Brief

20-year-old Stanley Ross, having recently escaped from the clutches of evil scientist Dr. Warren, accepts his mission of saving New York City from terrorists as superhero The Chip, while his relationship with a childhood friend blossoms into romance.

What We Liked

Referencing myriad superhero flicks--particularly BATMAN films' depictions of a vastly corrupt city slowly coming apart and the SPIDER-MAN films' setting of New York--THE CHIP 2 manages to create something new out of the saturated superhero genre in its protagonist Stanley, who has matured from a child at the mercy of his health issues (which mirrored the experiences of autistic children in the real world) into a confident and virtuous 20-year-old committed to saving his beloved New York City from the terrorists aiming to tear it apart. THE CHIP 2 is a whirlwind tale full of thrills, danger and fun that fans of superhero films are sure to love. Like the first book in the series, this is a story about overcoming disability and learning to love one's self, but it is also about accepting the responsibilities of adulthood and falling in love--with all the fear each brings.

Film: THE CHIP 2 follows perfectly the wildly successful blueprint set out by such mega-films as those of the Marvel franchise as it follows 20-year-old Stanley on his first missions as superhero The Chip as he fights to save his beloved New York City from the terrorists aiming to destroy it. THE CHIP 2 offers two fascinating arch-villains and many other minor villains and a fantastic protagonist in Stanley, the young man who overcome his health issues to succeed despite disability, growing into the amazingly powerful superhero he becomes. The story takes many twists viewers won't see coming, and finishes with a perfect climax that plants seeds for future films, allowing for a successful franchise based on the character of The Chip to be created.

TV: Due to the many villains and dangers present in the plot of THE CHIP 2, a TV-series adaptation offers ample length and a structural format perfect for exploring multiple subplots and character arcs. In the background of this story, the world is increasingly becoming a hopeless place of war and fear, and a TV series adaptation could explore deeply the many facets of this world, , providing a potentially infinite number of villains and conflicts to explore. In this way, a TV adaptation of THE CHIP would be very similar to the highly popular 10-season SMALLVILLE, one of the most successful TV series of the 21st century, or to the currently highly popular THE BOYS.

Key points: Action-packed; Lots of fun; Many twists make the story thrillingly unpredictable; Fascinating villains are a joy to read about; Showcases vibrant originality despite myriad references to superhero films

Synopsis

New York City, 2008: STANLEY (20, extremely muscular) and his mad-scientist uncle JEFF (40s, in wheelchair) are at home in Jeff’s house. A knock on the door. Stanley hides in the secret basement. Two agents are at the door, here for a tax appraisal of the property. The agents go upstairs, rummaging around for something. They ask what happened to the basement door. Jeff pretends the basement is no longer in use. The agents leave and call the evil scientist DR. WARREN (40s), who asks if they noticed any sign of Stanley. CLAUDIA (20, Latino, beautiful), the daughter of Jeff’s housekeeper and an old friend of Stanley’s, comes to visit after hearing of his return. She hugs Stanley as her father LUIS speaks with Jeff.

Evil scientist DR. POWELL (mid-60s, muscular), fresh out of prison, fishes by a river, brainstorming nefarious plots against the government. He finds in the river a strange, hairless, armless white animal that looks somewhat human. It's a subhuman—one of the creatures Stanley saw falling through the portal in space when he was imprisoned by Dr. Warren. Dr. Powell brings the subhuman home. From the bushes outside Dr. Powell’s home, FBI agents watch Dr. Powell, thinking the subhuman merely a dead animal.

Flashback to when Stanley first arrived home: Jeff marvels at all Stanley can now accomplish, and his lack of pain from sound and light. Stanley asks if Jeff ever longs to live a normal life and be like everyone else. Jeff says he doesn’t; he’s comfortable with who he is, enjoys being himself. Back to scene: Dr. Warren questions Jeff’s neighbor, MR. TREPASSI, about Stanley. Mr. Trepassi does not admit to seeing Stanley recently. Dr. Warren orders his goons to kidnap the Mr. Trepassi. Dr. Warren knocks on Jeff’s door, holding his small dog, Power, in his arms. Jeff gives a passionate performance pretending he believes Stanley is still locked up under Dr. Warren’s watch, and demands to know how Stanley is. Dr. Warren leaves. Stanley hurries upstairs to check on Jeff, who is furious, eager to get revenge against Dr. Warren. He reminds Stanley that Stanley is special—a superhero—and must use his abilities to fight evil. Stanley accepts this mission.

