EXT!

Mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of men.

PAGE 1

A cop car is patrolling a long stretch of road, snowbanks flanking either side. It is early, the sun just having crested the horizon, shifting the world in hues of baby blue and pink and orange. A call goes out through the radio: We got a 311 just off of 130. Looks to be intoxicated.

PAGE 2

The cop car pulls off on the side of the road, and the cops exit. They are dressed in warm winter gear, and begin to trek into the snow, following a pair foot prints. We see now, the target of the search: Nathan, nude, shuffling through the snow. He collapses to his knees after moving a few more feet before them.

PAGE 3

We do not see what he has ambled towards, nor what has brought him out into this frozen field. Though we do see the officers behind him, who look on in absolute terror.

--

PAGE 4 - 5

my loneliness does not pain me, 

because I know my redeemer lives 

and he will finally rise above the dust

PAGE 6

Nathan is seated at his desk within an immense, monotonous, and gray cubicle farm. Amongst the detritus of his desk are: pens, pencils, scrap pieces of paper and sticky notes, photos of his family, candy bar wrappers. The fluorescent lighting and drone of the air conditioner give an oppressing weight to the otherwise sterile environment. Nathan wears a thin headset connected to his computer, into which he stares, not focusing on anything in particular.

PAGE 7

A phone call comes in, and is patched through to his headset. He begins to speak his rehearsed lines, and for a moment he is able to feign interest in granite countertops.

"Good Afternoon sir or ma'am, my name is--"

Before he can finish his plastic pleasantries, words which are not words are spoken unto him. It is like a tendril of ice ushering forth from the earpiece, through the auditory canal, and into his brain. A coldness envelopes him, his motor functions cease, and a pencil drops from his hand. He notes the collision between the rubber eraser and the desk, then the graphite tip, which splinters and snaps into a million sub-light speed asteroids.

PAGE 8

Nathan is in the bathroom, lurched over the porcelain of a toilet, spewing forth the recently reheated remains of his wife's meatloaf. He is sweating profusely, his clothes soaked.

A concerned voice comes from outside the stall: you ok, Feynman?

Yeah, maybe just a bit of food poisoning. Shwarma, right?

That's what you get for eating that dirt people food, man.

Nathan sees a pair of shoes from below the stall turn and walk away. He has kept up the illusion once more that he is in fact human. Or racist. Either way, the ruse has held. He squints at the shoes, at the heels of them, perhaps agitated he has had to engage in any conversation at all. Especially during this momentous occasion for him.

PAGE 9

He is in his car now, driving in the first waves of a snow storm. It is dark out, and the orange glow of the overhead street lamps cause the frozen precipitation to glisten for a moment. Nathan's brow is furrowed, his shoulders are high, his body posture is tense. Despite the cold, he continues to sweat, his complexion becoming greasy and sick. He grips the steering wheel, thumbs picking at the decaying, dried rubber there.

PAGE 10

His wife is ladling out great gobs of spaghetti, pre-made sauce and passable meatballs. First to Nathan, then to his two sons, starting with the eldest then the youngest. They are seated on his left and right at the dinner table, and display an impressive amount of emotion and enthusiasm, perhaps making up for their fathers clear absence of the stuff.

PAGE 11

Nathan stares his pinching the space between his eyes and above his nose, pulling the skin together with the thumb and pointer finger of his right hand, then releasing, and repeating. In his left, he rubs the handle of his fork, back and forth with his thumb. He is still sweating, still greasy, still sick, a growing pain in the center of his mind. It is building in his eyes now, and from somewhere, the thought of hammering the fork into his skull, if only to release the pressure therein, crosses his mind.

You ok, hun?

I've been feeling pretty ill all day. Got this terrible migraine now too.

Musta been the shwarma.

Red sauce has splattered on the table, just off the plate before Nathan. Absent mindedly, he begins to draw in it using his left hand. His creation bares a striking resemblance to the Hebrew symbol for Tav.

PAGE 12

I... I need to excuse myself, sorry.

Nathan raises himself from the chair, and then collapses before his family.

Nathan's body is laying prostrate within the cold, sterile tomb of an MRI machine. He hears the voice of the doctor outside: We need to take a look inside.

PAGE 13

Sitting before the doctor, in that emasculating green medical gown, Nathan is read his diagnosis.

The doctor holds up the MRI print out of Nathan's brain. He sees the fold of his mind exposed to the world, curling upon themselves a number of times before ending at the membrane, and bone, sealing in his thoughts. There, at the center of that gray and white mass, like the great ovule of a wet and crumbling flower, is Malkhut.

We're going to give you this natural, organic remedy to your problem. See, it's made from this orchid that only grew along the Tigris and Euphrates river. We can render it down to its most base elements, and so its all so perfectly natural.

PAGE 14

What will it do?

It'll coax the filament of the extra-dimensional artifact which is growing inside your skull into reality.

Wait... what?

It'll turn off certain neuro-receptors, so you'll be able to better deal with the pain in your head.

Nathan is attempting to find sleep. He is laying next to his wife in bed, and though she sleeps peacefully, that same rest seems to elude Nathan. He looks at the ceiling, the whirling fan, as if it too threatens him in someway. He grows suspicious of all things: if his body can turn against him, his mind, then what other innocuous things also mean him harm.

PAGE 15

He rises from his bed, compelled by some unknown force. He begins to undress. He exits through the front door, and walks into the night. The phone call, and its dark speech, comes to mind. He hears that soft, delicate, voice again; he fears were he able to touch the person on the other end, the heat from his fingers tips might melt her.

What will my redeemer be like?

PAGE 16

He is crossing the street now. The quiet, empty, suburban streets offer no resistance to him, no judgment. It his him, and snow, and silence, and buzzing orange streetlights.

''I ask myself. Will he be a bull or a man?''

A car or two passes him. Perhaps they notice, perhaps they are going to fast. He is not yet stopped. The voice compels him unto the night.

''Will he perhaps be a bull with the face of a man? ''

Nathan is back in that field again. Kneeling, his flesh against the bitter snow. He is flanked by the police officers, whose expressions are a mixture of awe and terror. There is god amongst them, there, in the cold, in the quiet.

PAGE 17

An artifact has ushered forth from Nathan, exiting through his nostrils, his mouth, and his ears. A thousand gold and silver threads dance and unfurl, creeping from Nathan's orifices, winding together to become something greater, and real.

O r will he be like me?