SEVENTEEN

FADE IN:

INT. MEMORY CLINIC - TRANSFER ROOM - NIGHT

A woman in her sixties sits in a medical chair. RUTH VENN.
Her son ADAM, twenty-three, holds her hand. Electrodes
climb her scalp like silver vines.

On the wall: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL EXTRACTION. 46 YEARS. The
progress bar is empty.

KAYA ROWAN, 35, stands near the door in a plain dark coat.
An insulated courier case waits at her feet. She's all
practiced composure, until someone asks the wrong question.

                       RUTH
           Will I know him afterward?

The TECHNICIAN consults the consent form rather than the
woman.

                       KAYA
           You'll know who he is.

                       RUTH
           That's not what I asked.

                       KAYA
           You won't remember raising him.

Ruth looks at Adam. His hand trembles in hers.

                       RUTH
           And he'll remember me?

                       KAYA
           Yes.

                       RUTH
           So he'll know everything. And I'll
           know nothing.

No one disputes it. A hospital payment authorization glows
on a second screen. Adam's name. A deadline less than an
hour away.

                       ADAM
           Mom, we can find something else.

RUTH
         We already tried everything else.

The technician prepares a stylus. Ruth pulls her hand back.

                     RUTH
         Can I keep one?

                     KAYA
         One what?

                     RUTH
         Memory. Just one. His first word,
         or the day he came home. I don't
         care which.

Kaya examines the contract. She already knows the answer.

                     KAYA
         Not under this agreement.

                     RUTH
         Not even one?

Kaya has an authorization panel. One touch could suspend
the sale. Her thumb stays beside it.

                     KAYA
         You can still withdraw. The
         payment offer expires tonight.

The woman looks at the hospital authorization, then her
son. She signs.

A low electrical HUM fills the room. Ruth's fingers
tighten. Adam leans close, almost forehead to forehead. The
bar advances. At one hundred percent, the HUM dies.

Ruth opens her eyes, startled by the strange room. Adam
tries to smile.

                     ADAM
         Hi, Mom.

                     RUTH
         Hello.

Kindness. No recognition. He looks away so she won't see
him cry.

The technician ejects a black memory capsule. Kaya seals it
in her case. The release screen changes to COLLECTION
AUTHORIZED. Beneath Ruth's patient number: RESIDUAL
IDENTITY: RUTH VENN.

Kaya reaches toward the screen, as if the wording could be
corrected. Instead she initials the completed transfer.

INT. MEMORY CLINIC - CORRIDOR - CONTINUOUS

Kaya walks toward the exit. Behind her, through the half-
open door:

                      RUTH (O.S.)
          I'm sorry. Do we know each other?

Kaya stops. Her thumb touches the cold seal of the case.
She keeps walking.

                                                     CUT TO:

EXT. CITY - NIGHT

Rain on a city that has learned to sell its past. Older
buildings below polished glass towers. A tram slides past
an enormous advertisement: an elderly couple embracing on a
beach.

SOME MOMENTS SHOULD LAST FOREVER. The couple becomes young.
CONTINUUM. YOUR LIFE, WITHOUT LIMITS.

A smaller line under the smiling faces: Subject to neural
compatibility.

INT. LATE-NIGHT DINER - NIGHT

Almost empty. Kaya sits opposite LEON ROWAN, 39, her older
brother. His charm survives the worn work jacket. He steals
a fry from her plate.

                      KAYA
          You have your own.

                      LEON
          Yours taste better.

                      KAYA
          They're identical.

LEON
         Then there's no loss.

Another fry disappears. Kaya pulls her plate away. Leon
looks at the courier case beside her chair.

                     LEON
         You ever go anywhere without that
         thing?

                     KAYA
         I've made exceptions for funerals.

                     LEON
         That is a bleak dating profile.

He reaches into his jacket, produces a faded photograph.
Two children beside an overturned fishing boat. A storm
behind them.

                     LEON
         Found it in Mom's boxes.

Kaya points at a water stain above the children's heads
before Leon has unfolded the photograph.

                     KAYA
         Old harbor. You were eleven.

                     LEON
         That the night we ran away?

                     KAYA
         We missed the last bus. You
         decided that meant we were
         fugitives.

                     LEON
         Still excellent legal reasoning.

Her laugh surprises her. She studies the children in the
photograph.

                     KAYA
         It rained all night. We hid under
         this boat. You wanted to build a
         fire.

LEON
         Inside a wooden boat?

                     KAYA
         Your intellect peaked later.

He touches his own little face in the photograph. No
recognition, only evidence.

                     LEON
         Were we happy?

                     KAYA
         Sometimes. We fought a lot.

                     LEON
         You never tell those parts.

                     KAYA
         I locked you in a shed once.

                     LEON
         Now we're getting somewhere.

She smiles. He doesn't. A tiny distance opens between them.

                     LEON
         I know that's me. It just feels
         like somebody else's childhood.

                     KAYA
         You were there.

                     LEON
         I know. That's the worst part.
         Knowing.

Leon holds the photograph by its frayed edges. He studies
the faces without recognition.

