HOME OF JEREMY LIVING ROOM

The teenager walks into the living room, grabs a bronze sculpture from the mantelpiece, and walks slowly to his younger brother, who is still writing on the wall. The babysitter is following him and whispering in his ears.

BABYSITTER: See what he’s doing? I bet you used to be the apple of your parent’s eyes. Look at you now, forced to serve this little brat. You’re like a servant in your own home, and this little piece of shit knows it.  He’s playing you, Jeremy. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

Between his teeth, Jeremy says…

JEREMY: Yeah, he’s just fucking with me.He’s getting closer to the boy, ready to strike.

BABYSITTER: Put him down, Jeremy. You can tell your parents it was an accident.  They’ll have to console you; you’ll be the center of attention again. Even your friends will reach out to you. This is your time, Jeremy; put him down!

Jeremy raises the sculpture. He’s about to strike. Anna walks in and sees what is happening, and she drops her bags and screams. 

ANNA: JEREMY!!! Stop! What are you doing?!  Drop the statue!!! Get away from your little brother! 

He’s not listening to her. He strikes out at the boy, who, just in time, reacting to his mother’s screams, runs to her arms. Jeremy is breathing heavily. The babysitter continues to egg him on. 

BABYSITTER: Don’t stop! Get her too!! She doesn’t love you; she only loves him!!! Kill them both, and we can be together, for always.

Jeremy steps toward Anna, who is now clutching her toddler in her arms. She’s pleading with her son.

ANNA: Jeremy, honey. What are you doing?   It’s me, mom. Sweetie put down the statue.

He hesitates, but the babysitter appears in front of him.

BABYSITTER: Jeremy, this can be all yours if you do it.  

The BabySitter strips off her dress and poses in a trashy bra and panties.

BABYSITTER: You don’t need them. You are a man. I want you, and they don’t. Prove to me you want me to. End hem once and for all.

She steps back and points at his mother.

BABYSITTER: If she really loved you, she would have paid for your body morph! You could be stunning, just like your friends, but she wants you to be ugly; she’s jealous of you and wants to hurt you. She gives everything to this little brat! END THEM!

COFFEE SHOP

Subject 6 pulls a gun from his pocket, and the AI continues to encourage him.

AI 6: That’s right, just aim and shoot. They deserve it. They’ve ignored you all of these years. They think you’re nothing, but they’re nothing. They’re wastes of space! Show them how strong you are, show them whose superior, and cut them down. 

SUBJECT 6: Yes, now they see me! 

The man starts to shoot, and people scream, and as they fall to the floor dead, we see their AIs vanishing. Then the shooter’s AI also vanishes. He is left alone, standing in the middle of the blood bath. What did he just do?! 

IYM CONFERENCE ROOM

Jerry screams victory.

JERRY: Got it. The system’s shut down!

Stephan looks at the graph, not convinced.

STEPHAN: Maybe too late. Look at the graphs.

Stephan pulls up the chart. We can see that before the signal was turned off, the spike jumped. Rob doesn’t really care and steps closer to Jerry.

ROB: So we’re good? It’s over??

JERRY: Well, the system is sealed.

ROB: Then whatever it was, it’s gone. Good! Now, let’s restart the system.

Jerry and Stephan look at him, astonished. Karis receives a communication, and she looks at her bracelet.

KARIS: You heard him. Restart the system! They’re here. The last thing we need is to look like we don’t know what we are doing.

STEPHAN: We don’t! Re-starting the system without knowing what is happening means it may happen again. You’re basically releasing the beast again. Give us a few hours to look over the data.

ROB: Keeping the system down is close to an admission of guilt. We’ll be ruined.  Restart it back up! Your JOB is to make sure it doesn’t happen again!

Jerry glares at Rob.

JERRY: You’re a fucking idiot, Rob. If I still had my shares in the company, you’d be out on your ass.  You don’t seem to grasp the severity of what is happening here.

ROB: Well, you don’t. You may have created this company, but now you are just an employee who takes orders and shuts the fuck up. Got it?!

Karis is waiting for Rob by the door.

KARIS: Oh, stop your flirting, boys. We have guests to greet. As for you, Jerry, I expect a report to release to the authorities within the hour!

Rob follows Karis out of the conference room. Jerry and Stephan look at each other in astonishment. There is a moment of hesitation. Then Jerry starts the reboot of the system.

STEPHAN: What are you doing?!

