Wir (1982) - full transcript
Based on novel by Jewgenij Samjatin. "A vision of a united totalitarian state, a world of quadratic harmony and blue-grey conformity".
Nitverstan proudly presents:
"We"
Written by
Based on the novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Directed by
I shall simply copy, word for word, the proclamation that
appeared today in the One State Gazette:
The building of the Integral will be completed in one
hundred and twenty days.
The great historic hour when the first Integral
will soar into cosmic space is drawing near.
One thousand years ago your heroic ancestors
subdued the entire terrestrial globe to the power of the
One State.
Yours will be a still more glorious feat: you will
integrate the infinite equation of the universe...
...with the aid
of the fire-breathing, electric, glass Integral.
You will subjugate the unknown
beings on other planets...
...who may still be living in the primitive condition of freedom,
to the beneficent yoke of reason.
If they fail to understand...
...that we bring them mathematically infallible happiness...
...it will be our duty to compel them to be happy.
But before
resorting to arms, we shall try the power of words.
In the name of the Benefactor, therefore, we proclaim to
all the numbers of the One State:
Everyone who feels capable of doing so...
...must compose tracts, odes,
manifestoes, poems, or other works...
...extolling the beauty and the grandeur of the One State.
This will be the first cargo to be carried by the Integral.
Long live the One State, long live the numbers, long live
the Benefactor!
I write this, and I feel: my cheeks are burning.
Yes, to integrate the grandiose cosmic equation.
Yes, to unbend the wild, primitive curve
and straighten it to a tangent...
-an asymptote-
For the line of the One State is the
straight line.
The great, divine, exact, wise straight line- the
wisest of all lines.
Dear O-90. In half a minute
the Personal Hour will begin.
I, D-503...
...Builder of the Integral, am only one of the
mathematicians of the One State.
My brain, accustomed to figures,
does not know how to create the music
of assonances and rhymes.
I shall merely attempt to record what I see and
think...
...or, to be more exact, what we think...
...precisely so-we,
and let this We be the title of my record.
I wanted to pick you up
for our daily walk.
What a sky O-90!
Deep blue...
...not stained by a single cloud.
I love this sterile, blue sky.
Don't you love it, too, 18?
I'm sure you do.
We all do.
I'm not mistaken.
We are no longer just individuals...
...we think the same, we feel the same.
We are so much like each other.
Are you sure?
I think we are quite different.
Alas...do I confuse you?
No reason for 'Alas.'
Science progresses, and it is obvious...
...that, if not now, then in
fifty or a hundred years ...
Even everyone's noses ...
Yes, noses.
If there is any ground for
envy...
If I have a button-nose and
another ...
Oh, your nose is 'classical,' as they used to say in olden
times.
But your hands ...
Let us see your hands!
A most interesting
conjunction.
He is registered with me.
The pollen dries out the lips.
It comes from beyond the wall.
It's spring. D-503, marvelous, isn't it?
Spring.
I'd like so much to come to you today and let down the blinds.
Today, right now . . .
Put it away.
You know that our
next sexual day is in a week.
Our Personal Hour is over.
Will we meet again?
If I am assigned to...
I have just looked over what I had written...
and I see that I did not express myself clearly enough.
Of course, it is all entirely clear to any of us.
But perhaps you, the unknown readers to whom the Integral will bring my notes...
...have reached only that page in the great book of civilization...
that our ancestors read some nine hundred years ago.
Perhaps you do not know even about such elementary things...
...as the Table of Hours, the Personal Hour...
...the Maternity Norm, the Green Wall, and the Benefactor.
I cannot imagine a life that is not regulated by the figures of our Table.
From the wall in my room...
...tenderly and sternly
into my eyes.
Involuntarily, my mind turns to what the ancients
called an "icon."
And I long to compose poems or prayers.
Every morning, we-
millions of us-get up as one...
...at the same hour and the same moment.
At the same hour, in millionheaded
unison, we start work.
...and in unison
we end it
And, fused into a single million-handed body...
...at the same second, designated by the Table...
...we lift our spoons to
our mouths.
At the same second, we come out for our walk...
...go to the auditorium, go to the hall for Taylor exercises...
...fall asleep....
I have read many incredible things about those
times when people still lived in a free, i.e., unorganized.
The street
lights burned all night...
...and people walked and drove around in
the streets at all hours of the night.
It is so absurd...
...you, my unknown readers, will think me a malicious joker.
You may decide that I am merely trying to
mock you, telling you utter nonsense.
But our One State Science asserts...
...that this was how the ancients lived...
...and our
State Science never errs.
A letter has arrived for you.
Never take letters before 12 o'clock...
...otherwise you lack the blessing of the Benefactor.
It's an order,
censorship is unnecessary.
You will be expected at the Ancient House at exactly 4 clock.
You poor thing.
Well, darlings, so you've come to see my little house?
Yes, Grandmother.
You little pixy!
I know, I know!
All right, go in by yourselves,
I'll stay here, in the sun...
I love her,
that old woman.
Why?
I don't know. Perhaps for her mouth.
Or perhaps for no
reason. Just like that.
Such a thing does not exist.
I feel terribly guilty.
Obviously, there should be
no love 'just like that'...
...but only 'love because.'
All elemental
phenomena should . . .
It's clear ...
This is my favorite room of all the rooms in the Ancient House.
That's not why the Guardians painstakingly preserved it.
That's clear ...
In such vile dwellings,
in such courts or cages...
....lived thousands of microscopic, eternally warring states, called families, as ruthless...
Instead of our beautiful, unbreakable glass....
...they only had hazy windows.
No one could look through them.
Our houses look like woven air...
...constantly bathed by air.
Because we have nothing to hide.
Clear.
But here they all lived 'just like that,..
...loved, suffered...
What stupid, reckless waste of human energy
-don't you think?
A human being is made as absurdly as these
preposterous "apartments".
Human heads are opaque.
Only tiny windows in them.
Well, what do you see with them?
Please...
turn around.
You certainly wonder
why you are here...
...and why you are playing this
strange game.
Maybe because I attract you as well as I repel you.
Do you know what you saw in my eyes?
Your reflection.
But it was not like you.
Something unknown has entered your life.
An "X" and that horrifies you.
You mathematician.
Look, you are clearly trying to be original...
Clearly to be original.
Hence, to be original is to violate equality.
Don't be afraid.
I'll say something very wise and sensible now.
Don't you find it astonishing
that once upon a time people tolerated such characters?
And not only tolerated, but worshiped them?
What a slavish spirit! Don't you think?
It's clear.
These poets were masters far more powerful
than their crowned kings.
Why weren't they isolated, exterminated?
With us...the prehistoric times
of the geniuses are over.
I could...
...kill me?
Don't you think it's time?
And if I asked you to remain here with me?
Look, do you ... do you know what you are saying?
In ten minutes I must be in the auditorium. . .
... and all numbers must attend the prescribed Taylor exercises...
...because he was the greatest genius of the ancients.
A prophet who was able to see ten centuries ahead.
He was the first who perfectly organized the workplace.
He was unable to integrate his system from one
hour to twenty-four under the barbarous circumstances then...
...to all 86,400 seconds of the day.
I know a doctor at the Medical Office.
He is registered with me.
If I ask him, he will give you a certificate
that you were sick. Well?
And do you know that I must,
in fact, immediately go to
the Office of the Guardians.
The legal deadline for criminal charges
is twice 24 hours, my dear.
Are you staying?
Pardon!
Pardon!
Have you already read that?
What, please? What?
The brief statement on the third page?
I'll read it to you.
According to reliable sources, new traces have been
discovered of the elusive organization...
...which aims at liberation
from the beneficent yoke of the State.
Liberation?
Amazing, the extent to which criminal instincts
persist in human nature.
I use the word "criminal" deliberately.
Freedom and crime are linked as indivisibly as...
...well, as the motion of the aero and its speed...
...when its speed equals zero...
...it does not move...
...when man's freedom equals zero...
...he commits no crimes.
That is clear.
The only means of ridding man of crime
is ridding him of freedom.
And now, just as we have gotten rid of it,
some wretched halfwits...
...to spoil everything.
Didn't you march next to I-330
during the Personal Hour recently?
Are you a Guardian?
You know, I was at the Ancient House yesterday...
Why, that's excellent. It gives material for very instructive
conclusions.
But, you see, I was not alone,
I accompanied number I-330.
