Movie plot

Last week while vacationing in the Carribbean, I sat outside my hotel room balcony one night and looked at the stars. (There are many more visible there than in NY, of course, though not as much as I saw in the French alps). The light of the brightest star was white and strong - a window into a world millions of light years away. Looking at it I wondered what it would be like to go there? Suspended animation is all good in the movies, but it's highly questionable whether it will ever be realized in practice.

There is no other choice: humans would have to board a spaceship and live there for thousands of generations before they reach the star. The first generation will have still seen Earth..their children will only hear about it from their parents.. and relate it in turn to their own children in bedtime stories. After a 100 generations, what would life be like on this spaceship? One's entire world would be the ship - he would not know anything else. Trees and grass, forests and mountains, lakes and oceans, cities and sunset - all would be concepts only in his imagination, merely a mental picture formed from ancient tales. The common goal and purpose in life would be preached to him from birth: stay alive, give rise to the next generation, so that they may do the same, repeating until that final moment in the distant future. The sacred 'end game', the stuff of legends. The arrival.

The moment comes and they land on a planet near the destination star. They colonize the land, build cities, multiply and establish a civilization. The memory of Earth is by this point but a far away memory, as bleak to these people as the light of the Earth's Sun. In time, no one will know where they came from. Except for a select few, perhaps, who will form an elite society of possessors of 'the knowledge'. The secret would be strictly guarded and passed down the line. Of course, the day will come when survival will no long be a constant question on the minds of the new civilization. They will probe deep into their history and discover the truth. The next step is only natural - "We must return to our origin. We will finally complete the circle and see the source with our own eyes." [If we discovered that we are an ancient colony of a distant planet, wouldn't we strive to do the same?] And so, a spaceship takes off once again. Another few hundred thousand years pass, and the distant descendants of the people who sent them arrive back on Earth.

What will they see? Will anyone be welcoming them back...or even remember of their existence? Or perhaps what they will see will be a barren landscape - not a life form in sight? They will dig far below the numerous layers of dust accumulated over the millenia and find a pillar with this message etched in stone: "Welcome back. We waited for you all along. As you can tell, we are all dead. Please recolonize. Thank you, management."

Once in a while, usually during my free time or on vacation, I get ideas about possible movie scripts. I wonder if there are 2 hours of plot here...