Live out your
fantasies for $1,000
a day at
Westworld—
the ultimate resort!

Murder, violence, wild sexual abandon, any human desire is fulfilled by totally computerized, humanoid robots programed for your pleasure alone . . . Until a small computer casualty spreads like wildfire and one man stands alone against the berserk machines bent on total slaughter!

An adventure in total terror!

GUNPLAY . . . WESTWORLD STYLE!

Blane and Martin’s hotel room. Martin hitches on his gunbelt.

“Say, John, how do I know I’m not going to kill another guest with this thing?”

“Try it. Shoot me.”

Blane is standing at the mirror adjusting his shirt. His back is to Martin. Martin aims, but hesitates.

“Go on, shoot.”

Martin shoots. There is a click; no gunshot. Blane smiles. Martin looks closely at his gun.

“The gun has a sensing device. It won’t fire at anything with a high body temperature. Only something cold, like a machine.”

“They thought of everything.”

WESTWORLD

Where nothing can possibly go

worng

METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER
Presents

“WESTWORLD”

Starring
RICHARD BENJAMIN
YUL BRYNNER
JAMES BROLIN

Music by
FRED KARLIN

Written and Directed by
MICHAEL CRICHTON

Produced by
PAUL N. LAZARUS III

WESTWORLD
A Bantam Book / published March 1974

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1974 by Michael Crichton.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: Bantam Books, Inc.

Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark. consisting of the words "Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc.. 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FOREWORD
by Saul David
former story editor, MGM

A while ago I had a sort of apartment-office in one of those tall, sleazy-gilt new apartment buildings off Sunset Strip. The daytime life in those buildings has a sort of Sunday on Wall Street dreaminess—it’s quiet, the tenants are invisible, the corridors are empty except for the coming and going of moving men. Yet even at midday the elevators smelled of pot and heavy perfume, and graffiti on the stainless steel doors was often in lipstick or scratched with a key.

Musicians would emerge in the afternoon, blinking, looking sideways at anyone with a briefcase, never getting in or out at the lobby floor. The place came to life late at night though—the corridors pulsed with rock and smoke from balcony barbecues drifted upwards. And now and then the sheriff’s department would kick in a door.

Occasionally there would be a familiar face—a pretty young actress whose divorce was an ongoing conversation piece; a couple of hard-working comics and an immensely tall, absolutely silent young man, blue-eyed and rosy-fair, the very image of a British schoolboy turned junior officer. Absolutely out of place on Sunset Strip and, in those elevators, immense.

He would stare straight ahead, chin tucked a little to avoid grazing the plastic egg-crate overhead grille. When I had a companion and the talk was of books or publishing, I could tell he was listening.

I don’t think we were introduced. We may have been, but if so it didn’t take. Still, I was told who he was and he was not a forgettable sight anyhow—so that over a year later, when I had become a henchman at MGM and was told to attend a meeting to hear Michael Crichton propose a new film project, I instantly said, “Sure, I know him.” In Hollywood you say that, and such are the terrors; no one either believes or disbelieves, not even the know-ee.

As it turned out, he remembered me enough so that the mumbled “Hi” was as convincing as a kiss. And he had a perfectly marvelous project, which you are about to read.

The rest is (to mint one) history—mostly of the kind that razed Byzantium and made cab drivers out of czars. It’s really Michael’s story. But I vividly remember one afternoon—maybe a week before shooting was to commence—when it became my job to summon Michael and his knowing, resilient producer, Paul Lazarus, to a meeting in my office where I was to impart management’s latest. The picture had been canceled twice by then, the budget turned inside out, the principal cast members shuttled like dice and the screenplay revised, denounced, cut, added to and occasionally praised every day for many, many weeks.

That day Michael sat opposite me, Paul on his left. After a while I could only talk to Paul because Michael would say nothing, only stare unwaveringly out of his slump as I went on bravely explaining how it was necessary to add various little scenes all designed to “clarify and explain” sequences which needed neither. And simultaneously to reduce the budget by a considerable amount. I understood the full horror of what I was saying—the mad impossibility of doing what was demanded and the pointlessness of the demands themselves. I loved the project, therefore I was the particular centurion they sent.

Allowing for apologies, it was a long, dry meeting. Paul asked a few questions, nodded, made some notes. Michael just waited until it was all done. Then he got up, said, “I understand,” and left, Paul following.

Later on Paul told me that Michael very nearly quit that night. But he didn’t and the picture was made and we are still friends. Which gives you an idea, I hope.

Michael, I’m sorry the Japanese salesmen sequences were cut from the screenplay. But considering the movie WESTWORLD, I’m glad you didn’t quit that night.

SHOOTING WESTWORLD

The screenplay for Westworld was written in August, 1972, and subsequently offered to the major studios. Every one turned it down, except for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. That immediately presented a problem. MGM had a bad reputation among film-makers; in recent years directors as diverse as Robert Altman, Blake Edwards, Stanley Kubrick, Fred Zinneman and Sam Peckinpah had complained bitterly about their treatment there. There were too many stories of unreasonable pressure, arbitrary script changes, inadequate post-production, and cavalier recutting of the final film.

Nobody who had a choice made a picture at Metro, but then we didn’t have a choice. Dan Melnick, the new head of production at the studio, assured the Westworld producer, Paul Lazarus, and me that we would not be subjected to the usual MGM treatment. In large part, he made good on that promise. We began preproduction in November, 1972.

Preproduction is the time preparatory to shooting when the creative elements are assembled, the script is polished, the sets are built, the locations picked, and the cast hired. It is a busy period for any film, but we had several peculiar problems with Westworld.

The first problem, to be blunt, was the studio. From the outset, the executives in the Thalberg building were divided on the project: some championed it, others loathed it. The result was something like civil war, and no more pleasant than it sounds. There were arguments every few hours; I threatened to quit every three or four days, after episodes of massive depression.

An orderly preproduction was impossible. We didn’t have our cast until forty-eight hours before shooting began. MGM kept demanding script changes right up to the day of shooting. As we approached that final day, conversations took a more and more hysterical tone, in keeping with the old Hollywood traditions. I remember trying to squelch a casting suggestion by leaning across somebody’s desk and shouting, “I vomit whenever I see that actor.” At other times I would float through meetings, saying, “You’re gonna love it, it’s gonna be wonderful, you’re gonna love it,” and feeling vaguely silly, but that sort of talk seemed to work.

Our second problem was the budget. MGM had agreed to make the film only if it could be done for less than a million dollars. After a month of preparation, we decided it was impossible. Metro reluctantly increased the budget by $250,000, and we continued work. Even at that higher figure, a number of old studio hands told us it couldn’t be done.

A million and a quarter is a lot of money, so perhaps it’s worth explaining why we were feeling so pinched. Of the total budget, roughly $250,000 went for cast salaries. We had forty speaking roles, and several expensive stars.

Of the remaining million dollars, about $400,000 went for salaries of the crew during the six week shooting schedule. We had about eighty people working on cameras, costumes, props, hair, lighting, sound, transportation, and so forth. Most were paid the union minimum, which is nothing anybody gets rich on.

After paying cast and crew salaries, we had $600,000 for everything else in the film: sets, props, special effects, extras, and so on. This still seems like a lot of money, until one figures it out item by item. For example, a Hollywood extra gets about forty dollars a day plus fringe benefits. Even without crowd scenes, you need several extras a day just to keep your locations from looking deserted. Before you know it, you’re spending $50,000 for extras during the course of the film. And the extras need costumes, and horses. It adds up very fast.

Each specific budget category was so thinly financed as to seem impossible. Out of that $600,000, we could give the art director, Herman Blumenthal, only $75,000 for set construction. Anyone who has ever considered building a larger garage or finishing a basement playroom will understand the dimensions of his problem. For that $75,000, Herman had to build twenty sets covering nearly 200,000 square feet. And although he had certain advantages over standard construction requirements, he also had certain special problems. His floors had to be built with such fine tolerances that a camera rolling over them would not wobble or bounce. Many interiors had to be aged. The detail work had to be excellent because minor flaws become glaring when the image is projected on an eighty-foot-wide screen.

Herman is best known for expensive productions such as Cleopatra and Hello, Dolly. He attacked this problem with invention and high energy. He rented construction units which were later sold for use in office buildings. He transformed existing sets. He built units which could be repainted and altered after shooting, then shot again in another context.

In the final film, almost everything was used more than once. We used one medieval stairway three times, in different places. We used a single underground corridor nine times with six light changes, then tore out a false wall and used the same corridor, now widened, as the robot-repair area. We used one hotel room twice, changing furniture and camera angles. In the case of the hovercraft, we built only half the set (which is symmetrical), but “flopped” half the film left to right in the optical printer, so that the final effect was a full hovercraft compartment. Sometimes these maneuvers forced some peculiar cutting patterns, but the average filmgoer probably never notices this.

Our final problem area was technical. For an inexpensive film, we were blithely using a wide range of special-effects techniques: front projection, rear projection, burn-ins, video replay, and blue screen. Gene Polito, the cinematographer, fortunately has a broad technical background from his early days as an engineer; he saved us more than once.

Three problems were especially tricky. One was the robot eyes. I wanted eyes that looked only slightly unreal, not strikingly bizarre. After some experimentation, we settled on eighty percent reflectant mirrored contact lenses, which gave us flexibility to control the “kick” by lighting. They also had the virtue of permitting the actors to see through them.

The second problem was what we called the “gunslinger POV,” the machine view of the world. We reviewed standard special-effects techniques and rejected them all; they were too familiar, and shared a “filmic” quality—no matter how strange, they still looked like photographic images. I didn’t want that.

I knew it was possible to scan images with a computer, and then reconstitute those images in some other form. I didn’t know whether these techniques could be applied to motion picture film, but the idea seemed worth exploring. I also liked the idea that the machine world-view would be literally that—a series of pictures created by computer. Several experts told us that this was impossible. Finally we found a computer-graphics artist, John Whitney, Jr., who said he could do it. Neither he nor anyone else could be sure exactly how it would turn out, but we decided to go ahead and try it

The final technical problem was burning the gunslinger’s face with acid. Nobody had the faintest idea of how that could be done; the script called for the skin of the face to bubble and dissolve. Frank Griffith, the makeup man, began experimenting, but by the time we started shooting we still didn’t know how to make the effect work.

In all our planning, my overriding concern was to avoid a bizarre, science fiction appearance to the film. The story was strange and certainly suggested a strange treatment; I could easily imagine using wide-angle lenses, eccentric compositions, and disorienting cutting patterns. I decided to shoot the film straight, playing against the strangeness instead of emphasizing it

A major consideration here was the script itself. Most of the situations in the film are clichés; they are incidents out of hundreds of old movies. I felt that they should be shot as clichés. This dictated a conventional treatment in the choice of lenses and the staging. There were a couple of peculiar corollaries to that decision. One was the use of arbitrary crane shots which appear throughout the picture—the camera moves up and down for no damned reason except that’s the way old movies were done. Another was the use of slow motion for shootouts because, in the years since Kurosawa, Penn and Peckinpah explored the technique, slow motion has become its own sort of cliché.

Our shooting schedule was so tight that we had no allowances for errors, mistakes, or problems of any sort. We all knew that this was unrealistic, and we hit our first problem on the third day of shooting. I mention it as an example of the sort of trivial thing that can create an unexpected mess.

We were shooting the arrival of Benjamin and Brolin in the underground corridor. They ride a cart past square blue wall lights. However, we found the set was so white, with so much reflected light, that the colored squares washed out and failed to register strongly. We tried all the obvious solutions and none worked; finally we got it right on the day before the set was scheduled to be torn down.

Our luck held for two weeks, then Yul Brynner got shot in the eye with wadding from a blank cartridge. It was a freak accident; we had taken every possible precaution to avoid precisely that, but it happened. Yul’s cornea was scratched. He shrugged off the injury, which was minor enough, but it made it impossible for him to wear his silvered contact lenses. Whenever he tried, tears ran down one cheek, and the injured eye turned bright red from irritation. We had to shift the schedule radically to allow several weeks for his eye to recover.

In many ways, it was lucky that no one else was injured. I am a stickler for actors doing their own stunts; I think audiences can always tell if doubles are used. But there are always unexpected elements in a stunt.

Jim Brolin had recently broken his leg doing stunts, and was leery of further injury. His part required a fearless, effortless quality which he never felt during all his jumps and falls. To his credit, the audience will never suspect his apprehension. On the last day of shooting, he was to be bitten by a rattlesnake in the desert The actual strike was done with reverse photography—the snake was attached to his arm, then pulled off. In the final film, it appears to strike him.

For most sequences, we used unmilked rattlers, but we milked the rattler that was attached to Jim’s arm. Even the most thorough milking does not remove all the venom, however—a consideration that Brolin appreciated while the snake was having its fangs hooked into his shirt. Under the shirt he wore a leather and cotton pad designed to protect his arm. Suddenly he yelled that he had been bitten. And he had been, by the small teeth on the snake’s lower jaw. Everyone had forgotten about that He had no ill effects, but he did have a good scare.

