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THE END OF THE WORLD
A COMEDY
by
ADITYA BIDIKAR
FADE IN:
EXT. THE MOON. PROBABLY NIGHT. LOOKS LIKE IT
A barren moonscape, marred by pits, rocks and the like.
Two astronauts. Walking along, with some machines. Picking
moondust. We see one guy fiddle with his machine. Turning to
the other, he asks through the intercom system
GUY 1
Hey, Matt, you know how to work this
thing?
GUY 2/MATT
Y’know, Andy, you can sometimes learn a
surprising number of surprising things
if you pay ATTENTION when someone tells
you something.
GUY 1/ANDY
(putting a hand to his
ear)
Hey, there’s no need to shout. Just tell
me you don’t know either.
He continues fiddling. Beside him, we see Matt looking
around. Then suddenly, he sees something, his mouth drops
open, and slowly, he puts his hand on Andy’s. Andy,
irritated, doesn’t pay attention at first, but Matt starts
shaking his arm, and Andy looks up, and his mouth drops open
as he sees what Matt is looking at.
Then we see what it is. It is a rock as large as a man,
innocuous in itself, but for the fact that it has a door cut
into it.
The astronauts walk to it, leaving their instruments behind.
Matt touches the door gently.
ANDY
(nervous)
Don’t you think we should tell –
MATT
(putting a finger to his
lips over his mask,
without moving his head)
Shh!
Matt’s hands move to the handle, a round one like you find
on ship doors. As he grips it, a voice speaks in both their
heads
VOICE (V.O.)
Do not open the door!
They look at each other, surprised.
BOTH
Did you?
Pause.
BOTH
No!
They seem nervous.
Again Matt touches the handle.
VOICE (V.O.)
Do not open the door!
The voice sounds sexless, without emotion, making a
statement. There is no atmosphere on the moon, so the voice
shouldn’t actually be heard, so they realize it is in their
heads.
Matt disregards it, and pushes open the door. No atmosphere
inside, because there’s no air hissing out.
VOICE (V.O.)
Do not enter.
The astronauts look at each other, then shrug at once, and
enter.
CUT TO:
INT. STRANGE PLACE. PASSAGE. MOON. CONTINUOUS
ANDY
Are you nervous?
VOICE (V.O.)
No. Are you?
ANDY
Yes.
MATT
Me too.
ANDY
But you just said –
MATT
Not me.
ANDY
I’m getting freaked out. I think we
should –
MATT
NO. we stay and we get to the bottom of
this.
They turn a corner and see another door.
VOICE (V.O.)
Do not enter.
The astronauts shrug again and enter.
CUT TO:
INT. STRANGE PLACE. ROOM. MOON. CONTINUOUS
They see a machine on the other side of the room.
VOICE (V.O.)
Do not go to the machine.
The astronauts now seem to think the voice is just nonsense.
So they go to the machine.
The machine is a strange one. The prominent component is a
lever, and the rest is lights and stuff, which are lit up,
by the way, which should strike us strange, because this is
strange.
VOICE (V.O.)
Do not pull the lever.
The astronauts laugh. Matt pulls the lever.
He moves back as silently a panel moves aside revealing many
more levers.
VOICE (V.O.)
Do not pull the third lever from the
left.
Before Matt can stop him, Andy goes ahead and pulls the
third lever from the left.
The machine makes a noise, an almost imperceptible tick,
then another, then another. Louder, and louder, and louder.
Soon the ticking is almost ear-splitting. Then there is a
whirring. The machine whirs loudly, almost painfully.
The machine seems to strain at its sides, growing bigger and
bigger, just a little at a time.
Andy and Matt are now horrified. They gulp.
VOICE (V.O.)
I told you so.
The machine is suddenly covered with white light. No.
Energy, pure energy. It shoots out of the machine in a
widening bubble. The bubble covers the astronauts, expands,
CUT TO:
EXT. MOON. SPACE CAPSULE
covers their space capsule more than a mile away, expands,
CUT TO:
EXT. MOON FROM AFAR
covers the whole moon.
It grows and grows. Very fast. Sickeningly fast.
CUT TO:
EXT. SOLAR SYSTEM FROM FAR
The bubble expands till it hits Earth, covers it, and grows
on towards Mars and Venus, and goes on to cover the whole
solar system, and keeps expanding.
As the bubble of energy expands, it diminishes on the moon
itself.
CUT TO:
INT. STRANGE PLACE. ROOM. MOON
Everything is as it was. The two astronauts look at each
other.
Andy limps over to Matt and talks gibberish. Matt answers it
with more gibberish.
Matt tries to scratch Andy’s nose, but the mask comes in his
way. He investigates the mask and seems to be interested in
it.
He presses a button, and it starts moving around.
ANDY'S POV
His vision blurs.
He reaches out to Matt, and presses the same button.
They remove each other’s mask.
BLACK OUT
FADE IN:
INT./EXT. SMALL ALIEN CAPSULE. OUTSIDE THE SOLAR SYSTEM
The space capsule is ridiculously small. Just two aliens, a
control panel, and glass covering. Sorta like the Jetsons’
capsule.
Two weird aliens are watching a video monitor which we can’t
see.
They speak to each other in sub-titles. One of them (ALIEN
2) has the voice of the V.O. on the moon.
ALIEN 1
Humans are so predictable.
He laughs.
ALIEN 2
Yup. You tell them not to do something,
and they’ve got to do it.
ALIEN 1
Correct. We can now rule Earth, now that
everyone there is an idiot.
ALIEN 2
Y’know, we could’ve done it ourselves,
but this has a delicious sense of irony.
BOTH ALIENS
Humans made idiots out of humans.
We see the capsule turn towards the solar system. As it jets
off towards earth and after it, a huge crew of innumerable
similar crafts follow it, we hear the gibberish of the
billions on Earth increasing slowly to ear-piercing volume
and suddenly we
BLACK OUT
THE END
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