UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD THE TRILOGY
PART THREE
1999 was the year the Indian nuclear satellite went out of control.
It soared above the ozone layer like a lethal bird of prey,
until it was shot down by American missiles and exploded above the Australian continent.
We were cut off completely from the rest of the world,
if indeed it still existed.
We had no way of knowing if the catastrophe was local or global.
I continued to write my novel. I wrote like a maniac.
I wrote about our fears, I wrote about our hopes.
I wrote about Claire. I wrote about Chico, and Winter and Burt.
I wrote about the Farber family, and their pride and selfishness.
I wrote about the aboriginal people. I wrote about myself, too.
I wrote so that none of what had happened to us would ever be forgotten.
I wrote day and night.
Claire could not understand how the failure of the experiment
could possibly matter that much, compared to the fate of the world.
But such were the passions of the Farber family,
that the experiments seemed of greater importance than the end of time itself.
Ned, good morning. Let's go through the tapes together.
Is was all Sam thought about.
He blamed himself, even in his dreams.
Wake up, Sam. Come on, pretty face.
I'm asleep, for God's sake!
How can I give a shit if I'm too tired!
Without sleep, I can't transfer the images,
and if I can't, then there's been no point to any of it!
Good morning.
- I'm Karl. I work here. - I'm Eugene.
Well, make yourself at home.
Thank you.
It's nice.
- What do you do? - I'm a genius.
G'morning, mate.
I'm thinking about Raymond.
He'll get angry when he finds out about the money.
Didn't you keep some for him ?
No. but I will give some, you know me.
Thanks, mate.
Thanks what?
- Thanks, mate. - Thanks, mate.
If I understand this correctly,
you recorded some tape of his sister, which means
you could transmit it to his mother. Am I correct?
I'm the only one who can.
Then what's the problem? If you can make her see it then do it!
Why would Sam care? He should be happy!
- Ned. Sync lock for recovery? - Skipped procedure, standby.
Alright.
You want to go through this again, Claire?
No, Henry. I'm fine.
65% retention. 75% but still rising.
- Beautiful. Ronda? - Everything's perfect.
- Peaking at 93% - That's very impressive. She's a natural.
Store cards full. Combining into simulation.
...have a dream where Henry would give you back your sight. Just like you always said he would.
I can't trust the simulator. I just can't trust it.
Don't do anything!
Second seeing rolling straight through the transmission, Henry.
Okay, Lydia. Any objections?
Edith's heart's fine. BP good, respiration normal. Everything's okay.
Waves are good, she's in the curl.
Alright. Drat it. Go to transmission.
Ten... nine... eight...
seven... six... five...
four... three... two...
one... now!
The colors...
blue,
yellow,
red.
A person... sitting.
by a window,
blue hairband...
yellow dress.
She is sitting, hands folded.
Could she be... our daughter?
and the shadows on the wall?
And a jug on the table...
red curtains.
What a lovely face...
Henry!
Look at her face!
The sound's come up, Dr. Farber.
Go ahead, Elsa.
I'm so relieved.
I was so mad at you guys.
I thought you were dead.
It's so weird that this is finally happening now.
I can't think of anything to say.
I love you, Mother.
You're the wisest, sweetest, strongest woman.
I'm so happy that you can see me.
- Mother, this is Heidi. - I'm five.
You ran away before she was born.
She has your mouth.
Can you tell Grandma a story?
Tell her about your cat.
Can you tell her about your cat?
She likes to play with her tail and she only eats string cheese.
And she caught a... rat.
Only one. We don't have many rats at our house.
Elsa, I have to stop. My eyes hurt.
Thank you!
Congratulations, Edith!
Henry! Congratulations.
Thank you.
Hey, you're not writing about us.
No.
Like this.
And when you breath, when you get to that stage that is,
you push in, right here.
You push the stomach in and that powers the breathing.
See, you can keep it going all the time. Nonstop.
This day is a great day in history
your family is very proud
to be with you on this day when you see our faces.
I know I am talking too much.
- Anton, it's Edith this is for. Not Henry. - I'm coming to her.
Hello, dear Edith.
If only we could be with and share this moment with you.
Well, in a way, we are.
For a second, I was seeing, I was watching all those people
wondering: are they still alive?
Mrs. Farber,
I have just witnessed a miracle and so have you.
Of course, they're still alive.
Only miracles make sense.
Still there?
Yeah, he's still there.
A big old fellow?
