The Killing Dream

The Killing Dream – short synopsis Logline - In a future where a deadly STD has made sex illegal, a technophobic cop with an axe to grind has to find out who put a killer virus in the international virtual sex network before more people die. Several decades from now, rampant sexually transmitted diseases have made real sex illegal and any kind of physical touch something to be avoided. Babies are born via test tube. Vice cops monitor sex activity with highly sensitive endorphin monitors. SexNet provides the equipment, the artificial intelligence, and the global virtual network to fulfill everyone's fantasies. An assortment of technologies delivers the experience to your body and brain to simulate the real thing. Big business and big government work together to keep order and the untreatable diseases from spreading. Even the most intimate aspects of humanity are monitored and controlled. Those who break the law are sent off to spend the rest of their days in penal colonies. This status quo is broken when a deadly virus is unleashed in SexNet, turning dreams into killer nightmares. Nemo Markonin, a technophobic, old-school cop is thrust into the case when a man turns up dead while plugged into SexNet. His wife died while she was driving her car and she swerved to avoid hitting a sex addict who wandered into the street while wearing AI SexNet goggles. His dislike for anything that isn’t late 20th Century keeps him from fully adapting to the world as it is. The circumstances of the man's death cause Nemo to consider it a murder. Jonathan Banner, head of PR for SexNet wants to keep the situation quiet and consider it an accident due to an equipment malfunction. Another death of a woman wearing SexNet AI goggles while walking in a park, and a mass set of deaths at a night club soon put Nemo firmly on the case, and an admission by Banner that they may have a virus in their network. Nemo must reluctantly partner with Gail Vanderpool, a cybercom expert with SexNet, to solve the murders and find the virus before more people die. As Nemo and Gail meet one roadblock after another, they discover that a research team that was working on a serum that would destroy all known STDs had been quashed by SexNet. One of the scientists on the team was committed to a penal colony where he had slowly gone insane, another had become a teaching professor, and the youngest and most brilliant – Tim Walden - had died in a lab fire. Nemo relentlessly keeps poking around and realizes that Walden didn’t die. He faked his death, and became a woman named Kris who worked on the team at SexNet that was trying to find the virus in their network. She created the virus to destroy the company for hiding the serum she helped create and for locking up the love of her life in the penal colony. Nemo’s discovery is too late to keep Banner from convincing Gail to have neural links permanently implanted in her brain so she can jack herself into the SexNet network to try to destroy the virus. That plan backfires when Kris kidnaps Nemo as he's trying to get to SexNet headquarters before the virus destroys Gail. When Nemo comes to, he finds himself connected to the network where the virus forces him into nightmarish visions of his wife’s death and his own demons. With Gail and Nemo nearly overcome by the virus, Banner and technicians at SexNet finally locate the virus and try to destroy it. Their attempts cause massive electric surges at Kris's lab and SexNet, killing Kris, but freeing Gail and Nemo. Before Kris dies, she tells Nemo about the serum and that Banner has been hiding it at SexNet headquarters the entire time to be sure it doesn’t become public and SexNet doesn’t fail. Nemo escapes Kris’ lab and tracks down Banner at SexNet headquarters trying to escape the burning building in an auto piloted helicopter with the serum. In a fight on the roof, Nemo narrowly escapes the helicopter’s rotors, recovers the serum, and forces Banner to fall to his death. SexNet goes up in flames, Nemo and Gail share a kiss, and the serum promises a return for people to touch and be intimate again.