It won't turn into Arizona
no matter how long you stare at it,
My grandmother gave me this painting
before she died,
It's based on the legend
that at the end of the world,
all the falling stars
would come to the Earth
and turn the people of the Earth
into stars,
Is this how it's going to be between us?
I'm still not ready,
You're not the only one who lost our child, Callie,
I'm sorry,
Because she died inside me,
sometimes I think I was the only one who knew her,
loved her,
I think I've been afraid
that by trying to have another baby,
it would be disrespectful to the spirit of Amanda,
Well, maybe the next one will be Amanda, ,,
Coming home to us,
taking another shot at being born,
Morning,
Have you had breakfast?
I brought some bagels,
Don't you people ever knock?
( control voice ) There is nothing wrong With your television,
do not attempt to adjust the picture,
we are now controlling the transmission,
we control the horizontal,
And the vertical,
We can deluge you with a thousand channels
or expand one single image to crystal clarity, ,,
and beyond,
We can shape your vision
To anything our imagination can conceive,
for the next hour,
We will control all that you see and hear,
( ♪ )
You are about to experience the awe and mystery
which reaches from the deepest inner mind
to The Outer Limits,
Are we affected only by our outward experience,
or are there other worlds that affect us,
hidden worlds
That exist in the heart and in the blood?
Not bad, Jim, Still warm,
And you thought Houston
only had good barbecue,
You didn't fly your new toy all the way from Texas
just to serve us breakfast,
Maybe I did, Maybe I'm just being neighborly,
Mm-hmm,
Okay, maybe I didn't,
You're going to love this,
A couple of years ago on the Martian moon Phobos,
a quantum accelerator slammed
a couple of newly discovered subatomic particles
together,
and, ,,
Oh, my God,
Looks like the higgs-boson field is being torn apart,
Translation?
The foundation of our universe,
Without the higgs field, nothing would have mass,
Atoms couldn't exist,
You can see right here
how it's being stripped away,
a hole torn
in the very fabric of our universe,
and inside that hole, ,,
Another universe,
Another continuum,
existing just below the surface of the one we're living in,
We're calling it "Transspace,"
The first hole only stayed open
for a fraction of a second,
but eventually, we got them to stay open
long enough to send in a half a dozen unmanned probes,
Into transspace?
Mm-hmm, Look at this here,
Probe went in here,
half a second later,
it appears on the other side of the solar system,
Which means transspace is a shortcut
between two fixed points in space?
Very good,
We'd no longer be limited by the speed of light,
15 billion people on Earth
desperate for other planets to colonize,
This could be their ticket to get out of the solar system,
into the galaxy,
We are putting together
the first manned mission into transspace,
Now, I'll be in command,
I need two mission specialists,
I need an expert astrophysicist
to analyze the environment,
and I need a medical doctor
to study the effects of transspace on humans,
Now, you don't suppose
you know where I could find a couple of folks like these,
do you?
All right,
should we accept,
who else'll be on the roster?
An astrogation expert
by the name of Dr, Louisa Kennedy,
She'll handle navigation
as well as attempt to map transspace,
Look,
this is more than the usual risk on this one,
Two of the probes we sent in never returned,
On the upside,
you'd be among the first
to explore a whole new universe,
Take all the time you need to decide,
as long as I have your answer by this afternoon,
We leave in two weeks,
I know you feel rushed, but I...
I feel disconnected,
We were planning
on going home to the mountains,
Arizona'll still be there when we get back,
This isn't about missing our trip, is it?
My grandmother lived a traditional Navajo life
within sight of those mountains
until the day she died,
so here's her granddaughter,
never at home,
jetting around the solar system, ,,
She was disappointed in me,
I'm not disappointed in you, ,,
Never will be,
Copernicus, this is titan base,
You are cleared to begin transition,
Roger that,
Engines on-line,
Initializing particle generator, alpha sequence,
Viewscreen on,
Drilling commenced,
Impulse guidance systems off the charts,
Holding trajectory,
Hull compression red-lined,
Engine-core displacement 11%,
Warning, Quantum turbulence present,
engagement program ready to reboot,
reboot, my tailpipe,
Titan base, This is Copernicus,
what the hell's going on?
