Solaris

GIBARIAN: What I'm saying is: Don't trust anyone. Find yourself a weapon of some sort.

KELVIN: I can trust Rheya.

GIBARIAN: You'll end up like me.

KELVIN: You're not Gibarian...

GIBARIAN: No? Who am I, then?

KELVIN: A puppet.

GIBARIAN: And you're not? Maybe you're my puppet. But like all puppets, you think you're actually human. It's The Puppet's Dream. Wondering if they're human!

GIBARIAN: You think you're dreaming me, like you dream her. Understand something: I am the real Gibarian. Just a new incarnation.

KELVIN: What do you want?

GIBARIAN: You're being tricked. Sartorius picked a fight with you to avoid telling you about his idea for getting rid of the visitors. He's figured out they're made of subatomic particles called neutrinos, and he's going to create a negative neutrino field. Twenty four hours a day, until they're back on Earth.

KELVIN: Can it work?

GIBARIAN: It can. Ordinary matter, like ours? Not affected. Everything else, disintegrates.

KELVIN: Gibarian.

GIBARIAN: Leave the light off.

KELVIN: Where's Snow? Did you call him?

SARTORIUS: Yes.

SARTORIUS: It's changing characteristics. It's solidifying taking on weight.

KELVIN: How quickly?

SARTORIUS: If it continues, it will implode from its own weight and turn into a black hole in about four hours and pulls us in with it.

KELVIN: She'll come back.

SARTORIUS: No, she won't.

KELVIN: Why would you let her to do that?

SARTORIUS: It's not human, Kelvin. Whatever it is, it's not human, and I am threatened by that. Evolution-of- the-species-at-stake threatened. And I want to win. I want humans to win. So I am killing it before it kills me.

KELVIN: You fucking bastard...

SARTORIUS: Whose side are you on?

KELVIN: You murdered her!

SARTORIUS: Kelvin, she begged me. I had a short- range version of the destabilizer prototype, a miniature with a range of a few meters. She walked into it and disappeared. She was gone.

KELVIN: You killed her!

SARTORIUS: Not her. It.

KELVIN: Meaning Man can do whatever the fuck it wants?

SARTORIUS: Yes.

KELVIN: That's fantastic.

SARTORIUS: Why did you agree to come here?

KELVIN: No. There's no behavior modification.

SARTORIUS: She reappeared exactly as she had before?

KELVIN: They shouldn't let people like you into space.

SARTORIUS: Just so you know: I'm not going back until I understand what it is. I am going to figure out what it is, make it stop, and then I will go home.

KELVIN: Listen --

SARTORIUS: We're done. Oh, I should tell you, I don't trust Snow. There's something wrong with him.

KELVIN: What happened to Gibarian?

SARTORIUS: Didn't you talk to Snow?

KELVIN: I want to hear your version.

SARTORIUS: Who, here, could possibly care what you want? At best, you're Employee of the Month for the highest bidder in the Solaris auction. They have no idea what's going on up here. They've never even been in space. And I'm supposed to listen to you?

KELVIN: I am here to recover this mission, report my findings, and make a recommendation. Now: What happened to him?

SARTORIUS: The same thing that could happen to any of us.

KELVIN: Where's his body?

SARTORIUS: In the lab. With her, probably.

KELVIN: Her? Who are you talking about?

SARTORIUS: You have to give me your word you won't come in. Then I'll come out.

KELVIN: All right.

KELVIN: When did this happen?

SNOW: Oh, right away. That's why you never saw me with anyone. You should've noticed that. I miss him, though. I think I made a mistake.

KELVIN: Jesus...

SNOW: But I can't leave with you. I won't make it.

KELVIN: Maybe you can.

KELVIN: What's wrong with you? We need your help.

SNOW: I won't be making the trip.

SNOW: Who are you trying to please? Yourself? Her? Which her, this one or that one. Can you face both? We are in a situation that is beyond morality. So: Leave with her. You'll see the transformation.

