In the first years of the 21st century...
the Third World War broke out.
Those of us who survived knew...
mankind could never survive...
the Fourth...
that our own volatile natures...
could simply no longer be risked.
So we have created a new arm of the law...
the Grammaton Cleric...
whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate...
the true source of Man's inhumanity to Man:
His ability...
to feel.
Police!
You know what to do!
All the windows! Shoot them off! Fire! Now!
Get down!
Cleric. Lights out. Maybe more than a dozen inside.
- Put the doors down. Blow the bombs. - Yes, sir.
Go.
- Where is he? - Shut up.
- Anybody get him? Did anybody? - Shut up.
Listen.
- This is it. - Where?
There.
It's real.
Burn it.
Why didn't you just leave it for the evidentiary team to collect and log?
They miss things sometimes.
I thought I'd take it down myself.
Get it done properly.
How long, Preston... till all this is gone?
Till we burn every last bit of it?
Resources are tight.
We'll get it all eventually.
Libria, I congratulate you.
At last, peace reigns in the heart of man.
At last, war is but a word...
whose meaning faints from our understanding.
At last...
we are home.
Librians, there is a disease in the heart of man.
Its symptom is hate.
Its symptom is anger.
Its symptom is rage.
Its symptom is war.
The disease...
is human emotion.
But, Libria, I congratulate you...
for there is a cure for this disease.
At the cost of the dizzying highs of human emotion...
we have suppressed its abysmal lows.
And you, as a society, have embraced this cure:
Prozium.
Now, we are at peace with ourselves...
and humankind is one. War is gone.
Hate... a memory.
We are our own conscience now.
And it is this conscience...
that guides us to rate EC-1O...
for emotional content...
all those things that might tempt us to feel again...
and destroy them!
Librians, you have won...
against all odds and your own natures!
You have survived!
Every time we come from the Nether to the city...
...reminds me why we do what we do. - It does?
I beg your pardon?
It does?
The following items have been rated EC-1O, condemned:
Seven works of two-dimensional illustrative material...
seven disks of musical content...
20 interactive strategy computer programs.
Thank you for coming, Cleric. I assume you know who I am.
Yes, sir, of course. You are Vice-Council Dupont...
of the 3rd. Councillary of the Tetragrammaton, Father's voice.
Quite frankly, Cleric, I'm told that you are nearly a prodigal student...
knowing almost instantly if someone is feeling.
- I've a good record, sir. - What do you imagine that is?
I'm not sure, Vice-Council.
Somehow...
I'm able, on some level, to sense...
how an offender thinks, to...
put myself in their position.
If you had ceased your interval?
If you were a sense offender?
- I suppose you could say that, sir. - You're a family man, Cleric?
Yes, sir, a boy and a girl. The boy's in the monastery himself...
...on path to becoming a cleric. - Good. And the mother?
She was arrested and incinerated for sense offense 4 years ago, sir.
- By yourself? - No, sir, by another.
How did you... feel about that?
Sorry. I don't fully understand, sir.
How did you feel?
I didn't feel anything.
Really? How is it that you came to miss it?
I...
I've asked myself that same question, sir. I don't know.
A nearly unforgivable lapse, Cleric.
I trust you'll be more vigilant in the future.
Yes, sir.
Every time we come from the Nether to the city...
reminds me why we do what we do.
It does?
Every time we come from the Nether to the city...
... reminds me why we do what we do. - It does?
It does?
Prosecutorial evidence for A&R 13689O. I need it.
It was late this afternoon. May not have showed up in the records yet.
Sorry. Nothing has been logged and nothing's pending under that entry.
It was an item brought in personally by Grammaton Errol Partridge.
- Check again. - Sir...
Cleric Partridge has not entered anything in for weeks.
You're mistaken. It was a book of some kind.
Cleric...
there's nothing.
Thank you.
He's been passing into the Nether every night for the last 2 weeks.
We assumed it was enforcement-related.
You always knew.
