‘Three Little Birds’ by Bob Marley & The Wailers fades in.
A large concrete apartment complex squats on the landscape like a tick on a dog’s back. Cascading down, in the haze filled sky, endless tendrils of greenery thatched with multicoloured cables. The knots with vines like tattered streamers from a spent party popper.
An alembic-looking contraption can be seen amidst a pile of frayed wires and tools on a workbench. A pipette is inserted into liquid and a mixing tube shows bubbles swirl into a vortex.
Rapid footsteps and laboured breathing tramp to life. A young man sprints through a verdant but dishevelled city that can just about be recognised as London. The red phone boxes and buses look familiar but the overgrown balcony gardens and abundance of flora on every speck of dirt is more like a city in the tropics. There is a shabbiness and grime more familiar to the past than the cityscape one might expect.
Liquid drains through a series of tubes. We track a bubble of air speeding through the apparatus, going round and around a spiral tube before being deposited into a conical flask.
♫ “Because every little thing’s, gonna be all right.” ♫
The young man barrels down the pavement. He brushes past pedestrians and leaps into the road out past the oncoming traffic. “Shit…”. He jumps past a cyclist and catches the pole at the back of a speeding bus. Every vehicle on the road has been modified and patched in some way, the repair jobs and state of decay as varied as the make and model. They all share two features: they are old and billowing thick black exhaust. The traffic’s undulations are familiar even if the furniture of the city is not. The sickly sheen from a recent downpour mingles with vapours in the air, refracting the light of the road.
We see liquid drawn and criss-cross, flecked with light, as it darts through the array of glass paraphernalia. It’s then spun violently in what appears to be a centrifuge.
The young man, hunched in front of a bus stop, stares up at the complex of tenements. The hulking mass of concrete is softened by the vegetation and signs of life. People can be seen going about their day; a bustling market to one side of a long promenade staircase that follows the contour of the terraces up the vast building. We see the inhabitants in closer detail: an old lady with her hairnet, curlers and house coat, fag in mouth, sitting on her terrace reading a paper slate with the day’s headlines. A market vendor screaming prices trying to attract customers to his stall, a glass sign with fruit and veg and their prices inked in curly writing. Steam wafts from shabby food stalls as people eat their meals at counters. A drab man in what looks to be modern attire rests with his back to a wall, arms folded and great bags under his eyes. He surveys the scene as if looking for something out of place but his mind is elsewhere.
A gloved hand holds a blowtorch as a Bunsen burner ignites and we see fluid start to percolate. It looks like a mad science experiment as everything appears to vibrate. Bubbling and whirring, a sudden flurry of activity builds to a nauseating crescendo with steam whistling and a timer’s final count ticking down.
Next, the inside of a doorframe from a low angle. It’s quite ordinary, with brass locks, an unfastened chain and hook complete with patched raincoat. Without ceremony, it bursts open. The young man doubled over panting, outstretched arm in the air trying to get his words out.
A pause. Then, from out of sight, a deep voice flatly states, “You’re too late.”