"Guts" (action/black comedy) 17 (33.3%)
by Alden C. CaeleIn the 23rd century, North America doesn't so much have a 'government' than it does a corporatocracy that the government plays nice with because they've got all the money. Teenagers who show aptitude are 'claimed' by high-paying corporations early on, and spend their entire lives working within the company who claimed them. Those who do not, however... Things are not terribly good for them, stuck in the Outer City. Shops struggling where nobody has the money to buy anything; books for teenagers who have given up on trying to read after 'missing out' on being chosen; indulgences for people who can't afford them.
Vince Clayborn (
Idris Elba) is an anomaly. The son of a woman 'chosen' by a tech company at eighteen, seperated from his 'left behind' father, he had access to anything he wanted as a child. He grew up brilliant and spoiled, taught to fear everything about the outside world. Until, as he grew up, he began to hack through the invisible restrictions on the Net, and realised the system he was in was far scarier than the one he had feared for so long. So, as a teenager, he had a plan: perform horribly in school, become 'left behind', find his father, and take down the system from outside where nobody is watching.
Decades later, Vince is a very different man. He's become a Robin Hood of sorts, breaking into the Net from outside to fund his career as an independent inventor and to try to raise the standard of living, quietly, for those he's grown fond of. He could destroy the net, and through it, the system... he just needs the help of five people, all killed by the system. Luckily he's developed a machine that, using DNA/brainscan records from the Net's medical records, he can remake these people as clones... But resurrecting these people. and controlling them, are very different things. And time is running out.
Vince thought he'd defeated the fear that once drove him. Does he have the guts to change the world?
Vince Clayborn lived in the lap of luxury, the son of a single mother with plenty of wealth at her fingertips. He grew up brilliant but spoiled, overconfident, a bully... except when it came to the idea of the outer cities, where the left behind people lived. The idea of being cast out with them terrified him, an easy sore spot for those who wanted to take him down a notch. So he sought out information beyond the allowed boundaries of the Net, and discovered a world crushed under the boot heel of the rich. Now, he lives among them, realising that personal wealth did not give his mother an inch of the power he thought it did, and swears to rip the whole system down. Vince is smart, but not good with people; he's impatient, condescending, and driven by terror of the system catching him. So it's a great thing he now has to cajole people to follow his plan...
Maura McReilly (Emmy Rossum) was killed forty years ago, after being 'selected' by the government to create the new Net that would control information elegantly, so that neither generation would even realise the depths of what was being kept from them. She was the last programmer to even be taught about the workings of the Net, and she was killed immediately after finishing. Once resurrected, this angry young woman is the easiest for Vince to convince to go after the government, but perhaps the hardest to control. Especially as Maura thinks she has a child within the system who knows nothing about where she came from...
Mr. Nightengale (Hiroyuki Sanada) knows everything. Vince doesn't know
how, but he does - passwords, schematics of City buildings, even some things about the Net that Maura doesn't know. Dead only two years, he's also fairly current... and hard to control. After all, he died of a heart attack, and has no ill will against the City. And yet, he knows Vince controls his fate, and balances his intent to escape and unmask Vince's plan with the short-term benefits of complying. Strawberries, for one. And a soft bed. Mr. Nightengale does not sleep on anything smaller than a king size bed.
Enoch de Cantor (Timothy Olyphant) was 'selected' much earlier than most youths, because his role was much more important... and required much less smarts, and a lot more training. A hired killer for as long as he could remember, Enoch spent his entire life from the age of ten killing suspected spies and enemies of the City, first with poisons and rigging bombs, then with weapons and his bare hands. Enoch became an artist of violence, fueling his dissatisfaction with his life into his career and becoming the best in the business. By the time he rose to the highest position available to a man like him, he'd become bitter and fatalistic, but talented at not just killing, but seduction, codebreaking, and getting around the City undetected. Which is why, instead of the mild-mannered child he was told to expect, he found himself on the other end of a Government-ordered AK47 a year ago. Now, Vince holds him in captivity until the day he'll agree to help... knowing full well he will, purely because he hasn't escaped yet.
Joan Hamilton (Madeline Stowe) is stately, smart and loyal to a fault. A Vice President of a midlevel company in the City, her life was perfect... Until, after her 20th anniversary to her high-powered husband, she got a bullet in the back of the head from none other than Enoch. And yet, her conversations with Vince from captivity turn him around and wring him out, leaving him confused and exhausted rather than like the hero he sees himself as. Joan is a woman who, despite being killed to protect her husband, will love him until the day she dies... again. And Vince is running out of time to convince her to help him. Especially as the information he needs is so crucial, and would destroy her: the name and location of her child.
These five must learn to work together over the course of the first season. A taste of that...
1.01: When Good Men Do NothingIn which we meet Vince, and learn the details of the new world. Vince and Maura work together to disrupt a supply line of fresh fruit to cajole crucial passwords out of Nightengale, but once securing them from him, need to convince the only one who knows how to use them to help them - Enoch. It's Vince's first time re-entering the City since he was thrown from it many years ago, and the first time he's gone on a real mission. Will he be strong enough to stomach what needs to be done?
1.02: Assault, Not LeadershipVince plots to take out a diplomat from another country who may be bringing new Net specs, so that Maura can copy them for her work. With Enoch joining full-time, there's three active players in the gang: he, Vince and Maura. But having three brilliant, stubborn people on the team means jockeying for control of the mission, and the overall plan as well, complications Vince finds himself struggling with. Meanwhile, at the complex, Mr. Nightengale has a lovely dinner with Joan, and both learn plenty about one another... and make a plan to escape Vince's 'team' for good.
1.03: Kill With Grace, Kill With HonourAfter being caught by a squad of City police, Vince and Enoch must kill their way out of a holding cell, and Vince learns a lot about violence from the king of it - while Enoch begins to think he might be a better leader for this particular grand plan. Meanwhile, Maura can't help because she's distracted by a virus attacking the security of the complex... which she suspects came from Nightengale, despite his inability to leave his room.
Graphics by Li Robb. 