"But I, being poor Have only my dreams
I've spread my dreams Under your feet
Tread softly Because you tread on my dreams"
I assume you dream, Preston.
I'll do what I can to see they go easy on you.
We both know they never go easy.
- Then I'm sorry. - No, you're not.
You don't seem to know the meaning.
It's just a vestigial word for a feeling you've never felt.
Don't you see, Preston?
It's gone.
Everything that makes us what we are, traded away.
There's no war.
No murder.
- What is it you think we do? - No.
You've been with me, you've seen how it can be, the jealousy...
the rage...
"A heavy cost
I pay it gladly"
Don't.
You and your partner were close?
I hope you're as pleased to be assigned me, as I am the placement.
I was told this would be a career-making advancement.
I'm like you, Cleric. Intuitive.
Sometimes I know a person's feeling before they know it themselves.
Cleric...
I can only hope one day to be as uncompromising as you.
Good night.
The late 20th century...
saw the fortuitous and simultaneous rise...
of two synergistic political-psychological sciences.
The first, the revolutionary precept of the hate-crime...
- John? - Yes?
I saw Bobby Taylor crying today.
He doesn't know, but I saw.
Do you think I should report him?
Unquestionably.
... of the single inescapable fact...
that mankind united with infinitely greater purpose in pursuit of war...
than they ever did in pursuit of peace.
"But I, being poor
Have only my dreams
I've spread my dreams Under your feet
Tread softly
Because you tread on my dreams"
Obey us and don't move! Don't move! Comply! Comply!
- Stop! Stop where you are! - Get down!
Don't shoot! This is lawful, we have a warrant for your wife's arrest!
She's charged with sense offense!
Get her! Get her off him now!
Remember me.
Librians...
awaken. Awaken to triumph again...
in the face of yet another day.
Another step...
What are you doing?
I said, what are you doing?
I accidentally dropped my...
morning interval.
I took it out before I brushed my teeth.
I never take it out before I brush my teeth.
Then you'll go by Equilibrium, log the loss and get a replacement.
Yes. Of course.
Your new partner called. He says he'll pick you up at ten for the NR.
I hope you don't mind. I took the liberty of telling him...
you'll be at Equilibrium replacing your dose.
No, of course not. That was the right thing to do.
Stop that.
Due to terrorist activity, this site is temporarily closed.
Proceed to the Equilibrium Center in Sector 8A.
Due to terrorist activity, this site is temporarily closed.
Proceed to the Equilibrium Center in Sector 8A.
More than punctual, Cleric. Hop in.
How were the lines? I'm surprised you got your interval so quickly.
No, they're... they're fine today.
Maybe I'll drop by later. Get my interval adjusted.
You're expecting resistance?
That's something you'll find about me, Cleric. I'm a wary person.
Cautious by nature.
Always expecting the worst.
- You can't do this. You cannot! - There's nothing we can't do.
How long have you been off the dose?
Look at you!
Look at you.
The mirror's frame's illegal. Destroy it.
We have suppression. We're making entry.
Status deployment. Selecting catalog, illegal art.
You're gonna burn it, aren't you?
Eventually.
However, you couldn't have accumulated all this by yourself.
They'll all be sorted and examined.
We'll discover who your confederates are.
Gun!
We need her.
- What's your name? - O'Brien, Mary.
Well, Mary...
you can either tell the technicians of the Palace of Justice...
or you can tell me now.
Who are your friends?
I'm wondering if you have any idea at all what that word means.
Friend.
There's nothing you don't feel?
How about guilt?
Let me ask you something.
Why are you alive?
I'm alive...
I live...
to safeguard the continuity of this great society.
- To serve Libria. - It's circular.
You exist to continue your existence. What's the point?
- What's the point of your existence? - To feel.
'Cause you've never done it, you can never know it...
but it's as vital as breath...
and without it, without love, without anger, without sorrow...
breath is just a clock, ticking.
Then I have no choice...
but to remand you to the Palace of Justice for processing.
Processing.
