Making history

JO-BETH

Don't you xHiya Jo-Beth' me, you prick. STEVE (puzzled) I 'm sorry?

JO-BETH

So, we're seeing each other, are we? Well, it's the first I ever did hear of it. Some kinda sick joke?

MICHAEL (gulping) Oh-oh .

STEVE What are you talking about? JO-BETH

Just where the heckfire do you get off, Steve Burns, telling Ronnie Cain that you and I are seeing each other? What?

Oh, no STEVE MICHAEL

. that's my fault see

JO-BETH and STEVE turn to him, surprised.

MICHAEL (CONT'D) (in some confusion) See, I told Ronnie how Steve admired you, Jo-Beth. You know, how he was plucking up courage to ask you out one of these days . I guess he got hold of the wrong end of the stick JO-BETH

(a blushing smile) Yeah? Well why didn't you tell me, Steve?

(hitting him playfully with a menu)

Honestly, you guys . . . you're supposed to be smart, but you don't know nothing about women . . .

STEVE makes an effort to grin. His blush only seems to confirm his devotion.

JO-BETH

Sure I'll go out with you, Steve. You're cute. MICHAEL

(nudging Steve cheerfully) There! See! What I tell you? So .

Um .

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JO-BETH

STEVE

JO-BETH

There's a movie on at the Prytania . . .

CLOSE ON STEVE'S confused expression. CUT TO: EXT. PRINCETON CAMPUS - NIGHT

MICHAEL and STEVE are heading for HENRY HALL. STEVE Jesus Christ, Mikey . . .

MICHAEL

I'm sorry. It's just that that guy, Ronnie. He was being obnoxious, you know. Dropping hints to me about you in the most pathetic, jocky way . . . so I . . . so I . . .

STEVE

So you told him I was seeing Jo-Beth. MICHAEL

Well, it shut the prick up at least . . .

STEVE .

What the hell am I gonna do? I'm supposed to go see a movie with her Friday night.

MICHAEL

Come on, don't be such a wimp. You know how to watch a movie.

STEVE

Yeah, but what if she puts her arm round me? What if we're supposed to go on somewhere and . . .

MICHAEL

Putting her arm round isn't going to make you throw up is it? Come on! She's a nice girl.

STEVE

You don't understand, do you? You just don't understand. It wouldn't be fair to her. It wouldn't be right.

MICHAEL

Okay, okay. Tell you what. I'll go. I'll tell her you're sick. I'll bring along a note from you and I'll go in your place. STEVE

(miserably)

Right. Then the pair of you go off to your room and screw, right?

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MICHAEL

I don't know. Maybe. Jesus, I'm sorry! I thought I was doing you a favour.

STEVE

Yeah, well next time you wanna do me a favor, you ask, okay?

MICHAEL

It's only a week or so. A few more days even, if Leo is doing what I guess he's doing. Here we are.

He looks up at the ivy-clad mock Gothic of Henry Hall.

CUT TO: INT. MICHAEL'S ROOM, HENRY HALL - NIGHT MICHAEL and STEVE are sitting in front of a computer. STEVE is pressing the screen.

They both talk in rather false voices, for the benefit of any listening devices that may be in the room.

STEVE

Gee, Mikey. It's really strange that you still can't remember how to use the system.

MICHAEL .

I know. It's all kind of coming back slowly. But I'm real grateful to you for helping me out.

They grin at each other like naughty schoolboys at the stupid formality of their speech.

STEVE

No problem. Let's have a look at your work files, shall we?

The screen has some permanent icons around the edge: the central area is made up of pages. STEVE presses an icon and a number of buff coloured folders appear, with titles on their tabs .

MICHAEL

So this is, what, like on the Internet then? STEVE Excuse me?

MICHAEL

This computer is connected to other computers in a network?

STEVE

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Right. This is not a computer, Mikey. This is a Pad. Um

MICHAEL Pad? STEVE

Personal Access Device. The computers are way across the other side of campus. The Pad is how you get at your stuff.

MICHAEL

Oh yes. Pad. I get you. Of course. But how do I type into it?

STEVE Why would you wanna do that? MICHAEL

Well, don't I do my work on it? You know, wordprocessing, letters, assignments, stuff like that?

STEVE You just talk to it. MICHAEL

Oh, that's right. I talk into it. It knows my voice? STEVE Sure it knows your voice.

MICHAEL

Then why isn't it typing in what we're saying?

STEVE laughs and slaps MICHAEL playfully on the shoulder.

