1
- If we are
attacked by nuclear weapons,
here is a reminder of what
the air attack warning
sounds like.
When you hear the attack warning,
you and your family
must take cover at once.
You can protect yourself and your family.
We will show you what steps to take.
- You okay?
Truth?
- Just...
- Do clicks.
Do clicks, okay?
Are you dizzy?
Are you gonna be sick?
Good.
Are you seeing the things?
Lights?
Do your breathing.
I'm here, okay?
I pushed the game too far.
Thank you.
- You used to beat me
all the time, you know.
- I used to beat you?
- Racing.
Running.
You don't anymore.
- How are you now?
Not seeing anything you shouldn't?
- It's hard to tell.
All that stuff looks real to me.
- What about the lights, are they gone?
- No, no lights.
- Good.
Maggie, I heard you talking as we ran.
Are you hearing things?
The things the doctor spoke to us about?
You know you can tell me, I know already.
- If you know already,
why do I have to tell you?
- I know that it'll be happening,
I just don't know when.
Or if they already have.
Like just now?
- Everything is happening pretty much now.
Not this second exactly,
but these days in general.
Okay?
- Okay.
Just want to help.
What does that mean?
- It means I know you do.
And you are, helping me, you are.
- Good.
Stay in English, okay?
You know I never caught
on with your language.
Maggie.
- Please don't say it.
- I'm really sorry about your mother.
- You don't have to say it anymore.
- But I'm really really sorry about you.
- You really don't have to say it anymore.
- Never let me say it to you once, though.
Not properly, and I want to.
- While there is still time?
- Come on, it's not like that.
- It's not not like that though, is it?
Does she know?
- Who?
- Avery's friend.
Does she know about me?
- I suppose so.
I'm sure Avery would've told her.
And she's your friend too, you know,
she wouldn't be here otherwise.
- We don't know each other.
- You can get to.
- Do I have time for that?
- I'm not being rude, I'm just asking.
- She cares too.
We all do.
- You do.
- And Avery does.
Avery does.
- I know.
- You could let her know, you know.
- Now?
- Yeah, I see no reason why not.
- I will when they get here.
- Okay.
- Are we coming to you?
Is she okay?
Are you okay?
She doesn't look so bad.
She wanted the tent, she's got it.
She's fine.
- It's not always a good sign.
Doesn't always last.
- Look, let's list the
things that we know.
We know it will be
terrible when it happens.
We know that you'll be sad.
And you know that we know
that I'm gonna be looking after you.
We do know that, don't we?
Now, let's list the
things that we don't know.
Is Maggie going in the
right direction of our tent?
You know?
The one thing that's gonna
keep us warm tonight?
The tent?
- That's why I should go after her.
- Yeah.
See you in a bit then?
I don't know how Peggy's gonna
handle it when it happens.
She adores her, and she
has to watch her die.
Same disease as her
mother, exactly the same.
I mean, what are the chances of that?
- I just, I don't know.
- Maggie's mum
disintegrated, seeing things
and hearing voices and
talking to black spaces
in the corner of the room,
like there were people there.
Fights and whispers.
Not that Maggie was around
when it was at its worst.
- Maggie told you about this?
- No, Peggy did.
She has no one else to tell.
I'm sure she wouldn't have otherwise.
Funny, isn't it?
Look at Maggie.
She's walking and looking,
but things just aren't connecting.
Like something tiny
grows in the wrong place
on the side of your brain.
She just stops, just stops being.
I don't know.
But thank you for coming, for me I mean.
- You're welcome, for you, I mean.
Anyway, it's good to get away
from all the things they're talking about
on the television, isn't it?
- I don't now how I'm gonna help Peggy
the way Peggy helped her.
I don't really want to,
I suppose I have to.
- Well, you need to.
- Something like that.
- How long is it now?
- Any day now.
I think she's already on borrowed time.
- No, I meant how long until we get there?
- Oh.
Things we don't know, part three.
- Get the tent.
Set it up over there.
I know it hurts, but it's okay.
Just gonna get the tent set up.
Gonna get it set up nice and quick,
and then we'll be inside and we'll be warm
and we'll be okay.
Just think into the future.
Just think into the future.
It's okay.
It's okay, breathe in
and breathe out, okay?
I know it hurts, but it's gonna be okay.
We're gonna get the tent set
up, we're gonna be inside,
and we're gonna be resting.
Just think into the future
Maggie, how nice it will be,
and how the fire we'll build will smell,
how warm the air will be.
Head into the future Maggie, just think.
Just think of the sound of
the rain against the tent.
How nice that sound will be.
Good girl.
Keep breathing.
That's it.
That's it, you're catching
up to the future now.
You're almost there,
come on, keep breathing.
That's it.
You've caught up to the future.
It's okay, you've caught up.
That didn't take very long, did it?
- It didn't take long.
It didn't take long.
- Okay.
I'll come right back.
- The rain, Peg, it's coming.
I need some help with this tent.
- Do you know how hard
this must be for her?
- Well what does that
have to do with the rain?
- Do you, Avery?
- Of course.
Of course I do.
It's hard for us all.
- It's hardest for her.
- Yeah.
And it's still hard for us all.
- Could you just help me a little bit?
- What do you think I'm doing?
I am helping you.