You mean execution, don't you?
Processing.
The gun-kata.
Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights...
the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution...
of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically predictable element.
The gun-kata treats the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position...
representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage...
on the maximum number of opponents, while keeping the defender clear...
of the statistically traditional trajectories of return fire.
By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise...
by no less than 12O°%.
The difference of a 63°% increased lethal proficiency...
makes the master of the gun-kata an adversary not to be taken lightly.
Without love...
breath is just a clock...
ticking.
Prozium. The great, the panacea.
Opiate of our masses, glue of our great society.
Salve and salvation, it has delivered us from pathos...
from sorrow, from the deepest chasms of melancholy and hate.
With it, we anesthetize grief, annihilate jealousy...
obliterate rage, but those sister impulses towards joy...
love and elation, are anesthetized in stride.
Accept this fair sacrifice...
for we embrace Prozium, in its unifying fullness...
and all that it has done to make us great!
- Good morning, Cleric. - Good morning.
... and that intrinsically, humans, as creatures of the Earth...
would draw inherently always back to one thing:
War.
And thus we see, to correct another symptom of the disease itself...
we have sought to shrug off individuality...
replacing it with conformity...
replacing it...
with sameness, with unity...
allowing each man, woman and child in this great society...
to lead... identical lives.
The concept of identic environment construction...
allows each of us to head confidently into each moment...
with the secure knowledge it has been lived before.
What are you doing?
I'm rearranging my desk.
You didn't like the way it was before?
I had no feelings about it. I'm merely attempting to optimize.
Sense offenders. Holdup in the Nether.
We estimate 5O men, sir!
Intelligence tells us they're all fully armed!
This is the group that bombed the Prozium factories!
- You clean, we'll sweep! - Yes, sir!
Move, move, move, go! Go!
Cover me. I'm going in.
Nice grab, Cleric.
"Ludwig van Beethoven".
Cleric.
Why didn't you leave that for the evidentiary team to collect and log?
They miss things sometimes.
I'm gonna take it in myself. Make sure it gets done properly.
You know, Preston...
if we keep burning all the contraband...
eventually there won't be anything left to burn.
What'll that be for men like us?
Sir!
We've got something out back!
They were defended by women and children. We put them down easily.
This isn't the first time we've seen this.
Why do they keep these animals?
What do they... do they eat them?
- What do you want me to do, sir? - Exterminate them, of course.
- All right. Let's do it. - No.
What's wrong, Cleric?
Nothing.
Grab it! Grab it!
Sir, toss it back in. I'll finish it off.
- Give it to me, sir. - Give it to him. He'll finish it.
Wait!
It seems to me that...
some of these animals ought to be tested for disease.
If there's an epidemic in the Nether, it's best we know about it!
I don't quite follow your logic, Cleric.
They were Resistance. They could've lead us to the Underground.
But instead of apprehension and interrogation they were slaughtered.
Yes, but Cleric, given the circumstances...
Father decreed that there will be no more process for sense offenders.
They are either to be shot on sight or incinerated without a trial.
But it's countered a law! You'll remember the Council...
But it's not the will of the Council, it is the will of Father...
and he is law.
Sir...
without the logic of process, is it not just mayhem...
what we have worked so hard to eradicate?
You must understand, Preston...
that while you and even I may not always agree with it...
it is not the message that is important, it's our obedience to it.
Father's will. Call it faith.
You have it, I assume.
Yes.
- I have it. - Good.
Confiscated evidence X23T45.
Mary O'Brien.
Cleric John Preston passing into the Nether. Enforcement-related.
Thank you, sir.
I don't know what else to do with you.
Go on. Go on.
Go!
Fine, but you're going back in the trunk.
Okay.
Here.
Step away from the vehicle.
Step away from the vehicle!
This is your last warning! Step away from the vehicle!
- Identification! - I'm a cleric.
- You're on official police? - Identification!
- It's in my coat. - Where's the coat?
Where is it?
