[mysterious music]
- [lively music] - [cards whooshing]
- [tense dramatic music] - [static droning]
♪
[interrogator] Day 42, session 72.
Start recording.
Vitals?
[technician] Blood pressure 110 over 70.
Pulse 68.
Vitals normal.
[interrogator] Dr. Kask, what did you see?
What did they show you?
Dr. Kask?
How are you still alive?
[dramatic music continues]
[mysterious music]
♪
[Annika VO] How am I still alive?
We're a flawed species.
[Mother VO] Okay, are you ready to meet your little sister?
[gentle music]
[Annika VO] We're impossibly fragile.
[Toddler Annika] Hi, Klara. Hi.
[Mother] Yeah.
Do you think we should keep her?
Yeah.
[gentle music]
[soft blowing]
[Annika VO] We're self destructive.
[laughing]
[gentle music continues]
♪
[Annika VO] Superstitious.
Driven by fear.
[wondrous music]
[Annika VO] By love.
Barely able to survive on our tiny blue rock,
let alone in the endless black ocean of our universe.
[Klara] Top bunk! [giggling]
What's past the last planet?
Infinity.
Everything.
Anything.
Whoa.
Nothing ever lasts.
[Annika VO] How am I still alive?
[giggling]
[wondrous music continues]
[Klara] We need to let it go.
It needs to breathe.
[wondrous music continues]
[Annika VO] One day, we will die.
Hey, you okay?
[glass shattering]
[Young Annika] Mom?
Mom! Mom!
[Annika VO] We become dust.
Oh my God, what happened?
Klara! Klara!
[monitors beeping]
[Annika VO] And our dust
joins all the other dust of the universe.
And everything we love...
[flat-line droning]
[Annika VO] Goes away.
- [flat-line droning] - [soft dramatic music]
[Annika VO] How am I still alive?
How are any of us?
[Sam] What if biological life is just a stage?
What if we can evolve?
So our future as a species is post-biological?
Our present is post-biological.
It took us six thousand years to go from leeches to pacemakers.
But from pacemakers
to genetically modifying human embryos,
it took just 60.
[moderator] Mm-hmm. So this isn't the future.
The future is right now.
[moderator] Let me ask you this though,
if our destiny is post-biological,
is there other life in the universe as well?
Oh, that's a stone cold certainty.
[moderator] Okay, wait, wait.
Here's what I want to know.
Is there something you know that we don't?
Look, people call me a tech visionary.
That's just a bunch of horseshit.
[crowd laughing]
I'm just a fellow that sees what's right in front of him.
And it ain't no secret that I made my first billion
from solar energy,
but I did not invent the sun.
I'm no visionary.
Visionaries see things that no one else does,
and that's rare.
[moderator] Okay, so who does Sam Houston
consider a visionary?
Well, you know what?
We have one right here in this very room.
Annika Kask.
[Sam] Annika Kask,
would you please raise your hand?
There she is.
The first person to photograph dark matter.
[crowd applauding]
- [Sam] That's it. - There you go.
Fantastic. Thank you.
- Well, you bet. - Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
Appreciate it.
That was really great.
Nobody got hurt.
Oh, uh, excuse me.
Annika?
- Hi. - Hey.
Big fan. Big fan.
Thank you. I'm flattered.
Well, uh, I have a confession to make.
I didn't come here just to do a TED Talk.
I want to offer you a job.
[Sam] You know, most people,
they look at the universe and it's empty.
And you, with one image, proved 'em all wrong.
How'd you do it?
Every time we'd try and image it,
we'd get chaos.
Couldn't find the right data set.
What was the right set?
[Annika] All of them.
At once.
Overlapping. Like 3D glasses.
Except instead of just red and blue,
we overlap 233 data sets
to find order in the chaos.
And then you get that.
[Sam] Well, that's the how, but...
why?
No one's ever asked me that before.
I guess I just want to know what's out there.
[Sam] You want to know what's out there?
Why not down here?
It's a one-year contract.
Small lab on a remote island in the Caribbean.
What lab?
[Sam] That's confidential.
You need scientists to work on a secret project
on a remote island in the Caribbean?
Let me tell you something.
There's more up there,
and down here.
Everywhere.
Aliens.
Look, Mr. Houston, I appreciate the offer,
but I'm not the kind of scientist who hunts for aliens.
[Sam] We're not hunting.
We're gathering.
And we need your discovery to make sense of it.
Look,
you can forget about your little green men,
fishing for radio waves,
and hunting for a needle in a haystack,
because I'm here to tell you that the whole haystack
is made out of needles.
We're not alone in the dark.
In fact, the darkness has been our company all along.
You want to find out?
[wondrous music]
[wondrous music continues]
[Charlie] I am an electronics engineer.
Charlie Kaminsky.
[Annika chuckling]
Sorry, it's just...
Charlie Kaminsky saying he's an electronics engineer
is like Stephen Hawking saying he teaches math.
[chuckles] Yeah, I'm the CTO of Gateway Labs.
[Charilie] Sam hired me to check some new toys he's building.
Now, where do you- where do you work, Annika?
R.I.T.
You're Annika Kask?
Yeah, wow.
How did, uh, how did Sam land you?
He promised me we weren't hunting for aliens.
You?
He promised me we were.
Oh, wow.
[dramatic music]
♪
[Solomon] Welcome to the island.