STEVE

You touch the talk glyph, dummy.

We see the screen now. There is an icon device at the top left of the screen, this is the speech icon, known as a Talk Glyph.

STEVE (CONT'D)

Okay, when you touch the talk glyph, it brightens, see? And everything you say is either a command or text to be typed in. Then you touch it again, to dull it and you can talk without it taking down everything you say. Now I can see you've got work stuff here. You've got notes on Hegel, right? So press the talk glyph and say 'Fetch Hegel notes ' , or 'fetch my notes on Hegel' , anything like that. If there's more than one of something, it'll put up the options and you touch the one you want, it's real simple. MICHAEL (worried)

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But what about this weird voice I'm talking in at the moment? This English accent?

STEVE Shouldn't be a problem.

MICHAEL leans forward and touches the talk glyph, which brightens.

MICHAEL (talking to the screen: very loud and clear) Fetch my notes on Hegel.

Nothing happens. STEVE touches the talk . glyph to turn it off.

STEVE

Woah, woah. You don't have to shout. Just talk in your normal voice.

MICHAEL touches the talk glyph. It brightens again. MICHAEL (casually) Fetch my notes on Hegel.

A kind of window opens to one side and a representation of a folder instantly appears, very high resolution, with 'HEGEL NOTES' written on the front and a list all down one side of different titles. 'Biography', 'Dialectics', 'Hegel and Nietzsche' and so on.

MICHAEL Wow, that is so cool'. STEVE Okay, now touch, this . . .

MICHAEL touches the screen where it says 'Dialectics' . A page of very high-resolution, clear, anti-aliased text opens elegantly. It is a list of notes on Hegel and dialectics.

STEVE

Okay, so if you need to change anything, you just touch it. Then you touch the talk glyph and say what you want to say. You can't miss.

MICHAEL looks at a whole area of text which reads: TEXT The first deduction gains the

ideas of Nothing and Becoming from the idea of Being. We begin with the idea of Being, since there can be no idea more general than this. Applying to all there is, Being seems to have great fullness of meaning. And yet, because it makes no distinctions, the idea of Being reveals its emptiness, turning into its opposite, Nothing. But, then, the passage of Nothing into Being is what we

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mean by Becoming. In this manner we have derived the first three of Hegel's 272 categories.

MICHAEL These are my notes? STEVE

Sure.

MICHAEL Wow. I'm a genius!

MICHAEL leans forward and touches the first sentence: 'The first deduction gains the ideas of Nothing and Becoming from the idea of Being. ' Next he touches the talk glyph and speaks.

MICHAEL This is just about the most coolest thing I've ever seen.

Instantly, the text now reads: 'This is just about the most coolest thing I've ever seen.'

MICHAEL Wow! Wicked. Totally wicked.

The text now reads: 'This is just about the coolest thing I've ever seen. Wow! Wicked, totally wicked.' STEVE laughs and touches the screen.

STEVE

You forgot to turn off the talk glyph. MICHAEL ¦ How does it know to punctuate? STEVE

It doesn't always get it right. But it knows about inflection and pauses and stuff like that, (recalling that they might be being

overheard)

Are you sure you don' t remember any of this? MICHAEL

Oh. Yeah. Sure. It's coming back. It's all coming back. I'd just forgotten how cool it is. How neat. You know, real neat. But what's this . . .

He points to a panel that says 'Double superlative?' STEVE

It's questioning the phrase 'most coolest' on account of it's a double superlative.

MICHAEL

(shaking his head in wonder) Wow! STEVE

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Sure. MICHAEL

Okay. So. Suppose I'd gotten a book from the library and downloaded it onto one of those . . .

STEVE Flashed it to a cart, you mean? MICHAEL Yeah. Flashed it to a cart.

STEVE quietly picks up the carts from MICHAEL'S bag. They have the titles scribbled on in MICHAEL'S hand, Gloder: The Early Years and so on.

STEVE

Well what you do is insert the cart . . .

He pushes the cart into the cart-port below the screen. STEVE (CONT'D) A glyph appears on screen.

Indeed, we see on the screen that this is so. A representative icon in the shape of a cart.

STEVE (CONT'D)

. . . you touch the glyph and . . . sim-salabim!

The glyph zooms open and pages of the book Gloder: The Early Years appear, perfectly reproduced, on the screen.

STEVE (CONT'D) To go through the pages, you touch the arrows here, see? Or use the talk glyph to go to any ,, page you want.

