draft

[jamie]

1. Space Age(the working title was originally metropolis)
I've always had a set of technical(for lack of a better word) specs for different ideas floating around my head. One day on break watching YouTube I randomly came across that Janelle Monae chicks first couple albums Metropolis & Archandroid. While listening to them they played like a sequence of events so when I envisioned the events I used all those technical ideas mentioned earlier. What came about was this story about the guy and the android girl mentioned in her albums escaping the metropolis, making it to orbit around earth, and finally fleeing in a hijacked ship. That was supposed to be the end of it cause I heard them all at once and came up with the scenario on the spot.

Some time later I heard Kanye West's 808 & heart breaks, which had this opening that made my imagination go back to the two characters traveling in space alone on the ship. As a result I added another part to the story that follows Kanyes album dealing with heartbreak. Now the two are trapped in the ship and have a fallout because the guy is regretful second guessing his earlier actions, paranoid he's going to die on the ship for lack of food & water, and contemplating killing the android to take control of the ship. Before he can kill the android he once loved he passes out from exhaustion. She then puts him in a stasis chamber and the story ends.

This was around the time that Kanye west's "My dark twisted fantasy" came out(that's how old this story is I've been cooking up), So as soon as I saw the video for "runaway" I reworked it to be another chapter after the guy was put in stasis. The androids ship arriving at mars with her coming down to get provisions to awaken her mate in stasis on the ship in orbit. This part of the story is set to "My dark twisted fantasy"; specifically the events depicted in the short film runaway but extended.

The whole thing has been growing steadily over the years with over 30 albums depicting new arcs in the story. At this point I'm just waiting for Janelle Monae to release the last album in the series so I can close out the story. I already know how I want it all to end and even know that the final album I want to use which is the Timeless EP by Goldie. The format, if I ever get to complete it; will be a browser based game that unlocks each chapter when the user uploads the album (obviously I couldn't afford those kind of music license fees so I get around that by relying on the player to get the albums themselves. I just need to interface with them).



2. A Fiction(no title yet)
I'm not going to deep on this one cause it would take forever and a day. This is based on a series of scifi, action, and horror movies(non comic based) with black characters. Basically I took a bunch of movies and hodgepodged the black characters along with their immediate events surrounding them into one huge story. It all started when my internet or maybe it was power... Anyway some utility went out, and I was watching movies on my laptop. Watched Denzels postapocalyptic movie "book of eli" and later will smiths postapocalyptic movie "after earth" and got the idea to take a bunch of movie narratives and smash them together.

There is one catch here, that is the events depicted in "A fiction" is suppose to be the sum total of fictitious stories the people depicted in "Space age" consume. It actually started out as a kinda (parody of/play on) things like fiction books, movies, comics ect.



3. AI world(no title yet)
This is also based off black movie characters(non comic based) ...but ones of extreme power. Think God in Bruce almighty and Hancock on down to Mace Windu and Morpheus. There are no scenarios taken from movies only characters and power sets. The point of this world is to train AI to live beside humans in "A Fiction" by giving them an environment to live out life as a human. When they die and go to "heaven" it's actually just a robotic body that exist in "A fiction". Events that occur in this world serve as catalyst for a major plot point within "A Fiction"

If it hasn't been made obvious this all works as a circle within a circle within a circle.

#1 "space age" = Z above is our world in a proposed future. (this is the outer circle Z)
#2 "A fiction" = Y above is a world of wild fiction consumed by normal folks in Z (movies, books, games, etc Y within the outer circle Z)
#3 "AI world" = X above is a world of Artificial entities living life out as humans (exist as X within the world of Y ...alongside other such worlds X)

[jamie]

(Think of the following as development notes/drafts more than anything)
Watching the movies "After Earth"(Will Smith) and "Book of Eli"(Denzel Washington) I mentally placed the events depicted in the same world ...afterwards I thought about using black scifi characters & events from various movies to generate one big grand story. Below is the current state / first arc of that story.




