Click to load or right-click to download full-size image.

INT. OSVALDO’S – NIGHT

Joe leans forward conspiratorially toward Toozie.

JOE

Why do you say you know what goes on where I work?

Toozie reaches into her purse and pulls out her smartphone. She taps a few keys and then hands the phone to Joe to see.

It show a picture of Rosalie. Joe blanches.

TOOZIE

In case you’ve forgotten, that’s Dr. Rosalie Quisp. I believe she was a colleague of yours.

The bartender sets a glass of white wine in front of Toozie. She takes it and takes a sip.

TOOZIE

She was killed in some sort of industrial accident — unclear what kind, all the news media I could find were very vague about its nature.

JOE

It was tragic. We all liked Rosalie. What’s your point?

TOOZIE

Well, interestingly enough only one week after Dr. Quisp’s untimely demise, Oikos Galenou patents a compound that turns out to be the biggest medical miracle since penicillin.

Joe puts Toozie’s phone back on the bar.

JOE

A fortunate coincidence.

TOOZIE

Perhaps, Dr. Tucker. And a few years go by, and then there’s a terrorist incident, a really bad one, takes place. Something like six security guards were killed before the terrorists themselves were wiped out by a SWAT team. To this day no one, either from Oikos Galenou or law enforcement has been willing to comment in the news media about who these “terrorists” were or what they wanted.

JOE

Sometimes people play rough in industrial espionage.

TOOZIE

Yes, well, after that incident a mysterious artificial intelligence called the Mediatrix appeared. She…it?…let’s call her “she” puts her services to use solving an atrocious and long-running conflict.

JOE

I don’t see what you think that has to do with us.

TOOZIE

I would have thought nothing, until she gave that weird news conference prior to deactivating herself. She made a strange and possibly inappropriate set of references to sacrifices being made and how the long-suffering land of Stradanya was now in the “house of Galen.”

JOE

So that’s just weird.

TOOZIE

“Just weird,” until you think about the fact that “house of Galen” in Greek is Oikos Galenou.

JOE

Look, Toozie…

Please do not reproduce this storyboard or its associated screenplay text without permission from Faustus, who may be contacted here.