KELVIN: Into what?

SNOW: You'll see her die, that's all. They're mortal, despite what she told you. She will die. Then what will you do?

KELVIN: I love her.

SNOW: You do, you don't. She's willing to give her life, you're willing to give yours, it's touching and magnificent, anything you want but -- this isn't the place for it. Don't you see? No, you don't.

SNOW: What do you want?

KELVIN: I want you to get Sartorius to abandon his plan.

SNOW: What plan?

KELVIN: Just get him to stop.

SNOW: What do you want to do, leave the station with her?

KELVIN: Yes.

SNOW: Kelvin, she'll disintegrate. You don't believe me? Let's radio that shuttle pod you launched -- better yet, let's go get it. I've charted it's trajectory, only take a few hours...

KELVIN: Her oxygen would have run out.

SNOW: Maybe she doesn't need any. Should we check?

KELVIN: She knows everything. She knows who she is.

SNOW: She knows everything? Does she know she came once before and you put her in --

KELVIN: No.

SNOW: Why do you think she hasn't suggested that? It's the most obvious solution: Escape. She knows she can't leave here --

KELVIN: Get out --

SNOW: Oh, this one you love? What about the first one, the one you fucked and then put into a rocket and blasted into space? You didn't love her?

SNOW: What happened?

KELVIN: She drank liquid oxygen.

KELVIN: They come when you sleep.

SNOW: That's right. And we all have to sleep, eventually.

SNOW: We can liquidate the station. Take the Athena back.

KELVIN: No.

SNOW: Of course, when we return, we'll be regarded as lunatics if we tell the truth. We'll chalk it up to isolation, collective derangement.

KELVIN: I've never heard you express any desire to leave before now. Why now?

SNOW: Well, I think we're reaching the point of diminishing returns here, right? Certainly it's learning more about us than we'll ever learn about it.

KELVIN: But why is it doing what it's doing? Given it's resources, it could have done anything. Presented me with your double, and you with mine.

SNOW: Perhaps it did.

KELVIN: Human beings can die.

SNOW: But they are human. They certainly become human with incredible speed. First they're like they were in our memory, but then they fill in on their own. DNA doesn't determine the hundreds of trillions of connections that occur in the brain, it's not dense enough. They build up with experience.

SNOW: You're unnerved because you've spent your whole life thinking nobody is looking over you, and suddenly your subconscious is an open book. We are, for the first time, experiencing changes in natural reality by a force not our own. That proves that --

KELVIN: -- we are not sure of that. We are not sure we aren't all hallucinating.

SNOW: If God is beyond our comprehension, and she -- -- is here for reasons that can't be understood, isn't God here?

KELVIN: Not necessarily.

SNOW: Stop equivocating! Unbelievable, how you equivocate! You, the atheist, you're more dogmatic than any holy person I've ever seen! This is happening, Kelvin. Wake up.

KELVIN: Consciousness is enough, that's all I've saying. Consciousness should be enough for anybody.

SNOW: Who are you trying to convince?

KELVIN: Is it being deliberately cruel, you mean? I don't think so.

SNOW: I'm just trying to find an explanation for the continual reappearances.

KELVIN: When you cut yourself pounding the door, did it hurt?

SNOW: Kelvin, you awake?

KELVIN: What is it?

SNOW: Can you meet me and Sartorius on B deck in an hour?

KELVIN: Why?

SNOW: Just a little strategy session. But in person this time.

SNOW: What will you say?

KELVIN: To who?

SNOW: What are you going to report back to Earth?

KELVIN: I don't know.

SNOW: An enormous amount of money changed hands to get control of this project. We are in little danger of being left alone for long. You'll need to do something. Otherwise they'll be sending someone out to recover you.

KELVIN: Gibarian said he thinks Solaris should be destroyed.