And more than a little bit.
I'm helping you by coming out
on this strange pilgrimage.
You know Cat said it was
strange, and she's right,
it is strange.
We should've canceled the whole thing
when we got the terminal
whatever it is back.
- Diagnosis.
- Whatever it is.
- The word is diagnosis.
- It's not the point, Peg.
- Yeah, it's a point.
- What's the point?
- I don't know, you tell me?
- Maybe she shouldn't be out here.
Maybe she shouldn't be
going on this memory trail,
or whatever it is.
Maybe you shouldn't be encouraging her.
And whatever needs to be done at the house
should be done by someone
else, another time,
because Peg, this can't work now.
Like there's no future, Peg.
She should be at home.
- She wanted us to come.
- She's not behaving like it, is she?
- Well it's not her priority
to make us feel welcome.
- I'm not asking her to.
- What are you asking her?
- I don't know.
I don't know what you're
supposed to ask for.
I don't know what you're supposed to do.
What you're supposed to
offer, this close to the end.
- I think this is what
you're supposed to do.
Help them tidy the
things they want tidied,
take them to places they want to go,
make them the things they want to eat.
I think this is what you do.
Look, she wanted to come
out here before she...
She wanted to come out here, it helps her.
- She needs someone to look after her.
Not indulge her.
Not all the time.
- Yeah, well, all the time
is not very much, is it?
- No.
No, it's not.
Look, do you know what?
In the time that you've been arguing,
she's been over there being sick
and I've been here trying
to do the tent, Peggy.
So help her or help me.
Now, Peg.
- The tent won't take long.
That's it.
You're okay.
- I once heard that there is at least
two nuclear bombs for
every person on Earth.
Do you think that's true?
- I don't know.
- Sounds like something
that could be true.
Doesn't it?
- I suppose so.
- Silly, just one would
be enough to do the job.
- The last thing you need to worry about
is what's on the news.
- Do I have other things to worry about?
- I didn't mean it like
that, you know I didn't.
- I know you didn't.
But is this the best way
to spend the time left?
What are we supposed to do
with it when it's stopping?
Although I guess it is always numbered,
we mostly just don't
know what the number is.
- It'll be okay tomorrow, won't it?
- What do you mean?
- It's an old hospital
we're going through, isn't it?
- There are no
diseases left there.
It was a place for the head.
- So?
She lived there?
- She did.
With her mum.
- She was a little
girl, and she lived there?
- Peggy's told me
things, but far from everything.
They met in a drama school,
and became friends really fast.
Peggy taught her how to speak English.
She taught her that, can you imagine?
I mean, she is English, but--
- She didn't already speak English?
- No.
I mean, a bit here and
there from the radio,
enough to get a ticket, catch a train,
but I mean can you imagine?
- No.
No, I can't.
- Maggie's mom didn't
want Maggie understanding
the patients or being
spoken to by the staff.
So she just chose another language.
Just chose another tongue.
Just for the two of them.
Do you want?
Peggy?
- You can ask me.
- Was her mother English?
- The language wasn't
about country, I guess.
It was about secrets.
Sometimes I think it's
just the staff, the nurse.
- I really want to know.
We're all here in the dark.
I want to know.
Here in the dark.
- Well, that's all from me.
Good night everybody.
Maggie's mom was a nurse at this place.
Head nurse.
Nurse in charge, whatever you call it.
- Good night Maggie.
- For you.
For luck.
- So Maggie's mom and
Maggie herself, little Maggie,
lived there.
No one else in the staff lived there.
Maggie's mother insisted on that,
and no one seemed inclined to argue.
It was just Maggie, her
mother, and the patients,
until Maggie just left.
The hospital closed not too long after,
and even after it did,
Maggie's mother, all alone,
stayed up there, living
up there, until she died.
There wasn't a dad in the picture,
there wasn't any man ever.
- Could she...
Does she know you know?
- We've never talked about it,
but there's nothing about
her that Peggy doesn't know.
So she must know that I know.
- And I guess now that I know.
- I guess.
It's not even the half of it.
- I feel bad.
- I don't think she minds you knowing.
- No, I mean, I feel bad, I mean...
I feel sick.
- Oh, I'm sorry.
- It's okay, it's just a
long day and the drink.
- She used to look
outside her bedroom window
and see all of them, all the mad people
staring at their windows, looking at her,
all through the night.
- Oh god.
- I'll stop.
- Please.
- Okay.
We've stopped laughing, haven't we?
- Yes.
Yes, it seems we have.
- This whole life is just a joke
setting us up for this horrible punchline.
I want to feel something other than that.
- Oh Maggie.
- What, ridiculous observation?
- No.
- Pointless then?
- Maybe.
- What isn't?
- This.
Us.
I hope.
- Peggy, I can't do this.
I can't.
I can't.
I can't do tonight, or tomorrow,
I don't want to do what I have to do.
Or the tomorrow after that or after that.
- Maggie, Maggie.
- No.
Can't you see, Peggy?
I'm not able.
Why doesn't it stop when I say no?
You're supposed to be ready for this.
I'm not.
I never ever have been.
- Listen, you can't be
making yourself sick tonight,
you know you can't.
- Maybe mourning isn't
such a good idea, yeah?
Maybe there isn't anything
to mourn the loss of.
