Treachery
Page 4
appealing installations are the kitchen table and a large island. The children are scattered around the table and island.
An entertainment center and large-screen TV are on one wall. Toys and art supplies are strewn everywhere. Very imaginative original "LEGO" creations of every kind imaginable populate many bookshelves. The centerpiece is a magnificent, five-foot-long star cruiser that only could have been invented by a top-notch designer. Children's art of every style plasters the walls.
At the island stands VICKI MORRISON CARTER, white, thirty-four, bright-eyed, compassionate, attractive, of average build and fitness, and who is accustomed to being asked "What? What's so funny?" when she doesn't even laugh. Meal preparations are scattered on the island surface.
HEIDI
Exo-what? Is that like an exoskeleton? Ew. I don't want to know about any thousands of exo-anything.
Vicki laughs.
VICKI
Exoplanet.
DOMINICK
Outside?
HEIDI
Huh? What's outside?
DOMINICK
No, "exo-" means "outside." So what's meant by "outside planet?"
Heidi shakes her head, shrugs, spreads out her hands, and gives Dominick an expression that says "What in the world are you talking about?"
HEIDI
Again, "HUH?!" What is anything what-in-the-heck could you mean by what's meant by "outside planet?"
She affects a bombastic, didactic, deep "Starship Captain" voice.
HEIDI
"CAPTAINS LOG, STARDATE I WISH IT WERE CHRISTMAS. There is a massive planet outside. It's totally freaking awesome. I think I'll call it 'outside planet.'"
Everyone laughs. Heidi enjoys the attention.
HEIDI
"But I'm still freaking depressed, because it's still freaking not Christmas, and I don't have my spaceship Lego set yet. Also, I wonder if 'planet outside' maybe isn't such a good name for a planet. Maybe I'll name it 'totally freaking awesome planet', instead."
Everyone laughs more. Heidi has nothing more to say as a Starship Captain, so she raises her arms like a zombie and makes a menace of a moan and roar at Shirley, who squeals, and runs around to the other side of the island. All the kids except Dominick take up the game of zombie-chase-and-shriek tag again. Vicki chops the pepper again, CHOP, CHOP, CHOP...
Jake resumes his perusal of the internet.
Dominick walks over to his Dad.
DOMINICK
Dad?
Jake doesn't notice his Son for all the noise.
DOMINICK
QUEIT PLEASE!
Jake turns around. The noise and ruckus continue.
JAKE
CHILDREN?
The kids all stop and look at him.
JAKE
More quiet, please. In fact, a lot more quiet. In fact, could you please go outside?
Shirley runs outside in a pretended scream of terror. All the other kids except for Dominick follow and resume the game outside.
JAKE
That was really sharp, Dominick--I mean that was great that you noticed that exoplanet means "outside planet." But that doesn't really make sense, does it?
VICKI
(matter-of-fact)
Nope, but I think it would make a great name for a planet.
Jake gives her a "huh?" expression.
VICKI
Neptune, Pluto, Eris--what are they going to name any of those new planets they found out in the scattered disk beyond Pluto? I think it would make sense to call one of them "outside planet." You know, for like, outside, out there. Far away.
Jake, stunned at the badness of this idea, opens his mouth to express his dismay.
JAKE
Uh...
VICKI
Uh, not.
She smiles and winks at him. She had him. He laughs.
DOMINICK
Dad?
JAKE
What, Son?
DOMINICK
Why did you say they've discovered, how many?
JAKE
About one thousand seven hundred.
DOMINICK
Yeah. Why did you say they've discovered all those.
JAKE
Because it's just an incredibly cool fact. We've only learned in the past two decades about the existence of planets around other stars, and mostly thanks to this space probe we've got named Kepler--oh, and a very enterprising man who decided to search for extrasolar planets--anyway, I just think it's really awesome that we're beginning to see so many other planets, in other solar systems.
DOMINICK
See? Like we have pictures of them? Wow! Why haven't I seen them?--
JAKE
Since they don't look anything like the images from "AVATAR", few people realize how amazing they are. Just blobs of light is all we have. Some of the ways we find extrasolar planets is to use light, radio and other detection tricks to figure out that they are there, and how big they are, or maybe what their orbits are like, and stuff.