SNOW: That's ludicrous. This is contact. We have found God. The only issue is figuring out how to prove this in a way that will make sense back on Earth. So how will we describe it, if we choose to describe it at all?

SNOW: She has materialized from your memory of her. What was her name?

KELVIN: Rheya.

SNOW: It started about three months ago. Right after the government sold the expedition. We were ready to go home.

KELVIN: Will she come back?

SNOW: Probably.

KELVIN: I wish you'd told me.

SNOW: Told you what?

SNOW: Personally, I think it's God. At least, it fits my definition.

KELVIN: And professionally?

SNOW: I'm not sure. It started with Gibarian. He locked himself in his room and refused to talk except through a crack in the door. He covered the video lens. Obviously we thought he was having a nervous breakdown. I don't know why he didn't tell us he had somebody in there. By this time, we were getting visitors, too. He was desperately trying to figure it out. Day and night. Who was she?

KELVIN: My wife.

SNOW: Dead?

SNOW: Was her breakfast conversation that bad?

KELVIN: Shut up.

SNOW: I told you, try to stay calm. You're supposed to be the psychologist of the bunch.

KELVIN: What was it?

SNOW: How much sleep do you need?

KELVIN: How much sleep?

SNOW: How long can you go without sleep?

KELVIN: That depends.

SNOW: Well, when you do go to sleep: barricade your door.

KELVIN: Tell me. I won't think you're insane.

SNOW: Oh, that's a relief.

KELVIN: Is there anybody else here?

SNOW: Why, who did you see?

KELVIN: Gibarian warned me. He left me a message.

SNOW: Who was it?

KELVIN: She was real. Where did she come from?

SNOW: I can't talk just now. I'm too tired.

KELVIN: Where's Sartorius?

SNOW: In his lab. He won't let you in.

KELVIN: He'll let me in.

SNOW: Kelvin, if you see anything unusual...

SNOW: You didn't bring any chocolate, did you?

KELVIN: What?

SNOW: I love chocolate. I realized just yesterday how much I love it. I thought maybe, if they let you bring personal effects, you might have snuck some through, because... well, I've been thinking about it.

KELVIN: What's wrong? What happened to Gibarian?

SNOW: He's dead.

KELVIN: How?

KELVIN: How can you be here...

RHEYA: Shhhh. Just stay with me. Stay with me. Everything is forgiven. Everything.

KELVIN: Where did you go before?

RHEYA: When?

KELVIN: Last night. You were talking to someone in the corridor.

RHEYA: You must have been dreaming.

RHEYA: I've decided that if it is God, it's a sick God. Its ambitions exceed its powers, but it doesn't realize it. It's created a situation without a goal, and I hate that. A God whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose. And us? We would have to have "an arrangement". An unspoken understanding that I am not human. How can I not hate something that does that?

KELVIN: Please. Don't.

KELVIN: What does it want?

RHEYA: I don't know. Something. Anything.

RHEYA: What are you taking?

KELVIN: A sleeping pill. Do you want yours?

KELVIN: Is that really what you want?

RHEYA: I want to stop taking those pills.

KELVIN: I wish you wouldn't.

RHEYA: They do something to me. It's hard to think straight.

KELVIN: I think they help.

RHEYA: I have consciousness, but I am not mortal. Don't you see why I'm going crazy?

KELVIN: You have to remember that I love you, that's all that matters --

RHEYA: I can't --

KELVIN: It put you here. I'll admit it, it acted like a God and put you here, put you into my consciousness. I was asleep, and it put you into my dream. I saw your mouth. And there you were. Whether you've been sent here to make me happy or punish me, it doesn't matter. The decision we make now is all that matters. Stay with me.

RHEYA: Am I really her?

KELVIN: I don't know anymore. All I see is you.

RHEYA: What do I have to do to stop it?

KELVIN: I want you here.

RHEYA: You're lying.

KELVIN: You exist here. I keep telling you.

