// first draft: July 25, 2024
// final draft: Nov 13, 2025
// genre: crime thriller
// pages: 47
Page 19, Scene 15
INT. BFN-7 LOCAL STATION. MASTER CONTROL ROOM. DAY
Ted sits across Blackwood and Reed and sinks into his chair in clear shame and guilt for having crossed them. He tries to avert his eyes, the tension palpable, sweat dripping down his face. Reed let's the silence sink in a moment longer.
Reed Ted Beuhler. Seven years with BFN, is that right?
Ted That's right.
Reed I hear you're the man who blew the the lid off the top. The man who caused mayhem.
Ted begins squirming in his seat and proceeds to answer to Blackwood as opposed to Reed.
Ted Listen man this is BIG SHIT, okay? Big story, big headline, breaking news nationwide, alright? You're telling me you wouldn't do the same in my position? This is BIG. The big that gets me a promotion kind of big, you understand? BFN-7 is hot. Viewership is shooting past the stratosphere and I'm sorry, alright? I'm sorry that you brought me that information and I crossed you. I admit it I do - I was wrong. But the ship was sinking, man. And I do NOT want to go back to teaching fractions and decimals to a bunch of fourth graders who don't give a shit, alright? I am through with that. I REFUSE to go back.
He's out of breath, glancing back and forth between the two desperate for an answer. Blackwood's got a sour taste in his mouth but, remembering his purpose, he deflates.
Blackwood That's not what we're here about.
Ted eases up.
Ted No? Then what?
Reed You get a chance to take a look at the feed?
Ted Yeah, I did. (eyes go wide) Found something interesting too.
Reed crosses his arms as Ted leans in.
Ted Your guy, the one who did this.. the man is as technically skilled as one can get, alright? In and out. No delay. No stutter. The feed was clean. Flawless execution.
Reed How'd he do it?
Ted He re-routed through our encoder and replaced the feed mid-signal. You understand how insane that is?
Reed The transmission was replaced from inside the signal chain.
Ted Precisely.
Blackwood squints, this language foreign to him.
Reed Say, hypothetically, you were to replicate the signal interference.. how would you do it?
Ted's starting to get a real kick out of this, his excitement practically shouting as he leans in even closer.
Ted This kind of attack doesn't just happen from outside of the station. Never mind inside. The technicality of this specific situation is too complicated for your average "hacker," which he isn't. If I were to somehow hypothetically replicate this stunt from the outside, I'd have to have access to our stream key and uplink IP's - and those aren't even public, much less written down, with the exception of a few internal memos.
Blackwood Too risky to do it from inside of BFN and damn near impossible to do it on the outside.
Reed Unless a former employee kept the passwords longer than they should have, right?
Ted Sure, yeah. Never thought about that.
Reed How many current employees have access to those kind of credentials?
Ted (thinks) About ten of us, give or take.
Reed I'm going to need a list of all current and former employees from the past fifteen years who would've had access to those codes. I'm also going to need physical access logs - badge swipes, security camera footage for the control room and server racks, and a list of accounts with admin rights. That goes for vendor accounts and remote IP whitelists as well.
Ted exhales, a bit overwhelmed.
Ted Sure.
And having just taken a sip of coffee -
Blackwood Speaking of employees - you get along with everyone here?
Ted For the most part, yeah. We're all in some way acquainted.
Blackwood You run into anyone unusual? More so than most?
Ted I think anyone who's in broadcast news is in over their head in some way. I can't think of any current employees who would've had a reason to pull this sort of thing off. But there is one former employee that comes to mind - Oliver Wood. He was a transmission engineer. Handled the hardware and signal integrity - transmitters, encoders, satellite uplinks. You wanna' talk about weird, he's full of it.
Blackwood In what way?
Ted The things he'd say sometimes. He talked about how all media was deceptive, mind-control programming to re-wire our psyche to conform to the agenda of the elite. Whatever that means. Said he'd "revolutionize" the way we viewed broadcast news. Real off the wall kind of things.
Blackwood "Revolutionize." He ever elaborate on that?
Ted Nope. And I didn't bother asking him to. All I know is the guy was a little off in the head.
Reed What happened to him?
Ted No idea. He was supposed to cover the sewer leakage, you know? The one that happened a year ago? He never came into work. Never called. Radio silence. He just sorta.. disappeared.
unsolicited 