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The Bermuda Triangle is full of mystery and a family of scientists discovers why. |
| EXT - MARS BAY RESEARCH STATION, ANDROS ISLAND, BAHAMAS - NIGHT Stormy night, choppy seas, windy, cold. A lone car winds up a hill to the research station overlooking the ocean. Two men get out of the car and run through the rain to the door. INT - MARS BAY RESEARCH STATION - NIGHT Lab tables, computer screens, big LCD screens, big bank of windows overlooking the ocean, various types of equipment and lasers. Dr. Rachel Crain, PHD, Theoretical and Applied Physics, MIT, 28 years old, sits working at a high lab table on a laptop computer. Blonde, brilliant, naturally beautiful, hair pulled back, white labcoat, glasses. Captain John Paxton, Intelligence Officer, USAF. 36 years old, clean cut, attractive, casual dress, no uniform, windbreaker type jacket, standing in a darkened corner, reaches inside his jacket and puts his hand on his 45 caliber pistol in a shoulder holster, then pauses and studies the two men coming in the door. Dr. Michael Newell. PHD, Geophysics, Stanford. 46 years old, slight graying around his temples. MICHAEL Rachel ….. Captain Paxton relaxes and takes his hand off his pistol. Rachel stands up, approaches the two men and hugs Michael Newell. RACHEL Michael, thank god you're here. MICHAEL Rachel, this is my son Jeremy. Rachel reaches out her hand. Jeremy steps forward and they shake hands. RACHEL I've heard a lot about you from your Grandfather and your Grandmother. Dr. Jeremy Newell, PHD, Applied Physics, Harvard. 25 years old. Brilliant, good looking. Slightly disheveled, longish brown hair. JEREMY Yes, I've heard a lot about you too. It's good to finally meet you. MICHAEL Rachel, what's going on? Why did you call us here? Has something happened to my parents? Capt. Paxton steps out and approaches the two men. He nods to each in turn, introduces himself, and they shake hands. CAPT. PAXTON Dr. Newell, Dr. Newell. I'm Captain John Paxton, U.S. Air Force, Intelligence Division. I am sorry to tell you that your parents are missing. MICHAEL Missing? When? How? Capt. PAXTON Last night at about one o'clock in the morning, your parents went down to the dock and took one of the small research vessels out to sea, and seemingly vanished. MICHAEL Last night? Why didn't you tell us this when you called, Rachel? CAPT. PAXTON We could not allow Dr. Crain to elaborate over the phone due to security concerns, but I can assure you that all possible steps to find them are being taken. We have had search crews out since first light, and we've been using surveillance satellites that we have in the area, but so far there is no sign of them. MICHAEL What makes you think they're not at the bottom of the ocean? CAPT. PAXTON The boat they took was equipped with a GPS locator. If it was out there on the bottom somewhere, even if it was miles down, we'd find it. But it's not sending out a signal. Also, the Navy has certain resources in the area for tracking submarines in the deep water trenches, and their scans are not picking up any newly submerged vessels. The GPS was working when they left the dock, and we were able to track the signal to the edge of the Bank, but then it suddenly ceased. Something happened out there that caused it to stop. JEREMY What do you think it was? RACHEL We don't know. But if we can figure out why they went out there, maybe we can figure out what happened to them. JEREMY Why are there security concerns? Capt. Paxton looks at Rachel and nods. RACHEL As you may know, your grandfather has been doing research on quantum teleportation funded by the Air Force. Since your grandmother was already here studying the Bahaman Archipelago, he decided to use this area to conduct his experiments, so we set up the sending equipment here on Andros Island, and the receiver across the Tongue, on Young's Island. JEREMY The Tongue? MICHAEL Not far offshore, the Great Bahaman Bank drops off from 30 feet deep to about 5000 feet in one shear cliff wall. It forms the center of the Bahaman Archipelago and creates a deep ocean basin 100 miles wide surrounded by the Bahaman Islands. The dark blue of the deep ocean water in the basin is shaped like a tongue, so they call it the Tongue of the Ocean. RACHEL Since there is nothing but deep open water between here and Young's Island, this was a perfect place for your grandfather to conduct his teleportation experiments, and we have been getting some extraordinary results. JEREMY What kind of results? RACHEL When a particle is teleported using high intensity lasers, the original particle is destroyed during the scanning process, and some of the information in the particle is lost or damaged, so you wind up with an imperfect copy, kind of like sending a Fax. We have been experimenting with scanning the portion of the particle that can be scanned without causing damage, then completing the transaction, so to speak, using quantum entanglement, or as Einstein called it, 'spooky action at a distance' CAPT. PAXTON Spooky action at a distance? JEREMY Einstein demonstrated that quantum particles could be associated in such a way that they would become identical twins. Whatever happens to one of the particles