A Script for The Lanzhou Feed

**EXT. REVELL RIDGE - DAY**

SOUND of punishing WIND

The landscape is a brutalist painting of grey and black. Endless rolling hills of Precambrian shield rock, scarred by glaciers, dotted with skeletal black spruce. The sky is a flat, unforgiving white.

A tripod stands against the gale. Taped to it is a makeshift 360-DEGREE CAMERA RIG: three GoPros held in a 3D-printed bracket. It’s a fragile piece of tech in an ancient, indifferent world.

The wind hits the rig, making it shudder. A loose piece of duct tape securing a battery pack flaps violently.

BEN (20s), bundled in layers of worn gear, fights the cold. His face is chapped raw. He fumbles with the flapping tape, his gloved fingers thick and useless. He can't feel his thumbs.

A loose ethernet cable snaps against a granite outcrop like a whip.

Across from him, JORDAN (20s) is a mound of Gore-Tex. His hood is pulled so tight only his nose and the fog of his breath are visible. He stares intently at a tablet clutched in his hands.

**JORDAN**

It’s drifting again. The horizon line on the stitch. It’s wobbling.

Ben doesn’t look at him. He jams his frozen hands into his armpits.

**BEN**

(Snapping)

It’s the wind shaking the rig, Jordan. It’s not software. Give me a second.

He instantly regrets the edge in his voice.

A few yards away, STACEY (20s) is perfectly still. She’s crouched, aiming a BOOM MIC with a fuzzy windscreen at a patch of moss. A statue of focused intent.

She turns, her boots scraping loudly on the abrasive rock. Her voice is muffled by a thick scarf.

**STACEY**

We need the ambient silence. That’s what the brief said. “The silence of stability.” If you guys keep yelling about the horizon line, all we’re going to get is “The angsty tech support of stability.”

Ben gives up on his fingers. He bites the edge of a fresh roll of duct tape, ripping a jagged strip off with his teeth. He wraps it aggressively around the camera base, strapping the battery pack down tight.

He steps back, breath pluming. He taps the tiny spirit level bubble on the tripod head. It settles in the center.

**BEN**

(To himself)

Okay. Okay. It’s solid.

(Louder)

Jordan?

Jordan taps the tablet with a stylus.

**JORDAN**

Checking... yeah. Better. We have sync. Rolling in three. Two. Don’t move.

Ben freezes.

He looks out. The view is desolate and beautiful. A place that doesn’t care if it’s being watched.

CLOSE ON: Ben’s boots on the granite. We see the texture. Pink and grey feldspar, quartz, mica. Crystalline bedrock. Stable.

**JORDAN**

(O.S.)

Cut. That’s five minutes. My fingers are gonna fall off.

**BEN**

Pack it. Let’s get back to the garage before the sleet starts.

They move with efficient, practiced speed, breaking down the gear.

CUT TO:

**INT. GARAGE / EDIT SUITE - LATER**

The space is a chaotic fusion of woodshop and tech startup. A propane heater ROARS, its orange glow a stark contrast to the cold blues of the previous scene.

Monitors are propped on stacks of plywood. Tangled cables snake around a dormant bandsaw that serves as a desk. The air smells of sawdust, stale coffee, and ozone.

The garage door RATTLES as Jordan dumps a heavy gear bag on a workbench with a THUD. He rips his gloves off, thrusting his pale hands in front of the heater’s grate.

**JORDAN**

I hate field days. Why can't we be ‘studio-based researchers’?

Stacey unwinds her scarf, her cheeks bright red. She pulls a laptop from her pack, pushing aside a half-eaten bag of dill pickle chips to make space.

**STACEY**

Because the studio doesn't look like the end of the world. And because we need the textures. We need the real-world data.

Ben sits at the main editing station, a Frankenstein tower of scavenged parts. He slots SD cards into a reader. A progress bar appears on screen: “INGESTING.”

**BEN**

Data is coming in. Let's see if the wind ruined the stitch.

While the bar crawls, Stacey opens a browser on her laptop.

**STACEY**

So, while you guys were complaining about the weather, I was reading up on that lead I found last night. The place in China.

Jordan grabs a handful of chips.

**JORDAN**

The other rock pile?

**STACEY**

Beishan. Gansu province. Near the Gobi Desert. Listen to this...

She scrolls through a dense, translated academic PDF.

**STACEY**

(Reading)

“Stable crystalline bedrock, capable of safely isolating radioactive materials for thousands of years.” Sound familiar?

Ben spins his chair around, intrigued but skeptical. He rests his chin on the backrest.

**BEN**

Granite is granite, Stacey. Physics works the same everywhere.

**STACEY**

Yeah, but look at the approach.

She turns her laptop toward them. It’s full of diagrams.

**STACEY**

(Pointing)

Multi-barrier approach. Hydrogeological tests. In-situ simulations. They’re drilling into the same kind of ancient rock to hide the same kind of problem.

Ben leans in. He squints at photos in the article. An arid, brown landscape. But the rock... fractured granite. It’s uncannily familiar.

**BEN**

Okay. So they have a Revell site too. What’s that got to do with our film?

**STACEY**

(Tapping the arrow key)

Scroll down. Look at who is doing the research. Lanzhou University. School of Nuclear Science and Technology.

**JORDAN**

(Mouth full)

Riveting. Maybe we can swap radiation readings.

**STACEY**

No, look further.

Her voice sharpens with excitement. She clicks to a different tab. The university’s media department webpage. It shows students in VR headsets in front of a green screen.

