Original subtitles

An ordinary man, insurance executive, 45 years old, stumbles to his death on a

subway platform in New York City.

Or does he?

Unbeknownst to his wife or child, his brain is rescued from the accident scene

by a secret branch of the United States government and put into the body of an

artificially produced 26 -year -old man who has the strength of Superman, the

speed of Michael Jordan, and the grace of Fred Astaire.

The only catch... On the penalty of death, he can never let anyone from the

know he is still alive.

And that, my friend, is a problem.

For this man is desperately in love with his wife, his daughter, and his former

life.

Mr.

Wiseman.

It's cruel, you know. Well, sure, you're right.

But could you be more specific?

The way you read in front of me.

The paper, your report.

It's a little like barbecuing a steak in front of a guy who's starving, wouldn't

you say?

No.

You bastard.

You are the devil's incorrigible brother.

Your flattery will get you nowhere.

I mean it. The pleasure you seem to take in denying me... Denying you?

Is that what I've done?

Is that what I do?

Well, I suppose it would serve me right, wouldn't it?

If when I'm at death's door, some evil man like myself snatches me up, gives me

a second life, and in return insists that I never look at the sports section.

he could peek at Dear Abby.

Oh, that would sure show me, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

I have to mention that to my brother Satan at Easter dinner.

Fine. Make fun. I know what's going on.

You won't defend your position because you can't. It's indefensible.

No, you're wrong.

I won't defend my position because I don't have to.

Oh, no?

Well, just explain it to me.

Why can't I read, huh?

I mean, what is the problem with reading?

I mean, you get a paper every day, and then when you're done, you shred it. My

wife gives me a book, and when she's gone, you take it away.

I mean, my body's as hard as a rock, but my mind is turning into silly putty. I

mean, really, what is the problem?

Thanks a lot.

What you don't get is, for me, breathing is like breathing.

Mr. Wiseman. Words are like... Oxygen.

Yeah.

Do you know I courted my wife with letters?

She was still in school.

I was working in New York.

And back then, a long -distance phone call was... I mean, no one had that kind

of money.

So I wrote her these letters two or three times a week, and she wrote me.

Letters she still has.

Letters I still have.

Or had.

She still reads them, and I still read mine.

Or I did.

You look like you have rabies.

Kat,

and my little girl?

From the time she was old enough to sit up, we read to her.

Four and a half, and she could read aloud.

Four and a half.

Is she a good student?

Four and a half.

Time for bed, Mr. Wiseman.

Seriously, Doc.

Come on.

Forget the newspapers. Just the book.

Any book. That book that Lisa gave me.

Or anything.

Tom Sawyer.

Come on. Just give me a copy of Tom Sawyer.

Good night, Mr. Wiseman.

We only

want what we

can't have.

I could not have imagined how hard it would be to live without you all this

time.

Finish school and get to New York already, you lazy wench.

And I promise I will never leave you.

Finish school, get to New York already, you lazy wench. And I promise I will

never leave you. Never be without you. Never leave you alone.

Love, Michael.

P .S. My friend Roger thinks he can get me an interview with Grand Empire

Insurance. Now.

If I can only remember how to tie a necktie.

Heather? You awake at school?

Yeah, I'm up.

I'm up, I'm up, I'm up, I'm up.

All right.

If you want me to drop you off, you have to be ready to leave by 7 .30.

There's that appointment with your guidance counselor at 7 .45, and I don't

to be late.

I wonder what she wants to meet me for anyway.

You have any idea what it's about?

I told you, Mom. I have no idea.

Should have gotten your report card by now.

You know why I haven't gotten that report card in the mail?

Have you no shame?

With regard to what?

Never mind.

So what are we doing? Where are we headed?

We're jumping from the barbecue into the steakhouse.

Allegorically speaking, that is.

Talk English.

We're going to a library.

No kidding.

You've changed your mind? Decided to let me do a little light reading instead of

heavy lifting?

Not really.

We're going to a scientific library. A medical archive.

Most of my non -classified papers, research journals, and studies are

there. Where other scientists and medical researchers can have access to

They called me this morning.

Asked that I come by.

Something they wanted to show me.

