Written By James Russell
Presented by
INT. JAMES & ERIN's FLAT YEAR 3000 CHRISTMAS DAY - Day
JAMES, ERIN, PEDRO and KATIE, all in their late twenties, are in garish fancy dress as Joseph, Mary, Santa and a sheep, respectively. JAMES is at a desk in the corner reading briefly.
JAMES
DELANEY is on his way up.
JAMES perches beside ERIN but with an eye on the door.
PEDRO
How long have you worked with him?
JAMES
I went to school with him, but we haven’t spoken since I started working for Cable & Netless.
The Door Buzzes and James opens it. DELANEY and SARAH stand in the doorway dressed in normal (for the time) clothing.
JAMES
(Pleased and excited to meet them)
Hello, I’m JAMES. You must be DELANEY?
DELANEY
Hello JAMES, we finally meet in the flesh. This is SARAH.
JAMES
Hello SARAH.
SARAH
(Smiles and waves.)
JAMES
Quick come on in, we don’t have long before the start.
DELANEY
Sorry about being a bit late, we didn’t know the way and I bought a multi traveller ticket.
SARAH
(In good humour)
And we were late because he couldn’t stop playing with it.
DELANEY
It really is amazing, I downloaded it and it booked ahead all our connections, and knew exactly where we were through the whole journey.
DELANEY (CONT’D)
When our flight ran late; it changed the rest of the bookings to suit. It even guided me right to your building and opened the door.
They reach the rest of the group who stand to be introduced.
JAMES
This is ERIN, my wife; she is dressed as Mary, PEDRO and KATIE are dressed as Santa and a holy sheep. You’ll like PEDRO; he needs a multi traveller just to get to work in the morning.
SARAH
(Surprised)
I thought hardly anyone in the city still travelled to work.
PEDRO
I’m a real-artist, one of the last few hands-on jobs. I can’t get four metre Artwork into my “studio” so I work in a warehouse. Auto-manufactured art is only worth a quarter the price of a similar hand-made piece.
SARAH
What’s a “studio”?
JAMES
(In good humour)
It’s a pretentious name for his flat.
JAMES and DELANEY drift off from the rest as DELANEY Surveys the flat.
DELANEY
The place looks nice, I love the Christmas decorations, and that is some television.
JAMES
The auto-manufacture plans were dated 2789 but the plant could still make them. The downside was that I spent three hours searching the net for them.
DELANEY
It’s worth it.
DELANEY notices the set dining table.
DELANEY
(Continuing Surprised)
You got Christmas crackers?
JAMES lifts one and holds it out.
JAMES
I was going to order us all a real turkey dinner but can you believe you had to book nearly four years in advance, so they could grow the chickens.
DELANEY
(Correcting him)
Turkeys.
JAMES looks confused as he holds the cracker out to DELANEY who pulls his end.
DELANEY
Turkey is made from Turkeys; it’s a whole different animal from a chicken.
JAMES wins and stoops to pick up a little figure of an angel. He hands it to DELANEY
JAMES
You know I wish we had taken the time to meet while we were at school; we were in the same classes for seven years.
DELANEY
I’ve changed a lot since I started working with the Genesis Blend.
JAMES
It’s a hell of a lot of travelling.
DELANEY
(Slightly depressed)
It’s standing on the barren worlds that changes you. It seems to suck your heart out through your chest. Few of the engineers make more than the minimum dozen landings. They call the feeling The Thirst. I find the statistics are more frightening. Before we were born, man had visited nearly twenty thousand habitable planets but didn’t find a single cell of life.
JAMES
I hear you have dropped the Genesis Blend them all.
DELANEY
The blend will kick start life, but it’ll take hundreds of years before there is any plant life. Animal life will take a lot longer, who knows what form it will take.
JAMES
Hey, but if it weren’t for the faster than light travel explorers not finding life, we would not be doing this today. What was it, sixty years ago that the pre-enlightenment movement began?
DELANEY
You should speak to SARAH; she works on the data collection ship. I met her when she took a working vacation with us while we were on a Genesis Blend mission. She wanted to see the blend being dropped on a planet. She was part of the Enlightenment religion, even then.
ERIN
(Overhearing)
It’s not a Religion. It is the organisation to start a religion. Isn’t that right SARAH?
JAMES
ERIN is really excited about joining Enlightenment when it starts.
SARAH
For some of us it is a religion. We have already seen some of the scout footage - taken to confirm the weather was suitable and that the key events occurred during the day. From this the whole data ship’s crew started to believe in the first few months of scout footage. We haven’t been able to tell anyone until recently, in case it freaked people out.
PEDRO
It freaks me out. So the data collection ship are the prophets. Will you censor what you show us to fit into your new rules.
SARAH
(Gives a cross look)
We aren’t making up any rules. We are going to use the telescopes to verify every event from the New Testament. Then if the text in the Bible matches, it will go into the new bible. We believe that there will be enough proven text at the end to develop a full religion.
PEDRO
I think anything you come up with will be generally based on morals of today’s society rather than any footage you collect.
SARAH
You may be right but the purpose of the media is to allow everyone to see the events as they occur, that way we should come to a consensus.
ERIN
(Really excited)
What are we going to see today?
SARAH
Today is the big launch and as it is Christmas day, the first thing you’ll see is the Birth of Jesus Christ. Afterward we’ll open to a number of fixed channels showing a number of storylines all around 0AD. The main line over the next few months will follow Jesus through his life ending the season with the crucifixion and maybe resurrection at Easter.