MICHAEL

And I can use this text, move it about, incorporate it in my own notes?

STEVE

Sure. The data on the cart will delete itself after two weeks. And any data you use in an assignment is automatically footnoted, copyrighted and placed in a bibliography at

the end. To stop cheating, you know, copyright violation, that kind of thing?

MICHAEL

And where is all my work? I mean where actually, physically does it exist?

STEVE

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Hell, I don't know. Somewhere in the computing lab, I guess.

MICHAEL

But suppose I was writing letters home, personal stuff, diaries, that kind of thing?

STEVE

If you touch the privacy glyph here, no one but you can read it.

MICHAEL

Great. So now I can get on with my work. I can write essays and assignments and . . . how do I print them out? STEVE

You just flash them to a cart and take them to a print room somewhere. There's one in every faculty building, every dorm building. Nothing to it.

MICHAEL

This is so cool. I always knew Windows 95 was complete shit, but . . .

STEVE Excuse me? MICHAEL

Nothing, nothing. How long has all this been around? That is, I seem to have forgotten . . .

STEVE

This? This is ancient. This is a copy of a seventies European system. But you should see what' s on the way. There' s a German defector over here called Krause, Kai Krause. The stuff he's coming up with would just send you spinning. I saw a demo at the computer lab one time. (looking at the screen) Now, if you ever need to send a message, here's what you do.

STEVE touches a message glyph at the side of the screen. The pages of text up on screen shrink neatly into themselves and a new screen is revealed behind. An array of beautifully designed glyphs.

STEVE

Touch the talk glyph and say your own name. MICHAEL

(touching the talk glyph) Michael Young.

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On screen two Michael Youngs appear. STEVE touches the talk glyph to turn it off.

STEVE

Oh-oh, you've got a double. You're this one, 'Young, Michael D' . The other guy's just plain Young, Michael, no initial. 'Sides, he's a freshman. See? That's his classyear next to his name.

STEVE touches the name YOUNG, MICHAEL D. A small panel appears.

MICHAEL

That's me! 3 03, Henry Hall! What are all these icons? STEVE

Glyphs, they're glyphs, Mikey. You touch this one to open an info pane, this one to make a voice-call, this one to page, this one to leave a message on someone else's Pad. MICHAEL Like an e-mail? Electronic

mail, that kind of thing? STEVE

Flashmail. You can either flash a voice message or a text message. This is how you place a phonecall.

MICHAEL leans forward and touches the phone glyph. Instantly, a telephone on the desk next to the screen rings.

MICHAEL Jesus! STEVE

Congratulations, you just called yourself. You can call me or anyone on campus this way. Live talk person-to- person, or, if you touch this glyph, leave a text message.

MICHAEL picks up the phone and examines it. It is not quite like any phone he has ever seen. It is cordless, but not like most mobile phones. More of a mix between a phone and a pager.

STEVE touches the phone glyph again and the ringing stops.

STEVE

That's your mobile compad. Now, I'll show you how to leave flashmail.

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STEVE touches the flashmail glyph. A window opens on the screen.

STEVE Leave yourself a message.

STEVE puts down the compad and presses the talk glyph. He turns to MICHAEL and indicates for him to speak. MICHAEL

(to the terminal) Hiya, Mikey, how you doing? Good to see you the other night. Feel like going over to see the Yankee game next week? Catchalater, love Mikey.

STEVE presses the talk glyph again to deactivate it. Then he presses the flashmail glyph and the window disappears.

The computer gives a friendly, purring beep and a window flashes on screen. 'Flashmail waiting . . . ' MICHAEL touches the flashmail glyph and a window opens: it says 1FLASHMAIL WAITING FOR MICHAEL YOUNG, FROM MICHAEL YOUNG.' Michael's own voice comes out perfectly from the speakers at the side of the screen.

SPEAKERS

Hiya, Mikey, how you doing? Good to see you the other night. Feel like going over to

see the Yankee game next week? Catchalater, love Mikey. MICHAEL (awe-struck) Ho t z i gge ty-dang!

STEVE

(shrugging) There you go. Lesson over.

They continue to talk for the benefit of any possible hidden listening devices.

MICHAEL

(standing up and stretching) Gosh, Steve. I don't know how to thank you.

STEVE

(also standing) Hey, don't thank me. It means you haven't got any excuse now not to get back to work.

They are facing each other. STEVE is looking into MICHAEL'S eyes.

MICHAEL (embarrassed) So

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