simultaneously happens to the other, no matter how far apart they are. He didn't like his own conclusions because it broke his universal speed limit, the speed of light. He called it 'spooky action at a distance'. RACHEL The problem has been that the quantum state of entanglement is inherently unstable and may only last a few microseconds. Dr. Newell, your grandfather, theorized that if the ions were suspended in a magnetic field it would stabilize the entangled state. We have been able to teleport more and more complex information using this technique. Jeremy What kind of information? Rachel Formulas. Instructions, in essence, for more and more complex undertakings. We could, for instance, send a receiver to the moon or Mars with a couple of hundred pounds of "gray matter" to get things started, and a few trillion particles that have entangled twins on earth, then teleport instructions, and even materials, to build a habitat, for instance, or machines that are capable of doing scientific research, or mining, or a variety of other activities. Using conventional silicone based binary technology and radio frequency transmissions, it is possible to do the same thing, but it would take perhaps 15 or 20 years to complete a simple structure. Using quantum principles, the same thing could be done in days, even hours, or in some cases, instantaneously. CAPT. PAXTON So, you can see why this information could be extremely valuable, Dr. Newell, and why there may be some people out there who would be willing to do anything to get their hands on it. MICHAEL Point taken, Captain. But where is all this taking us? How is this going to help us find my parents? Rachel walks over to a big LED screen with a satellite image of the Bahamas up on the display and points to the map. RACHEL We are here, at Mars Bay, and the receiver is here, on Young's Island. Yesterday your father and I teleported a single particle to Young's Island, but so far it has not materialized there. I think this may have had something to do with your parents disappearance. Maybe your father detected some kind of atmospheric or magnetic disturbance and he wanted to go check it out. As you know, your mother has probably spent more time studying this archipelago than anyone else in the world. and I think it is highly unlikely that she could simply get lost out there, even in the middle of the night, but if they lost power and instrumentation due to some kind of disturbance, they could be adrift. We need your help analyzing the ocean currents and conditions at the time they disappeared to see if there was any anomalous activity that could have interfered with the teleported signal, and where they would have most likely drifted if they lost power. I need Jeremy's help analyzing your father's research notes, to see if he made any reference to whatever it was that drew them out there in the middle of the night. MICHAEL What time was it when you lost the signal? CAPT. PAXTON 1:27 a.m. Michael takes his laptop out of his briefcase, takes off his jacket, sits down and starts punching keys. Rachel walks into a small office off of the lab, returns with a journal and hands it to Jeremy. RACHEL This is your grandfather's journal. It contains his handwritten notes from his research. Please, see if you can find anything that may shed some light on what they were doing out there. Jeremy nods and takes the journal, then sits down at one of the lab tables and starts going through it. Michael stands and goes to the LCD screen and soon has ocean wave patterns up on the display. He pages the screens back to the time of the disappearance and begins to study the wave patterns and conditions. Rachel sits down and starts to punch away at her own laptop. They all continue to work. Then, after awhile: JEREMY Rachel, According to these notes, there was another teleported particle that was delayed about three months ago. RACHEL Yes, but it was only delayed for about two hours, and when it rematerialized, it was corrupted. We assumed that it was noise and classified it as an anomaly. JEREMY My Grandfather used to say that paradigm shifts are caused by anomalies. According to what I see in his journal, he revisited this occurrence after the particle disappeared yesterday. He was apparently trying to extract the new information that was attached to the particle when it rematerialized. His notes indicate that he discovered that the particle had a twin. It apparently kept changing even after it arrived on Young's Island, and it was no longer paired with its twin particle here on Andros. RACHEL How could that be? JEREMY I don't know, but clearly, his calculations indicate quantum entanglement. RACHEL Are there any clues as to why they went out? JEREMY Not yet, but I do know that he had a habit of drawing a box around his conclusions. Look. Jeremy held up the open Journal. At the bottom of the last page were a string of numbers with a box around them. JEREMY 75.19 - 25.43. Any idea what it could mean. MICHAEL They could be coordinates. Sounds like they're in the right neighborhood. They all went to the big LED screen. Michael touched a few icons, and the latitude and longitude showed up on the screen, overlaying the map. MICHAEL 75.19 - 25.43. 