DOMINICK.
Oh. How? I mean, what tricks?
JAKE
So, one of the ways they detect a planet that orbits another star is that the planet passes in front of the star, from our point of view, which makes the star slightly dimmer while the planet is in front of it, because the planet hides some of the star's light. In other words, if a planet circles a star, say, every hundred days, then every hundred days they'll observe a slight dip in the brightness of the star. So, I have this idea: what if we built a statistical model about the characteristics not only of stars where we have found exoplanets, but also of the star systems that are nearest to that exoplanet?
DOMINICK
You mean, could we find ways of identifying relationships between stars without exoplanets, and stars with them, so that we could find stars that might have other stars near them with exoplanets?
Vicki's jaw drops.
DOMINICK
What?
VICKI
You just took everything Dad said and turned it into a lot less words. Maybe you should become a news reporter. You'll be a Politician's worst enemy. 'So, what you're really saying is you hate Mexicans, is that correct?'
Jake laughs uproariously.
DOMINICK
What?
VICKI
Jake, do you have a way to try that? Or do you know anyone who could try that? I think that's a good idea. I don't even know whether anyone's tried it. Do you?
JAKE
I'll look around. I'll ask around.
INT. PROFESSOR SAMPLES' OFFICE--NIGHT
PROFESSOR SAMPLES, an Asian woman, thirty, short, pretty, bright-eyed, meek, and dressed mostly in business casual pink, sits at her computer workstation in her neat office.
Her office is full of books and stacks of astronomical papers and charts. The walls are lined with diplomas, awards, and spectacular charts and photographs of celestial objects and phenomena. Near her computer a photograph is mounted; it is a family portrait of herself, a very handsome Asian man, thirty-one, and two gorgeous children: a seven-year old girl and a nine-year old boy. Also at her desk is an open lab book with doodles and notes, and a pen.
She opens an email client on her computer, and reads her email.
JAKE (V.O.)
Dear Professor Samples, I wonder whether a certain method has been tried for searching for extrasolar planets. I've researched it some, but I think I probably don't even know where really to look. However, my guess is that you may have a better idea where to look, or even whether this idea has already been tried. Here's the idea...
She reads, and considers. Her face says "Hmm...that could be."
She opens software on her computer; a splash screen that says "orange" appears and vanishes, and then a main application window comes into view.
She opens a spreadsheet populated with numbers. The column headers include these titles: "STAR MSINI MSTAR HIPP V VURL VREF." She looks at the numbers. She frowns.
PROFESSOR SAMPLES
<
br /> Right. A table of stars with distance and vector relations to other stars, with all-degrees vector categories and original uncategorized vectors. I can do that.
She sighs.
PROFESSOR SAMPLES
Easy-peasy.
She pulls her lab book toward herself, picks up the pen, and doodles what looks like thinly sliced pie charts in it.
INT. KITCHEN--NIGHT
Jake reads his email. As he reads, his eyes go wide with amazement.
SAMPLES (V.O.)
Jake, one way to answer your question is with data or information analytics, also called data mining, which many Astronomers use. I don't know whether your particular question has been explored that way before, so I put together an analysis of the exoplanet database, and ran it. I have access to telescopes and equipment to hunt for exoplanets, and I did so with one of the unexamined candidates which your rule set found. You won't believe what I found.
Jake stands up, stunned and wide-eyed. He slaps his hands to his forehead in disbelief.
EXT. HOUSE--NIGHT
From his front lawn near the street, Jake stares at the constellation Orion in the night sky.
JAKE
We're going to find them...the Children of God, everywhere.
Vicki giggles, and he jolts, startled, and turns to see that she has spied on him. She stands at the front door, in the moonlight, in pink pajamas.
VICKI
Find them? Who? How? Did that professor you found have anything to say?
JAKE
She invited me to a meeting with a bunch of scientists at the next Southern European Astronomy something-or-other Association, uh, thingie.
She goes bug-eyed with amazement.
JAKE
Yeah, crazy.
EXT.