Yeah, he's a big old fellow.
He's a wedged tail.
Ah, Iritza.
He'll find his place soon.
Doesn't seem to be in any hurry about it.
I could record it. You could see him.
I know him.
- What about Father's face? - Henry,
I know him even better.
- You've never seen Henry's face! - I know him.
Where is everybody?
The old ones want to sit down with the young people. To explain some old business.
They want to make sure everything is passed on.
They're afraid of the radiation.
They call it "the poison from the sky".
They don't understand it, but they know it'll destroy our country.
They want to make sure everything is passed on.
People painting song lines, telling stories,
recording details of sacred sites.
They're pushing everything out. Like a dying moth pushing out eggs.
"Come into my parlor" said the spider to the fly.
"Oh, no thanks, Mr. Longshanks. I have other fish to fry."
- Thank you, Sammy. - You're welcome.
Here we go.
Now you will see Nora.
It's unbelievable, Mom. How Sam found me here in Siberia, of all places.
I wish you didn't have to see me in such an ugly place,
but I'm afraid...
this is what the world looks like.
Very good, Samuel! Bravo.
You liked that? I'm really glad.
Just getting a concentrated image in that situation was really difficult.
Siberia, was it cold?
No, forget about the cold. The cold was the least of the problems. It was my eyes.
Your eyes?
After recording Dr. Fukosawa in Tokyo, I couldn't see! I was literally blind.
- Was it the focusing? - No, it's the programming.
The programming is too harsh on the retina.
When you first walked into my office in Berlin,
who'd have thought we'd end up here?
You're a missing person yourself now, Mr. Winter.
Here I am.
For better or for worse.
In any reasonable culture I would be perceived as
fantastically beautiful, don't you think?
There must be a planet somewhere where they have the correct aesthetic
where all those young faces with their smooth skin would be considered terribly ugly.
All these folds, and spots and wrinkles,
well, it's wisdom, eh? So, it's beautiful? Even sexy?
I'll tell you, Edith, I actually feel a little shy.
That's enough, Sam. I'd like to do it again.
Damn it.
What are you laughing at?
- I've always found you sexy, Father. - Oh, shut up!
Edith Eisner had been 8 years old when she'd lost her sight.
The experience of seeing the world again was exhilarating
but it was also confusing, and sad.
The world she discovered was darker and uglier than she could have imagined.
It would have been ungracious for her to mention this.
Her grief was only there for those
with eyes to see it.
- You are not hungry, darling? - No.
Wait a minute, fellas!
At the end of the first week, we registered low levels of radiation in the air.
The contamination was insignificant,
but it was a defeat for the optimists amongst us.
The reason Henry and I are so close
to the Mbantua people is that a long time ago, nearly 40 years,
I came to write a book on the Mbantua women.
So, you both had work here?
I came for my work.
He followed me because he loved me.
I loved him, too. Very much.
We first met in Lisbon.
I was twelve, he was fourteen.
- We were running from the Nazis. - By yourselves?
I was with my parents.
He had lost his.
Our lives are filled with sad stories, and good ones, too.
We were teenage lovers.
You followed some of our adventure chasing Sam.
Berlin, Paris, Lisbon.
And then America.
We had American babies.
You must have missed them when you had to hide.
Very badly.
- And Sam lost his child. - Yes.
Your grand child...
- Did he say that it's our fault? - No, absolutely no.
He does think that it's our fault, but he will never be aggressive with me,
only with Henry.
That's how it always is...
That's how it always is.
Boys. Men.
It was on that same evening that I realized that this had been the purpose of our journey
Neither to prove my love for Claire,
nor the search for a blind woman's sight.
The purpose of our journey had been so that this music might bloom here,
on the edge of what was possibly the end of the world.
And as I played,
and as I watched the Mbantua people seek refuge from the radiation
in the caves of Dr. Farber's laboratory
I felt that what we were playing was a prayer,
a prayer for the wounded planet, Earth.
- Thank you, Claire. - You must be very tired.
This is wonderful. You see how the images are becoming so much clearer?
This is a very smart little computer.
So, listen. Edith... I was wondering if you have the strength
- No, Farber. She hasn't. - Quiet, Maisie. Of course, I have.
Hello, girls.
Hey, Madeleine, how are you?
Thank you, Karl.
Have anyone thought about possible side effects of this whole thing?
Old man Farber cares only about his work. Everything and everyone else takes a second place.
He wants his Nobel Prize.
Making blind people see?
