UNTITLED STORYLINE FOR TIMESLIP 2
by
VICTOR PEMBERTON
Outline for six episodes
EPISODE 1
LIZ, mid-30s these days, recently divorced and a commercial language interpreter, has begun to be plague by bad dreams. One dream keeps recurring : a little girl in a filly dress, on an isolated beach with her family, singing a strange little song as she moves towards the sea in search of starfish. LIZ knows the child is in danger, but is unable to warn her. The girl reaches the water’s edge, seems to run up against a barrier, pushes against – and vanishes. Her family, seated on the sands behind, is bewildered – horrified – grief-stricken…
LIZ awakens from the umpteenth repeat of this dream, sweating and shaking. She can only hurry to see if her own daughter HANNAH is safe. But 12 year old HANNAH sleeps peacefully. Whatever afflicts her mother plainly does not trouble her…
SIMON, a systems analyst by trade now, comes across a recent newspaper story about three climbers in Snowdonia, two of whom have mysteriously disappeared on a remote peak. They is no evidence that they fell, and the surviving companion cannot say where they might have vanished to. SIMON rapidly programmes this into a computer file he is assembling on the whole subject of ‘disappearances’ – clearly a sort of obsession with him. In the file, he finds a record of the vanished Victorian girl LIZ has dreamed about. Her name is HESTER. SIOMON pauses on this one. The beach where the child disappeared seems to be named St. Oswald’s Cove…
This obsession of SIMON’s causes trouble with his girlfriend JENNY. Their relationship would appear to be brittle enough already. But when SIMON discovers there is in existence a larger and more extensive file on disappearances under a top secret classification, and decides to devote an entire weekend to trying to hack into it. JENNY decides she has had enough. SIMON is working on the ‘password’ into the top secret file – an odd little electronic tune to which he has the find the complementary notes to complete the code. Maddened by the bleeps and honks, JENNY explodes.
In the steaming row that follows, SIMON tries to explain that he had ‘time experiences’ when he was young, and has lately begun – for what reason he cannot precisely say – to be preoccupied with the notion again. The ‘disappearances’ could clearly be in the time-slip (sic) category. JENNY retorts hotly that if SIMON was being honest with himself, he would admit he is just fed up with her. Wasn’t there a girl who shared his fabulous ‘time experiences’ with him – ? SIMON is genuinely taken aback. He hadn’t thought about LIZ in years.
Nor had LIZ though about SIMON. But she too is simultaneously engaged in a steaming row with HANNAH… who wants to know why her mother divorced, what was the matter with her father – HUGH – whom HANNAH obviously still loves and misses – what has gone wrong with all their lives? LIZ is too basically honest a person not to admit that a lot of the blame must be laid at her door. But HUGH was a scoffer – constantly rubbishing her for her telepathic and quasi-mystical experiences – which LIZ has come to realise are deeply meaningful to her, no matter how far in the past they may appear to lie…
LIZ drops a still sullen HANNAH off at school. Then, on a sudden impulse, she decides not to go to work as planned. Instead LIZ goes to a railway station and buys a ticket for St. Oswald. SIMON, driving to his office, seems abruptly overtaken by a similar urge. He swings his car out on to the motorway and puts his foot down.
Thus LIZ and SIMON meet for the first time in twenty years. Of course, St. Oswald isn’t remotely the same. Where the old naval base was is now a school. Where the Time barrier was is a football pitch. SIMON and LIZ, first astounded, then delighted thus to meet, run to greet each other. The forward line mows them down.
There is fulfilment for them both in the reunion. They cannot precisely understand that, since they thought they hated each other : but they cannot understand what seems to be a ‘call’ of the Time Barrier. It is as though in some strange way they are not acting any more, but being acted upon.
