Extant (2014–2015): Season 1, Episode 1 - Re-Entry - full transcript

ETHAN: Mom?
Are you too sick to come to the party?

I'm fine.

You know,
it's just my body readjusting, that's all.

I'll be right there, okay?

[GROANS]

WOMAN [ON TV]: Still no answers
as to what caused yesterday's blackout,

leaving nearly 60,000 homes in the district
without power.

That's the third blackout in...

I can't imagine.

I'm away from Bill and the kids
for two days, and it's like...

- It's tough.
- Oh, yeah. So, what's your secret?



A lot of V-Chrons.

- And no alcohol?
- Nope.

- I have not had a drink in 13 months.
- What?

- Can't risk a DUI in space.
WOMAN: Can't wait to hear about it.

That's the saddest story I've ever heard.
We have to remedy that right now.

- We can't.
- No cant's, we're doing shots.

- Ask the doctor here.
- Not until her tests come back.

- One shot.
- Listen, when her tests come back,

I will personally write her a prescription
for margaritas.

Thank you.

[BOY SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]

GIRL:
Ethan, get off him!

Stop. You're gonna hurt him.

JOHN: Ethan. Hey. What are you doing?
ETHAN: He wouldn't give me the ball.



And your solution was to push him down?

Ethan, what do you say?

- I'm sorry.
- It's okay.

If you do this again, no more
party for you. Understand?

- So sorry, guys. You okay?
- Yeah. All right, it's fine.

Let's go play.

You've gotta be exhausted. Go on up.

I can take out the trash.

Moll.

Gotta get back to the routine, right?

[CHIMES RINGING]

[TRASHCAN BEEPING]

[DOOR SQUEAKING AND BANGS]

ETHAN:
I was angry.

JOHN: Is that what you're supposed to do
when you get angry?

Hurt someone?

No.

How do you think you would have felt
if you'd really hurt Jake?

- Bad.
- Well, I sure hope so.

- Mom's mad at me.
- No, no. She's not mad.

But it's different now with her.

Your mom has to get used to
being back home again.

She was up there a long time,
all by herself.

It's gonna take a while for everything
to feel normal again, but it will.

I promise.

Okay.

Get a good night's sleep.
We have a big day tomorrow.

I think I need a flip.

Let me see.

Well, yeah. You're right.

All set.

I love you.

Will you leave my night-light on?

Sure.

[BLEEPS]

[SHOWER RUNNING]

JOHN:
What brought this on?

I had a dream.

Do you dream about Marcus much?

Less and less as I get older.

I still think about him every now and then.

What do you think about?

How if he were still alive,
there would be no us, no Ethan.

Without Marcus dying,
we may have never even met.

Maybe you'd still be with him.

Well, you know what?

I think...

we always end up
where we're supposed to.

[BEEPING]

COMPUTER:
Approaching Yasumoto Corp.

Hey.

Listen to me.
When I talk about you today...

Hey.

When I talk about you today,

I'm gonna talk a bit about how you were
originally created for the program,

but it doesn't mean I don't
see you as real. Okay?

- I'm not.
- Yes, you are.

You exist. Just like me.
Just like your mom. Okay?

[JULIE WHISTLES]

Jubes!

Rabbit!

JULIE:
Unh!

[BOTH IMITATES EXPLOSION]

- Look at you.
- He's been practicing.

- You nervous?
- Uh, pfft.

- Walk in the park.
- Exactly.

SAM:
I don't even know where to begin.

You were on the Seraphim station
for 13 months.

A solo mission.

Yes.

You were alone the whole time?

Well, that's why they
call it a solo mission.

[MOLLY CHUCKLES]

[SAM SIGHS]

Then I... I honestly...
I don't understand this.

Understand what?

I know there weren't any other
ISEA missions in that quadrant.

Molly, was there an emergency
that I didn't hear about,

an international crew that docked?

No.

Why?

You're pregnant.

What?

- You're pregnant.
- But...

That's not possible.

[THUMP]

[BEEPING]

[AIR HISSING]

Damn it.

B.E.N:
Five dollars for the swearjar.

- Put it on my tab.
- Of course.

Let's run the probe's data deck
and check for problems with the samples.

Maybe I contaminated them somehow
before they left.

I find that unlikely.

- Aren't you sweet?
- I have my moments.

