Route 13 by Frank MacCrory (FrankM) writing as Autonomous Anonymous - Short, Horror, Sci Fi - A gangster messes with the passengers on an automated trolley. 4 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

An autonomous trolley - transport of the future.

Not sure how easy to film but not the biggest budget I’ve ever read.

I think this has potential. How does a hijacker, which in effect this pretty much becomes, deal and argue with a hollow gram driver. Is the driver real elsewhere or just automated?

I could picture a bit of back and forth. Lights going off, temperature changes, stops missed etc

I guess this script needs a bit more time and a few extra pages. I would also strengthen the reason  the snakehead is on there

Interesting idea, but I don't think this one quite hits the mark.

Guy get's on an automated trolly, harasses the passengers, then the automated driver locks the trolly down and calls the cops. Then it just kind of ends.

Writing isn't bad. But it could be a little more clear in spots.

Still, a solid effort.

I don’t know what a “Trolley Problem” is, either, but I sure don’t want to run into it. I really liked Snakehead’s unhinged persona. The passengers don’t seem particularly surprised at the sudden downturn in their fortunes, which says a lot about the times they’re living in. And the AI driver’s polite adherence to the rules regardless of consequences to the passengers is a nice touch. The dark, menacing atmosphere of this story was well done.

Hey there Autonomous Anonymous (sounds like a Flight of the Chonchords rap name, nice),

Yep, nope, maybe? I think you’re gonna struggle here. First off, the writing was sound, you know your way about a script and it was an easy read. However...

One thing I’ve spotted already with others, and this falls prey to it again, is that I don’t think this is a horror and instead it strikes me as a Judge Dredd style dystopian future shock action script. So that’s a big issue right there.

The characters seemed pretty shallow too. Build into them, give them motive and reason, right now it’s just some bad guy with a gun who’s driving towards the goal of sexual assault...is there more than that? I think there has to be, personally speaking, as it simply didn’t engage if that was all there was.

Anyway, broke the parameters IMO, and needed greater drive in story and character.

Best of luck,

Cam

I had to Google what a Chinese Snakehead was. Either I am unaware (that is certainly possible) or you have to give us a little more in terms of this being a gang member.

Quoted Text SNAKEHEAD Pretty little thing. Don’t think she’s gonna say “No,” eh?

Who was he talking to?

Quoted Text The Driver’s voice appears quieter from a single speaker near the Snakehead.

How does a voice “appear” quieter? Did you mean sounds?

Quoted Text Snakehead FIRES his pistol.

At?

Okay - well written enough but this thing just kind of ends. Wasn't quite sure what to make of it and certainly didn't see a horror aspect.

Automated trolley and an unhinged gangster who isn't used to dealing with technology like that. Neat concept.

Things escalate quickly, of course. The other characters are just window dressing, unfortunately. Maybe this was a rushed last minute entry, but a bit more time spent to develop them would really add a lot to this. Especially given how it ends.

Everything hinges on that ending, but it isn't set up quite well enough. I already see some people didn't get it, and it's forgivable. The mother is the only one in a position to realize what's about to happen but it should start with maybe a sensation of acceleration, a corner taken too quickly, maybe Snakehead even warning the trolley to keep the jostling down.

I don't get the "Trolley Problem" either. Are the trolleys known to sometimes crash and kill everyone? Why are they still in use then? Or is it that nobody's heard of any trolley problems, as if to say their deaths will be covered up? It's a weird hard line that doesn't make sense to me. Is this the automaton's way of eliminating problems with the system? Kill the innocent along with the problem passengers? That seems like a stretch, I can't figure out that motivation.

Hmm, if he's a hardened criminal then surely he'd know that the trolley would immediately call the police?

And potentially killing everyone by crashing the trolley? Sorry don't buy it.

Well written though, just feels rushed and needed more time to gestate.

**SPOILERS**

Didn't get this one. Perhaps, a cultural thing.

