Original, full length feature
Drama.
Log line
A persistent investigative TV journalist discovers something disturbing about the leading presidential candidate, she is determined to discover his secret, but finds out too late.
Alternative log line
A journalist is drawn to the president elect and when she discovers that he has a dark secret, her curiosity competes with her infatuation.
The Controller
Synopsis
An AI story from a human perspective
The year is 2030, the race for the presidency in America is on.
Jenni Q, a determined young TV journalist, attends a rally where the unmarried leading presidential candidate, John Melville is addressing a crowd. He notices her in the crowd – immediate chemistry.
Also in the crowd is Jess, an attractive seventeen-year-old girl who claims to be his daughter.
In a security office three security guards watch supporters crowding around their candidate on three monitors, alarmed by a daughter coming out of the woodwork.
In a darkened room the mysterious Mr X, sucks on his trade mark Havana as he watches the the same scene on a large TV set. He is alarmed at Jenni Q’s trying to get Melville’s attention. (The security office and the Havana smoking man are present throughout the story.)
Jenni Q manages to speak to Jess but she’s too overwrought and confused to tell Jenni Q anything more than that her name is Jess Dawson and that for years she thought her father was dead.
Because she is both attracted to and curious about him Jenni Q requests an assignment to research John Melville for a major broadcast feature. She follows him around on his campaign meetings and uses the first opportunity to find out if he is married. She also finds out he has an uncanny genius with calculating large sums instantly without looking at a calculator. Can the future president really be a savant or is he a genius? She is determined to get to the bottom of it.
Mr X instructs Carstens, the campaign manager, to announce and arrange Melville’s marriage. Melville objects and Carstens arranges an hour in his busy scedule to meet and get to know his future bride. He is not amused but obliges.
When Jenni Q starts digging deeper into Melville’s past and searching for information on his family she is threatened by an unknown voice on the phone and once in a bar by one of the guards from the security room.
After determined trying, Jenni Q gets permission from his reluctant PR company to interview Melville. He instructs Carstens, his campaign manager, that he will meet Jenni Q first and without any other journalists who requested meetings.
It now becomes clear that Mr X not only controls Melville but also his security contingent who is more than just his guards and that he is disturbed and puzzled that Melville is showing signs of independent thinking.
Jenni Q meets Melville in his hotel’s lounge for the interview. They connect strongly and have dinner.
Jenni Q is very conflicted. The strong mutual attraction between them and his hidden, suspicious past competes in her mind.
Mr X calls a board meeting to discuss Melville’s obsession with Jenni Q. They decided to kill her.
Jenni Q gets a mysterious call from a man that tells her that Melville is something much more dangerous than a savant and asks her to meet him in an hour’s time and to be sure she’s not followed.
As the mysterious caller approaches her, he is killed by an unseen shooter. Jenni Q finds out his name and follows up on his back ground. She finds an ex-wife who is afraid to be involved and checks his computer, she forwards some of his emails to herself. When she leaves the dead man’s apartment, two men in a black SUV goes into the apartment building and leaves later with the computer and box files.
Jenni Q goes to Bright Water Creek, the name of the town she found on the dead man’s computer to look for Melville’s family. She meets with an old woman who lives isolated in a forest and might know about the Melville family. The old woman chases her off with a gun.
Back at the office her report-back meeting with her boss is interrupted by a younger colleague, Billy, who wants to be involved in the case. Jenni Q can’t stand him and refused.
Knowing that the old woman holds the key to the Melville mystery, she goes back. A black SUV follows her. A skipped four-way stop street and the cops stopping Jenni Q’s car interferes and they lost her.
She manages to convince the old woman to talk to her. She finds out that the old woman’s name is Dawson, the same as the seventeen-year-old that claims to be Melville’s daughter. Jenni Q shows her a photograph of Melville and discovers that he is the woman’s dead son, Johnny and that she brough up his daughter Jess because the mother died before Johnny. She lost all photographs in a fire years before and sends Jenni Q to the local school to find a photograph of Johnny Dawson.
After a search the headmaster finds an archived year book with a photograph of Johnny Dawson. The serious face of a much younger John Melville looks back at her.
Outside the black SUV waits for and follows her at a distant. That evening a shot is fired into the dining room and hits a wall mirror behind her. In inner turmoil, Jenni Q now refuses to answer any of John Melville’s frequent calls.
She checks more of the emails she forwarded from the dead man’s computer and finds one send to a Dr Helen Mangold. Jenni Q visits her to learn more about savants. Dr Mangold tells her that Melville might be a prodigious savant. She gives Jenni Q a brown envelope which the dead man has left for her with the instruction that it must be given to her in the event of his death. Dr Mangold attends the next campaign meeting where she comes to the conclusion that Melville is not a savant of any kind.
That night Jenni Q’s cottage is destroyed by a bomb, she is not hurt. From a neighbor’s phone she tries to call for help from colleagues but the only one answering is Billy who rushes to her aid. The brown envelope has slid underneath the front seat and unopened it is forgotten in the ensuing chaos. She still does not answer the calls from Melville, however in the security room, the guards are listening in on Melville’s telephone calls and his obsession with her is confirmed.
Jenni Q searches for the brown envelope, she doesn’t look under the front seat.
The next day Jenni Q finds out that Dr Mangold was killed in a suspicious car accident and that her boss has been arrested by security police for his own safety. Jenni Q knows it is not the police, but don’t know who, and can’t figure out how it could be linked to the deaths around her and the explosion in her cottage.
While talking on her phone while driving a large truck speeded into her car deliberately and left her unconscious. A black SUV, close behind the truck abducted her. She wakes up in a hospital-like ward where she realizes that she is a prisoner.
John Melville becomes the president elect of the powerful nation in the world. Mr X and his committee have arrived.
Jenni Q, still in her bloodstained clothes escapes by crawling along the ceiling beams, and is again helped by her nemesis, Billy. They opened the brown envelope and find the documents on the back ground research and the history of John Melville. They discover that he is an Interface, a human with an AI chip implanted in his brain which is controlled by an outside source which gives the controller absolute control over the world, its nations and resources. The most powerful man in the world is now under the control of Artificial Intelligence.
The race is on to make this public knowledge. No TV station, newspapers or any other media is willing to take it on. While Jenni Q and Billy search for someone to take up the challenge, John Melville is invited to be the keynote speaker at the International Summit on Artificial Intelligence. The controllers accept the invite and the speech is prepared for implantation. This will give the controllers unlimited funds for expanding their influence further until the financial institutions is under their control.
While Melville is speaking at the summit, a small middle eastern news station, local branch is keen to make this explosive discovery public and so undermine their enemy, the United States and their western allies.
The news go public and is taken up by every TV station world-wide, the print media as well social media.
But it is too late.
