Gwome: Eastbay
In District:
pCalifornia
In Rezhn:
Kymaerica [N; area B]
A WARTIME GLIMPSE OF EASTBAY’S LEADER
On Election Day, Prime Minister Li of Eastbay has been summoned for a meeting with Trench Blott, the San Francisco mayoral candidate supported by Los Angeles because he will acquiesce in the distribution of Northern California water to Los Angeles. Li is bound by treaty to support San Francisco in the event of an invasion, and he is personally sympathetic to the San Francisco cause. However, he is also a single father, raising his daughter Aglaya alone. Aglaya is 13 years old and attends the Mount Graves Monastery School with Cyrus Hawkes, the son of Nora Hawkes—war hero and the mayoral candidate on the side of independence for the city-state of San Francisco.
When we meet Li, he is in a wicker basket, on his way to a Monastery, about to meet someone he wasn’t expecting . . .
Page 56 of the published screenplay:
EXT. THE SKYSCRAPER—DAY
Pull back from the kids in a hallway leaving school for the day viewed through the glass front doors to reveal that the school is in the first story of a 50 story building.Crane past a sign that reads MOUNT GRAVES MONASTERY SCHOOL.
A large wicker basket, suspended from a rope, lowers into the frame, and a man gets out. A woman removes some empty jars and then loads the basket with produce. After she leaves, a man, dressed as a monk, jumps in. The basket slowly begins its return ascent.
INSIDE THE WICKER BASKET
Coming from below is LI, the head of Eastbay. He’s in his forties, of Asian descent and looks a little uncomfortable.
LI’S POV: the interior of the skyscraper: broken windows—kids playing. It’s some kind of low-income housing. Someone starts to look over at him.Li hides his face in his hood.
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ON THE SKYSCRAPERS ROOF
CLOSE-UP: The rope being coiled. Pan to: A team of mules walking in circles, laboriously cranking up the line and then to a different team lowering another basket.
BACK IN THE BASKET
Li is stopped ten stories off the ground. He watches as the other basket comes into view carrying a bald, malevolent looking man dressed as a monk. Quite possibly, this man has no soul. He is Tryon, but we call him BALDY.
I expected Blott.
BALDY
You look good as a monk, Li, you should give it a try sometime.
LI
I expected Blott.
BALDY
Would you have come to see me.
LI
What do you want?
BALDY
You use the San Francisco colony’s water supply, true?
LI
Some proportion we get from sovereign San Francisco’s mountain annexes yes.
BALDY
(laughs)
75 %. Something big is about to happen, something all your forces will not be able to stop. If you stay out, no one will touch your water.
LI
Does the Abbot know about all this?
BALDY
The Abbot is an old and irrelevant man.
LI
Does Frontage?
BALDY
An even older and more irrelevant man.
LI
But the terms of the treaty, after Salinas?
BALDY
You don’t believe all that, do you? The Junta will never let San Francisco go. So what? Did the peoples of Eastbay elect you Prime Minister to preside over their dessication or their freedom?
LI
But we have a treaty too.
BALDY
You also have a daughter. Your only family.
LI
Meaning?
BALDY
Meaning? Meaning, perhaps, that caution is in order. We cannot guarantee her security without your co-operation. Oh,
One of our agents found this. I believe it is your daughter’s. She should have it back.
LI
You came into our house?
BALDY
Count five before you follow me down.
With that Baldy tugs on his rope and begins to disappear as his basket starts towards the ground. Li lunges toward Baldy, but the man evades him with a laugh. The baskets swing wildly. Their eyes lock as Li watches Baldy descend—the ersatz monk smirking contempt.
Li tugs on his rope and starts down. As the building passes by behind him, Li examines the horse for a moment, then he takes a locket from around his neck and looks at it closely.
Down below, Baldy gets out of his basket, melts into the crowd.
LI’S POV: in the locket, a photo of a beautiful 13 year old girl, AGLAYA—the girl from the classroom scene.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. THE PREHISTORIC LAKE—DAY
A close-up of Aglaya, widening out to her and Cyrus as they walk through tall tree ferns around a strange little lake in Golden Gate Park. Nestled into the green, it looks almost prehistoric. School books in their backpacks, they come up to the edge . . .
. . .to learn what happens next, enjoy the book Wartime California at your local library, or order it online.
See Gwome: San Francisco
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