**STACEY**

I went down a rabbit hole. They have a massive media department. Researchers at Lanzhou University are looking at AI and immersive tech. VR. AR. The exact same stack we’re trying to use.

Ben leans closer, pointing at the screen.

**BEN**

Wait. Is that... are they generating terrain maps using photogrammetry?

**STACEY**

(Reading from the site)

“Virtual production to simulate film sets and lighting conditions. Reducing the cost of trial-and-error on real sets.” Ben, they’re doing exactly what we’re trying to do. But look at their gear.

The photos show professional motion capture suits. High-end cinema cameras. Ben looks over at their three GoPros sitting on the workbench. A wave of insecurity hits him.

**BEN**

Okay, now I'm depressed. They’re actual scientists. We’re just three kids in a garage in Northern Ontario pretending to be a production company.

**JORDAN**

(Surprisingly defensive)

We aren't pretending. Our audio is clean. And that stitch is going to work.

**STACEY**

That's not the point. The point is, there are kids our age, right now, in Gansu, dealing with the exact same weird intersection of things. Nuclear waste. Ancient rock. Future tech. And...

(pauses, clicks another link)

...ethical considerations of AI authorship.

Ben rubs his eyes, the fatigue from the cold hitting him. But his mind is waking up.

**BEN**

So, what? You want to copy their paper?

**STACEY**

I want to talk to them.

She looks from Ben to Jordan. Her eyes are bright.

**STACEY**

Think about it. We’re telling a story about the Repository here. They’re telling the same story there. What if we combined them? What if we used the VR space to link the two sites?

Jordan stops chewing.

**JORDAN**

Like... a portal?

Ben spins back to his monitor. The footage has finished importing. He clicks open a file. The 360-degree view of the Revell ridge fills the screen. Grey rock, grey sky. He drags the mouse, spinning the view.

**BEN**

(The wheels turning)

Like a data merge. If they have photogrammetry data of the Beishan site... and we have this...

**STACEY**

We could build a virtual environment where you walk on our granite and step onto theirs. A shared geology. A global dump site.

**JORDAN**

Do they speak English?

**STACEY**

Their website does. And they’re university researchers. Probably better English than us, honestly.

Ben stares at the pixelated image of the Canadian Shield. It looks lonely. The idea of someone else staring at a similar rock, thinking about similar things... it makes the garage feel a little less isolated.

**BEN**

(Muttering, reading over her shoulder)

“AI scriptwriting...” That sounds a bit soulless, doesn't it?

**STACEY**

Maybe. Or maybe it's just a tool. Like that stabilization plugin you love so much. They're also asking about the ethics of it. ‘How should AI authorship be credited?’ It’s not just tech-bro hype. They’re thinking about it.

Ben leans back in his squeaky office chair. The wind RATTLES the garage door.

**BEN**

It’s a long shot, Stacey. They’re a major university in China. We’re... us. Why would they talk to us?

**JORDAN**

Because we’re the only ones crazy enough to be filming rocks in freezing temperatures for an art project? Shared trauma?

**STACEY**

(Serious)

Because we are the ‘other’ location. Beishan and Revell. They are the two models. If they want ‘international context’ for their research, we are literally the only people who can give it to them from a youth perspective. We aren't the government. We aren't the nuclear lobby. We're just... looking at it.

Ben looks at the unfinished edit on his timeline. The jagged red waveform of the wind noise. He looks at the photo of the focused students in Lanzhou.

A decision clicks into place.

**BEN**

Okay. Draft an email. But don't make it sound too official. If we sound like a corporation, they’ll ignore us. Sound like... us.

Stacey grins, opening a new email draft.

**STACEY**

(Typing)

‘Dear Lanzhou Media Lab, we have a lot of granite and a really buggy VR camera...’

**BEN**

(Laughing)

Maybe slightly more professional than that. Mention the Revell site first. The geology connection. Then the tech.

**STACEY**

Right.

(Typing Subject line)

‘Subject: Participatory Research and XR Storytelling from the Revell Site, Ontario.’

**JORDAN**

Better. Ask them what microphones they use.

Ben watches Stacey type. The cursor blinks on the white screen. The scope of the room, of their project, suddenly feels bigger.

He turns back to his own screen. He opens the color grading panel, pulling a little blue out of the shadows, warming the rock tones. He wonders what the light looks like in Gansu right now.

**JORDAN**

What if they use AI to write the reply?

**BEN**

Then at least it'll be grammatically correct.

(Nods to Stacey)

Hit send.

Stacey hovers her finger over the mouse.

**STACEY**

You think this is weird? Reaching out like this?

Ben looks at the still image of the rock on his monitor.

**BEN**

It’s the internet. Everything is weird. Sending a message to the other side of the planet to talk about rocks that will outlast our civilization? That’s the least weird part of today.

Stacey clicks. The message is gone.

**INT. GARAGE / EDIT SUITE - NIGHT**

Hours later. The garage is quiet except for the HUM of the computer tower and the occasional CLICK of the propane heater. Jordan and Stacey are gone.

Ben sits alone in the glow of the monitor.

He picks up the SD card reader, turning the small black square over in his fingers. A repository of memory.

He looks out the dirty garage window into pitch blackness. The wind has died down.

He turns back to the screen. He brings up the timeline but doesn't press play. He just looks at the first frame. The grey rock.

In his mind's eye, a split screen forms. On the left, Revell. On the right, Beishan. A dialogue of stone.

He rests his hand on the mouse. For the first time all day, he doesn’t feel cold.

FADE OUT.