You are joking. The potential for this device is awesome.
It can take visual information straight from the brain.
Once I do that, we can suck our dreams and look at them like television.
- That's impossible. - That's what they said to Galileo.
He refuses to give back the "Noa Noa" manuscript,
written by Gaugain during his stay in Tahiti,
it will remain in France. It will be donated to the Modern Art Museum.
Oh, yes.
"It's a curious adventure"
For a writer you don't type very fast.
How do you spell "nuisance"?
I like it better when you're depressed, Winter.
- Peter ? - Yes, Edith.
How far have you got with your dictionary?
The word I am at is "inngirre".
Face!
Good morning, you've got the Dr. Stanley J. Top of the hour
traffic alert inbound on the San Bernadino on the 10 and the 405. You know how it is.
A quick look at the weather for this Friday, December 31st, 1999 the last day of the century
It's okay! It's okay!
It was in space! The blast was all in space!
We have a crystal radio! It was in the radio station in Los Angeles!
You've got to listen to this!
The earphones. Can I put them on you?
The world is still alive!
It was the eve of the year 2000.
There must have been parties all over the world.
But no celebration could have been happier than this one in Central Australia,
in the land of the Mbantua people.
But as we sang and danced we couldn't know
that one of us was not going to follow us into the new millennium.
This is insane. Just when you've found out the world is okay,
you're singing yourself to death?
The world is not okay.
You know the world is not okay.
You can't just decide to die.
I don't decide anything.
I just let go.
I'm sorry, my love.
- We've been pushing you too hard. - No, Henry.
There's nothing to be sorry for. Life ends.
But I've seen, finally... after all these years.
This is our story, my darling.
What a chase it has been. What a dance...
Just don't do this to me, please.
Listen...
Listen to them singing.
Days I'll remember all my life,
Days when you can't see wrong from right.
You took my life, But then I knew that very soon you'd leave me,
But it's all right,
Now I'm not frightened of this world, believe me.
I wish today could be tomorrow,
The night is dark, It just brings sorrow, let it wait.
Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won't forget a single day, believe me.
Days I'll remember all my life,
Days when you can't see wrong from right.
You took my life, But then I knew that very soon you'd leave me,
But it's all right,
Now I'm not frightened of this world, believe me.
Days.
Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won't forget a single day, believe me.
I bless the light, I bless the light that shines on you, believe me.
And though you're gone,
You're with me every single day, believe me.
Days...
Umbjana, my child.
Let's go now. Women's business.
When Edith Mbtjana was buried in the earth at the Kangaroo Plain,
her husband followed the aboriginal traditions for death,
but after the ceremony, he neglected those for mourning.
It occurred to no one that he might be attempting to break more serious taboos.
You come along now, Henry. You come away from here.
You know it's wrong for you to be here.
Wrong for you, Peter. But okay for me.
You know... I'm a white fellow, you know.
Goodbye, Fitzpatrick.
Do detectives write, Mr. Winter ?
- It depends on the expense. - Well, keep in touch.
It was Februray of the year 2000. The time had come for partings.
Winter, Chico, Buzzer, Burt and Lydia all went home,
thinking the story was over..
Claire and Sam finally felt that they'd left their old lives behind them.
They were looking forward to a life together that just seemed to be beginning.
Hello?
I stuck around. I didn't feel like going back to Paris, anyway.
I'd found a heart-felt solititude which allowed me to work in a very disciplined way.
I moved into the now defunct radio station
to write what I thought what was going to be the last chapter of my novel.
But none of us knew that Dr. Farber was pursuing a new line of research,
which would take us all on to another journey,
down dangerous pathways. Down into the garden of dreams itself.
- This is a Nobel Prize matter. - For making people see, yes.
If that's what you want, fine.
I'll stay. I'll even help you write the papers.
- Fine. - But turn it around and we're leaving,
and this old man's leaving with us.
- Don't you think that's his decision? - No, that's our people's decision, Dr. Farber.
- You want to record pictures of his dreams. - I would never hurt your people!
You're my brother, Henry. That never changes. Never.
You helped our people, and for that I thank you.
But I didn't understand what you wanted. If Ronda hadn't...
Peter, no one ever did this before, in the history of our planet!
And a damn good job, too.
Imagine what you could hang on your walls,
instead of my people's paintings.
You could exhibit the inside of our heads!
Our dreamings, and all our old people's secret knowledge. You know that, Henry!