RHEYA: That's impossible. I'm not Rheya.

KELVIN: Who are you, then?

RHEYA: I... I am Rheya. But I am not the woman you loved ten years ago.

KELVIN: Yes, you are --

RHEYA: Did you hear what Gibarian said? I'm not a human being. I'm an instrument. I came from your memory and your imagination and I will torture you no matter what. Even if I remain passive. That's when I drank the... I was going mad. It felt like there was no body underneath my skin. There was something else. An illusion. But I could feel my heart beating, and I remembered you tested my blood. Is it like yours?

KELVIN: Yes. I told you. It was exactly like mine.

RHEYA: But then I would be dead now.

RHEYA: Don't do this. I am literally begging you not to do this. Chris.

KELVIN: You should have told me.

RHEYA: It wouldn't have made any difference.

KELVIN: Thank you.

RHEYA: Chris, I had to. I had to. I didn't think you'd react like this.

KELVIN: Neither did I.

RHEYA: You never said you wanted one.

KELVIN: I never said I didn't.

RHEYA: Chris --

KELVIN: I can't stay here.

RHEYA: Chris, please. Chris, I'm serious. I won't make it.

KELVIN: Then you won't make it.

KELVIN: Listen: I don't care about anything but the fact that you are here. You are her, you are Rheya.

RHEYA: I'm disgusting.

KELVIN: No.

RHEYA: You're lying. I'm not human.

KELVIN: Rheya, I am not going back. I'm staying here with you.

RHEYA: Then you'll die.

KELVIN: I want every second I can get with you.

RHEYA: I'm not Rheya. You've always known that.

KELVIN: Rheya --

RHEYA: Don't call me that.

RHEYA: How could it be so cruel? How could it torture us like this?

KELVIN: I don't think it knows it's torturing us. It's just watching.

KELVIN: That won't happen again. We're different.

RHEYA: How can I tell? You've seen both of me. I only know what you're like here. You're all I know. There is no "You" from before.

RHEYA: What's happening to us?

KELVIN: It's all right.

RHEYA: Please don't lie. I told you before, I don't know how I came to be here. Whatever you think you can't say to me, I need to hear you say it.

KELVIN: I love you.

RHEYA: Don't. I'm the one at risk here. If we're playing out what happened before, I won't survive.

RHEYA: What's wrong?

KELVIN: Gibarian. He was here.

RHEYA: You said he was dead.

KELVIN: He is. But he was here...

RHEYA: Do you want to stay here?

KELVIN: Do you?

RHEYA: If you're here.

RHEYA: I have these strange thoughts, I don't know where they come from. I can't explain it.

KELVIN: Neither can I. Not any of it. There's no reference point for what's going on; it's never happened before. It's a clean break in the fabric of the Universe; a gap. There is nothing to do but experience it, moment-to- moment, and not let it destroy us.

RHEYA: But that's what happened before.

KELVIN: Not this time.

RHEYA: You don't want me.

KELVIN: Rheya.

RHEYA: That's what you were saying. I heard what you were saying.

KELVIN: For a reason that neither of us understand, you are forced to stay near me. That's all I know right now.

RHEYA: You're the coward.

KELVIN: Don't debate him; he'll say anything.

RHEYA: I'm just as human as you. I see, I hear, I touch, and I feel just like you do.

KELVIN: Can you sleep?

RHEYA: I don't think do. It's not sleep; it's something else. It's all around me.

KELVIN: Those are dreams.

RHEYA: But we fought.

KELVIN: Yes. Especially toward the end.

RHEYA: Why did she do it?

KELVIN: You... she said I didn't love her.

RHEYA: Was she right?

KELVIN: No. I love you.

RHEYA: I love you, too.

KELVIN: I'm sure there are worse people to talk to, but I don't know who they are.

RHEYA: I'm just trying to understand what's going on.

KELVIN: Who have you been talking to?

RHEYA: Sartorius.

