In the first years of the 21st century...
...a third World War broke out.
Those of us who survived knew
mankind could never survive...
a fourth...
that our own volatile natures
could simply no longer be risked.
So we have created a new arm of the law...
...the Grammaton Cleric,
whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate
the true source of man's inhumanity to man.
His ability...
to feel.
Police!
You know what to do.
Get down!
We have an unknown number
barricaded in the southeast end of the compound.
Read that. Tetragrammaton team en route.
Cleric, lights out. Maybe more than a dozen inside.
When the door's down, blow the bulbs.
Yes, sir.
Go.
Where is he?
Shut up.
Anybody get him? Did anybody hit him?
Shut up!
Listen.
This is it.
Where?
There.
It's real.
Burn it.
Why didn't you just leave it
for the evidentiary team to collect and log?
They miss things sometimes.
And I thought I'd take it down myself...
get it done properly.
How long, Preston, till all this is gone?
Till we've burned every last bit of it?
Resources are tight.
We'll get it all eventually.
Libria...
I congratulate you.
At last...
peace reigns in the heart of man.
At last, war is but a word
whose meaning fades from our understanding.
At last...
we... are... whole.
Librians... there is a disease in the heart of man.
Its symptom is hate.
Its symptom... is anger.
Its symptom is rage.
Its symptom... is war.
The disease... is human emotion.
But, Libria... I congratulate you.
For there is a cure for this disease.
At the cost of the dizzying highs of human emotion,
we have suppressed its abysmal lows.
And you as a society have embraced this cure.
Prozium.
Now we are at peace with ourselves,
and humankind is one.
War is gone.
Hate, a memory.
We are our own conscience now.
And it is this conscience that guides us to rate EC-10
for emotional content
all those things that might tempt us to feel again...
and destroy them.
Librians, you have won.
Against all odds and your own natures...
you have survived.
Every time we come from the Nethers to the city,
it reminds why we do what we do.
It does?
I beg your pardon.
It does.
The following items have been rated EC-10...
condemned...
seven works of two-dimensional illustrated material,
seven discs of musical content,
20 interactive strategy computer programs.
Seven works of two-dimensional...
Thank you for coming, Cleric.
I assume you know who I am.
Yes, sir. Of course.
You are Vice-Council Dupont
of the Third Conciliarly of the Tetragrammaton...
Father's voice.
Quite frankly, Cleric,
I am told that you are very nearly a prodigal student,
knowing almost instantly if someone is feeling.
I have a good record, sir.
Why, do you imagine, that is, Cleric?
I'm not sure, Vice-Council.
Somehow...
I'm able, on some level,
to sense how an offender thinks,
to... put myself in their position.
If you had ceased your interval,
if you were a sense offender...
I suppose you could say that, sir.
You're a family man, Cleric?
Yes, sir... a boy and a girl.
The boy's in the monastery himself,
on path to becoming a Cleric.
Good.
And the mother?
My spouse was arrested and incinerated
for sense offense four years ago, sir.
By yourself?
How did you feel about that?
I'm sorry.
I don't... fully understand, sir.
How did you feel?
I didn't feel anything.
Really?
How is it that you came to miss it?
I...
I've asked myself that same question, sir.
I don't know.
A nearly unforgivable lapse, Cleric.
I trust you'll be more vigilant in the future.
Yes, sir.
Every time we come from the Nethers to the city,
it reminds why we do what we do.
It does?
Every time we come from the Nethers to the city,
it reminds why we do what we do.
It does?
It does.
Prosecutorial evidence for A.N.R. 136890.
I need it.
It was late this afternoon.
May not have showed up in the records yet.
I'm very sorry, Cleric.
Nothing has been logged
and nothing is pending under that entry.
It was an item of evidence brought in personally
by Grammaton Errol Partridge.
Check again.
Sir, Cleric Partridge has not entered anything in for weeks.
You're mistaken. It was a book of some kind.
Cleric...
...there's nothing.
Thank you.
He's been passing through the gate into the Nether
every night for the last two weeks.
We assumed it was enforcement-related.
You always knew.
"But I, being poor...
have only my dreams."
"I have spread my dreams under your feet.
"Tread softly...
because you tread on my dreams."
I assume you dream, Preston.
I'll do what I can to see they go easy on you.
We both know... they never go easy.
Then I'm sorry.
No, you're not.
You don't even know the meaning.
It's just a... vestigial word
for a feeling you've never felt.
Don't you see, Preston?
It's gone.
Everything that makes us what we are... traded away.
There's no war.
No murder.
What is it you think we do?
No.
You've been with me.
You've seen how it can be... the jealousy, the rage.
A heavy cost.
I'd pay it gladly.
Don't.
You and your partner were close?
I hope you're as pleased to be assigned me
as I am the placement.
I was told this would be a career-making advancement.
I'm like you, Cleric... intuitive.
Sometimes I know when a person's feeling
before they know it themselves.
Cleric...
I can only hope one day to be as...
uncompromising as you.
Good night.
The later 20th century
saw the fortuitous and simultaneous rise
of two synergistic political and psychological sciences.
The first, the revolutionary precept of the hate crime.
John?