- I don't have it. - Unidentified individuals...
...are subject to destruction. - You're making a very big mistake.
- I'm a Grammaton cleric, 1st. Class. - Search the vehicle.
- No. There's nothing in it. - Search it!
- Clear, sir. - Keys to the trunk.
I'm trying to tell you, I have a pre-Dawn combustion witness.
Captain, this is a waste of my time. My name is John Preston.
- I'm the highest-ranking cleric. - Wait!
Stand off.
Sorry. I didn't recognize you, sir.
- Okay. You're just doing your job. - Thank you.
- We'll escort you back to the gate. - Thanks, sir.
Animals. Grounds're full of them.
- Sounds like it came from the trunk. - Impossible.
Just give me my keys and I'll be on my way.
Captain, I'm asking you one last time.
Don't do this.
- Down on your knees! - Down on your knees!
- I said, down! - On the ground!
- Comply! - Shoot him! Shoot him!
No!
Fuck!
- What? - Oh, shit! Shoot him, shoot him!
Always practicing, Cleric?
I guess that's why you're the best.
Maybe I'm just better.
Something on your mind?
- Why do you ask? - Intuitive arts, Cleric!
It's my job to know what you're thinking!
So, then... what am I thinking?
About the murders in the Nether last night...
and if they know who did it.
Am I close?
So, tell me. Do they know?
There are theories.
I have one or two of my own, but at the moment I'm not pretty much sure.
I'm glad it happened.
- Why? - Because now Father and Council...
have decreed an acceleration in the crackdown on offenders.
Whoever did it...
all they accomplished was a quicker end of the Resistance.
It's gonna be a massacre, Cleric.
I came to tell you there's a raid in the Nether. Sector 7.
So get ready.
That door behind you.
Go.
Go, damn you!
Get out of here, goddamn it! If you don't, you're dead!
- Don't, he'll shoot us in the back! - If I wanted to, I'd shoot you now.
- Damn you! Follow me! Now! - Let's go!
There will be no detention for any purpose.
All prisoners and apprehendings are to be put down.
Look out!
Cleric, what's happening? We heard gunshots!
Go!
What are you doing? Cleric! They were Resistance fighters!
Cleric!
He's a sense offender!
Cover all the quadrant!
What is this?
- What are you doing? - Nicely done, Cleric.
You drive them into the trap...
I close it.
The very definition of teamwork.
Don't you think?
Why don't you take the honors of the execution, Cleric?
- They should be interrogated. - Cleric...
Father's rulings are quite clear. Offenders are to be shot on sight.
- They have valuable information. - Cleric.
- They can be put to much better... - Cleric.
If your weapon's low, please use mine.
No.
I think, in the end...
it'll be better if you have it.
- Captain. - Yes, sir. Firing positions!
Ready!
Aim!
Fire!
- Sir. - Yes, Cleric?
You asked me to become Father's instrument against the Resistance.
I'm ready. Today...
I wish to show my faith.
I wish, with your permission...
to locate the Underground once and for all.
To destroy it?
- To destroy it. - Good. Do it.
I'm so...
so very sorry.
These are the possessions he had on him at the time of death.
- The illegal ones will be burned. - Good.
Errol Partridge.
- This should mean something to me? - He was a cleric. You knew him.
News bulletin: I'm a sense offender. I don't hang around with the Cleric.
I want to know about him.
Well, I suggest you go ask him...
but I understand that he's dead...
killed by your friends at the Tetragrammaton.
Not by my friends.
By me.
You were lovers.
And thus, it is in the writing of the Father...
that we find our greatest...
Good afternoon, sir. What will it be for you?
The latest couple of "The Insensits"?
- Revised edition of the Manifesto? - Errol Partridge.
What do you know about him?
- I beg your pardon? - Everyone out. Now.
Let me ask you one more time. Errol Partridge.
- What do you know about him? - I'm sure this must be some...
- You're an offender! - I'm not!
No? Then why are you so scared of me?