I-330? I am delighted for you.
A very interesting, talented woman.
She has many admirers.
I feel embarrassed, somehow,
to tell you about this altogether improbable occurrence.
...almost about a miracle,
which are banned here.
I left the room for a few seconds...
...rushed back into the room,
but I-330 was not there.
I clearly saw the ancient key ring
still swaying in the door of the
wardrobe.
I even opened the wardrobe and felt the bright,
ancient dresses.
Nothing.
You are the Builder of the Integral.
I am certain that sooner or later you'll succeed...
...in fitting all these absurdities into some logical formula.
Don't look at your watch all the time.
We have a further 45 minutes.
And 30 minutes are enough for us.
Then we can talk for 15 minutes.
Is anything bothering you?
Perhaps because O-90 is assigned to me tonight?
My dear, in three days she'll have a pink
coupon for you again.
You've moved your stool.
It is unlike mine.
The solid three-dimensional
classification system is destroyed.
Everything in your room has become non-Euclidean.
You haven't changed R-13.
In Taylor and in mathematics you were
always at the bottom of the class.
Do you recall old Plapa?
Our automatic teaching machine.
Once I stuffed his speaker with
chewed-up paper.
Every text came with a shot of a
spitball.
Imagine...if it had been alive.
Like teachers in ancient times.
Then he would have spat.
I do not understand
why this should be funny.
Dear O, our friend does not like jokes.
Jokes are unclear functions for him.
They're lies.
Ah, our mathematician!
A sinister servant of science.
He alone did not laugh at my joke in
class then.
And how is your Integral?
We shall soon be setting off to Mars
to make happy the universe, eh?
In the morning I was at the dock...
...and suddenly I saw: the lathes...
...the regulator sphere rotating with closed eyes
...utterly oblivious of all.
...the cranks flashing, swinging left and right...
...the bit of the slotting machine dancing up
and down in time to unheard music...
...a grandiose
mechanical ballet...
...flooded with pale blue sunlight.
And then, I wondered...
Why is this beautiful?
Why is dance beautiful?
Answer: because it is unfree motion...
...because the whole profound meaning of dance
lies precisely in absolute, esthetic subordination...
...in ideal unfreedom.
Are you writing for the Integral, too?
What about? Today, for example?
Today, about nothing. I was busy with something else ...
What?"
What, what! Well, if you wish...
...a court sentence.
I versified a sentence.
In very solemn iambics.
He harnessed fire in the machine, in steel,
And bound chaos
in the chains of Law.
In the Square of the Benefactor
the Day of Justice takes place tomorrow.
A colleague.
A state poet.
For years he sat next to me...
An ordinary number.
Then suddenly.
'I am a genius,' he says...
...'a genius, above the law.'
Fortunately, the antediluvian ages of geniuses are gone.
Yes, my dearest mathematician...
...fortunately,fortunately!
We are the happiest arithmetical mean...
As you mathematicians say
-integration from zero to infinity...
...from a cretin to Shakespeare ... yes!"
Well, I must go...
Shall we do it as always?
Shall I sleep alone with her?
Of course.
Else I would be ashamed.
With you, it is merely a pink
coupon, but with him....
...it is different.
He harnessed fire in the machine, in steel, And bound chaos
in the chains of Law.
Hail to the Benefactor! Hail! Hail! Hail!
Hail to the Benefactor! Hail! Hail! Hail!
Hail to the Benefactor! Hail! Hail! Hail!
Hail to the Benefactor! Hail! Hail! Hail!
Something similar was experienced by the ancients during
their "religious services."
But they worshiped their own irrational, unknown God.
We serve our rational and precisely known one.
Their God had not been able to think
of anything more sensible than offering himself
as sacrifice for some incomprehensible reason.
We, on the other hand, offer a sacrifice to our God, the One State...
...a calm, reasoned, sensible sacrifice.
Yes, this was our solemn liturgy to the One State...
...a remembrance of the awesome time of trial, of the
Sixty Minutes' War...
...a grandiose celebration of the victory of all over one...
...of the sum over the individual.
Yes, there was something
purifying like a storm, in that solemn ceremony.
You who will read this...
...are you familiar with such moments?
I pity you if you are not...
Again...a letter has arrived for you.
Never receive a letter before 12 o'clock.
- It's again an order.
Number I-330 has registered for you.
You are to be at her room
today at twenty-one.
I've been watching you for a long time.
You need someone
who is reasonable.
One who spends her life together with you.
I think about how I can help you.
Stay calm!
Sometime I find enough strength to...
Great Benefactor!
I knew...
I knew
the way you are.
Why did you register for me?
And why did you compel me to
come here?
Delicious liqueur. Would you like some?
With nicotine, and especially alcohol,
you'll end on the Cube...
Of course. Quick destruction of a few is more sensible than
giving many the opportunity to ruin themselves?
But the main thing is that I am
not afraid of you and completely at ease with you.
You are such a dear and nice man.
...oh, I am sure of it...
...you will never think of going to the Guardians and
reporting that I drink liqueur, that I smoke.
I am even sure...that in a moment
you will drink this marvelous poison with me...
Where ... where did you get this... this
poison?
Oh, this! Of one of my friends...
Who's that?
I won't allow it!
I want no one but me.
You fallen angel.
Now you're mine.
Now you're seeing again your reflection.
But for the first time
you're seeing it clearly and consciously.
That's not the one
you've known before.
The one who only consisted of
figures, numbers and equations.
He's a stranger...
and you meet him for the first time.
I don't understand
what's the matter with me.
Why don't you
want me to have friends?
Everybody has the right to
be happy in the One State.
Even my persistent admirer S-4710.
You met him in the underground recently.
It's twenty-five minutes past twenty-two.
Five minutes left.
You know what it means
to be seen in the street after twenty-two and a half.
All numbers have to sleep at night.
That's your duty
like working at day.
It's necessary to be able to work.
Not to sleep at night is a crime.
And one thing is clear to me...
I hate you.
I write for your Integral, D-503.
Abouts us...the State Writers.
My reflections proceeded from the part to the whole...
...the part...that's me...R-13...
...the majestic whole
...that's the Institute of State Writers.
I wondered at the ancients who had never realized
the utter absurdity of their literature and poetry.
The enormous, magnificent power of the literary word was
completely wasted.
Everyone wrote anything he pleased.
Just as ridiculous and absurd as the fact...
...that the ancients allowed the ocean to beat dully at the shore
twenty-four hours a day...
...while the millions of kilogrammometers
of energy residing in the waves...
...went only to heighten lovers' feelings.
We have transformed the savage, foam-spitting beast into a domestic animal...
...and in the same way
we have tamed and harnessed
the once wild element of poetry.
Today, poetry is no longer the idle,
impudent whistling of a nightingale...
...poetry is civic service,
poetry is useful.
Take, for example,
the Daily Odes to the Benefactor?
Who, upon reading them,
will not bow piously...
...before the selfless labors
of this Number of Numbers?
Or the immortal tragedy He Who Was Late to
Work?
Or the awesome Red Flowers of Court
Sentences?
Or the guidebook Stanzas on Sexual Hygiene?
We, the State Poets, have come down to earth....
...we no longer soar in the empyrean...
... we stride along the streets to a stern mechanical March.
Our lyre encompasses
the morning scraping of electric toothbrushes...
...and the dread crackle of the sparks
in the Benefactor's Machine..
...and the intimate tinkle of the gleaming crystal
chamberpot...
And we shall come to you, my
unknown readers on the distant planet...
...to make your life as
divinely rational and precise as ours.
I see a crazy, upside-down world.
At the dock I see some strange
machines, their bases up...
People are glued antipodally to the ceiling.
I don't sleep well.
I dream of pink shadows.
I am certainly sick.
Number I-330 has recently registered on you.
- Yes.
Additionaly you're registered on O-90, aren't you?
- Yes.
For three years.
Together with my old schoolmate R-13.
We were together yesterday.
O-90.
I kissed her briefly.
My lips were stiff and cold.
I sat on the floor next to the bed
and said nothing.
O-90 said:
"You're not the same...
...I feel you are no longer mine!"
'Mine'?
What sort of primitive notion?
We only belong to the One State.
Yes.
You did not have sexual intercourse,
did you.
No.
Although it was your duty?
I could not.
Why not?
I had had occasion recently to calculate
the curve for a street membrane...