I don't know if there is anything here.
Anything inside me.
I have thoughts, but I don't
know where I am among them.
Or if I'm there at all.
Maybe there won't be anything to miss.
Or mourned.
There'll be an empty space,
ready to be occupied by something better.
Empty spaces aren't so bad, are they?
When I saw the doctor,
and he told me just how
little time I had left,
he looked for my mother's file
to compare to mine, and it wasn't there.
It was an empty space.
I'm giving way to an empty space.
And empty spaces, what
do you fill them with?
- Maggie.
The rain has stopped.
- The rain has stopped.
The rain has stopped.
A nightingale,
and a robin.
- Is it?
- It is.
- Do you like the sound?
- I do.
You too?
- Me too.
What's that one?
- It shouldn't be here.
It shouldn't be here, a vagrant,
changing up the scene, it
shouldn't be here Peggy.
It shouldn't.
- It's okay.
It's okay.
Just think, remember when
we were paired up in class
and we found out we had the same name
and we decided to swap what
everyone had been calling us
our whole lives.
- I remember that.
- Yeah.
So that's not lost, that's not gone.
- But if you tell that
story again after...
Afterwards, it won't
matter a thing, will it?
- Here, Maggie.
Let me think.
What was the first play that we were in?
- I don't know.
- Think.
- I don't know, tell me.
- Just focus, you'll remember.
- Just tell me.
- It's okay.
You'll remember.
I think we should go to sleep now.
What do you think, Maggie?
Should we go to sleep?
I left the radio on for company.
Good night Maggie.
Good night Maggie.
- I had a dream.
What's happened?
What's happened?
- It has.
It is.
Come on!
- This may have happened before.
If it has happened...
You can't leave us, we're
here because of you.
- We're here because of her.
- My dear.
I remember now.
Of all the creatures
that can feel and think,
we women are the worst
treated creatures alive.
- Hi.
- Hi.
- Aren't you cold like that, Maggie?
Like some of these?
I picked them over there.
We've got some coffee.
Come.
- No one got much sleep
last night, Maggie.
What about you?
Did you?
- Not really.
- Strange night.
Come on.
- Maggie, we're gonna make it there today,
maybe early perhaps,
and tell me what you think.
We can get everything done
there quite quickly and...
Don't get upset about
this, maybe we can leave,
and sort of start heading back today.
Is that all right?
Will you think about it?
- No.
- We'll leave in just a minute, okay?
Your clothes are just over there.
I do what I want.
Yes I do.
I'm walking home.
I'm welcome.
But I'm not known.
I know its walls and
its rooms and its heart,
but it does not know mine.
Not now, not anymore.
There is nobody there.
No.
No.
If there was, would I have created you?
Would I be talking to you?
You are.
And when I'm gone and
forgotten, you shall be too.
Like everything else I
see and think and know.
Nobody can see or think
or know them as I do.
Yes, because I'm dying too.
The moment is passing.
The moment is thorough, and
then present, and then past.
One day, where we stand now
will be just another point
in the middle of nothingness.
Stretching on and on without end.
Lying in the middle of the road.
I am scared.
What would I tell you?
What would be your bedtime story?
The story you want to hear
just before you go to sleep?
What would it be?
How would it end?
- It's here.
- How would it end?
- It's here.
It's here.
- We'll go around the side to the front.
You slept there, I slept
there, and they slept there.
You gazed at this, and you saw yourself,
you dressed there, you touched that handle
when you wanted to move through that door,
and you breathed on that
window on a cold day.
You squinted at the light
that hangs up there.
- Oh my god.
- What is this place?
- I have to follow her.
- What are we doing here?
- I have to follow her.
- Tell me.
Do you know?
You don't know, do you?
You don't know her.
What do you think?
- I kind of don't want to.
- Stimulants, relaxants,
sleep pills, focusers.
This stuff.
Why would you keep them
out here like this?
- I think these are diaries.
Or notebooks.
There are photographs.
- Maybe we shouldn't look at those.
Jesus.
- What is...
Is that...
- I know you.
I remember you.
- No, I don't think so.
- You look just like her.
You look just like your mother.
- Nobody's said that in years.
- But you do.
- I do.
Do you really remember me?
- Do you really not remember me?
I worked with your
mother, for your mother.
I was the orderly.
I cleaned up.
Helped the men keep walking, keep clean.
I fixed things.
- I don't remember a man on the staff.
- Jesus Christ.
No way, you should put them away.
- Look at this.
Avery.
- Who made these?
- Close the drawer.
- Her mother?
- Close it, shut it.
Jesus.
- They were the patients.
They were the patients.
This is not a good place.
Let's look around.
- I didn't live there
like your mother, like you.
I was just there some of the time.
- And you're here now because?
- I stay here sometimes.
Often.
Always.
I live here.
I live out here.
- And you don't go in the house?
- I know nobody lives there,
but that doesn't mean
I'm free to just enter.
- Were you ever curious?
- Eager, felt like home.
- Did my mother know you were out here?
- No, never.
- And you didn't go in after?
Why?
- It's not my home.
I could be a guest, an invited guest,
but I can't just decide that it's mine.
It's not.
It wasn't before, it isn't now.
- Come and help me open this?
