Grounded Science Fiction
Strange things are happening in the small town of Aurora, New York. Uncommon displays of the Aurora Borealis and unusually high winds could be blamed on the heightened solar flares that are buffeting the earth’s surface. But they could also be something more…
Our opening image is on Dr. Samuel Gardner (mid-50s), jogging beside Cayuga Lake with his dog, Maverick, at his side. The lake reflects the glow of the sky, a billowing batik. Maverick stops and barks at the lake. The last colors of the aurora fade into daybreak and a small light -- could be a shooting star -- streaks across the horizon.
Sam is on a crusade to discover a cure for autoimmune disease. He’s alone and isolated and in denial about it, burying himself in his work for over twenty years.
MARIE WAGNER (late 40s) is also alone, except for her gifted and brilliant daughter, Celeste, 8-years-old. Marie is a recent widow, new in town. When Marie takes Celeste to see Sam for a school physical, Sam finds it hard to believe that Celeste has never been sick. Not even a cold. But when Celeste suffers a broken arm in a car accident, Sam realizes something more—she heals abnormally fast. Her broken arm is completely healed… in two days.
This leads Sam onto a different quest. Why does this child heal so quickly? Why hasn’t she ever been sick? He begins blood-work and DNA scans, against Marie’s wishes.
When Sam brings Celeste home from the hospital (an unusual small-town hospitality) he barely has a chance to ask Marie about Celeste’s arm healing so quickly before something very weird occurs… a high-frequency sound overcomes them—so powerful it shatters all the windows in the house. During this event, Marie sees something outside, resulting in her emotions coalescing into some dumbfounded, euphoric elation.
And at the same time, Celeste disappears.
Over the course of the next 48 hours, Sam, Marie, the local Sheriff, BILLIE PARKER and FBI agent Wyatt Manning experience inexplicable events and bizarre phenomena in the search for Celeste.
Sam and Marie are forced to come to terms with their past losses in order to transform their isolation and loneliness into lives worth living again.