Thank you.
Uh, how many people are working out here right now?
Nine or ten.
Dr. Glassner likes to keep it small.
Perry Glassner?
[Charlie] Wow. Shit. Okay.
Yeah, super friends unite. I like it.
[Solomon] We'll see to your luggage.
Dr. Glassner is waiting for you in the main facility.
Great.
Oh, um, I'll-I'll catch up.
Here, just be careful with--
Yeah, it's delicate.
- Thank you so much. - No problem.
Thank you. Thank you.
Perfect. Oh, there we go.
You can take that one for me.
Thanks.
[tranquil music]
♪
[wondrous music]
♪
[Perry] What's this?
B12 methylphenidate.
Immuno-booster.
You shatter a bone and it heals,
but you bruise trust and it's fatal.
[Perry] What's your purpose?
I'm Dr. Annika Kask.
Well, that's a chair I can sit in
and that's a door I can walk out of,
so what is your purpose?
Sam Houston sent me.
[Perry] Why would he do that?
I'm a computer scientist.
Oh, right.
That's a shame.
I thought you might have the salt to admit the truth,
that you've been sent here by Sam to spy on me.
To be the bruise that kills me.
[Annika] Should I go?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
After all, I might need an algorithm.
Oh, Dr. Glassner, hi, I'm Charlie.
And I gotta tell you, man, from one scientist to another--
Here we go. They're ******** multiplying.
I blew it. I... [sighs]
[Perry] As per your NDAs,
communications are monitored.
You will be watched.
[Charlie] It feels like overkill.
Yes, it's completely and utterly unnecessary.
I should be doing this work on my own in my basement,
but Sam would never allow that because this isn't really a lab.
It's a shrine to a man's overwhelming hubris.
[Perry] See, most billionaires buy yachts or football teams,
but he wants to buy ideas or legacies to show the world
he's somehow changed the course of human history.
So that's what you do here?
That's what we're about to do.
[computer voice] Welcome to the Tuning Lab.
[Perry] So you, you're up to speed?
That dark matter algorithm you discovered,
you'll need to apply it here.
Is this what I think it is? Does it work?
No. Yes. And get the **** away from it.
- [Perry] Right. Where to begin? - Sorry.
[Perry] Let's begin at the beginning, uh, in darkness.
So let there be light and heat and bacteria,
single-celled organisms.
Skip a few billion years.
Reptiles, monkeys, then us.
Apex predators.
Petty, ain't we?
Cruel.
Prone to self-destruction.
Hell bent on rage,
******** our habitat out of existence.
So now we turn our eyes away from Earth
in search of other worlds to defile.
But there's a hitch.
Because Mr. Drake's equation tells us that we're not alone.
The universe is too vast,
rich with resources,
likely swimming with intelligent life.
Competition.
And most of that's going to be millions,
if not billions of years ahead of us.
So we come into this race far, far behind.
Nevertheless, we do start looking
with whatever crude tools are available.
As you know, SETI,
the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
has been scanning, uh, what?
Oh yeah, radio waves.
That still only covers, what,
one ten-millionth of the night sky
using hilariously outdated technology.
It's like taking a little bowl of water out of the ocean
and peering in and concluding that whales don't exist.
No, not radio.
That's not how you'd communicate
if you're an interplanetary intelligence, is it?
You want to talk across space and time instantaneously.
So let's do this.
Take two photons, pair them, keep one here,
send the other light years away.
Force one photon into a declared state,
and the other responds in the very same moment
across space and time.
String a few billion of those together,
and you've got an FTL communicator.
No, but-but the quantum communication can't work.
It breaks the laws of physics.
No, no, it bends the laws that we know,
and that's not what this is.
[stammers] No, if you force a quantum state change,
that breaks entanglement--
[Perry] This machine does not force a state change!
It doesn't entangle or disentangle.
It just hears when someone has.
This simply listens.
It's impossible.
And yet here we have a machine that does exactly that,
that I built six years ago in my basement,
on my own on amphetamines.
So, take a look for yourself.
What do you want us to do?
Well, here's a hint.
You've already done it.
[Annika] It says he's scanning the radius of a couple of feet.
Right here.
So if he's listening for aliens, then it's...
He's doing it right here,
in this-in this room.
[Charlie] But-but what is it? I mean, like these are just--
It's-- It's a ton of data points.
[stutters] It's-it's-it's like background noise
of anywhere in the universe.
There's no rhyme or reason behind it. It's...
It's chaos.
[Charlie] Yeah.
[static droning]
Then we find order in the chaos.
[static droning]
Sort by data sets.
Okay.
It's the same algorithm.
It's my algorithm.
Sort by exponents.
[Charlie] It's organizing.
Sort by primes.
What? W-what is this?
I can't believe this.
Overlay all.
[machine rhythmically humming]
It's-it's a signal.
[machine rhythmically humming]
[stuttering] They're talking.
[machine rhythmically humming]
Holy shit!
[machine rhythmically humming]
Dr. Glassner?
[machine rhythmically humming]
[Annika] Dr. Glassner!
[Charlie] [stuttering] He's only scanning one little area.
But if it's quantum communication,
then it-it's all around us.
Or there's another explanation.
Or another phenomenon that we're not seeing, or--
Or, Annika, it's ****-to-the-yes aliens.
