Lives and Time

Fatalism. Regret. A life not lived. Life moves faster and faster, with each year passing quicker than the last. Dreams remain out of reach. Anxieties build as the world changes in frightening, seemingly volatile ways. But humanity perseveres; progressing in fits and starts – always moving forward.

LIVES AND TIME is a universal story about this enduring cycle of humanity, the fears and anxiety that mire us in banal moments and obfuscate the beauty of life, told through the intimate story of someone just trying to get by.

This is an impressionistic treatise on aging using a formalist sci-fi conceit. I have a very specific vision for this story, and I need help articulating it so that others can share that vision.


VIGNER MOORE (25) suffers a horrific accident while playing hockey on a sheet of ice.

Flash forward three months: He awakens in his bare apartment with the memory of the accident fresh in his mind. We follow him in a realtime continuous shot as he starts his daily routine, only to have it interrupted by his best friend DREW’S MOM, who drives him to his father’s office at the local SQUAMSCOTT ACADEMY.

Guided by his father’s research partner DR. WOLFSON, Vigner inspects the device responsible for his father’s death: An elaborate device called THE QUANTUM ENTANGLER.

Upon touching the entangler, Vigner is propelled an hour into the future. He meets with his Physician who is concerned that Vig is still feeling the effects from the hockey accident. Vig snaps through his day, hour by hour – working for a contractor, and going river skating, where he reconnects with his old High School crush KATIE.

The two spend the rest of the day walking through the town, pontificating on their dreams and aspirations. For her it's an entire day, for him it's just a matter of minutes.

Vig drops Katie off at home, and the remainder of the night passes in seconds. Confused, he starts the next day, repeating many of the moments that make up his routine in this small New England town - coffee from the market downstairs, laboring for the contractor, hockey practice, happy hour at a tavern, watching SportsCenter late at night - though the day passes in minutes.

The cycle repeats itself over and over until he breaks the routine by calling Katie. The two go ice skating again, walk on the winter beach, make love in an abandoned beach house that Katie dreams to one day make a home. Everything moves quickly for Vig and he doesn't understand why.

In an instant, Katie disappears from his apartment. Dr. Wolfson knocks on the door. Wolfson explains to Vig that, in an attempt to save his life after the horrific accident, Vig’s father used his quantum entangler to ‘sync’ the consciouses of the Vigner who had suffered the hockey accident (“VIGNER PRIME”) with the Vigner living this life.

Now “Vigner Prime” is destined to live out this other Vigner's life in only 90 minutes, the time remaining for the Vigner struggling on the ice. Wolfson promises to fix the timestream to allow Vigner to remain in this new world and live a normal lifespan. But he warns him that it will take him many years, and tells Vigner that he must find a “constant” to stabilize his leaps until then.

With this new mission in mind, Vigner begins embracing this fast-moving life. He starts a relationship with Katie. They fall in love as the seasons pass and they reach touchstones in a young relationship. In a matter of minutes to Vigner, they're married and starting a family. They have a beautiful child named Emily, who grows up rapidly in his eyes.

Katie remains in the town of Squamscott to take over the local newspaper from her father. She struggles to keep the newspaper alive in the changing world. Vig sees her as the constant he’s been seeking.

Vig mentors a young player named TROY. When we meet him he's fourteen years old, but as the story continues Troy matures to become a successful NHL player.

We jump from 1993 to the 2000s and see technology and the world evolving around them. Vig's contractor business struggles with the financial collapse. Frustrated by his inability to become a professional hockey player, Vig feels like a failure when he measures himself against Troy's success. Katie struggles to keep the family together while Vig grapples with his juvenile crisis – he’s still mentally 25 and acting like a self-centered jerk, while she’s moved into her late thirties and embraced the challenges and responsibilities of adulthood.

When Wolfson finally presents Vig with a solution that will allow him to ‘normalize’ in this timestream, Vig instead decides to use Wolfson’s research to journey to an alternate timestream.

In this alternate 2014 timestream, Vig married a different woman, runs a car dealership, as two boys, but no Emily or Katie. He made it as a pro hockey player for a season, but he essentially ends up in the same place as a father in small town of Squamscott, with the world continuing to move around him.

In this alternate world he meets his father ECKART, who never died in the errant experiment. Eckart long ago embraced the joys of life at the expense of his aspirations. Vig discusses this reality with his father and realizes that the true constant across all these existence is his consciousness – it may be slightly different through the prism of different worlds - but ultimately he is the same.

Knowing this, he decides to forgo this new life, for he would rather spend his remaining minutes with Katie and Emily than in this life he doesn't know. With his father's help he returns to the other timestream with only minutes before his consciousness will die.

In the waning minutes he sees his life evolve. He watches Emily go to college, get married, start her own family. He makes peace with the reality of who he's become, and most importantly proves to Katie that he’s a worthy life partner. He holds Katie and Emily's hands as he passes away in the beach house where Katie always dreamed of living. The moments of his life flash before his eyes.