ERIN
Is there a resurrection?
(Pause)
That’s what this is all about isn’t it? Now that we know we
ERIN (Cont’d)
are alone in the galaxy, maybe the universe, the Enlightenment project was to prove if the Christian religions were right all along.
SARAH
I don’t have access to anything but the weather analysis. Even if I did I wouldn’t tell you the end.
ERIN
I’m sure you could tell us a few things we don’t already know. Even just how the whole thing works.
SARAH
Haven’t you all asked you’re fetches all about it?
ERIN
Yes but I’ve never met in the flesh anyone who works on the data collection ship. I’d like to hear about it again.
PEDRO
(Exasperated)
We live in a society based on the fact that we don’t need face-to-face contact to interact. Yet at every opportunity people thrive on it.
SARAH
I don’t mind going over it, but stop me if I bore you.
KATIE
(Apologetic)
Could you make it basic? I must say I don’t understand any of it.
SARAH
But the Project has been “The” news article since we were born. You must have heard about it at school.
KATIE
I was brought up on a home school network, mostly art and music. I’ve never really been interested the Project, until the last few weeks.
SARAH
It’s a simple principle that has now become possible because we have Faster Than Light travel and the SETI Field Telescope. DELANEY don’t you have a file on this?
DELANEY and JAMES rejoin the group as SARAH is speaking. DELANEY lifts out his processor and walks to JAMES’s TV.
DELANEY
Where’s the port on this TV
JAMES joins him and they work to get the TV ready. The TV displays explanatory images to support the dialogue.
DELANEY
The Field telescope was developed by SETI a few years after FTL. It has four emitters that jump out to form the corners of a one light-year square. They emit a light-focusing field, which forms a huge lens. This focuses the light back to the Telescope body, which is stationed one light-year behind the lens.
It is brilliant for picking up detail across thousands of light-years of space. The only problem is it takes about three years before it is fully set up.
SARAH
The enlightenment medial corp. have specially developed and manufactured eighteen thousand for the project. They’ve been being set up for the last twenty years in a ring pointing at the Earth, three thousand light-years away. Now that it is Christmas day in the year three thousand they are receiving all the light that reflected off Earth today in the year 0BC.
PEDRO
I read that He wasn’t actually born on Christmas day.
SARAH
We know. But today isn’t the original Christmas day. It used to be on the 25th December. Everyone had forgotten it has been so long since it was celebrated last.
(Pause)
So the Santa suit is a few months early.
JAMES
(Interrupts)
Why did you think Christ wore a Santa Suit again?
PEDRO
Ha Ha.
(Laughs sarcastically)
It’s a testimony to the fact that, up until now, the only religion man could agree on was none. And giving gifts is good fun.
PEDRO and KATIE smile at each other.
KATIE
Why do you need a ring right around the earth, surely the sun will block out some of the light and half of the Earth would be at night. And why is it only a ring why not a sphere?
DELANEY
Every year the Earth will rotate around the sun. That means that during the year we would be constantly relocating the telescopes. It just isn’t possible because of the set up time required, they just had to build enough telescopes to make a ring. They designed the ring rather than a sphere because it was enough to get the resolution they needed.
KATIE
You said that you would be showing right up to the crucifixion in a few months, but that should take over thirty years.
SARAH
There are nineteen hundred years of uncharted history, for us to collect. So we accelerated the telescopes toward earth to a speed of 100 Rads.
DELANEY
In nineteen years they will have covered from 0AD to 1900 AD. Then they can go back to important events Before Christ and prove or disprove them.
SARAH
We are planning to return the telescopes to point zero again, Which is the 3000 light year ring but at a different elliptical, then we will accelerate them away from earth to travel further back in time. DELANEY, you better unplug from that TV or we’ll start to miss the opening ceremony.
PEDRO
It’s the use of the media that fascinates me. There haven’t been non-interactive “TV shows” for hundreds of years. I really don’t know how to watch it.
JAMES tunes the screen to the broadcast. There is a real-time picture of a cattle shed, viewed from almost directly above. There are people milling around. The sound is down.
JAMES
You just watch it on the screen. The guide said that after the opening sequences there would be eight channels that we can flick through.
They all sit down on the seats around the TV in poses similar to present day.
KATIE
This feels really strange.
ERIN
(Agreeing)
Is the screen too far away?
PEDRO
How do we control it?
JAMES
(Lifts the remote control and turns up the sound)
This is the remote control. There are lots of buttons but the only useful ones control the sound and change the channel.
The group are amazed. On the screen People still mill around but now we can hear the presenter’s voice.
TV PRESENTER
And it came to pass, that in those days there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that the whole world should be enrolled…
PEDRO
You know, if this weren’t so interesting it would be boring, I feel like I’m not part of it at all.
TV PRESENTER
… Joseph went up from Galilee.
ERIN
SARAH, can you tell us who is who?
SARAH
That is Joseph, talking with the shepherd; we call him Shep One. You can’t see Mary and Jesus hasn’t been born just yet.
TV PRESENTER
… because he was of the house and family of David.
SARAH
In another few moments you can see Joseph start when they hear the Baby’s first cry.
JAMES
We’ll this proves one this.
There actually was a heavenly host looking down from on high.
Some of the others laugh.
DELANEY
Shush.
FADE OUT:
THE END