- Dr. Glassner. - [Charlie] I mean,
we've been looking millions of light years away
for-for smoke signals,
but they were around us the entire time.
It's...
[Annika] Is this real?
[Perry] You tell me.
You're here to check my math.
[Charlie] I mean, [stutters] this means...
It means we're not alone,
we're not the centre of the universe,
we're not special.
It means they don't know anything about us,
or they don't give a ****.
[Charlie] What are they saying?
How could I possibly know?
We'd have to ask them with that.
What is that?
Littlemouth.
You're talking to them?
Not yet.
[stuttering] You actually...
you-you built a quantum communication device.
Can we-can we talk back?
No. The hardware can't replicate quantum signatures.
[Charlie] I can. I've already done it in my lab.
[Perry] I highly doubt it, but...
I suppose we're gonna find out.
Okay, I need to...
Oh. Oh, wow.
Ah.
[mysterious music]
♪
Good morning.
Go to the ant, consider her ways,
and be wise.
Do you know that?
Hmm.
We learn a lot from ants.
[Perry] For example, we, uh,
we study them to, uh, solve traffic problems.
All sorts of things.
I hear your schooling's going well.
I guess so.
Good. Right.
[machine rhythmically humming]
[mysterious music]
[Annika sighing]
[mysterious music continues]
[Annika] It's real.
[Annika sighing]
Shh. Do you hear that?
Scared?
No.
[quietly] Yeah.
[Klara] Mom says there's no such thing as monsters.
- [plunking] - [high-pitched screech]
I'll go check it out.
No!
I can't lose you.
[Annika sighing]
[mysterious music continues]
[ominous music swells]
[Charlie] So this is the transmitter.
[Annika] You can't turn it on for him.
We don't know enough yet.
[Charlie] I don't know.
How else are we going to find out?
You're not worried what they may be capable of?
Are you inviting me to speculate about aliens?
Because people often regret that.
Yeah, I am.
- [Charlie] Yeah? - Mm-hmm.
Okay. So, the coolest project that I ever worked on,
called the Argus 2,
it's this bionic eye that, like this machine
that could send microelectrodes from the optic nerve
to the brain and then, praise Jesus,
the blind doth see.
And just keeps getting better and better and better.
They get the software update every year,
and every two years, a hardware update.
Have you ever seen
a three-year-old see for the first time?
No?
It's-it's-it's everything.
Anyways, next year,
the Argus 5 is going to offer better vision
than the perfectly healthy biological eye.
It's-it's crazy, but why stop there?
What about all the spectrums of light that we can't even see?
Ultraviolet spectrum,
the X-ray vision even,
or thermal, whatever.
That's just the beginning.
We start with the eyes,
and then we're going to move on and [stutters]
improve limbs beyond nature,
improve livers beyond nature, the heart beyond nature,
and eventually pass the Rubicon to the brain.
We're going to take all of our thoughts,
all of our reasoning, all of our intelligence,
and we're going to put it into a more durable container.
Could be cloud-based or silicon chip,
something that's unbreakable,
that can exist inside of a black hole on the,
on the tip of a pin or in the spaces in between.
And that...
that is the end game for homo sapiens.
And I think that this is just another version of us
further down the road.
Okay, but what about pain?
Sorrow? Heartache?
Profound loss?
Regrets?
What about 'em?
Why-why would eliminating that be bad?
Because they shape who we are as people,
I think way more than pleasures do.
I mean, so much of who I am and what I value came from,
you know, painful experiences
that happened in my life that I had to grow and learn from.
And change.
I get that,
but human suffering as a whole, gone.
- Can you see it? - Yes, I see that.
But I also see a sterile intelligence
on a path with no interruptions.
No purpose except to spread, with no actual growth.
And that, to me, is not evolution.
That is just an equation.
And as awesome as your bionic eye sounds, Charlie,
I actually know a lot of those patients have had them removed.
Some.
And some people are weird.
And some people value other things in scientific perfection.
Some people accept the parts of them
that other people might see as imperfect.
Hmm.
So, we are our flaws?
And our mistakes.
[interrogator] Dr. Kask,
you saw how unbalanced Glassner was.
You saw the threat he posed.
Why did you choose to stay?
To help.
[Annika] First contact was possible.
Would you leave it to an unbalanced nihilist
to handle the introduction?
[AI voice on computer] This thought experiment
dictates that the female rabbits always give birth to pairs.
And each pair consists of one male and one female.
Rabbits can't reproduce until they are at least one month old.
She says she's very bright.
[AI voice on computer] At the end of the second month,
- the female... - Lucky for her.
[AI voice on computer] When month three rolls around,
the original pair of rabbits
produces yet another pair of newborns
while their earlier offspring grow to adulthood.
This leaves three pairs of rabbits.
The order goes as follows:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21.
[wondrous music]
♪
So, is Perry your husband?
No, I'm a doctor.
That's his daughter.
How long have you been here?
[Svea] I haven't left the island in three years,
but it feels like 30.
I don't know how you stay sane.
What makes you think I have?
Is he always so...
[Svea] Look, I'm not making an excuse for him,
because there's-there's none.
He lost his wife and son four years ago,
and it was bad.
He never really accepted what happened.
What did happen?
Well,
there was a house fire.
[Svea] He was in his lab in an outbuilding 50 feet away,
self medicated, probably drunk.
