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A Taste for Health

June 27th, 2019 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
Had an idea for a story recently for if society found a way to make someone naturally like the taste of healthy foods (like vegetables, etc) - imagine if what you liked and craved lined up with what was good for you.  It sounds and all seems well, everyone eating better diets and enjoying better lifestyles.  Then imagine one day unexplained animal attacks start leaving people dead and torn up, seemingly at random and in generally urban settings with no dangerous wild predators.  As the story goes on, footage and evidence start to reveal the attacks seem to come from not any animal but a human.  The authorities track down and arrest one suspect, but the killings continue, seemingly at random and with no motive.  It turns out not to be any one person but people at random who suddenly go mad for human meat.  The commonality is they've all been genetically modified to like the taste of whatever is good for them, and it worked too well.  Because the healthiest...[More]
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A Wish for a Life

April 2nd, 2019 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
Imagine if you could make any wish come true but would cause the death of one random person.

A man, known as the Baron, lives in a castle atop a hill and is suspected of having a supernatural artifact that does this, causing many mysterious deaths in the nearby town for his own gain.  Each death is similar, with each person becoming suddenly frail and ghostly pale before dying within days.  The story initially seems one of despair, as no one can really prove this to authorities and people at random just keep dying.  Many supporting and likeable characters have their arc abruptly ended in this manner.

An investigator tries to solve this mystery but doesn't believe in superstition.  He's an outsider to the town and tries to bring science and reason he believes the townspeople lack.  He suspects more likely the Baron created this rumor to hide something more nefarious.  A friend of the investigator gets frustrated with the investigator's calm...[More]
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God Formula

March 24th, 2019 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
Another one that came to me in a dream. Made more sense right after I woke, but I unfortunately started losing details as soon as I got to writing it down.

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The story is essentially a sci-fi thriller movie, where the founder tries to create AI from a math perspective similar to induction instead of the more common approach of fitting to data.  It's counterintuitive but rather than try to create a general algorithm that adapts to specific cases, the founder wants to start from one case and solve for the rest of the world - ie letting the AI define the rest of world on its own volition. In other words, instead of adapting or being an agent in the world, this algorithm plays God and creates it from scratch.  The idea is similar to trying to understand or simulate the current universe by instead creating a new one altogether via man-made blackholes in a lab.  It's also similar to what you do in theoretical math where you define hypothetical systems or...[More]
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Dreams Adrift

February 5th, 2019 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #

This could either be an animation or short film. The imagery of someone walking upsidedown against the night sky is what stuck in my mind.
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Scene starts panning down from a cloudy, moonlit night sky to a girl standing on the edge of a highrise rooftop with her arms out.  It looks like she is about to fall, but as she goes over the edge, the camera rotates to instead show her walking down the side of the building, apparently sleepwalking.  There is a wistful element as her hair is constantly flowing and her arms are out to balance.  The elements seem to whirl around her as she walks, as if animated by what she is dreaming.  The iconic scene is of her walking upsidedown on the bottom of a plank between two highrises against the backdrop of the moon and night sky in the background.  

Eventually...[More]
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Vue

January 20th, 2019 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
Another story that came as a dream, ironically as a movie I was watching in the dream.
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The movie initially starts as a horror film about boy initially trying to escape the home of a crazed family with a murderous cyborg child.  The home is more or less a cave with no open windows or exit (all boarded up).  The parents are human but very old and clearly insane, sort of like the fake grandparents from The Visit.  The cyborg behaves more like an animal and is Frankenstein-like, with loosely pieced together scrap metal for arms, blades for hands, barely functional prosthetics for what's left of the face (doll-like eyes, unmoving lips, etc), etc.  Often it crawls on all fours or climbs the walls, staying in the shadows.  It is unclear if it was once human at all or entirely machine to begin with.  The pacing and feel is almost like a Saw movie at first, with no indication how the we arrived here or why things are.

After about...[More]
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The Sound That Isn't There

August 20th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
Premise of a horror film I thought of while staying up too late. Tongue

Imagine every night you hear the loud humming of what you think are street sweepers driving by.  One night, you get tired of it and venture out into the streets to complain, except there's nothing there.  You run towards the sound, but it just keeps getting louder and louder, with nothing in sight for as far you can see.  The sound eventually starts moving away and goes quiet, like it does every night, and you go back home confused.

The next night, you run out again when you hear the sound, trying to get to the center of it before it goes away again.  This time, you keep running towards it as it tries to get away from you.  At first, you are barely able to keep up with the sound as it is moving away.  At some point, you realize the sound is suddenly getting louder and louder than it ever has before.  You get so caught up running towards the sound that you don't realize it has...[More]
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Perpetual Dreams

March 5th, 2018 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
Another story I watched play out like a movie in my dream - ironically this one about a character dreaming...