Yes?
I saw Robbie Taylor crying today.
He didn't know, but I saw.
Do you think I should report him?
Unquestionably.
...a single inescapable fact...
that mankind united with infinitely greater purpose
in pursuit of war...
than he ever did in pursuit of peace.
"But I, being poor...
have only my dreams."
I have spread my dreams under your feet."
"Tread softly...
because you tread on my dreams."
Don't move! Don't move!
Comply! Comply!
- Stop! Stop where you are! - Get down! Get down!
Don't shoot. This is a lawful entry.
We have a warrant for your wife's arrest.
She's charged with sense offense.
Hey!
Get her! Get her off him now!
Remember me.
Libria...
Awake.
Awaken to triumph again in the face of yet another day,
another step in our unified march
into the unwavering purpose...
...move ahead together
into the certainty of our collective destiny.
What are you doing?
I said, what are you doing?
I accidentally dropped my...
morning interval.
I took it out before I brushed my teeth.
I never take it out before I brush my teeth.
Then you'll go by Equilibrium, log the loss,
and get a replacement.
Yes.
Of course.
Your new partner called.
He says he'll pick you up at 10:00 for the A.N.R.
I hope you don't mind.
I took the liberty of telling him
you would be at Equilibrium, replacing your dose.
No, of course not.
That was the right thing to do.
Stop that.
Due to terrorist activity,
this site is temporarily closed.
Proceed to the Equilibrium Center in Sector 8A.
Due to terrorist activity,
this site is temporarily closed.
This site is temporarily closed.
Proceed to the Equilibrium Center in Sector 8A.
More than punctual, Cleric.
Hop in.
How were the lines?
I'm surprised you were able to get your interval
and get out so quickly.
No, they're... they're fine today.
Maybe I'll drop by later, get my interval adjusted.
You expecting Resistance?
That's something you'll find about me, Cleric.
I'm a wary person, cautious by nature.
Always expecting the worst.
You can't do this. You cannot do this.
Tetragrammaton. There's nothing we can't do.
How long have you been off the dose?
Look at you.
Look at you!
Look at you.
The mirror's frame is illegal. Destroy it.
We have suppression. We're making entry.
Standard deployment.
Collecting catalog. Illegal articles.
You're gonna burn it, aren't you?
Eventually.
However, you couldn't have accumulated all this
by yourself.
It'll all be sorted and examined.
We'll discover who your confederates are.
Gun!
We need her.
What's your name?
O'Brien, Mary.
Well, Mary...
you can either wait
and tell the technicians at the Palace of Justice...
or you can tell me now.
Who are your friends?
I'm wondering if you have any idea at all
what that word means... "friend."
There's nothing you don't feel?
How about guilt?
Let me ask you something.
Why are you alive?
I'm alive...
I live...
...to safeguard the continuity of this great society.
To serve Libria.
It's circular.
You exist to continue your existence.
What's the point?
What's the point of your existence?
To feel.
'Cause you've never done it, you can never know it.
But it's as vital as breath.
And without it... without love,
without anger, without sorrow...
breath is just a clock ticking.
Then I have no choice but to remand you
to the Palace of Justice for processing.
Processing.
You mean execution, don't you?
Processing.
The Gun Katas.
Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights,
the Cleric has determined
that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle
is a statistically predictable element.
The Gun Kata treats the gun as a total weapon,
each fluid position representing
a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage
on the maximum number of opponents
while keeping the defender clear
of the statistically traditional trajectories
of return fire.
By the rote mastery of this art,
your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120%.
The difference of a 63% increase to lethal proficiency
makes the master of the Gun Katas
an adversary not to be taken lightly.
Without love...
breath is just a clock... ticking.
Prozium... the great nepenthe.
Opiate of our masses.
Glue of our great society.
Salve and salvation,
it has delivered us from pathos, from sorrow,
the deepest chasms of melancholy and hate.
With it, we anesthetize grief,
annihilate jealousy, obliterate rage.
That those sister impulses towards joy, love, and elation
are anesthetized in stride,
we accept as fair sacrifice.
For we embrace Prozium in its unifying fullness
and all that it has done to make us great.
Good morning, Cleric.
Good morning.
...intrinsically, humans, as creatures of the Earth
were drawn inherently always back to one thing... war.
And thus we seek to correct not the symptom
but the disease itself.
We have sought to shrug off individuality,
replacing it with conformity.
Replacing it...
with sameness...
with unity,
allowing each man, woman, and child
in this great society
to lead identical lives.
The concept of identical environment construction
allows each of us to head confidently into each moment
with all the secure knowledge
it has been lived before.
What are you doing?
I'm rearranging my desk.
You didn't like the way it was before?
I had no feelings about it.
I'm merely attempting to optimize.
Sense offenders holed up in the Nether.
We estimate... we estimate 50 men, sir.
Intelligence tells us they're all fully armed.
This is the group that bombed the Prozium factories.
You clean, we'll sweep.
Yes, sir.
Go! Go! Go! Go!
Go!
Aah!
Take it! Take the landings!
- Aah! - Aah!
- Cover me. I'm going in. - Aaaaaaaah!
Nice grab, Cleric.