HARD RETURN

The year is 2017: A computer virus has infected the West Coast Main Frame, which controls everything from electrical power, to communications satellites, train switching, airline traffic control, and oxygen production. The Main Frame is the "brains" for the entire Western United Staes... And it has a virus. Potentially deadly to everyone from Seattle to Los Angeles to the Rocky Mountains.

How do you find and destroy a virus WITHIN a computer?

You send in a team.

Five computer scientists: the government's top virus expert Dr. SIMAK, a tough female hardware tech VOUGHT, a wild and crazy young programmer HAMILTON, the dashing systems designer KUTTNER, a beautiful female virus expert from the private sector named LISA. Protected by a team of five Marines lead by Urban Rescue expert Sgt. JOHN CABOT.

Sent INTO the computer by experimental Direct Plug Virtual Reality. Into a landscape of giant hard drives and circuit boards to hunt a virus which has taken form: stolen "bodies" from computer fighting games. A virus with the latest in artificial intelligence.

A virus which has become sentient... Learned to hate.... Wants to destroy the world outside of the computer.

Time is running out. The Bandits have shut down the oxygen scrubbers for Los Angeles. Everyone will be dead in less than ten hours, unless the Team can destroy The Bandits Virus.

But every hour spent in Direct Plug Virtual Reality after the first four becomes potentially deadly. The human brain loses its ability to differentiate between Virtual Reality and Reality. After four hours a fatal injury in VR will actually kill you.

As Cabot and the team search the inner workings of the Main Frame, searching for The Bandits Virus and its deadly leader DERRIX, they enter a world where programs are more real than humans. A "Doom"-like maze of wires, chips, circuit boards and transistors. Where the lions and tigers and bears of Encarta are REAL, and the vicious aliens from a game can actually kill you. Where a Bandit might lurk behind the next corner, waiting with a weapon stolen from a movie.

"HARD RETURN" is non-stop sci-fi action in the tradition of "Fantastic Voyage" and "Aliens" about a battle fought INSIDE the computer, with the fate of the world outside at stake.

HARD RETURN copyright 2005 by William C. Martell


For a copy of this script... E-mail me! wcmartell@ScriptSecrets.Net

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