State of the world when the science fiction story begins at book/arc 1:
The home world had a serious but manageable biological outbreak. In a bid to create the cure, a major lab accident lead to the majority of the planets population being wiped out; while other lifeforms became increasingly hostile. Decades after those events an existing A.I. platform originally used to model global weather & traffic navigation was extended and repurposed to foresee, manage, and suggest courses of action to all global threats. As a result of those A.I. suggestions...
1. The predictive virtual world used by the A.I. for modeling & projecting the future was opened to the public so that work could be carried out remotely/virtually without face 2 face contact.
2. Automatons were produced to assist the remaining population with manual labor and shield them from possible biological contaminates.
3. Healthy populations where sent to the moon and seed colonies in the solar system so that no one outbreak can effect the entire population.
4. An experimental multi use research vessel was commissioned to be placed in orbit where work could be carried out, away from any planetary populations.

(The failure of that research vessel leads to a string of events that ultimately threatens the remaining survivors of that world)


It's a 6 or 7 arc story and the below is either going to be arc 1 or 2. Depending on if I want to detail the events that caused the ships A.I. to attack it's original crew.
If I go that rout I'm using events from the following movies as an entry point for both characters and events...


QUICK & DIRTY EXAMPLE:
Dire state of affairs on the home world causes a need for further sensitive experiments in orbit.(Reference: "Cloverfield Paradox" & Interstellar) These experiments by the crew result in the creation of a possible threat to the home world that the ships A.I. predicts and attempts to stop.(Reference: Life) In their ultimate failure the threat escapes to their home world surface,(Reference: Pacific Rim) while the research ship vanishes; appearing sometime later above one of the colony planets.(See: next book/arc)


(Below is the opening setup for this part of the story- book/arc 1)
I've actually been rewatching candyman(and other "black" scifi/horror films) for a story I'm writing. I'm using certain character archetypes and narrative events while discarding/swaping other non relevant aspects. I've replaced the cabrini-green projects with a semi dilapidated research spaceship that reappeared in orbit(I'm stuck between using a Venus or Mars archetype ...mars is kinda over used). The two students in the movie candyman have been swapped for two researchers from the colony planetside. After going to the orbiting ship they find survivors and an intact ship's A.I.. The researchers then mistakenly let a "threat" down to the colony along with the evacuating survivors. Candyman as shown in the movie has been swapped out for that "threat". Instead of being supernatural in nature the "threat" is the result of the ships A.I. unsuccessfully trying to commission an automaton to stop the original, now dead crew from unknowingly dropping a weapon down to their home world.
(A lot of the events and motivations are the same. It's just that the locations and relationships have been changed)

(The story I'm working on actually takes events/character archetypes from a couple "black" movies ...namely)

[jamie]

Concept Birth
After watching "After earth"



and "Book of eli"



I noticed both dealt with a ravaged earth and imagined what it would look like if the cadet from "after earth" found Eli and they wondered together to Eli's city in the west. From there I thought "what other sci-fiction movies with African peoples(diaspora + continent) are out there that I can add to the mix". I added that the city they were walking to was the one depicted in "I robot"



I then thought this would make a great premise for a videogame. From there it became a small hobby of me going on a 3-4 month(+/-) binge of movie watching looking for content.



Premise
The remnants of humanity now exist on the moon, seed colonies in the solar system, with only one main hold out on earth. The planetary hub city is that hold out, which houses the main repository of human knowledge along with the last major healthy human population in the solar system. Elsewhere on earth only small pockets of survivors remain. Earth has been hit by a virus strain. In the attempt for a cure and inoculation, a mutation was born in those injected. In the chaos a portion of humanity deemed healthy was settled on the moon. From the moon settlement, seed colonies began construction elsewhere in the solar system, the most mature of which exist on mars. From the planetary hub city a search for a cure continues.

Act 1


A signal is received from a lost experimental vessel that reappeared in mars orbit. In response a recovery team is found that's already in route with a security team on board. The recovery team is then tasked with retrieving that vessel while the security team is planet side recovering a criminal banished from the mars colony to be tried back on the moon and if convicted banished to earth.


At the Moon base scientist have downloaded data sent from the vessel and are running virtual time projection simulations to understand what happened / will happen to the ship. While working they find that both the vessel and mars colony is projected to explode for some unexplained reason. They then bring in detectives to help in case it's human instead of mechanical problems. A detective notes that both explosions look man made and one projected victim of the mars explosion is projected to actually die before the explosion while also looking like a kidnap victim. He believes that if they can find who kidnap's & kill the girl they can find who causes the explosions. That detective is then brought in on a special team who are able to actually see what is happening on the ship in real time. The detective asks them to track the girl instead of the ship. Watching the events unfold the detective deduces that they are not watching a camera feed or virtualization, the scientist then tell him that it is actually portal technology invented for telescopes that allows them to see such far off distances. In doing so they see the women come under attack in public and discover the identity of the attacker; a criminal logged as being aboard the vessel when previously lost.