JERRY: We have no choice Stephan, and the bigger picture is the fall-out on the public if they can't lean on the system. We could be looking at thousands of unmediated homicidal maniacs out there. It’s six or one-half of a dozen. In the best-case scenario, the shutdown fixed the glitch. If I see any more anomalies, I’ll raise the wall again.

STEPHAN: Glitch, anomalies, really? This is no glitch; someone or something is accessing our system and controlling our AIs. 

Stephan walks out.

SHOT OVER THE CITY - NIGHT

Time passes from day to night over the city.

POLICE STATION BULLPEN

The room is filled with agents, some at their desks working on screens with maps and people's profiles, and others are debating with each other. Philip walks in on his way to Bob’s office.

POLICE STATION BUD’S OFFICE

Bud’s at his desk watching the news feed on the wall screen. Reports of clinics and hospitals with hundreds if not thousands of AI users waiting for answers. Philip walks in.

PHILIP: We are rerouting the overflow to temporary facilities, gyms, hotel banquet rooms, and even the freaking stadium. Who knew there were so many headcases in this city?! 

BUD: Watch it, Phil; my wife is one of them.

PHILIP: Oh, sorry! Bet... really?!

BUD: Yeah. She just left the clinic; she’s on her way now. It seems her life-coaching session went sideways. Do we see any casualties?

Philip goes to Bud’s desk and brings up a window with the coverage of the coffee shop shooting.

PHILIP: Yep, take a gander. 

Bud takes in the scene at the coffee shop.

BUD: Damn!

PHILIP: This guy shot 26 people. He’s in interrogation right now—the same story about his AI driving him to it. There’s also a teenage boy who tried to kill his mom and brother; she managed to talk him out of it. It turns out his AI babysitter was really Charles Manson in hooker clothes.

He brings up his profile of Jeremy.

PHILIP: He’s suffering from severe shock at New Breton General. But that's not all he’s Jeremy the son of IYM’s V.P.

BUD: Wow! Has he been informed?

PHILIP: I don’t know.

BUD: Well, find out. They may be a little more forthcoming, knowing it’s one of their own.

Bud is slightly hopeful, then turns his mind to Bet.

BUD: Phil, I’ve seen a lot of shit in my career, but this! At least they shut the damn thing off.

Bud taps on his bracelet.

BUD: Time to give the Feds a progress report. 

IYM BUILDING MAIN ENTRANCE HALL

Helen and Alisa walk to the front desk. There are a lot of employees leaving. The security guard (the same one as before) smiles at them.

SECURITY GUARD: What can I do for you ladies?

Helen touches the top of the front desk, and we see her card appear. He recognizes the name.

HELEN: Karis Bergan is expecting us.

At this moment, Alisa’s bracelet buzzes. She answers, and Bud’s image pops up.

BUD: It looks like they didn’t turn the system off fast enough. So far, we’re counting 26 new fatalities, plus the four from this morning, which brings up to 30. I sent you a detailed report.

ALISA: Thanks, Sheriff. We’ll keep you posted.

BUD: I think at this juncture, you can call me Bud.

ALISA: Alisa.

He smiles.

BUD: My wife was using an AI.

Alisa and Helen are touched.

ALISA: Is she okay?

BUD: Thank God, yes. It takes more than a homicidal figment of imagination to get the best of my gal. You have all the details in the report. Over and out.

She turns off the communication and looks at Helen.

ALISA: 30 dead. 

STEPHAN’S OFFICE

Stephan is seated at his intelligent surface desk, talking to his wife, Sam’s projected image. The office is huge, and one big window looks over the city. Bookcases are filled with plaques, trophies, and framed photos of him and his wife. 

STEPHAN: We’re still unsure what’s happening, but it’s bad. I can’t honestly say when I’ll be home.

SAM: I told you this tech would bite you in the ass one day.

STEPHAN: I know, Sam. People are dying. We are doing everything we can... please don’t climb on the soapbox right now. I’ve got a Federal agent and some ball-buster from the Governor's office heading up here. I need to pull myself together right now.

SAM: Why are they there?

STEPHAN: Sam! We’ve got a major crisis happening right now! Are you watching the news? We’ve already shut down the AI system, but if things don’t improve, if the corruption has leaked into other systems, they’re going to want to shut down the quantum core. I can’t express to you how dangerous that could be.

SAM: Stephan, I don’t want to upset you. I get it; it’s bad. Look, exhausting your self won't help you find a solution. You need to eat something and take a few minutes to breathe.