A man lives his life through many lucid dreams.  In them, he is aware he is dreaming and can pick the setting or story he wants to live in.  One thing he can't control though is that the dreams seem to randomly end and reset.  While he keeps his memories from past dreams, no one else in the dream seems to remember.  Over time, he starts noticing a person who is always in the dream.  It starts off with them just passing each other by, walking in the same direction, or other small coincidences, but eventually they end up in the same scenes or situations as well.  She ends up being the only constant between each dream, and they share many adventures together.  However, whenever he tries to talk directly with her and figure out who she is, the dream cuts off.  It doesn't help that she also always forgets everything as well, so every...[More]
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Face without Sentience

July 9th, 2017 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
An idea I've had for a while as a horror film:

Someone you know closely, seemingly all your life, one day turns around to face you and then just starts screaming in absolute fear, screaming non-stop forever at the top of their lungs, hour after hour, day after day, eyes wide and face frozen, with no change in expression, no reaction to anything, as if no longer alive, no longer conscious, no longer sentient.
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Buried Memories

November 9th, 2015 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
Another dream I had that played out like a movie.  Seems to be how all my ideas to come to me now.
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I am living off in the country side for some time.  There, I have a small isolated plot of land that I planted a farm on and regularly tend to for fun, but the house near it is pretty high tech and is where I do a bunch of more serious work for coding and other hobbies.  One day, some guy shows up while I'm out on my farm and tries to tell me I ought to work for his company and get a real job or something.  He starts telling me how it will be good experience to build resume and get real software skills, etc so I don't have to live on a farm anymore.  I ask if he knows what I actually do, and he says he can't tell, which just annoys the heck out of me that he'd dare even tell me what I should do with my life.  I show him that my farm is actually also a grave for past lives I've had and previous bodies I've...[More]
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Wasting Through Time

October 3rd, 2015 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
This was another story idea I got as a dream.  I suppose it reflects my mood lately with everyone seeming to get older around me, not just physically but mentally as well.

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Two friends have known each other all their lives.  They are able to time travel but only by skipping forward in time.  They've been doing that for a while and have experienced centuries of history past by, but one day, one of the friends loses this ability.  The other is torn between staying with the friend or leaving the friend behind to continue skipping forward.  There was a sense before that both of them were destined to see all the Earth's history to the very end until the world goes dark, but now that seems less certain.  They end up splitting ways, with one living through the years instead of skipping forward while the other continues to jump forward every few years.  Each time they catch up, one friend gets much older while the other remains...[More]
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Death of Spring

April 25th, 2015 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
This is another idea for a short film or animation (probably better fit) that I woke up with as a dream.  It was extremely vivid, like an actual animated film being watched.  The colors come off very strong, with death and decay being black and red while life is green and blue.  Both share occasional streaks of purple though.
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Two brothers are living in a somewhat burned down or devastated forest/wilderness/village.  One of them is out in the woods one day when they are cutting down a tree and release a water spirit.  The water spirit takes the form of an innocent child-like figure that heals the countryside.  

One of the friends get obsessed in dark magic upon realizing magic exists in the world and eventually starts becoming some sort of electricity or energy spirit, spreading smoke/decay and mutation but overall kept in a small corner of the woods because the water spirit would find out and destroy him.  He also doesn't...[More]
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Origins

September 24th, 2013 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
We started on a planet once located in the Asteroid Belt, but that exploded.  We came to Mars, but the atmosphere blew away.  Finally, we came here but hit our heads and called ourselves Earthlings.
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Perfect World

March 9th, 2012 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
Had this whole script idea in my dream this morning.  It was like watching a live-action movie with really good effects. It even came with an ending credits song - recorded a bit of it, maybe will make it a full fledge song later one day.

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An advanced society is led by one man (the leader) who seems to have invented a means for everything (free energy, robots, etc).  He himself seems immortal and omnipotent now from his own inventions.  His daughter - he turned into part machine so she does not grow old.  His company headquarters is actually a giant parked spaceship in the city.

One day, however,...[More]
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Who You Are on the Inside

February 4th, 2012 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
Two friends have known each other since childhood.  One has always been a bit weaker and slightly ill with an unknown virus.  The other friend makes the promise to one day find a cure to the other's condition and studies to become a doctor.

