INTERVAL
Genre: Retrocausal Psychological Thriller / Grounded Sci-Fi
Tone: Gritty, Analog, High-Stakes
Themes: Generational Trauma, Retrocausality, Emotional Self-Regulation
The Elevator Pitch
The Setup
Maya is a survivor, a “street cat” hardened by a childhood plagued by a terrifying, phantom presence in her bedroom that her father, Arthur, always dismissed as attention-seeking. Years later, desperate for cash to save a dying stray cat, Maya breaks into Arthur’s house to steal from him. Instead of money, she uncovers a heavy copper key and a classified 1976 file: Project Interval.
The Inciting Incident
The files lead her to a subterranean, abandoned university laboratory. There, she finds an obsolete sensory isolation tank running on vacuum tubes and humming analog tape reels—the Schmidt-Protocol. Inside the tank is Arthur, submerged in a neural trance. He isn’t traveling through time; his intense, current guilt is broadcasting information back to the spacetime coordinates of his past.
The Turning Point & The Glitch
Through the krakende control-room speakers, Maya hears the live audio-feed of her own five-year-old self crying in her old bedroom. Believing her father is playing a sick, manipulative psychological game to torment her, Maya grabs the intercom and screams a furious threat into the tank.
Instantly, the analog machine short-circuits. Through the speakers, Maya hears her own adult voice echo into the past, terrorizing her five-year-old self. She realizes the horrific truth: She was her own ghost. Her childhood trauma was caused by her own adult intervention.
The Standalone Climax
Maya cannot pull the plug without killing Arthur and trapping herself in a permanent trauma loop. To save them both, she must become his operator. As the police and demolition crews close in on the illegal facility outside, Maya must manually keep the failing 1976 hardware from exploding, while using her own voice to whisper serene, calming lies into the intercom—learning to master her own rage to quiet the demons of her past.