SIMON takes LIZ back to the station. A curious fog seems to have come down, and the platform is oddly deserted. Then LIZ’s expected 16.15 (train) doesn’t arrive. SIMON consults the Stationmaster – strangely spectral, oddly garbed – who tells them there is no 16.15. Never has been. Then the Stationmaster has vanished, and a fast train is heard apporaching. As it sweeps towards the station, LIZ and SIMON both clearly see the Victorian girl in the filly dress on the opposite platform. HESTER is beckoning to them, pleading. Then when the train has vanished, she has gone too, and the fog has lifted. The Stationmaster, plump and entirely real in up-to-date dress, asks them are they waiting for the 16.15 If so, B.R. deeply regrets it has been delayed…
SIMON and LIZ realise time has arbitrarily slipped for them. The Time Barrier is unquestionably ‘calling’ them, though it seems no longer to be reliably in the one place.
And it occurs to SIMON and LIZ simultaneously that if they are to find out what is going on, they must discover the whereabouts of COMMANDER TRAYNOR…
EPISODE 2
SIMON and LIZ begin a search for TRAYNOR. There could be a difficulty here, they realise, as TRAYNOR’s Clone still exists. The Clone was sucked into the Time Barrier. But what has happened to him since – ? Is he destroyed or still a hostile force?
Computerised Admiralty files reveal that TRAYNOR had a nervous breakdown, and was for a time hospitalised. This would have been a direct result of the cruel restraint he suffered at the hands of his Clone. SIMON has set up elabourate ‘tracking’ gear in LIZ’s flat. LIZ takes time off work to devote herself to the search. HANNAH cannot but be interested in what is happening.
SIMON keeps running up against the incomplete musical password into the ‘big’ disappearance programme. It seems disconcertingly to be a ‘block’ everywhere he tracks. LIX abruptly recognises it as an electronic form of the tune HESTER was humming on the beach. SIMON is delighted : it can only mean that the top secret programme originated… but then he is sobered… On the other side of the Time Barrier? And what can that mean?
This development is duly noted by a shadowy person whom we become aware is watching SIMON’s every move… by means of a large console and screen that looks into the present, the past, and the future. We do not see this person’s face, nor know who or where he is. He is served by a respectful staff, who refer to him simply as ‘SIR’…
SIMON and LIZ begin to despair of finding TRAYNOR. Every avenue of investigation seems to turn into a cul-de-sac. Then, returning after an outing with her father, HANNAH announces blandly over tea that COMMANDER TRAYNOR can surely be nowhere but ‘still on his island’. LIZ is astonished by this. HANNAH is confused, not really aware what she has said or why, but LIZ sees at once she has inherited the telepathic gift, which she in turn had from her mother. SIMON and LIZ try to pump HANNAH on her received knowledge.
HANNAH is bothered now, since it is all stuff her father ‘doesn’t believe in’. But she finds she can describe the island – bleak, overgrown, with some kind of strange old building centrally. She cannot however say where it is. SIMON thus wants her to experiment with a pin suspended over a map. HANNAH refuses this point-blank. It is obvious ‘superstition’, and HUGH would be angry. So LIZ tries. But the pin keeps returning to a particular point off the bleak Welsh coast where there is in fact no land marked. So there is an end to it. HANNAH is relieved that what she has ‘inherited’ doesn’t have to be spooky after all.
He is halfway home before it occurs to SIMON that TRAYNOR may have found an unmarked island – one ‘lost’ long ago for security reasons. As an old naval type he would be able to learn of such places. So SIMON quickly arranges a few days off, goes to investigate. He finds an island in the appropriate position all right – wreathed in mists, barren, mysterious.
We are made aware that the strange ‘SIR’ is tracking SIMON as he explores this place. And back at her flat, LIZ begins to get ‘flashes’ as SIMON locates the shell of an old monastery and approaches it. HANNAH is now deeply troubled by this, and tells her mother that she thinks part of the reason her marriage collapsed was because she was ‘still thinking’ of SIMON.