...recording all conversations
for the Office of the Guardians.
The rosy, concave, quivering film...
...the strange creature consisting of a single organ...
...an ear.
I was such a membrane
when I-330 got changed.
A click of the fastening at the collar,
on the breast still lower.
I heard...
...silence...
No!
Silk rustled down the shoulders,
knees...
...no: sharp blows of a hammer against the rips.
I'll never forget this...
I can't live without I-330...
Bad...bad...bad...
An incurable disease.
Apparently, you have developed a soul.
What's that?
A soul? I don't understand.
A soul? A strange, ancient, long-forgotten word.
In the past
it was impossible to define.
We sometimes use the words
"soul-stirring"...
..."soulless," but "soul"...?
Perhaps those are traces
that remain...
...when you remember
the click of the fastening or the silk rustling...
...the cold mirror reflects,
throws back.
But this one absorbs, and everything leaves its
tracer-forever.
No one else has it, and I. . . ?
I've never had a soul...
I don't understand
why I've got one?
What's the trouble?
A soul? A soul, you say?
What the devil!
We'll soon return to epidemics
if you go on that way.
I told you, we
must cut out imagination in everyone. . .
I often told you, nothing but surgery will
do...
Give me your X-ray glasses.
Stand up, D-503!
Come on! Come on!
Curious, most curious.
Listen, would you consent to ... to
being preserved in alcohol?
It would be extremely useful to
the One State.
It would help us prevent an epidemic...
Number D-503 is the
Builder of the Integral...
...and I am sure it would interfere with ...
U-um.
Well ...
My dear friend...
I'll tell you in confidence-
you are not the only one.
It was not for nothing
that my colleague spoke about an epidemic.
Try to remember-haven't you noticed...
...anything like it,
very similar in anyone else?
As far as your insomnia and your dreams,
I can suggest one thing...
...do more walking.
I will give you a certificate and take a
walk...
...well, let's say
together with someone.
Walls, dear O. They are, perhaps,
the greatest of man's inventions.
Man ceased to be a wild animal only
when he built the first wall.
Man ceased to be a savage only...
After the Sixty Minutes' War
when we had built this wall...
...and we had isolated our perfect
mechanical world from the irrational, hideous world of trees,
birds, animals. . . .
What's the matter?
Why did you stop?
Please, come to me.
I must have your child...
...give me a child...
...and I will go, I'll go
and you can stay with I-330!
Dear O! You know you are about ten centimeters
shorter than the Maternal Norm
It doesn't matter!
You seem to be anxious
for the Benefactor's Machine?
To see just once the little crease.
Only one day!
I always liked these round fold on your wrist,
like a baby's.
It pleased you to be sick...
In your absence, in the absence
my highest boss ...
...something happened yesteray...
What?
You've chewed only 48 times
instead of the prescribed 50 times.
This is because of the excitement.
And imagine I caught a man without a number
near the Integral around lunch time.
I'll never understand how he
managed to get in...
I took him to the Operational Section.
They'll know how to drag the why and how out of the fellow ...
Now he certainly is in the Gas Bell
and reveals everything..
Do you know that the Benefactor is
experimenting with 20 different types of gass?
He generates 20 different pain conditions -
from very mild to unbearable.
Even the most hardened sinner speaks then.
How fortunate that our happiness is protected in
so perfect a manner.
Now you have chewed only 48 times.
We install the rocket engine tomorrow.
Yes, sir.
We had thought you might be
seriously ill.
But I feel them, you understand?
At all times .. . they are here,
around the Integral...
Yes.
Who are they?
How would I know who?
You should immediately go
to the Medical Office...
...you possess
to much imagination. . .
I've eaten nothing else
than this black naphtha all my life.
But it tastes wonderful.
You just alluded to the
recent advances in neurosurgery, right?
I really do not know
whose head comes first under the sparkling knives.
Oh, well. ... She's here,
she came a little while ago.
Enter. Go to her quickly.
She's waiting.
She asked me to tell you.
You? Here?
Wait here.
Nothing to worry about...
Go back the way you've come.
Don't be afraid!
Nothing will happen to you.
But don't talk to anyone
about what happened to you!
I'll explain everything.
Tomorrow.
I am saddened.
Instead of a harmonious and strict
mathematical poem in honor of the One State...
...I am producing some sort of
a fantastic adventure novel.
Closets, underground corridors, landscapes,
men without a number?
Why do they go into these
notes?
Ah, if it were really nothing but a novel, and not my
present life...
...filled with X's, V-1 and falls.
Why did you send me
away yesterday?
Well...what about your duties tonight,
you must fulfill like all decent numbers.
Perhaps I had to test you?
Perhaps I must know that you will
do whatever I wish?
Sit down.
You know, the Ancient House dates back
to the time before the Sixty Minutes' War.
Do you really want to know everything?
Yes...everything.
And aren't you afraid?
No, I'm not afraid.
The little doctor was even
more scared than you.
Why do you stop
talking?
I! I can't stand this.
You are here.
You're sitting across from me,
but you are far away.
You've been hiding something
from me all the time.
Since we saw each other for the first time.
Will you ever think of me?
Will you never forget me?
Will you follow me everywhere...to the end?
No matter where I am leading you?
Because I love you.
The exit in the closet...
... and the underground corridor are
a well camouflaged escape route of our ancestors.
It runs under the Wall
to the green solitudes of the Forest People.
The Guardians have not discovered it yet.
No, you didn't dream.
But now any certainty is over.
Now something new will come,
something amazing, something unprecedented...
Have you finished the Integral yet?
Is it almost done?
When are you going
to fly to the stars for the first time?
Why do you ask?
Why are you asking for the Integral?
I've almost forgotten,
why I've come.
A rash: at least, the nature of the illness
is clear.
Why were you so frightened
when seeing them?
They ... they look like the figures
in the Human History Museum.
But hot, red blood is flowing
in them.
They learned how to live from trees and animals.
With you it's worse: you're overgrown with
figures...
...figures crawl all over you like lice.
You should be stripped of everything
and driven naked into the woods.
What's suddenly wrong with you?
Forgive me.
Do you remember ...
...everything began...
with our walk.
A drop of blood of the Forest People
is certainly still in you.
Maybe that's why
I loved you immediately.
Would you like to...?
Didn't you want that
I belong to you alone?
Only to you...
no one else?
Now it is so.
I'm completely at your mercy.
You can do at any moment...
What can I do at any moment?
Stop it! Stop it!
You talk as if it were about
drinking a glass of water.
I'm not longer that one
who you think I am.
Yes, I know,
you've got a soul recently.
A human being is like a novel...
...until the last page
you don't know how it will end.
Or it wouldn't be worth
reading...
You asked me what 'Mephi is.
Mephi. It is an ancient name,
our ancestors called it Hebrew...
Mephi means destruction...yes.
Yes, we - Mephi -
are going to destroy the Wall...
...together with the Forest Men.
You-and the One State.
It is like putting a hand
over the muzzle of a gun...
...and hoping to
stop the bullet.
It's utter madness!
Everyone must lose his mind-the sooner the
better.
The Integral is to make its first, trial flight
the day after tomorrow.
On that day we shall seize it.
The Integral in our hands will be the weapon
that will help us finish everything, at once.
Do you understand-
it must be done, at any cost.
Absurd!
What you're planning is revolution?
Yes, revolution! Why is this absurd?
Because our
revolution was the final one.
And there can be no others.
Everyone knows this....
My dear-you are
a mathematician.
Well, then: name me the final
number.
What do you mean?
I ... I don't understand: what final number?
Well, the final, the ultimate, the largest.
But that's preposterous!
If the number of numbers is infinite,
how can there be a final number?
Then how can there be a final revolution?
There is no final one;
revolutions are infinite.
I!
Why do you think beyond all limits?
Who benefits from this?
You doubt any kind of order.
Our whole life.
It can be shaken every day.
Swept Away.
The Benefactor! The One State!
Equality and the mathematical happiness!
Our whole life!
Don't you understand what life means?
That only differences...
....differences in temperatures
-thermal contrasts -make for life?
Didn't you study physics?
If everywhere, throughout the universe,
there are equally warm, or equally cool bodies ...
...they must be brought into collision-
to get fire, explosion, Gehenna.
This was exactly what our
forebears did during the The Sixty Minutes' War...
Oh, and they were right-
a thousand times right.
