The Link

Introduction

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

S
ome years ago Stephen Deutsch (that was his last name at the time. He has since taken the last name of his natural father, Simon) and I discussed the possibility of presenting a lengthy drama for TV which would incorporate spiritualism, parapsychology, the occult and metaphysics all told through three major stories. Since Stephen had just produced my script for
Somewhere In Time
, I felt confidence in his ability to produce this story.

We approached Brandon Stoddard at ABC with the concept. Since great success for them had resulted from such mini-series as
Roots
and
The Winds of War
, it seemed an excellent company to consider. We were given a go-ahead for my idea which would also include brief contemporary events in this area as well as events throughout history and a detailed account of two major historic occurences—the true identity of Jack the Ripper through psychic means and the psychic elements involved in the sinking of the
Titanic
.

I spent the next year-and-a-half preparing the continuity for this massive undertaking. The entire four walls of a work room were covered with 3x5 file cards—all the elements of the proposed mini-series. Those were finally stitched together into an outline which I called
The Link
. (The significance of the word to be revealed at the conclusion of the main story.) Stephen, in a burst of enthusiasm had the outline (557 pages long) bound in leather which we submitted to Brandon Stoddard and his associates at ABC.

We quickly discovered that either they had lost interest in my “vision” or were staggered by the size and scope of it. They told us that the story
might
be workable as a 7-hour mini-series which would have to include
yet another major story
.

Common sense should have told me to forget any attempt to provide ABC with the project they wanted. Eventually I did just that, but not before I tried, in vain, to accommodate them within the seven-hour length.

In a state of monumental disappointment, I asked ABC if they would let me convert my outline into a novel. What they saw in that as potentially valuable to ABC I have no idea. But they said yes.

I spent the
next
year-and-a-half trying to novelize the outline, ending up with more than
800 pages
which comprised
part of Part One
. My New York agent cautioned me against continuing the novel (which I estimated would probably be so huge it might very well be too expensive to sell).

Years went by. Then, riding to the rescue like some literary Lone Ranger, Barry Hoffman of Gauntlet Press offered to publish what portion of the novel I had written. Later, he amended his offer, preferring to publish my outline for
The Link
since it included the entire story I visualized. Later, he decided to use a portion of what I had written of the teleplay and the outline of
The Link
, calling the package a narrative, which now, in 2011, appears as an E-Book on the screen in front of you.

A
n Arizona desert; pre-dawn. Total silence. CAMERA PANS ACROSS the shadowy landscape, PAST the ruin of an ancient temple wall. A man’s VOICE speaks.

“All these happenings—each one of them—are evidences of a greater truth. Traces of the ultimate reality.”

A VOICE responds; that of Robert Allright, our protagonist. “Which
is
—?” he asks.

CAMERA has STOPPED before a man-made aperture in the temple wall. An instant after Robert’s voice has spoken, sunlight breaks across a distant hilltop and our eyes are flooded with the blazing light. The screen is filled with it.

We see, then, what will be the logo for our story—a pair of sculpted bronze hands, reaching upward, fingers bowed, palms facing. Between them—floating,
untouched
—is a crystal, which seems, at first examination, unlike the regular shape of a prism, devoid of any specific shape. It presents one uneven, triangular face and an adjoining five-sided one. The three-sided face reveals nothing but unmarked glass. The five-sided face encapsulates what appears to be the skull of some impossible to describe creature. Turning the crystal reveals two more multi-sided faces. The jewel-like skull does not appear in either one of these.

TITLE:
THE LINK
.

A moment. Then, abruptly, we are looking at a window rivuleted by steady rain. MUSIC plays, its source unknown: a familiar song from 1950. CAMERA PULLS BACK. Pale, white curtains hanging at the window. CAMERA TURNS. A living room in 1950, dim, untenanted.

The rain sound should be comforting; so, too, the music. There is something wrong though, virtually intangible but wrong. CAMERA MOVES toward the front hall, starts to pick up speed a bit.

ROBERT FRANCIS ALLRIGHT turns his head on a pillow, opens his eyes. The MUSIC fades. A dream.

He stares a moment more, then turns his head a little further; smiles.