- So what would you say if I invited you
to come inside with me?
- I would say yes.
I would ask if you would
always let a stranger do that.
- I would say that according
to you, you aren't a stranger.
- I would say that according to you, I am.
- Then I would reply that just
because I don't remember you
doesn't mean you don't exit.
Give me something, you know?
Proof.
- With their bones picked clean
and their clean bones gone,
they shall have stars at elbow and foot.
- I remember that sign.
I was barely tall enough to read it.
Just tall enough to look up at that model.
It towered above me forever and ever.
I couldn't see the
beginning or the end of it.
- You remember the model?
- I remember all the models.
I would stare at them beneath the window,
and in the moonlight.
They looked best in the blue moonlight.
The universe is the color blue.
- And blue is the color of the
clear sky and the deep sea.
- Blue is.
- Do remember
the dog from the gardens?
He walked into the house every night,
without prompting, without invitation,
and lay halfway up the
stairs, in the first landing,
a few steps from the door of your room?
He'd stay awake while you slept,
and Maggie when morning
came, he would leave
and wait just at the edge of the woodland,
never going far, until it
was time to come in again,
to watch over you, it seemed.
Do you remember?
- Yes.
He growled while I was young.
I didn't remember before, but now I do.
He stopped coming, you see,
and I didn't know if I had dreamed him.
When I didn't see him, I
didn't know if I had woken
from just a dream of him.
But you remember him too,
and a dream can't be shared,
can it?
My mother said the men loved the models.
They stared at them for hours and hours.
And when they turned away,
they whispered of adventures,
grand and great, unimaginable adventures.
You made that model of
the wide and open field
with five giant stone
fingers breaking the surface,
reaching up for space.
Just tips of statues,
these fingers became arms
became shoulders became backs became legs
that went down and down under the ground.
Stone giants pulling themselves
up towards the surface,
to the cosmos.
- The cosmos?
- All in a new order.
- Not a new one, just one--
- Just one with...
With which we might not be familiar.
- Time and space coexisting,
a big canvas that's just most
often viewed in this way.
In this order.
I see you as I did before
and as you are now,
and there's no distance between the two.
There's just you.
You in perfect continuity.
I'm sorry that you don't feel some of that
when you look at me.
- I don't.
- I know.
- Eternity.
We don't all get that.
Not out here in reality.
- That's not where you are anymore.
I'm sorry about your mother.
- She died.
She's dead.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- That's a shame, Maggie.
- It is.
You know my name?
- I remember it, yes Maggie.
Am I familiar?
Am I becoming familiar?
- The color of the clear sky.
The color of the deep sea.
The color of sadness.
The color of berries.
The Ulysses butterfly, the Maltese tiger,
the whale, the macaw, the
dragonfly, the seastar,
the color of sapphire, amethyst, azurite,
aquamarine and celestine.
The color of benitoite, the old guitarist,
the three musicians, the
girl with the mirror,
the dream, their sleep,
the boy with a pipe,
the death of the toreador,
the thing line, the wind yonder,
the moon and my heaven,
velvet suede shoes, Monday,
Christmas, Hawaii, and angel.
Bells, geraniums,
hyacinths, forget-me-nots.
Being with out being.
My mother's eyes.
The color of boys.
I'm going to offer you
to come inside with me.
What are you going to say?
- I'm going to say that I
would like that very much.
- Come inside with me.
- I would like that very much.
- She's coming back.
With someone.
- Who?
- He used to work here.
- How's he know her?
- I don't know.
- Look.
- Should we be scared?
We don't even know who he is.
- We have no idea who he is.
- He mentioned things
he couldn't have known.
He remembered the models here.
- Yeah, I remember you
telling me about them
the same way you'd tell
someone about a dream.
- Is that important?
He's sitting in there, he could be anyone.
- He has to stay.
- Just tell us.
- He has to.
- Tell them, Maggie.
- Okay.
These models the patients made,
they were these recreations,
these fabulizations
of antique or imaginary
notions of how the universe
was considered hundreds of years ago.
How it might have been considered before,
and how it could be considered
a long long time from now,
when the ways we think of and see things
are different again.
Ancient and fabulous star
maps, charts of the seas,
projections and ideas
of oceans and countries
and creatures within them.
All these ideas the current
understanding of everything
will be known one day as naive
and quaint and fictional,
like those dinosaurs at
Crystal Palace look to us now.
Didn't mean that those
notions weren't beautiful,
or that one day our
understanding of things
won't have us revert back to these ideas.
Literal sea monsters and all.
- Maggie--
- Peggy, I was just a
child looking at these.
Just a child at the foot of these things.
And the man I spoke to by the
stream, I don't remember him.
But he remembers the models too.
That's enough for him to stay.
Silly, I don't care.
- I'm glad you told me.
- What do you think about what I told you?
- I'm glad you did, I said.
- But the things I said.
- Maggie.
Maggie.
- Is that too difficult?
- You're turning something that was nice
into something that isn't anymore.
- I'm not concerned with nice now.
- Why not?
Why wouldn't you be?
That's all I'd be concerned about.
- That is already all
you are concerned about.
- And that's bad?
- No.
Maybe pointless.
I don't want nice.
I want answers.
- Just because you--
- I need answers.
- Just because you want answers fast
doesn't mean you're going to get them.