The ancient chants of the monastery, mixed with the vestigial tune of the computer code, seem to ring around SIMON as he approaches the ruin. Then, quite abruptly, he is confronted by a white-haired, bearded, bent figure. It is TRAYNOR, living in surroundings very similar to his prison in the Time Barrier. ‘Come in, SIMON,’ invites a subdued, vastly changed TRAYNOR. ‘I’ve been expecting you…’
EPISODE 3
SIMON has first of all to assure himself it really is TRAYNOR and not the Clone. He is able to ask questions about 1965, which TRAYNOR successfully answers. The COMMANDER ruefully acknowledges that this remains the acid test. But he maintains he is ‘out of the whole wretched business’ now, and only wants to be left alone. His clones if ‘lost in time’ somewhere. He is no longer interested. In spite of himself, however, TRAYNOR was aware beforehand that SIMON was coming to find him… He also knows the LIZ has a daughter that shares her gift… but all that will be where it ends.
SIMON can go or stay as he prefers. If he stays, he will have to catch his own fish, dig his own roots. On his island – which was indeed unmarked, and which he carefully ensured remained so – TRAYNOR, unlike the ancient monks who preceded him, does not cater for guests.
‘SIR’, observing this rebuff of a welcome, orders the insertion of a new command tape into the console…
SIMON stays on the island. He still thinks TRAYNOR is somehow central to what is happening to him and LIZ, and must be made to talk. Then SIMON becomes aware that TRAYNOR has fallen into a disturbing habit of talking to himself. He will ask questions in his ordinary gruff tone, then answer in a high squeaky voice. He does this a good deal of the time, and will at once stop the moment SIMON approaches, and behave normally. It is disconcerting.
SIMON creeps up on TRAYNOR one night when he is busy ‘chatting’. But alarmingly, this time he isn’t talking to himself : he is conversing with someone visiting him in what seems to be a ‘time window’… HESTER, in her frilly dress. The child is presently remonstrating with TRAYNOR, telling him he must ‘do something about us’. TRAYNOR is virtually responsible for the existence of the Time Barrier – who else can help? But TRAYNOR resists powerfully. He seems determined to avoid involvement at all costs…
LIZ meantime is worried about HANNAH. Something odd seems to have begun to happen to the girl. Her attention will be as it were ‘seized’ in the middle of the sentence : or she can be physically drawn from one side of the room to the other, without being aware that she has moved. A teacher at the school has asked to speak to LIZ. Whatever is occurring to HANNAH is causing concern all round.
SIMON finally ‘barges in’ on TRAYNOR in the middle of one of his night-time colloquies with HESTER. The time window at once ‘fades’. But TRAYNOR affects not to be put out. HESTER may be trapped behind the Time Barrier, but she has agreed to act as his ‘eye’ on what is going on there. Why does he need information, if he is in fact ‘out of the whole wretched business’ ? TRAYNOR will only say, enigmatically, that the choice is between good and evil, and each must choose his side. That is why he has come to this place, an old monastery, an ancient battleground of the struggle between light and dark. The one thing that is absolutely clear to him is that he must never, under any circumstances, go behind the Time Barrier again. No. That would unquestionably be choosing evil…
HANNAH is in the gym when LIZ calls on the teacher for her talk. They go to watch the callisthenics. But something alarming happens. HANNAH begins to be dragged away from the group, as though by a now irresistible force. She begins to disappear. Terrified, LIZ rushes to try and grab her back, realising she is going through the Time Barrier.
We see this also from a ‘reverse angle’, viewed in the time window on TRAYNOR’s island, as HESTER excitedly points it out to a horrified TRAYNOR and SIMON. HANNAH is dragged through the barrier, ‘snatched’ by minions of ‘SIR’.
LIZ bursts into frightened tears.
TRAYNOR and SIMON can only stare dumbfounded.