I assumed you'd appreciate the opportunity to take a ride, get out on a

beautiful spring day.

Wow. You are thoughtful.

A scientific library.

And I always worried I'd never get to see one of those.

We first realized there was a problem on Saturday when a student came in to

review your case studies on phantom sensory experience in artificial limbs.

took him to the Morris Archive, and we took down one of your case studies.

Well, let me just show you.

Wow. It's been a long time.

I saw the movie.

Open it up. Look inside.

What?

What's happened here?

Did the ink somehow fade?

Is this a joke?

That's what I thought at first, but then I realized, a joke on who?

And it was a Saturday, so there was nothing to do. There was no one to tell.

It wasn't until Monday that we realized it was the whole row.

That's the thing with his writing. It just doesn't stay with you.

How is this possible?

These are all original bound copies of my work.

Exactly how many volumes are affected?

That's what I'm trying to tell you. On Saturday, it was just the one book.

By Monday, we realized it was the entire row, and now, today, it seems it's the

whole sex.

But whatever it is, it seems to be eating the print right off the page. And

does not affect the bindings or the spines. It just seems to gobble the

And whatever it is, it seems to be spreading.

You want to tell me where it is?

Where what is?

Your report card, honey.

I know it came, and your guidance counselor already told me what's on it,

what do you say you show it to me?

Otherwise, I'll have to go look for it in your room.

Who knows what else I might find.

Right?

Well, what else do you have in there? Anything good?

Oh, come on, Heather.

You didn't notice all those C's before?

Give it to me.

Mom, I swear.

What?

I didn't do this.

Didn't do what?

What is it?

This is a blank piece of paper. I know. That's the weird thing. Every single

piece of paper in this shoebox is blank. But this morning, I swear.

This was a note that Bobby Dingus passed me during an assembly on how to write a

creative college essay.

And this, this was a combination to my locker in ninth grade gym.

And that was my report card.

Wow.

You're knee deep now, girl. Keep shoveling.

Mom, I'm serious.

This is creepy.

Creepy. Fine.

You have five minutes.

I'll be in my room.

No matter how far away you think I am.

Wow. You've been waiting for me to get up just so you could give me that?

You could just slip it under the door of the room service tray.

Turns out there's another location experiencing this disappearing ink

phenomenon.

Oh, yeah?

And where would that be?

Your house.

I'd really like to get a look inside.

Want to come?

Hello. Hello, Mrs. Lockhart.

I am sorry about the commotion on the front lawn with all the reporters and

strangers. No, no, I didn't call them.

No, it was a friend of the family's.

He called the police and the fire department and all the papers in the

getting an explanation.

No, I have no idea.

But the man from the town, said that he thought it was some odorless something

coming up from the ground.

But no one here is sick.

It's just that all the books and things are blank.

Would you get that?

And whoever it is, tell them that we don't want to give interviews or talk to

anybody. Would they just please leave us alone?

Yes?

Mr. Bender, how nice to see you again.

Do you mind if I come in? What are you doing here?

Well, when the government heard about what was going on here, they knew that

Newman and I had a history with Mrs. Wiseman.

They asked if I'd drop by.

Have a look.

Do you mind if we come in?

The pictures and paintings don't seem to be affected, only the words.

So what does the government think?

Do they have any ideas about what's causing this?

Not yet.

But it's early.

What about you?

Do you have any theories?

I don't know. Maybe it's someone's way of telling us that we don't read enough.

Actually, the whole thing creeps me out.

I keep on waiting for the walls to drip blood or something.

Well, that's not going to happen.

I know I'm just a tax man, but I know this.

There's a scientific explanation for everything.

No doubt.

There's a scientific explanation for this.

My husband loved to read.

Yeah, I know.

Grisham.

You like Grisham?

Mm -hmm.

And it seemed to spread to these.

He used to be letters from my husband, but now all the

pages are blank.

Do

you

think he'll come back?

Excuse me?

The words.

You know, once they figure out what it is.

It's all over. Do you think the words will come back? It's like invisible ink.

They're there. We just can't see them with our eyes.

I don't know.

But you know, no matter what, you can always remember them.

Nothing can stop you from remembering them.

