Æon Flux/Tide

Tide
Shorts Season 2, Episode 4
Airdate	November 17, 1992
Production Number	—
Written by	Peter Chung
Directed by	Peter Chung
← Sx04 Leisure	Sx06 → War
Æon Flux — Shorts

Tide is the fourth stand-alone short featuring Æon Flux and is the tenth short overall. It aired on Liquid Television on November 17, 1992.

Plot Overview

Æon breaks into what appears to be a kind of floating base with an accomplice and a key. She enters an elevator where she meets Trevor, who knocks the key out of her hand. It lands behind a structure and she handcuffs him to a pole before attempting to grab the key. The key comes loose, but the tag saying what number door it opens doesn't. As the elevator descends, Æon does the same actions in each scene. She exits the elevator, shoots at a Breen soldier, attempts to open the door (unsuccessfully) and shoots at something being lowered from a crane before entering the elevator again. This occurs several times through the third floor.

Meanwhile, in the elevator, Æon's accomplice has started getting into Trevor's pants. Their acts get more and more sexual until Æon realizes what's going on and attempts to kill Trevor. Her accomplice doesn't let her and tries to shoot her first, but she doesn't have any bullets. So, she throws her gun at Æon. The gun connects, Æon stumbles backwards and hits her head on an shelf sticking out of the wall and apparently breaks her neck. On the second floor, the accomplice leaves the elevator to retrieve whatever was in the closet and Trevor is shot dead by the Breen agent. He exits and shoots the crane.

After the accomplice comes back into the elevator, she takes the object from its container and discards it, thinking that it's useless. She exits the elevator on the first floor, runs to where the crane is and watches the Breen soldier escape on the wire. A plug is pulled out of the base by the crane and the base sinks. The object that Æon was attempting to retrieve was another stopper that would prevent the water from submerging the base.

Notes

Characters

• Æon: Æon is killed when she cracks her head on the shelf and apparently breaks her neck.

Trivia

Behind the Scenes

• Time: This short is four minutes and twenty seconds long.
• Genesis: This episode was structured much like a piece of music would be. Peter Chung cut the storyboard into a grid, where there's a repeating series of 20 shots and only the characters are placed differently. It's like the animation equivalent of a bolero.
• Scriptless: This is the only short of the series which was not written out as a script because it would have been too complicated to describe the story with words.