And behind the Time Barrier, HANNAH is dragged before ‘SIR’… who is now revealed as the well-groomed, smiling Clone of COMMANDER TRAYNOR…
EPISODE 4
The real TRAYNOR continues to want no more to do with it. He orders SIMON off the island, insisting it is his LIZ’s business to work out their own problems. He, the real TRAYNOR, happens to be immune to the Time Barrier. So he cannot be forcibly snatched. Yet he not admits his clone is doing these things to other people simply to try and persuade him to enter the Time Barrier voluntarily. Why…? TRAYNOR will say no more.
LIZ is desperate by the time that SIMON gets back. He ex-husband HUGH has turned up accusing her of criminal negligence – neither he nor the police who have been called believe for a moment wild stories about time barriers – and she must either produce HANNAH within 24 hours or face legal consequences. LIZ can’t seem to calm down enough to use her powers to try and get in touch with HANNAH. Yet something like that seems the only course of action. SIMON suggests they go to LIZ’s mother, JEAN.
JEAN lives alone and quietly since her husband died. Horrified by what appears to have happened to her grand-daughter, she agrees to help if she can. SIMON has adapted his tracking equipment in an effort to project mental images on to the screen. It works to a point. JEAN receives a confused picture of HANNAH in a sort of prison… of HANNAH being interrogated by SIR’s minions… then of HESTER wandering in a wood, playing private games as she hums her strange tune. This time she hums the tune right through, so that SIMON is able to pick up the rest of the code he seeks. Overjoyed, he keys this in, successfully hacks into the top secret data base.
It is a huge complex file, What is immediately clear from it is that HANNAH is one of many ‘hostages’ being held behind the Time Barrier by SIR, TRAYNOR’s clone, so that study of the file is relevant to their strategy. SIMON tells LIZ she must go and tray again to persuade TRAYNOR to help while he processes all the material. JEAN agrees with this. SIMON now has a priority task. LIZ must do what she can.
LIZ goes to the island in great trepidation. She gets to the monastic ruins just as TRAYNOR is preparing for one of his ‘colloquies’ with HESTER. LIZ hides. But the girl does not appear. Instead in the window… SIR materialises. TRAYNOR’s spy has been caught, he tells TRAYNOR. She is currently being re-educated. Unless he wants all the hostages to suffer – including HANNAH, the new one – TRAYNOR will now enter the Time Barrier voluntarily…
When SIR has gone, a newly desperate LIZ pleads with TRAYNOR. Shocked to see her, TRAYNOR still resists. If he goes beyond the Time Barrier, he knows SIR has everything arranged for his destruction. There is no argument about that. His clone is TRAYNOR’s ‘evil side’ : long ago he split from that, and dare not risk a new confrontation. LIZ must see to her own affairs, he to his. He will not commit suicide for the sake of LIZ’s daughter…
A dismayed LIZ gets back to SIMON, only to find him in a stew over the complexities of the file, and not getting very far. Needing to clear his head, he asks LIZ to come for a swim with him. There is a quiet pool he and JENNY used to go to regularly, JENNY… who has now moved on, fed up. LIZ cannot but feel guilty that she has in some way been responsible for the breaking up of SIMON’s relationship. Deep down, however, there is a certain gratification too…
The pool is silent, remote. SIMON dives in – but halfway to the water… disappears. LIZ screams. What has happened? Has he too slipped through the barrier?
SIMON surfaces in a muddy polluted lake, coughing and spluttering. The water seems poisonously foul. A young man is correct yachting gear waits aboard a gleaming motor cruiser. ‘That’s right,’ he remarks cheerfully. ‘Can’t swim anywhere in these waters now, can you? Dreadful what they are doing to the world…’
EPISODE 5
A mightily confused SIMON is hauled aboard the motor cruiser, and the young man introduces himself as B.G.B., president of the ‘New Day’ corporation. SIMON cannot work out where on Earth he has fetched up, and B.G.B. chooses not to enlighten him. He simply swooshes SIMON ashore. At an idyllic beach villa, smiling young women are ready with towels and drinks. B.G.B. says to the bemused SIMON, almost as an afterthought, that he is not to worry about – what was her name again? – HANNAH. Yes, nothing to worry about there. ‘She’ll be all right, you know.’