But they made one mistake.
They later came to believe
that they had the final number...
A cosmic error.
And you?
We?
We know for the time being
that there is no final number.
We may forget it.
No, we are even sure to forget it
when we get old...
...we, too, shall drop-
like leaves in autumn...
...like you, the day after tomorrow.
Not you.
For you are with us!
How many volts
do we need for the initial explosion?
Oh, you've already set the voltmeter.
Well, we could burn the Wall with our exhaust.
How much water do we need for the rear tank?
Oh, you've already set the water manometer, too.
With this amount
you could drown the festival comittee.
Do you know that our start has been postponed?
Postponed?
And why?
Haven't you read today's One State Gazette?
Because of the the Great Operation.
The State Science has discovered
something important.
The last obstacle
on the way to happiness is eliminated.
The imagination.
All numbers have been invoked
to come voluntarily to the Medical Offices.
Three-surges and the tiny knot
at the base of the brain is burned away.
How much fuel shall we take for the motors?
Do we think of three ...
or three and a half hours ...
Fifteen tons are enough.
At least we haven't been nurtured from earliest
infancy on the Taylor system for nothing.
For henceforth we shall be perfect like
our machines.
Have you ever seen the face of a pump cylinder break into a
distant, foolish, dreamy smile while it works?
Have you ever heard of cranes restlessly turning from side to
side and sighing at night, during the hours designated for
rest?
The Guardians have noticed
more and more such smiles and sighs of late.
As a kind of wild echo of the apes.
But now the road is open finally.
Long live the Great Operation!
Long live the One State!
Long live the Benefactor!
Fifteen tons. No, better load ...
a hundred ...
A hundred? Why so much for a test flight?
That would be for a week. Much longer!
Anything might happen. . .
I know ...
The new uniform for the test flight
of the Integral.
The pension office has assigned a new pot to you.
Actually, I've waited for you.
I wanted to tell you
how happy I am.
How much I'm
happy for you.
Because I'm sure
that I will be strong enough soon.
I think
I've to decide now.
Because of you.
Please, don't urge me.
But... I don't
urge you.
I took the residential building
children to the Operation.
The unreasonable ones
did not want it.
They had had to be tied up there.
But love must be ruthless.
Don't you think so?
When are you going to go to the Operation?
Tomorrow after tomorrow?
After the flight?
Then you will be healthy...finally.
You'll be like new.
Your present self will be waste then.
Did... did you...?
You are a child, my dear.
You can't be without being
watched at any moment.
It was the Integral's first test flight.
Without me - its builder.
Someone has betrayed me.
But I haven't been sent to the Benefactor's Machine
at once - as expected.
I don' know why.
I only got house arrest.
I have only one thought:
Kill...kill...kill!
I always move in the same magic circle.
I know
killing is somehow messy, primitive.
The thought gives me a strange sensation of something
sickeningly sweet in the mouth...
...and I cannot swallow my
saliva...
I am terminally ill in body and soul.
I expose all of myself...
...to the last crushed little screw...
...the last broken spring ...
I'll kill.
I know exactly the spot on her head.
You... you've gone mad!
Don't dare...
I'm not registered with you.
I'm here...only for control.
I beg you! One day only...one day!
Tomorrow...tomorrow. I'll go and do everything . . .
Please . . . for the Benefactor's sake ... I agree.
This is the Benefactor speaking.
Report to me at once!
Well, hurry,
get dressed!
You've read my notes.
- Yes.
Listen . . . Her name-you know whom I mean-did you name
her?
But only the truth...I must know...
I don't care...
- No.
No? - Because I ... I was afraid that ...
if I named her... you might...stop lov-...
Oh, I can't.
And so you too?
You, the Builder of the Integral?
You, who were to have become
the greatest of conquistadors?
You, whose name was to initiate a new,
magnificent chapter in the history of the One State?
You?
Well? Why are you silent?
Am I an
executioner?
Yes or no?
Yes.
You think I am afraid of this
word?
Have you ever tried to pull off its shell
and see what is inside?
A blue hill, a cross, a crowd.
Do you remember now?
Some above,
splashed with blood, are nailing a body to a cross...
...others below, splashed with tears
are looking on.
Does it not seem
to you that the role of those above is the most difficult, the
most important?
If not for them, would this entire majestic
tragedy have taken place?
And the author of the tragedy - God...
...was glorified for ages as the God of
love.
Absurd? No, on the contrary...
...it is testimony to the
ineradicable wisdom of man, inscribed in blood.
Even at that
time-wild, shaggy...he understood...
...true love of
humanity is inevitably inhuman.
And the inevitable mark of
truth is its cruelty.
Just as the inevitable mark of fire is that it
burns.
Show me fire that does not burn.
Well, argue with me, prove the contrary!
If this means that you agree with me...
...then let us talk like
adults...
...after the children have gone to bed.
I ask you: what did people from their very
infancy pray for...
...dream about, long for?
They longed for some one to tell them,
once and for all, the meaning of happiness...
...and then to bind them to it with a chain.
What are
we doing now, if not this very thing?
...we have already caught up with the
ancient dream of paradise . . .
...at this very
moment you...
...when all that needed to be done was
to skin the quarry and divide it into shares.
How old are you?
Thirty-two.
- Thirty-two. And your naivete is of someone
half that age someone of sixteen!
Has it really never entered your head...
...that they needed you only as the Builder of
the Integral?
No.
No!
No!!!
I was in
your room ...
Although you are
under house arrest?
They have rummaged through it.
Probably my persistent admirer S-4710 pursues me.
But we're working...
and we're really working, my dear.
Have you only come
to get to know this?
I was at the Benefactor's.
So...
Doesn't that interest you
what he told me?
It seems to me
I have always hated you, from the very first.
I fought against ...
But no, no, don't believe me...
I could and did not want to save myself,
I wanted to be part of it...
I wanted to perish...
...because...
..I only wanted you.
That's how I feel
even now. Although I know everything.
Did you name
me?
The thing at issue is bigger than us.
It's not about your individual happiness.
But the happiness of many others.
You prefer sitting here at the moment...
I understand you.
I understand you completely.
Nevertheless, you must calm yourself.
Don't.
According to my calculations,
there is no infinity!
Yes, yes, there is no infinity.
If the universe
were infinite...
...then the mean density of matter in it should
equal zero.
And since it is not zero
we know that!
It means
that the universe is finite.
Now this is the only thing I need to compute
the digital coefficient, and then ...
And then we shall conquer philosophically -
do you understand?
I dont want to win.
You are not letting
me complete my calculation, you are screaming. . . .
Listen. Just listen to me! You
must - you must give me an answer.
Out there, where your
finite universe ends!
What is out there, beyond it?
It is day. Bright. Barometer, 760.
Can it be true that I, D-503,
have written these two hundred pages?
Can it really be true that I once felt
or imagined that I felt all this?
But now...no delirium, no feelings:
nothing but facts.
Because I am well, I
am entirely well.
This morning all Numbers were seized
who had no certificates of the Operation...
...were taken
to the nearest auditorium.
I smile - I cannot help smiling:
it's so simple - three current surges...
...and the head feels
light, empty.
Now to the facts, after the Operation I went
to the Benefactor's Office...
... and told him everything
I knew about the enemies of happiness.
How could it have seemed so difficult before?
This evening, I'll sit - what an honour - at the
same table with the Benefactor...
... in the famous Gas Chamber.
So you refuse to fully confess...
...and to name those
who D-503 could not name?
Talk!
Do you want to talk now?
Do you want to talk now,
in the end?
I-330 didn't confess.
The little doctor
who I also had named...
...and who was taken into the Gas Chamber after her...
...proved to be less unruly.
He already talked at Pain Gas No.One.
Well, probably, doctors are particularly self-pitying in general.
Tomorrow they will ascend
the stairs to the Benefactor's Machine.
We must act.
This can not be postponed...
...because in the western parts of
the city there is silent chaos.
Parts of the Wall
have been torn down.
HOWEVER, on the Fortieth cross-town avenue, we have
succeeded in erecting a temporary barrier of high-voltage
waves.
And I hope that we shall conquer.
More than that-I
am certain we shall conquer.
Because Reason must prevail.
The signal to go to sleep.
Good night.
