    (nods)
    This is what happens to desperate people.
    (hesitates)
    You remember you heard on the radio that the billowing cloud caused sweaty palms and then your palms got sweaty, didn't they? The power of suggestion makes some people sick and other people well. If I think it will help me, it will help me.
    DENISE
    I threw the bottle away.
    JACK
    No, you didn't? Where?
    DENISE
    I put it in the garbage compactor. Jack leaps up.
    JACK
    When?
    DENISE
    (getting upset)
    A few days ago. Compacted it.
    CUT TO: The garage. He empties the garbage cans. The compressed bulks sit there like an ironic modern sculpture. He takes the butt end of a rake and jabs at them, spreading the trash across the concrete floor. From ABOVE: He picks through, item by item. Dots of shape and color. The colors recall a dark underbelly of the supermarket. Jack begins carefully and then his search grows more desperate. The stench hits him. He recoils. Individual items: A crayon drawing of a figure with full breasts and male genitals. A banana skin with a tampon in it. Clotted masses of hair, soap, ear swabs, crushed roaches, strands of frayed dental floss, ballpoint refills, shredded undershorts with lipstick markings. Jack pauses over these. No Dylar. Sweating, matted with debris, out of breath, he slumps over, distraught. His attention shifts. A crushed, torn newspaper catches his eye. He reaches for it. It's a supermarket tabloid. Jack opens it, matting down the pages. His fingers picking up the gray newsprint. His eyes scanning each page. We see bits of headlines, the content of sensational articles about aliens and strange births. All reminiscent of what Babette was reading in the barrack. CLOSE on an ad in the corner of the page: Afraid of Death? We move up to reveal Jack amidst the trash. CUT TO: A ladder appears. Then Jack's face emerges. He reaches around a high shelf retrieving a Reebok shoebox hidden high above buckets and pails. Inside is the automatic Zumwalt gun. Jack removes the gun. He then retrieves three bullets from an old Folger's coffee can.

INT. PHONE BOOTH, IRON CITY. DAY
    Jack dials the number from inside the glass booth. An iron bridge and smokestack in the background.
    A VOICE
    Hello?
    JACK
    I'd like to buy some Dylar.
    A VOICE
    Rid the fear.
    JACK
    Rid the fear. Clear the grid.
    A VOICE
    The Roadway Motel in Germantown. Room 8.
    Click.

INT. CHAPEL, COLLEGE-ON-THE-HILL
    The chapel is starkly modern. At the podium, Jack reads from notes. He speaks in very basic German.
    JACK
    (in German)
    Hitler hatte viele verschiedene Hunde. Er liebte seinen Hündchen Wulf. Blondi war ein Gift von Martin Borman--
    CUT TO: The reception afterwards. Jack enters. The German delegates laugh and eat sweets and spit as they talk. Jack finds Babette and the kids through the crowd.
    DENISE
    Great speech, Jack.
    STEFFIE
    You drank a lot of water, Dad.
    Jack reaches Babette.
    JACK
    Don't wait up for me tonight.
    BABETTE
    I need the car. I have my class.
    JACK
    You take the car. I don't need our car.
    (hesitates, leans in close)
    There's a chill in the air. You know what a chill in the air means?
    BABETTE
    What does it mean?
    JACK
    Wear your ski mask.
    Jack passes Murray and the other professors on his way to the door. We hear Jack's breaths and footsteps.
    MURRAY
    Jack, I never knew there was so much to say about Hitler's dog.
    ALFONSE
    In the psychic sense a forest fire on TV is on a lower plane than a ten-second spot for Automatic Dishwasher All. The commercial has deeper waves, deeper emanations. But we have reversed the relative significance of these things.
    MURRAY
    Elvis loved dogs too. Let's see there was Woodlawn and Muffy Dee and Champagne--
    LASHER
    Did you ever spit in your soda bottle so you wouldn't have to share your drink with the other kids?
    GRAPPA
    It was an automatic thing. Some guys even spit in their sandwiches.
    MURRAY
    Also, Muffin. And Wendell, of course, but he was a cat.
    JACK
    Murray, I need your car keys.
    MURRAY
    OK.
    He places them in Jack's palm.

