UNDERGROUND

and MOVING UPWARD -

DARK FORMS SHIFTING in the earthen depths

Humming, crackling, thrumming SOUNDS...

INSECT LARVAE, wriggling in a hollow pocket...

A BUMBLE BEE appears and feeds the POLLEN-NECTAR BALLS...

FURTHER UP -

ANTS, hurrying in a COMPLEX OF TUNNELS...

EARWIGS, BEETLES, more LARVAE...plant tendrils, roots...

and ravenous TERMITES, chewing into heavy root wood...

A YELLOW-JACKET

leaves its bustling underground HIVE...we

FOLLOW IT as it scurries up fast...to

DAYLIGHT!

broken by a CHILD'S SHOVEL piercing the ground.

The yellow-jacket zips up into a bight morning sky - the shovel hauls up a bit of soil, tosses it away -

EXT. MCDERMOTT HOUSE - RING OF PINES - DAY

SUPER: "Canterbury, New Hampshire...Present Day"

Eight year-old tomboy TILLY MCDERMOTT, pink cheeks streaked with dirt, is the very determined digger. In the center clearing of a ring of pines behind her house, she's digging a huge, shallow hole encompassing the entire ring. She's been at it a long time. Maybe years. Pine roots poke through.

CODY, her 14 year-old brother with a gangsta attitude skids in on his BMX and begins hop-riding in and out of the hole.

CODY
Silly Tilly, diggin' to China again.

TILLY
Not China! To the center of the earth!

CODY
China China! Ping pong, won ton!

He passes and kicks some dirt into her hold.

TILLY
Stop!!

She shoves him furiously, keeps digging.

CODY
Yo chill, sister looney tunes. Why you keep doin' this anyway?

TILLY
You know why...to get there!

CODY
Oh yeah. Yer gettin' reeeal close. Hey, don't let dad see ya,
he'll be pissed.

TILLY
Well don't tell him!

CODY
Already did. Better dig yourself to China quick before he comes!

Cody takes off. Tears well up in Tilly's eyes. To herself,

TILLY
I will get there...

As she digs, WE MOVE DOWN SLOWLY to

ONE OF HER LEGS

And on this bare leg something extraordinary is happening:

A COLUMN OF ANTS is beginning to SPIRAL AROUND IT.

Soon the column branches off until her leg is wrapped by ants flowing in an EXQUISITELY COMPLEX PATTERN.

She looks down at her leg...and giggles. She looks up. MILLIONS OF ANTS swirl around the perimeter of the hole like a living whirlpool.

TILLY
Why don't you guys ever help me dig? It isn't very fair.

Then, as if sending a secret signal, she turns her face up to the circle of
sky between the treetops and lifts her open hands, forming A TRIANGLE
WITH HER THUMBS AND FOREFINGERS.

AN UNEARTHLY DRONE...then THOUSANDS OF YELLOW-JACKETS exit the ground and swirl in a PERFECT GEOMETRIC CIRCLE, twenty feet in circumference, haloing her. They circle faster and faster in a HIGH-SPEED WHIRR...her blonde hair RUFFLES WILDLY...

She stands. With the ants below and the yellow-jackets above, she's in the middle of a spectacular, HUMMING INSECT VORTEX. She smiles sweetly at her friends...

EXT. AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK - DAY

The REVVING of a cranky engine inside a 60's Land Rover. It bounces cross-country over the blistering hot scrub.

SUPER: "Same time...south of Watarrka, Aboriginal Land...Australia"

IN THE ROVER

in back, sweating: four dark, grave-faced ABORIGINALS, all younger than 40, and LEYA MCDERMOTT, a ruggedly beautiful white woman, holding a pad and pencil. An ABORIGINAL drives.

OUT THE WINDOW we see an arched SANDSTONE OUTCROPPING. Leya points to it, turning to TOMMY, one of the Aboriginals.

LEYA
Who's that one?

Tommy and his friends exchange inscrutable looks.

TOMMY
Him a small one.

LEYA
Witchety?

TOMMY
Smaller.

LEYA
Centipede?

A severe-looking Aboriginal shushes Tommy. He looks away from Leya. Leya sighs, frustrated.

LEYA (cont'd)
You bring me to a Dreaming track, then
barely say a word. What's going on? I
want to record these but -

SEVERE ABORIGINAL
(interrupting)
You anthropologist, eh?

LEYA
Yes.

SEVERE ABORIGINAL
You write 'em down?

LEYA
I try.

SEVERE ABORIGINAL
We sing 'em. Fifty thousand years we sing 'em.
Can't write singin'.

He looks out the window and begins SINGING in a peculiar, high-pitched warble, which alters as he points to different parts of the landscape. Leya listens, transfixed.

He stops suddenly. The Land Rover SKIDS to a halt. Leya lurches forward.

TOMMY
We're here.

MOMENTS LATER

Leya is climbing the up-sloping end of a dramatic, BLOOD-RED RIDGELINE, maybe fifty feet high. It runs for miles ahead of them. She follows Tommy and the others, but they're moving fast in the 100-degree heat.

LEYA
Tommy, can you slow down please?!

At that moment we HEAR a DISTANT EXPLOSION.

TOMMY
No time. End of the world's not gonna
wait fer us.

EXT. ANTARCTICA - DAY

An endless, windswept icy plain at left. A GLACIER at right.

SUPER: "Same time...near Support Force Glacier, Antarctica"

GRINDING GEARS of a nearby vehicle: a big, gray-painted SNO-CAT rumbles over the ice.

INT. SNO-CAT - SAME

A DRIVER and two passengers, CHUCK and PETER, in the back. They man a bank of specialized computer workstations and sonar devices. Chuck, annoyed, holds up a MAP.