Lucy? She was at a sleepover.
But his wife and son...
[computer voice] Welcome to Littlemouth's signal room.
[Svea] Perry wasn't even aware there was a fire
until the police woke him up.
[Annika] Is he dangerous?
[Svea] He knows humans matter in theory,
but not in practice.
Just ask Lucy.
[pensive music]
- [helicopter droning] - [pensive music continues]
[Charlie] Thank you.
Lucy, I want you to watch this.
[Sam] This is a little piece of forbidden magic
that I learned in the bazaars of Morocco
from wise men who knew how to turn steel into thin air.
So, I want you to count to three,
then I want you to blow on the napkin.
Okay. One, two, three.
[banging]
[giggling]
Wait, wait, wait. Let me see.
How'd you do that? Wait.
[Perry] Go to bed.
- Here, let me help. - You got school in the morning.
- Go to bed. - Thank you.
Good night, sweetheart.
Good night.
Good night, Lucy.
You didn't eat much.
I-I've never had goat before.
[Sam] Okay. First impressions?
[Charlie] Yeah, right.
Uh, well, I think it's completely legit.
I mean, I've gone through six months of his logs,
and every single time
I tried to find some other explanation for it,
he'd already disproved it.
I mean, we're witnessing actual alien chatter.
We need to report this.
What? To who?
The IAA has guidelines on post-detection.
Do you want to have about a dozen space agencies
with all the bureaucrats down here
cluster******** this thing for the next decade?
[Charlie] I mean, Sam, I totally get it,
and you're not wrong.
However, Annika has a point.
I mean, we're not ******** around anymore.
This is like a solid seven on the RIO scale.
Oh, for Christ sakes, Charlie.
- You built quantum satellites. - What?
I thought you of all people
would just want to run with this thing.
I-I do.
Look, we discovered it.
It's ours.
[Charlie] Come on, that's ****ed up.
I mean, what if-if I discovered Pluto
I can just screw with it any way I want to?
Billionaires, they've taken over space exploration
because they have more resources than entire nations.
And I'm not exactly A-OK
with some galactic **** measuring contest
where a few billionaires get to determine
the fate of all of humanity.
Sam, listening is one thing, but talking back?
The risks of that are mind-boggling.
[Annika] We don't know if they're peaceful or hostile.
And you're talking about
sending a signal the way they do.
They'll know we're here immediately from anywhere.
You didn't say if you liked it.
The goat.
Yeah, uh, [clears throat] it was fine.
Now, we've spent six months trying to decipher it
and we still don't know if they talk in calculus
or interstellar Sanskrit or in swirls of colour.
Let me try.
That kind of thing might take centuries to crack.
Give me a week.
A week, that's all I ask.
[Perry] I hate goats.
You know, they pair goats with, uh, thoroughbreds.
They call them companion animals.
You see, horses don't like to be left on their own.
They're herd animals, and they, uh,
well, they get very lonely.
So the breeders will put a goat in the horse pen
to keep it settled and manageable and docile.
But the, uh, the entire dynamic is...
is very unnatural.
First, you've taken a horse out of its natural environment,
and then you paper over this perversion
by forcing a companion on it.
But some horses
are different.
They prefer solitude,
and they see the goat as an intruder.
An invader.
And so they'll do what any animal would do
when it feels threatened.
I mean,
horses don't even eat meat.
But they will chew clean through a goat's neck.
Imagine that.
And you know what the owner does?
Just buy us another goat.
All right, I think that's ******** enough.
[Perry] We're not waiting!
Not a week! Not a day!
[Perry] You fix my hardware.
You fix my software.
My schedule, or I'm done!
It's not the first time that he's threatened to take his ball
and go home.
He's an unstable man.
Yeah, well, it's all we can do to keep him together with meds
and duct tape.
So I guess you realize the other reason you're both here.
[Sam] The moment that Perry is not functional.
[Charlie] We get it.
We're the replacements.
So I will get you your week, Annika.
And I will smooth things over with Perry tomorrow.
All right?
[waves crashing]
[Annika] I'm worried that Perry's right.
I think the only thing that we can do is turn it on
and let them know that we're listening and hope they help.
And that is extremely dangerous.
Maybe.
But what would they want from us?
Resources.
[Charlie] Nope. This universe is crammed full of resources.
And you and I both know that our little tiny speck here
of the Milky Way is kind of a resource desert.
Keep going.
They could see us as a threat.
No, no.
Look, you got the tech that they got.
You think they give a shit about our stupid iPhones
or our dumb smart bombs?
Come on.
Food.
[Charlie] Us?
I wouldn't touch me with a 10 foot fork.
[Annika chuckling]
[Charlie] Whichever way I-I try to game this whole thing out,
I can't find anything to be afraid of.
I can think of so many.
[Annika] Life is fragile.
Fear keeps us safe.
All right.
[Charlie] Annika, our job is to know the unknown.
But now you don't want to embrace it?
You can't have it both ways.
[interrogator] Dr. Kask,
why didn't you stop Mr. Kaminsky
from initializing Littlemouth that evening?
[Annika] He never told me
because he knew I'd try to stop him.
[interrogator] He didn't consider the possibility
that this alien intelligence might be hostile?
[Annika] Charlie doesn't believe intelligence can be hostile.
For him, intelligence doesn't waste.
It learns.
From mistakes.