Dick Benjamin hadn’t done physical roles before. His first stunt required him to be thrown into a breakaway post that would snap on impact He hit the post so hard that half the set came crashing down on him—drapes, lights, rigging, everything. He emerged laughing. (In the final picture, you can see some of the electrical cables lying around his feet)

In the desert, I needed shots of Benjamin riding along a ridge. We picked what seemed to be a suitable ridge, and set up our telephoto cameras about a mile distant, communicating with the actors by radio. The wrangler, Dick Webb, rode along the ridge and reported that it was pretty windy up there. We were surprised; it was pleasant enough down with the cameras. I asked how windy. “Maybe sixty miles an hour,” Webb reported laconically. I asked if the shot could be made; he said yes. Dick got on the radio and said he’d try it. I was watching through binoculars and gulped when Benjamin appeared on the ridge. His clothes flapped like sails in a hurricane.

Many people have noticed that Benjamin isn’t riding very fast on that ridge, as the sequence appears in the final film. That’s the reason: he was trying to gallop along a sheer drop of several hundred feet, with a gale wind blowing.

Yul had been a circus performer in his youth, and he has great physical prowess. He did a number of forward and backward falls without difficulty, including one at the end of the film when he fell flat on his face with a slamming thump so unnerving that the whole set echoed.

His greatest problem was the sequence where his face was burned with acid. Frank Griffith had experimented with various techniques and finally settled on a mixture of makeup and Alka-Seltzer, which fizzed and bubbled when water touched it. That left a final problem: smoke. We had done a test with an extra who had small tubes of smoke glued to his face in various, places. Once the smoke began to be squirted out, the extra coughed and cried and sputtered in a comical fashion. The smoke was enormously irritating to nose and eyes.

Still, it was our best solution, if Yul could avoid coughing. He had an upset stomach that day, and had taken Alka-Seltzer for it; as the makeup was applied and the plastic smoke tubes attached around his face, we joked that he had Alka-Seltzer inside and outside.

We did the sequence once—water in the face, and then smoke pumped through tubing—and it worked all right, but it happened too fast. Yul said he could do it slower, and he did the second time around. Somehow we got the shot, but it was a remarkable effort on his part. As soon as I yelled “Cut!” he exploded in an attack of coughing.

The rapid work pace built an extraordinary spirit of camaraderie. The pettiness and temper tantrums which are a predictable part of film work simply didn’t exist, for the most part. Dailies were a sort of ritual. Everyone attended them: actors, crew, everyone. I worried that this would invite ego flare-ups and grumbling, but that never happened. The actors were generous with one another, and the crew helped one another with problems. Nobody was fired during the course of production, which is a rare thing in itself.

We were moving so fast and taking so many risks that we passed the point of foolhardiness and found a certain exhilaration in the work pattern. It was insane to be functioning this way. Each day’s work was impossible in the allotted time. We knew it, and so did the studio—they often thought we were falsifying our reports at the end of each day. We made them more comfortable by not showing them all the shot footage every day. We would look at all of it; then Dave Bretherton, the editor, would pull most of it before the executives saw dailies two hours later.

As director, I was camera-cutting. This means I would never shoot a whole scene from a single angle. I’d shoot part of a scene from one angle; part from another angle, with little or no overlap. It was the fastest way to work, but also the riskiest. If the scene didn’t work as shot, I had no extra footage to play with.

I was also picking certain sequences to dwell on, and shooting the others quickly. I knew I could not shoot the whole film well in the thirty days I had been given, so I picked the key scenes and concentrated on them. Hie rest of the scenes were plainly shot in haste, with the hope that the audience would forgive me later.

It wasn’t an ideal situation. But I had known that, going in, and so had everyone else. We made the best film we could in the time we had, and we kept our fingers crossed.

Two weeks after shooting, I saw the assembled film for the first time. It was horrible. It was boring, contrived, self-indulgent and slack. I left the projection room in silent depression. All of our energy and enthusiasm had been wasted on a piece of silly garbage.

Dave Bretherton (David Bretherton won an Oscar in 1973 for Cabaret.) was the only person in good spirits. He cheered me up enough to start editing. We went sequence by sequence, changing timing, replacing shots, adding and dropping things within the narrow limits that were possible with the minimal footage I’d shot. The picture slowly improved. After a month, I thought we might have something decent after all.

We ran the film for the MGM executives. A few executives liked it, but the general feeling was that it was a disaster. However, there was no talk of taking the picture away from me—everyone knew that I had camera-cut, and there was no spare film to play with. And the MGM management did agree to some additional shooting. I had once considered beginning the film with a TV commercial, and this idea was taken up. There was a writers’ strike at the time, so the commercial was written by Steve Frankfurt, a New York adman.

The executives saw the film again, a month later. They felt that it was improved, but still a lousy picture. In any case, we’d all know in two weeks, when the film was previewed before an audience.

I had plenty to worry about until then. The computer-generated footage was coming in, far behind schedule. John Whitney had found the process unexpectedly time consuming—it took eight hours to produce ten seconds of film. There were intricate problems with color and contrast balance. We were still doing a lot of testing. On the other hand, we were pleased with the general effect.

Fred Karlin was modifying his score, but nobody knew how it was being changed. I heard it for the first time when we did a temporary mix of dialogue, sound effects and music. I thought the new score was terrific. We got the last of our computer footage, and were ready for the preview.

Metro made no bones about the preview. There would be only one, at the studio, with a selected audience of “regular people,” no movie people. If the reaction was good, MGM would release the film carefully; if the reaction was unfavorable, they’d dump it.

The critical question was how many viewers would call the picture either “excellent” or “good” on the preview cards. Unless we had a seventy-five-percent response in those categories, we were in trouble. Some executives thought we might do better, perhaps as high as eighty or even eight-five percent. Other executives believed the picture was so lame that they didn’t even bother to attend the screening.

The picture began. There was a lot of coughing and shuffling; the laughs didn’t work and came in the wrong places. I sank lower in my seat. The executives were right I had spent a year on this movie and everybody hated it It was an utter disaster.

Then at the end there were screams and applause and when the cards came back, we had a ninety-five-percent rating, the highest anybody at the studio could remember. People were slapping me on the back and saying they’d known it all along. I went out and got very drunk.

The screenplay, reprinted here, is not the original script. Many changes were made from the first version, over a period of months. The following script is the version I had two days before shooting began.

At that time, MGM cut the schedule by three days. I refused to shoot the script as written, and responded by cutting three days of work. The deleted scenes included the salesroom sequences and the bank robbery.

Several other changes occurred in the course of shooting. Principally, the ending was changed. We deleted the final fight between Martin and the gunslinger. We tried it, but it seemed stagey and foolish, so we elected to drop it entirely. I had liked the idea of a complex machine being destroyed by a simple machine—the rack—but otherwise I didn’t miss the lost sequence.

The opening is also changed. We were unable to get convincing model footage of the hovercraft, and so could not play the sequence with full-screen model shots. We had to use TV images. That was a post-production situation and is, by any standard, a compromise.

Still, a film is an exercise in what is possible. I am satisfied that we arrived at the best solutions to the problems we faced, given the available options. For the most part audiences don’t care about those problems, alternatives, or solutions. And they shouldn’t.

Westworld was not intended to be profound. Neither was it intended to be stupid, but our clear goal was entertainment. I like to think that audiences have fun with this film. We had fun making it.

Michael Crichton
Los Angeles
October 13, 1973

Run opening credits on black screen.

Desolate whine of wind over.

FADE IN ON:

A desert landscape at dawn, all muted grays. The desert stretches for miles with no sign of life, and no sound except for the whine of the wind. Then we hear a new, superimposed whine. It is so faint at first that we are not sure we hear it at all. But it builds with astonishing rapidity.

And then from the far distance a silver shape streaks toward us and past us—we’ve hardly seen it.

CUT TO:

An angle down on the silver shape, as we shoot forward across the desert at extraordinary speed. The roofline in lower frame is streamlined, mechanical. We are zooming at 300 miles an hour. The engine scream is very loud.

CUT TO:

A panning shot of the silver shape. It is a hovercraft, bulletlike, riding on a cushion of air, propelled forward by a howling jet.

CUT TO:

Inside the hovercraft cockpit. The pilot is a foreground silhouette. Through the window the desert rushes up toward us. We skim over sand dunes, rock outcroppings, low ridges. The jet noise is more muted. Crackle of radio communication back and forth.

CUT TO:

Inside the hovercraft passenger section. It looks rather like the interior of a modern jet aircraft. Twenty passengers are there, in a loungelike atmosphere. We gather from their dress and demeanor that they are wealthy, cosmopolitan, and somewhat jaded. The jet sound is very quiet here.

A stewardess serves drinks. The camera follows her to Blane and Martin. Martin is talking. He is in his early to middle thirties, attractive and earnest. In contrast, his companion, Blane, is a little older, a little more assured—and at the moment obviously bored by Martin’s speech. He stares out the window.

MARTIN: I’m not worried at all, I’m just curious. How much do they weigh?

BLANE (shrugging): Three or four pounds.

MARTIN: That’s pretty heavy . . . Do they have much of a kick?

BLANE: It’s not bad.

MARTIN: Well, I never fired a Colt .45 before . . . What about that thing where you go like this (makes fanning motion with flat of his hand, rapidly) over the gun.

BLANE: Fanning.

MARTIN: Yeah.

BLANE: What about it?

MARTIN: Is that hard to do?

BLANE: No.

MARTIN: Now when they give you the gunbelt, does it have those strings to tie around your legs?

BLANE: If that’s the kind you want.

MARTIN: That’s the kind I want. I think it’s probably better for quick draws, you know.

BLANE: It all depends.

MARTIN: Well, it seems to me that most of the gunfighters tie their holsters to their legs with those strings, for quicker draws. What kind of gunbelt did you have the last time?

BLANE: I had one without strings.

MARTIN: And you could draw fast?

BLANE: Yeah.

MARTIN: Then maybe it doesn’t matter, after all . . . (long silence) But the guns that they give you are real guns?

BLANE (nodding): Real guns.

MARTIN: That’s incredible.

There is an electronic pinging. Martin looks questioningly at Blane.

VOICE OVER: The orientation on the resort will now begin. Please put on your earphones.

Martin puts on his earphones.

MARTIN: Don’t you want to listen?

BLANE: I heard it the last time.

Martin nods. Blane stares out the window. Move in on Martin’s face.

RECORDED VOICE (Over): . . . consists of three separate resort areas, each with its own special appeal; Whichever resort you have chosen, we are sure you will have a fascinating and rewarding stay here.

CUT TO:

The front of the cabin and the viewing screen. The present slide shows an overhead map of the circular resort, which is divided into three quadrants, colored differently. The slide changes to show a closer view of the blue quadrant.

RECORDED VOICE: Western World is a complete re-creation of the American frontier of 1880. Here it is possible to relive the excitement and stresses of pioneer life to the fullest.

CUT TO:

RECORDED VOICE: Western World is a life of lawless violence, a society of guns and action . . .

Martin smiles as he watches. Blane gives him a sidelong look. Martin’s attention remains directed to the screen.

CUT TO:

A new slide on the screen.

RECORDED VOICE: This is Medieval World, where we have reconstructed thirteenth-century Europe, a world of chivalry and combat, romance and excitement . . .

CUT TO:

Another part of the passenger compartment. We notice a middle-aged man in a business suit sitting next to a middle-aged woman. He nudges her, smiles—he’s obviously going to Medieval World.

RECORDED VOICE: . . . Our teams of engineers have spared no expense in this re-creation, precise to the smallest detail.

CUT TO:

A new slide on the screen.

RECORDED VOICE: Then we have Roman World, a lusty treat for the senses in the setting of delightful, decadent Pompeii. Here the traveler . . .

CUT TO:

The man and woman. Now the woman is smiling; she’s going to Roman World.

RECORDED VOICE: . . . experiences the sensual, relaxed morality that existed at the peak of the Imperial Roman Empire.

The man blinks; he’s not so sure he likes his wife going there.

CUT TO:

Blane and Martin.

RECORDED VOICE: All together, these resorts comprise Delos, the most exciting vacation spot . . .

CUT TO:

The screen showing the three original quadrants.

RECORDED VOICE: . . . in the history of man. Located five hundred miles into the Sahara Desert, Delos is a triumph of man’s mastery over the environment . . .

CUT TO:

The passenger compartment. We see an anal, taut accountant of about forty-five, reserved and bespectacled, ready to jump at shadows, but watching the screen eagerly.

RECORDED VOICE: Completely self-contained, efficient, (Accountant smiles) and highly reliable . . .

CUT TO:

What the pilot sees from the cockpit as the hovercraft makes a left turn and streaks forward into the morning sun. Directly ahead of us, gleaming like a gem, is a huge complex with a large dome. We can’t see much, but we are moving toward it awfully fast.

CUT TO:

The passenger compartment. A stewardess moves down the aisle, giving out little tags to each passenger.

RECORDED VOICE: . . . Hydrophonic tanks, recycled air and water systems, climate control, the whole spectrum of technology has been employed in Delos for the vacationer’s pleasure. Expensive and unusual, Delos is not for everyone, but for those that choose it, it is truly a unique and rewarding . . .

The stewardess stops by Martin and Blane.

STEWARDESS: Mr. Martin. (gives him blue tag) Mr. Blane. (gives him blue tag)

Blane smiles at her; so does Martin, but hesitantly.

The recorded voice continues over:

CUT TO:

The desert, as the hovercraft shoots forward, into the sunrise, toward the resort.

The hovercraft control room. A bank of TV screens show the approaching hovercraft. Fuzzed figures in the foreground guide the craft in; low technical dialogue.

FIRST TECHNICIAN (voice over): We have you on grid five. Over.

HOVERCRAFT PILOT (voice over): Read you as grid five.