Dr. Warren stands by as his goon FORRESTER tortures Mr. Trepassi, who admits that there has been increased activity in Jeff’s house recently and that, years earlier, he had observed building materials being delivered into the home. Dr. Warren connects the dots: The basement is Jeff’s new lab. Dr. Warren orders Mr. Trepassi killed. The phone rings: it’s Dr. Powell. Jeff, tormented in his home by images in his mind of Mr. Trepassi’s suffering, tells Stanley that it’s time they move to stage two. Dr. Warren will soon learn of the basement and they must leave. He bought a mansion on a large piece of land outside the city with savings over the years, waiting for this moment. They must leave at once, erasing all traces of their existences. Jeff sets fire to the house and the store he owns and he and Stanley leave. Luis and Claudia meet them at the mansion, as they have lived here for a while. Claudia shows Stanley around. Later, they all have dinner together and Jeff declares that Stanley needs one more thing to become a superhero: a costume. Jeff tells them of a material he created that is impenetrable to even bullets but is flexible and wearable. He stabs himself with a knife as demonstration, breaking the knife in half without harming himself.

Claudia and Jeff finish making Stanley’s suit. It’s silver with black and green, and obscures Stanley’s face behind a mask. It contains a camera pointing out from his chest, and a DVD player in the belt. Stanley’s abilities allow him to manipulate electronic devices and this suit works with this ability. His suit is so powerful that it works symbiotically with his mind, neither controlling the other, and will allow him to see bad deeds unfolding before they occur. Teary-eyed, Jeff says, “You are The Chip, Stanley. Your parents would be proud.” Claudia works for the mayor in a New York City rapidly collapsing due to crime and corruption, with a Chief of Police in league with Dr. Warren. Claudia enters the mayor’s office to let him know that there has been a breach in the digital system of the city, though the hacker is just looking around for now. Claudia returns to the mansion and asks Stanley for his help with this problem, asking him to “save me, save all of us.”

In the lab in the mansion, Claudia watches as Jeff connects the chip—and therefore Stanley—to the internet, wherein he will navigate and stop the threat to the city. Inside the internet, Stanley is in corporeal form in his costume (as he imagined it so) as ones and zeroes zoom past. Watching on his PC monitor, Jeff can read the language of zooming digits and can “see” Stanley among them. He can communicate with Stanley via voice. Stanley revisits his training as Dr. Warren’s prisoner in order to understand how to navigate the internet. Remembering, he concentrates, and the digits zooming by him slow until they morph into human beings. Stanley flies above these “people,” each searching for something specific on the internet, and comes to a realization: For every person the internet allows to achieve something previously impossible, such as a woman in rural Alaska “visiting” a specialist doctor in New York, there is potentially a terrorist able to create mayhem from hundreds of thousands of miles away; the internet is infinitely vast and impossible to police. Stanley flies to a virtual version of City Hall in search of the hacker. He finds a man acting suspicious and demands to know his name. The man disappears (never real but a representation of a hacking program) and, searching for the “anti-virus program,” the hacker sends strange bots attacking Stanley with taser guns. Stanley destroys the bots and flees, arriving into a hallway with hundreds of closed doors. He enters into a room full of ledgers and understands: The hacker had been attempting to acquire the city’s financial accounts. Stanley hides the ledgers in another records room containing only dog licenses and pet-vaccination certificates, and leaves the internet.

A Russian terrorist stands on a tanker on the Indian Ocean, furious at the hacker who failed to get the money from New York City’s account. Another man arrives to tell Omar that Dr. Powell wants to see him. On the phone a furious Dr. Powell tells Omar to set sail for New York. CIA DIRECTOR BEVIN’s boss tells her they are shutting down surveillance of Dr. Powell due to lack of manpower and finances, and that any evil he commits will be on her hands. Inside his home, Dr. Powell is secretly building a monster out of the subhuman he found, giving it huge arms made of the same impenetrable material Stanley’s costume is composed of. He puts a chip in its brain—less advanced than Stanley’s, but sufficient. Powell creates a monster in his own image from this creature: animated evil. Dr. Powell dresses the monster in red and blue with a star for a belt buckle, making it look sarcastically patriotic. He names it Strong Arms.

In the mansion, Stanley senses an electrical impulse and tells Jeff that it feels just like his chip, on the outskirts of town. Jeff knows his fears have come true: The chip has been replicated. He knows about Dr. Powell and his release, and figures the man is involved. Stanley senses that this other chip-holder intends to blow up a nuclear plant. Stanley dresses up as The Chip and flies there. There, Stanley fights Strong Arm, tearing its arm off, as four agents hop out of a black van and shoot taster-like weapons at them, disabling Stanley’s and Strong Arm’s electronics. Stanley manages to fire a missile at the van, destroying it and killing one of the agents. The other agents flee the scene. Back at home, Stanley and Jeff discuss what happened. Dr. Warren’s agents must be looking for Stanley and they responded to the ping of Strong Arms thinking it was Stanley. Claudia rushes in, glad Stanley is OK. Unable to identify Dr. Warren’s agents, Stanley flies to the facility where he was once held prisoner. On the roof, he listens in on Dr. Warren’s phone conversation. Dr. Warren knows that The Chip was Stanley, and that Dr. Powell is responsible for Strong Arms.