That's because the reporters figured out that you can't make notes out there.

They jot anything down, it just disappears.

Thanks for letting us in, showing us around.

So what do we do now, gentlemen?

I mean, what's next?

I mean, do we move out or do we stay put?

I mean, my newspaper comes to the front stoop, and by the time I get it into the

kitchen, it's gone.

My daughter can't do her homework except on the computer.

And I am trying very hard not to be upset, but... No, you have a right to be

upset. And you deserve some answers. And I'm going to make sure you get some

just as soon as possible.

Really? Did you write down her number?

There is something that you should know.

What's that?

Whatever it is, it's spreading.

My next -door neighbor called to say that the typewritten labels on her

prescription medicine bottles are gone.

And it's starting to affect her books as well.

Thank God for TV.

Like I said to your daughter, Mrs. Wiseman.

There's a scientific explanation for everything, and no doubt there's a

scientific explanation for this, too.

It's only a matter of time before someone figures it out and somehow fixes

Well, that certainly helps out.

All right.

I know.

Odd.

If I didn't know any better, I'd be tempted to say it's behaving like a

biological virus, a disease.

I mean, the whole idea that it's... Spreading. It's like a plague or

Well, I get it spreading from my house to my neighbor's house, but from that

medical library to here in the suburb?

How do you make sense out of that?

Well, if we were dealing with a disease, we'd probably have to find a patient

zero.

Someone who was present at what seems to be the point of origin, and who might

also have been able to carry it back to the next outbreak point.

You mean someone who might have had contact with that library or the things

it, and also would have visited my home?

Precisely.

Huh.

Well, that would have to be you, Doc.

I mean, the papers in your archive, you wrote those, and you have been to my

home a couple of times.

What are you trying to say, Mr. Wiseman?

Not trying to say anything.

I'm just stating the obvious.

If we're looking for someone who has those two places in common, then the

person I can think of is you.

I mean, hey, I'm no doctor, but you sure seem to fit the profile of patient zero

to me.

No offense.

Oh, yeah, well, no offense taken.

Texas? No.

Utah? Not yet.

Vermont?

As of yesterday, a multitude of sites.

Virginia?

No, but West Virginia, yes.

Washington State, Wisconsin, Wyoming?

Not yet, not as far as we can tell.

Is the doctor here?

I understand he's waiting right outside.

Let's bring him in, please.

Dr. Morris.

General Roskin.

Gentlemen.

Thank you for coming to Washington.

There's a crisis. I'm happy to do whatever I can to help.

Dr. Morris, what do you think we're looking at here?

I don't have the foggiest idea, ma 'am.

That's curious, because our people do have an idea.

and they felt very strongly that you would concur with their hypothesis.

I'd be fascinated to hear their theory.

Dr. Morris, do you know what a nanobot is?

Yes, I do.

Why don't you explain it to my colleagues?

The nanobot will be to this next century what the transistor was to the 50s and

60s, what the computer chip was to the 80s and 90s.

It's a way of creating new and different types of matter beginning at the

molecular stage.

by arranging atoms in a particular way.

The object is to create microscopic molecular machines.

For instance, during the experiment that ultimately yielded Mr. Wiseman, we

introduced certain nanobots into what became his blood.

These replaced functions normally assigned to an immune system. They

the body from foreign germs and are also responsible for the extremely high rate

of healing Mr. Wiseman enjoys.

These particular nanobots also replicate, do they not?

That's part of what makes them so effective.

The more a disease or foreign particle penetrates Mr. Wiseman's system, the

the nanobots multiply, overwhelming the hostile germ or organism.

So, let's speculate.

What might happen if one of these... Nanobots. Yes.

What if one became airborne?

Hmm.

Well, quite honestly, I couldn't give you a definitive answer. Nanotechnology

so new, so... We've taken some of these blank pages and put them under an

electron microscope.

They're teeming with your little molecular machines.

They eat the ink, apparently confusing the lead in it for some sort of

biological threat, and then make more nanobots.

Yes, sir.

You pardon the pun, but it appears that you are the author of our current

plight.

Oh, yeah.

I forgot. It's BYO TV night.

Now you bring the TV.

What infomercial are you watching?