KELVIN: When? When I'm asleep?

KELVIN: What are you talking about?

RHEYA: That I am not Rheya. That Rheya died. Killed herself. I'm different.

KELVIN: What's wrong.

RHEYA: You don't love me.

KELVIN: Stop.

RHEYA: Do I really feel like... I am...?

KELVIN: Yes. Yes.

RHEYA: I'm glad.

RHEYA: Sartorius wants to destroy it.

KELVIN: Well. He doesn't think it's God, but for different reasons than me. He's thinking: If I can figure out how to make it stop, than I am smarter than it is, and therefore it cannot be God.

RHEYA: He has a point.

KELVIN: He does have a point. That's just not the way I'd like to see it proven.

RHEYA: You feel sorry for Solaris, or for me?

KELVIN: It's a violent response to something we haven't figured out. Don't let the cowardly demeanor fool you: He is ruthless. Unblinking in his prejudice.

RHEYA: It was obvious from the way he first looked at me.

RHEYA: What does Snow think you should do?

KELVIN: Snow thinks we shouldn't leave until we figure out a way to document it, to prove its existence to the planet Earth. This is hilarious: He thinks it's God, but he wants it to sit still for a photograph so he can show the folks back home.

RHEYA: You sure say "God" a lot when we're doing it.

KELVIN: I know. I'm putting that in my next report.

RHEYA: I like that too.

KELVIN: How could she not be real? I can smell her, taste her. She does exactly what she did... it's not possible.

RHEYA: You know, I've decided: I'm just gonna believe what you believe about this whole Solaris thing, it'll make life so much easier; the little wife agreeing with her big, strong husband. You must get such a headache thinking about those Great Big Problems all day.

RHEYA: Do you have any idea how much I like fucking you?

KELVIN: I think so.

RHEYA: Good. Because I want you to know. I really like fucking you.

RHEYA: I can't help feeling that I'm cheating when I take them.

KELVIN: It's genetics. You know this. You know where it comes from. There is nothing wrong with uncrossing a few crossed wires.

RHEYA: Why did you say those things?

KELVIN: I don't know. I couldn't understand why you didn't tell me.

RHEYA: What happened to us, exactly?

KELVIN: You don't know?

RHEYA: Thinking what you were doing and saying, just being consumed by thinking of you. I loved it so much, that feeling.

KELVIN: I did too.

RHEYA: Scared. No, not scared. Wary. Like I was something to be... her guard went up. I was a threat. Now I know why. She was afraid she'd be seen. That I would see her for the self-obsessed neurotic that she was. I think she thought she had a few more years of being on a pedestal. But that's the cycle, right? I knew a little more than she did, she knew a little more than her mother, and on and on. I guess that's part of the reason why --

KELVIN: I know. I know. We don't have to talk about that.

RHEYA: I would have these -- I don't know how to describe them -- visions, when I was younger. Maybe not visions, but like these waking dream states. Time would just collapse, I would be inside time. I would stare at a second hand on a clock until it stopped. Freaky stuff.

KELVIN: How old were you?

RHEYA: Seven, eight. So one day my mother catches me sort of staring off into space, and she asks me what I'm doing, and I start trying to explain to her, about this state that I can put myself in, and this look comes over her face.

KELVIN: What kind of look?

KELVIN: Where've you been?

RHEYA: I been thinking about how much I hate you.

RHEYA: What happened?

KELVIN: You were trying to break down the door. Do you know why?

RHEYA: When I saw you were gone I got scared.

RHEYA: But what if Solaris is what there was before The Big Bang?

KELVIN: As I said, it is beyond our comprehension.

RHEYA: As I said, then it's God, right?

RHEYA: Is it a planet?

KELVIN: Not exactly. It exists in a continuum that wasn't proven until ten years ago, a higher mathematical dimension superimposed on top of the Universe. An infinite number of them, in fact. It was a violation of all of our various laws regarding the Universe, Space, or Space-Time. It was completely counter-intuitive. We had to unlearn everything.