- Molly.
- Go ahead.

- You have an incoming V-Chron.
- Bay 1, please.

Sending Bay 1.

JOHN:
The camera's on. Say hello.

- Hello.
JOHN: You wanna tell her?

Go ahead.

I got accepted into school.

I had my last meeting with the principal
this morning.

We're gonna wait for you to get back
for the orien...

[STATIC NOISE]

Ben?

B.E.N: I'm detecting interference
from a solar flare.

Shall I attempt to restart after it passes?

Sure.

B.E.N:
Attempt to restart...

Ben?

Ben?

[CLICK]

There has to be some kind of explanation.

How about you made a mistake?

Molly, I ran every single sample
from your tether twice.

Are you sure there was no one else?

How many times
are you gonna ask me this?

Even if there was,
you know I can't get pregnant.

We tried for years.

Were you taking the fertility drugs?

No.

No.

I stopped taking those way before Ethan.

I'm just asking every rational question
I can think of for the report.

You can't put this in the report.

Molly, this report goes straight
to Director Sparks. I can't lie.

I'm not asking you to lie.
I'm asking for some time.

As my friend.

As your friend, I should be admitting you
for observation right now.

That's exactly what I'm afraid of.

I just got back to my family, Sam.

I don't wanna end up in quarantine.

Just give me some time to figure it out
before I tell John.

At the Humanichs Project,

we recognize that
we live in a world of machines.

Most of us interact
with one form or another

from the time we wake up
until the time we go to sleep.

We've outsourced many
of our day-to-day activities to robots

that have made our lives
way more efficient,

but in the process,

we've removed the all-important element
of human connection.

Deep down, we all know
that robots are not really human.

A Medi-Assist bot

has a 100-percent accuracy rating
when administering a vaccine,

but it cannot comfort a child
who's afraid of a needle.

A task-android

can process your bank deposit,

but it can't share your joy
when it helps you buy your first home.

It turns out the true uncanny value
isn't visual at all.

It's the value of genuine connection.

The goal of the Humanichs Project
is to bridge that divide

by bringing humanity to the machine.

How are we going to do that?

By creating an artificial intelligence

designed from the very beginning
to seek connection.

Programmed not by ones and zeroes
that we type into interfaces,

but by day-to-day human experience.

Ladies and gentlemen,
let me introduce you to my son.

Ethan.

Go get them, Rabbit.

KERN:
Harmon Kryger.

He passed away before I came onboard.

Were you close?

Yeah.

- He was a good guy.
- So I heard.

Dr. Woods, I'm Gordon Kern.

- The new deputy director.
- That would be me.

It's a tragic situation.

Shall we?

I have to be honest.

I spent all weekend
preparing to grill you on your logs.

But your work is incredibly thorough.

Leaves very little left to the imagination.

There was one thing.

- The gap.
- Yes, the gap.

Well, that's easily explained, actually...

If you don't mind,
we'll wait for Director Sparks.

I know he has questions.

Well, there's something I'm sure
everyone in this room is curious about,

but we're all either too polite
or too embarrassed to ask.

The robot uprising, am I right?

What's to stop the Humanichs
from overthrowing us one day

and enslaving their human overlords?
Is that the question?

Absolutely nothing.

How, then, would an owner
control and manage their behavior?

It's not a master-slave relationship.

My partners and I believe
if we want machines to be more human,

we have to give them
the human experience.

They have to learn like children learn.

The Humanichs brain learns
right from wrong, good from bad,

the same way we all did,
for the most part.

- What do you mean, for the most part?
- There is no guarantee with any child,

because in the end,
they're free to choose their own path.

Dr. Woods, my name is Femi Dodd.

I chair a number of programs
for Mr. Yasumoto.

What is the protocol
in the event your experiment fails?

Do you have an emergency plan
for their shutdown?

To preserve their power? Absolutely.
It's called Interlude Mode. Do you mind?

Excuse me, Dr. Woods.
I didn't mean for the resting mode.

I meant for their termination.

To kill them?

That wording is a bit inelegant, but yes.

Do you have a child?

I have a daughter.

Do you have a plan to kill her?

- My daughter's a human being.
- I don't understand the difference.

Well, for starters, she has a soul.

With all due respect, Ms. Dodd,
there is no such thing as a soul.

What you call a soul,

I call a cumulative effect
of a lifetime of experience.