EXT. COLLEGE PARKING LOT
    Jack opens the door to Murray's Datsun. It's littered with gum wrappers, ticket stubs, lipstick- smeared tissues, crumpled soda cans, popsicle sticks. Jack puts the key in the ignition.

INT. CAR/EXT. WAREHOUSE DISTRICT. NIGHT
    On Jack driving.
    JACK
    Steal instead of buy, shoot instead of talk.
    BABETTE (V.O.)
    You're a man Jack, we all know about men and their insane jealous rage.
    On a red light, we tilt down from overhead and swing around with Jack speeding through in Murray's car.
    MURRAY (V.O.)
    Maybe violence is a form of rebirth. And maybe you can kill death.

EXT. OVERPASS/ROADWAY MOTEL. NIGHT
    The low rumble of trucks on an overpass. The car parked under the bridge. Inside the car, Jack loads the gun. His eyes shut tightly, his nerves rattling. He gets out of the car. A one-story building set against the roadway. The motel has nine or ten rooms. The rain-soaked lot is empty. In the wide, Jack walks toward the motel. An aluminum awning over the check-in door. The drip of water hitting the metal. Jack peers into a dimly lit office, which looks empty. On the door are little plastic letters arranged in slots to spell out a message: NU MISH BOOT ZUP KO. We dolly with Jack as he makes his way along the wall, looking peripherally through windows. The sound of trucks rumbling overhead. In the next to last unit, there is the scantest flicker of light. Jack stands at the edge of the window. He listens. He swivels his head to look into the room out of the corner of his eye. A figure sits in a low armchair looking up at the flickering light. Jack grips the doorknob. He turns it. It opens. He slips into the dark of the room. A low hum. The walls are a sad color of green, the ceiling cracked. His feet shift on the grimy industrial carpet. A crackling sound as his foot comes down on a small white pill. A TV floats in the air, encased in a metal brace, pointing down at man sitting sprawled in the short-legged chair. The sound is off. He wears a Hawaiian shirt and Budweiser baggy shorts. Torn stockings as socks. His hair greasy, his eyes half-closed. His long fingers wrap around the arm-wrest. The scar across his hand. The man speaks without taking his eyes off of the TV.
    MAN
    Are you heartsick or soulsick?
    The door falls closed behind Jack with a click. He hesitates.
    JACK
    I know you.
    MR. GRAY
    Yes, I've been around. I'm the chick and the cheese. I'm the...where was I?
    After a moment, Mr. Gray looks at Jack.
    MR. GRAY
    What do you want?
    JACK
    I want some Dylar.
    MR. GRAY
    What do you want?
    JACK
    I want to live.
    MR. GRAY
    But you're dying.
    JACK
    (voice cracks)
    But I don't want to.
    MR. GRAY
    Then we agree. To enter a room is to agree to a certain kind of behavior. It isn't a street or a parking lot, for instance. The point of rooms is that they're inside.
    JACK
    Good point.
    MR. GRAY
    There is an unwritten agreement between the person who enters a room and the person whose room has been entered. A room is inside. This is what people in rooms have to agree on, as differentiated from lawns, meadows, fields, orchards...
    JACK
    That makes perfect sense.
    The hum of the room seems to shift tone.
    MR. GRAY
    To convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, this is what you do.
    Jack nods. Mr. Gray reaches into his pocket, and produces a handful of white tablets which he tosses in the direction of his mouth. Some enter, some fly past.
    MR. GRAY
    I wasn't always as you see me now.
    JACK
    That's what I was thinking.
    MR. GRAY
    I was doing important work. I envied myself. Death without fear is an everyday thing. You can live with it.
    JACK
    You're saying there is no death as we know it without the element of fear. Without fear, people would adjust to it, accept it.
    MR. GRAY
    Dylar failed reluctantly.
    JACK
    With everybody?
    MR. GRAY
    With all bodies. But it will definitely come. Maybe now, maybe never.
    JACK
    There will eventually be an effective medication, you're saying. A remedy for fear.
    MR. GRAY
    Followed by a greater death. More effective, product-wise.
    Mr. Gray throws more pills in the direction of his open mouth. He sucks them like sweets.
    MR. GRAY
    Just between us chickens, I eat this stuff like candy.
    JACK
    I was just thinking that.
    MR. GRAY
    How much do you want to buy?
    JACK
    How much do I need?
    MR. GRAY
    You're a big man. Middle age? Does this describe your anguish? I see you as a person in a dark brown jacket, champagne colored pants. Tell me how correct I am.
    Silence. There are cracked Dylar tablets all over the fire retardant carpet. Trod upon, stomped. Mr. Gray lies down on the bed.
    MR. GRAY
    I learned English watching American TV. I barely forget the times I had in this room before I became misplaced. There was a woman in a ski mask, but her name escapes me at the moment. American sex, let me tell you, this is how I learned my English.
    Jack's gaze lingers sadly at the TV. The set has a walnut veneer with silvery hardware. The picture rolls badly. In the reflection he sees Babette sitting on the bed with Mr. Gray. She slowly climbs on top of him, her body dissolving into his. Jack turns around to face Mr. Gray. He swallows, his ears clearing, sound shifting in his head. Jack becomes hyper- conscious of every object, every sound. The buzz of a light above the stove, the dripping faucet in the sink, how water strikes the roof in elongated orbs, splashing drams. The room tone seems to shriek momentarily and then hums. White noise everywhere. Jack advances two steps toward the middle of the room.