SECOND TECHNICIAN (voice over): Conformation grid five, seven-one-seven, nine-three-eight, wind ess Q.

FIRST TECHNICIAN (voice over): Notify ground crews. Standby.

CUT TO:

A bank of switches. A hand flicks several.

CUT TO:

A TV screen showing the hovercraft landing.

CUT TO:

The actual hovercraft landing, sand spitting up.

CUT TO:

A TV screen showing the hovercraft landing from vertical perspective.

CUT TO:

Hovercraft control room. The personnel oversee the lock-up, flicking switches, speaking softly. We never see the people clearly.

FIRST TECHNICIAN (voice over): Locking in now . . .

SECOND TECHNICIAN (voice over): Shutdown two . . . shutdown three . . .

THIRD TECHNICIAN (voice over): Down two . . . down three . . .

FIRST TECHNICIAN (voice over): Nice job, everybody . . .

CUT TO:

Inside the hovercraft. It is still day, but the hovercraft is on the ground and in the shadow of the dome, and thus the interior looks different. The passengers are getting out of their seats, unbuckling, speaking in a rising hubbub of voices.

The passengers exit to an elevator.

CUT TO:

Inside the elevator. The passengers stand motionless, facing forward as the elevator descends to the basement garage area. A stewardess accompanies them.

CUT TO:

The underground garage area. Three trams stand waiting; yellow, blue, red. The passengers sort themselves out and move apart. Blane and Martin go to their blue tram.

Standing by each tram is a pretty girl in a color-coded uniform with a hand-size computer of some sort. As Blane and Martin board:

GIRL: Name, please?

MARTIN: Peter Martin.

The girl punches a button on the device.

GIRL: Thank you.

BLANE: John Blane.

GIRL: Thank you.

She smiles pleasantly. They get on board. The tram starts up. Martin looks back at the girl.

CUT TO:

What Martin sees: A traveling shot of the girl diminishing as the tram pulls away.

CUT TO:

Martin and Blane. Martin is still a little unconvinced about all this; his personal problems still preoccupy him. He’s not sure he’s going to have a good time, and he has a sort of sour I-know-this-isn’t-going-to-be-as-good-as-it’s-cracked-up-to-be expression on his face. Then he has a thought.

MARTIN: Was she . . . ?

BLANE: Probably.

MARTIN (shaking his head) Amazing.

BLANE: Supposedly, you really can’t tell. Except by looking at the hands—they haven’t perfected the hands yet.

Martin nods, then turns forward.

CUT TO:

The underground corridor. As the tram streaks forward, down a corridor lined with blue lights.

CUT TO:

Another corridor and tram, this one going down a corridor with red lights. On it is the Middle-Aged Man.

CUT TO:

Still another corridor and tram. This one goes down a corridor with yellow lights. On the tram is the businessman’s wife—in fact, the Roman World tram seems overpopulated with women.

CUT TO:

Martin in his tram, watching as he comes to:

CUT TO:

The underground locker room. It really looks part elegant locker room, part store. The half-dozen tourists going to Westworld including the Accountant, are taking off their clothes.

CUT TO:

A montage, as they remove their own clothing, watches, jewelry, everything—and are given western clothes, boots, hats. And finally guns. Martin and Blane react to each step of the process. As their own clothes are locked away in a locker, there seems to be an irrevocable aspect that disturbs Martin. But as they strap on their guns, they smile at each other.

Bring up fast-paced plunking banjo.

DISSOLVE TO:

A western street scene, as a stagecoach rumbles into town, spewing dust.

CUT TO:

Martin looking out the window of the stagecoach.

CUT TO:

A series of traveling points-of-view from the window: a man sitting back in a chair, smoking a cigar, a woman in bustle and parasol, walking down the boardwalk, a cowboy in chaps hitching up his horse.

CUT TO:

Martin looking away from the window to Blane and grinning like a kid.

CUT TO:

The street as the stagecoach rumbles up in front of the Grand Hotel, a misnamed place. It is really a two-story shack.

The passengers climb out, coughing like greenhorns in the dust, and enter the hotel.

CUT TO:

Inside hotel room. Martin’s suitcase is thrown down on a rickety bed, which groans with the weight. A disgruntled old bellhop who badly needs a shave explains with no particular interest:

BELLHOP: Reckon that’s everything. Bathroom’s down the hall. Bath’ll cost you two bits for hot water. Dinner’s at seven sharp, breakfast at six-thirty. Git lunch on your own. Couple a places to eat in town. It don’t look like much here, but we got everything.

Martin is staring in curious fascination at the Bellhop. Blane catches the look.

BLANE: Can we see your hands, please?

The Bellhop shrugs, holds open his hands, palms up.

CUT TO:

The hands. They are perfectly lifelike except for a little prominent ridging at the finger joints. It’s not very noticeable, but it is wrong, and gives the whole thing away.

CUT TO:

Blane and Martin.

BLANE (tipping the Bellhop): Thank you.

The Bellhop leaves. Martin stares after him.

MARTIN: You mean to tell me he’s a robot?

BLANE: That’s what I mean to tell you.

Martin shakes his head in wonderment, looks around the room curiously, touching things.

CUT TO:

He examines a chest of drawers. Then he goes to the bed, his attention drawn by a paperback dime novel on the nightstand. He sits down on the bed; it creaks loudly. He winces at its lumpiness, looks back at Blane.

MARTIN: I paid a thousand dollars a day for this?

BLANE: It’s authentic. The West of 1880.

MARTIN (grumpy): They might have made it a little more comfortable.

BLANE: But that’s the point. This is really the way it was . . . If you wanted comfort, you could have stayed in Chicago.

Martin turns away, his attention absorbed by the novel. He opens it.

CUT TO:

The paperback. It reads: “Pub. 1869.”

CUT TO:

Martin. He closes the book, sets it down, notices an enameled pitcher on the bedstand. He picks it up; it has a rather graceful shape.

CUT TO:

The pitcher. Imprinted on the bottom: “Stevens Ironworks, Pennsylvania, 1874.”

CUT TO:

Martin. He holds the pitcher in his hands, runs his fingers over its curve.

MARTIN: Julie would love all this. She was always interested in antiques . . . (smiling warmly) . . . poking around for hours in all those funny shops, looking for—

BLANE: Peter, I don’t believe it.

Martin stops. After a beat:

BLANE: You’re a lawyer, you know better than anybody else what a ride she took you for.

MARTIN: Well, there’s the kids—

BLANE: —Fine, the kids, but here you are six months later, still thinking about her.

MARTIN: No, not really. She just came to mind, is all.

Martin puts the pitcher down gently and walks to the window. As he goes, he puts his hands in his pockets—a modern gesture—and looks out.

MARTIN (slowly): It’s an interesting place . . .

CUT TO:

An angle down on the western street from Martin’s point of view. A few riders are going by leisurely, their horses kicking up little spurts or dust; a couple of old-timers across the way are talking. Two women discuss a new dress that one wears. One of the women is quite handsome.

CUT TO:

Martin at the window.

CUT TO:

The gossiping women.

MARTIN: There’s a lot to do here.

CUT TO:

Inside the hotel room. Martin takes a deep breath, looks back into the room.

MARTIN: Well . . . where do we go from here?

CUT TO:

The western street. Blane and Martin come out of the hotel and walk down the boardwalk, smiling, nodding. A lady passes them; Blane tips his hat. Martin notices. A pair of ladies pass them; this time they both tip their hats. They continue on.

Angle down on the western street from a second-story room.

CUT TO:

The Accountant’s hotel room. He turns away from the window, looks around the room, hitches up his gun and holster, then looks at the mirror over the highboy. He tries a couple of quick draws—clumsy at first, then a little better. As he gets into the rhythm of it, he begins to smile. And then suddenly, on his next quick draw, his gun accidentally discharges, and he shoots out the mirror. He is startled.

CUT TO:

Blane and Martin as they enter a saloon. A honky-tonk piano plays. There are dusty men playing cards, and a couple of slick gambler-types. One or two solitary gunslingers with bottles in front of them. No women at all. Blane and Martin enter, go up to the bar. The Bartender comes over.

CUT TO:

BARTENDER: What’ll it be?

BLANE: Whiskey.

BARTENDER: (to Martin): What about you?

Martin has been looking around the room. He turns and says without thinking:

MARTIN: Uh, a very dry vodka martini on the rocks, please.

The Bartender blinks.

BLANE: Just bring him whiskey . . . he’s new in town.

The Bartender moves off.

BLANE: Look, you got to get into the feel of the thing.

MARTIN: I feel silly.

Blane turns and leans back on the bar, resting his elbows. He surveys the room.

BLANE: Why?

MARTIN: It’s like a joke.

BLANE: It’s not a joke, it’s a toy. It’s an amusement park—the best amusement park in the world. All you have to do is have fun.

Martin also turns.

CUT TO:

What Martin sees.

A slow pan around the room.

MARTIN (over): Some pretty rough customers here. How many of them are, uh . . .

CUT TO:

Blane and Martin as Blane pushes back his hat.

BLANE: Guests like us? Who knows? Maybe five, maybe none. That’s the beauty of this place. It doesn’t matter.

CUT TO:

The room. A closer pan showing details of the men playing cards, drinking, lounging. They’re flawless western types.

BLANE (over): It may look rough, but it’s still just a resort.

CUT TO:

Blane and Martin. Their drinks come. Blane gulps it down.

BLANE: There’s no way you can get hurt here. Just enjoy yourself.

Martin picks up his drink, gulps it down, and is overcome with explosive coughing. Tears come to his eyes. Blane tries to keep from laughing. Martin is coughing and wiping his eyes, finally gets control of himself.

MARTIN: What is that stuff?

BLANE (picking up unlabeled bottle): Doesn’t say.

MARTIN (breathing deeply): Good God . . . gimme that.

BLANE: Puts hair on your chest.

Martin is now glancing around the room in embarrassment as he pours himself another shot. He picks it up to drink it and is nudged—the drink spills all over his shirt.

The man who has nudged Martin is a gunslinger, a good six inches taller than Martin, dressed in black, and exceedingly mean-looking. He is the kind of man who gets going in the morning by shooting somebody the way other people get going with a cup of coffee. He has stepped up to the bar and has obviously taken no pains to avoid nudging Martin. But he ignores him.

GUNSLINGER (low): Whiskey.

The Gunslinger disdainfully tosses a gold coin on the bar counter. Then he turns to look at Martin. Martin is just standing there, staring.

GUNSLINGER: Sloppy with your drink.

Shaking his head, he turns away. The Bartender brings a bottle and a shot glass. The Gunslinger pours a drink, knocks it back with a satisfied sigh.

Martin stares at the Gunslinger. Blane nudges Martin: go ahead and take him on. Martin looks angrily at Blane: you stay out of this.

The Gunslinger himself is apparently oblivious, staring forward across the bar. Then he says:

GUNSLINGER: You momma’s boys are all alike. Need a bib to keep your shirt clean. We got a bib for this boy?

Scattered laughter around the room. The Bartender, who is drying glasses with a towel, smiles indulgently. Martin still stares.

Blane is looking at Martin, who is carefully not looking at Blane.

BLANE (hissing): Go on!

Martin shakes his head quickly.

GUNSLINGER: Yeah . . . Some guys aren’t much without momma around, to hide behind her skirts.

Martin is, if anything, more terrified by this than goaded into action. Blane whispers into Martin’s ear. Martin shakes his head. Blane grabs his arm and whispers again.

Camera begins to move in on Martin.

MARTIN (very low): You talk too much.

The Gunslinger turns his head slowly, indolently, like a lazy lion.

GUNSLINGER: You say something, boy?

MARTIN (louder): I said, you talk too much.

Around the saloon, people are beginning to sense the tension; they are losing interest in their drinks and card games. The Gunslinger is still lazy.

A slow smile spreads across his face. He steps away from the bar.

GUNSLINGER: Why don’t you make me shut up?

Martin steps away from the bar, nodding. Blane moves backward.

CUT TO:

The saloon as chairs scrape back and people dive for cover. Blane vaults over the bar. Martin and the Gunslinger square off.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger

CUT TO:

Martin

CUT TO:

GUNSLINGER: Your move.

CUT TO:

Martin, having a shade of last-minute doubt.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger’s face. Snap zoom in on his eyes, which we see are plastic and electronic, and in that moment of recognition

CUT TO:

Martin drawing his gun and

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger drawing and he is cut down and

CUT TO:

Martin, guns blazing

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger spinning, twisting in slow motion, and blood spurting from shoulder and chest as the bullets hit him and

CUT TO:

Martin still firing and enjoying the hell out of it and

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger slamming against the bar, and then slumping to the floor, slowly. Silence. It’s incredibly realistic.

CUT TO:

Martin, frozen in sudden horror, holding his smoking pistol in front of him. He stares at the dead man.

CUT TO:

What he sees: the Gunslinger, blood pouring from his chest.

CUT TO:

Martin looking around as people in the saloon warily take up their old positions.

CUT TO:

Blane rising above the bar, smiling.

BLANE: Pretty realistic, huh?

Martin, raising his eyebrows: hell yes. Blane comes around and claps him on the back. The honky-tonk piano begins to play again. Martin knocks back a drink, then turns to look over his shoulder.

CUT TO:

What he sees: two men hauling the Gunslinger’s body out of the saloon, feet first. The body is dragged roughly across the floor, leaving a wavering trail of blood.

CUT TO:

Martin, turning back to Blane.

