The year
is 1992 in northern Idaho, for the past hundreds of years a secluded
Native American family has been making illegal alcohol in the
mountains and selling it to people around the northern United States
area and Canada. The oldest daughter, Koen, has been learning
how to make the alcohol her whole life along side her sister, KaNee.
They are learning from their grandmother who is the sole caretaker
for them. The rest of their family have fallen victim to
accidents that occurred while making the illegal alcohol and in other
various accidents. It is up to the grandmother Nari, to teach the
family trade to the only remaining off-spring and to earn money to
support them. Nari's whole life has been surrounded by the creation
of this alcohol that goes by the name Trace-Maker, she travels to
check points placed throughout the forests and valleys to communicate
with other people. Their family is very isolated and relies on each
other heavily to survive, why their family is so isolated is not
known to the two girls. Nari has been hiding them in the mountains
away from society in hopes that they will continue the family
tradition, but also to keep them safe from the rest of the world
because they are descendents of an ancient tribe that is endangered
of being erased by the ever growing technological world. The
existence of advancements in technology are not what threatens the
family, Nari has certain knowledge about Trace-Maker and if it falls
into the wrong hands it could mean big problems for other families
and communities like theirs.
Koen is
a 15 year old Native American girl from northern Idaho, she is about
5' 3” and 110 lbs with a slender build, she has thick dark hair cut
into blunt bangs above her eyes and feathers off around her shoulders
in no controlled way. She has a favorite jean jacket she wears that
has different patches all over it like a billboard of her
personality. Her sister's name is KaNee, she is 13 years old and
about 5'6” and 130 lbs, she is taller and stronger than her older
sister, her hair is formed into different sized dreadlocks and is
shaved short in the back. The two have spent a lot of time in the
forests and mountains of the area so are very active. Their
grandmother Nari is in her early seventies, is about 5 feet tall and
100 lbs, she is relatively small but very strong physically. Her
hair is mostly all gray and white tied back into three braids that go
down her back. The house they live in is only accessible by foot or
horse back, the house itself is interesting because it has many
hidden passages throughout it that lead to other rooms or are simply
short cuts. The house was created to be confusing for anybody who
may break in or stumble upon it would not be able to get to every
space easily. The two girls do not even know about all of the hidden
spaces in and around their property.
While
all of their other family have died in various different accidents,
Koen and KaNee were lucky enough to play different roles in the
creation of Trace-Maker that were not as dangerous. Now that they
are the only ones in their family left they are forced to be involved
in the whole process. There are only three able bodies now, not
counting their three horses and two goats that serve as
transportation and a means of milk and cheese. They are not able to
make as big of a batch of Trace-Maker as in the past with the help of
more people so they are forced to create in smaller batches.
Trace-Maker is illegal because it puts people in a trance like state
that can create lucid dreams, but since it is unregulated it can be
dangerous if not made correctly and some people never recover from
the trance. The people that never recover from the trance are
thought to be forever trapped in their first lucid dream environment
and are unable to obtain control of it, whatever idea or thing that
they created now evolves into their surroundings. Their physical
body remains in a sleeping state but the hair all over their body
starts to grow continuously until they die, so their eye lashes for
example may be four feet long or longer depending on how long they
are alive in the sleep state. Not many people live long in the sleep
state because it is expensive to take care of them and no one has
ever recovered from it so it is seemed to be non-reversible. The
main market of people that buy Trace-Maker are very rich people
because it is rare and hard to find. Trace-Maker brewers drop off
their batches at check points where another person picks it up to
travel to another check point where another person will pick it up
and eventually sell, the partners never see each other in order to
conceal it's secrecy, the money is exchanged in the same way.
The
story begins three years after the most recent death of the family;
the girl's aunt Lata died in a kidnapping indecent where she was
forced to drink faulty Trace-Maker that forced her into the sleep
trance forever and her body was never found. The three left have
spent the last three years very quietly in attempts to avoid
harassment from the same people who kidnapped Lata. Nari believes in
her heart that Lata is not dead but lost in her dream state and has
an idea of how to communicate with her. There are a lot of things
Nari has not told Koen and KaNee but with the current events she
feels this may be their only hope of keeping their culture alive.
Nari has a secret room that is accessible through a passage way
inside of her bathroom mirror only able to open at 3:05pm of each
day. Inside the hidden room are various objects and personal things,
one of which is a special Trace-Maker recipe book. Inside the book
there is a recipe called Maker-Trace, if one drinks enough
Maker-Trace it is possible to see things the naked-sober eye cannot,
one of those things are the people who are trapped in their sleep
states. The people in their sleep state that are trapped in their
lucid environment take on whatever form they were in at the moment
that they could not come back into the sober-world. The major draw
back of Maker-Trace is that the amount needed is large and at which
point whomever has consumed that amount will also be drunk. Nari has
to make a decision about what to do now that she presumed to be the
only living being with this knowledge and recipe of Maker-Trace; does
she attempt to find Lata alone, although the process needed to make
the drink is very dangerous to do alone, or does she involve her
grandchildren even though it is highly dangerous and meant to remain
a secret for the fear that if the recipe were to fall into the wrong
hands all hell would break lose with it's power.
Nari
decides that she is getting too old and weak to do this alone, she
needs Koen and KaNee to help her but what she does not expect is that
the girls will take over the task of controlling the effects
Maker-Trace. Nari spends time teaching them how to make it and drink
it safely, it is all in moderation. Koen and KaNee learn at an
early age what it is like to be highly intoxicated by consuming
Maker-Trace, like everyone's first drunk experience mistakes are
made. Over time and many, many days of drinking the alcohol Koen and
KaNee learn how to drink enough that both of them simultaneously will
be able to be in the right state to search for their aunt Lata. They
travel throughout the area guided by sober Nari as their sober-world
protector searching for clues and directions of where Lata may be or
what really happened to her.
This
idea for a science fiction film is meant to focus on the idea of
culture and information being passed on by generations and that
generations can exist in different states of mind and body that can
be controlled by a substance but it has yet to be controlled ideally.
One action produces another and finding the sweet spot that will
create a desired outcome is the trick, this idea strives to find the
sweet spot of communication.
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