LIZ obviously knows nothing of this. She returns to JEAN, in a bad state. JEAN’s intelligence of HANNAH has improved a little, but is hardly consoling. She is able to report that HANNAH has been locked in a windowless cell, seems to be a principal hostage. But of SIMON there is no sign. If he has ‘slipped’, it must be into some totally different time sector.
A distraught LIZ understands that now there is nobody to go to HANNAH’s rescue but her. Yet if the Time Barrier in fact ‘moves’ how is she to find it? LIZ remembers the time window in which his clone appeared to TRAYNOR on the island. That surely is a way through…
SIMON meantime – in spite of himself, because he is still worried about HANNAH – becomes intrigued with B.G.B.’s ‘operation’. It is not completely clear what it is, but it is certainly well-financed, and serviced by experienced technicians who are housed in an extensive laboratory beyond the beach villa. There is a search going on for some elusive ‘sound’, the vibratory properties of which appear to be of immense relevance. The whole place regularly shakes – upsetting the female staff and cracking the glasses in which they carry drinks – as experimentation continues, but the sounds are still ‘not nearly’ what B.G.B. is looking for. B.G.B. gives the impression of being a sort of profound yuppie. He seems surrounded by every material comfort, yet quotes the metaphysical poets and is deeply concerned for ‘the planet’.
B.G.B. eventually indicates to SIMON a large and forbidding old factory or foundry further around the lake from them, suggesting he ‘take a closer look’. SIMON is surprised he hadn’t noticed the place before, and doesn’t know why B.G.B. wants him to investigate it. But SIMON goes there by night. The factory is marked ECTOM in large letters, and spills out foetid industrial waste into the lake. Abruptly a storm comes up, and SIMON has to run for cover. He is alarmed to observe that B.G.B.’s set-up seems to now have disappeared. A newspaper blowing in the wind informs him that it is 1975…
LIZ returns to TRAYNOR’s island by night, gets to the time window as he sleeps. She finds she can slip through without trouble. But it starts a bleeping, and TRAYNOR awakes just in time to see her disappearing. He is duly alarmed too…
SIMON tries to get into the ECTOM factory. But some cars drive up, and he has to conceal himself. TRAYNOR’s clone alights from a vehicle and goes into the factory with some associates. They seem to be dressed like members of a private army.
Getting into the factory itself, SIMON finds the clone TRAYNOR in conference with what seems to be the factory manager, the tall hard-face THEO. THEO is respectful to Clone-TRAYNOR, on whom he seems in some way dependent. They are considering a tray of some dark, amorphous substance. Clone-TRAYNOR is saying it is ‘still not right’, and there will be no more money until THEO and his factory have got a lot nearer ‘terminal matter’…
LIZ behind the barrier finds herself lost in a wood. She comes across HESTER, still singing and playing woodland games. HESTER says she has escaped from SIR, who was ‘being cruel to her’, keeping her locked in a cupboard for being a spy. LIZ asks her to lead her to HANNAH, promising to get HESTER back to her own time. HESTER takes LIZ past all her childish bowers and hidey-holes : but then over a child’s bear trap in the ground, into which LIZ tumbles, knocking herself out. HESTER laughs with little-girl glee. SIR’s minions at once appear, presenting her with a huge lollipop. She has learned her lesson excellently…
And TRAYNOR, watching all this from the time window, is wracked with doubt and guilt. Perhaps after all only he can save the situation…
EPISODE 6
LIZ is thrown into the windowless cell with HANNAH. The joy of their reunion is short-lived, for they realise they are now both time hostages. LIZ says they must try jointly to get in touch with JEAN, at least to let her know if they can what has happened to them.