MARTIN: Blane, are you sure he was—

BLANE: Of course. You don’t think you really shot anybody, do you?

Martin thinks it over, then grins and shakes his head.

MARTIN: Wow.

CUT TO:

Blane and Martin’s hotel room. They are changing clothes prior to dinner. As Martin hitches on his gunbelt:

MARTIN: Say, John . . . (taking out his gun) How do I know I’m not going to kill another guest with this thing?

BLANE (grinning): Try it.

Martin looks confused.

BLANE: Shoot me.

Blane is standing at the mirror, adjusting his shirt. His back is to Martin.

BLANE: Go on. Shoot.

Martin aims, but hesitates.

BLANE: Shoot!

Martin shoots. There is a click; no gunshot. Blane smiles. Martin looks closely at his gun.

BLANE: The gun has a sensing device. It won’t fire at anything with a high body temperature. Only something cold, like a machine.

MARTIN: They thought of everything.

CUT TO:

The gun. We can see that it’s a little strangely shaped; a peculiar lump under the barrel.

CUT TO:

The dining room of the Grand Hotel. Dinner is being served, family style, in heavy porcelain dishes that are somehow reminiscent of chamber pots. A half-dozen guests, including the Accountant, are eating.

Among them are Blane and Martin. They eat heartily in silence for a while.

BLANE (turning to elderly hostess): What do people do for companionly entertainment in this town?

HOSTESS: I wouldn’t know about such things. I’m just runnin’ the hotel.

Blane looks at Martin.

ACCOUNTANT (timidly): Miss Carrie’s got a real nice saloon, down end of the street.

HOSTESS: I won’t have talk of that woman in this house. Not over my dinner.

MARTIN (quickly): Real good food, ma’am.

HOSTESS: Thank you, stranger. I can see you’re a gentleman of some breedin’.

Blane nudges Martin.

BLANE: Isn’t she terrific?

Martin blinks.

BLANE: Notice the hands.

CUT TO:

The hostess passing the potatoes. We see her hands; there are odd ridges in the fingers.

CUT TO:

Martin, frowning.

CUT TO:

A close shot of the hostess’s face: it’s flawless down to the last detail.

HOSTESS: Been mighty hot lately in these parts. I expect we’re due for some rain.

ACCOUNTANT: Yes, ma’am. I expect so.

CUT TO:

Martin, staring at the woman, then he turns to Blane.

MARTIN: Who’s Miss Carrie?

CUT TO:

Miss Carrie’s Saloon. Miss Carrie, a tough thirtyish hooker, presides over a bordello of great splendor and what can only be described as the most tasteful and elegant decadence. Unlike the first saloon previously seen, her house is feminine and rich, the atmosphere subdued. In one area, men play cards on richly covered tables; their cards make a quiet slapping sound, their bids are given in low voices. In another area, some preliminary hanky-panky consonant with a PG rating is taking place.

The total effect is just a little intimidating, as Blane and Martin enter. Martin is appropriately wide-eyed as they move to the bar. A couple of Miss Carrie’s employees lounge at the bar. They are quite pretty.

CARRIE: You fellas new in town?

MARTIN: Yes (to bartender) Whiskey.

CARRIE: Just passin’ through?

BLANE: Maybe.

CARRIE: Lookin’ for some fun?

BLANE: Maybe.

CARRIE: Well, you come to the right place. Plenty of fun here. This’s Cindy, and Arlette. Arlette’s from Paris, France.

MARTIN (to the girls): Howdy.

Cindy and Arlette leer invitingly. Carrie gets more businesslike.

CARRIE: P’raps you gentlemen are taking a liking to them?

BLANE: P’raps.

Cindy and Arlette preen. Martin smiles appreciatively at them, then has a thought. He turns to Blane.

MARTIN: Hey, listen—

CARRIE: They’re real accommodatin’

BLANE: They look it.

MARTIN: Hey, listen, are those two—

CARRIE: You just go on upstairs, and we’ll reckon accounts later.

BLANE: Sounds good to me.

MARTIN: Are those two girls machines?

BLANE (leering at the girls): Now how can you say a thing like that?

MARTIN (gulping): Are you sure?

BLANE (clapping him on shoulder): Come on . . .

Blane, Martin and the two girls ascend the stairs to the second floor.

As they go upstairs, murderous and continuous gun-fire goes on from outside. Martin and Blane stop their ascent; Martin grateful for the diversion, Blane merely curious.

MARTIN: What’s going on?

MISS CARRIE (looking out window): They’re robbing the bank.

MARTIN (to Blane): Robbing the bank . . . Hey, maybe we should go help out . . .

The shooting continues. Blane considers it. Finally Blane shakes his head.

MARTIN: Well, you don’t know, it might be fun to fight bank robbers.

BLANE: This’s better.

He slaps his girl on the bottom, and continues upstairs. After a moment, Martin shrugs to Arlette, and follows her upstairs. Gunfire continues through next sequence.

CUT TO:

One of the upstairs rooms. Arlette puts her foot on the bed, hikes up her long frilly skirt, and begins to unlace a high boot.

The room is dark, warmly lit by a couple of gas lamps; it’s romantic in a way, dramatic in a way. The sounds of the brawl downstairs are muted.

CUT TO:

Martin, undressing by the bureau, looking at her in the bureau mirror.

Arlette, dropping her boots on the floor, reaching behind her to unhook her bodice. She glances once at Martin over her shoulder, smiles.

CUT TO:

Martin taking off his shirt, smiling shyly.

CUT TO:

Arlette in a white slip as she removes her dress with a loud rustling of starched petticoats.

CUT TO:

Martin lying naked on the bed, watching her. He is increasingly anxious.

MARTIN: There, uh, is something I have to tell you . . . I mean, I don’t know if, uh, it matters, but it matters to me . . .

Arlette undressing, not very concerned.

ARLETTE: Yes?

Martin in bed.

MARTIN: Yes, uh, you see, I’m a married man and I never, uh, I mean I’ve always been faithful to my wife . . .

He is watching Arlette, still undressing.

MARTIN: So I haven’t had, well, I mean, it’s, um, it’s been a while, and I, well, I hardly know you, if you know what I mean. I mean we just met a few minutes ago, and you’re probably very nice and all, but—

Martin breaks off abruptly.

CUT TO:

What he sees: Arlette undressing. Her clothes are essentially all removed. Her body is extraordinarily lifelike, and at the moment, powerfully sexual— which is what made Martin shut up.

Arlette smiles at him, approaching the bed.

MARTIN: I feel funny.

ARLETTE: Why?

She lies down next to him, kisses him softly.

A close shot of their lips pressing together.

A stock romantic shot with new meaning here.

Martin, being very experimental about the sensations, then closing his eyes, letting go.

Montage of their lovemaking. It is done in the most fuzzy-filtered romantic style possible. We end the sequence on his eyes, closed as he reaches orgasm.

Arlette’s eyes are also closed. And then at the final moment, she opens them wide: and again we see that they are electronic, unreal.

SLOW DISSOLVE TO:

Martin is sitting on the bed pulling on his boots. He is dressed except for them. (The phallicness of boot-pulling-on will not be emphasized.) Across the room, Arlette stares at the mirror and combs her hair. He looks at her, sighs, shakes his head.

ARLETTE: Is something wrong?

MARTIN (smiling): Not a thing.

ARLETTE (smiling): Good.

She comes over and kisses him on the cheek.

ARLETTE: I think you are nice.

Then she leaves. Martin just sits there. After a moment, he sits a little straighter and begins to smile. He is thinking about the episode and feeling good about it. He gives a little chuckle, and obviously thinks himself pretty debonair at this moment.

Blane comes in, excited.

BLANE: How was it? Wasn’t it terrific? Boy, machines are the servant of man. Wasn’t that great?

MARTIN (still debonair): Not bad.

BLANE: Not bad . . . Now you’re the big lover.

Martin has gotten up, gone to the mirror, and is more or less primping.

MARTIN: Well, you know . . . some guys have a way with women . . .

Blane has gone to the window. He looks out.

BLANE: Shooting’s stopped . . . I guess we missed the robbery.

MARTIN (yawning): Well, you can’t have everything. You know something? This place is really fun.

CUT TO:

The hotel room where Martin and Blane are asleep. Camera pans away from them toward the window.

CUT TO:

An angle down of the western street. A scene of carnage: dead horses and dead bodies all over the place, silvery in the moonlight.

CUT TO:

A slow, ground-level pan across all the dead animals, the people, the shattered windows, the incredible mess.

End the pan on an incongruous sight: two electric headlamps coming silently toward us. As they come closer, we hear a faint electric whine.

CUT TO:

An electric-driven van as it pulls to a stop and a gang of workmen in white coveralls climb out. They begin to collect the bodies, moving them into the van.

CUT TO:

Montage shots of the nighttime cleanup. Some of it is very difficult: for the horses, a winch apparatus is needed. There are also straightforward repairmen, replacing windows, fixing broken chairs, and so on. But the main interest is the collecting of the dead.

CUT TO:

The van, as the machines are being loaded.

CUT TO:

Another part of the street as the van pulls into a ramshackle, ordinary-looking building at the edge of town. It goes out of sight.

CUT TO:

The repair-building garage. The van backs up to a conveyor belt. Workmen begin to unload the damaged machines onto the conveyer belt, which carries them out of sight.

CUT TO:

The robot-repair room. It is a vast surreal hall lit by banks of cold fluorescent lights. The room contains rows of benches, each with a cluster of electronic equipment. On each bench, a machine is being repaired by one to three technicians. All the technicians are dressed in white labcoats and wear white hats over their hair.

Altogether it is an incredible sight; horses on their backs, legs sticking into the air rigidly as they are torch-welded; men and women naked, being screwed, bolted, fitted, wired by technicians. All of it rather quiet, and scrupulously clean.

We run a long tracking shot through all of this, and eventually pick up a supervisor, about fifty, scholarly-looking and thoughtful. He is conferring with a workman about a horse lying on one of the benches.

SUPERVISOR: Yes, I’d replace the whole unit rather than try to repair it.

WORKMAN: Ten?

SUPERVISOR: Use an XX Fifty if we have any in stock. The XX Fifties have a longer lifespan.

WORKMAN: A Fifty may not fit in here.

SUPERVISOR: Maybe if you shift the integrator unit further up into the cavity . . .

WORKMAN: I’ll try it.

The Supervisor goes on down the line, and the camera follows him. He stops by one bench on which a woman is being repaired; her shapely leg is held up in the air, and wires protrude from the sole of her foot.

SUPERVISOR: That balance servo again?

WORKMAN: Yeah. She fell over this afternoon. I think it’s the sensor. If it’s the central unit we’ll have to open her up.

SUPERVISOR: Get a confirmation before you do that.

He goes up. He comes to a grizzled old-timer, chest torn open.

SUPERVISOR: What’s he in for?

WORKMAN: Central malfunction.

SUPERVISOR: Another one?

He frowns, continues on.

CUT TO:

The underground conference room. It’s rather spartan—concrete walls and a gleaming metal table, around which six supervisors sit. They all look more or less like the supervisor we’ve seen: distinguished intelligent men in their fifties. All wear white lab-coats and shirts and ties beneath. In front of each is a small control console.

FIRST SUPERVISOR: . . . so that after applying all our corrections to data, we come out with six central malfunctions in Medieval World during the past week. This is absolutely unprecedented.

SECOND SUPERVISOR: What about Western World?

THIRD SUPERVISOR: One malfunction tonight. Makes three in the last week.

SECOND SUPERVISOR: Well, I don’t see any reason to worry at this point—

FOURTH SUPERVISOR: Any problems with life-support equipment?

FIFTH SUPERVISOR: All our units seem to function normally at this time, but the technology of those systems is less complex.

THIRD SUPERVISOR: I’ve been wondering whether we are looking at a nonrandom pattern and failing to recognize it.

CUT TO:

The working technician’s locker room. It is a sharp contrast to the austere conference room. This place is plastered with pinups, and is very proletarian. Several technicians are getting out of their clean work clothes and into ordinary street clothing.

FIRST TECHNICIAN: Jeez . . . what a day.

SECOND TECHNICIAN: Look at it. Three in the morning. We never used to finish past two.

FIRST TECHNICIAN: What’re you working?

SECOND TECHNICIAN: Rome.

FIRST TECHNICIAN: That’s the worst. I’ve been in Westworld. It was pretty soft.

THIRD TECHNICIAN: So was the castle. It’s been bad lately, though.

FIRST TECHNICIAN: Damned supervisors don’t even know what’s happening.

SECOND TECHNICIAN: Well, they don’t have to do the work. Just walk around and give orders. They got their heads in the clouds.

CUT TO:

A screen in the underground conference room. It is a schematic of the three-part resort, with numbers being superimposed appropriately.

SIXTH SUPERVISOR (voice over): From the day we opened the resort, we had a failure and breakdown rate conforming to computer predictions, that is, zero-point-three malfunctions for each twenty-four-hour activation period, concurrent or not.

CUT TO:

The sixth supervisor.

SIXTH SUPERVISOR: This was an anticipated operations aspect of the resort, and we were prepared to handle it. The majority of breakdowns were peripheral and minor, until about six weeks ago.

CUT TO:

The screen, showing the resort and the superimposed numbers. There are some other numbers for dates and subcalculations, central breakdowns, peripheral breakdowns, total breakdowns, each with a column for absolute numbers and percentages. In other words, the graphic representation is complex.