CHUCK
We're in the wrong zone. NAV-SAT
indicates petroleum closer to the
Hayola Escarpment. We gotta move
closer to 100 West.

PETER
And natural gas is somewhere right
under our treads, Chuck.

CHUCK
Oil is priority.

PETER
Why waste time?

CHUCK
Were you born this stubborn?

PETER
20-hour labor.

The driver notices something off to the right.

DRIVER
Hey, two o'clock.

PETER
Whoa! Never seen that before.

The Sno-Cat is grinding along just beside a shallow GLACIAL FISSURE, and inside it the men now SEE

A BRIGHT YELLOW FLOE

CHUCK
Is that...pollen?

PETER
Where in the world would pollen be
coming from? This is the South Pole.

The two look at each other, perplexed.

EXT. MCDERMOTT HOUSE - RING OF PINES - AS BEFORE

From a distance, next to a big red farm-style house surrounded by a large lawn and woody acreage:

ROY
Hey! Is that a gopher or a girl I see?!

Tilly sees her dad walking toward the pine ring. The insects DISPERSE INSTANTLY. sHE RESUMES DIGGING.

Boyishly charming ROY MCDERMOTT enters the ring and sits next to her.

ROY (cont'd)
You are not supposed to be here. You
are a problem child.

TILLY
I am not.

ROY
I told you there was only one way I'd
let you keep doing this -

Tilly abruptly picks up a handful of dirt, examines it closely and finds an ANT.

TILLY
(trying her best)
Common Harvester ant. Order: hy-men-op-tera.
Family: form...formicid-da-ee...

ROY
Formicidae. Close enough.
(tickles her)
Sneaky, defiant little offspring...
earwigs next!

TILLY
(laughing; twisting away)
Deal! Gotta keep digging...

ROY
Tomorrow. It's suppertime. C'mon.

He stands and snatches her up over his back so she's hanging face-out, knees over his shoulders, held by the ankles.

HER UPSIDE-DOWN POV: looking after the hole as they walk away. It seems to open up from the bottom of the ground.

TILLY
I don't like your cooking. When's
mom coming back from Australia?

ROY
Soon, smart fart.

He pretends to drop her. She SHRIEKS and our view

BLURS UPWARD...

EXT. OUTBACK RIDGELINE - AS BEFORE

Inhumanly hot. Leya stops, takes a sip of water from a bottle. The Aboriginals move on ahead fast. Another EXPLOSION, sounding closer this time.

TOMMY
Leya! Come!

She trudges forward, soon finding a bizarre scene:

Three male ABORIGINAL ELDERS lay half-naked on the bare ground near a boulder. Their skin is burnt and blistered. They're near death. Leya looks at Tommy. He introduces one.

TOMMY
This is Old Billy. He's boss'a this
ridge. Protects it, protects its
dreamin', its songlines.
(to Old Billy)
Jukurrpa yilpa Leya McDermott. She help
us with land rights, the Way of the Law,
the Footprints of the Ancestors.

Old Billy gestures for her to come. She kneels down close. His face is black, weathered. His hair a wild white mane.

He WHISPERS INTENSELY for a few moments in Aboriginal tongue, then closes his eyes. Leya rises to Tommy.

LEYA
What did he...?

TOMMY
You listen careful now. Old Billy,
Winston and Timmy here, they gonna lay
here till they die. They're givin'
themselves to the Babies. The Dreamtime
maggots. They been sleepin' inside this
ridge since the First Day. If the mining
company there blast into it and dig
down...

He points to some construction activity in the distance, at the foot of the ridge.

TOMMY (cont'd)
...the Babies gonna wake up, and billions
of black flies and other insects'll cover
the earth, kill every livin' thing. This
place only place the Babies talk to us.
Old Billy ask you to help us again, help
stop the company. He ask you Please.

LEYA
Tommy...the little I was able to do
before...it was just luck.

The INSECTILE DRONE of a didgeridoo (Aboriginal woodwind instrument) startles Leya. OLD WINSTON'S up now and is playing it in a trance-like rhythm.

THOUSANDS OF BLACK FLIES suddenly appear out of nowhere. Leya shields her face as they flick at her ears, eyes, nose...

The OLD TIMMY thrusts his hands out in the same "triangle" formation we saw Tilly make before. Within moments, the flies focus their flight into an astonishing, THREE-DIMENSIONALLY PATTERED SPHERE in front of him. The living sphere HUMS loudly.

Leya blinks, barely able to believe the spectacle. She turns to meet Tommy's piercing eyes.

TOMMY
Please.

An EXPLOSION. Leya jumps. Old Winston stops playing - Old Timmy CLAPS - the flies DISPERSE in a split second.

Leya half-collapses against the boulder. Tommy and his friends squat next to her.

LEYA
What...did I just see?

TOMMY
(a pause)
Talkin'.

LEYA
Talking. To flies. But that's just...
mythology...the Babies...all that...
just myths.

TOMMY
Yeah. But real myths. Ones you can see,
hear, touch, smell.

A FLY lands on Leya's hand. She gazes at it as if she's never seen a fly before. It flits off.

LEYA
(re: Elders)
Are there others doing this kind of
thing, in other places?

Tommy exchanges glances again with his friends. They nod.

TOMMY
(hesitant)
Couple'a Billy's blood from Tennant
Creek...they gone walkabout, past the
white place, down south...where the
Ancestors live.

LEYA
The white place?

TOMMY
You know, the white place, the ice.

LEYA
You mean Antarctica? What's past
Antarctica?

TOMMY
(leaning forward)
Gondwanaland.

At this word, the Severe Aboriginal lifts his face to the sky and begins to SING again...

To be continued...