Ex Machina (12 page)
EXT. MEADOW ⁄ LANDING SITE – DAY
The helicopter touches down.
The rotors stop.
And the Pilot climbs out.
Takes off his helmet.
Looks at the girl standing a few metres away.
Nothing betrays that Ava is anything other than a pretty girl in her early twenties.
Ava turns as he approaches her.
CUT TO
EXT. MEADOW ⁄ LANDING SITE – DAY
Ava’s precise point of view.
Looking at the Pilot.
The image echoes the points of view from the computer/cell-phone cameras in the opening moments of the film.
Facial-recognition vectors flutter around the Pilot’s face.
And when he opens his mouth to speak, we don’t hear words.
We hear pulses of monotone noise. Low pitch. Speech as pure pattern recognition.
This is how Ava sees us. And hears us. It feels completely alien.
EXT. MEADOW – DAY
Ava and the Pilot finish talking.
We are too distant to hear their conversation.
But whatever is said, a few beats later, the Pilot goes to the helicopter and opens the passenger door, to allow Ava to enter.
Then he goes back to the Pilot’s door.
Gets in.
And the rotor blades start to turn.
CUT TO
INT. HOUSE ⁄ NATHAN’S STUDY ⁄ CIRCULAR WINDOW – DAY
The view from the circular window as the helicopter takes off, banks away from the house, and starts climbing.
CUT TO
– computer monitor.
Lines of code appear, as they are typed.
They read:
main ( ) {
extrn a, b, c;
putchar(a); putchar (b); putchar (c); putchar(‘!’*n’);
}a ‘goo’;
b ‘dby’;
c ‘e, wo –
CUT TO
EXT. TRAFFIC INTERSECTION – DAY
A busy traffic intersection. Somewhere in North America.
In the crowd, we glimpse Ava. Just for a moment.
Cut to black.
END
Ex Machina
Alex Garland is the author of the bestselling novels
The Beach, The Tesseract
and
The Coma
, which was created with images by his father Nicholas Garland. He is the co-author of the videogame,
Enslaved
.
He has written the screenplays for
28 Days Later
and
Sunshine
, and adapted Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel
Never Let Me Go
for the screen.
novels
THE BEACH
THE TESSERACT
THE COMA
screenplays
28
DAYS LATER
SUNSHINE
NEVER LET ME GO
DREDD
First published in 2015
by Faber & Faber Limited
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Alex Garland, 2015
Cover and interior film artwork: Photos and Poster Artwork © Universal Pictures, 2014
The right of Alex Garland to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0571–32535–1