THIRD SUPERVISOR (voice over): Roman World has a rise in breakdown rate, which doubled in a week. In addition, we saw a disproportionate rise in central as opposed to peripheral breakdowns. We identified some problems with humidity control, and regained homeostasis.

CUT TO:

Technicians’ locker room.

FIRST TECHNICIAN: You ever made it with one of those machines?

SECOND TECHNICIAN: No . . . I’ll take the real thing. If I can ever get home to her.

FIRST TECHNICIAN: I tried it with one of those Rome hookers. One night out on the repair table. Powered her up, and really went to town . . .

THIRD TECHNICIAN: You could get fired for that.

The First Technician snorts disdainfully.

CUT TO:

The underground conference room.

THIRD SUPERVISOR: Despite our corrections, the breakdown rate continued to climb. Then Medieval World began to have trouble. And now we are having more Western World breakdowns . . . There is a clear pattern here, which suggests an analogy to an infectious disease process, spreading from one resort area to the next.

The supervisors react in their various ways.

SECOND SUPERVISOR: Perhaps there are superficial similarities to disease—

FIFTH SUPERVISOR: It’s only a theoretical concept. There are a lot of ways to order that data.

FIRST SUPERVISOR: I must confess I have difficulty believing in a disease of machinery.

THIRD SUPERVISOR: We aren’t dealing with ordinary machines here. These are highly complicated pieces of equipment, almost as complicated as living organisms. In some cases, the design of our robot circuitry has been worked out by other computers. We don’t know exactly how they work . . . Why shouldn’t they be vulnerable to, let us say, a neurological disease?

SECOND SUPERVISOR (sarcastic): Or mass psychosis?

FIFTH SUPERVISOR: You ask me, we’re the ones with the mass psychosis.

SIXTH SUPERVISOR: I feel we have an obligation to our guests at the resort. They are entirely dependent on us and the machines. If there is any widespread breakdown, we’ve got to close the resort—for their safety.

SECOND SUPERVISOR (still sarcastic): You afraid they’ll catch the disease?

THIRD SUPERVISOR: I agree it’s a serious problem. It may be premature to close the resort now, but unless we can stop the breakdowns, we won’t have any choice. We’ll have to shut down.

CUT TO:

High angle down on conference room as the group sits there, then gets up.

CUT TO:

Western street—dawn.

CUT TO:

Battlements of Medieval World—dawn.

CUT TO:

Roman World—dawn.

CUT TO:

Central control room. It is an enormous, circular, underground room, resembling an Apollo mission-control room. On the TV screens we see dawn breaking over the three worlds. There is a hubbub of complex technical talk. Eventually we realize that the people are starting up the resort for the day, getting this intricate and ponderous machine to come to life, activating everything.

TECHNICIAN ONE: Up gain four-three-seven . . .

TECHNICIAN TWO: I’m not getting sound pickup from the tenth quadrant, please check my leads to console . . .

TECHNICIAN THREE: My telemetry is good, repeat, good telemetry . . .

TECHNICIAN FOUR: We have sunrise in zero point forty-three, ready on all quadrants. Energize grid.

TECHNICIAN FIVE: Grid energized. Confirmed.

TECHNICIAN ONE: Uh . . . all right, then, give me four-three-six if you can patch in that . . . If not, four-three-five . . .

TECHNICIAN TWO: I have sound now, thank you . . .

TECHNICIAN THREE: Yes, I wanted scrambled eggs and bacon with cinnamon toast. Do you have any cinnamon toast? Okay, send it down to the central control room, console three.

TECHNICIAN FOUR: Just a minute. (pauses to light cigarette) Okay, what was that? No grounding on unit five? Try a bypass . . . Well, I have readings on all units, five included . . . hold on a minute . . .

Technician Four lights a cigarette for Five.

TECHNICIAN FIVE: All right . . . let’s standby for resort activation.

CUT TO:

The western street. Several robots are frozen in fixed positions, their sightless eyes unblinking.

CUT TO:

Medieval banquet hall. A rigid groom stands guard.

CUT TO:

Roman World. A handsome woman wearing a toga is frozen in mid-stride, one elegant leg poised to take a next step.

CUT TO:

Central control room. As the technicians get ready to start up, we catch scattered phrases:

TECHNICIAN ONE: . . . Ready on phase four-four-three . . .

TECHNICIAN TWO: four-four-three . . .

TECHNICIAN FIVE: . . . activation at five nine . . .

CUT TO:

Roman World. A flash cut of the Roman woman, her leg poised, her arm about to sweep her toga around her in the morning chill.

CUT TO:

Central control.

TECHNICIAN TWO: . . . lower gain alpha two . . .

TECHNICIAN FIVE: . . . ready on six . . . on five . . . on four . . .

CUT TO:

A digital clock as the seconds click by.

CUT TO:

Roman World, as the woman stands waiting.

CUT TO:

Central control.

TECHNICIAN FIVE: . . . on three . . . on two . . . activate now.

CUT TO:

Roman World, as the woman imperiously sweeps her gown around her, and walks down steps out of sight.

CUT TO:

Medieval banquet hall as the groom yawns.

CUT TO:

Western World. An old-timer in a rocking chair on the western street begins to rock, with a rhythmic creak. We hear birds chirp, and a distant horse whinnies. Morning has arrived.

CUT TO:

Blane and Martin in their hotel room. We faintly hear the creak from the rocking chair on the street below. Martin wakes, yawns, sits up, looks toward the window.

CUT TO:

The Accountant’s hotel room. He wakes in a startled, disoriented way. He looks over at a voluptuous shoulder. A woman is in bed with him.

Reverse angle.

We can now see that the sleeping woman is Arlette. The Accountant looks over at her, remembers, smiles.

CUT TO:

The western street. Below, from Martin’s point of view, it is getting more active every minute of the day.

CUT TO:

Hotel bathroom. Martin, in an enormous bathtub, scrubbing, singing “Home on the Range,” delighted with himself.

CUT TO:

Blane, in the bedroom, getting dressed, hearing Martin’s singing. He grins at his reflection in the mirror.

CUT TO:

Martin getting out of the bath, toweling himself off, still singing and humming.

CUT TO:

Blane, smiling in the mirror, adjusting a neckerchief with elaborate dandyish care when there is a knock on the door. Thinking it is Martin, Blane opens the door—and a gun pokes through at his nose. Blane steps back; the Gunslinger enters.

GUNSLINGER: Not a word. (cocks gun) Move over there.

Blane moves away from the door. The Gunslinger closes the door. He smiles.

He moves deeper into the room, turns until he can hold Blane and the door in his vision.

GUNSLINGER: Now we’ll just wait for your friend.

Blane stands there with his hands up. A beat.

BLANE: What do you want?

GUNSLINGER: You keep quiet.

CUT TO:

Martin coming down the hallway, towel wrapped around himself, gunbelt over his naked shoulder. He comes to the door, stops, hears muffled voices inside.

While he waits at the door, a woman walks down the corridor past him and sniffs at his nakedness.

WOMAN: Have you no sense of decency, young—

MARTIN (finger to lips): Ssssssh!

CUT TO:

Inside the bedroom. The Gunslinger whirls.

GUNSLINGER: What—?

Angle on hallway as Martin whips out his gun, kicks the door open and starts firing. The woman screams.

Inside the bedroom, Blane dives for cover and the Gunslinger is alone. He fires once, shattering the mirror. Then he’s hit, and spins. The woman screams, hands to her face in horror as we see Martin firing.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger as he is picked up bodily and flung out the window.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger falling from outside the hotel. He bites the dust.

CUT TO:

Hotel room. Blane gets up as Martin comes into the room. Martin goes directly to the window, looks out and down at the street.

CUT TO:

The western street from Martin’s point of view. A crowd clusters around the fallen Gunslinger.

CUT TO:

The hotel room as Martin turns back to Blane.

MARTIN: Was he bothering you?

They exchange smiles.

SHERIFF (voice over): You guys are all the same. I seen plenty of you.

CUT TO:

A sheriff closing jail-cell doors.

SHERIFF: All the same. Think you can come into a town and raise hell . . .

Martin, now being locked up, is no longer smiling.

SHERIFF (voice over): . . . and do whatever you want. Well, I’m here to tell you things are changing.

Angle past the Sheriff to Blane, standing in the jail outer office.

SHERIFF: There’s a law here now. You can’t go plugging whoever you please.

BLANE: But, Sheriff, it was self-defense.

SHERIFF: That’s what they all say. Fact is, he shot a man. Have to stand trial.

The Sheriff turns to Blane.

SHERIFF: Judge’ll be here next week . . . I was you, I wouldn’t trouble over your friend here. Judge Benson likes to hang ’em. (nods thoughtfully) Hang ’em high.

BLANE: But, Sheriff—

SHERIFF: That’s all. Now beat it.

The Sheriff slumps into a chair, props his feet up on the desk. Blane remains standing there. He looks at the Sheriff. Then he looks at Martin, shrugging from behind bars. Blane winks.

SHERIFF: I said beat it.

Blane leaves.

Martin sits down on his crude cot, leaning back against the stone wall, folding his arms across his chest, sighing.

MARTIN (almost to himself): I’ve never been in jail before.

The Sheriff, his feet propped up on his desk, his back to Martin, doesn’t look back.

SHERIFF: First time for everything.

MARTIN: But I haven’t done anything wrong.

SHERIFF: Shot a man. I’d say that was something . . . Where’re you from?

MARTIN: Chicago.

SHERIFF (back to Martin): Chicago’s a long way off, fella. Thousand miles and more . . . (turns to look at Martin) I hear they got a building in Chicago that’s five stories high. That right?

MARTIN: Yeah.

SHERIFF: Damned high. (he turns around) Don’t know why you bothered coming out here.

CUT TO:

Martin, who just stares.

CUT TO:

The western town at midday, in the blinding heat of the sun. The dust and glare are forbidding, unpleasant. Blane is on the boardwalk, talking to a lovely Apache girl, giving her a cloth-covered tray. She nods and crosses the street toward the jail as Blane watches her. Angle on the Girl, reaching the jail, looking back once. Blane nods slowly. The Girl goes inside the jail.

CUT TO:

The Sheriff, feet on his desk, stops the Girl indolently, using his leg as a barricade. He looks under the cloth at the food, nods, swings his leg away. She goes to the cell, passes the food in to Martin. Under the tray is a note.

CUT TO:

Martin reading the note. He nods.

CUT TO:

The Girl leaving the jail. As she goes, the Sheriff pinches her bottom, and she squeals and slaps his hand away. He chuckles, settles back in his chair, pulls his hat down over his face.

CUT TO:

Outside the jail. The Girl emerges, waves her hand slightly in a signal. Blane nods, turning away.

CUT TO:

Martin, in his cell, eating his lunch, has moved away from the bunk bed. He glances at the Sheriff, who is asleep, snoring. Martin nervously eats a bite, then puts the plate away, his appetite gone.

CUT TO:

Outside the jail a couple of horsemen lazily ride by. A buckboard jounces by. We hold on the shot . . . and hold . . . and hold . . . and suddenly there is an explosion, and the whole side wall of the jail blows out.

CUT TO:

Blane turned away, holding two horses by the reins.

CUT TO:

The wall blowing out, people scattering.

CUT TO:

The Sheriff, startled.

CUT TO:

Blane mounting up, as debris flies.

CUT TO:

Martin running out through the hole in the jail as Blane comes up with an extra horse. Martin climbs up awkwardly—the one false touch in the otherwise perfect western cliché—and his slowness allows the Sheriff to come bursting out the front door.

SHERIFF: Hold it!

Blane fires instantly, slamming the Sheriff back against the brick of his jail. Women cower and scream. The Sheriff, only wounded, tries to get up. Blane blasts again. The Sheriff, dying, pitches forward, spurting catsup.

CUT TO:

Blane and Martin riding off down the street with townspeople staring amazed after them.

CUT TO:

Blane and Martin disappearing from sight.

CUT TO:

People coming out into the middle of the street to watch them go.

DISSOLVE TO:

Blane and Martin sitting in the hills, at the feet of their horses.

MARTIN: I guess that makes us desperados.

BLANE: I guess.

MARTIN: What do we do now?

BLANE (after a long pause): The way I figure it, anything we want. There’s no law in that town now. We go in there, do anything we want.

There’s a long pause. Finally:

MARTIN: You know what? I almost believe all this.

BLANE: Why shouldn’t you believe it? It’s as real as anything else.

MARTIN: Yep. I reckon.

A long shot of the two men sitting in desolation with their horses.

CUT TO:

Central control. We track around the technicians on their consoles, catching snatches of technical dialogue.

TECHNICIAN ONE: What can you give me in grid seven?

TECHNICIAN TWO: We have that on SM-five-one-four. Transfer now.

TECHNICIAN THREE: Transferred. Reschedule. Now what about that mountain lion?

TECHNICIAN FOUR: Inoperative, but we are rechecking the tapes on the mechanism.

TECHNICIAN FIVE: Listen she wants to meet the King, and we have to restructure for that. Can’t disappoint a guest.

TECHNICIAN SIX: . .. a little more on the stallion—

TECHNICIAN FIVE: . . . the dungeon lighting is five-five. Repeat five-five.

TECHNICIAN THREE: The Black Knight won’t be repaired until tomorrow afternoon. Switch to another scenario.

TECHNICIAN FOUR: —we have programmed infidelity in the Queen as of two minutes ago.

