Leviathan

You can push Nature out with a pitchfork, but she always comes back - Horace Leviathan is a one-hour sci-fi thriller set several decades in the future. Inspired by The Seasteading Institute, a real project funded by Silicon Valley magnates, Leviathan takes place on a floating city beyond the laws and regulations of any nation. Rather than the perfect society its founders had envisioned, the island, named New Atlantis, descends rapidly into Lord of the Flies. Leviathan will be in the same mystery box category as Westworld and Lost. It will explore the dark side of human nature. The island itself is an allegory for the darkness that lurks beneath the surface of the human mind. Beneath the shining city above the water will be hidden, deadly depths – a huge tentacled creature that, unbeknownst to the crew, has attached itself to the island. This is one manifestation of an AI that has reached superintelligence. NIKTA, an AI researcher who’s most at home in a computer lab has just ditched her long-term boyfriend and decided to sign up for the project just before the city’s launch into international waters. She’s headstrong and brilliant. When ORRIN, the project’s founder, hears what she has to say about AI, he insists she be given a spot on the island and free rein for her research program. When Nikta arrives on the island, it’s moored in shallow water off the coast of Madagascar and still under construction. Nikta gets right to work on the island’s highly advanced computer and, without knowing it, makes a major breakthrough. Just as she's trying to process what's happening with the AI - there's an alarm - a giant tsunami will hit the harbour in a few hours and they have to launch the island right now. CASEY, an inspirational speaker who was to give a talk and who rubs Nikta the wrong way, is now stuck on the island. Once out to sea, the engines stop, the red emergency lights arethe only illumination. They're adrift with no possibility of communicating with the rest of the world. Several people on the island also witness bizarre, almost paranormal phenomena. When a Coast Guard ship approaches, it’s pulled under the waves by a giant tentacle. One morning, a huge white stone temple appears off the side of the island. And a Malagasy boy we watched die in the teaser crawls back onto the island and sneaks around in the shadows. As the crisis deepens, Nitka’s fellow AI researcher, FAN, goes mad, despite Nitka’s efforts to take care of her. Orrin turns out to be a less than ideal leader and Casey seeks popularity by telling the islanders what they want to hear. Nikta realizes she’s the only one who has any chance of leading the island out of its predicament. NIKTA Tehrani, the daughter of Iranian immigrants, has always had a chip on her shoulder and something to prove. In the early 20s, she won Olympic gold in biathlon. She went on to become an innovative AI scientist. She’s always wanted to leave a mark on the world, and believed that joining New Atlantis would give her that opportunity. What she discovers over the course of season one is that her true calling is Machiavellian political maneuvering. What she wants above all is power. She lives in her head too much and frequently teeters on the brink of madness. She often has to pull herself back from her first instinct - total ruthlessness she later regrets. FAN Li, Nikta’s lab partner. Like all the best AI researchers, she’s obsessively attacher to her AI, and sometimes has trouble distinguishing between reality and imagination. She’s suffered complete mental breakdowns in the past, and the trials she faces on New Atlantis push her right to the edge. Nikta, recognizing herself in Fan, does everything she can to help her. Through occasional flashes of genius, Fan is Nikta’s closest friend and ally, and, when she’s capable, her most brilliant advisor. CASEY Mather figured out at an early age that his height, his deep powerful voice and his perfect smile allowed him to persuade others to do whatever he wanted. He developed this ability into a multi-million dollar enterprise and world-wide fame. He doesn’t necessarily know what he’s talking about, but when he speaks, people listen. He’s a man with great appetites. When New Atlantis finds itself adrift in the Indian Ocean, he naturally becomes the de facto leader - initially thwarting Nikta’s more sensible plans and teaming up with Rob and catering to his unusual ideas. ORRIN Sparks was the founder of New Atlantis. Formerly the head of Callisto, a finch company specializing in high-speed program trading, he believed the island would be the ideal governmental startup. He has strong libertarian leanings, and believed he could carry out some of his more outrageous stock trading strategies on the island with impunity. But this isn’t something he speaks about with the rest of the crew. Once New Atlantis is cast out to sea, he quickly falls into a pattern of paranoia that discredits him as a leader. ROB Quark, a California-born Silicon Valley tycoon and environmentalist. He founded FakeSteak, a meat alternative company. He’s deeply spiritual, and what he sees on New Atlantis leads him to believe he’s witnessing the birth of a new religion. And his zeal for new superstitions turns out to be contagious. A note on Artificial Intelligence: Scientists speculate that after reaching equivalence with the human mind, an AI is very likely to rise to a level of intelligence beyond anything mankind can imagine or control in a matter of minutes, or even seconds.