"We"
written by
based on the novel
2nd Doctor
Delinquent
Benefactor
Old Woman
1st Doctor
Music
Technical Management
Screen Technology
Magnetic Recording
Sound
Camera
Editor
Assistant Director
Make up
Costumes
Equipment
Props
Manager
Production Manager
Editor
Directed by
A production of
Made in
On behalf of
Subs by Nitverstan
"We"
Written by
Based on the novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Directed by
I shall simply copy, word for word, the proclamation that
appeared today in the One State Gazette:
The building of the Integral will be completed in one
hundred and twenty days.
The great historic hour when the first Integral
will soar into cosmic space is drawing near.
One thousand years ago your heroic ancestors
subdued the entire terrestrial globe to the power of the
One State.
Yours will be a still more glorious feat: you will
integrate the infinite equation of the universe...
...with the aid
of the fire-breathing, electric, glass Integral.
You will subjugate the unknown
beings on other planets...
...who may still be living in the primitive condition of freedom,
to the beneficent yoke of reason.
If they fail to understand...
...that we bring them mathematically infallible happiness...
...it will be our duty to compel them to be happy.
But before
resorting to arms, we shall try the power of words.
In the name of the Benefactor, therefore, we proclaim to
all the numbers of the One State:
Everyone who feels capable of doing so...
...must compose tracts, odes,
manifestoes, poems, or other works...
...extolling the beauty and the grandeur of the One State.
This will be the first cargo to be carried by the Integral.
Long live the One State, long live the numbers, long live
the Benefactor!
I write this, and I feel: my cheeks are burning.
Yes, to integrate the grandiose cosmic equation.
Yes, to unbend the wild, primitive curve
and straighten it to a tangent...
-an asymptote-
For the line of the One State is the
straight line.
The great, divine, exact, wise straight line- the
wisest of all lines.
Dear O-90. In half a minute
the Personal Hour will begin.
I, D-503...
...Builder of the Integral, am only one of the
mathematicians of the One State.
My brain, accustomed to figures,
does not know how to create the music
of assonances and rhymes.
I shall merely attempt to record what I see and
think...
...or, to be more exact, what we think...
...precisely so-we,
and let this We be the title of my record.
I wanted to pick you up
for our daily walk.
What a sky O-90!
Deep blue...
...not stained by a single cloud.
I love this sterile, blue sky.
Don't you love it, too, 18?
I'm sure you do.
We all do.
I'm not mistaken.
We are no longer just individuals...
...we think the same, we feel the same.
We are so much like each other.
Are you sure?
I think we are quite different.
Alas...do I confuse you?
No reason for 'Alas.'
Science progresses, and it is obvious...
...that, if not now, then in
fifty or a hundred years ...
Even everyone's noses ...
Yes, noses.
If there is any ground for
envy...
If I have a button-nose and
another ...
Oh, your nose is 'classical,' as they used to say in olden
times.
But your hands ...
Let us see your hands!
A most interesting
conjunction.
He is registered with me.
The pollen dries out the lips.
It comes from beyond the wall.
It's spring. D-503, marvelous, isn't it?
Spring.
I'd like so much to come to you today and let down the blinds.
Today, right now . . .
Put it away.
You know that our
next sexual day is in a week.
Our Personal Hour is over.
Will we meet again?
If I am assigned to...
I have just looked over what I had written...
and I see that I did not express myself clearly enough.
Of course, it is all entirely clear to any of us.
But perhaps you, the unknown readers to whom the Integral will bring my notes...
...have reached only that page in the great book of civilization...
that our ancestors read some nine hundred years ago.
Perhaps you do not know even about such elementary things...
...as the Table of Hours, the Personal Hour...
...the Maternity Norm, the Green Wall, and the Benefactor.
I cannot imagine a life that is not regulated by the figures of our Table.
From the wall in my room...
...tenderly and sternly
into my eyes.
Involuntarily, my mind turns to what the ancients
called an "icon."
And I long to compose poems or prayers.
Every morning, we-
millions of us-get up as one...
...at the same hour and the same moment.
At the same hour, in millionheaded
unison, we start work.
...and in unison
we end it
And, fused into a single million-handed body...
...at the same second, designated by the Table...
...we lift our spoons to
our mouths.
At the same second, we come out for our walk...
...go to the auditorium, go to the hall for Taylor exercises...
...fall asleep....
I have read many incredible things about those
times when people still lived in a free, i.e., unorganized.
The street
lights burned all night...
...and people walked and drove around in
the streets at all hours of the night.
It is so absurd...
...you, my unknown readers, will think me a malicious joker.
You may decide that I am merely trying to
mock you, telling you utter nonsense.
But our One State Science asserts...
...that this was how the ancients lived...
...and our
State Science never errs.
A letter has arrived for you.
Never take letters before 12 o'clock...
...otherwise you lack the blessing of the Benefactor.
It's an order,
censorship is unnecessary.
You will be expected at the Ancient House at exactly 4 clock.
You poor thing.
Well, darlings, so you've come to see my little house?
Yes, Grandmother.
You little pixy!
I know, I know!
All right, go in by yourselves,
I'll stay here, in the sun...
I love her,
that old woman.
Why?
I don't know. Perhaps for her mouth.
Or perhaps for no
reason. Just like that.
Such a thing does not exist.
I feel terribly guilty.
Obviously, there should be
no love 'just like that'...
...but only 'love because.'
All elemental
phenomena should . . .
It's clear ...
This is my favorite room of all the rooms in the Ancient House.
That's not why the Guardians painstakingly preserved it.
That's clear ...
In such vile dwellings,
in such courts or cages...
....lived thousands of microscopic, eternally warring states, called families, as ruthless...
Instead of our beautiful, unbreakable glass....
...they only had hazy windows.
No one could look through them.
Our houses look like woven air...
...constantly bathed by air.
Because we have nothing to hide.
Clear.
But here they all lived 'just like that,..
...loved, suffered...
What stupid, reckless waste of human energy
-don't you think?
A human being is made as absurdly as these
preposterous "apartments".
Human heads are opaque.
Only tiny windows in them.
Well, what do you see with them?
Please...
turn around.
You certainly wonder
why you are here...
...and why you are playing this
strange game.
Maybe because I attract you as well as I repel you.
Do you know what you saw in my eyes?
Your reflection.
But it was not like you.
Something unknown has entered your life.
An "X" and that horrifies you.
You mathematician.
Look, you are clearly trying to be original...
Clearly to be original.
Hence, to be original is to violate equality.
Don't be afraid.
I'll say something very wise and sensible now.
Don't you find it astonishing
that once upon a time people tolerated such characters?
And not only tolerated, but worshiped them?
What a slavish spirit! Don't you think?
It's clear.
These poets were masters far more powerful
than their crowned kings.
Why weren't they isolated, exterminated?
With us...the prehistoric times
of the geniuses are over.
I could...
...kill me?
Don't you think it's time?
And if I asked you to remain here with me?
Look, do you ... do you know what you are saying?
In ten minutes I must be in the auditorium. . .
... and all numbers must attend the prescribed Taylor exercises...
...because he was the greatest genius of the ancients.
A prophet who was able to see ten centuries ahead.
He was the first who perfectly organized the workplace.
He was unable to integrate his system from one
hour to twenty-four under the barbarous circumstances then...
...to all 86,400 seconds of the day.
I know a doctor at the Medical Office.
He is registered with me.
If I ask him, he will give you a certificate
that you were sick. Well?
And do you know that I must,
in fact, immediately go to
the Office of the Guardians.
The legal deadline for criminal charges
is twice 24 hours, my dear.
Are you staying?
Pardon!
Pardon!
Have you already read that?
What, please? What?
The brief statement on the third page?
I'll read it to you.
According to reliable sources, new traces have been
discovered of the elusive organization...
...which aims at liberation
from the beneficent yoke of the State.
Liberation?
Amazing, the extent to which criminal instincts
persist in human nature.
I use the word "criminal" deliberately.
Freedom and crime are linked as indivisibly as...
...well, as the motion of the aero and its speed...
...when its speed equals zero...
...it does not move...
...when man's freedom equals zero...
...he commits no crimes.
That is clear.
The only means of ridding man of crime
is ridding him of freedom.
And now, just as we have gotten rid of it,
some wretched halfwits...
...to spoil everything.
Didn't you march next to I-330
during the Personal Hour recently?
Are you a Guardian?
You know, I was at the Ancient House yesterday...
Why, that's excellent. It gives material for very instructive
conclusions.