Simple information traveling the neural
pathways in your daughter's brain.

Believe it or not, Dr. Woods,
there are people in this world

who still believe that there is more to us
than can be explained by science.

Well, those people are idiots.

SEGERS: Dr. Woods.
FEMI: I am one of those idiots.

JOHN: I'm sorry.
- I accept your apology.

I mean, I'm sorry
you're one of those idiots.

- That's enough.
- How dare you?

How dare you ask me do I have
a contingency plan to murder my son?

And you're asking us for funding
that can unleash thousands,

maybe millions of these Humanichs
on the world.

It's a perfectly valid question.

What sort of controls and restrictions
would you put in place

to ensure they behave properly?

And I gave you my answer, Mr. Segers.
Absolutely none.

The security and life support systems
were back online almost immediately,

but the communication system
stayed down for approximately 13 hours.

As it says in my log book there,
I spent most of that time

trying to get the system up
and running again,

but, unfortunately, I was unsuccessful.

I then went to sleep for three hours,

and when I woke up,
everything seemed back to normal.

It took you all that time to reboot Ben?

Have you tried to work on that thing?

- Heh, heh. No.
- Heh, heh.

During that 13 hours,
did anything else happen?

- Anything anomalous?
- Uh...

Related to the solar flare?

- Everything is right there in the log.
- There's one thing I'd like to clear up.

The security system records
each quadrant of the Seraphim

with banks of surveillance cameras.

Presumably, they were up and running

as soon as that emergency power
kicked back on,

but that footage was deleted
from the system's memory.

There had been several instances
of interference in the months prior,

but none quite to this level.

In the past, what I had done is
make a copy of the footage, just in case.

I went to do the same thing this time,

but instead of copying the footage,
I accidentally deleted it.

The only record of that time
is what I manually entered into my log.

I take complete responsibility
for that error, sir.

Well, sounds like we didn't miss much.

Just me swearing
at a bunch of inanimate objects.

[ALL LAUGH]

I'm still waiting
for your medical examinations,

but as soon as I've had a chance
to review them,

and you complete a series
of psychiatric evaluations,

we'll put this one in the books.

Psychiatric evaluations?

Just a few meetings in addition to your
post-morts, to help with your re-entry.

It's a change in agency policy
after what happened with Harmon Kryger.

I probably should have warned you
before I brought you over.

There's just as much bureaucracy
now that we're in the private sector.

Sir, if you wanna make it,
you'd better leave now.

Oh. Off-campus meeting.

It's a pleasure to have you back, Molly.
You were missed.

Thank you, sir.

SPARKS:
How's he doing?

He's ready.

[BEEPING]

SPARKS:
Welcome back, Mr. Yasumoto.

We found something of an anomaly
on the Seraphim.

An anomaly?

Another solar flare
knocked out the communications system.

- Like Kryger.
- Yes.

But, unlike Kryger,

we're missing the security-camera footage
for the 13 hours that followed.

That seems like an unlikely coincidence.

Even more so
if you know the astronaut involved.

Molly Woods.

She claims she accidentally deleted it.

You don't believe her?

No.

Why not?

Because she doesn't make
those kinds of mistakes.

This could be everything.

Stay close.

About that...

Her husband, John,
gave a presentation to your board today,

but was denied funding.

I can only do so much from the ISEA.

A gesture from you
could put us closer to the family.

Might make it easier
to keep an eye on her.

This is the last one.

[BEEPING]

[JOHN CHUCKLES]

[BEEPING]

COMPUTER: John, you have
an incoming call from Yasumoto Corp.

Dr. Woods.

Hideki Yasumoto. Thanks for coming.

Oh, please. It's an honor.

The honor is all mine.

I have a very important mission today,
and I think you're just the guy to help me.

What kind of mission?

Um...

It's a search.

A search for what?

I realized that
in order to further the goal of Humanichs,

to give him a true human experience,
he needed to be part of a family unit,

to be raised in a home.

So I brought him into ours.

Heh. My wife and I struggled for years
with infertility,

and, eventually, we were told
we would never be able to have a child.

That can have a profound effect
on a marriage.

As happy as we were,
there was something missing.

And that was Ethan.

So you see Humanichs
as a cure for childless couples.

Adoption, surrogacy,
those are all viable options.

