The Glass Fortress (2016) - full transcript
One thousand years after the One State's conquest of the entire world, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to invade and conquer extraterrestrial planets.
I remember,
or I think I remember...
Since we left the earth in a hurry,
aboard our spaceship, the Integral,
my mind is so confused, torn apart between reality and fantasy.
How did we manage to escape from the glass city, a cold and shadeless world,
with the other rebels and the woman I love,
my revelation,
Iris.
My name is Daniel, ex D-503,
and I'm a fugitive.
My name was D-503 and this is my story.
I was born some one thousand years after the instauration of the One State.
The only thing I know about my parents,
is that they were allowed to have a baby,
especially my mother who had to meet the maternal norm.
In the One state,
your hour of birth and gender are the components of you name, or "number".
Consonants for males,
vowels for females.
From birth,
the numbers are immediatly entrusted to the breeding department,
believed to be more thoughtful and maternal
than the biological parents.
For the same reason,
young numbers are educated by robots.
One of them was called Plapa,
as far as I can remember.
I was good at mathematics,
in the study of train timetables,
and diligent in the performance of my taylor exercices,
which I particularly liked for personal reasons.
As a child, my future was already written,
like the predictable trajectory of a planet.
Following the expectations the One State had place in me,
I became a highly skilled engineer.
This growing reputation made me noticed by the Welldoer
who placed me to head up the Integral project.
The Welldoer is the master of the One State.
He supervises the right and dutiful observance of law and order.
In order to extent the scope of its influence,
our benefactor launched the project Integral,
a spaceship meant to broadcast his message throughout the universe,
far beyond our solar system's frontiers.
Despite the greatness of my task,
I decided to contribute to the propagation of the One State message
by writing a diary.
Besides some intimate comments,
I described my daily life in the city of glass,
in particular the Personal Hours,
and the way I used to occupy them.
Sex was important of course.
an hygienic activity
freed from love and its drawback.
Promulgated by the One State,
Lex sexualis was as follows:
"A Number may obtain a license
to use any other Number as a sexual product."
Among other distractions,
I used to go to the musical factory,
walk in the streets of the glass city,
and talk to people.
I didn't know that this pleasant and trivial routine
would forever change the direction of my life...
The first time I met Iris,
ex-I-330,
it started with a laugh.
My laugh strangely echoed by hers...
<i>End of the personal hours in 2 minutes</i>
Since the Two Hundred Years' War,
not one of us has ever stepped beyond the Green Wall.
An unbreakable crystal belt
which protects the town from total chaos.
Now, it was standing right in front of us.
The green forms filtering through the glass,
shapeless from afar,
proved more accurate closely.
You could distinguish some ridiculous and anarchic form
cut off from our perfect geometry.
Let me show you the way through the Wall of glass,
D-503.
she whispered into my ear...
<i>End of the personal hours</i>
I-330 took me to a house,
by the green wall.
This house, said to be the one of an old poet,
was from the ancien times,
long before the war.
A kind of country manor,
made of opaque stones and tiles.
Symbol of the dark times,
the building had been sheltered under a dome of glass,
for the interest of a few people,
endowed with the appropriate understanding.
The entrance was kept by an old lady
who was enjoying the last beams of the sunset.
Her face had as many wrinkles
as there were cracks on the roughcast wall behind her.
"Go all by yourself" she whispered,
after sending a wink to I-330...
Then we took off our uniforms,
and decided to do the same with our number.
Get rid even for a moment
of these alphanumeric identifications...
In your eyes, in your arms,
I'm dissolving in you, Iris.
I am the universe.
She answered:
“Hush my love, I knew you
I knew it even before we met."
"Take me far away in your cosmic dreams, Daniel..."
Later,
Iris showed me the book she had picked up earlier
on a wooden shelf
in the reading room of the house.
A rabbit,
a dizzying hole,
a strange green potion,
a key,
a door,
a passage...
What puzzling non sense!
If the book was the door,
then the green liquor was the key.
An unusual warmth flowed into my veins...
For the first time in my life,
I was abandoning myself and feeling my strange otherness.
Like when I look at my own reflection in a mirror,
a reversed myself.
"Come with me" she said,
"you are now ready..."
We entered an endless corridor.
Water was dripping somewhere upon a stone.
For a second,
I was my former self,
horrified at the thought of what could be at the end of this dark passage.
Then, an intense light submerged us...
Now, we have simply come out beyond the Green Wall.