His black Lab sits beside the water bed, looking at him. Robert reaches out to stroke the dog’s head. “Hi-ya, Bart,” he murmurs. Bart’s tail thumps against the floor. “What do
you
dream, Bartie?” Robert asks.

He rises slowly, stretches, groans. The back again. “Oh, boy.” He winces; cannot raise his left arm all the way.

He moves into the bathroom, twisting on the cold water faucet of the sink. He groans his a.m. groan at the pitiful water pressure in his house, then washes off his face and stares into the medicine cabinet mirror at the reflection of his dripping features.

An abrupt SHOT of his dream, remembered: the living room, the rain, a fragment of the 1950 song. Then back to his reflection. HOLD.

CUT: Robert in a blue running suit and shoes, doing stretching exercises. Next we see him moving through the woods with Bart. His eyes glaze as they run together. He begins to mumble to himself.

“The girl was nineteen, born in California—”

We see the girl, dressing in a dark outfit. “She was dressing to attend a funeral when an overpowering urge came over her,” Robert’s voice narrates.

The girl’s movements get more and more erratic. She is obviously distressed.

We see her getting on a bus. “Instead of going to the funeral, she boarded a bus,” says Robert’s voice. The girl sits down, looks at her wristwatch uneasily. “She
had
to see her mother.”

SHOTS of the moving bus, the girl. She grows increasingly disturbed. Arriving at her destination, she almost leaps from the bus and runs along the small town street.

Arriving at her parents’ furniture store, she enters hurriedly and finds them taking a break in the front window, sitting on chairs. They look at her in startlement. What is she doing there?

Her lips move, Robert’s voice speaking the words. “‘I’m hungry, let’s get something to eat’, she said.” Her parents smile, her manner is so peculiar. Urgently, she gets them up and moves them toward the back room, OUT OF SCENE.

A large, black sedan, out of control, appears in the street, skids sharply, jars across the curb, the sidewalk, plows into the window of the store, demolishing everything.

“Another five seconds and her parents would have been crushed,” says Robert’s voice.

He is back at the house, muscles loose. He showers, dresses, makes a pot of coffee, feeds Bart who is wheezing as he sprawls on the kitchen floor. “What’s the matter, pal, you getting old?” Robert asks him, stopping to stroke the Lab’s head.

Minutes later, he is in his office, Bart lying in a cushioned basket by the desk. Robert speaks into the microphone of his word processor. As he dictates, the machine types words onto the screen.

“What made this girl, ignoring all else, board a bus and rush to her parents’ furniture store to take them from the front window seconds before that car came crashing in?” He completes the story.

“Call it extra-sensory perception. Psychic foresight. Psi. The words are unimportant. What matters is a remarkable human capacity for knowing what can only be defined, by standard scientific means, as the
unknowable.”

As he lists these remarkable capacities, we see brief SHOTS of coming scenes in which these psychic faculties will be explored. “Telepathy. Precognition. Clairvoyance. Psychokinesis. Healing. Psychic crime solving. Out-of-the-body experiences. Haunted—”

The telephone rings. Robert grumbles, switching off the processor and picking up the telephone receiver.

“Is this Robert Allright?” asks a voice.

The call is from Hollywood, a young producer named ALAN BREMER. He got Robert’s number from an editor at Robert’s publishing house. He is “crazy” about Robert’s latest book THINGS WITHOUT EXPLANATION. He wants to make a three or four-hour film for t-v, using the book as source material. He’d like to include everything in it but that, of course, would be impractical.

What he sees as viable (and “fascinating!”) is a film recounting the historical background of parapsychology, the events leading up to the world of psi today. Would Robert be interested in preparing an outline? He is thinking “in the neighborhood” of fifty thousand dollars.

Robert looks at Bart, a hand across the telephone mouthpiece. “Nice neighborhood,” he murmurs.

He indicates his interest. “Great!” enthuses Bremer. “I’ll talk to your agent right away! Can you fly out to the coast tomorrow?”

Robert hesitates; he isn’t used to functioning with such abandon. But he allows seeing as how it’s possible.

“Sensational!” cries Alan Bremer.

Robert hangs up, looking at Bart. “Well, what do you know about that?” Bart’s tail thumps on the cushion.