JEAN thus begins to get confused images, which frighten her. There is a knock at her door. To JEAN’s immense surprise, it is TRAYNOR – come to tell her why, even though he is the only person who could really help, there is nothing he can do. SIR, his clone, is the evil side of himself. He dare not risk exposure to ‘all that’ again. What if he was wrong in the past? What if his supposed victory was an illusion – his identification with the stalwart monks of old simply an hypocrisy? JEAN sees TRAYNOR is a frightened man : afraid of himself.
SIMON in the ECTOM factory investigates the amorphous matter in the tray after the departure of THEO and Clone TRAYNOR. It is a most curious material, which seems to shrink away when he tries to touch it. It will also take on shapes or characters almost at will – even in response to thoughts… rock, paper, sand… But the shapes and transmogrifications do not sustain, fall apart immediately after.
Vastly intrigued by what all this may mean, SIMON is disturbed by security guards. He has to run for it, and is eventually chased up on to the roof. Here he is trapped : but as the guards come out to get him, a glittering helicopter swoops down from above, dropping a rope and sling, winching SIMON up and away. At the helicopter controls is B.G.B., puffing an expensive cigar. Two of his smiling young women hasten to make SIMON comfortable, put a drink in his hand. B.G.B. simply says, ‘Bad, all that, isn’t it ? Somebody should really do something about it before it’s too late. Well, I won’t detain you longer’ – and the smiling women press levers, rudely ejecting SIMON from the helicopter.
SIMON ‘falls’ through a strange collection of modes of matter, systems of being, to finish up crashing to the floor –
– in JEAN’s living room, when JEAN has just about convinced TRAYNOR that if he fears he has not overcome the evil in himself, then what he dare not to do is avoid the battle. For every human being there is a time to run, a time to stand and fight… TRAYNOR is plainly alarmed when SIMON mention ECTOM, though he will say no more of whatever he knows here. Of B.G.B. however, he is equally obviously totally ignorant : he cannot imagine who this ‘intruder’ might be. SIMON offers to come with TRAYNOR to bring back LIZ and HANNAH, but TRAYNOR – sadly enough – declines any help. JEAN is right, he thinks. This is one he must face himself. Nobody else, ironically enough, is remotely involved…
Thus the final sequence becomes a kind of O.K.Corral. TRAYNOR very reluctantly goes back to the island, where SIR is waiting at the time window. SIMON, with JEAN’s help, is able to key in his equipment to what is happening so that they can see events on the screen, and LIZ and HANNAH together in the cell are able to attune telepathically. TRAYNOR gains only an assurance from SIR that he will not employ the help of others – it is to be a one-to-one confrontation, good against evil – and steps through the window to face his fate.
Basically, TRAYNOR has to prevent SIR from destroying him, so that he will not be able to ‘take his place’ in the world : in history. SIR use subtle devices to overcome TRAYNOR – mental, electronic – but in the end it resolves into a knock-down drag-out fight between the two of them. It is the sort of thing that would be stopped if it occurred on the street : two elderly men trying desperately to find the resources to kill each other. TRAYNOR finally summons up the strength to push a heavy object over on the fallen SIR. This should squash him like a beetle, but doesn’t exactly : seeing his end is inevitable, SIR begins to go through various matter transformations, similar to those SIMON ‘fell’ through… finishing up as a spent pool of the amorphous matter…
TRAYNOR cannot understand what has happened. But he has no time to ponder the point. LIZ and HANNAH are automatically released from their cell, and they let out the other hostages. HESTER again appears on the Victorian sea shore, racing back to her grieving parents. Other hostages are restored to their own times. HANNAH and LIZ come out in JEAN’s living room, through the screen of SIMON’s equipment. TRAYNOR emerges once more on his island.
But has TRAYNOR truly destroyed his Clone ? What did the odd transmogrifications signify ? Is TRAYNOR’s battle – which is by remove the battle of them all – ended of just beginning… ?
To be continued…
.end.