I opened my eyes,
and close to me, actually,
I saw those very things
which until then not a single living Number had ever seen
except dimmed and hazy through the cloudy glass of the Wall.
The sun.
It was no longer our light
evenly diffused over the mirror surface of the pavements.
It seemed an accumulation of living fragments
of incessantly oscillating dizzy spots
which blinded the eyes.
Under my foot,
the ground was not a perfect flat surface
made of cold glass.
It was soft and warm.
And the trees,
like candles rising into the very sky,
or like spiders that squatted upon the earth.
It is such a lovely day...
"At night all the Numbers must sleep"
"Dreaming is a serious mental disease"
"Sleeping at night is a duty, like work"
"Not to sleep at night is criminal"
"Take us away in your ship, D-503..."
My unkown readers,
can you hear this torrent of lava
rumbling underneath an extinct volcano?
This is exactly what I feel.
Will I carry on cristallising in an eternal mineral death,
or finish in an unexpected magnificent explosion,
full of motion and colours?
The Welldoer doesn't draw its power from god,
or an elected chamber.
His strenght is rooted in the Unanimity of the Numbers.
Highlight of the year,
election day has finally come.
It is also the day of the official launch of my spaceship,
the Integral.
The spokesman announced to all the Numbers
gathered in perfect lines:
"It is Unanimity day today,
the annual election of our Welldoer.
Those in favor shall lift their hands"
For the first time in the history of the One State,
several hundred of Numbers didn't lift their hands.
They clenched their fists instead...
The following morning,
everything seemed back to "normal",
if this qualifier only makes sense to me now.
But what could have been the awakening of a bad dream
was in fact my reality.
Like many others, I got caught.
Luckily, Iris managed to escape.
Where are you my loved one...?
The One State prosecutor recited my sentence,
if not emotionaly then at least with conviction.
"I deem it my duty to testify that Number D-503 is ill
and is unable to regulate his emotions.
His imagination must be removed at once."
Obviously,
they had gathered sufficient proof
to start my operation without further delay.
Then, Iris appeared to me
like an angel of the ancient times.
She said:
"Take us away in your ship, Daniel..."
As we were on our way to Venus,
the on-board computer asked me :
"Waiting for your instructions D-503."
I simply answered :
My name is Daniel.
My name is Daniel.
My name is Daniel...
My name is Daniel.
or I think I remember...
Since we left the earth in a hurry,
aboard our spaceship, the Integral,
my mind is so confused, torn apart between reality and fantasy.
How did we manage to escape from the glass city, a cold and shadeless world,
with the other rebels and the woman I love,
my revelation,
Iris.
My name is Daniel, ex D-503,
and I'm a fugitive.
My name was D-503 and this is my story.
I was born some one thousand years after the instauration of the One State.
The only thing I know about my parents,
is that they were allowed to have a baby,
especially my mother who had to meet the maternal norm.
In the One state,
your hour of birth and gender are the components of you name, or "number".
Consonants for males,
vowels for females.
From birth,
the numbers are immediatly entrusted to the breeding department,
believed to be more thoughtful and maternal
than the biological parents.
For the same reason,
young numbers are educated by robots.
One of them was called Plapa,
as far as I can remember.
I was good at mathematics,
in the study of train timetables,
and diligent in the performance of my taylor exercices,
which I particularly liked for personal reasons.
As a child, my future was already written,
like the predictable trajectory of a planet.
Following the expectations the One State had place in me,
I became a highly skilled engineer.
This growing reputation made me noticed by the Welldoer
who placed me to head up the Integral project.
The Welldoer is the master of the One State.
He supervises the right and dutiful observance of law and order.
In order to extent the scope of its influence,
our benefactor launched the project Integral,
a spaceship meant to broadcast his message throughout the universe,
far beyond our solar system's frontiers.
Despite the greatness of my task,
I decided to contribute to the propagation of the One State message
by writing a diary.
Besides some intimate comments,
I described my daily life in the city of glass,
in particular the Personal Hours,
and the way I used to occupy them.
Sex was important of course.
an hygienic activity
freed from love and its drawback.
Promulgated by the One State,
Lex sexualis was as follows:
"A Number may obtain a license
to use any other Number as a sexual product."
Among other distractions,
I used to go to the musical factory,
walk in the streets of the glass city,
and talk to people.
I didn't know that this pleasant and trivial routine
would forever change the direction of my life...
The first time I met Iris,
ex-I-330,
it started with a laugh.
My laugh strangely echoed by hers...