It means the opposite, Maggie.
Sorry.
- Don't be.
- Don't you want to
say you're sorry to me?
- Say something you think
about what I told you,
then I'll say sorry.
- You're serious?
- I'm serious.
- Really?
- Really.
- Okay.
I think that man is just some dull guy
strumming his cheap guitar at a dull party
waiting for all the
girls to come and listen.
And you can't blame him,
because it never fails.
- What does that even mean?
- It means building little paper trinkets
doesn't answer anything, Maggie.
It doesn't even ask questions.
Love answers questions.
- Really?
That's what you mean?
- That's what I mean.
I love you, don't I?
- And that's an answer to something?
- It's an answer to why
you have people next to you
as you walk along here.
It's an answer to why you
won't be alone tonight,
or tomorrow night, or the night after.
- It's also an answer
to why some other people
will be alone, isn't it?
- Oh.
Oh Maggie.
Maggie, you hurt me with
what you said before,
you know, you really did.
- I didn't mean to.
- You still did.
Fine.
He can stay.
And you can cry or do whatever it is
that you want to do while you're here.
And I will hold you, Maggie.
- He's looking around.
- He's looking around.
- We all decide.
So?
- Okay.
- Yes.
Okay.
- There is so much you're going to do.
- There's so much I wish I never did.
- It's raining.
- It is.
- It's cold.
- Look, you don't have to
appeal to us in that way.
Maggie wishes for you to
stay, and therefore you can.
- Thank you.
- Thank her.
I see you've made yourself at home.
- I'm sorry.
- Don't be.
I suppose apart from Maggie,
this is as close to being
your home as it is for anyone.
- It's fine.
I heard this the last night I was here.
That's fine, right?
- So, how do you remember Maggie?
- Did my mother give you this?
- No.
I gave her that.
- What is your name?
- My name is Walker.
- Hello Walker.
- Talk to us too
Maggie, not just him.
Us too.
- Don't play with her like that.
What are you doing?
- I lived here.
With my mother.
In my room with my mother.
I never saw much of the other staff,
just them going in and coming out of work.
They would wave at me,
like they would wave
at any little girl looking at them.
I stayed in my room a lot.
I didn't go out unless I was with her.
I know that she looked after people there.
I know that she cared for men.
And I do know, though they
cried and I heard them cry,
it was because of what
happened to them at war,
and not for any other reason.
This was an asylum.
You know what that word means?
That's what this place was.
My mother made it so.
It was my home, not a
hospital where I lived,
but my home where there was a hospital.
And it was her home too.
And just for a little
while longer, it still is.
Age cannot wither her,
nor custom stale her infinite variety.
- The last one.
That'll be best for you.
- How did you know that
those things were there?
- I knew from when I worked here.
She kept them there.
- You look too young to have worked here.
- Thank you.
I'm not.
My first job.
She gave it to me, Maggie's mother.
I was young.
- How did you know her?
- I used to bring supplies
up to the hospital.
- But you said it was your first job.
- First proper job.
- And the supplies one?
- Just a helper.
A helper boy.
- What was she like when she spoke to you?
- She was very good to me.
She was kind when she spoke to me.
- And here, what was it like here?
- Those are nice clothes.
I could guess which item
of clothing would be chosen
by each one of you.
- What does that mean?
- Do you bet me I can't?
Somebody bet me I can't.
- I bet you.
- Where are the other nurses?
Where has everybody gone?
There's nobody around anymore
to tell the truth, I mean.
Or to separate the truth
from all that is whispered.
What does it really matter
what truth is, right?
It only matters what's believed.
You tell me that the dress I
guess for you isn't for you.
What if it really is or isn't?
Not important.
The only thing that matters
is I believe you in telling me it isn't.
The bet's won that way,
and what it really was
is of no importance or
consequence or record
or remembrance at all, right?
Now the talk I heard said this
place began in the late '50s,
a social psychology research
facility, they called it.
Facility.
One of those words that
either doesn't mean very much
or means just about
anything you might want it.
I want to say this one, but I'm not sure.
The color's too strong, you
don't need it so strong.
It was the current thinking.
They had people back
from war who hadn't found
anywhere to go after they've returned.
This one.
The same scientists who learned
how to put fire in a bomb
so big it could level cities
decided that maybe the way forward
wasn't just to deconstruct
buildings and spaces,
but people.
The chemicals are made and put in tablets,
and all they needed
were the people in which
to put these pills.
And they were enough.
So even if they were no
use on a battlefield,
they were still useful
vessels for experimentation.
Didn't take that much work either.
Didn't take an awful lot
of effort to change them,
there's not that much inside to change.
They're just human.
And if one line of thinking
goes wrong, it doesn't matter.
Try another.
No doubt, this one Avery.
And there's always a war.
So there's always lots of
other people to try it on,
and there's lots of other things
to change these people into.
You two don't look so,
but I bet you are.
And that's the same all over the world,
free or not, no such thing.
Milgram, Skinner, Stanford,
Jesus, MK Ultra mind control,
and imagine if a place like this
could get hold of a kid.
A blank slate.
See how much could really be constructed,
manipulated, formed.
No social influence.
Just the subject, the
instruments, and time.
Lots of time.
Lifetimes of time.
