PLASTIC MAN

A barrel lid cracks open.  Two eyes peek out.

O'Brien unfolds himself, awkwardly climbing out of the

empty barrel.

INT.  STAIRWELL

O'Brien slithers up the stairs, clinging to every shadow.

INT.  HALL

Like a ghost, he glides down the dark empty halls, moving

only when the surveillance cameras pan away.

INT.  SUSAN BRIGHT'S LAB

The DOOR HICCUPS and O'Brien slips inside.

On hands and knees he crawls toward the center of the lab

where the nanobot is stored.

Again we PEER OUT THROUGH the wire mesh of the mouse cage.

O'Brien's head POPS UP IN FRONT of us.

                         O'BRIEN

          Oh no, P.O.W.s.

He ducks down just as the camera sweeps overhead.  He pops

back up.

Opening the cage, he frees all of the little mice.

                         O'BRIEN

          Never leave a man behind.

He grabs the last one, ducking under the arc of the

camera.

INT.  SECURITY BOOTH

There is a flash of white in the corner of Susan's lab.

                         SIM

          Did you see that?

Doby nods.

                         SIM

          Looked like a... mouse.

INT.  SUSAN BRIGHT'S LAB

The cage is empty.

O'Brien finds the security panel of the nanobot

containment system.  He sprinkles graphite dust on the

keypad.

When he blows on the dust, four numbers remain covered:

1-6-8-9.  From his pocket he pulls out a folded paper.

It is filled with a list of all the numbers relevant to

Susan's life such as birthdays, phone numbers and

significant dates.

His thumb stops at "August 6th, 1991.  Birth of Nanobot."

                         O'BRIEN

          Never good at remembering numbers,

          were you, Susie?

He types the date and the pressurized SEALS GASP.  The

plate rises, revealing a glass tube filled with a sapphire

blue liquid.

                         O'BRIEN

          That's your baby, ain't it?

He is about to touch it when the lab DOOR suddenly swings

OPEN.

He ducks.  Holding his breath, he waits.  The room is

silent.

Slowly, quietly, he peeks out.  A flashlight blinks near

him and he ducks back down.

He hears a WHISPER.

Panicking, he starts to creep toward the door when a beam

of light suddenly pools around him.

                         SIM

          Look what we caught here.

O'Brien can't see because of the light in his eyes.

                         SIM

          One big muther of a mouse.

O'Brien bolts, running straight into Doby's chest.

A giant fist hammers down onto the top of his skull as his

eyes roll up into his head.

                                            FADE TO BLACK.

FADE IN:

ON NIGHTMARE

trapped beneath searing laboratory overhead lights,

Argon's hideous face HOVERS OVER us, a cracked lipless

smile revealing ulcerous gums and stained teeth.

                         ARGON

          I've been waiting for something like

          this my whole life.

The voices warp through the watery space.

                         POPPY

          Bad boy got caught with his hand in

          the cookie jar.

The faces float over O'Brien like disembodied heads.

                         SIM

          You should have stayed in jail, pal.

Argon grips O'Brien's head under the chin.  Poised between

his fingers is a gleaming stainless steel hypodermic

needle.

                         ARGON

          For every environmentalist, anti-

          industrialist, animal activist that

          has shoved their myopic,

          protectionist cause-of-the-month

          crap down my throat, I shove this

          down yours!

He sticks the needle into O'Brien's neck.  O'Brien's eyes

flutter, the voices and faces stretching away.

Argon's thumb depresses the plunger.

                         POPPY

          You sure you know what you're doing,

          Icky?

INSIDE the hypo, blood blossoms all around us as the

sapphire fluid containing the nanobot is injected into

O'Brien.

We RUSH with blurred speed INTO his blood stream as we see

the nanobot; a microbiotic machine that resembles a

snowflake.

As it bounces from protein cell to cell, falling AWAY FROM

us, it begins to blur as we hear what sounds like MUZAK.

The shapes FOCUS again as we realize that we are now

LOOKING DOWN INTO the aisle of a grocery store.

The two parts of the nanobot become O'Brien and Susan

joined together by the grocery cart they are pushing.

FLASHBACK - INT.  GROCERY STORE

It is the 1970s.  O'Brien is a granola hippie activist

type, extra crunchy.  Susan still loves Oreo cookies.

