[THEME MUSIC PLAYING]
[CRICKETS CHIRPING]
[FATHER SIGHS]
[EXCLAIMING IN ANNOYANCE]
[UTENSILS CLATTERING]
Honey, it's family hour,
there must be something on.
DAUGHTER: Oh, wow, Candy Critters!
[FATHER EXCLAIMS]
Oh great. It's Monsters, our favorite show.
[MONSTROUS LAUGH]
Shh, it's starting.
[MONSTROUS LAUGH]
[FATHER CHUCKLES]
[BEEPING]
[SIGHS]
Welcome to hell.
Raymond to ST three, I am in.
[INDISTINCT VOICES ON RADIO]
Roger that.
Rendezvous in three hours at 0700.
It'll be enough time.
This is standard evaluation procedure.
I should be done in plenty of time to make our rendezvous.
No, I don't see him.
Dammit.
[HEAVY BREATHING]
He is here. Dis-com.
Sebastian.
My name is Cara Raymond, Sebastian.
I am an outpost inspector.
And I am here to evaluate this operation and your part in it.
You have fallen far behind in your shipments.
We must talk.
SEBASTIAN: I have nothing to say to you.
CARA: I am sorry to hear that.
I had hoped you would be more co-operative.
This will go much easier and much more quickly
if you just answer my questions.
SEBASTIAN: You wouldn't be interested in the answers I have.
Why don't you let me be the judge of that?
SEBASTIAN: You are my judge.
Are you not?
I don't consider myself the judge of any one.
I am a gatherer of facts. A fair witness.
What I learn here about this outpost,
and your performance determine what I recommend to the company.
So you see,
it's best if you work with me.
I see.
The currents of industry must not be interrupted.
Very well.
What do you want to know?
First, why are the projected ore shipment quotas not being met?
There have been... complications.
Sebastian, I assume you want to live.
At least you wanted to badly enough to volunteer
to be bio-engineered for this assignment
when you learned you had a terminal disease.
Now, if I don't get some answers,
I am going to have to assume
that this station isn't salvageable.
And that means you are out of a job.
Sebastian.
Let me remind you.
You signed a contract
with Hephaestus mining corporation.
You have no rights as a citizen,
whoever you were before your metamorphosis
cease to have any legal significance,
when you were brain-wiped.
Hephaestus owns you.
Right down to your patented designer DNA.
And just like the rest of the equipment here,
if you're not cost effective,
you will be scraped.
Is that what you want?
It seems, Miss Raymond,
that what I want,
is of little consequence.
Things are the way they are.
We are both part of a system.
Sebastian, this would be much easier
if I could see you, and the rest of the outpost,
will you please turn on a light in there?
Very well.
[BUZZING]
Am I what you expected?
I didn't know what to expect.
They didn't give me much...
Background information on this case.
All they told me was your name.
The name I was given, when I was reborn.
CARA: Yes.
All right.
Let's get down to business.
All shipments, quotas...
[EXHALES] God, I am roasting.
It's over a 100 degrees standard in here.
And it's over 300 degrees in here.
"Three hundred degrees" standard?
No, Celsius.
An inch of helo glass and it's almost too hot to touch.
It feels cold to me.
[SIGHS]
The cyber tech certainly earned their pay with you.
All right.
Talk to me.
Do you mind if I prepare my nourishment during this interrogation?
The installation of the station went according to plan.
The automated melters and ore distillers
were able to produce
the transeronic elements to the mantle of To-alpha.
I know all that.
What I want to know is why you're behind in your shipments?
It isn't easy to explain.
Well, try. And try to be brief.
My orbital connection is in two hours and 40 minutes,
we don't have all night.
You show a surprising lack of knowledge
about this planet, inspector.
Night goes on forever on this side of To-alpha.
The brightest it ever gets here,
is a sort of twilight.
It was just a figure of speech, dammit.
Let's stick to the problem.
What's the excuse?
Health problems?
These extreme transformation
sometimes have unforeseen side-effects.
SEBASTIAN: Yes, there have been some side-effects.
Some form of exfoliation has been plaguing me of late.
Analogous to the growth of finger nails possibly.
Evidently as you suggested,
my bio-reformation was not completely error-free.
These side effects,
are they the reason for your missed quotas?
No. The quotas have not been met
because I have been busy with other research.
[SIGHS IN EXASPERATION]
Some time ago, I began to hear...
I supposed you'd call them voices.
At first I thought it was my imagination.
Loneliness.
All my hormonal activity is regulated.
Still I have such feelings on occasion.
CARA: Sometimes synaptic re-routing,
takes place.
Vague memories, a sense of dejavu,
as I said, the process is not without occasional errors.
It's true that there are memories.
Or a ghost of memories.
Reverberations from my past.
But these voices are different.
Tell me about them.
I am taping this interview by the way.
Not voices really.
I don't know if I can describe them in words you would understand.
Some times, it's like whispering.
Some times it's like the sound of rain
against a cedar roof.
And yet it's all the same.
It seems at times that they are trying to tell me something.
Trying desperately.
