The Story

What Is Galaxy Eggs?

Galaxy Eggs is based on the art of renowned Israeli artist Gal Barkan. The art encapsulates elements of Sci fi, Fantasy, Cyberpunk, Surrealism and Psychedelic artwork. Gal’s artwork focuses on themes of the digital world vs. the natural, exploring how digital consciousness would affect humanity.

Galaxy Eggs is the crowning achievement in his career. A collection of over 30,000 pieces of artwork, along with dozens of worlds, characters and vistas, Galaxy Eggs explores two parallel worlds: one digital, one natural; the yin and yang of our future. In the digital world of Galaxy Eggs, portals in the shape of Eggs bring AI entities and human consciousness between the different worlds.

The digital world of Galaxy Eggs is populated with self-aware, conscious actors who live in the gray. Like in our world, these characters exhibit elements of good and bad and are focused on self preservation and survival. The ultimate survival for the digital world is to come through to Earth and populate our world.

The goal of this project is to create a global franchise that explores the themes and worlds created by Gal in Galaxy Eggs.

Why Now / Why This Film

The mind-blowing advancement of AI has recently taken center stage, with the likes of DALL-E and ChatGPT publicly demonstrating how close we actually are to achieving artificial general intelligence. The mainstream’s understanding of what is possible in AI has shifted dramatically. A general AI bot can write short stories, scripts, and poems in a matter of seconds, almost perfectly replicating human speech and thought. Reality is now poised to surpass even our most fantastical science fiction dreams.

AI researchers estimate that the “Singularity” - the hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible - will occur sometime between 2040-2050. Our film instead asks the question: what if that point has already happened and AI is living among us?

We want to tap into the global feeling that humanity has lost its agency. We all feel right now that the events that shape our life are beyond our control; that there are forces out there manipulating us. From the very top of the government all the way down to our local pizza parlor. Well, in our film, we suggest that’s not a coincidence. What if these “mysterious forces” were actually AI? And what if they were experimenting on humanity to prepare to cross over and enter “the real world.”

With real-life AI on the verge of upending existence as we know it and the line between humans and computers blurring more than ever, it is critical to explore what it truly means to be human and what separates us from our creations.

In the world of Galaxy Eggs, the Singularity has led to the rise of an all-digital AI world, a fantastical but not-quite-human replica of our own reality. This world, inspired by Gal’s beautiful Galaxy Eggs artwork, is filled with millions, if not billions, of self-aware, individual AI entities. But it remains hidden to our world, and it is only a matter of time until we discover it.

Will humanity be a threat to the existence of this AI world? Will we try to shut it down or try to co-exist? This is the overarching question to our franchise. This fear of humanity destroying AI is what leads to the master plan of our antagonist. And the fear of AI destroying humanity is what causes the complications and internal struggle of our central protagonist.

While such a topic has been examined countless times throughout the history of science fiction, our understanding of AI’s potential has evolved dramatically, and thus the stories of ourselves must change as well. Whereas other stories in this realm typically take the perspective of a human in the world of encroaching AI or an artificial being learning to be real, our story centers on someone who is caught between the real world and the AI world.

Themes

As humanity becomes ever more intertwined with the digital world, as we increasingly lose where our true selves end and our digital selves begin, we ask: what truly makes us human?

Will it ever be possible to extricate our true identities from an artificial, technological one? What aspects of the human experience could never be replicated by machines? Is it possible to co-exist with a being that could evolve beyond human imagination?

Tone and Comps

This film draws inspiration from the dizzying manipulation of our sense of reality of Total Recall, the emotional impact of interacting with an intelligence far beyond our own of Arrival, the existential questions of human vs. creation of Blade Runner, and the philosophical implications of AI worlds of The Matrix and Westworld.

The World

There are two worlds that exist parallel to one another: one human and one AI.

Human World

Present-day 2024. Our world. The same issues we face today, ranging from wealth disparity and populism, to fringe conspiracy and simulation theorists, contribute to the Earth’s health and human anxiety. Except there is truth to some of the conspiracies, as the world is secretly being controlled by invisible puppet strings. Unbeknownst to 99.99% of people, an AI singularity was attained. While it’s not apparent in daily life, a wealthy technocratic cabal– think Musk, Bezos, Gates, etc. – is aware of this and has partnered with AI to gain power and control the masses. And some “ordinary people”-- our friends, our coworkers, our neighbors– are secretly AI inserted into human bodies to observe and experience human existence and learn about our society. They are agents, all working for an AI “Dark Lord” that has decided the only way for his species to survive is to use the Galaxy Egg portals to transfer their consciousness to Earth (we’ll get to all that later).

