Haneke gets very high, stumbles into an RSL, and begins writing the opening scene of a sequel to Seventh Continent.

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Georg, Anna and Eva wake up in Australia, their dream continent.

“Lest we forget..” the eerie recording is playing at half-speed, crackling, giving the disembodied voice a dreamy, drunken slurred quality.

“It tastes like ash! Oh why does it taste like ash Mommy?” Eva whines plaintively.

The Austrian family is sitting at a table in a German-themed RSL somewhere on the south coast, perhaps Kiama, and Eva is whining at her hybrid schnitzel/Parma dinner and spitting a mouthful onto the table. Georg and Anna are sitting opposite each other, staring at each other’s faces but not seeing each other.

The German bistro in the RSL was once famed for its schnitzels and pork knuckles. But no one could remember how to speak German anymore, and most people didn’t remember where they were. The regulars simply found themselves there daily, right before the hour of remembrance and that eerie record was played punctually at 16:00.

The RSL was near the coast, and adjacent a caravan park that seemed to operate both as a holiday destination and a retirement village. “Operates” is a strong word, as both the vacant-eyed elderly and the sunburned youthful residents have no memory of any other place. The younger ones, Shane Warne clones, with zinc cream-painted faces and billabong cozzies, they move as little as the retirees, have the same vacant eyes, and spasm with the aggressive jocularity they once had when alive.

Some kind of gradual zomification event seems to have frozen all of them in time. They’re placid zombies, their undead lust solely directed at pushing buttons on the switched off pokie machines and the continual robotic downing of Tooheys New schooners.

“Lest we forget…” the record intones, and the zombies shuffle slowly across the hall to the shrine.

“Lest we forget..” all the zombies begin to intone this in unison, staring vacantly out to sea..

“Lest we forget”..the zombies are now pounding their chests rhythmically.

“Mommy, are we dead?” Eva whimpers “what’s happening? Why can’t I remember anything?”

“Yes, sweetie, yes!” Anna replies “we’re dead, but we made it to Australia, and now we’ll get to live here with our new forever friends!”

Eva can’t move and a blackness begins to descend over her vision. She screams. There are fates worse than death.