Set in a not too distant dark future where memories are stolen and sold for voyeuristic pleasures - a mental health nurse and her son are taken by a nefarious memory and human trafficking cartel with the sole purpose of removing their memories and selling them into slavery... 

SYNOPSIS:

Set in a dark uncertain future where technology to remove people’s memories has been developed to assist people with mental health issues like soldiers suffering with PTSD. But when the technology is stolen by an underground crime operation headed by a distinguished gentleman going by the name of LOGAN, they plot to steal people’s memories - selling them for voyeuristic pleasures to the highest bidders. Stripping away victims memories effectively leaving them an empty shell devoid of memories and thus now memory free to be sold on the black market as a blank vessel for devious suitors to do with what they please, this nefarious process is called deletion…

When LAURA THOMAS, a Community Psychiatric Nurse, and her young son OLIVER are selected for deletion, a brut enforcer DOMINIC is deployed to capture them. Dominic watches from afar during the day, preying and waiting for the right time to execute his job. With the lights now out and Laura now settled in bed, Dominic seizes his opportunity and enters the house, targeting Laura first by entering her room while she sleeps. She wakes in a fright to find the foreboding menacing shadowed frame of Dominic looming over her. Laura puts up a fight and manages to get out of the room with one thought on her mind, saving her son. But Dominic is too powerful and sedates her. Now fading and crawling on the floor, with her last ounce of strength she attempts to get to him, Laura’s eyes fading on a frightened Oliver standing in his bedroom doorway…

Laura wakes with a thud, disorientated and strapped to an old dental type chair in a dark underground room. A creepy man known as THE EXTRACTOR sits at a computer typing away ignoring her pleas. He attaches a device to her head, tightening the screws into her scalp which draw blood. Turns back to his computer and fires up the device instantly sending a shock to Laura’s system as he begins to scan her memory. The process is painful and deeply traumatic as Laura’s memories are extracted and saved into file format and sent to a central hub for processing and sale distribution….

Laura wakes in a small dark cell, cold and disorientated on the floor. Her screams for help get the attention of an American girl in the next cell, ASHLEY. The Extractor enters the cell, sedates Laura and takes her away for phase two memory erasing. But Laura is a fighter, a mother determined to find her son, and manages to escape after faking a seizure then knocking The Extractor out. Laura flees the cell to discover she is in some sort of underground bunker full of rows and rows of cell doors. She desperately tries each one in the hope of finding Oliver, most empty but she does find Ashley. Unable to open the door and spooked by the sound of someone approaching, Laura vows to return for Ashley. Still unable to locate Oliver she makes her escape onto higher ground and flees into the surrounding woodland…

Arriving at the facility and finding the Extractor, Dominic heads out in pursuit of the fleeing Laura. Now struggling with extreme headaches and fragmented flash memories due to the memory erasing, Laura blacks out waking in the refuge of a nearby secluded farmhouse. With no phone signal and the phone line seemingly now down, Laura fears the worse and tells the farmer they have to head to the nearest police station. But as they make their escape Dominic arrives and a fight ensues allowing Laura to slip away. As dawn breaks, she makes it to the Police station only to be visited by a lawyer working for Logan who tells her she must do everything he says if she wants to see Oliver again…

JOSEPH HERNANDEZ, mid-forties swarthy American, arrives in the UK to hunt down his missing daughter, Ashley. After getting some information from Ashley’s last known place of residence, it leads him to an underground club, ‘Memories of Others’. The club is a haven for memory deviants who want to experience stolen memories of others with an array of memories are on offer, catering for a wide range of clientele. When Hernandez walks into one room projecting memories onto a wall, to his horror he realises the memories are his daughter’s! After a fight with security, he is ejected from the club told to never return. Enraged he heads to the nearest Police station where the story now meets with the previous he crosses paths with Laura as she leaves. Sensing Laura knows Ashley following a brief exchange, he follows her as she is bundled into the back of a car and driven away. Hernandez tails the car, tracking footsteps to the secluded underground facility. But on entering the facility he gets into a fight with Dominic who knocks him out. Now Joseph and Laura are held in the facility and face a race against time to find their children before their memories are erased and thus becoming a blank canvas devoid of any trace of their lives…

Deletion story structure is reminiscent of a book split into chapters with fragmented, overlapping storylines that piece together in the storytelling vein of Memento, Reservoir Dogs, and Pulp Fiction.

Quarterfinalist, Shore Scripts Feature Contest 2023

Quarterfinalist, ScreenCraft Sci-Fi & Fantasy Screenwriting Competition 2022