- That's not what happened here.
There were no children here.
- You seem kind to your friend.
This is a kind color, this blue.
It looks nice on you.
You calm it, and it calms you.
Blue used to be the
girl's color, you know.
And boys' was the pink.
The '60s, just one theory after another,
all given reign.
You don't have to worry
about the consequences,
just try it, it has to be
better than before, right?
That failed, and that collapsed.
Things would just land on
top of it to build on it.
And now the bomb is in the hands
of anyone with a desire to have it,
and an idea that god exists.
But you're asking
questions about this place?
Don't you remember enough
to tell them, Maggie?
- I don't think so.
I want you to stay and help me remember.
This is the one I'm going to wear.
- I remember mirrors.
Knowing about them somehow.
Not seeing them, but just knowing.
Forced perspectives, projected film loops.
Tight notes that said chandelier,
grandfather clock, vase,
the perception of the thing being--
- I don't--
- As real as the thing.
- I don't get why.
- It means you don't need a
knife in order to threaten.
All you need to do is introduce to people
the idea of the potential
presence of knives.
That's enough to frighten.
So they keep control and do it
to a minimum of expenditure.
Tell them things to reassure them, too.
This is delicious food.
These are wonderful clothes.
This is a lovely house.
This is what love feels like.
What I'm doing to you now is loving you.
Bury things inside these
people that tell them that.
Keep that constant, and
it's anything you want.
Is that right, Maggie?
Tell them this place
was one big experiment.
That each room had a different theme
to test a different social theory.
A different social...
What'd they say?
Phenomenon.
A paranoia room, a sexual revulsion room.
A phobia room, what else?
A rape room, a group violence room.
Lone violence.
Alcohol, drugs, pornography.
Do you remember, Maggie?
- I think this place was
meant to induce feelings
of otherworldly things.
I don't know, I shouldn't
have brought you here.
- This wasn't science raising Satan.
This was experimenting with fear.
This was people reaching
into other people.
You can do anything
with a person that way.
- Maggie, what does that mean?
- Anything to them.
- It means--
- Anything with them.
- We shouldn't have come here.
You look beautiful, Peggy.
- Maggie.
Maggie--
- You are beautiful.
You look beautiful.
- Maggie, listen to me.
I think he should leave.
- I'm sorry if I said anything wrong.
- I think you should leave.
- I think you should stay.
- I'm sorry.
- No, you said a lot of shit.
- You didn't say anything wrong.
- Tell everyone here that
you said a lot of shit.
- I did.
I said a lot of shit.
But I thought we were doing ghost stories.
I thought, you know,
out here in the woods,
in the middle of nowhere,
and I thought we were
telling ghosts stories.
- You don't have to say that.
- He does if he means it.
- What, you think I'm serious?
- You mean it, don't you?
She's not well, you know.
She's not well.
- I'm sorry.
I didn't know you were feeling bad.
- Just stay.
I want him to stay.
I want him to tell me about my mother.
- She was very protective of you.
Like you were made of glass.
No, that's not right, it's too easy.
She was more like you were absolutely
the only one of your kind.
That you were absolutely
singular in your composition
and your temper.
She treated you the way
you would treat the last
or first of a species.
Not because it's fragile, no.
But because it's unique.
She was that way with you.
- Does anybody have a cigarette?
- Am I leaving?
The nighttime swallows
people up around here.
- What is that?
You keep saying things like that,
then you don't mean it,
then you say it again.
I mean, what?
What does that mean?
- If he's being put outside,
I'm being put outside too.
That's it.
That's all.
You're staying.
- Jesus.
- Thank you.
- Does anybody have a cigarette?
- Was any of that true?
What you said earlier.
- No.
Just ghost stories.
Were the first time I heard them,
were still tonight when I told them.
- I think that's enough now.
- What's enough?
What's enough?
- I'm leaving in the morning.
Cat's leaving in the morning too.
And even if I have to
pull her away by the hair,
Peggy's going.
Maggie, please come with us.
- You want to leave me?
- No.
- You hate me.
- I want you to come with me.
I want you to come with
me, and be with us.
- I have to--
- No, no you don't.
You really don't.
This is not good for you.
- And out there is?
The way I am.
It's not good for you the
way you are, or for anyone.
It's shitty and horrible
and mean and nasty.
And people are dumb and
ugly and empty and dull.
And here are trees and birds
and flowers and my mother.
- And him?
- Look at what is out there?
People.
They talk too much and hog too much space,
and they push and they
kick and they scratch,
and that just at people they love.
They destroy me.
- You're getting delirious, Maggie.
- And what about what
happened to you, Avery?
- Don't.
- Why not?
Don't you think about it?
- Don't say it.
Don't tell it.
- Why not?
What kind of world is it
that something like this should happen?
- Maggie.
- Don't do it.
It doesn't back up anything you're saying.
It would've happened here.
Anywhere.
There's no sanctuary.
Here won't protect us.
And it really isn't gonna protect you.
He isn't gonna protect you.
Come home with us.
We'll sit with you there, and even though
it won't all be okay, we can
be together, at least together.
Do you want to be alone with him?
Do you?
- I'm going to take him into another room.
I'm going to take you to
another room and lock you in.
That's the only way
we're letting you stay.
