Please Stand By… 2007

Wendy, an autistic young woman with a lifelong fascination for Star Trek, leads a carefully structured life inside a San Francisco group home where she is watched by the attentive house manager, Scottie. Her world narrows and brightens around one giant project: a 427-page Star Trek script she hopes to enter in Paramount Pictures’ screenwriting contest, chasing a prize that could change everything for her.

In a visit that feels like a beacon in a restricted life, Wendy’s sister Audrey arrives with photos of her infant niece, Ruby, and the hard truth that their childhood home is being sold. Wendy clings to a hopeful plan: if she can win the contest, she believes she can buy back the house and help care for Ruby. Audrey’s blunt honesty—she doubts Wendy’s ability to care for a baby—lands like a cold wind, and Wendy’s request to be taken home spirals into a meltdown. Audrey leaves, her heart heavy, while Wendy is left with the ache of a dream that might slip away.

When Wendy misses the mail-in deadline, a stubborn resolve takes over. She decides to deliver the script in person, a bold move that shifts the whole weight of the story onto the road. She steps out before dawn, with the group home’s small dog, Pete, in tow. A bus to Los Angeles seems like a straight path, but the journey quickly grows messy: Pete urinates on the bus, and the vehicle leaves them stranded on the roadside.

The path for Wendy becomes a maze of misfortune and small mercies. She wanders into a rough shanty town, where she is robbed of most of her money. A nearby shop nearly swindles her out of what remains, but an elderly woman named Rose intervenes. Rose senses Wendy’s vulnerability—her grandson shares a similar autistic experience—and offers guidance and companionship on a senior citizens’ bus. Tragedy flickers into danger when the bus driver falls asleep and crashes, changing the trajectory of Wendy’s mission and forcing her to confront peril more directly.

The crash leaves Wendy waking in a Bakersfield hospital. Even under the strain of a possible life-altering detour, she remains determined to complete her mission. She escapes with the help of instinct and grit, leaving Pete behind at the hospital and, in the process, losing parts of her precious script. Undeterred, she scavenges discarded paper and begins to rewrite, stubbornly reconstructing the pages she fears she may never recover.

Back home, Audrey and Scottie realize Wendy is missing and launch a full out‑search. They deduce she has ventured south to Los Angeles to deliver the script personally. The Bakersfield hospital staff inform them of Wendy’s whereabouts, and a coordinated effort by the police and family teammates intensifies the pursuit. Sam, Scottie’s son, joins the search, and the pair eventually find Wendy’s manuscript fragments among the hospital’s corridors.

With renewed hope, Wendy tries to buy a bus ticket to LA, but money remains a barrier. Resourceful and determined, she climbs aboard the next bus in a most unconventional way—stowing away in the baggage compartment—reaching Los Angeles unseen by most, yet not by fate. In the city, she wanders the streets until two officers recognize her from the missing-persons report. A rare moment of trust comes when Officer Frank speaks in Klingon, breaking through Wendy’s guarded reserve and earning her cooperation. They escort her to the police station, where she is finally reunited with Audrey and Scottie.

From there, a car ride to Paramount Pictures follows, and Wendy’s long journey reaches a climactic moment at the studio’s mailroom. The worker is rough and dismissive, but Wendy, with a blend of nerve and persistence, slips past security and places her entire script into the turn-in box. In a quiet revelation, she tells her sister that she undertook the mission not to prove anyone right or wrong, but to prove to herself that she is capable.

The road back to the group home is calm but not empty. Paramount soon sends a letter: the script wasn’t selected, yet the note is encouraging—an invitation to keep writing and to keep refining her craft. Wendy accepts the outcome with a grounded resolve, seeing value in the effort and in the progress she has made toward her own sense of achievement. The story closes on a tender, hopeful note as she visits Audrey at their childhood home, where she holds her niece Ruby for the first time and shares a quiet, mutual embrace with her sister. The journey—fraught with obstacles, small acts of kindness, and moments of courage—leaves Wendy with a sense of completion, even in rejection, and a renewed belief in the power of persistence.