FADE IN
INT. BEDROOM – MORNING
MAN sits up in a white bed in an unadorned room. Everything in this house is barren and decaying: the walls are white, but the paint is chipped and stained, and the ceiling is stained and warped with yellow water-damage. There is a light fixture on the ceiling, but it holds only frayed wires and no bulb. Instead, all the light comes from the room’s single window. The view is only empty grey sky, uniformly overcast. We can hear the ocean; nothing else.
The man gets out of bed and gets dressed in old worn clothes, suitable for manual labor. He puts on tall rain boots.
INT. BATHROOM – MORNING
The man brushes his teeth. Only a trickle of water comes out of the tap.
INT. LIVING ROOM – MORNING
The living room contains only an old grey sofa and a side table against one wall and a rusted bicycle beside the front door. There are puddles on the floor. The man enters and with a cigarette and a lighter. He sits down on the sofa and struggles with the almost-empty lighter, but is eventually able to light the cigarette. We watch the smoke curl and linger.
Still smoking, the man rolls up his pants, then stands and grabs the bicycle on his way out.
EXT. HOUSE – MORNING
The man’s house once sat on the beach; it now sits a few inches deep in the ocean. The waves lap up in the yard. The house shows visible damage from past storms, and several windows are boarded up. A single solar panel and a rainwater cistern sit on the roof.
The man — still smoking — carries his bicycle as he descends his front steps and splashes across his yard. The street is partially flooded, but he is able to put his bike down on the mostly dry far sidewalk. The bicycle creaks and jangles as he begins to slowly pedal.
EXT. STREETS – MORNING
The man bikes past a variety of houses. One is clearly abandoned and uninhabited, half collapsed from storm damage; a lounge chair hangs out of an upstairs window where it was deposited by a storm. Another house has sustained damage, but also has visible repairs and repainting. It, too, has solar panels and a cistern; it is also surrounded by sandbags and has window boxes full of plants. A third house is in a similar state to the first, with a rusting 2016 Honda in the front yard, heavily beat up and cannibalized for parts. A fourth house is a little less decrepit than the first, but worse off than the second. Half its gutters have been torn off and dangle from the roof, and all its windows and several holes in the roof have been boarded up with plywood. But an American flag flies from the gutters like a flagpole, and there’s a brightly colored yard sign out front: “Darren Woods for President.”
The man gets off his bike and carries it across another flooded street. He has to step over a fallen telephone pole, but he pays no mind to its tangled wires and the scattered traffic lights.
EXT. RICH HOUSE – MORNING
The man passes a concrete 6-ft storm wall, topped with barbed wire. Over the wall, we see a large house with a roof of shiny solar panels, a satellite dish, and glassed-in balconies full of crops. Over the sound of the old bicycle, we hear — for the first time — a sound from a living thing. It’s some animal’s cry of distress. It catches the man’s attention, and he stops the bike; when the cry is repeated, he follows it around the corner of the wall. We now see there is a bird — a small shorebird of some sort — caught in the barbed wire.
The man leans his bicycle against the wall and inspects the bird. It struggles against the wire, trying to get away from him, but is thoroughly tangled and gets nowhere. It gives up on thrashing but is still trembling. The man begins to push a wire out of the way, only to flinch back with a sharp inhale of pain when he’s poked by the wire. He inspects his hand, where there’s a small spot of blood. After a moment’s contemplation, he takes his cigarette in his free hand and taps its ash against the wall, then presses the lit end against the wound. He hisses in pain; the bird echoes with its own distress call, now softer.
Satisfied with another inspection of the wound, the man puts his cigarette back in his mouth and then takes off his shirt. He uses it to wrap his hands as he pushes the wire away from the bird a second time. The bird holds still. The man finishes pushing the wire back and slowly pulls away his hands. After a few seconds without moving, the bird leaps into the air and flies away, the only sound the beating of its wings.
The man puts his shirt back on and continues on his way.
EXT. COMPOUND GATE – MORNING
The man gets off his bicycle in front of an even larger storm wall, this one at least fifteen feet tall. We can’t see any of what’s on the other side, but there’s the sound of machinery. This wall is also topped with barbed wire, with security cameras peering down from among the coils. The man approaches the solid metal gate, and a control panel in the wall beside it. He stubs out his cigarette against the wall and shoves it in his pocket, then opens the panel and punches in a few buttons. A camera scans his face. A pleasant chime sounds, and the gate grinds open.
EXT. COMPOUND – MORNING
On the other side of the wall is a line of oil derricks and a pipeline station. We see a forest of pumps and pipes and valves, all in good repair and condition. All the metal is clean and rust-free, or painted in maroon.
The man leaves his bicycle by the gate as it closes behind him. He enters a small windowless brick building that squats beside the gate.
INT. OFFICE – MORNING
The man flips a light switch as he enters, warmly illuminating a small but cozy one-man office. The walls are covered with photographs of coastal scenes, shorebirds and dolphins and sunsets and sailboats and surfers on a wave. The desk holds a sleek computer, a landline phone, several neat stacks of papers and notebooks, a jar of pens, and an assortment of seashells. Beside the desk sit a radiator and an air conditioning unit, both connected to the wall.