    BABETTE (V.O.)
    I could not distinguish words from things, so that if someone said "falling plane," I would fall to the floor and take cover.
    JACK
    Falling plane.
    Mr. Gray flails on the bed.
    JACK
    Plunging aircraft.
    Mr. Gray kicks off his sandals, folds himself over into the recommended crash position, head well forward, hands clasped behind his knees. Jack watches him slumped, trembling. He takes another step toward the bed.
    MR. GRAY
    Why are you here, white man?
    JACK
    To buy.
    MR. GRAY
    You are very white, you know that?
    JACK
    It's because I'm dying.
    MR. GRAY
    This stuff fix you up.
    JACK
    I'll still die.
    MR. GRAY
    But it won't matter, which comes to the same thing.
    Jack advances into the area of flickering light, out of the shadows, seeking to loom. He puts his hand in his pocket, gripping the firearm. Mr. Gray watches the screen again.
    JACK
    (hand in pocket)
    Hailing bullets.
    Mr. Gray hits the floor, and begins to crawl toward the bathroom, looking back over his shoulder, childlike, showing real terror. Jack follows him into the toilet.
    JACK
    (whispers)
    Fusillade.
    Mr. Gray tries to wriggle behind the bowl, both arms over his head, his legs tight together. Jack looms in the doorway. He raises the gun and points it at the trembling man.
    JACK
    My name is Jack Gladney and I'm here to kill you. I'm a former dier who is now a killer. You know my wife, Babette. She wore the ski mask.
    Mr. Gray puts his hands over his crotch, and tries to fit himself under the toilet tank, behind the bowl. Jack swallows again.
    MR. GRAY
    She wore the ski mask so as not to kiss my face, which she said was un- American. I told her a room is inside. Do not enter a room not agreeing to this.
    MR. GRAY
    This is the point, as opposed to emerging coastlines, continental plates.
    He climbs up onto the toilet seat. He seems to be going to the bathroom. Jack lowers the gun, unsure suddenly.
    MR. GRAY
    Or you can eat natural grains, vegetables, eggs, no fish, no fruit. Or fruit, vegetables, animal proteins, no grains, no milk.
    Sound all around.
    MR. GRAY
    Or lots of soybean milk for B-12 and lots of vegetables to regulate insulin release, but no meat, no fish, no fruit. There are endless workable combinations.
    Mr. Gray grabs more tablets from his pocket, and hurls them toward his open mouth. He tears open his shirt pocket to find more pills. Jack raises the gun again.
    MR. GRAY
    Did you ever wonder why, out of thirty-two teeth, these four cause so much trouble? I'll be back with the answer in a minute.
    Mr. Gray flushes the toilet. Jack fires the gun. The sound snowballs in the green tiled room. Blood squirts from Mr. Gray's midsection. A delicate arc. Jack watches it in awe. The flow diminishes to a trickle, spreading across the tile floor. Jack fires a second shot, the jolt traveling up his arm. The bullet strikes Mr. Gray just inside the right hipbone. A red stain appears on his shorts and shirt. Mr. Gray sits wedged between the toilet bowl and wall, one sandal missing, eyes totally white. Blood seeping. The trucks rumble overhead. Jack approaches the sitting figure, stepping around the blood. He takes out a handkerchief and wipes the weapon clean, kneels down and places it in Mr. Gray's hand, cautiously removing the handkerchief, painstakingly wrapping Mr. Gray's bony fingers, one by one, around the stock, delicately working his index finger through the trigger guard. Mr. Gray foams at the mouth and his eyes drop out of his skull. Jack steps back to survey the scene. Behind him, Babette enters the motel.
    BABETTE
    (quietly)
    Jack?
    Mr. Gray's eyes gleam, briefly. He raises his hand and pulls the trigger, shooting Jack. Jack reels, hurt and stunned. Blood covers his forearm, and hand. He looks; the bullet has made a shallow penetration in his wrist. Jack turns around and sees Babette standing in the center of the motel room.
    JACK
    Baba.
    Suddenly, red streams through her coat which falls over her right leg.
    JACK
    You've been shot.
    BABETTE
    So have you.
    Blood drips from the tips of Jack's fingers.
    JACK
    I'm sorry.
    MR. GRAY
    (mumbles)
    And this could represent the leading edge of some warmer air.
    Jack looks at Mr. Gray. He's alive. His lap a puddle of blood. Snapped with a jolt into the moment, Jack stumbles over to Babette.
    JACK
    It must have ricocheted off my wrist.
    BABETTE
    And hit my leg.
    Jack wrestles his belt off of his waist, and manages with his right hand and teeth to tie it firmly just above the bullet hole in Babette's leg. While he does this:
    JACK
    How did you know I'd be here?
    BABETTE
    (shrugs)
    Men are killers.
    Jack sucks on his wrist and spits out the blood and pulp. She grabs a pillow case, shaking it off a pillow, and ties it around Jack's wrist. Jack looks back at Mr. Gray.
    BABETTE
    He needs help.
    JACK
    Come on, let's get him out of here.
    BABETTE
    We need help.