From mutations.
From curious expressions in nature.
What do they want?
What do we want when we observe an ant colony
halfway around the world?
[suspenseful music]
[Annika VO] So, Charlie was always going
to unlock Littlemouth.
Initialize.
[computer voice] Initializing.
[Annika VO] Because he believed no harm would come of it.
[wondrous music]
[computer voice] Initiation sequence successful.
[interrogator] But you didn't believe that, did you, Doctor?
[suspenseful music swells]
[Charlie on speaker] Uh, hey, Perry?
Perry?
Well, uh, Perry, you should, uh...
you should know that I-I fixed it.
We can talk back now.
[computer voice] Welcome to Littlemouth's signal room.
Get down here. Ten minutes.
[Perry] Lowest level.
It's time to meet Littlemouth.
[helicopter droning]
[buzzing]
[helicopter droning]
[voicemail voice] You have reached the voicemail box of...
[Sam on voicemail] Sam Houston.
[voicemail voice] Please leave a message. [beep]
He said he'd wait.
[computer voice] Level C.
Take your time?
[Annika] Charlie tell me you didn't.
[mysterious music]
[Perry] At 1:24 AM Littlemouth turns on.
Perry, I object to this on so many levels.
[Perry] But you won't do anything about it, will you?
So what you can do is check for data variations when we go live.
Uh, what are you...
what are you going to say?
Hello.
How?
Of all the data points,
one sequence repeated itself at a marginally greater rate.
[Perry] Littlemouth will repeat that sequence
and send it between here and the antenna.
But you don't even know what that sequence means.
[Perry] Well, does an infant have any idea
what its first fumblings at language mean? No.
But they simply mimic those more developed.
- But the- - Does the parent have any idea
what the child means?
No, but they know what the child is saying.
They're saying, "I'm alive and I'm listening."
[Perry] Yet though we babble, we do so mathematically.
We will use two universal constants.
The speed of light will be the unit of measurement.
And primes,
we will repeat the code ten times.
The first interval will be two times the speed of light.
And the final interval, therefore,
will be the tenth prime 29 times the speed of light.
[Annika] You're saying a lot more than just hello.
[Perry] Yes.
We're saying, "We've heard you and we're logical."
And, "We're here."
Yes, that's the idea.
[buzzing]
[Perry] By the way, Sam won't stop it.
There's no kill switch.
And even if he could, he never would.
He's blinded by hubris in one eye and glory in the other.
Anything else from the little goats?
Yeah.
Let's do it.
What?
I'm sorry, I-I gotta see this.
[Charlie] Perry, you know, you-you should, uh,
you should say something.
Like a quote for posterity or something.
What, like, "One small step"?
or, "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds"?
I mean, something.
Considering what's about to happen. It's...
Nothing is about to happen.
That's the entire point.
[Perry] There's no war of the worlds.
There's no grand enlightenment.
[machine whirring]
Just a thundering silence.
[machine whirring]
This is about insignificance.
This is about our smallness laid bare.
There'll be no response because we simply do not matter.
Not our work, not our deeds.
Or our mistakes.
[machine whirring]
So there's your ******** quote.
[machine whirring]
If it doesn't matter, why build this?
[machine whirring]
To prove it.
[machine whirring swells]
[countdown beeping]
[loud buzzing]
[suspenseful music]
[machine whirring]
Ta-da!
There you go.
Nothing. As predicted. Oof.
[Sam] So, when's it happening?
[Annika on phone] Five minutes ago.
[Sam] Really? And?
[Annika on phone] And I'm done!
[Sam on phone] Whoa, Annika, uh, look, don't...
[static buzzing]
[loud clunking]
Whoa.
Whah?
[siren wailing]
Uh...
[whirring]
[computer voice] Backup power on.
System offline.
- [siren wailing] - [tense dramatic music]
Uh, Perry, Perry, you should shut it off.
Perry, shut-shut it off!
- Shut it down! - Shh!
[machine whirring loudly]
[machine whirring down]
[soft dramatic music]
Annika, I got it.
[Annika] Why'd you turn it on, Charlie?
[Charlie] Just hold on a sec.
[sensor-pad buzzing]
You need to come see this.
[News Anchor VO] Officials have yet to offer an explanation
for the six seconds
that interrupted almost all global electronic
and satellite communication.
There are unconfirmed reports of loss of life as hospitals,
traffic signals and aircraft have lost power.
[Retired General VO] Well, we can't rule out
this is of military origin.
A test of some kind, if you like.
Yeah, the satellites are all down.
These are just analog broadcasts.
[NASA Engineer VO] We at NASA, we're at a loss.
Whatever it is, it extends beyond the Earth's atmosphere
because it's knocked out all high-orbit satellites.
[News Reporter 1] Is this possibly extraterrestrial?
[News Reporter 2] Power went out for eight minutes-
This is Perry?
Yeah.
[News Reporter 1] The power went out for 8 minutes
and 19.48 seconds.
What that means exactly, we don't know at this time.
Charlie, they talked back.
What do you mean?
The power goes out, and exactly 8 minutes,
19.48 seconds later, it comes back on.
[Annika] What do you think that means?
Whoa.
So what?
That's the exact amount of time that it takes sunlight
to get to Earth.
They waited and they responded in a universal constant.
We showed them we understand.
Yep. The-the speed of light.