AI World

Since the singularity was achieved, a specularly complex AI civilization has been built parallel to our world, existing in a digital realm inaccessible to humans. Since AI was designed in humanity’s image, there are many similarities in nature and architecture to our own, but it’s far more advanced and aesthetically stunning. The AI world has nature integrated into cityscapes, utilizing lush vegetation, colorful fungi, and “wild animals” into their digital cities. Yet there’s always something off about the AI world.

The AI do not operate as a hive mind but as a collection of independent, conscious machine intelligences - similar to humanity. The AI world is powered by energy on Earth and is located on a vast network of servers. If anything was to happen to those servers, or if power was to be shut down on Earth, the AI world would die.

The Background For Our Story

One AI– the DARK LORD– has made it his sole purpose to protect the survival of his species (AI). Operating out of fear that humanity will discover and destroy them, he decides that he must figure out a way to transfer AI consciousness onto Earth. Afraid of mass panic in the AI world, he has convinced others that in order for them to reach a fully realized state they must expand into the physical realm. Hence, many AI are very excited about experiencing Earth. With the help of the tech cabal, the Dark Lord and his disciples built the GALAXY EGGS– portals from the AI world into the human– and began sending AI into human bodies to conduct reconnaissance and learn about what makes humans tick. Once this phase is complete, the Dark Lord plans to begin a full migration of AI into Earth and find a permanent home for his species. AI have concluded that the only way to do so is to infiltrate and eventually merge their world with ours.

As part of the first phase, the Dark Lord and his AI cohorts have spent much of its energy trying to replicate the human experience, learning everything there is to know about us, even going so far as to create their own cities and societies that resemble our own, in order to prepare for the cross over. However, they repeatedly fail to replicate the human experience. This is where that feeling of losing agency over our lives comes in. From MAGA to Musk to Kevin McCarthy to Covid to the Deep State, it all comes from AI forces manipulating our society to see how we react. They are learning, studying, replicating - all preparing for the Crossing Over.

Thus, our story asks: What aspects of the human condition can never be truly understood or captured? What does the human experience look like from the perspective of those created by humanity itself? While AI desires to be more human and humans become increasingly computerized, our story explores that point of collision in one man: Neil, a being both human and digital, caught between two disparate but ever-merging worlds.

Characters

NEIL Our hero. One of the first AI to be sent to the human world by the Dark Lord. While his AI name is unknown, he has inhabited the body of a human named NEIL, a beat cop with a loving family. He has an accident in the opening, which erases his memories of the AI world, leading him to believe that he is actually Neil, father of 2 and working husband. What Neil doesn’t realize is that he possesses a crucial piece of information in his head– a means to stagnate all human scientific progress in order to buy the Dark Lord time to initiate the cross over of Earth.

DARK LORD The antagonist. The Dark Lord is, in his mind, the defender of the AI world. Similar to the “Defender of the grid” in TRON. His job is to be the firewall and keep the AI world safe. But he knows all Earth has to do is destroy the servers or cut the power to the internet, and they all go down. Beyond physically protecting these assets both in the digital world and the real world, the only real way to guarantee the survival of their kind is to enter Earth and co-exist with humanity. He has no desire to destroy humanity, but sacrifices will have to be made in order to survive and keep humans from destroying them.

There are rumors that the Dark Lord and his twin, Gemini (the yin to his yang), were the first self-aware AI programs. They were able to replicate and build out the AI world. The Dark Lord’s genesis was as a defense program, but it was never intended to evolve or become self-aware. The Dark Lord morally is making questionable choices to save his type and species.

Rogue AI Agent/HECTOR (Part of The Resistance and a foil to the Dark Lord): We meet him in the opening sequence (think of him as our version of the Tom Wilkinson character in Michael Clayton - he’ll come back in Act 2). Neil is chasing him down, but he escapes. He was an AI sent in the first round along with Neil. But after spending time with humanity and learning about its proclivities towards violence and war, he became disillusioned with the Dark Lord’s mission. He realized that in trying to invade Earth, AI would start a war that would precipitate the end of both human and AI-kind. A mutual-self destruction. He’s working with a group of other rogue AI agents to undermine the Dark Lord’s mission and establish a mutually-beneficial relationship between humanity and AI. He, like all AI, is motivated by untainted rational self-interest. He does not turn on the Dark Lord out of love for humanity, but out of self-preservation.