EXT. ROADWAY MOTEL. NIGHT
    The rain has stopped. Jack kicks open the front door. Babette, limping, and Jack, one good arm, drag Mr. Gray behind them on a bedsheet, blood striping the sheet and the sidewalk. Mr. Gray's gun hand drags along the pavement.
    BABETTE
    Why did you give him a loaded gun?
    JACK
    I was thinking I'd shot him three times but it was only twice and my plan was... I don't know, I clearly fucked that up...
    They reach the Gladney's station wagon (which Babette parked outside the motel).
    JACK
    I'll come back and get Murray's car later.
    Mr. Gray kicks free, involuntarily, his body flopping and spinning, fishlike. He makes gasping noises, short of oxygen.
    BABETTE
    He's choking.
    Jack leans over him and clothes-pins Mr. Gray's nose using his thumb and index finger in an attempt to give him mouth-to- mouth. Mr. Gray's eyes follow Jack down to his face. It's awkward and intimate. Mr. Gray's mouth is awash in regurgitated Dylar foam, half chewed tablets. Jack kneels over the wounded man, exhaling rhythmically into his mouth. His knees in the wet and littered street. Babette watches sadly. Mr. Gray starts to come around, and take regular breaths. Jack removes his mouth, but hovers just above his face. Their mouths almost touching.
    MR. GRAY
    Who shot me?
    JACK
    Um...I...
    BABETTE
    (jumping in)
    You did. You shot you.
    Jack looks at Babette, grateful, then back at Mr. Gray and nods.
    MR. GRAY
    Who shot you?
    BABETTE
    You did. The gun is in your hand.
    MR. GRAY
    What was the point I was trying to make?
    BABETTE
    You were out of control. You weren't responsible.
    JACK
    We forgive you.
    MR. GRAY
    Who are you, literally?
    JACK
    We're passersby. Friends. It doesn't matter.
    MR. GRAY
    Some millipedes have eyes, some do not.
    BABETTE/JACK
    Sure./OK.
    With much effort, and many false starts, Jack and Babette wrap him in the sheet and get him into the back of their station wagon. Mr. Gray stretches out, moaning.