Twenty years later, the doctor gets close to understanding the nature of the illness and finding a cure.  Both are excited at the prospect, but as the cure is applied, the friend seems to gradually get weaker.  The doctor scrambles to figure out what went wrong, but each day that passes, the friend seems to slowly lose grasp on the world.  Eventually the friend becomes bedbound and the doctor caring daily for the friend.

Over time, the doctor notices that, although the friend is losing mental capacity, the friend seems physically fine.  In fact, as the friend becomes healthier, the friend becomes less mentally stable, as if gradually fading away.

The doctor...[More]
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Imperfect Genesis

November 13th, 2011 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
In the beginning, the world was but a blank canvas, a fresh landscape for gods to shape as they saw fit.  After they added life and other final touches to their work, they decided to strip themselves of their power, join their creation as mortals, so that their emotions and imperfections do not allow them to destroy what they so cherished, perhaps as they once did in another time.  What they did not realize, however, was that the capacity for their destructive nature came not from their omnipotence but from their ability to reason.  Thus even without their power, the destruction they feared for their creation came to be nonetheless, only this time they would not remember it.
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Passing of Dreams

May 29th, 2010 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
A young influential doctor is called in to assist in the operation of an elderly high-profile patient.  The patient has been left in a paralyzed state by unknown causes but continues to have thought processes and dreams; the paralysis is believed to have a mental rather than physical basis.  New technology by an experimenter is being used that would allow the doctor to enter the patient's dreams in an attempt to free him from his condition.  The doctor was chosen because the technology is not entirely understood, and it is hoped the doctor would be able to figure the situation out quickly once inside the patient's mind.

The doctor is placed into a deep sleep next to the patient, his head in a device connected to the head of the patient's.  The scene pans across the patient's brown eyes to the blue eyes of the doctor, the irises of which are blue.  The doctor awakens in a bed that is not his own and quickly realizes he is in the mind of the patient....[More]
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Immortality

December 11th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #

  You often see movies or books about people who can never die, but usually they also heal super fast from any wound or injury.  Just a thought on my end, but what if you can never die, but you heal at a normal rate?

  The scary part about this is that the normal person can relate since no fast healing is involved.  The person in the character is essentially still conscious no matter what happens.  What’s to say this doesn’t occur in real life? Obviously you can’t heal from everything or live forever, but what’s to say your consciousness doesn’t continue drift along out there?

  It probably wouldn’t work that well as a film because you can’t show the inside of someone’s mind (supposing you take a first person perspective).  From an outside observer though, that might work.  Ideally, a book would work better so you can see the main character’s thoughts.

  The story…[More]

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Undo

November 6th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #

This is an idea that came to me for possibly a short video ad of some sort.  Promotes safer driving I guess, but really.. change the ending and it could promote a lot of things.

  Scroll through a series of scenes showing every day life.  Closer shots show they are actually running backwards.  Over time, we see that these are all mistakes that people make (spilling coffee, breaking tables, etc) that are fixed by going backwards in time.

  Eventually we come to the scene of a car accident with a car pinning a helpless victim to a tree.  The scene running backwards, however, does not solve the issue.  The car pulls away and the victim slides to the ground.  The car is intact - in fact, it’s brand new - but the person spends his life scarred.

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Friend in the Shadows

September 30th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
     A man is traveling with his family and gets stranded in a dark cave.  He is alone and trapped in a large pit within the cave.  Fortunately, there is a stream of sunlight reaching down towards one end of the pit and plants are growing there.  From these few crops he is able to survive.  Later he also climbs down rocks deeper into the cave where it's darker and discovers a river where he can catch fish.

     The whole time he is alone until he one day notices someone standing in the shadows on the other side of the river.  The person can't really be seen and is just a dark figure.  The man calls and waves out.  The person doesn't say anything, but the man assumes it's because they're too far apart to hear each other.  However, the person seems to motion or signal back before fading back into the shadows.

     The man doesn't see this person again until one day he injures himself along...[More]
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Three Years Past

June 12th, 2009 | Posted by pftq in Stories | #
     A freshman boy walks down the school hallway eating a cup of ice cream he got from across the street.  While walking, he suddenly looks up from his ice cream to realize his surroundings look different.  It's the same location with some things altered, perhaps looking older or worn out.  He eventually realizes he has ended up 3 years into the future.
     His friends tell him he's crazy.  When the boy tries to use his ice cream as proof, they tell him he just got it from across the street.  Defeated, the boy just accepts his situation for the time being.
     His learning is accelerated and he quickly adapts to his new life.  He seems to learn things instantaneously sometimes (such as math) even though he doesn't remember having been good at it before.  One day his friends bug him about the ice cream again and the boy gets irritated.  The boy suddenly shouts, "How could I have gotten the ice cream...[More]
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