A criminal wants to rape a girl. But the AI calls the police. However, upon realizing that the criminal can kill innocents, the AI takes a dumb (or evil) decision to let him rape that girl by giving him some privacy and then.... what? Is it going to crash? Or the AI has called another vehicle that will crash into this trolley and it'll look like an accident.

DRIVER (O.S.)
Have you ever heard of Trolley
Problem?

Not sure what does this means. An inside joke?

The script is neatly written though.

Agree with what's been said here, very well written, an out-of-the-box idea and certainly not like anything else in the competition. More CLOCKWORK ORANGE than anything which is good. I too though was confused in spots and didn't really get the ending. With a couple more pages to spare for the competition, I think there was an opportunity to expound on some details.

AJR

Hi writer,

Weird tale on the ol’ night train to hell, or something. I think the AI driver is a little more unstable than Snakehead himself, and really couldn’t give a shit about humans, just that the trolley remains under its control.

A quick read with a morbid outcome, albeit somewhat confusing to someone who has never ridden a Philadelphia “Night Owl” trolley, as in: “red end-of-line lights rush right up to the trolley”. Not sure what happened there, but… I enjoyed the ride.

Best of luck.

There's a really interesting idea here, but unfortunately the execution of the idea just didn't work for me. Mainly because of the mother and toddler.

If it had been a trolley full of expendables in a harsh future world, it works better. But the innocents on board throw it over the line.

Still, I think you ought to keep the concept and experiment with other ways to play this out.

Story: This went off the rails quickly (okay, pun intended). I like the idea of a cyber-operated trolley that interacts with the passengers, and I think you almost pulled off the story, but it does feel like something is missing from the overall story, and some clarifications are needed, like, why does the computer driver decide to go back to the status quo? Because the snakehead threatened to shoot his way out?  So instead the computer elects to just crash the trolley, killing everyone on board?  And why does the computer tell the mom it will ensure a worse outcome if she hits the emergency brake?  What could be worse than killing everyone on board by deliberately crashing the trolley?  I think you had a good idea, you just need to harness it.  You had three more pages to explore the situation, I think you should have taken advantage of it.

Characters: All pretty well written, no complaints there.

Dialogue:  It’s not too bad. Some of it on the nose but for the most part it was fine.

Writing:  Again, I think you bailed too soon on it.  You had something going and I think you just didn’t have time to fully develop the ending.  Overall not bad on the writing itself.

Meeting the challenge:  It’s got elements of sci-fi but no real horror, other than an arm getting blasted.  Not sure the challenge is really met.

Hi writer,

This might sound a bit harsh, but I read it twice and I must have missed a lot cos I don't know what I just read.

Probably just needs fleshing out, but as it is there's not enough there to engage me.

Good luck

Premise was interesting but it seemed underdeveloped, I was expecting more interactions between the characters.

The most interesting aspect was the driver deciding to sacrifice the sleeping girl for the greater good, but this needed more work to hit home.

I am aware of the trolley problem simply because I researched A.I. and how they will be used in Automated Driving for a sci-fi story I was writing at the time.

I don't think your average person would know this though, so you're going to have to spell it out more in the script. It has been mentioned in a few TV shows/movies but always with an explanation. I don't know how you are going to get this across before the end as is, but you need it.

I think the concept is a great one and I'd suggest ditching the trolley problem aspect and come up with some other way this A.I. could outsmart the gangster without killing everyone.

Sci-Fi, deffo. Within the next 50 years = yes. Budget? Yes. Horror? No.

Great concept though, just needs work.

-Mark

First of all, thank you for not writing the max pages.

Hmm, ok, I love the idea of a futuristic trolley. Seriously, something about that visual is great to me.

I don’t really understand this story though. The red lights threw me off completely.

Not really a horror. Some interesting ideas, and an interesting character (no clue what a snakehead is, but I like the sound of whatever “tayo” is. Sounds like something I shouldn’t be saying, but nevertheless…)

Kind of a weird script tbh. Didn't feel like he got his comeuppance or anything. There was some cool ways this could have gone, but it went nowhere.