Copernicus, more turbulence anticipated,
But, ,,All go,
Titan base, over,
Titan base,
Copernicus is launching,
All right, everybody,
just grab onto anything nailed down,
Titan base,
Copernicus has safely made its transition,
Portal closing,
Can you read? Over,
That's it,
We're on our own,
It's beautiful,
Are those stars or black holes?
So many black holes
would have sucked this entire universe inside,
Does anyone else find this vaguely unsettling?
In the absence of light, space should be dark, not...
"Is there no bright reversion in the sky
"For those who greatly think,
or bravely die?"
Alexander Pope,
Don't you people read?
Warning, Hull integrity challenged,
that can't be good,
Increasing g-forces on the hull,
Hull compression at two Earth gravities,
what's happening?
Whenever a ship enters transspace,
millions of gravitons...
That's the little particles that make up gravity waves...
Attach themselves to the hull,
Is that how you lost the second probe,
crushed by gravity particles?
Uh-huh,
I'm using the ship's artificial gravity shields
to repel them,
1,5 gs, ,,
1,3,, ,
G-force is normal again,
We are the first humans
seeing what we're seeing right now,
but I promise you we will not be the last,
because today, ,,
Today,
humanity took its first step towards the stars,
All right, come on,
Let's go, folks, Let's get to work,
You didn't look too good during the transition,
Just a little discomfort,
Didn't you feel it? No,
I don't think they did, either,
Let's go check you out,
What's taking so long?
Tell your molecules to stop fidgeting,
Alec, I swear, I feel fine,
What is it?
Good God,
What?
You're pregnant,
What?
Pregnant? Are you sure?
10 days,
We had a fight that morning, kissed and made up that night,
Kitchen table ring a bell?
But why didn't the pre-flight medscan catch this?
It was too early to pick up,
I never would have been allowed to come on this mission,
What effect will this have on the baby?
The baby's not in danger,
Your stress levels are a little high,
your body's pumping out more endorphins than normal,
but that's just due to the excitement,
Should we tell Jim?
No, Jim will just worry,
It's against regulations
to withhold information,
Only if it jeopardizes the safety of the crew
or the success of the mission,
and as ship's doctor, I don't think that's the case,
And what about us?
Does this make a difference
between us?
Do we have to analyze everything?
Can't we just enjoy this moment?
[ beeping ]
The DNA scan, ,,
It's a girl,
We know the first unmanned probes
entered transspace here
and left it here,
and so on with the other probes,
Now, since we know at what point they left normal space
and also returned to it,
we can correlate points in our universe
with points in this universe,
and we get...
A road map,
The beginnings of one, at least,
Someday we'll use this continuum
as a freeway system,
with off-ramps
marked "This way to Alpha Centauri,"
I've a good deal more transspace to chart
before it's even remotely an expressway,
Right now I'll be happy if when we leave here,
we wind up in our own solar system,
and not 10,000 light-years from home,
We'll help a lot of people
with this new freeway system,
I mean, this can open up doors
that we haven't even dreamt of yet,
Be careful what you wish for, commander,
You all right?
Yeah, Headache,
I've been doing spectroanalysis
on those dark stars
for over an hour,
Any idea what they might be?
Well, they seem to have
some of the same elements you'd find in a star,
principally hydrogen,
but they don't emit light,
some unknown kind of radiation,
Everything here seems to radiate
the same kind of energy, ,,
Viewscreen on,
Including those huge objects,
We've been instructed
to bring any vital samples back home,
Those are too big to fit in the cargo bay,
Maybe we can cut off a piece with our laser,
use the grappler beam to pull it in,
shield it against radiation?