75 Degrees, 19 Minutes, West, 25 Degrees, 43 Minutes, North. Michael traces his finger across the LED screen to the spot on the map. It was just off the coast, on the edge of the Grand Bahaman Bank. CAPT. PAXTON That's where we lost the GPS signal. Rachel What about the conditions at the time they disappeared? Michael There was an unusual wave pattern at the time of the disappearance. I am studying it now to see if I can determine what caused it. Michael scrolls back the screen a few pages. Michael You see here, and here, and here, the wave patterns are random. There are swirls and eddy's and the waves are moving in with the tide, like you would expect, but at the time of the disappearance, the arrows showing the wave motion line up neatly in rows from North to South across a big portion of the Tongue. JEREMY That's odd. Can you go back to the time of the first occurrence, three months ago? Michael starts scrolling thru screens. When he arrives at the date and time of the first occurrence, the lines showing the wave patterns also line up North to South. RACHEL Well I'll be damned. That can't be coincidence. But what does it mean? JEREMY Remember the double-slit experiment? CAPT. PAXTON What is the double-slit experiment? RACHEL Scientist shined a light beam thru two slits in a thin plate, and measured the interference pattern on the other side of the plate. The wave patterns showed interference pretty much like you would expect. Similar to what you would see in a wave pattern if you used water. Rachel stands and starts drawing on the blackboard. She draws a line with two openings in it, then shows the wave pattern like a rippling pool on the other side of the line. RACHEL The waves overlap on the other side in a way that makes the interference patterns line up in straight lines, similar to what we are seeing in the ocean on the night they disappeared. JEREMY So then they shot one single electron of light thru one of the slits, and something strange happened. Somehow, it still produced a wave pattern on the other side of the slit. The electron seemed to be going through both slits at once, and somehow interfering with itself. Rachel Then they discovered that the electron did not seem to exist in any particular location until they looked for it somewhere. CAPT. PAXTON Meaning? RACHEL Meaning that when they looked for it, the wave function collapsed, and the wave became a particle. It's like the act of looking for it caused it to choose a position. CAPT. PAXTON So it sounds like you're saying that if we look for them somewhere, we may find them somewhere. Doesn't sound too 'spooky' to me. RACHEL What we are saying Captain is that that particular wave pattern may have been caused by some kind of magnetic or atmospheric disturbance that could have interfered with the teleported signal. It may be the reason that they set out to sea in the middle of the night. CAPT. PAXTON With all due respect Doctor Crain, I think it is much more likely that they were lured out there, and were victims of espionage, than they are lost in some mysterious wave pattern in the 'Bermuda Triangle'. MICHAEL Do you have any evidence that they were lured out there Captain? Capt. Paxton No sir. We don't. MICHAEL Then we should continue to consider all possibilities. Wouldn't you agree? CAPT. PAXTON Yes sir. We should. Rachel yawns and looks at her watch. RACHEL I think we should get some rest. It's almost two o'clock, and like your grandfather says, we're starting to think in circles. CAPT. PAXTON Agreed. Gentlemen, if you would like to grab your bags, I will show you to your quarters. This storm is supposed to blow over tonight, so we will have search crews back out at first light. EXT.- BEACH BUNGALOWS - NIGHT Six bungalows are lined up on the beach. Screened front entry, thatched roof, wood siding. Jeremy, Michael, and Capt. Paxton are walking down the beach to the bungalows carrying their bags. They see Rachel moving around in the first bungalow. The other bungalow's are all dark. CAPT. PAXTON Take your pick, Gentlemen. Your parents stay at the main house, so the rest of the bungalow's are empty. Michael Where do you stay, Captain? Capt. Paxton Nearby. I'll see you in the morning. Paxton turns and leaves. Jeremy and his father say goodnight and walk into their bungalows carrying their bags. Jeremy takes the first bungalow, and his father takes the second one. Jeremy puts his suitcase on the dresser, opens it and get's his toothbrush and other things out, strips down to his underwear, and goes into the bathroom. When he comes out he turns out the light, but as he pulls back the covers and starts to get in bed, he see's the light on in Rachel's bungalow. He can see her shadow outlined thru the shades and she is undressing. He tries to look away, but he cannot seem to make himself. He watches as she takes off her labcoat, lets down her hair and shakes it out, then starts unbuttoning her blouse. She takes off her blouse, then reaches behind her back and starts to undo her bra clasp, then stops, reaches up and turns out the light and disappears in the darkness. Jeremy wonders if she realized he was watching her, intruding on her privacy. He climbs into bed, mumbling something under his breath about how stupid he is. INT.