INT. STATION WAGON
    Jack, moaning, drives one-handed through the empty streets, looking for a hospital. Babette moaning in the passenger seat. Mr. Gray moaning in the back. The streets are empty save for a milk truck coming from the other direction.
    MR. GRAY
    You are on the air.
    They pass a three-story former Pentecostal church with a neon cross over the entrance. Jack hits the brakes, screeches to a halt and backs up onto the curb.

EXT. PARKING LOT
    Jack and Babette drag Mr. Gray by the feet up a wheelchair ramp. Mr. Gray holds one hand at his midsection to stanch the flow. The gun hand drags behind.
    MR. GRAY
    Tennis anyone? Anyone tennis?
    Babette rings a bell. A shadowed cloaked figure appears behind the smoked glass. The door opens. A nun, black-habited, black-veiled, leans on a cane.
    BABETTE
    We're shot.
    NUN
    (a German accent)
    We see a lot of that here.
    She turns back inside. Jack and Babette drag Mr. Gray across the entranceway.

INT. CLINIC
    There are waiting rooms, screened cubicles, doors marked X- Ray, Eye Test. They follow the old nun into the grand space. Two orderlies appear, great squat men with sumo physiques. They push two gurneys. The nun, irritated, calls out something else in German. Another nun comes racing, pushing a shopping cart. The orderlies lift Jack and Babette onto each gurney. The nun barks something in German. They lift Mr. Gray and put him in the cart.
    MR. GRAY
    Inflated-adjusted real income.
    More nuns arrive, rustling, ancient, speaking German to each other. They carry transfusion equipment, wheeled in trays of glinting implements. An orderly removes the gun from Mr. Gray's hand. He tosses it in a desk drawer that holds about ten other hand guns and half a dozen knives. The three of them, Jack and Babette in gurneys and Mr. Gray between them in the cart, are pushed through the space. Mr. Gray is then pulled away and the couple on the two gurneys is pushed together.
    MR. GRAY
    No one knows why the sea birds come to San Miguel.
    Jack smiles, almost fond of him in that moment. Babette sees this. Mr. Gray is wheeled one way. Jack and Babette the other. The original nun follows Jack and Babette into a cubicle to work on their wounds.
    NUN
    Such a violent country.
    More nuns walk by, heavy rosaries swinging from their belts. The image comforts Jack and Babette.
    BABETTE
    What's your name?
    NUN
    Sister Hermann Marie.
    JACK
    (German)
    Gut, besser, best.
    She smiles.
    JACK
    (German)
    1, 2, 3, 4.
    He points to various objects in the room and says the name in German. The nun nods happily while she cleans and wraps Babette's leg in sterile pads. Babette laughs.
    Two more nuns appear, wizened and creaky. The nun says something to them. They smile, nod and look at Jack and Babette, addressing their bullet wounds. They all count to ten together, recite colors, items of clothing, and parts of the body in German.
    There's a picture on the wall of Jack Kennedy holding hands with Pope John XXIII in heaven. Babette elicits a small smile.
    BABETTE
    What does the Church say about heaven these days? Is it still the old heaven, like that?
    The nun turns to glance at the picture.
    NUN
    Do you think we are stupid?
    Jack is taken aback by the force of her reply.
    NUN
    We are here to take care of sick and injured. Only this. You would talk about heaven, you must find another place.
    BABETTE
    Then why do you have that picture on the wall?
    She draws back, her eyes filled with contemptuous pleasure.
    NUN
    It is for others. Not for us.
    JACK
    You don't believe in heaven? A nun?
    NUN
    If you don't, why should I?
    JACK
    If you did, maybe we would.
    NUN
    If I did, you would not have to. Someone must appear to believe.
    BABETTE
    Is death the end then? Does anything survive?
    NUN
    Do you want to know what I believe or what I pretend to believe?
    JACK
    I don't want to hear this. This is terrible.
    BABETTE
    You're a nun!
    JACK
    Act like one!
    NUN
    You would come in from the street, married, dragging a body by the foot and talk about angels that live in the sky. Get out from here.
    She presses her face toward theirs and continues forcefully in German.
    NUN
    (in German)
    Anyone who comes in here talking about Angels is a numbskull. Show me an Angel. Please! I want to see one. Show me a saint. Give me one hair from the body a Saint! It is our task in the world to believe in things no one else believes. If we abandon such beliefs, the human race would die out. That is why we are here. A tiny minority. If we didn't pretend to believe these things, the world would collapse! Hell is when no one believes.
    The words growing harsher, wetter, more guttural. Her eyes show a terrible delight in their incomprehension. Babette's fingers find Jack's.
    NUN
    We pray, lighting candles, asking statues for good health and long life. But not for long. You will lose your believers.
    The nun stops her rant and taps her cane for emphasis, then walks away.
    NUN
    (then in English)
    So maybe you should try to believe in each other then.
    The doctor comes in wearing his hearing aid.
    JACK
    Herr Dokter. Will he be alright?
    HERR DOKTER
    Not for a while, but he will survive.
    Jack and Babette are now alone, holding hands.
    BABETTE
    I wish I hadn't told you about my condition.
    JACK
    Why?
    She starts to cry.
    BABETTE
    Then you wouldn't have told me you're going to die first. The two things I want most in the world are for you to not die first and for Wilder to stay the way he is forever.
    JACK
    Once, I almost asked you to put on legwarmers before we made love.
    BABETTE
    Why didn't you?
    JACK
    I thought you might suspect something was wrong.
    A celestial light slowly illuminates them. It rises through the circular window at the front of the church. Jack and Babette are awash in heavenly light.