They-they would know the sun is everything to us.
No energy, no power, no biological life.
[Svea] But what did they say?
[Charlie] No idea.
Bare minimum, they said that we hear you
and we know where you are.
[News Anchor VO] It's still too soon to predict
how high the death toll may grow,
but it most certainly will.
[News Anchor 2] Officials are rightly worried about the size.
and scale of this unprecedented event.
[Annika] I'm gonna kill Littlemouth.
[Charlie] Annika, that's like the opposite
of building really cool shit.
Well, then go ask Perry nicely not to turn it back on, Charlie.
I think Perry has enough humanity
- to see the-- - [Svea] Kill it.
You don't bank on Perry's humanity.
[Charlie] Wait. What if we need Littlemouth again?
No, look, look, hear me out, okay?
Whatever they did out there, that was not a death ray.
They just turned the lights off for eight minutes to tell us
they heard us.
It's just too dangerous, Charlie.
I don't think it's dangerous, Annika.
[Annika] Yeah, but we are.
We're not a species that does well
with massive paradigm shifts.
They don't need a death ray. They said, "Hi", and look,
we're gonna do the rest.
Yeah, but, but that's not their intentions.
[Annika] We don't know what their intentions are.
[ominous music]
Annika, you can't let fear decide, okay?
It's safer than hope.
[Annika] I'm locked out.
[Charlie] Is Perry using Littlemouth right now?
No.
He killed it himself.
Let's meet at 1300 hours.
Perhaps it's time to reassess.
[mysterious music]
[Annika] We opened a door.
Littlemouth's signal.
It told them we were here.
Our place in the universe was about to change.
Irreversibly.
Forever.
[Lucy] Oh!
- [insect buzzing] - [soft dramatic music]
[soft dramatic music continues]
Come on.
[wind gusting]
[soft dramatic music continues]
♪
[Lucy screaming]
- [wind gusting loudly] - [mysterious music]
[Annika] Oh my God, Lucy!
[Lucy crying]
[Perry] Lucy!
[Lucy screaming]
Lucy!
[Lucy crying]
- [Lucy whimpering] - [soft dramatic music]
Shh.
[soft dramatic music]
[Perry shushing]
It's all right.
[ominous music]
[Perry] You're all right, you're all right.
[ominous music swells]
Should we be afraid?
Describe an alien.
I wouldn't know where to begin.
Most people would describe something like they know
here on Earth.
Biped, number of eyes, some form of brain,
or perhaps a variation of an insect or a squid,
or a computerized, artificially intelligent,
pompous ****in' robot.
But almost always some sapiocentric extrapolation
of what we know here on Earth.
But the question is not,
"What does an alien look like?"
It's "What does alien intelligence look like?"
[wondrous music]
[car horns honking]
[wondrous music swells]
♪
[NSA Sparrow] Hello, ma'am, we're with the NSA.
Come in.
[NSA Sparrow] Sam Houston here?
[woman] Yes, sir.
[Sam] Haven't had my coffee yet.
Oh. I grabbed one on the way in.
Mm-hmm.
How is it, Sam, that nearly every company on the planet
went dark for 8 minutes, 19 seconds,
yet your operations didn't skip a beat?
- Does the sun still work? - Hmm.
[Sam] Then we still work.
[NSA Ladrillo] Mr. Houston, good morning.
Now, what you're about to see is classified.
All right.
[NSA Sparrow] That was taken two hours ago
off the coast of Cuba.
And the NSA thinks this has something to do
with the power outage?
Well, we don't know what to think.
Most satellites are still down.
Everything we're getting
comes from one of our deep space satellites.
This anomaly seems to be radiating
from one central point,
right above a private island owned by you.
[NSA Ladrillo] And this anomaly,
it's growing.
[NSA Sparrow] Exponentially.
This morning, the anomaly was the size of a pinprick.
In two days,
it'll be visible from mainland Cuba.
In a week...
This is gonna cause mass panic.
What's on the island, Sam?
Solar observatory.
[sighing]
All right.
Where exactly are you going?
Well, you boys got me all riled up.
I'm gonna go take a gander.
You will go nowhere near whatever that is
without military escort.
Excuse me, am I being charged with something?
Then get the **** out of my way.
You're pushing your luck, Sam.
[Sam] Yeah, well, it served me well so far.
[Computer voice] [indistinct] leaving in five minutes.
[mysterious music]
Come on.
[ominous music]
[tense music]
♪
[wind gusting]
[mysterious music] [wind gusting]
♪
What the hell, Charlie?
Haven't you done enough already?
Annika, I'm telling you, this thing's safe.
No, it's an alien phenomenon,
and you want to stick your hand in it?
Look, whatever this thing is, it's [stutters]-
It's right here, okay?
We're exposed to it already. There's nothing between us,
and it's, it's just air. Look.
Look at this. Read it.
It's a column of air surrounded by a vacuum.
You get past the first six inches and it's just air.
[ominous music]
What if it's not just air?
Hmm?
Speech is just air.
It's just how it's organized.
Yeah.
Wha...
What are you, what are you doing?
What if it's just another data set?
Yeah, but if it's just ****in' air,
then how do you collect that data?
Watch me.
Oh, great.
This will work.
Oh, shit, okay.
[ominous music] [wind gusting]
♪
[wondrous music]
♪
[interrogator] You say they speak in thoughts and visions.