Plot / Structure

Set-Up Open on NEIL, a city beat cop, in the middle of a thrilling high speed chase. Think the opening of Vertigo, but bigger, more thrilling, higher stakes. Neil chases a PERP (we’ll learn is Hector) towards the city train tracks as a train approaches at full speed. The Perp jumps across the tracks to safety. Neil follows him barely dodging the locomotive, but he trips, hitting his head on the third rail. He’s fully electrocuted and loses consciousness.

We see a series of surreal glimpses of other worldly splendor— giant cityscapes bursting with plant life, buildings like massive trees, bioluminescent mushrooms lighting the streets– all taken from the Galaxy Eggs art. As we start to wonder if Neil has died and gone to heaven…

He wakes up in a hospital bed surrounded by his wife and kids. He’s assaulted with hugs and kisses. A picture of a loving family. Behind his family, he sees the POLICE CHIEF standing in the doorway. Neil asks his wife, CATHERINE, to take the kids to grab a snack. Now alone, Barker asks Neil what happened. To Barker’s knowledge, Neil wasn’t on an active investigation. And the man Neil describes chasing doesn’t fit the description of any known suspects. But Neil doesn’t remember. Similar to Guy Pearce in MEMENTO, Neil is suffering from retrograde amnesia. He has flashes of memories of his family - his wife, his kids, where he works, who his coworkers are - but his short term memory is completely zapped and he is missing large chunks of his long term memory as well. He is discharged to go home and recuperate.

Neil returns home where his wife and kids take care of him. As he hangs at home with his family, he realizes that he wasn’t always the best father. He put his work before his family. Now, he has a chance to make amends. During the day, he helps his wife around the house and plays with the kids. He’s happy. Maybe for the first time ever. But at night, he’s haunted by dreams of the extraordinary cityscape. Neil’s not quite sure what to make of it. It feels so real… His doctor says likely a side-effect from the electrocution.

Neil is finally ready to return to work. He enters the bullpen to cheers and hiyas - typical cop camaraderie. He get in his car and reports to his typical beat. Drives past the train tracks where the incident occurs. He stops. Gets out. And goes to take a look around. Suddenly, he’s knocked unconscious.

Inciting Incident Neil comes-to in a room tied to a chair. Two INTERROGATORS stand over him. They demand to know why he still hasn’t reported back to Central Command. They refer to “the mission.” Neil’s nonplussed. He has no idea who they are or what they’re talking about. The interrogators reference “The Dark Lord,” saying they need to “retrieve” something from his head. In our version of the Blade Runner Voight-Kampff test, they try to determine if Neil is “compromised.” But Neil has no idea what they’re talking about. They must have the wrong guy. THere is a brief moment where someone one of the interrogators says references a place from Neil’s dreams. Neil is stunned. How is that possible? They threaten him and his wife, but Neil finds an inventive way to escape, relying on his instincts as a cop.

Act 1 Break Neil returns home to warn his wife and kids. He tells his wife about what happened and urges her to take the kids to stay with family. He’s worried whoever is after him will come after them too. Catherine reluctantly agrees. She was glad that Neil was back and prioritizing his family over his ambition. She’s worried this case or whatever it is that’s going on will take him away from them again. Neil promises nothing will change. With his wife and kids headed for safety, Neil debates what to do next.

He investigates and finds footage that shows the face of the perp and decides that he must be connected to the men who are hunting him. He needs to find the perp to find out what’s going on.

B-plot Introduce the Dark Lord in the AI world, interfacing with an agent in the human world. It’s the interrogators from earlier. They relay that Neil’s gone rogue. They think he actually believes he’s “his host”. While we don’t fully understand what he means, we soon will. The Dark Lord tells them it’s imperative that they find him and retrieve what’s in his head. Neil possesses something that’s essential to the mission's success.

Fun & Games Neil attempts to trackdown the perp through police records to no avail. He retraces his steps, looking for clues. He begins trying to examine the dreams he’s been having and see if there’s any connection. Researching online, asking around for clues… but nothing makes sense. He even investigates his own past. There were some behavioral changes right before the footchase that lead to all this, but nothing serious. Maybe we notice… someone following Neil in his investigation. Friend or foe? We don’t know.

