Still Valley At 20,000 Feet - Mike Burns (good ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Ricard and the KFH come over to them, the priest leading the erstwhile mass-murderer by the hand.

FATHER RICARD
Bob, do you still have the governor’s letter? It’s necessary for something I need to do.


BOB
Right here, Father.

Father Ricard takes it in hand, turns to the page written in his own hand, so many years before. He holds it in front of the KFH’s face. Light leaps from the bloodstain on the old, yellowed page onto the KFH’S forehead.


FOCUS STEADILY ONCE AGAIN, THIS TIME ON THE FACE OF THE KFH.

The Klansman From Hell takes off his hood. The face we see, the one we haven’t seen since the night in Still Valley, is that of Paradine, former sergeant in the Ninth Virginia Cavalry, and former chief advisor to the first president of the Confederate States of America. It is aged unbelievably, almost decaying and falling off his skull, withered, dried, greyish, with old scars all over the throat and neck, but still
(CONTINUED)
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recognizable as the man who single-handedly won the war for the southern states.

PAN back slowly, bringing Bob (seen from behind) into foreground.

(CUT TO)

POINT OF VIEW shot from Bob’s viewpoint. Greyish smoke leaks from the now-empty eye sockets of Paradine. The cross, attached somehow to the chest of the robe, is smoking, too, its flame gone out. The mass murderer of this age and betrayer of another, Paradine slumps over, lifeless, his flesh disintegrating in a shower of grey dust, his whitened bones sticking out of the charred, dirty white robe at random points.

BOB (speaking aloud)
Wait a minute...I remember...

SUPERIMPOSITION

Image of a young man scribbling in a pocket notebook, with laptop computer on his lap, sitting in a passenger seat near plane entrance as Bob and Julia first boarded earlier...

VOICEOVER (Bob’s voice)
...maybe he was a journalist. Is he still alive?

(CUT TO)

Bob looks around frantically, and sees the young man, dirty and disheveled now, staggering up toward a small hilltop, with the laptop in one hand and a cellphone in the other.

BOB
Sir! Are you all right? Any injuries?

YOUNG MAN
Yeah, I’m okay. I ‘uz gonna get on top of that hill and try to see if my cell’d reach somebody.

Bob watches as the young man successfully accesses the local 911 system, who reassures him that Civil Air Patrol and Air Force personnel will be coming their way, and that this phone link will make it happen much quicker. After the operator tells the young man to stay on the line, to allow for radio directional finders to pinpoint his exact location, Bob speaks to him again.

BOB
By the way, have you tried the laptop? Are we near enough a tower to access the ‘net?

YOUNG MAN
My laptop’s workin‘. Maybe you could get the ‘net. You need to reach somebody? Go ahead an‘ try.

BOB
I sure do! (takes laptop as the young man hands it over distractedly) Thanks!

Bob first looks around to find Father Ricard. Gone!

Shaking his head resignedly, Bob tries the internet hookup. Miraculously, the laptop seems unharmed, and makes the connection quickly. He goes to his YouTube sight, and types the content of the letter into it, down on one knee with the laptop propped on the other.

SUPERIMPOSITION

A couple of changes of camera angle, showing Bob typing, and showing the passage of a short period of time as he completes his task.

Now, Bob takes his own cellphone, and plugs its camera-phone element into the appropriate port on the laptop, using his own adapter--which is miraculously a good fit. He first sends pictures of Paradine‘s remains, his skeleton lying prone with smoke still issuing from hood and cross, together with some spoken commentary. Then he takes numerous shots of the whole scene of the crash, trying to give a panoramic picture from his point of view, adding his own comments here as well.

POINT OF VIEW

Small sections of the scene of the plane crash site, as seen through the small square of Bob’s cell-phone display in successive FREEZE-FRAMES.

FOCUS on Bob, from above and behind, as he is doing this.

PAN OUT AND UPWARD on whole scene.

(SLOW FADE-OUT of plane crash scene)

(SLOW FADE-IN of scene in stadium, where Bob is standing and speaking at podium on stage in the middle of stadium)

VOICE-OVER (voice of Bob Wilson, speaking one of the verses of Father Ricard:)
“This world, unlike God’s world, is failed.
Not merely fallen, but failed.
Sired by no true or noble intention.
If it must be buried in time, with death as cure,
Let the interment be in hallowed ground,
And the apostle of change eulogize it.”

NARRATOR (VOICEOVER)
For Bob Wilson, would-be big-time player in the world of corporate sales, an utterly unanticipated outcome to a trip and to his self-styled role as prophet of change. A trip that has ended in disaster, and brought him a new vocation as herald of a change larger than any he could ever envision, a change to alter a history and a world...in the Twilight Zone.

AUDIO FADE IN (gradual) of end-credit music.

PAN OUT AND UPWARD on whole scene. Crowds of enthusiastic people, large numbers of them African American, giving Bob standing ovations. Images from his YouTube sight show on a screen behind him.

(SLOW FADE OUT of stadium scene)


(SLOW FADE IN
of the present-day Confederate president at a signing ceremony, surrounded by numerous men in suits {presumably Confederate governors, with badges on their jackets identifying them and their states} clapping and cheering as the president arises from his seat at the table and holds up the PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION for the TV cameras {and presumably two jubilant nations} to see)

FREEZE FRAME.

FULL AUDIO FADE IN of end-credit music.

ROLL END CREDITS.


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