FADE IN SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE - SPACE 1

Silent and endless. The stars shine like the love of God...cold and remote. Against them drifts a tiny chip of technology.

CLOSER SHOT It is the NARCISSUS, lifeboat of the ill-fated star-freighter Nostromo. Without interior or running lights it seems devoid of life. The PING of a RANGING RADAR grows louder, closer. A shadow engulfs the Narcissus. Searchlights flash on, playing over the tiny ship, as a MASSIVE DARK HULL descends toward it.

INT. NARCISSUS 2
Dark and dormant as a crypt. The searchlights stream in the dusty windows. Outside, massive metal forms can BE SEEN descending around the shuttle. Like the tolling of a bell, a BASSO PROFUNDO CLANG reverberates through the hull.

CLOSE ON THE AIRLOCK DOOR Light glares as a cutting torch bursts through the metal. Sparks shower into the room.

A second torch cuts through. They move with machine precision, cutting a rectangular path, converging. The torches meet. Cut off. The door falls inward REVEALING a bizarre multi-armed figure. A ROBOT WELDER. FIGURES ENTER, backlit and ominous. THREE MEN in bio-isolation suits, carrying lights and equipment. They approach a sarcophagus like HYPERSLEEP CAPSULE, f.g.

LEADER: (Filtered) Internal pressure positive. Assume nominal hull integrity. Hyper sleep capsules, style circa late twenties...

His gloved hand wipes at on opaque layer of dust on the canopy.

ANGLE INSIDE CAPSULE as light stabs in where the dust is wiped away, illuminating a WOMAN, her face in peaceful repose.

WARRANT OFFICER JENNA, sole survivor of the Nostromo.  Nestled next to her is JONES, the ship's wayward cat.

LEADER: (Voice over; filtered) Lights are green. She's alive. Well, there goes out salvage, guys.

DISSOLVE TO:
INT. HOSPITAL ROOM - TIGHT ON JENNA - GATEWAY STATION 3

She's lying in a bed, looking wan, as a female MED-TECH raises the backrest. She is surrounded by arcane white MEDICAL EQUIPMENT. The Med-Tech exudes practiced cheeriness.

MED-TECH: Why don't I open the view port?  Watch your eyes.

Harsh light floods in as a motorized shield slides into the ceiling, REVEALING a breathtaking vista. Beyond the sprawling complex of modular habitats, collectively called GATEWAY STATION, is the curve of EARTH as seen from high orbit. Blue and serene.

MED-TECH: And how are we today?
JENNA: (Weakly) Terrible.
MED-TECH: Just terrible? That's better than yesterday at least.
JENNA: How long have I been on Gateway station?
MED-TECH: Just a couple of days. Do you feel up to a visitor?

Jenna shrugs, not caring. The door opens and a MAN enters, although Jenna sees only what he is carrying. A familiar large, orange TOMCAT.

JENNA: Jones!

She grabs the cat like a life preserver.

JENNA: (Cooing baby-cat talk) Come here Jonesy you ugly old cat...you ugly thing.

Jones patiently endures Jenna's embarrassing display, seeming none the worse for wear. The visitor sits beside the bed and Jenna finally notices him. He is thirtyish and handsome, in a suit that looks executive or legal, the tie loosened with studied casualness. A smile referred to as "winning."

MAN: Nice room. I'm Not-much. Carter Not-much.  I work for the company, but other than that I'm an okay guy. Glad to see you're feeling better. I'm told the weakness and disorientation should pass soon. Side effects of the unusually long hyper sleep, or something like that.
JENNA: How long was I out there? They won't tell me anything.
NOT MUCH: (Soothing) Well, maybe you shouldn't worry about that just yet.

Jenna grabs his arm, surprising him.

JENNA: How long?

Not-much gazes at her, thoughtful.

NOT-MUCH: All right. My instinct says you're strong enough to handle this...Fifty-seven years.

Jenna is stunned. She seems to deflate, her _expression passing through amazement and shock to realization of all she has lost. Friends. Family. Her world.

JENNA: Fifty-seven...oh, Christ...
NOT-MUCH: You'd drifted right through the core systems. It's blind luck that deep-salvage team caught you when they...are you all right?

Jenna coughs suddenly as if choking and her _expression becomes one of dawning horror. Not-much hands her a glass of water from the nightstand. She slaps it away. It shatters with a SMASH. Jones dives, yowling. Jenna grabs her chest, struggling as if she is strangling.  The Med-Tech hits a console button.

MED-TECH: (shouting) Code Blue! 415. Code Blue! 4-1-5!

Not-much and the Med-Tech are holding Jenna's shoulders as she goes into convulsions. A DOCTOR and TWO TECHS run in. Jenna's back arches in agony.

JENNA: No...noooo!

They try to restrain her as she thrashes, knocking over equipment. Her EKG races like mad. Jones, under a cabinet, hisses wide-eyed.

DOCTOR: Hold her...Get me an airway, stat!  And fifteen cc's of...Jesus!