You think we want you walking through our dreamings with your fancy cameras?
- You are leaving, too, Ned? - Yes, I am going with my people.
God Almighty!
It's okay. He's in deep sleep.
What's he doing?
He's trying to record his own dreams.
The technology's the same: He takes his brain signals
and turns them into pictures on the screen.
- That doesn't look very promising. - We'll see.
At first, only Dr. Farber could see the promise of his experiments
He and Karl worked around the clock.
But the fruit of their labor seemed to be nothing more than
a chaotic rhythm of digital noise, colors, and lights.
But eventually, shapes began to emerge
Herr Dr Jung, Herr Dr Freud...
if only you could see us now!
Sam could see the computer slowly finding it's way through this new universe.
He realized that in order to continue successfully,
his father couldn't remain the only subject of his own experiments.
Sam knew what he was expected to do.
Don't hurt him.
But he's my son.
You see, we know you. We know how your brain sees.
And we're smart.
We learn.
What was just electricity to us yesterday, is color today, and movement!
A dream!
I shouldn't be seeing this.
Ronda ?
Oh, Claire, look at this.
Progress.
A cacophony of brainwaves transformed into a symphony of colors and shapes.
Biochemical images.
If I were Sam, this would make me feel like honey.
- The music of the spheres. - This is so beautiful.
Beautiful? Wallpaper is beautiful.
You're not looking at the human soul, singing to itself,
to it's own god!
I don't know about God.
The God within us.
Look at it. It needs nothing.
- It needs everything. - Nothing. Nothing, my dear!
- It will eat us up alive. - Never.
- We should really stop this. - Stop it? How can we stop it?
This is all we've ever wanted! This is what we feed on!
How could we ever turn away from this?
We don't have the right.
Shit. There it goes again.
- Look! That's his face. It's Sam's face. - I can see that.
- He's frightened. - Maybe.
- Can't you see? - You know what I think is going on here?
I think the computer's doing it.
The computer is interpreting. It's trying to transmit a visual equivalent of the dreamer's emotions.
When did you ever see your own face in your dream?
- I often see myself in my dreams. - You do?
- You don't? - Never.
Well, aren't you? Aren't you even curious to know about your dreams.
- Of course she is. - It's not very clear to me.
- Is that all? The computer will learn. - Well, if that is the worry, relax.
- We'll have them clear as crystal. - Relax.
- Any day. - I don't really like my dreams. Mostly, they're nightmares.
You have to look at it as if you were going to another planet, or...
It's like you'll be the first woman to walk on...
- On Venus! - On Venus.
You are not trying to tell us you're going to turn down a chance to see your own dreams.
- Come on! - And then we quit.
And then we quit. And then we quit!
What is that?
- And then we quit! It's a deal? - Alright then. Yes, then we quit.
- Will you do it? - Once?
- Tonight? - Once.
That's the way. Is that a promise?
No, she doesn't trust us.
Claire was in position to deny Henry Farber the chance of recording her dreams.
Based on her successful transmission to Edith, she was the perfect cadidate.
She had transmitted more detailed visual information in her first seeing,
provided more coherent memory patterns in her second.
The computer considered her technically compatible.
- What is the border rate? - It's okay. There's no danger of overloading.
Good.
Who could have known that sleeping inside her was the propensity for addiction.
Look!
Look, it's me. I'm in front of the house we used to live in when I was four years old.
I must have dreamed that all my life and I've never remembered.
I want to see this again.
Why don't you let us work on this, Claire. We'll have a much better image...
Sam, did you see that? It was me when I was little.
Just a minute.
I suggest we work on it, analyse it and if it's successful I'm sure it'll be quite easy.
I'll put it through.
Once she saw the lost world of her childhood
she was helpless against the desire to see more.
In the weeks that followed, the laboratory became a beehive of activity.
The computer constantly processed huge amounts of data.
While one person slept, the others huddled around monitors,
waiting, watching, wanting to see a dream.
Soon, they were hooked. All of them.
they lived to see their dreams,
and when they slept, they dreamed about their dreams.
They had arrived at the island of dreams together,
but in a short time, they were oceans apart.
I watched helplessly as Claire and Sam were drowning in their own nocturnal imagery.
They ignored each other, and neglected themselves.
The dreams, which should been flushed away with the first yawn,
were now their only diet, and thus became more and more concentrated.
They made monsters for themselves that they could neither tolerate
nor do without.
Each time I get to this part of this dream, it gets blurry.