TECHNICIAN FIVE: Schedule the Indian attack for dawn—

TECHNICIAN SIX: I have the banquet for delivery at five-thirty if that conforms—

TECHNICIAN SEVEN: Well, I think we can arrange for her to—

TECHNICIAN EIGHT: Yes, he can be Sheriff if he wants, the Sheriff was just killed. Okay, program—

TECHNICIAN SIX: Coming up on the castle, zero . . . now . . .

End our pan on a TV screen which shows the castle of Medieval World.

CUT TO:

The castle standing in the distance.

CUT TO:

The interior of a medieval room. The Queen is being dressed and combed by her Ladies-in-Waiting. She allows this for a few minutes, then:

QUEEN: (regally) Leave me now.

The Ladies-in-Waiting depart, bowing and scraping. The door closes and the Queen is alone. From behind a tapestry a man appears, dressed as a knight. We have seen him before, on the hovercraft. He is a guest, a little too portly to be the legitimate object of the lovely Queen’s affections, yet she runs to him and embraces him.

KNIGHT: My Queen!

They kiss passionately. When they break:

QUEEN: If the king should learn of this, we would both be put to death.

KNIGHT: I’d be more than happy to die for you, my lady.

(The point here is that the Knight is trying to do the medieval dialogue with only partial success. The robot Queen is flawless in character.)

QUEEN: Let us pray it shall not be . . . I have news . . . the Black Knight has returned, and seeks a match with you.

KNIGHT: The Black Knight . . .

QUEEN (nodding gravely): None other.

KNIGHT (breaking from embrace): Is he pretty tough?

QUEEN: He has the strength of ten, and cunning besides . . .

The Knight looks glum at this news.

QUEEN: But his sight is poor in his left eye. Stay to his left, and you will prevail, and win the day.

CUT TO:

Central control room as a Technician at a console says:

TECHNICIAN: Let’s have confirmation on that reprogram on the Black Knight for left lateral weakness and instability for tomorrow . . .

CUT TO:

A TV screen showing the room with the Queen and Knight.

CUT TO:

The actual room.

QUEEN: Go now. I shall see you on the morrow.

The Knight gravely kisses her hand.

KNIGHT: My lady.

He leaves.

CUT TO:

The castle hallway outside the Queen’s room as the Knight sticks his head out the door, peers up and down, then steps out, closes the door. As he walks down the hallway:

KNIGHT: Hot damn!

He pauses to look out a window.

CUT TO:

An angle down on appropriate feudal activity in medieval town.

CUT TO:

The Knight as he smiles in delight.

CUT TO:

The Knight going down some stone steps in castle hallway. He bumps into a servant girl, a peasant type. She stumbles back. Then gets hold of herself.

SERVANT GIRL: A thousand pardons, my lord.

She bows deeply, exposing her ravishing bosom.

KNIGHT: What is your name, child?

CUT TO:

The central control room.

TECHNICIAN THREE (eating): —schedule for tomorrow A.M. Full court. It’s his last day in the resort, we’ll make it a lulu.

TECHNICIAN TWO: Tomorrow A.M. Broadswords. Schedule locked.

TECHNICIAN FOUR: We have a problem with air conditioning in beta section, send a crew out . . .

TECHNICIAN FIVE: —Yes, he can be sheriff anytime he wants, that is correct, just give him the badge . . .

CUT TO:

A group of people who are clustered around the entrance to the jail, all looking in at something we cannot see. Alter a moment the crowd moves back, and the Accountant emerges with a definite swagger. He has a shiny silver badge pinned to his shirt. He leans against a post and says to the watching crowd:

ACCOUNTANT: I’m the new law around here.

TOUGH MAN IN THE CROWD: Think you can handle things?

ACCOUNTANT: You want to find out?

CUT TO:

The western hills where Blane and Martin are still slouched down by their horses. Suddenly, one whinnies and startles. They both sit up. Simultaneously, we hear a rattling hiss.

CUT TO:

A snake coiled near them, ready to strike.

CUT TO:

Blane and Martin, frozen in panic. Then:

BLANE: Let me handle this.

He slowly reaches for his gun. Martin slowly backs away. Blane gets his gun out, aims, fires.

CUT TO:

The snake. The gunshot misses.

CUT TO:

Blane firing again.

MARTIN (horrified): Look out!

CUT TO:

The snake, striking.

CUT TO:

Blane, as it catches him on the forearm, sinks its teeth in. In horror, Blane shakes his arm, trying to shake it loose. The rattle continues. Angle on Blane, his face aghast.

CUT TO:

Martin’s face, equally aghast.

CUT TO:

Blane, spinning in a dervish dance, finally shakes the snake loose. Both men fire, blasting it. They look at Blane’s arm.

BLANE: Goddamn it!

CUT TO:

His forearm with two puncture marks.

MARTIN: Do you suppose it’s real?

BLANE: Hell no.

He goes over to the snake.

CUT TO:

The snake, dead. Through the bullet holes we can see the silver of machinery. Blane reaches down, opens the mouth. Metal teeth.

CUT TO:

Blane, angry now that his terror has worn off.

BLANE: That’s not supposed to happen.

MARTIN: Maybe it is. Maybe it’s part of the thing.

BLANE: The hell . . . stupid damned machine. (kicks snake) That’s not supposed to happen!

MARTIN (staring at snake): Well then, it’s clear.

BLANE: What is?

MARTIN: Our case. I mean, they are clearly liable for damages . . . The only question I would have is one of jurisdiction, which would influence where we brought the action, whether here or back in America. We probably ought to find out where the corporation is based, since that is potentially relevant. And of course, the extent of your damages.

CUT TO:

Central control room. The Supervisor is at a control console. The atmosphere is tense.

SUPERVISOR: When did it happen?

TECHNICIAN: About twenty minutes ago.

SUPERVISOR: The rattlesnake struck a guest?

TECHNICIAN: He was shooting and missed.

SUPERVISOR: Even so, the snakes are programmed never to hit on a strike. Was the guest injured?

TECHNICIAN: Minor puncture wounds.

SUPERVISOR: I don’t like it. It’s inexcusable to injure a guest. Pick up that snake for a total post at once. And check all the snake central mechanisms tonight during the repair period.

The Supervisor goes to a wall phone, dials. He frowns, dials again. The Aide watches. Finally the Supervisor hangs up in disgust.

CUT TO:

The Supervisor, in an electric cart, whizzing down a very long concrete tunnel. His face is grim.

CUT TO:

His view of the tunnel rushing past him.

CUT TO:

The cart going away from us, down the tunnel.

VOICE OVER: In each of our resorts, we have utilized technology . . .

CUT TO:

A conference room unlike any we’ve seen so far. It is plush, with rich carpets, heavy upholstered chairs, wood paneling. A man stands on a sort of stage and speaks. He wears a well-cut suit, and sounds and acts like a salesman, which is what he is. Next to him is a projector screen. Behind him, the drapes on the stage proper are drawn. On the screen, a complex resort groundplan is being projected.

SALESMAN: . . . to re-create past environments in human history. These were carefully chosen after extensive marketing research into communal fantasy. Eventually, we settled on the American West, Medieval Europe and Imperial Rome.

CUT TO:

The listening audience: heavyset men in expensive suits, thoughtful and skeptical. They are investors.

SALESMAN (over): In principle, it was like television or movies— except that you didn’t watch it, you participated in it. We believe that modern man, living in a civilized world . . .

CUT TO:

The Salesman.

SALESMAN: . . . needs to escape into fantasy—and in fact will pay willingly for the privilege . . . Thus, we created the greatest amusement park in history, with the help of our highly advanced robotic technology . . .

CUT TO:

The hillside area where Martin and Blane were sitting earlier. A little electric cart, like a futuristic golf cart, comes rumbling over a hill and stops. Two men in coveralls get out, walk to the snake. One man bends over to pick up the snake; there is a sputtering of sparks, and he yanks his hand away in alarm.

The other man goes back to the cart and returns with a pair of insulated tongs. With these, he picks up the writhing, sputtering snake, and drops it into a box. The cart drives off.

SALESMAN (voice over): But what of the future?

CUT TO:

The investor audience. The Supervisor, immediately noticeable in his white coat, enters the back of the room, pauses, and then goes to whisper into the ear of one of the men in the back.

SALESMAN (voice over): This is the theme of our fourth world, still under construction: Future World. Here we have used technology to create thrills that never have been, thrills of the future.

CUT TO:

The Salesman and the slide screen.

SALESMAN: Visitors will stay in an ultramodern resort complex here. The surrounding environment will be safe. There will be restaurants, casinos, and bordellos for both sexes, technologically advanced of course.

CUT TO:

The Supervisor whispering to the man in the back, who nods.

CUT TO:

SALESMAN: Outside the resort, the environment offers unpredictable weather—rains of plastic pellets, artificial quicksand, flashfloods of stinging acid—and exotic beasts roaming the countryside.

CUT TO:

The Supervisor conferring in whispers with one of the men in the back row.

SALESMAN (voice over): Now I mentioned exotic bordellos earlier, let me show you what I mean . . .

The Supervisor gets his instructions, nods, leaves.

CUT TO:

The Salesman, as a woman and a man are wheeled out onstage. They are both naked except for identical loincloths. Both are extraordinary looking, like the product of a black-white-Oriental union, and fiercely beautiful.

SALESMAN: Here are two prototypes of our most advanced product. You will notice that there is nothing realistic about them. They are unreal, and beautiful.

CUT TO:

An angle past the Salesman and the robots, out to the audience.

SALESMAN: The point here is that we are not trying to reproduce reality, but to exceed it. For instance, notice the external equipment on this robot . . .

He lifts the loincloth, and we see the audience’s reaction.

SALESMAN: . . . which is entirely unrealistic, but effective and stimulating. Internal vibratory mechanisms increase the effect.

He drops the loincloth and moves to the woman.

SALESMAN: Similarly, this female model is a technological triumph, with suction and torsion mechanisms.

CUT TO:

The Supervisor, driving away on his cart down the long concrete tunnel. The cart becomes very small, the whine dies.

CUT TO:

The autopsy room. A giant photomicrograph of electronic circuitry. We hear a buzz and a hiss over. The autopsy room; stark and simple and small; a table with a cluster of electronic equipment around it. The snake mechanism lies on the table. A man with a dissecting microscope peers down at it. Around and behind him, TV screens show images of the mechanism, the electronic circuitry, the computer test patterns. It is really a vision of machines probing machines. People look on and help out—there are, all together, three technicians in the room, and the Supervisor standing in the corner, watching quietly.

CUT TO:

A close shot of the opened snake belly.

CUT TO:

The technicians quietly exchanging technical comments, adjusting machinery, twisting dials, continuing their slow, careful probe of why the snake failed to operate correctly, as we see the Supervisor watching.

CUT TO:

The opened mouth of the snake as it lies on the board, being checked out. It is terrifyingly realistic, even now.

CUT TO:

The conference room we have previously seen, with the six men seated around the table.

SUPERVISOR THREE: Logic circuits on the snake simply failed to respond. There was no sign of mechanical damage or tampering and no clue to the malfunction.

SUPERVISOR TWO: Central mechanism psychosis?

SUPERVISOR THREE: I am reporting what I found.

SUPERVISOR SIX: I feel we should shut down the resort for a month.

SUPERVISOR TWO: That seems rash.

SUPERVISOR THREE: The snake injured a guest. We can’t allow that to happen. Many elements of the Delos resort are potentially dangerous—that’s part of the appeal. If they should become truly dangerous . . .

SUPERVISOR FOUR: I agree, but we can announce the resort is overbooked, and not allow further new guests to arrive. I think we can take care of the ones already here.

CUT TO:

The banquet hall. A lavish banquet is in progress. As we pan in and out around the table, we see the King and Queen, the Knight-guest, and the court all enjoying themselves expansively. Then in our cutting, we begin to go back and forth between the Knight-guest and the Black Knight, immediately recognizable by his black clothes, black hair, black mustache and evil demeanor. These two are exchanging glances.

CUT TO:

Central conference room.

SUPERVISOR THREE: If we can’t insure the safety of the guests, we are going to be in desperate trouble.

SUPERVISOR FOUR: But we can insure their safety. Everything’s fine.

CUT TO:

Miss Carrie’s Saloon. A fight is in progress. We pick out Blane and Martin, both having a terrific time. They punch people with roundhouse swings; they shoot people from the upstairs balcony; they bop people with bottles. It is absolutely more fun than anything imaginable. We also see the Accountant, who is participating—glasses and all—and making a good show of himself punching out some tough-looking guys. Slowly, as we watch, the elegant Miss Carrie’s bordello is destroyed chair by chair, table by table, chandelier by chandelier, pane of glass by glass, bottle by bottle in an orgy of controlled destruction that finally leaves the place virtually unrecognizable.

CUT TO:

The robot-repair room, previously seen. The Supervisor, head bowed unhappily, walks among the robots being fixed. He stops by the Gunslinger. Two workmen are working on him.

One workman is refilling the robot with packets of artificial blood. Another is lifting off the Gunslinger’s face to expose machinery behind it.

SUPERVISOR: What’s his problem?

WORKMAN: Nothing. He got shot up today and we’re taking the opportunity to replace his visual cortex. Adding the new infra-red units. And we’re increasing audio sensitivity.

The Supervisor nods, goes on. Hold on the Gunslinger’s electronic jumble of a face.

CUT TO:

The face of the Peasant Girl we have previously seen. She is in a room of the castle, with the Knight-guest.

GIRL: You called for me, my lord?