- JEREMY'S BUNGALOW - DAWN. Jeremy gradually awakens. Rachel is sitting on the side of his bed, gently jostling him awake, and calling his name. The morning light illuminates her face with a soft glow. The sky is clearing, and he can hear the waves lapping gently up on the beach outside his bungalow. RACHEL Jeremy, Jeremy, wake up. It showed up. Jeremy awakens, and shaking off his stupor, leans up on one elbow. JEREMY What showed up? RACHEL The particle. It showed up. It finally showed up about 10 minutes ago. JEREMY How do you now? RACHEL It sent me an email. Rachel shows Jeremy her cell phone. On the screen it says, "Hi Mom, I'm Home." RACHEL I have the receiving unit programmed to send me an email anytime a particle materializes on the other side of the bay. Get dressed and meet me at the lab. Rachel gets up and walks out of the bungalow. She is wearing a t-shirt and not much else. Jeremy jumps out of bed and begins scrambling around looking for his clothes. INT. - Lab. Rachel is alone. Labcoat, slacks, hair pulled back, glasses. The door opens and Jeremy comes in. A molecular structure slowly rotates on the LCD. JEREMY Is that it? RACHEL Yes, and it's huge. An order of magnitude larger than it was when it was teleported. And not only that, it continues to morph, so it is also entangled with a twin, somewhere, like the first particle was. The door opens and Michael comes into the room, followed by Capt. Paxton. JEREMY Dad, this is the particle that was teleported on the day they disappeared. It finally showed up on Young's Island, and it is chocked full of new information. CAPT. PAXTON What kind of new information? RACHEL We don't know yet. Jeremy, where is your grandfather's Journal? Jeremy walks over to the lab table where he was working and retrieves the Journal. He opens it and starts paging thru it as he walks back to the LED screen. RACHEL How did he approach it? How did he figure out how to extract the new information from the last particle? How did he arrive at those coordinates? Jeremy picks up the chalk, and holding the Journal in one hand, starts writing formulas on the blackboard. Rachel watches him intently. After he fills up most of the board with formulas he stops and takes a step back. RACHEL Ahhh! I see. And then it would follow: Rachel steps up and continues to write formulas on the blackboard while Jeremy watches. They begin taking turns on the blackboard until it is full, then flip it over and start again on the other side. By the time they fill up the other side of the blackboard, they reach a conclusion. Rachel writes down a final, long formula on the board. She draws a box around it, then steps back and both her and Jeremy look at it in amazement. RACHEL Well. There it is. JEREMY Yes. There it is. Beautiful, huh? CAPT. PAXTON What is it? MICHAEL Is that a wormhole formulation? RACHEL Yes. That is exactly what it is. This is a formula for a spherically symmetric Lorentzian space-time metric that prescribes the wormhole geometry for a traversable, flat faced, Lorentzian wormhole. JEREMY And not only that, it predicts its frequency. CAPT. PAXTON In English? MICHAEL It's describes a doorway to another dimension, Captain. RACHEL Yes. And all we need is a starting point, and we can predict where, and when, it is likely to materialize. CAPT. PAXTON. Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but it seems to me that we have a starting point. Captain Paxton walks over to the LED screen and puts his finger pointedly on the location where the GPS signal was lost. CAPT. PAXTON 75 Degrees, 19 Minutes, West, 25 Degrees, 43 Minutes, North. Jeremy, Rachel, and Michael all look at each other, stunned by the obvious truth of the Captain's statement. RACHEL He's right. Plug in the coordinates, let's see where it takes us. Jeremy goes to the computer and enters the formula, using the coordinates where his grandparents disappeared as a starting point. He presses Enter and gradually an eddy appears on the screen at the starting location. It swirls and sinks and moves around the bay like a tornado without a funnel, turning sideways, upside down, sinking to the bottom, disappearing for a while, only to reappear on the bottom of the ocean at the center of the archipelago, then gradually winds its way to the surface of the ocean. RACHEL There. Stop it there. Look at the wave pattern. The arrows showing the wave pattern were lined up in neat rows, from North to South, across the tongue. Jeremy presses a couple of keys, and the swirling mass on the screen stops, slowly spinning on the oceans surface, right in the middle of the archipelago. RACHEL When will it be there? JEREMY Tonight. At midnight. INT - RESEARCH VESSEL CABIN -DUSK. Calm Sea. High tech 45' boat. Radar screen on the dash, other instruments in cabin. Michael is at the wheel. Captain Paxton stands next to him in the cabin. In front of them is the vast expanse of the deep blue waters of the Tongue of the Ocean. CAPT. PAXTON I didn’t realize you were such an accomplished seaman, Dr. Newell. MICHAEL My mother has been studying this archipelago for a long time Captain. I practically grew up on this bay. CAPT. PAXTON I hope you understand sir, I didn't see the point of distracting the search crews on what is likely to be a