                     LEON
         I read that the old packages get
         resold. Sometimes they break them
         up. Mine could be in a hundred
         heads by now.

                     KAYA
         I can ask around again.

LEON
          You did. And what would buying
          them cost? Another childhood?

Leon taps her forehead gently.

                      LEON
          Besides. You have the originals.

                      KAYA
          And I'm not selling.

                      LEON
          Good. Tell me the end of the boat
          story.

                       KAYA
          You promised me a house by the
          sea. A porch. And a ridiculous
          little boat.

                      LEON
          Did you believe me?

                        KAYA
          Completely.

A silence both comfortable and painful.

                      LEON
          I'm sorry I don't remember.

                      KAYA
          I remember enough for both of us.

He folds it once, slips it across the table to her.

INT. KAYA'S APARTMENT - LATE NIGHT

Small. Functional. No neural entertainment equipment. An
old paper calendar hangs by the stove. Kaya washes her
hands longer than she needs to.

Her phone: LEON - Dinner tomorrow. My treat. She types: You
said that tonight. He replies: History is written by the
survivors.

A PRIORITY CONTRACT flashes. ACTIVE NEURAL CARGO. HIGH-RISK
COMPENSATION. She opens the bid: more money than three

months of work.

ORIGIN: FEDERAL NEUROFACILITY. RECIPIENT: PRIVATE
FOUNDATION. ZERO-LAYER CARRIER PREFERRED. She presses
DECLINE.

A moment later the offer returns at twice the rate.
Alongside it: CONTRACT WINDOW CLOSES IN 02:00.

Kaya looks across the room at the chipped photograph of
herself and Leon as children. She accepts.

EXT. FEDERAL NEUROFACILITY - NEXT MORNING

A concrete complex on the edge of the city. Guards and
biometric gates. A sign reads: PERSONHOOD MATERIAL - CHAIN
OF CUSTODY REQUIRED.

INT. FEDERAL NEUROFACILITY - COLLECTION ROOM - MORNING

A tired STATE TECH checks Kaya's identity against a screen.
ZERO PREVIOUS INTEGRATIONS. Her audit certification has
expired but the government seal still appears beside her
name.

                      STATE TECH
          You never tried even one holiday
          memory? Mountain climbing? Being
          famous?

                      KAYA
          I like knowing whose hangover I
          have.

He pulls a refrigerated canister. Its label stops Kaya
cold: OWEN REED. ACTIVE PERSONALITY IMPRINT. 17 CONFIRMED
HOMICIDES.

                       KAYA
          Owen Reed?

                      STATE TECH
          Officially dead. Unofficially
          somebody paid extra for the whole
          package.

                      KAYA
          He consented to extraction?

STATE TECH
          Court disposition. Not the same
          thing.

His execution time precedes the collection time by forty-
six minutes. She notices.

                      KAYA
          The imprint was taken before he
          died.

                       STATE TECH
          Otherwise you don't get much of a
          personality.

Kaya snaps the canister into a sealed transport case.

                      STATE TECH
          Whatever you're carrying, don't
          connect yourself to it.

                      KAYA
          I transport. I don't sample.

EXT. HIGHWAY - MORNING

Kaya drives. The case stays locked behind the passenger
seat. Public radio: a civil-rights challenge to the
extraction of prisoners' neural imprints. She switches it
off.

A child on a school bus stares out at Kaya's car. For a
second the child looks frightened of something inside it.
Kaya turns back to the road.

EXT. SUTTER FOUNDATION - MORNING

Gardens, water features, pale stone. Healing redesigned by
the fabulously rich. A building that has nothing in common
with the government vault, though both handle human lives.

INT. SUTTER FOUNDATION - RECEIVING SUITE - MORNING

MARTIN RUSK, 46, clinical security director, welcomes Kaya.
An examination technician waits at a second console. He
scans the capsule. A second screen flags her zero-layer
status.

RUSK
         Courier-side integrity
         verification. Routine with Class A
         material.

                     KAYA
         Federal lab already certified the
         package.

                     RUSK
         Our insurer requires the carrier's
         neural baseline.

She reads the consent tablet. OUTBOUND VERIFICATION ONLY.
NO NEURAL WRITE.

                     KAYA
         No integration. No exposure.

                     RUSK
         Absolutely none.

She sits. A band settles behind her neck. Her baseline
pattern runs across the monitor. Across a partition, an
unseen OBSERVER watches.

Rusk touches his screen. A hidden line changes from VERIFY
to CHALLENGE. KAYA - ZERO-LAYER TEST. The screen displays a
small blue bridge and a red warning: ACTIVE PAYLOAD.

A male hand grips a knife. Not Kaya's hand. A room lit from
the hall. Blood on tile. A trembling man looks straight
into her eyes.

                     MAN (V.O.)
         Where did he go?

Kaya bolts upright. Rusk disconnects the band before she
can reach it.

                     KAYA
         You wrote something into me.

                     RUSK
         Transient sensory bleed. A known
         artifact. There was no neural
         write.