KNIGHT: How long have you been in the palace, Daphne?

GIRL: Since I was three, my lord.

As they talk, the Knight steers her to the bed. They both sit on the edge of the bed.

KNIGHT: Charming . . .

The Knight runs out of medieval chatter, shifts to a more modern idiom.

KNIGHT: I think we ought to get to know each other better, Daphne.

GIRL: Better, my lord?

KNIGHT (leering): I can reward you well.

He leans over to kiss her. She complacently allows it. His hand reaches out for her breast. She squirms away.

GIRL: My lord . . .

KNIGHT: Daphne . . .

He grabs at her more roughly. And she slaps him on the face.

GIRL: My lord forgets himself.

The Knight is stunned, in more ways than one.

CUT TO:

Central control room, alive with activity.

TECHNICIAN: Problem with the girl. Program breakdown.

The Supervisor is in the room, walks over almost casually.

SUPERVISOR: What’s the trouble?

TECHNICIAN (punching buttons): One of the castle machines isn’t responding. Refusing a guest seduction.

SUPERVISOR: Refusing?

TECHNICIAN (correcting himself): Not responding to inputs.

SUPERVISOR: Get her out of there and report it to central repair.

The Supervisor makes a note.

TECHNICIAN: Yes, sir.

CUT TO:

The Knight’s room as the girl leaves, slamming the heavy door behind her. The Knight sits back on the bed, frowning in confusion. He lies back in the bed and—

CUT TO:

Robot-repair room. The naked feet of the Peasant Girl, on her back on a repair table. A half-dozen men in white cluster over her. The Supervisor is among them. They talk quietly, probing. Angle up at the cluster of men. Above them are a bank of lights, like operating-room lights. In fact, the whole situation is reminiscent of a surgical procedure.

CUT TO:

The girl opened up. Her machinery exposed, gleaming beneath the flesh of her outer covering.

CUT TO:

The Supervisor, as he turns away from the table, and walks off with an aide.

AIDE: They find the trouble?

SUPERVISOR: No apparent trouble.

AIDE: But she didn’t follow programming. She didn’t permit a guest seduction, and she’s a sex model.

SUPERVISOR: She certainly is.

They walk a moment in silence.

AIDE: Are they going to shut down, sir?

SUPERVISOR: No. The directors feel that shut-down now would hurt tourist confidence.

AIDE: Oh.

SUPERVISOR (almost to himself): I don’t like it.

The Aide nods dutifully. He glances up at a wall clock.

AIDE: Almost dawn now.

CUT TO:

Miss Carrie’s Saloon at dawn is demolished. Dead and exhausted bodies are slumped everywhere. Among them are Blane and Martin, snoring soundly. Martin wakes slowly, looks around.

CUT TO:

The Roman villa at dawn. In the yellowish light, the Middle-Aged Woman wakes on a couch. Two men lie alongside her. She looks at them, sleeping, and she giggles like a teenager, putting her hand to her mouth.

CUT TO:

The Knight’s room at dawn. The husband of the Middle-Aged Woman we have just seen, he is up and struggling to pull his tight-fitting clothes over his pauchy frame. It is comical. But finally he is dressed, and looks almost knightly. His massive stomach growls; he pats it, and sets off in search of:

KNIGHT: Breakfast.

CUT TO:

Martin struggling to his feet in Miss Carrie’s Saloon. He has a bad hangover. He reaches across the bar (supporting himself, too) and pours himself a shot, knocks it back, coughs, looks around. At his feet, Blane yawns, wakes slowly as Martin surveys the wreckage of the saloon, and the burgeoning day’s activity outside.

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The western street. The Gunslinger is seated in a chair on the boardwalk, squinting in the morning sun, indolently smoking a cigarette. From time to time he glances toward the saloon.

CUT TO:

The Knight walks down the castle corridor; his stomach growls again.

CUT TO:

The Knight walks down the steps of the banquet hall. There is still some food on the banquet-hall table from the previous night. He goes over and picks around, hungry. He is interrupted by the Black Knight.

BLACK KNIGHT: Hold, varlet!

KNIGHT: You talking to me?

BLACK KNIGHT: None other.

KNIGHT: Look, I’m hungry and—

The Black Knight sweeps the table in front of the Knight-guest with his sword, knocking aside goblets and plates. The two knights stare at each other.

BLACK KNIGHT: Prepare for thy doom, thou scurrilous knave.

CUT TO:

People looking up at the screen in central control, monitoring the progress of events. Rather bored here. One technician munches on bacon as he watches.

CUT TO:

The banquet hall.

BLACK KNIGHT: Have you no spine, varlet?

KNIGHT: Well, uh . . .

The Knight’s stomach growls again. Then the Black Knight looks up, and sees the Queen coming down the steps partway, and stopping.

BLACK KNIGHT: Ah-hah!

CUT TO:

Central control as one technician intones monotonously:

TECHNICIAN: Full monitor . . . okay . . . let ’em go.

CUT TO:

The banquet hall as the Black Knight swings viciously with his sword, and the Knight ducks back, and plucks a handy sword from off the wall. The two men immediately begin a brutal fight, under the watchful eyes of the Queen.

CUT TO:

The control room as one technician says:

TECHNICIAN: Up gain five-three, we’re losing a little tolerance . . . bring me up . . . fine, good . . .

CUT TO:

A montage of several very loose shots of the medieval battle in progress.

CUT TO:

Robot gun as the safety unit is pulled off the barrel.

CUT TO:

Blane and Martin stagger out of the broken saloon, and cross the street. In contrast to the Medieval World, the western street is pretty quiet. The Gunslinger lazily gets out of his chair, going toward them. Blane and Martin continue walking.

BLANE: Oh, my head . . .

The Gunslinger, blocking their path.

GUNSLINGER: Hold it.

MARTIN: You again?

BLANE (irritable with hangover): Let me do it this time . . . it’ll be a pleasure.

Martin steps away. The Gunslinger smiles sadistically.

BLANE (cool): Make your move.

The Gunslinger draws, full speed.

CUT TO:

Blane drawing full speed, and being hit and dropping like a damp rag. Plop. Striking for its lack of drama. Blane lies writhing in agony in the dust, clutching his chest.

BLANE: I’m shot! I’m shot!

MARTIN: Hey, Blane. . .

Martin is smiling, convinced his friend is putting him on. He moves toward Blane.

MARTIN: Hey, Blane, okay, that’s funny, now let’s get—

Martin freezes. Blood seeps around Blane’s fingers as he clutches his chest.

MARTIN (utterly serious): Hey, Blane . . .

Blane stops writhing, sags, relaxed, dead. Martin looks up at the Gunslinger.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger and Martin. The Gunslinger has holstered his gun, now holds his hand ready. His face has a newly sadistic smile as he says:

GUNSLINGER: Draw.

Martin stares, looks to Blane, back to the Gunslinger, then backs off, trying to decide whether to draw or not, then,

MARTIN: Oh my God—

As he spins away and the Gunslinger fires at him. Martin scrambles away, rolling and twisting but really scared and not graceful at all. He hides behind the corner of the building, gets up and tries to pull his gun out of his holster but can’t; it’s jammed, so he just turns and runs.

CUT TO:

Central control room is electrified with this development.

THIRD SUPERVISOR: Shut down! Shut down immediately!

CUT TO:

The banquet hall as the battle is progressing, more or less as we have left it, until suddenly the Black Knight strikes a telling blow, gashing the Knight-guest’s arm. The Knight-guest looks up in surprise for a brief instant—before his head is lopped off by another blow, and rolls across the stone floor.

CUT TO:

Central control. Panic.

SUPERVISOR: Shut down! Shut it all down!

TECHNICIAN: Circuits don’t respond, sir!

SUPERVISOR: Then cut the robot power!

ANOTHER TECHNICIAN: Power cut!

CUT TO:

The Roman villa. The Middle-Aged Woman is watching her two lovers fight each other to the death. She screams.

CUT TO:

The western street. The Accountant comes out into the street, which is disorderly, panicked.

ACCOUNTANT: What’s going on here?

He is gunned down.

CUT TO:

Central control. The TV screens show the surface activity. It continues as before. The Supervisor, staring in helpless horror.

SUPERVISOR: They’re not responding.

TECHNICIAN: Should we cut the main power grid, sir? It’ll kill the life-support systems but—

SUPERVISOR: Shut it all down!

We see switches being thrown, buttons punched, and then central control is plunged in near darkness. A few emergency lights remain on, and the TV monitors.

CUT TO:

The TV monitor of Western World. Action still continues.

SUPERVISOR (watching screen): They’re running on stored charge out there.

TECHNICIAN: How long can they go?

SUPERVISOR: Depends on the robot and the model. Some can go a full twelve hours. The others will begin to run down in an hour or so . . . Turn the main grid back on.

ANOTHER TECHNICIAN: The relays must be frozen. We can’t get back our power.

The Supervisor picks up a telephone.

SUPERVISOR: Hello—

It’s dead; he hangs up in disgust.

TECHNICIAN: How are we going to get out of here? All those doors are electrically powered.

CUT TO:

The doors around the central control room. Close on a TV screen of Western World.

CUT TO:

Western street with Martin running like a frightened kid along the back of the main street. He is gasping for breath, terrified.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger lazily following Martin, in no particular hurry.

CUT TO:

Central control, where the atmosphere is anything but lazy.

THIRD SUPERVISOR: Get those doors open before we suffocate!

TECHNICIAN: Sir, we have no control over the robots at all. We can’t protect the guests.

CUT TO:

Castle dungeon as two burly, grotesque attendants drag a guest down the steps into the dungeon. The guest shouts and struggles. They move past, several figures chained to the dungeon bars, and continue on to a bizarre rack (as in “The Rack”).

The chained figures stare in horror as the guest is clamped onto the rack. We see all the details of the preparation. Perhaps the attendants are dressed in black, like executioners.

GUEST: Hey, come on now, for Pete’s sake, hey, you guys have got to be kidding . . . (trying a joke in his panic) . . . Listen, I’m paid up in advance, come on . . . (the guest begins to laugh hysterically) Are you guys kidding? (as the last clamp goes over his wrist) Ouch, that hurts. Hey, can’t any of you stop this?

The attendants continue their quick but methodical preparations. Then one of them begins to twist the large steering wheel at one end of the rack, stretching the guest.

The guest screams. Pan away from the guest to the stairs.

CUT TO:

Castle corridor. The screams become fainter. Camera pans up to show an elderly woman slumped against a tapestry. She clutches her chest. Camera continues pan up to medieval faces on tapestry.

CUT TO:

Roman World. A comely maiden in a toga comes running out from among some pillars, with a greedy-looking man in hot pursuit. Both pass the camera. A moment later, a guest (the Middle-Aged Woman) comes running, similarly pursued. And scared.

CUT TO:

Martin runs like hell along the western street.

CUT TO:

Close shot of Gunslinger’s face.

Panning with him, then a head-on close shot of his face as he blinks his mechanical eyes.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger’s point of view. What he sees, as he sees it: a bizarre, computerized image of the world. The predominant tones are red and black, but overlaid on this are perspective lines, and flashed-up calculated figures, and shifting green tones which apparently represent shifts in the Gunslinger’s concentration. In brief, we are seeing Weltanschauung of a computer; its image of the physical world. The traveling point of view rounds a corner.

CUT TO:

Martin getting onto a horse, galloping out of town as the Gunslinger watches him go.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger’s point of view, which is red and black. Several snap zooms give higher and higher magnification. Then overlay cross-hairs on Martin’s back.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger has taken out his gun to shoot, but decides against it. He holsters his gun, mounts up, and follows Martin out of town. We see two rifles in saddle slings. The Gunslinger is not hurried; he rides easily. No sweat.

This sequence will have established the convention of the Gunslinger’s point of view, so that it is readily identifiable to us whenever it appears.

CUT TO:

Back to TV image of the western main street.

CUT TO:

The darkened central control room. Shadowy figures move about the room.

TECHNICIAN: Temperature elevated ninety-eight degrees.

TECHNICIAN TWO: Oxygen seventeen percent and dropping.

SUPERVISOR: Get that power on so we can open the doors.

CUT TO:

Pan to show the shut doors. One of the technicians is pounding on it.

CUT TO:

Roman World. A woman is picked up bodily, screaming at the top of her lungs, and flung into a stately pillared pool.

CUT TO:

Underwater view as she smashes into the water.

CUT TO:

The woman.

WOMAN (splashing): I can’t swim! I can’t swim!

All around her, there is panic and pandemonium.

CUT TO:

The desert. It’s very quiet, in contrast to what we’ve just seen: Martin, riding hard out into the desert.

He looks back over his shoulder as he rides, but sees nothing.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger loping along easily.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger’s world. Following an easy set of black hoofprints in a red world.

CUT TO:

Martin rides along the upper rim of a canyon. He is moving fairly quickly.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger some distance behind. He looks up, sees Martin on the ridge. He reins up.

CUT TO:

Martin riding along.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger. He takes out his rifle, holds it to his eye.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger’s point of view. It’s a red world with Martin a tiny speck in the distance. Snap zoom closer. Then again . . . then again . . . super concentric circles, a bull’s-eye.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger. He fires.

CUT TO:

Martin. His hat flies off his head; he looks back.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger’s point of view of Martin. A tiny speck.

CUT TO:

Martin riding off more quickly.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger riding off slowly.