But, you see, I was not alone,
I accompanied number I-330.
I-330? I am delighted for you.
A very interesting, talented woman.
She has many admirers.
I feel embarrassed, somehow,
to tell you about this altogether improbable occurrence.
...almost about a miracle,
which are banned here.
I left the room for a few seconds...
...rushed back into the room,
but I-330 was not there.
I clearly saw the ancient key ring
still swaying in the door of the
wardrobe.
I even opened the wardrobe and felt the bright,
ancient dresses.
Nothing.
You are the Builder of the Integral.
I am certain that sooner or later you'll succeed...
...in fitting all these absurdities into some logical formula.
Don't look at your watch all the time.
We have a further 45 minutes.
And 30 minutes are enough for us.
Then we can talk for 15 minutes.
Is anything bothering you?
Perhaps because O-90 is assigned to me tonight?
My dear, in three days she'll have a pink
coupon for you again.
You've moved your stool.
It is unlike mine.
The solid three-dimensional
classification system is destroyed.
Everything in your room has become non-Euclidean.
You haven't changed R-13.
In Taylor and in mathematics you were
always at the bottom of the class.
Do you recall old Plapa?
Our automatic teaching machine.
Once I stuffed his speaker with
chewed-up paper.
Every text came with a shot of a
spitball.
Imagine...if it had been alive.
Like teachers in ancient times.
Then he would have spat.
I do not understand
why this should be funny.
Dear O, our friend does not like jokes.
Jokes are unclear functions for him.
They're lies.
Ah, our mathematician!
A sinister servant of science.
He alone did not laugh at my joke in
class then.
And how is your Integral?
We shall soon be setting off to Mars
to make happy the universe, eh?
In the morning I was at the dock...
...and suddenly I saw: the lathes...
...the regulator sphere rotating with closed eyes
...utterly oblivious of all.
...the cranks flashing, swinging left and right...
...the bit of the slotting machine dancing up
and down in time to unheard music...
...a grandiose
mechanical ballet...
...flooded with pale blue sunlight.
And then, I wondered...
Why is this beautiful?
Why is dance beautiful?
Answer: because it is unfree motion...
...because the whole profound meaning of dance
lies precisely in absolute, esthetic subordination...
...in ideal unfreedom.
Are you writing for the Integral, too?
What about? Today, for example?
Today, about nothing. I was busy with something else ...
What?"
What, what! Well, if you wish...
...a court sentence.
I versified a sentence.
In very solemn iambics.
He harnessed fire in the machine, in steel,
And bound chaos
in the chains of Law.
In the Square of the Benefactor
the Day of Justice takes place tomorrow.
A colleague.
A state poet.
For years he sat next to me...
An ordinary number.
Then suddenly.
'I am a genius,' he says...
...'a genius, above the law.'
Fortunately, the antediluvian ages of geniuses are gone.
Yes, my dearest mathematician...
...fortunately,fortunately!
We are the happiest arithmetical mean...
As you mathematicians say
-integration from zero to infinity...
...from a cretin to Shakespeare ... yes!"
Well, I must go...
Shall we do it as always?
Shall I sleep alone with her?
Of course.
Else I would be ashamed.
With you, it is merely a pink
coupon, but with him....
...it is different.
He harnessed fire in the machine, in steel, And bound chaos
in the chains of Law.
Hail to the Benefactor! Hail! Hail! Hail!
Hail to the Benefactor! Hail! Hail! Hail!
Hail to the Benefactor! Hail! Hail! Hail!
Hail to the Benefactor! Hail! Hail! Hail!
Something similar was experienced by the ancients during
their "religious services."
But they worshiped their own irrational, unknown God.
We serve our rational and precisely known one.
Their God had not been able to think
of anything more sensible than offering himself
as sacrifice for some incomprehensible reason.
We, on the other hand, offer a sacrifice to our God, the One State...
...a calm, reasoned, sensible sacrifice.
Yes, this was our solemn liturgy to the One State...
...a remembrance of the awesome time of trial, of the
Sixty Minutes' War...
...a grandiose celebration of the victory of all over one...
...of the sum over the individual.
Yes, there was something
purifying like a storm, in that solemn ceremony.
You who will read this...
...are you familiar with such moments?
I pity you if you are not...
Again...a letter has arrived for you.
Never receive a letter before 12 o'clock.
- It's again an order.
Number I-330 has registered for you.
You are to be at her room
today at twenty-one.
I've been watching you for a long time.
You need someone
who is reasonable.
One who spends her life together with you.
I think about how I can help you.
Stay calm!
Sometime I find enough strength to...
Great Benefactor!
I knew...
I knew
the way you are.
Why did you register for me?
And why did you compel me to
come here?
Delicious liqueur. Would you like some?
With nicotine, and especially alcohol,
you'll end on the Cube...
Of course. Quick destruction of a few is more sensible than
giving many the opportunity to ruin themselves?
But the main thing is that I am
not afraid of you and completely at ease with you.
You are such a dear and nice man.
...oh, I am sure of it...
...you will never think of going to the Guardians and
reporting that I drink liqueur, that I smoke.
I am even sure...that in a moment
you will drink this marvelous poison with me...
Where ... where did you get this... this
poison?
Oh, this! Of one of my friends...
Who's that?
I won't allow it!
I want no one but me.
You fallen angel.
Now you're mine.
Now you're seeing again your reflection.
But for the first time
you're seeing it clearly and consciously.
That's not the one
you've known before.
The one who only consisted of
figures, numbers and equations.
He's a stranger...
and you meet him for the first time.
I don't understand
what's the matter with me.
Why don't you
want me to have friends?
Everybody has the right to
be happy in the One State.
Even my persistent admirer S-4710.
You met him in the underground recently.
It's twenty-five minutes past twenty-two.
Five minutes left.
You know what it means
to be seen in the street after twenty-two and a half.
All numbers have to sleep at night.
That's your duty
like working at day.
It's necessary to be able to work.
Not to sleep at night is a crime.
And one thing is clear to me...
I hate you.
I write for your Integral, D-503.
Abouts us...the State Writers.
My reflections proceeded from the part to the whole...
...the part...that's me...R-13...
...the majestic whole
...that's the Institute of State Writers.
I wondered at the ancients who had never realized
the utter absurdity of their literature and poetry.
The enormous, magnificent power of the literary word was
completely wasted.
Everyone wrote anything he pleased.
Just as ridiculous and absurd as the fact...
...that the ancients allowed the ocean to beat dully at the shore
twenty-four hours a day...
...while the millions of kilogrammometers
of energy residing in the waves...
...went only to heighten lovers' feelings.
We have transformed the savage, foam-spitting beast into a domestic animal...
...and in the same way
we have tamed and harnessed
the once wild element of poetry.
Today, poetry is no longer the idle,
impudent whistling of a nightingale...
...poetry is civic service,
poetry is useful.
Take, for example,
the Daily Odes to the Benefactor?
Who, upon reading them,
will not bow piously...
...before the selfless labors
of this Number of Numbers?
Or the immortal tragedy He Who Was Late to
Work?
Or the awesome Red Flowers of Court
Sentences?
Or the guidebook Stanzas on Sexual Hygiene?
We, the State Poets, have come down to earth....
...we no longer soar in the empyrean...
... we stride along the streets to a stern mechanical March.
Our lyre encompasses
the morning scraping of electric toothbrushes...
...and the dread crackle of the sparks
in the Benefactor's Machine..
...and the intimate tinkle of the gleaming crystal
chamberpot...
And we shall come to you, my
unknown readers on the distant planet...
...to make your life as
divinely rational and precise as ours.
I see a crazy, upside-down world.
At the dock I see some strange
machines, their bases up...
People are glued antipodally to the ceiling.
I don't sleep well.
I dream of pink shadows.
I am certainly sick.
Number I-330 has recently registered on you.
- Yes.
Additionaly you're registered on O-90, aren't you?
- Yes.
For three years.
Together with my old schoolmate R-13.
We were together yesterday.
O-90.
I kissed her briefly.
My lips were stiff and cold.
I sat on the floor next to the bed
and said nothing.
O-90 said:
"You're not the same...
...I feel you are no longer mine!"
'Mine'?
What sort of primitive notion?
We only belong to the One State.
Yes.
You did not have sexual intercourse,
did you.
No.
Although it was your duty?
I could not.
Why not?