Maggie, which doors have locks on them?
Which doors, Maggie?
- Downstairs.
The basement.
- Right.
That's where you're sleeping tonight.
Okay?
Say okay.
- Okay.
- Right.
Maggie, where are the keys?
They were in your rucksack.
- They're in yours, you
opened the door, remember?
- Come on.
- Thank you.
- Right, come on.
Maggie can't be getting
herself sick tonight.
Not now, and not over you.
So don't do anything tonight.
Seriously.
- I won't.
- I said seriously.
- I said I won't.
Are you always this angry?
- Yes, as a matter of fact, yes, I am.
This is your room.
You'll sleep here tonight.
I guess if you need anything, knock,
or better yet, wait 'til
morning, you can last that long.
- Okay Peggy.
Peggy.
Margaret.
- Nobody calls me that.
- Really?
Nobody?
Not your husband?
- Don't talk about him.
- If he calls you that, what
would your little boy say
if asked if that was your name?
- How do you know about that?
- I don't remember.
Maybe Maggie told me.
Or maybe I just know things.
What do you think?
Do you think I just know things?
You look like a Margaret.
You ran away from them, maybe you run away
from that name too.
- That's enough.
I want you to tell me something.
- What do you want to know?
- The truth.
- About what?
- Maggie's mother.
What did she do to people here?
- Do I really have to say this time?
She made everybody love her,
whether they wanted to or not.
She was forceful that way.
- Oh.
What did she do?
What was it like for Maggie here?
- Don't I get a question?
That's fair, isn't it?
- I don't think that you can dictate fair.
- Well may I ask for fair?
One question each.
- Your turn, then.
- And you'll tell me the truth?
- I said your turn.
- How could you leave your little boy?
How could you leave your family?
- You're just going to
say it, just like that?
- Do you think of it like that?
Do you think about what he thinks?
- Stop.
- I'm sorry.
- You should be.
- I am.
It's just strange to see her.
- Why doesn't she remember you?
- I said it's strange.
- What were you doing out
there, why didn't you leave?
All this time, what were you waiting for?
- She reminds me of her mother.
So much.
- She's not her mother.
She's my friend, and she
has nothing to do with you.
She's mine and I need her.
- We would all
talk here, all of us.
Day and night about her.
She didn't have a father,
so we thought maybe,
maybe she was special.
And that we were being hurt
this way because we were chosen.
This was a path to a better place.
A special place.
- Stop it.
- We would talk about the people
who come from miles around
and do the same.
We would see shadows,
silhouettes of people.
Pilgrims, just out there, just
outside, on the hillsides.
Arms outstretched,
looking into this building
and seeing her, deep red in skin clothing,
opening up men layer by layer,
pushing her fingers inside
them and theirs inside her.
- That's enough.
Not another word.
- Such a nice dream to have.
Hanging at the end of the ropes.
Peggy, I know a secret.
Do you want me to tell you?
Before anyone else knows.
Something is going to happen tonight.
The fires are coming.
They'll be starting soon.
Over the horizon.
And your little boy,
in his bed, in flames,
will cry for you as his
little stomach burns,
then his little hands will burn too
as he tries to pat out those flames.
All of your little boy will burn.
That same fire will come here,
and tonight you will burn too.
Which do you most fear, Peggy?
I won't tell anyone.
Peggy.
They are all coming back.
All of them for their revenge.
There'll be a metamorphosis tonight.
- And?
Did you lock him in?
- He's locked in.
It's okay, he's locked in.
- Let me see the key.
I want to see the key.
- Did he say anything
else about my mother?
- He's not well, Maggie.
- Please tell me, Peggy.
- He's not well.
- Let me see the key.
- I have it, it's here.
It's around my neck, and he's locked in,
and he's in bed and we
should get into bed too.
- Yeah, I want to go to sleep.
- I will ask him if you don't tell me.
- No you won't, Maggie, no you won't,
you're going to bed with the rest of us.
- I meant tomorrow.
- No, you won't.
- Peggy's right.
- Did you say anything to him?
About me.
- I think Peggy's right.
- About what?
- About sleep.
- About sleep.
- About sleep, yes, we should.
- No.
- Yes?
- No.
- I am happy.
You said I must have
sadness too, but I don't.
I'm happy.
Most people are.
And if I'm honest, I must wonder if
you bring it all on yourselves.
I mean, you all talk endlessly,
exclusively of the terrible
things you know and you feel
like it's normal.
I just want to tell you, it's not.
It's not.
- You look just like her.
- Tell me.
- You do.
You look just like her.
- Tell me why.
- I see no difference between you.
I see your face.
I see hers.
I see your hands, I see hers.
I see your body--
- What did you do here, with her?
- Maggie.
- Walker.
- You're on the floor,
I left you something.
I've been collecting those for you.
Leaving them for you as
long as I can remember.
Leaving them for you, so
when you picked them up
and put them in your pocket,
you'd be weighed down,
you'd be anchored, you'd be
kept here on Earth, a pivot.
So I fly here and walk
there and always come back,
knowing you're here.
It's the only way to keep you earthbound.
These are heavy.
- They're old, Maggie.
I've picked them up from
every beach, every hill
across every time, every
place, and everywhere.
- The world is slipping
through my fingers.
- You can see it.
