Artwork title: An Invader
Artist: Jordan Persson
[A woman wakes up in her bed. It is the middle of the night, but a strange blue light shines in through the window.]
[She gets out of bed and approaches her back door, peering out its window to try to determine the light’s source.]
[Her reflection in the window starts grinning at her maliciously and lunges at her. She jolts backwards in fear.]
[Suddenly, she wakes up in her bed again with a gasp. This time it’s morning. She catches her breath.]
[She stands, apprehensively, a few yards from the back door.]
[Out on the back porch, she leans over the railing and sighs. Shifting her arm, she places her elbow in some kind of slime. It drips off the arm of her bathrobe.]
WOMAN: What? Oh… Ew…
[As she retreats back into the apartment, the camera pans down the exterior of the building, showing more of the slime dripping down the structure. The shot comes to rest on a basement bulkhead door.]
[Close up of the basement door. More slime is pooled near the handle.]
[Close up of the dirtied bathrobe being shoved into a laundry sack.]
[The woman walks out of the bedroom, away from the laundry sack.]
[Now seated at a desk with a computer and a digital drawing tablet, the woman works on a digital illustration.]
[A chat message from a friend pops up, and she responds. Their chat bubbles are superimposed over shots of the woman at her computer.]
FRIEND’S CHAT MESSAGE: sup
WOMAN’S CHAT MESSAGE: workin
FRIEND’S CHAT MESSAGE: same
FRIEND’S CHAT MESSAGE: hey, soon we won’t have to
WOMAN’S CHAT MESSAGE: ?
[The friend sends a picture. It appears to be AI-generated. It is of a girl “holding” a drawing pad via an extra set of hands coming out of her torso. Her hands have too many fingers and her skin has a plastic-y or wet sheen.]
WOMAN’S CHAT MESSAGE: oh lmao
WOMAN’S CHAT MESSAGE: always looks like it’s covered in baby oil
[Fade to a shot of afternoon sunbeams dancing on the floor, implying the passage of time.]
[The woman waters a plant.]
[The woman walks back into the bedroom, and comes out with the laundry sack.]
[The woman brings the bag to another door, opens it, and heads through, closing it behind her. Her footsteps can be heard going down stairs.]
[The woman enters a basement laundry area. There are some sporting goods and toy soldiers scattered in the foreground. The woman empties the laundry bag into a washing machine, then starts it.]
[She absentmindedly picks up one of the toy soldiers, smiling a little as she turns it over. Offscreen, there’s a strange noise.]
[Puzzled by the noise, she sets the toy soldier back where she found it and steps over to the darker part of the basement to investigate.]
[She peers down a long, dark hallway, trying to sense any motion.]
[She slowly reaches for a pull-chain, then yanks it, turning on a light at the end of the dark hall.]
[The camera pans out from behind her, revealing… nothing unusual down the hallway.] [She sighs in relief, walking back to the laundry area.]
[She sits down on the stairs and pulls out her phone.]
WOMAN’S CHAT MESSAGE: that AI stuff still scares me
WOMAN’S CHAT MESSAGE: I can’t help but feel like we’re gonna look back at this era of it and think it’s quaint
[As the chat bubbles are shown, a shot of the woman swapping the laundry from the washer to the dryer fades in, indicating the passage of time.]
Persson_Jordan_transcript copy
FRIEND’S CHAT MESSAGE: yeah, I feel you
FRIEND’S CHAT MESSAGE: it’s hard not to be afraid of being replaced
[A shot of a few old trinkets on a shelf, including a small hand mirror. The focal distance shifts, bringing the trinkets out of focus, but bringing the reflection of the woman into focus. She is back to texting on her phone.]
FRIEND’S CHAT MESSAGE: but look, for the time being
FRIEND’S CHAT MESSAGE: at least you can draw hands
WOMAN’S CHAT MESSAGE: yeah, there’s always that
[The dryer buzzes from offscreen. The woman looks up, then stands up and exits the frame.]
[The woman unloads the clothes from the dryer into the laundry sack. In the foreground, where there were three toy soldiers initially, there are now four.]
[The woman finishes filling the sack. She notices the fourth toy soldier and peers closer in confusion, pulling out a pair of glasses to get a closer look.]
[Close up shot on the soldiers. The new addition is a mutated one with two heads and three arms. At its base is a trail of the slime from earlier.]
[The woman recoils, visibly unsettled. She picks up the laundry sack and runs upstairs with it.]
[Close up shot of one of the steps. A few seconds after the woman’s foot passes over it, the bathrobe lands on it, presumably having fallen out of the sack while she was running.]
[The woman reenters her apartment’s kitchen, turns the light on, and shuts the door behind her, locking it. She takes her glasses off, puts them on the table, and rubs her face as she walks back to her bedroom with the laundry sack.]
[Shot of her, seen through the glasses on the table, entering the bedroom and dumping the laundry onto the bed. Suddenly, in the foreground, a hand wrapped in the cloth of the bathrobe quietly picks up the glasses.]
[The woman starts digging through the laundry, confused at not finding the bathrobe. The kitchen light turns off with a small click, and she turns to look in that direction.]
[The woman creeps slowly and apprehensively into the darkened kitchen, looking in the direction of the light switch. From offscreen, the same strange noise from the basement is heard again. The woman turns to look in its direction, and gasps in shock.]
[A glistening, slimy duplicate of the woman stands in the middle of the apartment, clad in her bathrobe and glasses. Smiling, it raises its arm and gives a small wave. Its hand flickers with a strange AI-generated effect.]
[Cut to black.]
[Title card: AN INVADER]
[Title card: JORDAN PERSSON / CHRISTINA KELLY]