I had had occasion recently to calculate
the curve for a street membrane...
...recording all conversations
for the Office of the Guardians.
The rosy, concave, quivering film...
...the strange creature consisting of a single organ...
...an ear.
I was such a membrane
when I-330 got changed.
A click of the fastening at the collar,
on the breast still lower.
I heard...
...silence...
No!
Silk rustled down the shoulders,
knees...
...no: sharp blows of a hammer against the rips.
I'll never forget this...
I can't live without I-330...
Bad...bad...bad...
An incurable disease.
Apparently, you have developed a soul.
What's that?
A soul? I don't understand.
A soul? A strange, ancient, long-forgotten word.
In the past
it was impossible to define.
We sometimes use the words
"soul-stirring"...
..."soulless," but "soul"...?
Perhaps those are traces
that remain...
...when you remember
the click of the fastening or the silk rustling...
...the cold mirror reflects,
throws back.
But this one absorbs, and everything leaves its
tracer-forever.
No one else has it, and I. . . ?
I've never had a soul...
I don't understand
why I've got one?
What's the trouble?
A soul? A soul, you say?
What the devil!
We'll soon return to epidemics
if you go on that way.
I told you, we
must cut out imagination in everyone. . .
I often told you, nothing but surgery will
do...
Give me your X-ray glasses.
Stand up, D-503!
Come on! Come on!
Curious, most curious.
Listen, would you consent to ... to
being preserved in alcohol?
It would be extremely useful to
the One State.
It would help us prevent an epidemic...
Number D-503 is the
Builder of the Integral...
...and I am sure it would interfere with ...
U-um.
Well ...
My dear friend...
I'll tell you in confidence-
you are not the only one.
It was not for nothing
that my colleague spoke about an epidemic.
Try to remember-haven't you noticed...
...anything like it,
very similar in anyone else?
As far as your insomnia and your dreams,
I can suggest one thing...
...do more walking.
I will give you a certificate and take a
walk...
...well, let's say
together with someone.
Walls, dear O. They are, perhaps,
the greatest of man's inventions.
Man ceased to be a wild animal only
when he built the first wall.
Man ceased to be a savage only...
After the Sixty Minutes' War
when we had built this wall...
...and we had isolated our perfect
mechanical world from the irrational, hideous world of trees,
birds, animals. . . .
What's the matter?
Why did you stop?
Please, come to me.
I must have your child...
...give me a child...
...and I will go, I'll go
and you can stay with I-330!
Dear O! You know you are about ten centimeters
shorter than the Maternal Norm
It doesn't matter!
You seem to be anxious
for the Benefactor's Machine?
To see just once the little crease.
Only one day!
I always liked these round fold on your wrist,
like a baby's.
It pleased you to be sick...
In your absence, in the absence
my highest boss ...
...something happened yesteray...
What?
You've chewed only 48 times
instead of the prescribed 50 times.
This is because of the excitement.
And imagine I caught a man without a number
near the Integral around lunch time.
I'll never understand how he
managed to get in...
I took him to the Operational Section.
They'll know how to drag the why and how out of the fellow ...
Now he certainly is in the Gas Bell
and reveals everything..
Do you know that the Benefactor is
experimenting with 20 different types of gass?
He generates 20 different pain conditions -
from very mild to unbearable.
Even the most hardened sinner speaks then.
How fortunate that our happiness is protected in
so perfect a manner.
Now you have chewed only 48 times.
We install the rocket engine tomorrow.
Yes, sir.
We had thought you might be
seriously ill.
But I feel them, you understand?
At all times .. . they are here,
around the Integral...
Yes.
Who are they?
How would I know who?
You should immediately go
to the Medical Office...
...you possess
to much imagination. . .
I've eaten nothing else
than this black naphtha all my life.
But it tastes wonderful.
You just alluded to the
recent advances in neurosurgery, right?
I really do not know
whose head comes first under the sparkling knives.
Oh, well. ... She's here,
she came a little while ago.
Enter. Go to her quickly.
She's waiting.
She asked me to tell you.
You? Here?
Wait here.
Nothing to worry about...
Go back the way you've come.
Don't be afraid!
Nothing will happen to you.
But don't talk to anyone
about what happened to you!
I'll explain everything.
Tomorrow.
I am saddened.
Instead of a harmonious and strict
mathematical poem in honor of the One State...
...I am producing some sort of
a fantastic adventure novel.
Closets, underground corridors, landscapes,
men without a number?
Why do they go into these
notes?
Ah, if it were really nothing but a novel, and not my
present life...
...filled with X's, V-1 and falls.
Why did you send me
away yesterday?
Well...what about your duties tonight,
you must fulfill like all decent numbers.
Perhaps I had to test you?
Perhaps I must know that you will
do whatever I wish?
Sit down.
You know, the Ancient House dates back
to the time before the Sixty Minutes' War.
Do you really want to know everything?
Yes...everything.
And aren't you afraid?
No, I'm not afraid.
The little doctor was even
more scared than you.
Why do you stop
talking?
I! I can't stand this.
You are here.
You're sitting across from me,
but you are far away.
You've been hiding something
from me all the time.
Since we saw each other for the first time.
Will you ever think of me?
Will you never forget me?
Will you follow me everywhere...to the end?
No matter where I am leading you?
Because I love you.
The exit in the closet...
... and the underground corridor are
a well camouflaged escape route of our ancestors.
It runs under the Wall
to the green solitudes of the Forest People.
The Guardians have not discovered it yet.
No, you didn't dream.
But now any certainty is over.
Now something new will come,
something amazing, something unprecedented...
Have you finished the Integral yet?
Is it almost done?
When are you going
to fly to the stars for the first time?
Why do you ask?
Why are you asking for the Integral?
I've almost forgotten,
why I've come.
A rash: at least, the nature of the illness
is clear.
Why were you so frightened
when seeing them?
They ... they look like the figures
in the Human History Museum.
But hot, red blood is flowing
in them.
They learned how to live from trees and animals.
With you it's worse: you're overgrown with
figures...
...figures crawl all over you like lice.
You should be stripped of everything
and driven naked into the woods.
What's suddenly wrong with you?
Forgive me.
Do you remember ...
...everything began...
with our walk.
A drop of blood of the Forest People
is certainly still in you.
Maybe that's why
I loved you immediately.
Would you like to...?
Didn't you want that
I belong to you alone?
Only to you...
no one else?
Now it is so.
I'm completely at your mercy.
You can do at any moment...
What can I do at any moment?
Stop it! Stop it!
You talk as if it were about
drinking a glass of water.
I'm not longer that one
who you think I am.
Yes, I know,
you've got a soul recently.
A human being is like a novel...
...until the last page
you don't know how it will end.
Or it wouldn't be worth
reading...
You asked me what 'Mephi is.
Mephi. It is an ancient name,
our ancestors called it Hebrew...
Mephi means destruction...yes.
Yes, we - Mephi -
are going to destroy the Wall...
...together with the Forest Men.
You-and the One State.
It is like putting a hand
over the muzzle of a gun...
...and hoping to
stop the bullet.
It's utter madness!
Everyone must lose his mind-the sooner the
better.
The Integral is to make its first, trial flight
the day after tomorrow.
On that day we shall seize it.
The Integral in our hands will be the weapon
that will help us finish everything, at once.
Do you understand-
it must be done, at any cost.
Absurd!
What you're planning is revolution?
Yes, revolution! Why is this absurd?
Because our
revolution was the final one.
And there can be no others.
Everyone knows this....
My dear-you are
a mathematician.
Well, then: name me the final
number.
What do you mean?
I ... I don't understand: what final number?
Well, the final, the ultimate, the largest.
But that's preposterous!
If the number of numbers is infinite,
how can there be a final number?
Then how can there be a final revolution?
There is no final one;
revolutions are infinite.
I!
Why do you think beyond all limits?
Who benefits from this?
You doubt any kind of order.
Our whole life.
It can be shaken every day.
Swept Away.
The Benefactor! The One State!
Equality and the mathematical happiness!
Our whole life!
Don't you understand what life means?
That only differences...
....differences in temperatures
-thermal contrasts -make for life?
Didn't you study physics?
If everywhere, throughout the universe,
there are equally warm, or equally cool bodies ...
...they must be brought into collision-
to get fire, explosion, Gehenna.
This was exactly what our
forebears did during the The Sixty Minutes' War...
