TIMECRADLE… A New Sci-Fi HyperShort by Ethan Lawrence… #alien #scifi #pitch #hollywoodidea #story

Ok, this one is a brain tweak from FireballBro… Hope you’re ready.

TIMECRADLE by Ethan Lawrence

In the cold, faraway reaches of the Arctic wilderness, a crew from an American mining company discovers a cake of ice with a cryogenically preserved body inside. At a research center some distance away, scientists cut through the ice with lasers, and on the operating table lies a primitive Cro-Magnon man.

Dr. David Briggs, a knowledgeable anthropologist with a small scar on his chin, and Dr. Lindsay Brady, a microbiologist specializing in auto-immunity, are given the opportunity to examine the primitive being’s impossibly-preserved 12,000-year-old body to learn the secrets of cryogenics for future generations. Both examine him and make the startling discovery that his blood produces a molecule that selectively kills diseased and cancerous cells in a desired way and leaves healthy cells virtually untouched. They are intrigued that the frozen man could be the key to curing diseases. But there’s one problem – the primitive man’s cancer-killing blood is short lived because its natural compound is breaking down due to the effects of long-term cryogenic freezing. They need fresh blood to have a chance in developing a workable mass-produced cure.

David and Lindsay are approached for a top secret government project. They are led into a laboratory where they are surrounded by an array of highly sophisticated computer equipment. Using hi-tech methods, the U.S. Intelligence program has developed a powerful electron module bombarded with a plasma-like constellation of ionized, excited electrons, protons and other particles, as a sensory deprivation capsule, a ‘matrix cradle’, to release from volunteer subjects a ‘time bending body’ that duplicates the physical body of human beings. This counterpart is able to separate itself from the physical body, while leaving the other one behind in the present – and move through a quantum wormhole to the past. The name given to this experimental program, ‘Witch’s Cradle’, comes from the witch hunts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. One method of torturing accused witches was to tie them up in a sack, string the sack over a tree limb and set it swinging. The rocking motion caused disorientation and induced a ‘separation’ of the possessed victim and the demon inside her.

With the discovery of the Cro-Magnon man, David and Lindsay are to be sent back in time to bring back enough “cancer killing” blood to cure mankind of all diseases. With no time to think, the two learn that they’ll have only two hours before they are either irretrievably trapped in the past themselves or are dead. The longer they are “split” from their body, the greater the chances are that their first body will suffer insanity and death.

David and Lindsay are sent back in time amid cries of pain and unearthly wails from within the cradle. Their second bodies appear 12,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, where mile-high ice sheets cover all of North America. It is cold and dry and unimaginably harsh. Land masses shift almost constantly, near-continuous climatic oscillations, sea levels rising in seconds, rendering most parts uninhabitable. It is chaotic and dangerous, like nothing ever seen or imagined before.

For the next two hours, David and Lindsay search for a Cro-Magnon man. They locate one, but, suddenly, the ground begins to shake, crack and split. As the valley caves in on itself with ice, water, mud, trees and even heaven itself – David slips down into a fissure, lost in vapor dust. Lindsay watches everything slip from their view in a time-bending retreat back to the present.

Devastated by her failure, Lindsay stares at the cryogenically frozen Cro-Magnon man. She notices something about him for the first time. Beneath his beard is a small scar. This Cro-Magnon man is David!

©2014Ethanlawrence