<i>End of the personal hours in 2 minutes</i>
Since the Two Hundred Years' War,
not one of us has ever stepped beyond the Green Wall.
An unbreakable crystal belt
which protects the town from total chaos.
Now, it was standing right in front of us.
The green forms filtering through the glass,
shapeless from afar,
proved more accurate closely.
You could distinguish some ridiculous and anarchic form
cut off from our perfect geometry.
Let me show you the way through the Wall of glass,
D-503.
she whispered into my ear...
<i>End of the personal hours</i>
I-330 took me to a house,
by the green wall.
This house, said to be the one of an old poet,
was from the ancien times,
long before the war.
A kind of country manor,
made of opaque stones and tiles.
Symbol of the dark times,
the building had been sheltered under a dome of glass,
for the interest of a few people,
endowed with the appropriate understanding.
The entrance was kept by an old lady
who was enjoying the last beams of the sunset.
Her face had as many wrinkles
as there were cracks on the roughcast wall behind her.
"Go all by yourself" she whispered,
after sending a wink to I-330...
Then we took off our uniforms,
and decided to do the same with our number.
Get rid even for a moment
of these alphanumeric identifications...
In your eyes, in your arms,
I'm dissolving in you, Iris.
I am the universe.
She answered:
“Hush my love, I knew you
I knew it even before we met."
"Take me far away in your cosmic dreams, Daniel..."
Later,
Iris showed me the book she had picked up earlier
on a wooden shelf
in the reading room of the house.
A rabbit,
a dizzying hole,
a strange green potion,
a key,
a door,
a passage...
What puzzling non sense!
If the book was the door,
then the green liquor was the key.
An unusual warmth flowed into my veins...
For the first time in my life,
I was abandoning myself and feeling my strange otherness.
Like when I look at my own reflection in a mirror,
a reversed myself.
"Come with me" she said,
"you are now ready..."
We entered an endless corridor.
Water was dripping somewhere upon a stone.
For a second,
I was my former self,
horrified at the thought of what could be at the end of this dark passage.
Then, an intense light submerged us...
Now, we have simply come out beyond the Green Wall.
I opened my eyes,
and close to me, actually,
I saw those very things
which until then not a single living Number had ever seen
except dimmed and hazy through the cloudy glass of the Wall.
The sun.
It was no longer our light
evenly diffused over the mirror surface of the pavements.
It seemed an accumulation of living fragments
of incessantly oscillating dizzy spots
which blinded the eyes.
Under my foot,
the ground was not a perfect flat surface
made of cold glass.
It was soft and warm.
And the trees,
like candles rising into the very sky,
or like spiders that squatted upon the earth.
It is such a lovely day...
"At night all the Numbers must sleep"
"Dreaming is a serious mental disease"
"Sleeping at night is a duty, like work"
"Not to sleep at night is criminal"
"Take us away in your ship, D-503..."
My unkown readers,
can you hear this torrent of lava
rumbling underneath an extinct volcano?
This is exactly what I feel.
Will I carry on cristallising in an eternal mineral death,
or finish in an unexpected magnificent explosion,
full of motion and colours?
The Welldoer doesn't draw its power from god,
or an elected chamber.
His strenght is rooted in the Unanimity of the Numbers.
Highlight of the year,
election day has finally come.
It is also the day of the official launch of my spaceship,
the Integral.
The spokesman announced to all the Numbers
gathered in perfect lines:
"It is Unanimity day today,
the annual election of our Welldoer.
Those in favor shall lift their hands"
For the first time in the history of the One State,
several hundred of Numbers didn't lift their hands.
They clenched their fists instead...
The following morning,
everything seemed back to "normal",
if this qualifier only makes sense to me now.
But what could have been the awakening of a bad dream
was in fact my reality.
Like many others, I got caught.
Luckily, Iris managed to escape.
Where are you my loved one...?
The One State prosecutor recited my sentence,
if not emotionaly then at least with conviction.
"I deem it my duty to testify that Number D-503 is ill
and is unable to regulate his emotions.
His imagination must be removed at once."
Obviously,
they had gathered sufficient proof
to start my operation without further delay.
Then, Iris appeared to me
like an angel of the ancient times.
She said:
"Take us away in your ship, Daniel..."
As we were on our way to Venus,
the on-board computer asked me :
"Waiting for your instructions D-503."
I simply answered :
My name is Daniel.
My name is Daniel.
My name is Daniel...
My name is Daniel.