Meanwhile the recovery crew awakens from deep sleep and is briefed on the mission. After docking with the experimental vessel and checking it out the recovery team finds that the crew is dead while the vessel is largely powered down. With the recovery underway the security team is sent down to mars colony for recovery of [the prisoner]. Once on the ground in the colony they find that there has been a major event. There is little activity around and the colony appears largely lifeless. Searches of the area reviled dead colonist within the buildings. Security team moves to the jail and finds the door leading to [the prisoner] is locked even though bodies killed in the manner of his conviction are present throughout the colony. Unlocking & entering the containment area [the prisoner], other convicts, and [the research assistant] are found intact but offer no clue to what happened. Back on moon base [the detective] pressures [the scientist] to bypass moon-mars signal delay by sending a message threw the portal to mars security team head(a friend of his) of the bombing suspect. While attempting to apprehend the bombing suspect [the security head] is apprehended while [the detective] looks on through the portal. Simultaneously food is being offered to the jailed convicts which is used by [the prisoner] as an opportunity to escape. Security team corners [the prisoner] in a building then [the commander] enters to bring him out when they are both attacked by and fight off [the infected]. After reacquiring [the prisoner] he tells the security team these murders aren't his and that he only used them as an opportunity for theft. Security team Android then comes back with survivors who explained what happened on the colony before the security team arrived. While planning extraction to rejoin the recovery team [the survivors] stage a failed attempt to break [the prisoner] out again. [the commander] states that the given predicament concerning [the infected] requires everyone's help and talks [the prisoner] and his crew into joining together with them to help everyone escape.

As [the suspect] takes [the security head] deeper under the colony they lose the ability to project a portal through the colony structure. Scientist suggest extending the range by sending down an experimental remote probe from [the vessel] which uses the same portal tech. Via remote probe [the detective] tracks [the suspect] to his mars hideout; the moon team relays the location to the security team then witness [the security head]'s murder by [the suspect]. Remaining security forces receives the location plus an identity match from colony computers, then apprehends the bombing suspect.

[The detective] interrogates [the suspect] via delayed remote signal from the moon. During witch he is told that he is a loyal patriot and that the experimental vessel must be destroyed to save humanity. With the admission of gilt the case is closed but [The detective] is concerned about the woman who he was given no info on. As the communication window closes [The detective] asks [the scientist] to send him through the portal onto [the vessel] so that he is able to save the woman. He is prepped sent through and revived on the other side by the recovery crew medic. While in recovery his medical scan data is used to create a [silicone clone] to be sent down to the [the colony] to rescue the woman.

The security team moves to the transport from the prison and find it hasn't arrived. Out in the open they are attack by [the infected] and [the suspect] escapes while everyone flees back to the prison. While the prison is surrounded [silicone clone] arrives at the colony and immediately heads for the hideout location to find the woman. There he finds the woman and is confronted by [the suspect] arriving to grab the bomb and flee back to the experimental vessel. While [silicone clone] and the woman make their way back to the transport they stop at the woman's home where [silicone clone] is briefed on what happened at the colony. During this time the surrounded prison is attacked by [the infected] during which [the suspect] arrives and carves his way through en-route to the transport but is stopped by [the commander] and [the prisoner]. [the commander] [the prisoner] [the research assistant] and Security team Android notice the transport is ready and make it out of the prison; back at the same time as the [silicone clone] and woman arrive. After taking off they realize [the suspect] was right about the need to stop [the infected] and decides to blow the colony.

The transport is turned back around where [the commander] and Security team Android jump off early to head to the reactor to detonate it. Meanwhile the transport docks back at the colony to serve as a decoy. [the infected] then notice [the commander] and Security team Android on their way back to the transport. [the commander] Security team Android [the prisoner] [silicone clone] and the woman makes their way out on the transport as it is jumped by [the infected] and [the suspect]. The survivors retreat to the front of the transport while [the prisoner] de-couples the rear. As the rear transport module falls away the colony explodes in the background.