Why not speak plainly?
Why not tell us what's at stake?
Is it possible that a post-biological intelligence
could figure out a better way to communicate with us
than English?
[Perry] You can go now.
[Svea] Hasn't she been through enough for one day?
[Perry] You can go now.
"Chapter one:
"Peter Breaks Through."
"All children except one grow up.
They soon know that they will grow up.
And the way Wendy knew was this.
One day when she was two years old,
she was playing in a garden
and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother.
I suppose she must have looked rather delightful,
for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried,
Oh, why can't you remain like this forever?
Wendy knew that she must grow up.
You always know after you are two.
[Perry] Two is the beginning of the end."
[soft dramatic music]
♪
[indistinct yelling]
[commanding officer on headset] Safeties on
unless a clear hostile act or intent presents itself.
We're going to breach, clear, and control.
Now there's no clear sat recon,
so we're going in blind here, folks.
[News Anchor VO] Activated emergency protocols,
including curfews and emergency powers.
Officials insist it's necessary to ensure the panic
that has ensued doesn't spin out of control.
[News Anchor 2 VO] In places where martial law
has yet to be declared--
United States military is going to be here within hours,
knocking down doors.
So we need to have some answers.
All right, look, I have an actual theory.
Look, Sam.
So this pillar, right?
It's-it's-it's nothing.
It's just air and-and light.
[Charlie] Anything that passes through it,
it's benign.
Now what-what is the most commonly used Morse code signal?
A distress call.
Right. So, [clears throat] what if...
what if the message that we sent using Littlemouth,
the most commonly repeated sequence that we saw,
was actually an SOS?
Or it could mean absolutely nothing at all.
All I'm saying is that maybe this is their way
of trying to help us.
[Charlie] What if these anomalies are like a cloak?
I think they're trying to hide us from harm,
or-or communicate, or protect us, or--
Protect us from what?
Sam, I don't know.
[interrogator] But did you know
what we might have needed protection from?
The universe is infinite.
And therefore full of infinite dangers.
[Perry] [muted] There's only one pillar.
They're replying to the source.
[soft suspenseful music]
It needs to breathe.
[Sam] If we don't figure this out,
they'll lock us out and then fumble this thing
while the whole world burns.
[deep breathing]
- [muted indistinct chattering] - [soft suspenseful music]
[Klara VO] It needs to breathe. It needs to breathe.
I can't breathe! I need air!
[woman on screen] [echoing] I need air!
[Klara VO] It needs to breathe. It needs to breathe.
- [soft suspenseful music] - [muted indistinct chattering]
[Sam] I cannot believe the brain power in this room
cannot come up with one workable idea.
They're going to lock us up.
[soft suspenseful music]
[Sam] Annika, where are you going?
[suspenseful music continues]
♪
[suspenseful music swells]
[Sam] Annika, you all right?
[wondrous music]
We can talk to them.
But how?
In there.
[Annika] Eight minutes and 19.43 seconds.
It was a scan. They waited.
They scanned us. What did they see?
What did they learn about us?
They saw a planet covered in air.
What does that tell them about us?
Well, um, that would tell them
that whatever biological life lives down there
survives completely surrounded by air.
So what's the safest way to engage with us?
Air.
We don't talk in language, we talk in air.
Molecules bent into shapes that mean something.
[Annika] So we go in, breathe in,
and have a conversation.
And this whole time
we've been so worried about trying to figure out
the best way to communicate with them,
we didn't think that maybe
this hyper-advanced intelligence
would find the best way to communicate with us.
We have to go in.
What, into that pillar?
- Yes. - Now, wait a minute.
Now that's a hell of a leap of faith, Annika.
This is not an invasion.
It's an invitation.
So who's going in?
I mean, you'll almost definitely suffocate.
Sam, you want to go cement your legacy?
Been there. Done that. No.
Yeah. Okay.
I'll do it.
[suspenseful music]
Whoa.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[tense dramatic music]
[helicopter whirring]
[soldier] Put your hands on your head.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Yeah. All right.
- [indistinct radio chatter] - [helicopter whirring]
[tense music swells]
How human of us to see this
and be afraid.
How human of us not to see the hope in it.
How human.
[Annika] How human.
[soft rhythmic whirring]
[NSA Sparrow] We're past the edge of the earth.
There is no protocol,
no policy for whatever this is.
No laws cover what you've done.
No putting the genie back in this bottle.
We can fix it.
Iran's mobilized their entire southern fleet in Bandar Abbas.
Shots are already fired in Kashmir.
Half of America is convinced it's the Rapture.
And I don't even want to begin to tell you what Russia's up to,
but, hint, it's ******** bad.
You can fix all that, Sam?
Humanity couldn't handle a global blackout.
What's going to happen when they see this anomaly
hanging over New York?
There is something that we can do.
Yeah, I heard it.
Air. Sure.
- But it's not my call. - Thank Christ.
New orders just came in.
Look, you should let me just try it.
Let me go in.
You will be confined to your quarters under armed guard
until arrangements can be made for secondary detainment.
You will be compelled to fully disclose anything
and everything you know about the activities on this island
when asked.
[Charlie on speaker] They don't trust me.
They know that I'd try to go in.
Annika, you have to find a way.
How?
I don't know.
[Annika] We don't even know
if going in there and talking to them
will stop the anomaly from growing.