INT. GLADNEY KITCHEN. MORNING
    Babette pours Jack coffee. They clearly haven't slept, still in the clothes and bandages from the night before. One by one the kids enter in their sleep clothes. Denise brings Wilder and places him on the counter.
    DENISE
    What is it camels store in their humps? Food or water?
    They move around the room, making cereal, toast, drinking orange juice, talking over each other, the familiar sounds of a family in the morning.
    HEINRICH
    It depends which kind you're talking about. There are one hump and two hump camels.
    DENISE
    Are you saying a two-hump camel stores food in one hump and water in the other?
    HEINRICH
    The important thing about camels is that camel meat is considered a delicacy.
    DENISE
    I thought that was alligator meat.
    STEFFIE
    Who introduced the camel to America?
    HEINRICH
    Are you sure you're not talking about llamas?
    Jack and Babette find each other across the table.
    BABETTE
    Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by hostile facts.
    DENISE
    The llama stayed in Peru. Peru has the llama, the vicuna and one other animal.
    STEFFIE
    Bolivia has tin.
    DENISE
    Chile has copper and iron.
    STEFFIE
    I'm the only person I know who likes Wednesdays.
    Jack grabs the milk and turns it over his coffee. Empty.
    JACK
    We're out of milk.
    RADIO VOICE
    A California think-tank says the next world war may be fought over salt.
    JACK (V.O.)
    There is just no end to surprise.

EXT. SUPERMARKET PARKING LOT
    We start wide, high and as the Gladney's station wagon pulls into an outlined space, we start to head down--
    JACK (V.O.)
    I feel sad for us and the queer part we play in our own disasters.
    As the family exits the car, we pick up with them and follow them.
    JACK (V.O.)
    But out of some persistent sense of large-scale ruin, we keep inventing hope.

INT. SUPERMARKET
    The Gladney's walk through the sliding doors.
    JACK (V.O.)
    And this is where we wait, together.
    A shopping dance has developed throughout the store. The dance is exuberant. Joyous music accompanies them. The credits roll as the shoppers dance.

Summary: The plot is divided into three parts and a musical outro number.