Haha, I liked it and it kept me guessing -- the writing's good (the one little catch was with the junkie getting shot, which I had to re-read) -- but I'm not sure the revealed premise passes the sniff test. This has to be the most wasteful and costly, least efficient city management program of all time. I was left waiting for the second reveal that it's all in VR.

EDIT: a lot of comments suggesting this isn't horror. It clearly is. It starts out with a scary situation (mother and toddler trapped on a train car with a dangerous person) and morphs into true sci-fi horror with the final reveal that innocents, too, can be (and presumably routinely are) sacrificed to this system.

This has lots of potential but I don't think I get the whole story.

Hmmm...no, I haven't heard of Trolley Problem and I still don't know what that means.

Sci-fi box checked. Horror box? Meh, not so much. Near future, absolutely.

Opening line - "it" - "its'".  What is a Snakehead?

So far, this is very dumb to me.  The dialogue is laughably unrealistic, as is the entire setup.

No...not good.  Very little effort I can see here, and what I do see makes little sense.

*

Hi everyone,

This script was mine. As some of you guessed, the lack of clarity was due to being rushed (as opposed to my usual problem of being over-length and cutting badly). I appreciate all of the reads and feedback.

There was quite a bit of confusion on terminology because I just didn't do a good job explaining.

A Snakehead is a Chinese gang/gangster involved in human smuggling.

I got a chuckle thinking that Tayo might be a dirty word. He's the main character of a cartoon full of talking buses.

Apparently the Trolley Problem is not as well-known as I thought. Doesn't help that there was a typo so "the" was missing. It was originally a thought experiment carefully contrived to make different branches of ethics give different answers, but has gotten a second wind in discussions of autonomous vehicles. In this story I put a literal trolley in the Trolley Problem.

My plan (cut short by time) was to have the trolley explain to Snakehead that it's constantly making predictions about human behavior such as manually-controlled vehicles and kids in crosswalks. And about sixty seconds ago it used its road rage algorithm to predict that bringing him to a station would result in at least six fatalities.

As for the ending, you're unfortunately seeing my first draft distracted by budget concerns. I was trying to think of how it could be shot in a stationary trolley car, then have sped-up footage of approaching the end of the tunnel. Windows were tinted so there'd be no need for scenery zooming by the windows.

Sorry that I didn't spell out explicitly enough what actually happened story-wise: the trolley ran itself full-speed into a solid wall to kill the five passengers rather than risk a mass-casualty event. Adding "CRASH!" after CUT TO BLACK probably would have sufficed.

I immediately thought of two plot holes: First, couldn't fore-warned police find some way to neutralize this guy? Hard to explain in natural-sounding dialog that the police's hands would be tied until he actually opened fire. Second, does one guy with a pistol really pose that big of a danger? That's fair; he should definitely be more heavily armed in a revision.

When I first started typing, there weren't going to be any "innocent" victims to keep with the norms of horror, but I thought that would give the impression the trolley was weighing who is and is not important to society. Thus the toddler to illustrate this is cold, hard math. The metric the trolley uses might be raw fatalities,  quality-adjusted life years, an American version of a social credit score, or most likely a half-baked algorithm slapped together on a lowest-bid government contract. There's a hint of this in I, Robot where an android can only save one of two people, and it picks the one with a higher chance of survival.

Part of the discussion about autonomous vehicles and the Trolley Problem is when fatalities appear unavoidable but there's some ability to affect who dies, does the vehicle have any special duty to its owner or occupants?

A disturbing factoid comes from some actual experiments with robots tasked with saving humans from harm (simplified environment where there is only one potential harm). Protecting one human is fine, but when two humans were in peril simultaneously the robot often froze with analysis paralysis. Points to a need to think about decision criteria ahead of time.

Thanks again everyone. I will be trying to fix this up a bit when I have some time.

Quoted from FrankM Thanks again everyone. I will be trying to fix this up a bit when I have some time.

Had a bit of time and fixed up the script.