Shift

"Shift" is a Halo 5 machinima produced and uploaded in early 2016. Its story revolves around an individual who is gifted with the power to access alternate realities at will. A final cut was uploaded on September 14, 2016 which added minor audio adjustments, and a Director's Commentary narrated by Matteoarts and Jack Kennedy was uploaded on January 4, 2018. A sequel is slated for release in late 2018.

## **Synopsis**

   **Jonah**, an engineer, is contracted with his long-time friend **Miller** to serve on a ship delivering a large inventory of canisters filled with an unknown substance. Something apparently goes wrong during a hyper-jump, and the ship is marooned adrift near an unknown planetary system. Jonah is tasked with repairing the ship's navigational system before they sink too deeply into the planet's gravity well and cross the point of no return.

While he is tinkering with the systems, an eccentric artificial intelligence titled, **The Watcher**, transports him to an alternate reality where the ship crashed seventy years in the past and left most of the planet's ecosystem dead. She tasks him with understanding how the planet died so he can help her reverse it and change reality.

Over the next several hours, Jonah alternates between the two realities and bonds with the AI (which he names Lucy). He also learns several key facts surrounding the event; the first of which being that the ship did not malfunction, it was sabotaged. Miller, acting as head of security, is sent to find the saboteur and bring them directly to **the Captain**. The second detail is that Lucy's masters are not alien- they're future human descendants. And thirdly, the canisters they were hauling as cargo were carrying a highly destructive biological agent in gas form which was responsible for killing off the native inhabitants, a relatively advanced civilization.

Unfortunately, he is accused by the Captain of intentionally setting them adrift and being solely responsible for the navigation failure, and is thrown in the brig. Miller has no choice but to consider him a traitor, and treats him as such. Shifting back to Lucy's reality, he works out the truth by traveling to the ruins of a city and analyzing one of the canisters in the wreckage of the ship; the planet's death was no accident. The ship was chartered by an unknown company who wished for it to release the bio-agent into the atmosphere and quickly clear the planet of life so that it could be left open for human colonization.

Returning to his original reality, Jonah convinces Miller to let him out and assist him in gathering proof; by accessing the Captain's personal computer, he confirms that only the lead engineer (Jonah) and the Captain of the expedition have the authority to lock the ship on a plotted course. The Captain was hired by the company to take the ship to the planet's coordinates, sabotage it so that it would crash, and escape via a single escape pod so that he could return to human civilization and report back to them.

After they confront the Captain, he gives up the facade and openly attacks them. Miller is knocked unconscious, and Jonah is shot in the abdomen. As the Captain turns and makes the final preparations to leave the ship, Jonah takes Miller's sidearm and fatally shoots the Captain through the head. When he views the navigational system, however, he realizes that the ship has already crossed the point of no return and is rapidly falling into the planet's atmosphere.

Jonah drags Miller into the escape pod and seals her inside it before initiating the next stage of his solution to save the planet. Taking what time he has left, he explains to Lucy and Miller that he's been mortally wounded by the gunshot and the Captain's early release of the gas inside the canisters has resulted in the deaths of all other crew onboard. He activates the ship's self destruct sequence as it requires a living member of the crew to remain onboard during the explosion as a safety precaution to prevent misuse of it. Before dying, he gives a tearful goodbye to Miller while sending her pod to the planet, and expresses how grateful he is to Lucy for her friendship.

The final scene ends with Lucy shifting into Jonah's reality as hers was about to be erased by his decision to sacrifice himself. She watches the sky as a distant explosion appears, and reflects on the unexpected outcome; the salvation of her planet at the expense of her only friend.