All right, what is it?
I have the oddest feeling
when I look out there,
like all this is somehow familiar,
as if I were home looking out my own window,
You must have quite a view,
Emergency,
Shield failure in aft quadrant seven,
integrity of hull at critical risk,
Earth gravities climbing,
2,8,
3,0,
3,2,
Rear shield system off-line,
Has the hull been breached?
Not yet,
3,8,
Mass concentration of graviton particles present
on the aft of the ship,
That thing reaches five, we're finished,
Callie, you've got to get those shields up,
Rerouting percentage power from forward shields,
4,6,
4,8,
Power to shield restored,
Earth gravities dropping,
Shield perimeter intact,
Internal gravity optimal,
Power status?
With the redirect, we're at 80%,
Everybody okay?
Well, ,,
The good news is
the graviton particles were on our hull long enough
for the external scopes
to record their structure,
Look at this,
The graviton particles
are actually part of a larger mass,
one big enough we can actually see,
Each one seems to consist of five nuclei,
Hwiina,
Hwiina?
You feel it, little one?
The Hozho is disordered,
You feel it?
Nali?
Nali!
It was my nali, Alec,
My grandmother, she spoke to me,
She said "Hwiina,"
Hwiina?
It's been so long, ,,
It means something about place,
this place,
She told me that the Hozho was disordered,
The Hozho is the harmony and balance of the universe,
Its disruption by human beings
is the worst thing that can happen
in the Navajo cosmos,
So, anybody else
having any interesting hallucinations?
Come over here,
Is that what it felt like?
Hallucinations?
No, that's just it,
It felt very real,
I could even smell the lavender in her hair,
Clearly, you were drawing on your own memories,
but I can't see any evidence here, ,,
Delusional psychosis?
Callie, honey, you're not crazy,
I am the nutcase
in this family, Remember?
It's clear to me
you're having a physical reaction
to being in transspace,
and let's not forget that you are pregnant,
How is the baby?
Perfectly normal,
but you, on the other hand, you're running a fever,
You've got chills, body ache, headache,
all the classic symptoms of infection,
but there is not a trace of either a bacteria or a virus
in your system,
Bacteria, ,,
You're sick,
but there's no reason for you to be sick,
Your immune system hasn't been activated,
You don't have any antigens present, ,,
Of course, That's it,
Where are you going?
Come on,
I need your professional opinion on something,
Those are graviton particles,
What do they look like to you?
No clue, Come on, let's go,
No, In your own experience as an MD,
what do those particles remind you of?
Five nuclei,
Leukocytes, White blood cells,
Exactly, White blood cells,
Good old white blood cells,
They attach themselves
to foreign substances in the body, ,,
And destroy the intruder,
Sound familiar?
These particles may be part
of the natural order here,
their function being
to protect this massive environment
from alien substances,
And we are the alien substance?
Mm-hmm, Call it a subatomic defense mechanism,
If we're still planning
on bringing one of those big rocks
inside this ship,
we'd better make sure
it doesn't have a defense mechanism of its own,
Point taken, What about you?
You're starting to look like typhoid Mary,
Thanks,
It's no worse than a bad cold,
I should be able to do my job,
Nobody else has been affected like her?
No,
It, ,,lt may have something to do
with the fact that I'm, ,,
I'm pregnant,
And you waited till now to tell me this?
We only just...
Hold on a second,
I've known you for what, 10 years?
I wish you'd felt free to confide in me,
I'm sorry,
It's, ,,lt's just the mission, ,,
There's no evidence the baby is in danger,
Callie's condition is relatively stable,
but her symptoms are not consistent
with that of a pregnancy,
So something else affected her?
Yes,
All right,
I want a full-scale analysis of those big rocks out there,
I want to know what they're made of,
to the best we can determine,
before we attempt our retrieval operation,
Those gravitons gave us a run for our money,
and I am not taking any chances on their big brothers out there,
Double-check everyone, including me,
for any symptoms like the ones she's been having,
I want that done every hour if you have to,
All right,
And if you two even think
of withholding any more information from me,
I will have your butts kicked so far out of the space program,
they won't even let you ride Space Mountain,
Understand?