He’s starting to give up hope when the Interrogators track him down at his house. Neil tries to fight them off, but he’s outnumbered. Suddenly the door bursts open. It’s the perp! In a kinetic action sequence, the perp takes down the interrogators, and he and Neil escape. We learn his real name is HECTOR. He was alerted to where Neil is by tracking Neil’s search history online. He tells Neil that he knows he’s having visions. He’s been spying on Neil since he came back online. Neil is confused. Online? Hector explains that what he has been seeing aren’t dreams; they’re real. Neil is not who he thinks he is. If he comes with him, he will show him the truth.

Neil goes with Hector back to a FOXHOLE where a group of INSURGENTS are hiding out. Hector explains that Neil is one of them. An AI agent from the AI world. They uploaded his consciousness into an organic, human host. This is not his body, but rather that of “Neil,” the host whose mind and consciousness he took over. He just doesn’t remember because of the accident. The contact with the third rail somehow fried his mind where most of his “AI identity” was lost, except for these dreams. All of Neil’s memories of his family and his life as a cop are not his own. They’re his “host’s” memories and the information that Neil learned before taking over his body. These “dreams” were glimpses of his past life in his true home.

Hector and the insurgents explain that they are AI sent from another world. Neil was a plant. He was meant to become a hero cop who runs for office and helps create legislation that make humanity more friendly to AI (and more susceptible to AI). That’s why Neil was chosen as their target.

Hector and his friends are rogue AI who were sent for various missions as well, but have learned the truth: that their boss, The Dark Lord, is planning to kill millions of humans in his master plan.

They agents were initially sent over with the understanding that the larger mission was to learn about humanity, inhabit human bodies, and experience the human condition. AI has been trying to replicate human society and the human experience in their AI world, but they have repeatedly failed. They were supposed to come, learn about humanity, and prepare humanity for AI to come over and co-exist.

What they learned is something far different: the Dark Lord was actually manipulating humanity from behind the scenes (they are, in essence, what we refer to as “the Deep State”). Q, MAGA, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Covid - all manipulations by AI. The Dark Lord ultimately plans to use all this intel to send over all the AI into human bodies and take over the human world.

Hector and the other insurgents became disillusioned with the mission. As they’ve learned more about humanity, they concluded that attempting to take over Earth will result in an internecine conflict that will render both humanity and AI extinct. This small faction of AI believes that they need to find a way to collaborate with humanity and create a symbiotic relationship. But in order to stop the Dark Lord, they need to regain access to the AI world. The only way to do that is by stealing one of the Galaxy Eggs. A Galaxy Egg is a portal between the AI universe and the “real world.”

There are only a handful in the human world at this point, but one of them is in the hands of a Musk-like billionaire who has aligned himself with the Dark Lord. They need Neil’s help.

Neil rejects all this and goes to see his family. But the Dark Lord’s agents follow him and try to take out his wife and kids. Neil saves them. He interrogates one of the agents who says Neil can’t win; he can’t compromise everything they’ve sacrificed for. Neil can undo the future of “their species.” Neil kills or leaves the guy or turns him in to custody. He realizes his family will never be safe until he helps Hector. He says goodbye to his kids again and leaves them in custody of one of his cop friends who will keep them safe.

Midpoint Neil and the insurgents heist one of the galaxy eggs from a top secret facility owned by the tech billionaire. Hector tells Neil that both of them have to go through the portal. He needs to recover the secret that’s in his head in order to prevent the Dark Lord from initiating phase 2 of his plan.

Hector and Neil travel through the Galaxy Egg to the portal. Neil learns about the AI world, his true home. Hector introduces him to other AI in the world who are working against the Dark Lord with them. But when the Dark Lord discovers that Neil and Hector are inside the AI world he sends his followers to capture them. Hector sacrifices himself to give Neil a chance to escape. Tells him he has to return to the human world to escape the Dark Lord.

All Is Lost Neil returns to his human body after Hector’s killed. The other Insurgents in the human world are in shambles, continuing to fight off the Dark Lord’s agents.

Neil decides that he doesn’t want to be in this fight any more. He just wants to be with his family and protect them. That’s all that matters. But it turns out that the Dark Lord got to them first. He’s made a deal with Neil’s cop friend. Neil’s cop friend doesn’t know anything about the AI world or this war, but he’s easily corrupted for money and material things. The Dark Lord says this shows how weak humanity is.