I feel as if they are calling to me,
as if they want me to go out.
Out into the world and find them. Join them out there.
But I can't find them.
Something is holding me back.
Sebastian.
Let's be very clear about this.
Do you mean to say you think you're hearing alien voices?
You think these voices are from the inhabitants of To-alpha?
Yeah.
This is a problem.
[RUMBLING]
What was that?
A tremor.
To-alpha is prone to considerable seismic activity.
Quite a piece of real estate.
It's quite beautiful.
In it's own way.
So you've told me.
[SIGHS]
Do these voices tell you not to operate
the mining equipment?
They tell me nothing.
At least nothing that I can understand.
It's just that since I began hearing them,
the mining operations simply don't seem important.
Is it important to you whether you live or die?
Does it make any difference to you at all?
Does it make any difference to you?
No!
I mean,
obviously I prefer that you live,
but my only concern is getting this station online if possible.
If I can't, I'll recommend shut down.
That means no more ships come in. No more supplies.
You would die.
You've done that before.
Yes, I have.
And the consequences don't bother you?
I do my job.
Is it really so clean and easy for you?
"Just a job"?
I never said it was easy.
I said I do my job.
Listen.
I was investigating the progress
on a terraforming job in the Mayhaas system
out on the rim, when I heard that
my husband had neogenic carcinoma,
that's a fatal sort of... I know.
He was just a parsec away.
I could have gotten to him before he died
but it would've... meant abandoning the job.
I didn't, abandon the job.
I never saw my husband again.
Do you think he forgave you?
There was nothing to forgive.
Andros would have understood.
He felt the same way about his job.
As I do about mine.
What we do,
defines what we are.
In my case,
the opposite is true.
[RUMBLING]
Sebastian. Sebastian.
You were concerned for me.
Not at all.
I don't want the company to lose a valuable investment.
While there's still a chance I might restore you to working condition.
I see.
Don't worry.
It felt like a cool mist.
A cool mist coming down from the hills.
This heat is...
It's getting unbearable.
What is that around your neck?
Oh, it's...
It's nothing.
It's not important.
Sebastian.
What's wrong?
Are you hearing the voices now?
Voices.
No.
Only yours.
Sebastian,
humanity has had faster than light drive
for over 200 years.
We've explored and colonized
nearly a third of the galaxy.
In all of that time,
do you know how much intelligent alien life we've discovered?
None. Zero.
Given that, don't you think your voices
are a little hard to swallow.
I don't know.
But I do know that I am not insane.
These voices are different.
There is something about them, they do not come from my past.
Or my imagination, I am sure of it.
There is something about them,
they're trying to tell me something.
When the company changed me,
they changed my senses.
I can hear the sound of the Earth.
I can see the color of night.
Why can't I understand them?
All of these sensations are self destructive.
You must try and concentrate on your work,
on the here and now.
[SIGHS]
Is this the newest orvane?
SEBASTIAN: No!
I am not sure what it is.
Some kind of crystalline formation.
I believe somehow that it is connected with the voices.
Sebastian, I want you to listen to me very carefully.
These voices you claim to hear are a fantasy.
Some thing out of your own mind.
They don't exist.
Inspector.
Hasn't there ever been anything you wanted so badly,
that you were willing to believe in it
no matter what the odds were against it.
Only myself.
Hephaestus is very good at making people over.
There is so little left of me that is human.
But even less of you I think.
I am the person I have to be.
I make no excuses for myself.
SEBASTIAN: If you could see yourself through my eyes,
perhaps you will start making excuses.
You have no right to talk to me like that.
You don't know me.
I know you as well as you know me.
Which is well enough in your case,
for you sit in judgment of my life.
Who the hell are you to judge me?
You're not even human anymore.
And crazy on top of that.
I may only be a chip in the machine,
but there are people who respect me,
rely on my judgment.
I have friends, people who care about me.
I see.
Friends.
Yes.
Friends. That's it.
And they're calling me now.
What are you trying to say?
What is it?
Yes.
Of course.
I don't hear anything.
I understand them at last.
[LAUGHING]
Now, I know what they're saying.
They want me to join them.
Sebastian.
You leave me no choice.
I am going to have to declare you
incompetent to supervise this outpost,
and order it discontinued.
Where are you going?
They're calling me.
I must go now.
Who is calling? What are they saying?
It is the voice that speaks of belonging,
to a place of rest.
Of healing.
My mind was cluttered with bits of past grief and anger.
Now I am going to the place I belong.
I am going home.
"Home"?
You're going to be left to die here by slow starvation.
To die in the darkness.
The only living thing on an entire planet,
is that what you want?
To die alone?
Of the two of us,
who is more alone?
You can't do this.
You signed a contract.
We own you, dammit.
We gave you your life.
You gave me ears with which to hear,
for that I thank you.
Sebastian.
Goodbye, Cara.
I forgave you.
[SNIFFLES] No.
[CRYING] Andros.
They told me you died.
Don't leave me.
Don't go!
No!
Don't leave me alone.
[THEME MUSIC PLAYING]