You're seeing it now.
- The lights blind me.
- The lights are the world.
- They hurt.
- I'm sorry.
- Tell me who you are, please.
- I could tell you a story.
- Tell it to me gently.
- Gently?
- No noise, no shouting, whisper it.
I don't care what's in
it, just whisper it.
- An immortal, a time traveler, a man.
Talks not of living forever but
of moving through all times.
His becomes a life unbound from time,
which he now holds in
his hand as a variable
based on perception.
He talks of the dawn of time
and of witnessing evolution first hand,
he talks of watching mankind
as it grows from rocks,
from sticks to fire.
He talks of surviving poxes and plagues,
and seeing ravines splitting
open over centuries.
He tells of sitting in
a plane as it crashes
and watching the metals
fly around and through him,
and into the hands, stomachs, and heads
of those sitting around him.
He tells of how he dropped a
bomb on a clear Monday morning
on 250,000 people, and he
talks of tonight, Maggie.
- Tonight?
- Tonight.
- If were to let you
from that room tonight,
would my mother like it?
- Your mother?
- May I tell you a story too?
- Just give me
something I don't already have.
- A mortal, a young girl,
just beginning to use up
her 70 years, tells of the one
time she saw a man in pain.
By mistake, she says,
and she had never even seen a man before.
A young man, tied up
to a chair and crying.
She could see blood, wells of it.
She tells of how she didn't even know
that this wasn't natural,
that this wasn't how all men looked,
that this isn't how they all behaved.
And she asked her mother
if this was right.
And the one who fed
her, who tucked her in,
who kept her warm, said "yes."
Because before they get
to this chair, these men,
these man who stand at
the front of history,
from the beginning of time until the end.
They wage war in villages,
in towns, and in cities,
and they do in their homes.
Their enemies and their loved
ones are not distinct to them.
They tear into both of them alike.
They use knives in the desert
and their own selves in the hearth.
It is their nature.
And so we grab them when
their bodies are broken
on a far away field, or
they have returned home
in a state of weakness,
we grab them, we make them ours,
and we hurt them until
they want to eat themselves
out of existence.
We feed them their own selves.
And this young girl listened
to all the tall woman said
about this war that has no beginning,
but now must have an end.
"This is vengeance," she said.
"It is ours.
"It is mine, and it will be yours.
"Do you want this to stop?"
and the young girl said, "no."
Have you heard this story too?
- I have.
And after the chair, they
would rest in the basement,
and then when a patient was suddenly
distracted and irretrievable,
he would never emerge.
All the sadness, all the sorrows,
all the terrors of this
war made for tears,
terrible and endless tears,
which dripped and dropped and seeped
and ended up down in that room,
collecting there for
years and years and years,
until they eroded markers
and anchors of form,
like time and space itself.
They just fell away.
- I remember you.
You were a patient.
- I remember you too.
You said "no."
- I remember you screamed.
- You've grown.
Into her.
- I'm tired.
Tell me something that isn't a story.
No more stories.
- No more stories, then.
I shall tell you a truth.
You see, we did not
all scream and scratch.
The men did not all laugh
and howl and jostle.
They did not push me to the ground,
and they did not hold me down.
They did not rip out my hair
or tear holes in my body.
They did not place the knife in my hand
and tell me if I opened my
own throat, I would fly,
become a star man, sit next
to the man in the moon.
They did not laugh, and I did not believe
what they did not tell me.
No, no.
They held me high and in glad spirits,
carried me, with tight and
good hands on their shoulders
from that building, upon
a path made of feathers
surrounded by the birds
themselves to the woods,
where a rocket ship built
higher than any tree ever grew
was already standing.
Happy, I remember.
I waved to them as I ascended.
They were happy too, and
kind in their smiles.
From the moon I was to watch,
and they were to sleep
a long and deep sleep,
and when you returned I would wake them.
It would be Christmas morning at last,
and it is, Maggie.
You are here, at last.
I have seen the best of all universes
whisper excitedly here.
I have walked through entire worlds,
creating themselves from
the dirt and the dust,
inventing lights and wires,
cathedrals and houses, homes,
all in anticipation of you.
Thank you for inviting me here.
I'm happiest to see you.
Do you know love, Maggie?
- I know I have been loved,
I don't know if I have loved.
Walker.
What else might be
if I were to let you
from that room tonight?
I should like to love, and
I should like to be loved.
If we were again to tell stories,
would the immortal think,
in spite of all of his freedom from time,
that it was too late?
I would hope that it is not.
But I fear that it is.
I wish I could say I might wait for you.
That would be nice, wouldn't it?
- Yes.
It would be wonderful.
But it is wartime.
- It is always wartime.
We inherit it, we fight it,
abandon all compassion,
I abandoned mine.
You're a man, you're good at fighting.
- And you're a woman,
you're good at bleeding.
- Then it is too late.
A shame.
I'm ready.
- Maggie.
What happened?
What's happening?
- What will I do when the end comes?
What you said always.
- Maggie.
I left my boy because he
was going to become a man.
Just one more man.
One that I'd made.
And I'm sorry that I left
him while he was still a boy,
because I didn't want to
see the man that he became.
I always lied.
I never told you that.
- I know.
It's not the whole truth,
though, is it Peggy?