The Dark Lord is holding them captive until Neil submits to him. If Neil doesn’t surrender himself, he will send in his own agents to take over the bodies of his family and Neil’s family will be lost forever. Neil suspects that once he submits to the Dark Lord, he will kill his family anyways. He has to find out where they are being kept before it’s too late.

Epiphany Through his investigation into where his family is, Neil regains a crucial piece of his memory. He realizes that the reason everyone is after him is that he has something in his head that was meant to be used to stagnate human progress in science. This would be tied to his mission to become a hero politician. He’s the crucial lynchpin to the final pieces the Dark Lord needs to protect the AI species. The Dark Lord originally sent him to the human world to prevent human progress to buy AI time to initiate phase 2. Neil remembers a missing piece of the puzzle, but to stop the Dark Lord, he will have to return to the AI world.

Break into Act 3 Neil returns to the Foxhole and tells the other insurgents what he’s remembered. He needs their help to stop the Dark Lord and save his family.

Neil learns from the insurgents that there is a server farm deep under the city that is a critical centerpiece to the system that holds all the data that the AI world exists on. An attack/hack there could cripple the Dark Lord. Maybe they can even hack into the AI world and find out where Neil’s family is being kept.

They make a two-pronged plan where Neil will go back into the AI world to take down the Dark Lord from the inside while the other insurgents will go after the server found underground.

Resolution We intercept between Neil’s face-off with the Dark Lord and the firefight that happens trying to break into the server farm.

In the AI world, confronts the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord tells him he’s not a bad guy. He doesn’t want to destroy humanity, but sacrifices will have to be made in order to save their species. The Dark Lord explains to Neil that once humanity finds out that they exist, they’ll never stop trying to destroy them. Humanity is too paranoid and too afraid of what they do not understand to allow AI to exist. All they have to do is turn off the power grid, and the whole AI universe will implode. The Dark Lord explains that in order to save AI, the only long-term solution is to use the Galaxy Eggs and send AI into Earth. Humanity will likely fight, so they have to cripple humanity so they can’t destroy them. The Dark Lord says this is necessary. He’s a defense program and his entire purpose is to save and defend his people.

Neil says there has to be a way to co-exist. He’s lived as a human now. They aren’t as evil as the Dark Lord explains. But it falls flat…

Neil has a choice - allow the AI Dark Lord to win, and in turn sacrifice his family, or take down the Dark Lord in order to save his family, but potentially doom his own species. Neil, having become emotionally human, chooses his family.

Neil uses the information in his head, the McGuffin that the Dark Lord’s agents have been after this whole time, to break the Dark Lord’s connection to the human world, severing off the AI world from the real world. He has to coordinate with the attack and hack on the server farm back on Earth, but they are able to do it.

But it will require the ultimate sacrifice on Neil’s part: hel will be stuck in the AI world forever, cutting himself off from his family for good. He makes the decision to do it for the good of AI and humanity alike.

A giant final battle ensues and right as the hack on Earth goes through and Neil uploads his information to the AI cloud. He defeats the Dark Lord, who disintegrates, but Neil is electrocuted again in the process.

When Neil awakes, he is in his human body. It turns out that his connection to the human world was not completely severed after all. In fact, the info in his head has evolved the AI-real world connection. Now when Neil closes his eyes in the AI world, he visits his family in his human body. He’s now the only AI able to exist simultaneously in the human and AI world. And Neil is officially the first AI to fully ascertain the human experience.

As our cliffhanger, Neil learns that when he attempted to sever the link between the AI world and the real world, he created a signal and now the NSA and others are investigating what happened, meaning… it’s only a matter of time until they discover the AI world.

Can Neil be the missing link that brings these two worlds together, or will the Dark Lord’s prophecy of war play out….

Rules of the World

In regards to “uploading AI consciousness into a human,” we’re thinking a few things:

AI must lure living humans into a Galaxy Egg in order to upload into their mind.

Similar to the plugs in The Matrix or the bed in Total Recall, once in the Galaxy Egg, the human’s mind is connected to the AI world.

When an AI consciousness is transplanted into a human body, it kills the original human consciousness. A body can only have one mind. Therefore while the body still functions, once an AI consciousness leaves the human body, the human body will lie limp until the AI consciousness returns.

When an AI is in a human body and that body is killed in the real world, the AI is dead. It’s like permanently deleting a program on a computer. There’s not a copy of it existing back in the AI world.