1.                  COLE
I love this air.  This is wonderful air.


RAILLY
What’s wonderful about the air, James?


COLE
It’s so clean.  No germs.


RAILLY
You’re afraid of germs?


COLE
I have to go.


RAILLY
Why do you think there aren’t any germs
in the air, James?


COLE
This is April, right?


RAILLY
July.


COLE
(sudden panic)
July?!


RAILLY
Do you know what year it is?


COLE
What year is it?


RAILLY
What year do you think it is?


COLE
1995?


RAILLY
You think it’s July of 1995?  That’s
the future, James.  Do you think you’re
living in the future?


COLE
(slightly confused)
No, 1995 is the past.


RAILLY
1995 is the future, James.  This is 1989.




2.




RAILLY’S VOICE (cont. o.s.)
During such an attack in the French
trenches in October, 1917, we have an
account of this soldier…


ON THE SCREEN, a slide of an old deteriorated photograph shows
JOSE, the Puerto Rican kid, strapped to a stretcher, being carried
by SOLDIERS through the trenches during an attack.  JOSE appears
to be ranting madly as the projector ZOOMS CLOSER on his face until
the image approximates Munch’s famous painting.


RAILLY’S VOICE (cant. o.s.)
— who, during an assault, was wounded
by shrapnel and hospitalized behind the
lines where Doctors discovered he had
lost all comprehension of French but
spoke English fluently, albeit in a
regional dialect they didn’t recognize.
The man, although physically unaffected
by the gas, was hysterical.  He claimed
he had come from the future, that he was
looking for a pure germ that would
ultimately wipe mankind off the face of
the earth in the year… 1995!


The AUDIENCE gives a nervous CHUCKLE.


ON THE SCREEN, a different old photograph of JOSE.  This time
he’s in a military hospital, gaunt, haunted, very ill.




                 RAILLY’S VOICE (cont. o.s.)
Although seriously injured, the young
soldier disappeared from the hospital
before more data could be gathered.  No
doubt, he was trying to carry on his
mission to warn others, substituting
for the agony of war…a self-inflicted
agony we call the “Cassandra Complex”.






3.


EXT.  MOTEL CORRIDOR – MORNING


COLE puzzles over a junk food vending machine, inserts coins tentatively.


INT.  MOTEL ROOM


ANGLE ON TV, the picture of RAILLY filling the screen.




———————– PAGE 52 MISSING ———————–




COLE
My notes.  Observations.  Clues.


RAILLY
Clues?  What kind of clues?


COLE
A secret army.  The Army of The Twelve
Monkeys.  I’ve told you about them.
They spread the virus.  That’s why we
have to get to Philadelphia.  I have to
find them — it’s my assignment.


RAILLY
What will you do…when you find
this…secret army?


COLE
I just have to locate the virus in its
original form before it mutates.  So
scientists can come back and study it
and find a cure.  So that those of us
who survived can go back to the surface
of the earth.






        obscured stencil of THE TWELVE MONKEYS!










4.


                     BOTANIST
Let’s consider again our current
information — if the symptoms were
first detected in Philadelphia on June
28, 1995, that makes us know that…?


COLE
It was released in Philadelphia,
probably on June 14, 1995.


BOTANIST
And it appeared sequentially after that
in…?


With a quick glance at the panel of SCIENTISTS staring at him
from behind the long table, COLE replies like a good pupil,


COLE
San Francisco, New Orleans, Rio de
Janeiro, Rome, Kinshasa, Karachi,
Bangkok, then Peking.


BOTANIST
Meaning…???


COLE
That the virus was taken from Philadelphia
to San Francisco, then to New Orleans,
Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Kinshasa, Karachi,
Bangkok, then Peking.


BOTANIST
And your only goal is…???


COLE
To find out where the virus is so a
qualified scientist can travel back into
the past and study the original virus.