The man throws away the old cigarette from his pocket as he sits down. He turns on the computer, scrolling through his email, and pauses to frown at one message in particular. We can’t read the whole message, but one line in particular is in large enough font to read over his shoulder: WE ARE RAISING EXTRACTION TARGETS. The man turns his computer off again and gets up. He grabs a supply bag hanging next to the door, then turns off the light as he exits.
EXT. COMPOUND – DAY
The man walks around the facility, inspecting and cleaning the equipment. He starts first with the pipeline. He takes a notebook out of the bag to write down notes as he checks the pipes and the meters. After looking over them all, he moves to inspect the derricks themselves. We watch over his shoulder as he scans their meters.
OVER THE SHOULDER ON METERS #1 AND #2
The first meter is labelled “Derrick 77571HOU01 Flow Rate.” The meter is reading around noon, at seven gallons per stroke. Beside it is another meter reading “Derrick 77571HOU01 Well Level.” This indicator is low on the left side, at the edge of a red zone. Besides the meter are a few controls and a large emergency lever. The man writes down the readings in a notebook.
OVER THE SHOULDER ON METER #2
The meter labelled “Derrick 77571HOU02 Flow Rate” is reading only about two gallons per stroke, and the tick of the “Derrick 77571HOU02 Well Level” is hovering in the red, ever so slightly above zero. The man studies it, concerned if not alarmed, before making a note and moving on.
EXT. COMPOUND – DAY
The man cleans the joints of the derricks, careful not to disturb their pumping. He finds a spot of flaked paint on a derrick leg, notates it down in his bag, and then begins the slow task of repainting that leg. Time is passing, but with the sun hidden behind the clouds, it is difficult to tell exactly how fast.
Suddenly the calm of the man painting is interrupted by a shrieking sound — vaguely reminiscent of the crying bird we heard earlier. This time, however, the sound comes from machinery, as one of the other derricks is visibly shaking. It’s stuck in the low position, its motor trembling as it tries and fails to drive another pump. The man drops his paintbrush and runs to its side.
The man might not have been alarmed before, but he is now. The derrick shakes violently, with dark smoking fluid oozing from its joints. The ticks on the meters fluctuate wildly between zero and the max. After a moment’s hesitation, the man reaches for the red lever labelled EMERGENCY STOP at the base, beside the meters. A drop of the black liquid falls on his wrist and he hisses in pain, but still throws the lever.
As soon as the lever is flipped, the machine falls still. In the contrasting silence, we hear only the low thrumming of the neighboring derricks, still pumping. The man sits on the ground and uses his shirt to rub the fluid off his hand, and we see a new burn forming beside the one from when he freed the bird.
The man doesn’t immediately stand back up again, but pauses for a moment on the ground. His gaze rests on the other derricks, and on their emergency stop levers.
INT. OFFICE – DAY
The man sits down in his office. He lights a cigarette from a plug in the wall, takes a long drag, then picks up the phone and dials a number. Several rings elapse before a voice answers.
On the other end of the line is the voice of PHONE MAN. His words are muffled and tinny so as to be unintelligible to the audience, but his tone is unmistakably aggressive.
MAN
Derrick Two just failed. I placed it off-line to avoid catastrophic damage to the broader system, but I don’t see a way of returning it to working order.
The phone man’s answer is again unintelligible. At times, it veers from aggressive to actual yelling.
MAN
You can send anyone you wish, sir, but the problem is there is no oil left to pump. Forcing Derrick Two to continue operating would only risk damage to the pipeline and the other derricks.
Phone man replies, no longer yelling, though his tone is still sharp.
MAN
There is nothing to worry about with the other derricks, sir. All remain in good operation. Derrick two or no, we can still get plenty of oil out of this ground.
The call terminates from phone man’s side. The first man hangs up the phone, puts his cigarette in his mouth, and turns his attention to his computer. He clicks a file, and the computer begins to play calm, vaguely upbeat electronic music. The man punches numbers from his notebook into a spreadsheet. But after a few lines, he leans back, gazing up at the photographs on the wall. The smoke of his cigarette curls in the enclosed space.
EXT. COMPOUND GATE – EVENING
The gate grinds closed behind the man and his bicycle. He checks that the gate is secure, then sets off on the noisy bike. The clouds are breaking open a bit at the edges, and the dying light has the golden tint of evening.
EXT. STREETS – EVENING
The man bikes back the way he came. We see the same houses that he passed on the way in. The American flag hangs limp from the flag house, and there are electric lights on — but no visible people — in the solar panel house.
EXT. HOUSE – EVENING
The man carries his bike back up the walk to his house. The water level is higher than it was in the morning. Behind the house, the setting sun has broken through the clouds. It burns on the horizon, the water ablaze with its reflection.
FADE OUT