                         SUSAN

          Nanotechnology is going to change

          the world, Danny.  I'm telling you

          in ten maybe twenty years, life is

          going to be a totally new kind of

          experience.

O'Brien is not listening, repulsed by the stock lining the

shelves.

                         SUSAN

          And what I love about molecular

          science is the way it revolutionizes

          how we have to think.  It unifies

          the entire world on a single level.

          Everything is completely connected.

          Sometimes I can really feel it,

          everything around us, just a small

          part of a whole.  It's really

          wonderful.

                         O'BRIEN

          Yeah, we'll see.

                         SUSAN

          We'll see?  What does that mean?

                         O'BRIEN

          We'll see how wonderful it is after

          you spend the next twenty years

          making Agent Orange.

                         SUSAN

          God, Daniel, I'm not going to make

          Agent Orange.

                         O'BRIEN

          You think the chemists that invented

          Agent Orange twenty years ago were

          in school saying, 'Boy, I really got

          some good ideas for a highly toxic

          incendiary defoliant.'  You think

          Oppenheimer was dreaming about

          mushroom clouds before the war?

She tries to ignore him.

                         SUSAN

          We've had this conversation already,

          Daniel.

                         O'BRIEN

          All I'm saying is that the companies

          that have money for the kind of

          research you're interested in, have

          money because that's what they're

          interested in!  Money!

She stops the cart.

                         SUSAN

          I'm sorry I brought the whole thing

          up!  If you're gonna flip your wig --

                         O'BRIEN

          I can't help it, Suze.  It's this

          place.  You know how I get in these

          stores.  They freak me out.  All

          these tiny boxes, little cans filled

          with eight syllable God knows what.

He grabs a can of Spam.

                         O'BRIEN

          Look at this.  They've taken all the

          food out of food.  When you start

          talking about the future, this is

          what I see.  Huge vats of Spam.  You

          are what you eat and they're turning

          us into Spam-people.

He shoves the can back into the shelf.

                         O'BRIEN

          You think it's a coincidence that

          they have all these aisles lined up

          like this, like a little maze!

          We're all lab rats running through

          their maze, pulling lever A or lever

          B, each designed to create some kind

          of bio-chemical dependency.  All the

          while they're everywhere, watching

          us, two-way mirrors, surveillance

          cameras, nodding to each other,

          making little notes.

                         SUSAN

          You're insane.

                         O'BRIEN

          Am I?  Look!  Right there!  That's

          exactly what I am talking about.

A little BOY is trying to get a box of Trix cereal from a

shelf that is too high.

                         O'BRIEN

          Lever A...

He jumps several times, unable to grab the economy-sized

box.  O'Brien walks over to him.

                         SUSAN

          Daniel!  Don't -- Oh no.

The tips of the kid's fingers are slowly coaxing the box

from the edge.

                         O'BRIEN

          Let me help you, kid.

The Kid's face widens into a smile until O'Brien pushes

the box back.

                         KID (BOY)

          Hey!

                         O'BRIEN

          You don't want this.

                         KID

          Yeah, I do!

                         O'BRIEN

          You have no idea what this is doing

          to your body.

                         KID

          I like Trix!

                         SUSAN

          Daniel, give him the Trix.

                         O'BRIEN

          Susan, this is the future of America

          here.

                         KID

          Trix are for kids!

O'Brien grabs a box of Shredded Wheat.

                         O'BRIEN

          Here, kid, this is great stuff.  Why

          don't you give it a try?

                         KID

          I want Trix!  Mommy!

The Boy's wail swells unnaturally loud as we rise up,

DISTORTING, as it becomes --

The PRESSURIZING of the TEST TANK.

INT.  TEST TANK

O'Brien jerks awake.  He is inside a dark steel capsule.

There is a WET SUCKING NOISE as the hoses are opened and

the white assembler fluid begins pumping into the tank.

                         O'BRIEN

          Mommy!

INT.  LAB

Argon watches the gauges climbing on the tanks with a mad

gleam in his eye.

Poppy stares at the computer flickering through the model

simulation.

                         POPPY

          Icky, this is so exciting.

Sim looks a bit nervous.

                         SIM

          How long do you leave him in there?

                         ARGON

          Until he's done.

He laughs until the tank shivers.

The whole unit is now sizzling hot.  A coolant line

bursts.

Each of them backs away as the tank vibrates under

mounting pressure, like a water balloon that is ready to

burst.