I'll dream this again. I can make that clearer.
Now, I can stare at it in a whole new direction.
They wandered in and out of lost worlds,
feelings and figures emerged from a forgotten past.
Their dreams became black holes of isolation.
They suffered finally from a complete loss of reality.
I am as happy as a child. And then I fall.
Why do I always fall?
Don't leave me all alone!
Why do you always leave me alone?
The fall.
The time.
The loneliness.
The fear.
Hello, Claire.
How are you?
Can I see?
- Please? - No.
There's a line that should never be crossed.
And we passed it a long time ago.
By the time I came to rescue Claire the only thing she cared about
was having fresh batteries for her video monitor.
Good luck!
Stop!
If I'd given Claire the batteries for her monitor, then I could have been her friend.
But I wouldn't, so I was her enemy.
She would not let me touch her. She would not let me feed her.
I wanted to help Claire, but I didn't know how.
I thought she had to sweat them all out, those false images she'd absorbed.
She had fallen into the deep well of narcissism,
and she had to climb up towards the light by herself.
Make it work!
Gene, can't you make it work?
I can't, Claire. It's dead.
I'm dead.
My heart is dead!
I'd always cherished the beginning of the Gospel According to John:
"In the beginning was the word."
I was now afraid that the Apocalypse would read: "In the end, there were only images".
I didn't know the cure for the disease of images.
All I knew was how to write.
Winter had once said to me:
"Words won't help us now, Mr. Fitzpatrick." But words were all I had.
Somebody must have collected the $500,000 reward from the CIA.
In another 20 years, the US government might tell me who it was.
but not now. Not in this book.
All I found out was that two men landed in a helicopter
and took Dr. Farber back to the United States.
I finally understood why Henry had wanted to transform brainwaves into images.
His wife existed only in his dreams.
He had sought her there, and had found her.
Well, not really her. His memory of her,
and his vision of himself.
It's time to pack up! Where is your son now, Dr. Farber?
"In the beginning was the word." "Words won't help us now, Mr. Fitzpatrick."
I believed in words.
And I believed in the magic and healing power of storytelling.
So, I did the only thing I could do:
I continued to write Claire's story.
Hoping that she could read it one day.
I wrote her healthy. I wrote her happy.
I prayed that the truth of the words
might still the screaming white birds in the sky.
For several hours, the government agents looked for Sam
and circled over the maze into which he had fled.
They might have found him, if he had wanted to be found
but it was impossible to rescue a man lost in the labyrinth of his own soul.
Now, it's time to get that shit out of your system. For once and for all.
Come on.
I'll take you to the old fellas that I know.
You will sleep between them. They will take your dream.
Come on.
I'll take you.
You're my brother.
Come on!
You don't say?
I know, I know.
Rock.
Fly, don't bother me.
Shoo, fly.
Don't bother me.
10,000 fleets sweep over me in vain.
Well, how do you like it?
But now...
what happens now?
That's for you to invent.
I "danced around the planet", you call it.
Yeah,
I watched you dance.
It was only later that I realized Sam Farber
had been inside the ransacked laboratory at exactly the same time
Claire and I had stood at the broken bridge on the other side of the camp.
It was perhaps the last time the pair of them would be so close.
On that April morning, I no longer had a competitor for her heart.
And yet, Claire and I had moved beyond all that.
There's no going back.
We were not going to be a couple again. Not with each other, or with anybody else for quite awhile.
But we were always going to be friends.
I wanted to see Claire grow old,
more than anything I hoped she was now on the path to being that better person she had sworn to become.
I wrote an ending for my novel, whereby Sam and Claire would meet again,
in that same bar in San Francisco, Tosca's.
I wrote it, but tore the pages apart and wrote the truth instead.
Sam did return to San Francisco,
only to find he had lost his wife and son, for good.
He never found his father again. Only his grave.
Dr. Farber had died keeping the secrets of his dream machine for himself.
As for Claire, the next time I heard from her she was working for Greenspace.
Her extraordinary vision had found her a place on their space observatory.
She and her crewmates orbited the Earth,
watching the oceans for pollution crimes.
She stayed up there for 6 months. She spent her 30th birthday in space.
Hello, Claire. Happy birthday!
I'm in New York. The book came out today. What do you think?
We don't have much time. Operator, can we have the conference call now, please?
Ready, guys?
Happy birthday to you...
To the memory of my father and my brother,
for my mother, Barbara, Hella and Michael.