PILOT ONE SHEET

LOGLINE: A man’s retirement dream home becomes a nightmare when used by a celestial order guarding the portals of past eras to draft him as a soldier to combat time-line penetrating marauders. 

The play reenacts the shooting of President William McKinley in 1901. Marc Horwich’s retirement dawns as he travels to join his partner, Eric, at their newly acquired Victorian era, 3-story Brownstone triplex, on Lake Michigan. Before he departs, he learns his cancer has returned and is terminal. He receives a garbled telephone message from his dead father congratulating him on his new home and to await contact from “the Matcher”. Hiding his illness, Marc congratulates Eric’s home selection.  A phone rings on the empty, renovating, 3rd floor. They see a fully furnished, mint condition, early 20th century business office with a large desk and ornate phone. A barrier bars office entry.

Boxes with old scrapbooks and relics found in a hidden 3rd floor room reveal information about their home. They visit their new gymnasium where Marc meets a mysterious trainer, Vince, telling him of his new life with the “The Matcher”. Marc finds two men’s golden rings in a relic box. One is a perfect fit, but it attacks and submerges under his skin. He falls unconscious. Their next door neighbor, Lydia, reports that her great grandfather, Elisha, built and used the 3rd floor as his office. Marc also learns that his father lived in the home and (bigamously) sired and raised 3 children there. While Marc retrieves additional scrap books at Lydia’s house, Eric innocently intercepts a message from Marc’s doctor detailing his cancer diagnosis. Marc rejects Eric’s loving consolation as an invasion of his privacy. Eric storms out of the house as Marc realizes his life is spinning out of control.

Marc answers the 3rd floor office phone. This time the new ring emerges from his skin allowing him entry. He is called to meet Quintus , “The Matcher”,  at his Jeweler/Tailor shop . A late Victorian wardrobe appears in the office Armoir and Marc must exit the office via fire escape.  Appropriately dressed, the moment he alights from the fire escape he drops 120 years in time. Marc learns he and Eric are Quintus’ newest “Sentinels”  in the “Order Of Guardians”—just as their fathers were—celestially-ordained  cops who guard time portals from time-line altering marauders.  Marc rebuffs Quintus, berating him for recruiting by subterfuge. Marc flees realizing Eric is next in Quintus’ sights. He finds Eric wearing the (his) gold ring, unconscious and dying. Next  to him is a note from Marc , but written by Quintus, offering Eric the ring as a peace offering for their quarrel. Helpless and weeping, Marc swears revenge. Elisha, now the 3rd floor ghost, appears and revives Eric. Elisha, and later the trainer Vince, themselves paired Sentinels generations earlier, convince our duo  to accept  Quintus’ first Match for them—to time travel to  Buffalo N.Y., the site of President William McKinley’s assassination—to  “protect the President.

They meet Leon Czolgosz, a wiry young man, at a socialist-anarchist rally where capitalists are excoriated and McKinley condemned. Leon exposes a small revolver. The duo return to their time to obtain modern antibiotics to treat the wounded President. Posing as agents of the secret “Night Watch” unit, they warn authorities of the lurking assassin and join the President’s security staff. Lured my malefactors into retrieving Quintus’ secret instructions lodged in a bank vault—they are trapped in a time lock controlled tomb and prevented from stopping the assassination. Suffocating, Vince, himself a Sentinel, rescues them. However he vetoes any efforts to administer life saving antibiotics to treat the President—that would irrevocable alter the time line. Yes, our duo must “save the President”—but which one and how?