                         POPPY

          ... Icky?

The TANK EXPLODES, splitting open like a can of whipped

cream.

We see the world THROUGH the eyes of O'Brien as he rises

from the burbling marshmallow-amnion.  Everything has a

sense of UNNATURAL VISCOSITY as if reality had been remade

with molasses.

The room CURVES and WARPS, our eyes like carnival mirrors.

We see a DISTORTED ARGON staring at us in awe.

                         ARGON

          My God... it works.

Now we see O'Brien.

He has been completely polymerized, his entire body

shifting and flowing like a drunken wave machine.

The rubbery flesh of his face looks too heavy, hanging

slack.  His eyes bulge and loll as he tries to focus.

                         ARGON

          Grab him!  Hurry!  Grab him!

Doby is the closest and he snatches O'Brien's arm.

O'Brien reacts, yanking his arm which thins to a strand of

spaghetti and whips free.

O'Brien stumbles backwards, quivering like a Jell-O Slinky

until his bare foot, which seems more a puddle than a

foot, lands on the main floor drain.

His leg slips immediately through the sieve as he slaps

down to the floor, one leg sprawled out in front of him.

He blinks.

Then the rest of him falls through.

Sim grabs at the pile of clothes covering the drain but

Daniel O'Brien is gone.

FROM BELOW the drain we LOOK UP at Argon and the others

staring down.

                         SIM

          That's impossible.

                         POPPY

          It's a miracle.

                         ARGON

          It's an organic-polymerization.

Behind them the tank core continues to melt down,

gelatinous waste splattering the room.

                         POPPY

          Icky!  What's happening?

                         ARGON

          Who cares!  We've got to find him!

          Hurry!

His chair heads for the door.

INT.  STORM DRAIN

A six inch pipe opening GROANS with the sound of

STRETCHING RUBBER.

Fingers suddenly reach out and grab the edge of the hole.

There are a series of CARTOON-LIKE SOUNDS as O'Brien pulls

himself out, emerging from the opening like toothpaste.

After a struggle he pops free, snapping into normal human

proportions.

Cradling his head, he stands up in the corrugated metal

drain.

Unsure of what has happened or why he is naked, he

stumbles out into the creek, his bare feet squishing into

the muddy water.

EXT.  ARGON LABS

The moon throbs overhead in a sky of dark crushed velvet.

Sim and Doby's flashlight beams dart and bounce as they

sweep the compound.

They find the drain pipe and Sim throws his beam down it,

careful not to get his shoes muddy.

                         SIM

          Ah for the love of God, I ain't

          going in there.

He looks at Doby.

                         SIM

          You check it out.

INT.  ELEVATOR

Poppy and Argon ride up in the elevator that connects the

main lab to Argon Tower.

                         ARGON

          It works, Poppy.  It works, it

          works!

                         POPPY

          Now, Icky, I don't need you winding

          yourself up.  I need you focused and

          in control.

                         ARGON

          But, Poppy, you don't know what this

          means --

                         POPPY

          You don't either.  We won't know

          anything until we find that guy and

          find out if he's alive or what.

                         ARGON

          Yes, that's true.  We have to find

          him, run tests, determine if the

          polymerization is stable.

                         POPPY

          In the meantime, we're going to need

          someone to deal with that mess in

          the lab.  I don't think we should

          call Dr. Bright.

                         ARGON

          Oh no.  No.  We'll get her

          assistant.  What's-his-name?

          Nebbishman?

                         POPPY

          Nebbleman.

INT.  MAIN LAB

Nigel Nebbleman enters the building.  He is wearing a

raincoat over his pajamas that are covered with small

bunny rabbits.

Poppy is waiting for him.

                         POPPY

          Dr. Nebbleman, thank God you're

          here!

In her high heels she is taller than him and when they

embrace, his head lays against her ample bosom.

                         POPPY

          I've been nearly hysterical with

          fright.  Thank God you came.  I feel

          so much better that you're here.

                         NEBBLEMAN

          What happened?

Poppy leads him to the stairwell.

                         POPPY

          As I told you on the phone, there's

          been an accident.  A terrible

          accident.

INT.  SUSAN BRIGHT'S LAB

We hear Nebbleman's voice crack with panic, as he rushes

towards the double doors of the lab.

                         NEBBLEMAN (O.S.)

          Oh my God.  Oh my God.  Oh my God.