Perfectly,
Callie, ,,
Congratulations,
Spectroanalysis indicates the large masses outside
are 40% hydrogen and carbon dioxide,
20% iron, copper,
and other trace elements,
and 40% unknown...
Some element totally absent
from the periodic table,
Radiation?
Appears minimal,
We should have adequate shielding
against these wavelengths in the cargo hold,
No defense mechanisms, gravitons?
It's not just a rock,
There's definitely some molecular activity
going on inside,
Given that we don't know what makes up 40% of it,
I can't say retrieval
is totally without risk,
We'll have to drop and raise our shields
real quick,
Seems like acceptable risk,
Getting a key sample is critical to our mission,
Viewscreen on,
All right,
We'll carve off a little piece of that one,
Move us in a little closer,
Got to time this thing just right,
Take your stations,
What the, ,,
Hello, little one,
Nali?
This isn't real,
It's as real as you need it to be,
I need it to be not real, I need to be back on the ship,
Remember our walks in those mountains?
I smell lavender,
Remember the backpack we'd fill with water and cookies?
Emergency cookies,
And remember what I told you, child?
How all the Earth is as alive as you or I?
The mountains are her heart,
the rivers and streams, her veins and arteries, ,,
All alive, connected,
and so our people have always believed,
Hwiina,
Hwiina, ,,
Oh, my God,
Now,
No!
Callie!
Feisty little rock,
All power, forward shield,
Help me out here, Doc,
The gyro system's back on-line,
Stabilization in five seconds, ,,
And stabilizing,
Engines completely off-line,
Automatic reactor shutdown,
We're on impulse power
with primary reserve power partially active,
Graviton shields?
Some degeneration present, but holding,
Take it easy, Take it easy,
I'm taking you back to the infirmary,
No, I'm all right,
No, you're not all right,
I've never heard anybody scream like that,
Alec, it wasn't my pain,
Now I know what's happening here,
I put it all together,
Let Alec take you to sick bay,
Please? Look at you,
Thank you,
No, I have to show you something,
Okay,
Look, when that thing exploded,
it released hydrogen, carbon dioxide,
and a stream of high-energy electrons...
The same combination that creates electrical power
in a living cell,
It certainly reacted like a living organism,
All right,
For the sake of argument,
would you say that this stuff is, uh, alive?
Would you say it's intelligent?
You're not understanding, Jim,
They're no more conscious
than the cells in our own bodies,
but they are organic,
Those large rocks out there,
they function like red corpuscles,
and the gravitons are the white blood cells,
and transspace is the bloodstream,
What are you talking about?
What if the universe as we know it
is just the surface of the universe?
A bacterium living on our skin
would think this was the whole universe,
but if you injected it into a vein,
what would it see then?
Red blood cells,
Those big rocks out there carry hydrogen
the same way our red cells carry oxygen in our blood,
Oh, so now you're saying
that the universe is some kind of huge being?
What I'm saying is the universe is alive,
From the moment I came here, I felt that,
like no one else could,
I don't know why,
Maybe it's because I'm pregnant,
Because on some level life recognizes new life,
Our presence has infected transspace,
so her body mirrors
the symptoms of infection,
Yes, and my subconscious mind has been working overtime,
trying to get my conscious mind to get what's going on,
Hwiina,
It means "the place lives,"
This place is alive,
All right, stop, This is crazy,
I cannot make decisions that affect our lives
based on some wild theory,
No, she's right,
I've been studying
a cluster of these dark stars in the distance,
I used the computer
to create a three-dimensional model,
and then rotated it in space,
I thought the results were a glitch, faulty data,
The rotation of the stars created a double helix,
My God, ,,
DNA,
If this is part
of some massive macrocosmic being,
is that God,
or something we've yet to comprehend?