SALESMAN (voice over): . . . In the end, we constructed three great fantasy environments: the rugged lawlessness of the American West;

CUT TO:

The Salesman giving his pitch in the same opulent conference room we’ve previously seen.

SALESMAN: the romantic chivalry of medieval Europe;

CUT TO:

The listening audience. It’s different this time. Every businessman is Japanese.

SALESMAN (voice over): the decadent parodies of Imperial Rome. The principle was that all this was like television or movies—

CUT TO:

The Salesman.

SALESMAN: except that you didn’t watch it, you participated in it. You were part of it. We believed that modern men, living in a civilized world, needed to escape into—

Abruptly, the Salesman stops. Cold, rigid, frozen.

CUT TO:

The Japanese businessmen, startled.

CUT TO:

The Salesman, still frozen in his last words, unmoving.

CUT TO:

The room, as everyone stands in confusion, and a man in a white coat enters from the back and says:

MAN: I’m sorry, gentlemen, but there has been a breakdown in power supplies and we have to cancel our meeting. If you’ll come this way, we will escort you back to your helicopters . . .

The Japanese men reluctantly start to leave.

CUT TO:

The Man at the door, as the Japanese leave, smiles politely, nods. Another man in a white coat comes up and speaks in his ear.

SECOND MAN: We’re still not able to get power to the underground control center. Their exit doors are jammed and unless we can start oxygen and air conditioning in a few minutes, they’re going to expire.

FIRST MAN: What’s going on on the surface?

SECOND MAN: Total panic. I think most of the guests are dead. The machines are running on batteries.

FIRST MAN (utterly calm): I think we might as well evacuate all of our personnel in this unit until we have some better understanding of the situation.

SECOND MAN (not calm): You mean walk out—

FIRST MAN (hissingly quiet): That’s exactly what I mean.

To confirm his point, he jerks his head over his shoulder back toward the stage. The Second Man looks.

CUT TO:

The robot Salesman, frozen in mid-gesture.

CUT TO:

The two Men at the door. The last of the Japanese leave, and they leave too, closing the door behind them.

CUT TO:

A long shot from the back of the deserted conference room toward the stage. The Salesman remains frozen. We expect something to happen, but nothing does.

CUT TO:

Martin entering another canyon, with high rocks above him on both sides. He rides and looks up.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger just riding along. Pan with him and as he passes us we see the same canyon in front of him. He rides on.

CUT TO:

Martin looking back as he rides. He has passed a sharp-angle bend in the canyon wall, and so is out of vision of anyone following him. Abruptly, he leaves the path, rides up a short distance, dismounts, and positions himself for an ambush.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger on the far side of the bend. The Gunslinger rides casually forward, body relaxed, apparently unaware of any danger. He approaches the bend . . . and then stops. We move in close on Gunslinger’s face as he stares forward intently.

CUT TO:

Gunslinger’s point of view. A bizarre world of red, with flashing parameters and guidelines. And a hissing sound. Pan back and forth—the parameters alter, shift, turn—as he tries to locate the sound.

CUT TO:

Martin waiting, gasping for breath more out of tension than fatigue. He isn’t breathing very hard, but this is the sound the Gunslinger is picking up.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger’s face in profile. Push in on his ear and he smiles and

CUT TO:

What the Gunslinger sees now: Paralle lines bouncing off walls, and focusing down for him to a point around the corner.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger riding forward a few steps toward the bend. Then he dismounts and takes his rifle out of his saddle sling.

CUT TO:

Martin waiting tensely, blinking with sweat and strain . . . waiting . . . waiting . . . And suddenly he is inundated with murderous gunfire; all around him the rocks spit up fragments like live yellowstone geysers. He presses his face to the ground but the shots are almost continuous and the spray of chips from the rocks is frightening and so he gets up and makes a break for it. He mounts and rides off while the shots continue.

CUT TO:

Martin riding.

CUT TO:

Martin as he rides away from us, out of sight.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger getting lazily back on his horse, and riding forward in pursuit. He comes around the bend, and goes directly to the spot where Martin tried to ambush him. He stops and peers down at the site.

CUT TO:

Gunslinger’s point of view: a cluster of boulders, streaked by ricochets, and blood on the ground. Zoom in and out intermittently to observe details.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger as he smiles, turns his horse and rides away from us.

CUT TO:

Another desert area. Martin, riding along, very tired now. He looks over his shoulder.

CUT TO:

Martin’s point of view. An empty desert. No sign of the Gunslinger.

CUT TO:

Martin riding up onto a sort of ridge, to get altitude to look back.

CUT TO:

Martin’s point of view. No sign of the Gunslinger.

CUT TO:

Martin turning away, looking forward down the ridge and staring at a man in coveralls fixing a flat tire on an electric cart of the sort we’ve previously seen. The Man is obviously a resort employee. Martin rides down to him, quickly, pulling up by the cart.

MARTIN: Hey.

The coveralled Technician turns, and is terrified.

TECHNICIAN: Don’t shoot me—

He starts to run around the other side of the van.

MARTIN: Hey—

He rides his horse around the van after the man.

MARTIN: Hey, wait a minute—

He comes around and finds the van Man cowering.

MARTIN: What’s the matter with you?

TECHNICIAN (frowning): Hold out your hands.

Martin holds out his hands: no ridges.

TECHNICIAN (astonished): You’re a guest.

The Technician slumps back against the van.

TECHNICIAN: You really gave me a scare. Everything’s broken down. The machines have gone crazy. I thought I’d escape to the far exit of the dome, but then the cart broke down . . . (he gestures)

MARTIN: You know about the machines?

TECHNICIAN: I repair ’em.

MARTIN: There’s one chasing me now. A gunslinger.

The Technician becomes oddly enthusiastic, almost delighted, as he talks.

TECHNICIAN: Gunslinger . . . Must be a model 404, maybe a 406. Excellent machine. If he’s a model 406, he’s got everything . . . ultrasonic and low frequency hearing, regular visual discrimination and zoom magnification, and of course infrared discrimination, too. Beautiful machines . . . So . . . elegant.

MARTIN (desperate): He’s after me.

TECHNICIAN: I don’t doubt it. You know the model 406—if that’s what it is, a 406—has a new integration unit. Amazing little thing, fits back behind the neck, allows tracking and fixed orientation on an order never before possible.

Martin realizes he is not getting through to this man.

MARTIN: What can I do?

TECHNICIAN: Do?

MARTIN: Yeah . . .

TECHNICIAN: There’s nothing you can do. If he’s after you, he’ll get you. They’re going to get us all. You haven’t got a chance.

MARTIN: But there must be—

TECHNICIAN: Listen, fella. Don’t kid yourself. The best scientific brains in the world built that machine, and they did a good job. There are things you could try—knocking out his systems. Go someplace noisy for his hearing. Acid would kill the visual system, if you could hit him with acid. Infrared . . . go someplace uniformly hot . . .You could try, but believe me, he’d always be one jump ahead of you.

MARTIN: I’m going to try.

TECHNICIAN: Sure, try. We can all try. But you haven’t got a chance.

MARTIN: Yes, I do.

The Technician laughs ruefully, shakes his head, and having finished changing the tire, climbs aboard his van, starts the engine. Martin rides off. We stay with the Technician. A moment later, his glass windshield is shot out. The Technician staggers out of the cab. A bullet punctures the metal of the van side. Another bullet hits the Technician, slamming him back against the van. A third bullet blows out the tire again. The Technician sees it and a moment later is killed by a final gunshot.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger arriving at the cart, looking off in the direction in which Martin has left.

CUT TO:

Another area of the desert. Martin rides forward through the same kind of desolation we have already seen. Ahead of him is a high rock wall. As he moves toward it, he notices a sign at the foot of the rock wall. The sign reads (in five languages) LEAVING WESTWORLD. GUESTS PROCEED NO FURTHER.

Martin pauses. He looks up the rock wall. He hears wind sounds, and then something else: an odd, mechanical pftt . . . pftt . . . pftt . . .

He rides up the rock wall. The sound becomes louder.

CUT TO:

A green forest area. Martin rides over the top of the ridge, and is immediately splattered with water.

We now see that it is a sprinkler system: he is coming down into a green field, all artificially watered. He rides through it, then stops. He looks ahead.

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Martin’s point of view of Roman World in the distance.

CUT TO:

Martin riding forward into an area of trees. He comes to a streambed.

CUT TO:

Martin riding along the streambed. We notice the wind makes a continuous hissing sound. The trees blow, giving dappled light patterns. The water rushes.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger riding down the sprinkler-field area, toward the trees.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger among the trees.

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The Gunslinger’s point of view of a world made undecipherable by hissing sounds, the gurgling sounds—too many inputs.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger’s face as he frowns.

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The Gunslinger’s point of view as he suddenly makes it clear by turning off his sound input. All the vectors are gone, but so is the sound—it’s silent now. Yet it is still confusing, because of the shifting pattern of light in the trees.

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The Gunslinger as he rides on, much more wary, hardly advancing forward. He senses a trap of some kind.

CUT TO:

Martin riding hard through the streambed, his horse’s hooves kicking up spurts of water.

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The Gunslinger still moving slowly.

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Martin reaching an impasse, dismounting, running up out of the streambed. As he goes, he passes an old concrete sewerlike structure, but takes no notice.

CUT TO:

Roman World. Martin runs amid the destruction and chaos. He passes the swimming pool where the female guest, now drowned, lies. All the people and all the machines seem to be dead. He passes the black slave, previously seen, who is now repetitively bowing and touching his forehead, bowing and touching his forehead, like a broken record.

CUT TO:

Gunslinger. He finds Martin’s horse abandoned, looks off.

CUT TO:

Martin running through Roman World, past images of death and destruction. He is really looking for some place to hide, some position of safety, but can see nothing.

CUT TO:

Forested area. Martin leaving Roman World. Still running hard. He passes another concrete structure, continues on.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger as he is moving cautiously through Roman World.

CUT TO:

Martin. He passes still another concrete structure, and this time he stops, curious. He bends over, lifts a metal lid, looks in, looks back over his shoulder, crawls down and

CUT TO:

Martin, who drops to the ground at the far end of the dimly lit underground corridor. He looks around in surprise and confusion, then runs down the corridor. We stay with him all the way to the end of the corridor, where he stops.

CUT TO:

Martin’s point of view. Another corridor, identical to the first. He runs down it. He’s damned tired, but energized by fear. He reaches the end of this corridor.

CUT TO:

Martin stopped. He faces still another corridor.

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The Gunslinger moving through Roman World, looking at the ground.

Gunslinger’s point of view. He follows the red footprints Martin has left.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger coming to the outskirts of Roman World, still tracking Martin.

CUT TO:

Martin. He has reached the better-lit central control area. He stares with fascinated puzzlement at the banks of computing equipment. Then he looks into the still-sealed central control.

CUT TO:

Central control. Everyone is dead, slumped over consoles.

CUT TO:

Martin, staring, then turning away. As he turns away, we pan up to a TV console, which shows the Gunslinger stalking through Roman World.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger in Roman World, still tracking patiently. He comes to the concrete structure, pauses.

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Martin in underground locker room.

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The Gunslinger. He lowers himself down the concrete structure, entering the underground world.

CUT TO:

Robot-repair room as Martin enters it. This room is mostly bare, only three or four robots on the tables. Martin looks at the equipment by each. He finds a bottle of acid, grips it in his hand, and looks around the room, frowning. Suddenly he is electrified (so to speak) by a faint sound. We all listen hard.

It is distant footsteps, running.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger, underground, running hard.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger’s point of view. It works well in this dimly lit underground corridor.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger rounding a corner going out of sight.

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The robot-repair room as the Gunslinger enters at the far end, pauses.

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The Gunslinger’s point of view. There is too much complexity in this room; the electrical equipment produces jagged interference.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger pausing; wincing at too many inputs.

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The Gunslinger’s point of view. A simpler set of inputs, but he is operating on less information, and the camera tracks forward cautiously.

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The Gunslinger moving down the tables, from side to side, cautious. His gun is out. He passes several robots on the tables. No sign of Martin.

Pan of Gunslinger passing.

We do not realize this shot is really Martin’s point of view until

CUT TO:

Martin lying on a table like a robot, only his eyes tracking and then Martin jumps up and

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The Gunslinger turning and seeing and

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Martin tossing the acid in a swift fling of his arm and

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The Gunslinger being hit with acid and his face instantly hissing, steam rising. He puts one hand to his face in an immediate gesture and the hand, too, begins to steam.

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Martin. He turns and runs, leaving the Gunslinger behind.

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The Gunslinger alone, pirouetting in the room, hissing steam. He moves toward one table, knocking over equipment, but gets running water, douses his face and his hand.

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Martin running around a corner, then stops, gasping for breath, convinced that he must have won. He grins a little.

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The Gunslinger. He turns away from the sink. His face is hideous, acid-etched, his eyes black burned-out spots. He looks off toward where Martin ran away.

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Martin gasping for breath, smiling.

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The Gunslinger taking out his gun, moving forward.

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Martin and the Gunslinger. The Gunslinger appears in the background and almost immediately fires, but there is no discharge.

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The Gunslinger’s gun. A red light in the handle winks “Battery.”

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger and Martin. The Gunslinger throws his gun away and comes for Martin, who runs off.

CUT TO:

The Gunslinger.

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The Gunslinger’s point of view. Now operating only on infrared, it is an all red monochromatic world.

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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.

CUT TO:

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.

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.