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Martin running down a corridor with red lights along the walls. We recognize it: the corridor to Medieval World. He pauses at the end, looks up.
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The Gunslinger stalking Martin.
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Medieval World. Martin comes above ground into near darkness. He is surprised at the change. He looks off.
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Martin’s point of view of the medieval castle at dusk.
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Martin enters the banquet hall. Except for the light change, it is as we last saw it. The Knight-guest is dead, the Queen is on the stairs, unmoving, her battery run down. The Black Knight is staring off into the distance, his battery also run down. Martin enters the room, looks around. He brushes against the Queen, who falls off the stairs onto the floor.
Martin can’t decide what to do, when the Gunslinger arrives, his acid-scarred face grinning hideously. Martin moves cautiously back, crouching like a street-fighter. He circles the room.
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The Gunslinger, also wary.
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The Gunslinger’s point of view. In infrared, the torch-lit room is confusing, especially with any movement.
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Martin. He realizes the Gunslinger is confused. He figures it out, and moves back toward the torches on the walls.
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The Gunslinger. He frowns.
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The Gunslinger’s point of view. He can’t find Martin among the torches for a moment. Martin’s heat merges with the torch heat.
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Martin standing beneath one torch, staring at the Gunslinger just a few feet away. The Gunslinger is like a blind man. He turns his head one way and the other, trying to find the human heat source which he knows is in the room. But the Gunslinger is confused. The moment goes on, with unbelievable tension. Martin and the Gunslinger, just a few feet apart, but Martin effectively concealed.
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The Gunslinger’s point of view, which will visually make the point.
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Martin and the Gunslinger as the Gunslinger finally apparently gives up, and turns to walk away. Martin sighs and drops his hands, making a banging noise against the wall. Instantly, the Gunslinger whirls—it was a trick, his turning away—and leaps for the source of the sound. And Martin does the first thing that comes to mind, which is to grab the torch over his head and bring it down on the lunging Gunslinger.
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The Gunslinger as he bursts into flames. He spins around the room.
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Martin as he runs off.
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Martin runs down the castle corridor, past the elderly guest.
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The Gunslinger, roaring with flames, engulfed.
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Martin running down another corridor, when he hears a cry for help. He pauses, turns.
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The castle dungeon. Martin enters the room and sees a girl chained to the wall. His back is to us. She cries intermittently for help. Martin approaches her; she hears him and turns. She is exquisitely, arrestingly beautiful.
GIRL: Help me . . .
Martin hesitates.
GIRL: Help me, please . . .
Martin releases the Girl from her manacles. She rubs her wrists.
GIRL: Oh, thank you.
Her knees start to buckle. He catches her as she falls. He helps her over to a stone bench, then crosses the dungeon to get her some water from a casket. As he crosses the dungeon back and forth, we have plenty of chance to notice the rack.
Martin holds water to the Girl’s lips in a metal ladle. She shakes her head, refusing it.
GIRL: No water . . . no water . . .
MARTIN: Go ahead and drink.
GIRL: No . . . no water.
MARTIN: Go ahead.
GIRL: No, please.
Martin, figuring she is delirious, presses her.
MARTIN: I’m trying to help you.
GIRL: No, please . . .
The water spills down her chin and suddenly sparks drip and sputter from her hair. She has short-circuited. Martin is stunned but he doesn’t have much chance to reflect on it because he hears a sound behind him and turns and sees:
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The Gunslinger. A charred mass, barely humanoid, moving forward.
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Martin and the Gunslinger as they have their last fight in the castle dungeon, to the death.
The Gunslinger, moving with stunning speed, gets Martin around the throat. Martin kicks him away; there are char marks around his throat. The Gunslinger falls back, recovers and attacks again.
Martin has turned to run but the Gunslinger tackles him. They fall and roll. The Gunslinger punches viciously. Martin’s face is cut. He twists away. Another punch misses, and strikes the stone floor with a metallic clang.
Martin wrestles free. The Gunslinger punches and knocks him back. Martin turns into a punching bag for the rhythmic, mechanical blows of the Gunslinger.
Whenever Martin is able to hit the Gunslinger, he responds with the same mechanical quality, feeling no pain, simply getting up quickly, attacking again.
Finally Martin maneuvers around so that there is a barred grating between himself and the Gunslinger. He is gasping for breath, looking for a respite. There is none—the Gunslinger’s hand darts through the bars and gets Martin by the throat again.
This looks like it for Martin, but he picks up a sword from the fallen body of one of the attendants earlier seen, and with a single swipe cuts off the Gunslinger’s arm—or at least, he would have, except there is the clang of metal against metal. The Gunslinger’s arm does not release its grip. Finally, with more sword strikes, it does. But there is no injury to the Gunslinger.
Martin, once released, falls coughing to the ground. The Gunslinger comes over to deliver the coup. Martin backs off. The Gunslinger lunges.
Martin can’t take much more of this, but he rolls and misses the Gunslinger. Martin staggers to his feet. His face is cut and bleeding. His clothing is torn. The Gunslinger stalks him. Martin backs off.
The Gunslinger delivers two lightning-punches, and Martin crumples. His face is a bloody pulp. He is no longer resisting, really. He tries in some vague way to get away, but none of his movements are effectual anymore.
The Gunslinger moves in again, slowly, and then darts. Martin rolls. The Gunslinger is tripped up by Martin’s rolling body and falls against the rack. One arm is pinned down by the click of the wristlet. The Gunslinger struggles to free himself. Martin lies numbly.
The Gunslinger is trying to get free . . .
Martin looks up, gathers his energy for one last move, and springs on the Gunslinger’s feet. He gets one foot into the foot-catch on the rack. Then the Gunslinger kicks Martin away.
We now have the Gunslinger with one hand and one foot caught in the rack. But he is getting his hand free with his other hand.
Martin has been kicked across the room, but gets to his feet, sees what is happening, and in a last desperate lunge, flings himself at the control wheel on the rack, tossing off the safety ratchet. The wheel begins to spin wildly.
The rack stretches, and the Gunslinger is literally pulled apart, his torso separating into two pieces, revealing sputtering machinery that hisses and spits as the Gunslinger dies with a mechanical scream.
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Martin turned away from the destruction, in order not to be burned by the sparks. He now looks back. The Gunslinger is destroyed. Martin limps across the dungeon, sits down in utter exhaustion next to the dead robot Girl he previously tried to help.
Martin is apparently oblivious to her presence. He gasps and heaves, staring forward. He is really out of it. Finally he begins to smile.
Then he gets up and walks out of the dungeon. As we track him, we have the Girl in the foreground, staring sightlessly at us as Martin walks away in the background.
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br /> FADE TO BLACK.
END CREDITS.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Still in his early thirties, MICHAEL CRICHTON is a man of many trades. Born in 1942 in Chicago and educated at Harvard College and the Harvard Medical School, he received his MD in 1969. As an author, he made his reputation with The Andromeda Strain which was both a bestseller and a major motion picture. Since then other books have appeared, pseudonymously and otherwise, notably Five Patients, a work of medical nonfiction. But a good part of his time is now spent on films. Dr. Crichton has written the screenplay for the film of his recent novel, The Terminal Man, and his most recent project is the futuristic Westworld. Michael Crichton—who is in fact not only author, physician and moviemaker but also a Post-Doctoral Fellow on leave of absence from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California—confesses that he has a half dozen other book and film projects in mind.
Westworld Page 8