Thank you.

But not everyone is a viable candidate.

There will always be people with a need
for companionship and connection.

If your board had let me finish,
I would have told them that

filling that void is way more important than
building a more empathetic service bar.

I'm sure you understand

that the future you're proposing
raises great moral questions.

- Yes, but it also raises great possibilities.
- I agree.

Unfortunately,

the long-term prospects are too murky

for Yasumoto Corporation to invest in
at this time.

The board's decision will have to stand.

We have responsibilities
to our shareholders.

Of course.

I fully understand.
I really just appreciate your time.

However, as a private citizen,

I would not be bound
by those same responsibilities.

How is it?

- Good. Do you wanna try?
- Okay.

That is good.

- Wanna try mine?
- Sure.

I like yours better.

Wanna switch?

Okay.

MAN:
Excuse me, ma'am.

- Here you go.
- No, thanks.

This one is for you. It's already paid for.

- By whom?
MAN: Uh...

He's gone. Sorry.

Come on, let's go.

Mom!

You made me drop my ice cream.

Okay. Look, have this one.

I don't want that one.
I want another one, like this.

Okay, this is the one you chose.

I don't want it anymore.

Let's go.

- I want another ice cream.
- Ethan! We have to go right now.

- No!
- Ethan!

Ethan!

Ethan!

Ethan!

Ethan!

Ethan.

It was like this when I found it.

Your hair looks really pretty.

I don't know what's going on with him,
but he is not the same as when I left here.

No, he's not.

He's a year older.

That is not what I'm talking about.

- He's changed.
- And so have you. That's called life.

That's the consequence
of our family being apart for so long.

It takes time to reconnect.

And I'm trying.

- Are you?
- Yes.

Because it feels like
you're pulling away from us.

I don't know what's happened,
but I've felt it.

And he's felt it too,
ever since you got back.

Well, it wasn't that
easy before I left here.

Not easy like it was for you.

We've always seen him differently.

- I see him as our son.
- And so do I.

But the way he looked at me today,
you should have seen it.

It was almost as if he hated me.

He doesn't hate you, Molly. He loves you.

He doesn't love me.

He executes a series of commands
that you've programmed into him.

He approximates a behavior
that resembles love.

But that's not love.

I don't know what's going on with you,
but you have to figure it out,

because that kid is the closest
we're ever gonna get to being parents.

I got the funding from Yasumoto.

We start immediately.

[GASPING]

COMPUTER:
Camera recording.

Marcus?

Hello?

Hello.

You need help?

Help.

What can I do?

Do.

It's okay.

It's...

okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

JOHN:
Molly?

I'm sorry about yesterday.

[SIGHS]

Well, you didn't say anything
that wasn't true.

This opportunity with Yasumoto,

it may not be the ideal time, but...

Molly, if we can make it work...

We'll make it work.

Have I said congratulations?

No.

Congratulations.

[MOLLY LAUGHING]

LAURIE: Re-entry can be a challenge
after this kind of extended mission,

especially if there are spouses
and children involved.

So the agency would like us to meet
for a few sessions.

I want this office to
be a sanctuary for you.

A place where you can talk
about anything and everything.

[OVER SPEAKERS]
We didn't have this resource in place

for your colleague, Dr. Kryger.
We should have.

The agency believes
a lack of attention to his mental state

was a factor in his suicide.

I agree.

Why don't we begin
with your own assessment

about where you are in your transition?

How are you feeling?

MOLLY:
Physically?

LAURIE:
Whatever you'd like to share.

Physically.

Emotionally, mentally.

[COMPUTER BEEPING]

Okay.

COMPUTER:
Beginning playback.

[TABLET BEEPING]

[TABLET BEEPS]

[TABLET BEEPING]

Come on. Come on.

[TABLET BEEPING]

[TABLET BEEPING]

[TABLET BEEPING]

[BLEEPING]

[BEEPING]

[PANTING]

[CHIMES RINGING]

Harmon?

It's me.

I'm real.

It's not like on the Seraphim.

You're not hallucinating.

Everybody thinks you're dead.

I shouldn't have come here.

Harmon. Talk to me.

- What happened?
JOHN: Molly?

- Dinner's ready.
- I'll find you.

Until then, be careful.

- Don't trust them.
- Who?

HARMON:
Anybody.

Anybody.