painkiller.
- What do you have?
Canned food.
- Meat?
- Meat. Was stored in a cellar.
Follow me.
Raid!
Attention! Anyone attempting to breach
the cordon will be shot!
Let me...
Let me on behalf of
every museum employee
who is still alive
express our deepest sorrow
over the death of your wife.
Dear Eric...
Dear Eric,
Some say that children live by the
joy of learning the world.
However I am convinced that even
in their happiest moments
children live by fear.
When I was a child, I lived
by the fear of locomotives.
People said that when I was a baby,
I saw how a locomotive
had run over a cow.
I don't remember that
But in my darkest nightmares
a huge black locomotive
kept pursuing me.
My feet felt rooted to the ground.
I woke up screaming.
I've been having that dream again
recently.
I am standing on the rail tracks
and at the same time I am
driving the locomotive.
I keep running towards myself
and I can't do anything.
My life and my science turned into
this black merciless locomotive
that had run over mankind.
I imagine various people
driving that locomotive:
From the great Bohr to our president.
But the most terrible
nightmare, Eric,
is the one with you standing
on the tracks.
My dear boy,
If something bad happens with me
or with mom,
I've asked to bury us near the red wardrobe
with Egyptian skulls
in the left corner of the storeroom.
Yesterday, after we'd had an argument,
I went ahead and written a draft
message for a future civilization
which I hope will be reborn some day.
I'm sorry, my colleague,
I do not quite understand:
Who are you addressing?
I don't know. Anybody.
There will be someone.
Visitors from the space. Mutants.
Mutants.
I'm sorry but I must go.
I have a lot of work to do.
Excuse me.
I think the discussion of this text
can be postponed till tomorrow.
Perhaps. Today is not a time.
Such a sad day.
We should acknowledge the fact
that the whole history of mankind
is a history of a slow suicide
of a living matter that by sheer accident
acquired an ability to think
but that did not know what to do
with this fateful ability.
Full stop.
It could not find any better use
for this ability
than invention of the most
effective ways
of global suicide. Full stop.
From Judas rope...
- I can't stand this any longer.
...to the latest neutron bomb,
genetic, bacteriological,
and the devil knows what other weapons.
An admirable progress,
the triumph of the mind! Full stop.
The - that is the essence of science!
Perhaps in some sense,
our colleague is right.
What do you want to say?
All old values are gone.
They turned out to be groundless
out there.
Here under the ground we will create
a new mankind.
We will give it new moral values
and new commandments.
You shall hate your neighbor,
you shall hate your distant,
you shall hate yourself.
I can imagine what you'll create.
I understand you.
It is alien to you.
You are just like my father.
Excuse my frankness,
but you're the last humanists.
Like mammoths.
I have to go.
I'll go with you, Father.
We must finally accept that we
completely failed,
that we disgraced ourselves
without even using a fraction of
what we were given.
If there is an intellect in space,
it should look on us with
scorn and disdain.
We are nothing but presumptuous monkeys.
Dear Eric,
I work a lot and I am close to
understanding one thing
important to everybody.
But my work is hindered by
various distractions,
for example... I am perfectly sure
that I had heard a scream
of an operator from the
electronic center:
"A computer error,
cancel the missile launch"
Cancel the missile launch...
He was drinking coffee,
he choked and...
he was late by 7 seconds.
Seven... Perhaps there is
something in this number,
even if we forget the commonplace things.
By the way, I remember his face.
He went along the hall,
a drop of sweat on his nose.
He was smiling and he unzipped
his pants as he walked.