RHEYA: Is it intelligent?

KELVIN: Intelligent beyond our comprehension.

RHEYA: Then it's God, right?

KELVIN: It's something.

RHEYA: You still don't believe in God?

KELVIN: The whole idea of God was dreamed up by a silly animal with a small brain called Man. Even the limits we put on it are human limits. It can do this, it can do that! It designs, it creates!

RHEYA: Even a God that wasn't active, that just created something and stood back and watched?

KELVIN: You're talking about a man in a white beard again. You're ascribing human characteristics to something that isn't human. Human beings look for causes and patterns. How could we know what Solaris is up to, if anything?

KELVIN: What do you remember?

RHEYA: What do you mean?

KELVIN: Do you remember Beethoven? The Beatles? Movies, books, restaurants, friends?

RHEYA: Yes. But not until you mentioned them. As soon as you said those things, I remembered them. And they have associations that make me think of other things I remember. It's like filling up.

KELVIN: You're better when you take them.

RHEYA: I know, I know. But still, somehow I don't feel better.

KELVIN: All right. How about I feel better when you take them?

RHEYA: You want to fuck her?

KELVIN: Stop it.

RHEYA: You behave as though you want to fuck her.

KELVIN: Rheya. Not here.

RHEYA: And I just want to know if I'm crazy or not -- if what I think is happening is actually happening. Or am I one of those people, those women, who are blind to what's going on? Who pretend not to see their husband's attention toward another woman?

KELVIN: Let's go home.

RHEYA: You go home.

KELVIN: I am. Please come with me. I don't want to do this here.

RHEYA: You talk like an actor.

RHEYA: Not a very happy poem.

KELVIN: You didn't look very happy.

RHEYA: I wasn't.

KELVIN: And tonight?

RHEYA: Better.

KELVIN: "And Death Shall Have No Dominion".

RHEYA: Book?

KELVIN: Poem. Dylan Thomas. I thought of it when I saw you on the train.

RHEYA: My Thomas is a little rusty.

KELVIN: Rheya...

RHEYA: I want you inside me right now.

RHEYA: We're taking a flight?

KELVIN: Yes.

RHEYA: What are they?

KELVIN: To calm your anxiety.

RHEYA: To calm my anxiety.

RHEYA: Don't.

KELVIN: Why?

RHEYA: I don't know. I can't be alone.

KELVIN: I'll be right back.

KELVIN: I need to see Snow.

RHEYA: I'll go with you.

KELVIN: I'll just be a minute.

KELVIN: Oh, God. I'm awake.

RHEYA: Yes.

SARTORIUS: You want it coming back with us?

SNOW: You go ahead. Of what I remember about Earth... it's all one thing now. Everything's a blur. I like distinctions.

SNOW: I got rid of him. I wanted to see if... I wanted to be the only one. I wanted to be Snow.

SARTORIUS: Fuck me. I knew it.

SARTORIUS: Snow, get up here, now.

SNOW: I'm not Snow.

SNOW: Gibarian was under enormous --

SARTORIUS: Gibarian was helpless. It's very simple: Man created the science that resulted in the discovery of Solaris, and the ship that brought us here.

SARTORIUS: A recoil, with no compensating mechanism.

SNOW: And when a given situation no longer corresponds to the normal faculties of the... original, the visitor suffers some sort of disconnected consciousness.

SARTORIUS: Followed by non-human manifestations.

SNOW: Are the actions of Solaris premeditated?

SARTORIUS: They are not autonomous individuals and they're not actual persons. They are projections materializing from our minds, based on a given individual.

SNOW: It's an experiment.

SARTORIUS: We thought you'd be alone. We want to talk about...

SNOW: We want to talk freely.

SNOW: He won't do it.

SARTORIUS: Why do you say that?

SNOW: He won't.