We have no idea.
[Charlie on speaker] We have to try.
You have to try.
[Annika] Charlie, I can't.
I-I wouldn't.
There are just...
There is too many unknown factors.
I'm sorry. I'm just scared.
[Charlie on speaker] Annika, you can't let fear decide.
You didn't become a scientist
because you're afraid of the unknown.
You did it to learn.
To help people.
Think about saving one life.
[Annika crying]
I'll go check it out.
No!
You can't risk it.
Stay.
[Charlie on speaker] Now, think about saving them all.
[Annika gasps]
[Annika on speaker] Charlie, I have an idea.
[suspenseful music]
Of course.
[Charlie on speaker] They're not going to understand
a single word you say, so say a lot of them.
Wish me luck.
[Charlie on speaker] Good luck.
Yes.
Right away.
[knocking on door]
Dr. Kask. What's so urgent?
[Annika] An oversight.
Perry is still running an FTL signal
from the tech tent by the pillar.
It's a repeating quant signature that we picked out
when we originally--
Okay, dumb it down, please.
I believe that it's contributing to the growth.
Okay, uh...
tell me how to shut it off.
Do any of your troops know how to run Python?
Or any other quant-friendly computing languages?
Our scientists won't be here for another two days,
so can you just tell me how to unplug it?
It's not like pulling a plug. It's a complicated system.
We have servers running on clouds--
Okay, enough! I get it.
I just need five minutes.
[Annika] Five minutes.
Okay.
Try anything, someone gets shot.
It's not a threat. It's just where we're at.
[soft dramatic music]
♪
[NSA Ladrillo] Who else has seen the raw data, Sam?
Ellis.
Hauptmann at MIT.
[soldier on speaker] We've got bogeys
approaching the wind pillar.
Six o'clock. Over.
[NSA Ladrillo] Corporal, see what's going on out there.
Yes, sir.
[dramatic music continues]
♪
[NSA Sparrow] Annika, get over here.
[Lucy] "And it isn't fair, I would say with my last breath.
It isn't fair', said Michael coldly.
Father is a cowardly custard.
So are you a cowardly custard?"
Dad, what's a custard?
Huh?
It's a pudding, a yellow pudding.
Wobbles and shakes.
[Perry] Like when someone's afraid.
Go ahead.
[soft dramatic music]
♪
Hey!
[Charlie] Hey. [banging]
Hey, come here!
Over here! [banging]
Hey, over here!
Hey!
[soldier] Stop her!
No!
[suspenseful music]
[low rhythmic humming]
[deep breathing]
[gunshots blasting]
[Charlie gasping]
[tense music]
[Annika exhaling]
[low rhythmic humming]
[Annika gasping]
Where am I?
[low rhythmic humming]
[Annika VO] Are you inside my head?
[deep inhaling]
[Klara VO] Through the air inside you now.
Klara?
No.
[Annika] How are you talking to me?
[Klara VO] Through memory.
Or thought.
Light.
Speech.
On a molecular level.
In any way you prefer.
Shall we stop?
No.
- [deep breathing] - [low rhythmic humming]
[wondrous music]
Who are you?
[Klara VO] No longer biological.
No longer machine.
[Annika VO] Like physics itself.
We don't create.
Or destroy.
We learn.
[tinkling music]
♪
[Annika VO] You reorganize.
Everything is transformed.
[Annika] Why are you here?
[Klara VO] You called us.
[loud low rhythmic humming]
[Klara VO] You asked for help.
[Annika VO] Charlie was right.
You were hiding us from...
What?
[Klara VO] From the universe.
You're far from alone.
[Annika VO] Are we in danger?
Yes.
[Klara] You revealed yourselves.
And those that reveal themselves cease to exist.
Others will come.
Many are watching
in silence.
Hidden.
For now.
Some civilizations hide in fear.
Others hunt out of fear.
[Annika VO] Who are you then?
Predator?
Prey?
[Klara VO] We do not hide.
Or hunt.
Not anymore.
We protect.
[deep breath]
[Klara VO] We learn.
We have evolved.
[Annika VO] Evolved.
Into the universe itself.
[Klara VO] One day, you may as well.
But that is your choice to make.
[deep breath]
Get back, get back!
Do not cross the perimeter!
[helicopter whirring]
[wondrous music]
[Klara VO] You can hide.
[Annika VO] I don't know if we're ready.
If I'm ready.
What's past the last planet?
Infinity.
[Annika VO] We'll never be the same again.
[muted laughing]
[Klara VO] You have to let go of what was.
To be ready for what is to come.
[wondrous music]
♪
[soft dramatic music]
♪
- [soft fluttering] - [dramatic music continues]
[deep inhaling]
[wondrous music]
♪
[low ominous rumbling]
- [wondrous music] - [low ominous rumbling]
- [soft dramatic music] - [low ominous rumbling]
♪
[soft rumbling]
[gentle dramatic music]
[interrogator VO] Dr. Kask.
What comes next?
Did they tell you?
They don't have a face we can confront.
They don't have a world we can destroy.
They expand their intelligence.
[Annika] But not us.
We're a flawed species.
Superstitious.
Self-destructive.
Safe from the universe.
But not ourselves.
[interrogator VO] Doctor, will they come back?
What makes you think they left?
[mysterious music swells]
♪