Oh, and they were right-
a thousand times right.
But they made one mistake.
They later came to believe
that they had the final number...
A cosmic error.
And you?
We?
We know for the time being
that there is no final number.
We may forget it.
No, we are even sure to forget it
when we get old...
...we, too, shall drop-
like leaves in autumn...
...like you, the day after tomorrow.
Not you.
For you are with us!
How many volts
do we need for the initial explosion?
Oh, you've already set the voltmeter.
Well, we could burn the Wall with our exhaust.
How much water do we need for the rear tank?
Oh, you've already set the water manometer, too.
With this amount
you could drown the festival comittee.
Do you know that our start has been postponed?
Postponed?
And why?
Haven't you read today's One State Gazette?
Because of the the Great Operation.
The State Science has discovered
something important.
The last obstacle
on the way to happiness is eliminated.
The imagination.
All numbers have been invoked
to come voluntarily to the Medical Offices.
Three-surges and the tiny knot
at the base of the brain is burned away.
How much fuel shall we take for the motors?
Do we think of three ...
or three and a half hours ...
Fifteen tons are enough.
At least we haven't been nurtured from earliest
infancy on the Taylor system for nothing.
For henceforth we shall be perfect like
our machines.
Have you ever seen the face of a pump cylinder break into a
distant, foolish, dreamy smile while it works?
Have you ever heard of cranes restlessly turning from side to
side and sighing at night, during the hours designated for
rest?
The Guardians have noticed
more and more such smiles and sighs of late.
As a kind of wild echo of the apes.
But now the road is open finally.
Long live the Great Operation!
Long live the One State!
Long live the Benefactor!
Fifteen tons. No, better load ...
a hundred ...
A hundred? Why so much for a test flight?
That would be for a week. Much longer!
Anything might happen. . .
I know ...
The new uniform for the test flight
of the Integral.
The pension office has assigned a new pot to you.
Actually, I've waited for you.
I wanted to tell you
how happy I am.
How much I'm
happy for you.
Because I'm sure
that I will be strong enough soon.
I think
I've to decide now.
Because of you.
Please, don't urge me.
But... I don't
urge you.
I took the residential building
children to the Operation.
The unreasonable ones
did not want it.
They had had to be tied up there.
But love must be ruthless.
Don't you think so?
When are you going to go to the Operation?
Tomorrow after tomorrow?
After the flight?
Then you will be healthy...finally.
You'll be like new.
Your present self will be waste then.
Did... did you...?
You are a child, my dear.
You can't be without being
watched at any moment.
It was the Integral's first test flight.
Without me - its builder.
Someone has betrayed me.
But I haven't been sent to the Benefactor's Machine
at once - as expected.
I don' know why.
I only got house arrest.
I have only one thought:
Kill...kill...kill!
I always move in the same magic circle.
I know
killing is somehow messy, primitive.
The thought gives me a strange sensation of something
sickeningly sweet in the mouth...
...and I cannot swallow my
saliva...
I am terminally ill in body and soul.
I expose all of myself...
...to the last crushed little screw...
...the last broken spring ...
I'll kill.
I know exactly the spot on her head.
You... you've gone mad!
Don't dare...
I'm not registered with you.
I'm here...only for control.
I beg you! One day only...one day!
Tomorrow...tomorrow. I'll go and do everything . . .
Please . . . for the Benefactor's sake ... I agree.
This is the Benefactor speaking.
Report to me at once!
Well, hurry,
get dressed!
You've read my notes.
- Yes.
Listen . . . Her name-you know whom I mean-did you name
her?
But only the truth...I must know...
I don't care...
- No.
No? - Because I ... I was afraid that ...
if I named her... you might...stop lov-...
Oh, I can't.
And so you too?
You, the Builder of the Integral?
You, who were to have become
the greatest of conquistadors?
You, whose name was to initiate a new,
magnificent chapter in the history of the One State?
You?
Well? Why are you silent?
Am I an
executioner?
Yes or no?
Yes.
You think I am afraid of this
word?
Have you ever tried to pull off its shell
and see what is inside?
A blue hill, a cross, a crowd.
Do you remember now?
Some above,
splashed with blood, are nailing a body to a cross...
...others below, splashed with tears
are looking on.
Does it not seem
to you that the role of those above is the most difficult, the
most important?
If not for them, would this entire majestic
tragedy have taken place?
And the author of the tragedy - God...
...was glorified for ages as the God of
love.
Absurd? No, on the contrary...
...it is testimony to the
ineradicable wisdom of man, inscribed in blood.
Even at that
time-wild, shaggy...he understood...
...true love of
humanity is inevitably inhuman.
And the inevitable mark of
truth is its cruelty.
Just as the inevitable mark of fire is that it
burns.
Show me fire that does not burn.
Well, argue with me, prove the contrary!
If this means that you agree with me...
...then let us talk like
adults...
...after the children have gone to bed.
I ask you: what did people from their very
infancy pray for...
...dream about, long for?
They longed for some one to tell them,
once and for all, the meaning of happiness...
...and then to bind them to it with a chain.
What are
we doing now, if not this very thing?
...we have already caught up with the
ancient dream of paradise . . .
...at this very
moment you...
...when all that needed to be done was
to skin the quarry and divide it into shares.
How old are you?
Thirty-two.
- Thirty-two. And your naivete is of someone
half that age someone of sixteen!
Has it really never entered your head...
...that they needed you only as the Builder of
the Integral?
No.
No!
No!!!
I was in
your room ...
Although you are
under house arrest?
They have rummaged through it.
Probably my persistent admirer S-4710 pursues me.
But we're working...
and we're really working, my dear.
Have you only come
to get to know this?
I was at the Benefactor's.
So...
Doesn't that interest you
what he told me?
It seems to me
I have always hated you, from the very first.
I fought against ...
But no, no, don't believe me...
I could and did not want to save myself,
I wanted to be part of it...
I wanted to perish...
...because...
..I only wanted you.
That's how I feel
even now. Although I know everything.
Did you name
me?
The thing at issue is bigger than us.
It's not about your individual happiness.
But the happiness of many others.
You prefer sitting here at the moment...
I understand you.
I understand you completely.
Nevertheless, you must calm yourself.
Don't.
According to my calculations,
there is no infinity!
Yes, yes, there is no infinity.
If the universe
were infinite...
...then the mean density of matter in it should
equal zero.
And since it is not zero
we know that!
It means
that the universe is finite.
Now this is the only thing I need to compute
the digital coefficient, and then ...
And then we shall conquer philosophically -
do you understand?
I dont want to win.
You are not letting
me complete my calculation, you are screaming. . . .
Listen. Just listen to me! You
must - you must give me an answer.
Out there, where your
finite universe ends!
What is out there, beyond it?
It is day. Bright. Barometer, 760.
Can it be true that I, D-503,
have written these two hundred pages?
Can it really be true that I once felt
or imagined that I felt all this?
But now...no delirium, no feelings:
nothing but facts.
Because I am well, I
am entirely well.
This morning all Numbers were seized
who had no certificates of the Operation...
...were taken
to the nearest auditorium.
I smile - I cannot help smiling:
it's so simple - three current surges...
...and the head feels
light, empty.
Now to the facts, after the Operation I went
to the Benefactor's Office...
... and told him everything
I knew about the enemies of happiness.
How could it have seemed so difficult before?
This evening, I'll sit - what an honour - at the
same table with the Benefactor...
... in the famous Gas Chamber.
So you refuse to fully confess...
...and to name those
who D-503 could not name?
Talk!
Do you want to talk now?
Do you want to talk now,
in the end?
I-330 didn't confess.
The little doctor
who I also had named...
...and who was taken into the Gas Chamber after her...
...proved to be less unruly.
He already talked at Pain Gas No.One.
Well, probably, doctors are particularly self-pitying in general.
Tomorrow they will ascend
the stairs to the Benefactor's Machine.
We must act.
This can not be postponed...
...because in the western parts of
the city there is silent chaos.
Parts of the Wall
have been torn down.
HOWEVER, on the Fortieth cross-town avenue, we have
succeeded in erecting a temporary barrier of high-voltage
waves.
And I hope that we shall conquer.
More than that-I
am certain we shall conquer.
Because Reason must prevail.
The signal to go to sleep.
Good night.
"We"
written by
based on the novel
2nd Doctor
Delinquent
Benefactor
Old Woman
1st Doctor
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