Out enjoying nature by the mansion, Stanley hears urgent voices. He follows the sound for twenty minutes until he sees in the distance a cabin in the woods, with security cameras and chain-link fence surrounding it. Beside the cabin is a large shed. Stanley sprints home, changes into his costume, telling Jeff about the danger, and telling him to contact Claudia and let her know of the threat and to evacuate City Hall. JFK Airport is also evacuated. At the cabin, the men inside rush out and empty their Uzis into Stanley but the bullets bounce right off his armor. They intend to bring New York City to its knees by collapsing its every system. Stanley beats up the men and disables their plans except for one bomb remaining in City Hall that he cannot disable remotely. He calls the police to come deal with the terrorists. Then he flies to City Hall while Jeff recognizes the men as he watches this unfold: they worked at Dr. Warren’s lab back when Jeff worked there. And if Dr. Warren is involved in terrorism, perhaps Dr. Warren had ordered the terrorist bombing that killed Stanley’s parents.

At City Hall, Stanley desperately searches for the bomb. At last, he finds it, but if he disconnects its power source, the bomb will explode. Stanley rips an electrical cord out of the wall and absorbs electricity from it until he is glowing, then grabs the bomb and dives out the window. The bomb explodes just after Stanley makes it outside, preventing damage to the building. Stanley is unhurt.

Dr. Powell reestablishes contact with his terrorist associates, but, because the government stopped monitoring him, the government has no idea of this. Dr. Powell on the tanker at sea speeds it toward New York, ignoring the demands of the Coast Guard for identification. The Coast Guard launches two Destroyer ships and two fighter jets. Stanley, at home, picks up on these vibrations and flies out to the scene. Stanley manages to disable three of the tanker’s four engines, slowing the tanker’s speed. The tanker crashes into the coastline but the speed was not high enough to damage the oil it carried, so Stanley prevented an environmental crisis.

Stanley decides to find the hole in the universe he glimpsed when he was Dr. Warren’s prisoner. In his costume, he flies straight up into the sky at a speed almost faster than the speed of light. In space, Stanley finds a gaseous cloud. A subhuman falls through it and tells Stanley that other subhumans have come through the portal and when they do, they take on the personality of whoever they are with. The subhuman dies and Stanley closes the portal by flying quickly around it, inverting the gas and dissipating the portal until it’s gone. Stanley detects Strong Arms on the street and flies there to fight it. Strong Arms is again attempting to destroy a nuclear power plant. After a vicious battle, Stanley sends a missile into Strong Arms’s chest, destroying it beyond salvation. He is glad, but surveys the damage to the streets below with sadness.

Dr. Warren has Claudia kidnapped and brought to him at the facility. Dr. Warren fires his agents, so they go to work for Dr. Powell instead, who orders them to get him another subhuman. One of the agents, a female named AGENT SMITH, reveals that the agents are subhumans, from outer space. They want to get home. Only Agent Smith can speak as only she has a tongue. The agents deliver to Dr. Powell two subhumans which fuse together to form one huge, badly shaped creature with one arm much bulkier than the other and just one eye that doesn’t see well. Dr. Powell installs a chip in the creature’s brain and gives it eyes that can shoot laser beams. He names it Synergy. He gives Synergy its first command: kill The Chip. Government agents burst into Dr. Powell’s home with gas masks on as a gas spreads in the house, knocking Dr. Powell out. They spray Synergy with liquid nitrogen, freezing it.

Three weeks have passed since Claudia’s kidnapping and Stanley can’t sleep or eat much, worried sick about her. At last, he intercepts as signal from Dr. Warren’s facility, believing it may be a trap. But Stanley decides to go to it regardless. He flies to nearby the facility where he is attacked by a gorgeous woman in a purple costume with claw-like weapons shooting out from it. The woman is Claudia, but she tells Stanley her name is Virus now. She refers to Dr. Warren as her father, then attacks Stanley. Stanley believes Claudia can’t possibly be a match for him but he has been trained relentlessly and knows that if she plugs her software into a port in Stanley’s helmet, she can disable his abilities. Stanley tries to stop Claudia by pleading to with her, but is forced to hit her hard, drawing blood. It doesn’t stop her so Stanley says, “I’m sorry Claudia,” and fires a missile into the gas pump they beside them, causing a huge explosion to swallow them up. Watching from the facility, Dr. Warren is stunned and furious.

Stanley arrives at the mansion with an unconscious Claudia. Jeff can save Claudia by removing Dr. Warren’s implant but she will need an implant in her brain from now on. Luckily, Jeff has a spare implant. Stanley tells Jeff that Dr. Warren believes The Chip and Virus are dead, and he intends to keep things that way, turning away from life as a superhero so he can live a normal life with Claudia and go to university. Dr. Powell is in prison again and his agents don’t care to help him as they were not paid. Dr. Warren is furious to have lost his superheroes but happy to pay big money for Synergy if the agents can get the creature.

About The Author

George Jack is the owner of a delivery-service company and an avid fan of science-fiction for as long as he can remember. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.