Now you will tell me everything you know about Errol Partridge...
or I will have a wagon come to take you to the Hall of Destruction...
for summary combustion.
- I really don't know. - Speak!
He... he'd come in here with a fellow named Jurgen.
- Why? - That's all I know, I swear.
Interesting.
We've been watching you, Preston.
You're Jurgen.
You're feeling.
Do you know why you came?
Welcome to the Underground.
Polygraph.
It detects fluctuations of human emotion.
We have to be sure.
Mary.
You're carrying in your left pocket a red ribbon spread with her scent.
You breathe it in sometimes, when you think there's no one to see.
But what you feel...
could only be satisfied by falling yourself into her.
She's scheduled for combustion.
Tomorrow.
I know.
You know, I was like you...
but the first thing you learn about emotion...
is that it has its price. Complete paradox...
but without restraint, without control...
emotion is chaos.
- But how is that different? - The difference being that...
when we want to feel, we can.
It's just that...
some of us...
some of us have to forego that luxury so that the rest can have it.
Some very few of us...
have to force ourselves not to feel.
Like me.
Like you.
What can I do?
You can kill Father.
Cleric John Preston, you are to come with us immediately.
- Cleric Preston. - Sir.
I've heard the most disturbing rumor.
- Rumor, sir? - Yes.
A rumor maintaining that one of us, one of the Cleric...
has secretly taken it upon himself to cease his dose...
that one of our elite number is actually feeling.
- Feeling, sir? - Are you playing with me, Cleric?!
No, sir.
This person, I'm told...
is actually attempting to contact the Resistance.
Now tell me, if you be so kind.
. How exactly have you been making use of your time of late?
Attempting to contact the Resistance, sir.
Attempting.
How is it that you intend to expose this traitor...
if all you do is attempt?
You're absolutely... 1OO°% right, sir.
Of course I am.
The Cleric is the final line of defense.
If the Resistance compromises it, we are doomed.
- Father is doomed. - I will redouble my efforts, sir...
to locate the Resistance, to find this traitor...
and bring them all to the Council's fair justice.
Do it.
What are you doing?
I...
I was checking to make sure you've been taking your interval.
And are you satisfied?
Yes, I am.
Good night, Dad.
I don't understand. My execution's set.
Why are you here?
Aren't you gonna dose?
My God.
What...
what'll you do?
I don't know.
5O sweepers, maybe more.
What about an audience? Can you somehow arrange one?
Father's never given one since the Upheaval. The danger's too great.
You trained your whole life to fight this kind of odds.
Even if I could...
make it through, what guarantee is there it'd accomplish anything...
...that anything would be different? - We have a network. It's very large.
Word comes that Father is dead, that the Council is leaderless...
bombs already planted'll be set off at Prozium clinics and factories.
If we can succeed in disrupting the supply for even one day...
one day, our cause will be won by human nature itself!
What about war, the cruelties that are all gone now?
Replaced by the Tetragrammaton?
Will you do it?
Yes.
Can you?
I don't know.
Don't...
Seeing her one last time will make it harder to do what you have to do.
File footage.
Viviana Preston.
Sentence and incineration.
- Auditory. - Viviana Preston...
for ceasing your interval, with the crimes of feeling...
you stand condemned to suffer annihilation in the city furnaces.
You will be taken there immediately and you will burn.
- The incineration's gone through?! - It's going through now!
Machine thermides priming. Machine thermides priming.
- I need to speak to this woman! - You're too late, sir.
Time lock's engaged. If we force the door, the thermides will explode.
... clear the area immediately.
All unauthorized personnel, clear the area immediately.
Thermides primed...
firing in ten seconds...
nine seconds...
eight seconds...
seven seconds...
six seconds...
five seconds...
thermides firing.
Cleric John Preston...
you are under arrest.
This man, this senior cleric...
has ceased the dose!
He is feeling!
He is the worm that has been eating at the core of our great society!
And I, I have brought him for your justice!
I told you I'd make my career with you, Preston.
