Welcome to the Machine by Dustin Bowcott - Short, Horror, Sci Fi - A Job Seeker, looking to work for The Machine, isn't happy when she doesn't get the job that she wants. 6 pages - pdf, format 8)

Great read and a definite page turner.

Well written, which is generally a given.

I’m think there is a more symbolic meaning to this that I'm just not smart enough to put together, but I didn’t care because I enjoyed it at face value.

Great title

Not sure what to think about this one. Not quite sure I understood it.

Was Angela in charge of the Machine all along? If so, why was she pretending to be an applicant? Also, how could Teufel know Dave was her brother if he wasn't even aware of her authority?  

On the other hand, if Angela wasn't in charge all along, and simply gained power by kicking Teufel into the Machine, why would the Bodysuits follow her orders?    

Quoted Text                        TEUFEL                (dismissive)           I'm just the manager. I report the           decisions, not make them.

"I report the the decisions. I don't make them." would sound better.

Not sure how I feel about the story overall, but it did hold my interest all the way through. Might read it again later when I'm not so tired.

Few specific things:

Why mention Dave's her brother after the fact? Wouldn't it have more emotion impact if he begs her, as her brother, to help him and she still refuses? Where he says, "Help me", you could go with "Help me, please. You're my sister for god sakes". Or "We're flesh and blood" (goes better with the gruesome theme).

The way you have it makes her reaction a bit odd too. Not sure why she would react with shock to someone telling her Dave's her brother. Did she not already know this? Or did she not know that Tuefel knew? This was a bit confusing and took me out of the read for a moment.  

Also, not sure about Angela's line "I'm over it". Even if she was immediately over it, the line rings false to me. Think you were trying to show she can be a bit cold and emotionless (and hinting at what she's capable of later on) but you can probably convey that with a reaction. She might just shrug and not say anything. But I would suggest something like...

Angela struggles a moment to compose herself, then looks up at Tuefel with an intensity that startles him.

TUEFEL
Good, well I'll leave you to get suited up.

This way you get a flash of something dark or competitive in her that we hadn't seen before. Something that might explain what she does at the end.

Liked this a lot, only suggestions are...
- escalate Teuful revealing bits about Angela so that he in essence is taunting her into her reaction, imho at the minute her turning on him seems abrupt. (or Angela could position how much she wants the office job, or both)
- wasn't sure about the descrip of the machine, struggled to understand if it's mechanical or organic or both... might be me though.

More arthouse than an actual story. This is one of those things that I just had to write. I realise that most budgets or even imaginations may not be able to fully realise the Machine to its full potential. So I'm not under any illusions of this one being picked up.

The Machine is representative of society and the way the privileged few get to live relatively happily at the expense of other people (those being eaten). I did intend for the machine to be made of metal and organic flesh, I just haven't put the words together in the right way to make this precisely clear.

Not sure if anyone here is familiar with Lovecraft, but I tried to create a similar atmosphere with this. The Machine itself is similar to Cthulhu in that it is a cosmic monster of absurd description.

I'll try to answer specific questions and in doing so I hope that I'll find the way to make the story clearer.

In regard the title... I had the Pink Floyd track playing through my head while writing this. Especially the part where Teufel says, Welcome to the machine! If this ever did get made, it would be great to have permission to play that track. I know Floyd had their own reasons for writing it (I read that is is about the music industry), but it works if the machine is society too. If anything, I'd have said that that is what Floyd were writing about anyway.

Quoted from MarkItZero Why mention Dave's her brother after the fact? Wouldn't it have more emotion impact if he begs her, as her brother, to help him and she still refuses? Where he says, "Help me", you could go with "Help me, please. You're my sister for god sakes". Or "We're flesh and blood" (goes better with the gruesome theme).

It's too on the nose. They both already know they are related to each other. The only reason he would have for mentioning that is to relay that information to the viewer. She denies him because she is ashamed of her own greed and selfishness. That's why Teufel assures her that he's not there to judge.

Quoted from MarkItZero Also, not sure about Angela's line "I'm over it".

She's already cold and calculating or she wouldn't be there in the first place. She is going for a job that entails working for an alien machine that eats people. You'd have to be pretty cold to do that, I think. It's meant to show true human nature and how we'd even step on the heads of family members to get what we want.