Is this the place where all life begins?
This energy out there, could it be the life force?
All right,
let's back off the philosophical arguments,
We've got to get this ship moving,
Start plotting a course
back to the exact point that we entered transspace,
We're getting out of here,
This information will help us
on the next mission,
Jim, transspace is much more
than just a shortcut to the stars,
It's not something to be exploited,
No, Transspace is our ticket to new discovery,
It's the pipeline to our future,
Without it, we are stuck in our solar system,
We'd have never gotten this far if it wasn't our destiny,
I am all too familiar
with the concept of manifest destiny,
thank you,
I told you, I'm fine,
Enough with the scanning,
What?
She's gone,
What happened?
The pain I felt?
Mm-hmm,
All this life around us, and, ,,
I don't have time for this,
I've got to get back to work,
Wait, It can wait,
I've got to help Jim
get the engines back on-line,
Callie, let me do my job,
Five minutes,
Please?
Look at this...
I've aligned this black star here
in transspace
with its exact corresponding point
in our universe,
which happens to be a star,
There are other parallels, too,
Large masses here in transspace
correspond with planets in our space,
and the objects in both universes
have much the same chemical composition,
as if they're linked somehow,
Linked, huh?
Maybe the objects here actually intrude
or poke through in some way,
creating stars and planets
in our universe,
I don't know,
I think you're getting a little ahead of yourself,
Maybe life does start here in transspace,
The collision nearly ruptured
the magnetic containment vessel
in the reactor core,
It's operating
at less than 60% of optimal strength,
Repairable?
Not with what we have on hand,
and if we try
for anything above 60% normal power levels,
the magnetic field will collapse, and, ,,
Boom,
Boom, big-time,
All right,
so we've got enough power for the engines,
and we've got enough power to keep the graviton shields up
so we don't get crushed,
It'll be tricky getting back,
We'll have to switch power
from the engines to the particle generator,
drill open a quantum hole, then switch back to engines...
Split-second timing,
I can't afford to not get this information back home,
and I can't continue to risk the health of your child,
There's no telling
what this environment's doing to it,
I don't want you to worry,
I'll get you both home safe,
It's going to be all right,
So, what are you going to name her?
It's all right, child,
I'm unconscious, Is that it?
Actually, you're more conscious than ever,
I thought all of this would go away
after I lost, ,,
Go on,
say it,
You're safe here,
After I lost Amanda,
I grieve with you, child,
What else makes you sad?
No, Stop it!
You're not real,
You're just a memory from my subconscious mind,
Perhaps your subconscious
remembers more than you do,
What else makes you sad?
When I was a little girl, ,,
You showed me all the constellations, ,,
Sash, the bear,
Dasani, the porcupine,
the horned rattlesnake, thishtso,
Anlt anii, the beetle,
I fell in love with the stars because of you,
Mm-hmm,
And when I left home
to study those things that you taught me to love, ,,
I saw the hurt and disappointment
in your eyes,
Did I ever ask you
to stay in the four corners?
You didn't have to,
I knew that's what you wanted,
I would never ask anyone to trade their dream for mine,
I lived within the sacred lands
all my life,
I woke each morning and prayed,
made offerings,
tried to live a life of harmony and balance,
I did these things
because so few in this century do,
I felt someone had to,
and because I love the lands, it was not a hard choice,
I love them, too,
I know you do, ,,
And that
is the true essence of Hozho,
of harmony...
Respecting and balancing the universal order,
the forces that bring life,
You don't have to live within the four corners
to do that,
If there was disappointment in my eyes
when you left,
it was only because I loved you
and I didn't want to see you go,
I think I'm ready now,
I felt calm,
happy,
I felt like bursting with promise and excitement,
You look amazing,
You look 10 years younger,
Like when we'd go hiking
in the mountains back home,
and I'd take a deep breath of air,
and I'd know that it rose off the hot floor of the desert,
cooling the higher it got,
One breath of air,
and it connected me to everything around me,
from the Earth to the sky,
I felt the life, ,,
And I felt the death, too,
Amanda's death, ,,
The possibility of our own,
and it was all part of the same design,
the Hozho,
Callie, ,,
We're not going to die,
You don't know that,
I want to make love with you, Alec,
Here?