wild goose chase. MICHAEL I do understand Captain. And I agree completely. My evaluation of the ocean currents indicate my parents should be somewhere south, where the search crews are looking. CAPT. PAXTON How long until we arrive? MICHAEL Several hours Captain. We should be there by eleven or eleven-thirty. CAPT. PAXTON What exactly do you expect to find there? MICHAEL I have no idea, but both Rachel and Jeremy think it's worth checking out. EXT - RESEARCH VESSEL - DUSK Rachel and Jeremy are standing on the aft deck, watching the shoreline recede in the distance. JEREMY Last night, when I went to my bungalow, I found myself, well, I thought maybe I should apologize if ….. RACHEL Yeah. Those bungalow's are pretty transparent. I was a little distracted too. You might want to consider turning out the lights before you undress, young Dr. Newell. She gives him a wry smile, then turns and walks toward the cabin. Jeremy turns red, then follows her, mumbling something under his breath about how stupid he is. Michael and Capt. Paxton are standing, watching the ocean in front of them and the radar and sonar screens blinking on the dash. MICHAEL You two may as well get some rest. It's going to be a long night. Jeremy and Rachel nod, and turn and start down the steps to below deck. Rachel sits and puts her head down the table. A coffee pot sits on the counter. JEREMY I wonder if there is any coffee around here. Jeremy starts rifling through the cabinets until he finds the coffee, fills the pot with water and starts it brewing. Then sits down across from Rachel. JEREMY MIT, huh? RACHEL Yes. MIT. I did my doctorate on quantum entanglement. They offered me an Associate Professorship, but when I heard about your grandfathers work, I sought him out, and he offered me the job as his research assistant. I jumped at the chance. JEREMY You took my job, you know. RACHEL Well, maybe after we get your grandparents home, we can find something for you to do around the lab. There's always filing to be done. You Harvard boys must be good for something. After all, your grandfather went to school there, so it can't be all bad. She gets up and pours them both a cup of coffee. RACHEL What do you really think we're going to find out here? JEREMY I don't know. Maybe nothing, but …. RACHEL Yeah. I know. As surreal as this all seems, we can't ignore the facts. JEREMY I never thought I would be chasing around the ocean in the middle of the night looking for a wormhole, but I imagine that my grandparents never did either. EXT - RESEARCH VESSEL Pan out. The ship recedes into the distance, as the light begins to wane. Fade out. INT. - CABIN OF RESEARCH VESSEL - NIGHT. Near midnight. Michael, Jeremy, Rachel, and Capt. Paxton are in the cabin, peering out the window as they toss in the waves. CAPT. PAXTON Can you see anything? MICHAEL Nothing but black water. Suddenly the sea begins to churn and they see a huge black wave coming toward them. MICHAEL ROUGE WAVE ......, HANG ON... He steers the boat around and heads into the wave at full throttle. The boat climbs the wave and barely makes it to the top. When they reach the crest they see that the wave is actually a towering circle of water with a dark swirling mass in its center. Michael tries to steer away, but it's too late. The ship was firmly in the grip of the wormhole. The boat tips over the edge, spins wildly in the blackness, then disappears into the swirling mass. They hold on to the sides as the boat spins and turns, Jeremy and Rachel cling to each other, then suddenly they find themselves on the surface. The sea is calm, and more surprisingly, it is daylight. In the distance they see a ship approaching. It looks like a Viking Ship of war, with a carved wooden dragon on the bow, a glistening white sail, and oars in the water. As the ship draws near they can see a half-dozen or so men standing at the bow. The men are shirtless, and some of them hold bows in their hands, with quivers of arrows on their backs. They see that the "sail" is actually made of some white, crystalline, glass type of material, and that the ship was actually gliding along several feet above the water, seemingly held up by the oars. There was a beam of light coming from a bright spot on the distant shoreline shining on the crystalline sail. The beam of light seemed to be powering the ship silently thru the water. As the ship reaches them, the oars lift out of the water, and the ship lowers to the surface of the ocean, tossing gently in the waves. CAPT. PAXTON Where in the hell are we? Capt. Paxton instinctively reaches inside his jacket and puts his hand on his pistol. Almost simultaneously, one of the bowmen takes an arrow from his quiver, draws back his bow, and lets the arrow fly. Paxton tries to raise his weapon, but it is too late. As the arrow flies toward them, it turns into a glowing ball of light, but as it reaches their boat, it gradually slows down, then disappears in a burst of light, along with Capt. Paxton's pistol. They look up, and the man standing at the front of the ship, in front of the bowmen, is holding the pistol, curiously examining it. JEREMY I think a better question may be, "when" in the hell are we? Fade out. |
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