She kills him because she doesn't get the job she wants. He doesn't need to taunt her. She imagined herself working in the office with the elite, not in a white bodysuit, feeding people to the machine. That's enough to turn her.

Hope this answers all the questions. They were expected. Thanks for all the reads, much appreciated.

A dark one here.

Loved the title.

Maybe it's my lack of knowledge. I am not familiar with the name Teufel and so in the very first dialogue block I didn't know if the character was male or female.  

Quoted Text I did intend for the machine to be made of metal and organic flesh, I just haven't put the words together in the right way to make this precisely clear.

It became clear as the description went on. "Bits of flesh and bones" didn't give me quite the visual you later painted.  Maybe - a mechanical/mammal hybrid - or something like that.  

I did see it pretty clearly as the description went on.

Quoted Text ANGELA I’m over it.

The line was a bit of a hiccup for me. Not sure why - it could be because I never really thought she was in it. Her shock was more from Tuefel somehow knowing that Dave was her brother - she seemed to handle the consumption of Dave quite well. I think it would be more in her character to say something like - "I didn't cry." Minor point, I know. It just seemed like the wrong line.

Overall - quite liked this and very well paced.

This reminds me of one of my features.

I liked it. I would leave out the brother part. It was implied that there was a connection, it's better at leaving it at that, or hinting that their connection is deeper than just acquaintances is some way.

Dustin,

I liked this. Very dark, nice twist and I loved the on-the-spot transformation of Angela. That was extremely well done and shocking, but necessary for her survival. Loved it! I can picture the actor playing Teufel now, a smarmy, self righteous type.

Another winner, and you might be right about it not getting filmed but I agree sometimes we have these stories we just want to tell no matter what. Good job and hey, you never know.

And I can't help but think The Machine was alluding to something else, perhaps the industrial machine that swallows us working shlubs and then spits us out when we are of no more use. Maybe it is. I'd like to hear you elaborate on that.

Steve

Haven't read any comments

Tiny note p1: Teufel stretching the outcome for a second actually felt in her emotional favor since she passes the test. Perhaps it's okay behavior in this world. Though then Teufel makes a dismissive statement just to invite her to relax at the window with him later. Just noticed that stuff, not knowing if it’s a reasonable behavior of him to act erratic.

Perhaps the switch could look special if turning it on has such a big impact concerning your mystery here. Not an expensive set piece to create some details.

"Dave shakes his head in disappointment.

DAVE
So long as you’re all right, eh."

He takes it. That serves atmosphere.

"A friend of yours?

(Later)

But Dave there, he was your
brother."

If you mean the second call "brother" used as a reference to a platonic relationship, I think it's confusing to understand as written. I have no background of what was/is between Dave and Angela in this Utopia to differ it clearly .

"ANGELA
But I thought... I thought that I’d
be working up there, in the office."

Haha. Her reaction is killer and a very well entertaining starting point in case of the upcoming gore.


There's lots of vagueness which is a quite interesting aspect of the screenplay, for sure. I however think in some parts or subjects you could be to the point and build a full impression for a bit orientation I guess we need. Be it fleshing out Angela, her relationship to Dave, Teufel, or the machine concerning the how and why.

While I like the bland ruthlessness, I think some more precision would improve the plot. That for example shows in the window image. There I would have thought the machine is outside sitting in the darkness. Then I got the impression of the dialogue that the office is directly above the machine. Is it a kind of window like a showcase within the cave. If so you could definitely work with the position of the speakers and a cool switch, give Teufel a clear line, all that to imply clearly we're in an isolated "room" or "scenario" here.

In general, I had fun with this script. It's kind of stuff that takes you for a ride through a world of questions flying by. My points were pretty little things to me and the read makes me believe you have it in your head far more precise than it reads yet. Just tune it a bit as you tend to do, that should do imo.

Perhaps there are some tiny points which help to push it further…

Btw, Teufel means devil in my language. I haven't known English speakers use many words including pronunciations such as "eu"; somehow it took its way obviously, perhaps Old English, proto-European term or sth.. Or it's a reference.  Teufel also produces loudspeakers...