Now?
Here, Now,
All right, folks, we're almost home,
Approaching original entry point,
50 meters, 40,
30,
Full stop,
I don't like what I'm seeing here,
What happened to our power levels?
Increasing g-forces on the hull,
It's taking more and more power to repel the gravitons,
They're everywhere,
We got enough juice to drill a hole and go home?
Not enough for the entire ship,
Big enough for the escape pod?
No, not even for the pod,
If we switched off the graviton shields,
how much time would we have to open a hole
and get through?
That would give us enough power,
but it'd leave less than 30 seconds
before the ship was crushed,
That's not enough time to make the transition,
What do we have left in the reactor core?
Less than 60%,
All right,
If we crank that up manually to 75%
to make the transition,
how long before the reactor overloads?
Jim, no,
A minute, maybe two,
That's all the time we need,
Download your data into the escape pod,
Evacuate,
By the time the reactor blows,
we'll be home free,
All right, Dr, Kennedy,
get your transition program on-line,
and get set to drill that hole for the escape pod,
Wait,
My God, Jim, this is a living thing,
and you want to set off a nuclear explosion
inside it?
We have no other choice,
The radioactivity
could poison this whole continuum
for the next 10,000 years,
If transspace is poisoned,
we could very well poison ourselves,
poison the very source of life itself,
That is speculation,
What if she's right?
My responsibility
is the safe return of this crew
and the information that we've gathered,
Now, I am ordering you
to download your data into the escape pod,
because we're getting out of here now,
I've programmed the computer to override
and raise power levels to 75%
in exactly 15 minutes,
Set the particle generator to open a hole 10 seconds later,
Okay,
Callie, I'm, ,,I'm sorry,
I know, Manifest destiny,
How are we doing, Doc?
Ready for launch,
All right, I'll take the helm,
You okay?
I don't know,
I love you, Alec, I always will,
I know, Come on,
Callie! Callie!
Locking sequence updated,
Escape pod launch sequence initiated,
transferring reactor control to bridge,
Turn back,
I can't, She locked the door,
I said turn us back!
I can't, She changed the sequence code,
Escape pod in position and holding,
Callie! Callie, can you hear me?
I'm here, Alec,
Callie, don't do this,
It's already done,
Activating particle generator,
The ship doesn't have enough power
to make the hole,
It will when I drop the graviton shield,
I'll reroute extra power from the shields,
that surge should open a hole for you to go home,
Once you're though,
I'll take the reactor off-line,
it's the only way to save both you and this universe,
God, Callie, no!
I had to, Alec,
When I lost Amanda this time,
I thought,
all this life around us and only death inside me,
If we poison this place,
I'm afraid, ,,
No, I know, somehow, all women, all humanity,
will only have death inside them,
Dropping graviton shield,
Shields deactivated,
Power rerouted to particle generators,
I'm sorry, Alec,
I wish it didn't have to be this way,
I wish I could hold our child in my arms
before I die, ,,
Or see the sun rise in Arizona one last time,
Earth gravities rising, Hull compression imminent,
Callie, ,,
I love you so much,
And I love you,
I'm so sorry
That we wasted so much time
being angry at each other,
good-bye, my love,
No!
Say it!
Goodbye, ,,
Goodbye, my love,
Hull integrity compromised,
Warning...
Hull breach in sectors 10, 21, and 66,
reactor off-line,
Little one, ,,
You have lived the way,
We are shaped by our experience
both within and without,
Present and past,
And we pass those experiences on
in our blood,
Giving birth to new generations,