EXT. THE UNIVERSE – THE PRESENT
LYLE, COSMOS faces YOU with the heaviness of the dark star-
studded universe resting on his shoulders. He is humanoid and amorphous, with a “Hello, my name is” NAME TAG on his chest.
He bends and changes with every breath. His face, however,
remains the same: glittery purple eyelids, winking teeth,
eyes directed at You.
LYLE, COSMOS
You are a dreamer.
He speaks with a strange, primordial accent. He reaches into
the nebulous sky and plucks EARTH’S MOON from its orbit. It
fits between his index and middle fingers.
LYLE, COSMOS (CONT’D)
I am the Dreamwalker.
He places the Moon to his forehead where a third eye would
be.
LYLE, COSMOS (CONT’D)
Before you were a dreamer, you were
dust.
A third eye appears, with the Moon as its pupil. He blinks,
and his eyelids dance with astral light.
LYLE, COSMOS (CONT’D)
Before you were dust, you were the
universe.
Behind Lyle, Cosmos, from the heaviness of the universe,
emerges a giant, many armed shape – THE CELESTIAL OCTOPUS.
She is a shadow with body, a suggestion amidst the stars. She
places the tip of one of her colossal tentacles across Lyle,
Cosmos’ ambiguous shoulders.
LYLE, COSMOS (CONT’D)
Before you were universe, you were
celestial octopus.
He reaches for her tentacle. The Octopus sidles closer to him
in affection.
LYLE, COSMOS (CONT’D)
And before there was a celestial
octopus, there was once a woman.
He reaches out to You with blue-tipped fingers. He gently
closes Your eyes.
EXT. THE UNIVERSE – BEFORE
You open Your eyes to reveal there is nothing. Lyle, Cosmos
is gone. The universe is void and empty, with only darkness
softly swirling.
LYLE, COSMOS (O.S.)
In the time Before, there was no
universe. Only darkness, only nothing.
A small patch of darkness swirls more intensely.
LYLE, COSMOS (O.S.) (CONT’D)
But miracles tend to hide in only
darkness, only nothing.
It begins to grow body and shape.
LYLE, COSMOS (O.S.) (CONT’D) (CONT’D)
A woman, born from an unlikely hiccup
of borrowed energy.
FIRST WOMAN is a silhouette. She dances through the empty
cosmos.
LYLE, COSMOS (O.S.) (CONT’D) (CONT’D)
Women at the cruxes and piths of
creation always hunger. This one was
no different.
First Woman grabs tendrils of darkness and begins ravenously
shoving them in her mouth. She grows larger and larger.
LYLE, COSMOS (O.S.) (CONT’D) (CONT’D)
She ate the darkness and the blackness
and the emptiness. She grew and grew
and grew. Until balance was upended,
and gravity took her.
First Woman is CRUSHED into herself in a SPIRAL OF DARKNESS.
Then, in a WHOOSH, she supernovas into THE UNIVERSE AND ALL
OF ITS COSMIC ENTITIES.
LYLE, COSMOS (O.S.) (CONT’D) (CONT’D)
Her heavenly body is the universe. She
unfurled to every corner.
Then, all of the universe collapses back into a singularity,
The Celestial Octopus. Her tentacles are the arms of
galaxies, spiraling with starlight. She is flanked by an
impossible darkness.
LYLE, COSMOS (O.S.) (CONT’D) (CONT’D)
She furls and unfurls. She is The
Celestial Octopus. She is the endless
cycle of life and death, of being born
and reborn.
She unfurls again, becoming THE PRESENT UNIVERSE.
EXT. THE UNIVERSE – PRESENT
Lyle, Cosmos stands before You once more, with The Celestial
Octopus on his shoulders like a galactic scarf.
LYLE, COSMOS
Such is genesis. We exist in her
unfurling.
Lyle, Cosmos reaches out once more to close Your eyes. You
see only darkness, only nothing.
LYLE, COSMOS (CONT’D)
Our lives will cease when she
collapses once more.
RETURN TO BLACK.
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