Earthworm

Logline

A humanoid alien arrives on Earth to find the last surviving, recently lost, rover of her civilization, only to discover that spores accidentally carried to the planet have caused the death of all life on Earth.

Setting

Post-apocalyptic Earth, stripped of all life, and still being consumed by a fungus to this day.

Setup

On a black screen, images of low quality flicker by (a landfill, deforestation, hunting, nuclear weapons). The comms operator warns Seit, the ship’s pilot, about the hostility and primitiveness of life on Earth and reminds her of the expedition’s goal: to find and bring the lost rover home. A loud rumble. The ship begins its descent. The egg-shaped ship, featuring a large emblem on its front, opens. Seit descends the ramp. She holds a weapon equipped with an integrated navigator; the route is displayed on its screen. After standing in the ominous silence for some time, she decides to move forward. The alien ignores a strange mushroom. Cut through three locations: a quiet forest, a wild wheat field, a broken road with an abandoned village in the distance. Sleeping mushrooms are present in each location.

Main Action

Walking through dry grass, the alien emerges before a ruined city. «Where are you hiding, fools! What have you done with our gifts to you!» Zait enters the city grounds. Small pebbles shower down on her. As she walks through the city, she increasingly sees images of a crossed-out emblem of her expedition in graffiti and posters. Finally, seeing the desecration on a stone right in front of her, she rushes to it and, overcome with emotion, erases the extra line, cursing the people once more. She sees direct confirmation of their ignorance. Zait continues her journey. Overhead view: on the roof of a high-rise building is the alien emblem, and beneath it, a plea for rescue in various languages.Zait reaches the sea. On the shore lies a plush teddy bear rotted by moisture. Zait notices a patch and the preserved threads with which the paw had been meticulously reattached. The alien is slightly surprised by what she sees, but dismissing extraneous thoughts, she tugs on her tails and begins to walk across the water in her sun-darkened boots. «Could there really be something of value to these ignoramuses…?»Strangely music gradually begins to sound. After some time, Zait finally emerges before the surviving planetary rover she was searching for. She picks it up and hugs it, standing among comical, dancing, and singing mushrooms. The alien says that she feels at home and that this planet is not entirely ruined.Zait returns to the ship: she wants to try to find out the full picture of what happened. She turns on the recording from the planetary rover.

Climax

A woman stands by the sea. On her back is a singing mushroom, and in her hand is a stone; behind her is a child with a teddy bear. She screams at the rover and throws a stone at it. Sait gets frightened. Interference begins in the recording. The woman cries out that people will take revenge. At that moment, the mushroom on her suddenly grows larger. The woman falls. Sait leans toward the screen and exclaims in shock that mushrooms don’t do that. The recording completely dissolves into white noise.

Resolution

Sait recalls all the small mushrooms she saw along the way and realizes that the spores, accidentally brought by the planet-hopper, caused the collapse of this civilization. «Base, but we… there are people here… I mean… the planet-hopper was acquired.» «Understood. You can return home.» «Roger that.» Sait pulls the very same teddy bear from her pocket. She stands in confusion. The camera sharply pulls back into the depths of space, where ships like Sait’s travel between planets.

Finale

After the credits, the audience sees an abandoned bear on Earth. It has a tag on its back that reads «Made on Mars”—a cliffhanger for future events.For Seit, however, the ending is tragic at this point: she failed to overcome herself and her blind faith. Yet, something within her still fractured.