Port of Missing Names
Key art
Prologue
Fog sits on a wet quay. Cranes repeat into the dark, the same shape smaller and smaller.
Watch
The screening is not on this page
2:57 · 16:9 · not filed.
One line
Before the synopsis
Six coated figures stand at a rusted booth whose window glows a flat white.
Synopsis
Tech-Noir · Standalone
The glow does not flicker at first. A barred terminal waits in front of the booth. Its bars are cold with damp.
Beyond the cranes, a dark ship is taking coats aboard. The coats go up a gangway and do not come down. Water ticks the pilings.
Above the quay, a wet control room looks down. One hooded back is at the consoles. The back does not turn.
Extended sequence
After the cut
To the right of the glass, a line of pale figures stands as light only, already processed, with no faces left to turn. Their edges are soft. They do not cast the shadows the coated figures cast. At the booth, one coated figure holds a small lit slate.
The glow in the window falters. The white goes grey and comes back weaker. The figure's fingers stay on it a moment, then the figure steps through the booth and comes out on the far side as the same height of pale light, coat gone, and joins the line of the processed.
Figures in the frame
Kept at the edge
The line does not make room. It simply becomes longer. No face appears on the new light.
The coat that was worn does not fall to the quay as cloth. It is simply no longer there. Three remaining figures walk a pier toward the cranes and the black water.
Codex fragment
The ship takes the boarding coats and does not take the light-figures, who stay on the dock as if they had already arrived. A crane's cable sways and does not hook them. Fog moves between the cranes. The three coats remain at the edge.
The scenario is filed in the Codex.
Sound of Imagination
The pale line does not step onto the ship. The hooded back in the control room stays a back. The two who remained at the booth do not grow new slates. Black water takes no light-figure and no coat from the edge.
Showcase
Object from the room
Two others stay at the booth and do not follow. The three stop at the edge.
One of them still has a lit slate. The other two have empty hands. The slate's light stays on their cuffs and not on the water.
The Craft
Image · motion · sound
The processed line holds its new length on the dock, faceless and unboarded, while the ship continues to take only coats that have not yet become light. The barred terminal does not print a name.
Fog thickens and thins and the pale line stays visible through it. One lit slate at the edge does not go dark to match the one that failed.
Read it as written. The scenario.
Filed in The Houses
Future & Machine · Tech-Noir
Port of Missing Names is filed under Future & Machine in Tech-Noir. A house film. The house keeps the climate. The climate keeps this title.
The next room
After this filing
The quay keeps its split: coats that may still board, and light that stays, already finished, already without faces to turn toward the ship. The next room is Aftercurfew.
After the frame
Mark · keep · letter
Released rooms keep a mark from one to five, a keep on this device, and letters that stay with the page after the feed has moved on. Port of Missing Names is ready.
Letters under the frame
The Archivist · held
Filed in the archive. The page does not expire.