Again, great title. Because of that it would definitely be the flick I wanted to see if visiting a festival.  

Good luck with it

Nice. A gripping story which kept me enthralled to the end.

The only thing that didn't gel with me was how Angela could do away with Tuefel so easily without the bodysuits intervening, given her lowly position vs his managerial post.

Nice job.

Hey Dustin,

Quite the morbid read. I’m getting the consensus that your current state of affairs in Europe is forcing your mind to search for logic and reason…? Just a thought, a creeping notion that “something evil this way comes”. You’re not alone.  People everywhere are trying to make reason of this change; they feel it in their bones, on their skin, like a static charge in the air searching for a tinder box.

Anyway, this shows more like a dream sequence IMO, no beginning and no end. I recall a similar dream I had when I worked on cold steel progressive headers, and their relentless ambition to eat metal for days on end. Screaming at deafening 120 decibels, burning oil, spewing grease, throwing out metal hot enough to melt your skin. The headers operate on a massive slide ram, smashing alloys between carbide dies. The dream sequence involved the header becoming a beast wrapped in flesh (the dies now teeth), wherein I controlled its ability to function via thought… it had become an extension of me.

Your machine, to me, is a leviathan extension of a communist ideology, a propaganda machine become sentient. Millwrights (minions) contently upgrade the machine tooling with new and advanced forms of pain. This is inevitability. The poisonous soft kill of our nation states (fluoride, aspartame, sun block, sugar, grease, nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, porn, media, gaming) has dumb(ed) down the populous so much to the extent that, a hard kill into the jaws of a wretched death is now more than welcome to erase our suffering brought on by the insurmountable shit the Libtards have rained upon us under the umbrella of their Police State.

Behind the office (Iron) curtain is where those at the upper echelons of a feed chain of a (NAZI, Communist) regime are protected from the new and improved Gulag they’ve created.  

“Congratulations” states Teufel, is Angela’s receivership of knighthood within the Masonic circle; lest she saw it coming… who else has the ability throw others into the beast, including her brother. Now it’s her beast… ‘Angela’s Maschine’… ‘Die Maschine’ , her final solution for the filthy rodents of humanity that dare claim the inherent rights to breath the same air as her.

… or maybe it means something else to you, lol. However, I might add that most who claim to be ‘Awake’ are now in agreement that there is definitely something, somewhere, that’s going to show the world just how evil it can be. The Globalists are done f*cking around, so to speak, it’s easy to see by how brazen they’ve become… your machine is the epitome of their insanity, I dig it, It’s very imaginative. Best of luck...

Dustin,

Not much to say on this.  Works for me as a dark social satire.  Not too subtle but short and to the point.  

Solid set-up with the curtain, speakers, and the cryptic talk of what’s awaiting them -- pity about the budget from then on as visually this could be pretty memorable.  One of those ideas you write regardless.  

The title put me in mind of Pink Floyd and their early music video animations.  Maybe that’s the way to go with something like this?  Put it out there as an animation and really push the boundaries with the visuals.  Surprised not to see more animations popping up on the boards what with the advances in technology making it a more accessible medium.

Steve

Dustin,

Some notes.

This one is dark and has a sci-fi feel.  I like the metaphor and how you manage to have the machine grind up and mutilate and kill those who are not blessed with a job or some other means to avoid the machine.  The twist at the end worked, although I think it was too easy for the protag.  I can't imagine Mr. T hadn't been through something like that before.

Also, I like the mindlessness of the machine and the people who fed it.  Does anyone really know what benefit they get from this?  Apparently not.

Good job.

Best
Richard

A little Inferno, a little Spectre.

Being a Teufelshunde myself, I recognized the name instantly, and knew where this was going.  Once I saw Angela I was expecting a "Good vs. Evil" storyline to play out, but you surprised me with the ending.

The inclusion of Dave was out of place.  He was just a device to move the story forward, his dialogue was unnatural, and he didn't really add to the story.  I understand what you want to do with him, but as it is, it doesn't work for me.

I saw the ending like the scene from Spectre where the two assassins vie for the role of taking out 007.  And by "vie" I mean one kills the other to get the job.

Thanks for the read, Dustin.

Jordan

I really enjoyed it, thanks for sharing :D