Now, Sandra walks in with a tray of food and coffee. 

SANDRA: Sorry to disturb you, but I thought I’d bring you something to eat before I go.

He looks at her with an appreciative smile, then looks back at the image of his wife on the desk.

STEPHAN: Sam, this is the very charming Sandra. She’s the one keeping an eye on me here.

SAM: Hi, Sandra.

Sandra smiles; she is clearly uncomfortable with this meeting. She places the tray on the desk.

SANDRA: Uh... hi. So... I’m leaving unless you need me for anything?

STEPHAN: No, go ahead. We’ll see you tomorrow when things are all settled and back to normal.

She smiles and leaves.

IYM BULL PEN 

Sandra walks to her cubicle. People are leaving for the day. No one says goodbye to anyone. It’s a very cold spectacle. Discouraged by the scene, she falls into her chair.

SANDRA: Bro, ON!

Bro appears, sitting on the corner of her desk.

BRO: What’s up, girl?

SANDRA: I think I’ve had enough of this place!

BRO: And what about your dad? He’s so proud of his baby girl.

SANDRA: Maybe it’s time I stopped letting my father run my life. This is a dead-end situation. Bray will never see me as anything other than an assistant lap dog.

BRO: Girl, grab yo purse and spritz on some of that Shalimar. You and that tight little ass of yours need to be straddlin’ a bar stool. 

She looks at him, pauses in thought, and with a big smile…

SANDRA: Giddy up.

KARIS’S OFFICE

The office is spacious and elegant an impressive view of the city. Alisa and Helen are sitting facing Karis at her desk, and Rob is looking out the window.

HELEN: Thirty people have lost their lives today.

KARIS: We are truly sorry to hear that. A tragedy, I know.  But we have yet to find conclusive data linking our system to this unfortunate loss of life. 

ALISA: Really, so why did you shut it down?

ROB: Precaution. Here at IYM, the welfare of our clients has always taken priority over anything else. We felt we should try to find out if these horrible events were somehow connected to a fault on our side, and we’ve concluded that they were not. 

Alisa turns and looks at the man. She doesn’t like him.

ALISA: Precaution?  More like admission. Can we cut the bullshit here?!

Alisa sends the graph of the spikes from her bracelet onto the wall.

ALISA: This is why you shut it down.

KARIS: Yes, we detected these anomalies, which, in turn, prompted us to take preventive measures.

HELEN: And what, in your opinion, are they exactly?

KARIS: Our top people are working on it. But as I said, up so far, there’s nothing to suggest that this glitch is related to these tragic events. As far as we can tell, we are the victims here.

ALISA: Tell the victim's families.  

Alisa stands up. And points at the graph line.

ALISA: This is a specific data stream associated with your Therapeutic AI product line. The glitch, as you say, has only targeted this sector, and this signal was transmitted from your core. 

ROB: Miss Uh? Our company has been serving billions of people from all walks of life for over eight years to date, with no problems. IYM AI’s have proven to be a major asset to our society.

Helen walks close to Rob.

HELEN: Sir, you can stop the sales pitch. All that matters is that your selfless humanitarian contribution has developed side effects that are KILLING people! Now I will ask again, do you know what caused the ANOMALY?! 

Insulted, Rob pauses his diatribe. Suddenly his bracelet starts to flash. He looks at it discreetly. It’s a text from his wife, Anna: “Call now; Jeremy is at the hospital. He tried to kill Johnny and me.”

Rob is shocked but quickly regains his composure.

ROB: Would you excuse me? I have a family emergency.

Karis glares irritatingly at him. He could care less, and he walks out.

HOSPITAL JEREMY’S ROOM

Anna is sitting by the bedside of her son Jeremy, watching him sleep. He has an I.V. drip and is plugged into a variety of machines. Anna’s bracelet lights up, and it’s Rob. She walks out into the hallway.

JEREMY’S ROOM OUTSIDE THE HALLWAY

She quickly answers, and Rob pops up on the screen.

ANNA: Rob, what’s going on?!  The babysitter program tried to get Jeremy to kill us!!

ROB: Calm down, Anna. We don’t know how this could have happened, but it’s all over now.

ANNA: What do you mean you don’t know?! Jeremy’s in severe shock. The doctors say he may even have brain damage! And I made him use that damned thing, and it’s all my fault!

She is crying. Rob doesn’t know what to say.