​DESOLATION GATE

​

 

​WGA: 1616045

​

Logline:



After gaining access to an alien supercomputer, a hapless IT worker finds himself the target of a fearsome alien assassin bent on destroying humanity.

 



Bryn Hersch works as a lowly IT tech for Data Smash. Every day for months he's been receiving cryptic messages about an alien war that may intrude on Earth's domain. What seems like an inside prank becomes all too real when Bryn is assigned to help a mysterious agent from corporate security get set up in an office that shouldn’t exist. Agent Mark Freeman gives Bryn an “interface;” a gadget that uses nanotechnology to insert itself into Bryn’s head.



Bryn catches a brief glimpse of a massive alien construct, a supercomputer that seems to be tucked into its own dimension. Next thing he knows, he wakes up in a Victorian era apartment, with a rather furious Jenna Stiles grilling him for information. Then she removes one of Bryn’s eyes and replaces it with a cybernetic orb.



The next day Bryn begins to learn how to interface with the machine he seems inexorably linked to. Jenna, who is trapped on the other side of the interface with the computer, issues a stern warning of elements seeking the interface, which will lead to a more ominous piece of technology known as the Portal.



Bryn is too confused and stressed to take her warnings seriously. Then computer servers form into an autonom, a deadly killing machine that attacks Bryn. He flees with his buddy Mike, narrowly escaping as more autonoms manifest.



Soon all the players appear: The NSA has tracked the energy incursions and agents Penny Detmar and Sidney Palitier are assaulted by a fearsome Euhedral, the symbiotic intelligence that is sending the autonoms. He comes to be known as Stony. Stony destroys the van and leaves one agent dead, but Bryn and Mike escape.



They flee to Las Vegas, seeking Bryn’s missing father Del, who is a physicist that the NSA has also been monitoring. Bryn finds he can easily manipulate the odds and get rich quick in Vegas, but they are soon under attack in their casino hotel and flee from half a dozen autonoms. Stony is racing to catch up but Penny and Sidney are able to intercept Bryn and Mike after a firefight.

The safe house the NSA brings them to has been tracked and Stony sends a modified hybrid tank in to kill them. Again they flee, heading to the Planck Labs outside Albuquerque where Bryn’s father worked.



Stony intercepts them there and captures Bryn. A fierce firefight ensues but the Euhedral escapes. He uses various unsavory tactics to locate the Portal, which Bryn’s interface is attuned to, and they are soon racing back to DC. NSA agents also set up defenses there, along with the rogue agent Mark Freeman.



After a fast-paced series of chases, double-crosses, false identities, and high-tech weapons battles, they all reach the portal. Stony has unleashed an event that will replicate thousands of portals, which the Euhedrals can use to manifest on Earth and become the master race.

Bryn is able to stop the event, but Stony lances him with a null sword—a singularity blade that sends anything it touches to oblivion. Jenna is able to save him through the portal and he ends up in her captive pocket dimension with the computer. Only one of them can return to Earth’s plane.​

Jenna lets Bryn go back, though she has been trapped there for a century and a half, because he’s the best chance they have to stop further incursions. Because he is the Monitor.