I was tempted, after the top panel, to have our hero Scot say ‘So you’re the code-word?’, but of course that would have made it a different type of screenplay…

Seems like the right page for a Friday…! Cape Town has been enjoying Burning Man type trance parties for years, since the ’90’s, though more recently we have Afrikaburn, which is modelled on the BM experience.
This is an example of the enjoyable nature of secret knowledge. Us, the audience, knows what the explosion is all about, and we enjoy seeing the party crowd catching up with what we already know.
Since film crews play such a big part in creating builds for awesome events like Afrikaburn (our version of Burning Man), that for a scene like this, I think I could just turn the cameras on the crew…
Funny to think when I first wrote The Oracle Machine, 10+ years ago, cannabis was illegal. Yet now it’s practically legal in South Africa, & many other places. Things can change fast!
And yes, Cape Town really is what I call ‘The Cradle of Consciousness’, where scientific evidence suggests humanity survived as a small group (20,000 people) & then enjoyed a leap in consciousness over 100,000 years ago, before spreading out worldwide.
(Think #2001 A Space Odyssey, but with cave people tossing bones to the sky)
Our incredible region is now finally being recognised by local authorities, and marketed as humankind’s ‘Cradle of Culture’. (But I think ‘Cradle of Consciousness’ is much more accurate & cooler!)
This is why it’s The Perfect Setting for an original movie about humanity’s next evolutionary leap in consciousness and IQ.
(Or should it be AI-Q?)