Vice-Council, this man is guilty of consorting with sense offenders...
of having relations with a female...
of sense crime itself!
Dispatch the search team to the Cleric's quarter to search for...
That won't be necessary. If you run the trace record on his sidearm...
you'll find he was with the sweeper team when they were murdered.
Cleric, I assume you have something to say to me.
I know.
It's hard to believe...
that a cleric could turn his back on everything that he's been taught...
to become associated with the Resistance...
even becoming a champion in its Underground...
but it's true.
I promised I would bring you that man...
and I have.
- Cleric Brandt. - Sir.
The trace shows that it was your gun in the Nether with the sweepers.
That's impossible.
This is wrong.
I think, in the end...
it'll be better if you have it.
He switched them. He switched them!
- See? I have his gun now. - Of course you do.
- You took it when you arrested me. - What?
Take him to the Hall of Destruction for judgment and combustion.
Wait, wait, wait! I can explain this!
I'm not feeling! He is the one who's feeling!
This is a mistake!
Of course, since a complaint has been lodged...
law on the letter has that I allow a team to search your premises.
Do you think that's entirely necessary, or am I being too...
exacting?
As you say, sir, it's the law on the letter.
And it doesn't disturb you in the least...
...your colleague going to his end? - The only thing that disturbs me...
is that I am Father's instrument against the Underground, and yet...
I've never had the honor of meeting him.
But Cleric, you know that Father never grants an audience to anyone.
Even to the man who brings him the Resistance?
Sorry, sir. Just a formality.
The search team will be up momentarily.
Excellent. I've nothing to hide.
- The search team's already inside. - Excellent.
Looking for something?
If I were you, I'd be more careful in the future.
- How long? - Since Mom.
- And Lisa? - Of course.
- How did you know? - You forget...
it's my job to know what you're thinking.
Then you know what I'm gonna do now.
You have a message for the Vice-Council?
It's done.
I've located the Resistance.
Come now.
You'll have them all.
You're not to address Father unless first addressed by him.
Avoid eye contact. If you should break his personal security zone...
you will be immediately put down by snipers. Is that understood?
You'll surrender your firearm, of course, and then there's the test.
Test?
Yes. You didn't imagine we would risk exposing Father...
to even such a dedicated servant as yourself without...
first having tested you, did you?
Please.
Cleric. Your weapon, please.
Here.
Sit.
We'll start with a test question first.
More of a riddle, actually.
What'd you say is the easiest way to get a weapon away from a cleric?
You ask him for it.
I told you I'd make my career with you, Cleric.
Preston, Brandt's job was simple: To make you feel like you'd won.
To make you feel safe.
For years I tried to infiltrate an agent into the Underground.
Until it hit me.
In order to pass undetected into their midst...
in order to be trusted by them, my provocateur...
would have to think like them...
and would have to feel like them. But where to find such a man?
A man with a capacity to feel who didn't yet know it?
But... we've never met.
No?
Don't look so surprised, Preston.
Why should Father be more real than any other political puppet?
The real Father died years ago.
The Council simply elected me to pursue his paternal tradition.
And you, Preston, the supposed savior of the Resistance...
are now its destroyer...
and along with them, you've given me yourself...
calmly...
coolly...
entirely without incident.
No.
Shit.
Not without incident.
I'm coming.
You really should learn to knock.
How did it feel, Preston?
Mind the uniform, Cleric.
I plan to be wearing it for a long time.
Be careful, Preston.
You're treading on my dreams.
Wait! Wait!
Look at me. Look at me.
I'm alive.
I live, I breathe...
I feel.
Now that you know it, can you really take it?
Is it really worth the price?
I pay it gladly.
The following items have been rated EC-1O, condemned...
Two millennia ago...
in his conquest of the known world, Alexander The Great...
slaughtered more than one million human beings.
Three centuries later...
... murdered his own sister impregnated with his own child.
... have been rated EC-1O...
... rated, condemned, destroyed.
Items have been rated...