AN EXPLOSION OF BLOOD beneath the sheet covering her chest! Jenna stares at the SHAPE RISING UNDER THE SHEET. Tearing itself out of her.
HER P.O.V. as the sheet rises. A GLIMPSE OF the CHITTERING HORROR...IT SCREECHES.
TIGHT ON JENNA screaming, snapping up INTO FRAME.

Alone in the darkened hospital room. She gasps for breath, clutching pathetically at her chest. There is no demented horror rigging itself out of her. Her eyes snap about wildly, slowly focusing on the reality of her safety. Shuddering, bathed in sweat, she kneads her breastbone with the heel of her hand and sobs.

A VIDEO MONITOR beside the bed snaps on. A MED-Tech’s face.

MED-TECH: Bad dreams again? Do you want something to help you sleep?
JENNA: (Faint) No.. I've slept enough.

The Med-Tech shrugs and switches off. Touching a button on the nightstand she opens the view port, REVEALING Gateway and the turquoise Earth. She hugs Jones to her and rocks with him like a child, still shattered by the nightmare. Shivering. Sleep is far off.

JENNA: We made it, Jones. We made it. But at what price?

CUT TO: EXT. PARK 4
Sunlight streams in shafts through a stand of poplars, beyond which a verdant meadow is VISIBLE. EXTREME F.G. Jones stalks toward a bird hopping among fallen leaves. He leaps. And smack into A WALL.

JENNA: (Voice over) Dumb shit.

WIDER ANGLE as Jones steps back confused from the HIGH-RESOLUTION ENVIRONMENTAL WALL SCREEN, a sort of cinerama video-loop. Jenna sits on a bench in what we now SEE is an ATRIUM off the medical center, still somewhere in the bowels of Gateway Station. Benches. Some unenthusiastic potted trees. The sterile corridors VISIBLE beyond glass doors b.g.

Not-much ENTERS in his usual mode, casual haste.

NOT-MUCH: Sorry...I've been running behind all morning.

Jenna seems healthier now, but still a bit brittle.

JENNA: Have they located my daughter yet?
NOT-MUCH: Well, I was going to wait until after the inquest...

He opens his briefcase, removing a sheet of printer hard copy, including a telestat photo.

JENNA: Is she...?
NOT-MUCH: (scanning) Amanda Jenna-McClaren. Married name, I guess. Age: sixty-six...at time of death. Two years ago.  (Looks at her) I'm sorry.

Jenna studies the PHOTOGRAPH, stunned. The face of a woman in her mid-sixties. It could be anybody. She tries to reconcile the face with the little girl she once knew.

JENNA: Amy.
NOT-MUCH: (Reading) Cancer. Hmmmm. They still haven't licked that one. Cremated. Interred Park side Repository, Little Chute, Wisconsin. No children.

Jenna gazes off, into the pseudo-landscape, into the past.

JENNA: I promised her I'd be home for her birthday. Her eleventh birthday. I sure missed that one.  (Pause) Well...she has already learned to take my promises with a grain of salt. When it came to flight schedules, anyway.

Not-much nods, a simpatico presence.

JENNA: You always think you can make it up to somebody...later, you know.  But now I never can. I never can.

Let's get one thing straight...Jenna can be one tough K 9. But the terror, the loss, the emptiness are, in this moment, overwhelming. She cries silently.

Not-much puts a reassuring hand on her arm.

NOT-MUCH: (Gently) The hearing convenes at 0930. You don't want to be late.

INT. CORRIDOR - GATEWAY 5
Elevator doors part and Jenna emerges, in mid-conversation with Not-much. DOLLYING AHEAD OF THEM as they move rapidly down the corridor.

JENNA: You read my deposition...it's complete and accurate.
NOT-MUCH: Look, I believe you, but there are going to be some heavyweights in there. You got Feds, you got interstellar commerce commission, you got colonial administration, insurance company guys...
JENNA: I get the picture.
NOT-MUCH: Just tell them what happened. The important thing is to stay cool and unemotional.

INT. CONFERENCE ROOM - ON JENNA - GATEWAY 6
She's not cool. Not unemotional.

JENNA: Do you people have earwax, or what? We have been here three hours. How many different ways do you want me to tell the same story?

She faces the EIGHT MEMBERS of the board of inquiry at a long conference table. Gray suits and grim faces. They aren't buying. Behind Jenna on a large VIDEO SCREEN, MUCH grins like a goon from his personnel mug shot. His file prints out next to it. Ebony’s face and dossier replace it, and then the others as the SCENE continues...GRANITE, AAKA, Amaroq the android traitor, AUTUMN.  VAN LEUWEN, the ICC representative, steeples his fingers and frowns.

VAN LEUWEN: Look at it from our perspective.  You freely admit to detonating the engines of, and thereby destroying, an M-Class star-freighter. A rather expensive piece of hardware...
INSURANCE INVESTIGATOR: (Dryly) Forty-two million in adjusted dollars.  That's minus payload, of course.
VAN LEUWEN:The shuttle's flight recorder corroborates some elements of your account. That the Nostromo set down on LV-426, an unsurveyed planet, at that time. That repairs were made. That it resumed its course and was subsequently set for self-destruct. By you. For reasons unknown.
JENNA: Look, I told