How to gain hair or how to lose weight?

News.

Just watching the news.

It's the only thing on anyway.

Every channel.

All day.

News.

Well, to what do I owe the pleasure?

I mean, I don't get many visitors at 3 a .m.

And I certainly don't get a lot of television sets.

Neither the secure place to go to keep up with things.

The rioting outside.

It started to eat ink off money.

And the rioting.

So should I be worried for my family?

No. The craziness has confined to the cities for now.

Although the virus, the plague, whatever you want to call it, apparently it's

made its way to the West Coast.

I've heard scattered reports in Australia.

And I think I heard something from Japan.

I'm sorry, Doc.

Other governments of the world, universities, libraries, are working

to scan what's left into computers.

But the word keeps appearing.

You want to sleep?

Can you sleep?

Well,

for what it's worth...

My terrarium is your terrarium.

So, if you change your mind, just wake me up and I'll take

the chair for a while.

If you are hungry, I will bake some bread for you. And

if you are worried, I will hold your head for you.

If you can't sleep at night, I will screen your dream for you. And

if you feel uptight, I will make everything all right for you.

The key don't work, you can knock on the door.

No matter how far away

you think I am.

Mom? Could I get into bed with you?

Oh.

Sure, honey.

Go on.

There you go. Oh, what is it?

They shut down school again?

No, they have to stop letting little things like no books get in their way.

This is a blackboard, right?

And lunch?

Lunch is always the best time, anyway.

It's Sunday, Mom.

Sunday.

Oh, right. Well, since my calendar faded, I... You

know, it's a good thing your dad isn't around.

He would have hated this.

One of his favorite things to do is get that morning paper and then...

Cuddle up with a good book at night.

There.

What's the matter?

I can hear your heart beating over here.

I couldn't sleep, so I went downstairs to watch TV, and the president was on,

and it must have been a tape from earlier in the day, but they passed this

Now, what law could get you so upset?

Anyone. that has a book, a book that hasn't faded, you can't read it anymore.

Not by yourself and not to yourself.

You're not allowed to read any surviving book unless you get ten people together

and read it out loud.

So if it fades, when it fades, theoretically, someone will be there to

it.

But it's not a book anymore.

It's a memory.

Like when someone dies and you realize that they're never coming back again.

The world is different now, and you just do it. You just get up in the morning

and move on.

That's what this is like. When I'm old, I'm going to be telling my kids about

these things we used to have.

Books.

Am I making any sense?

Mm -hmm.

world is different now.

It'll come to you.

What's that?

The cure.

The antidote.

Whatever you want to call it.

It's killing you, isn't it?

Remember what you once said to me?

That it's like cooking a steak in front of a starving man.

This is like devoting your life to being a farmer, only to discover that

everything that you worked so hard to grow kills people instead of nourishing.

You didn't know.

You couldn't know.

You want to hear the irony?

I remember the date I got my first library card.

Eight years old.

Used to walk there by myself.

Always clean.

They had air conditioning.

And they had this water fountain.

That no matter how hot it was outside, somehow that water fountain looked icy

cold.

That's the reason I first went there, to get out of the heat.

And then when I was 12, I came across...

Christmas Carol.

I had already seen the movie on TV with Mr. Magoo.

So I started to read this book.

And I was waiting for Mr. Magoo to show up.

And there were songs, so I was just waiting for the songs.

But none of that was in the book.

The book was better.

Really?

Listen, I happen to be close personal friends with Magoo.

What can I say?

You're entitled to your opinion, I guess.

When I was 15, I stole a copy of Grey's Anatomy, put it in my bag, and walked

out the door.

Oh, I wanted to have it in my house, you know, forever.

I just wanted it on my shelf in my room right next to my autographed baseball

and my monster magazine.

You know, just to be there.

Anyone find out?

Yeah, well, I was caught.

Putting it back.

Putting it back. I love that book so much.

What it showed me. What it taught me.

I put it on my shelf.

And it was like the telltale heart.

You ever read that?

Where the guy hears the heart beating of the guy he killed?

This was the same thing.

That damn book.

All night long it was talking to me.

Telling me what a disappointment of a human being I was for stealing something

so precious.

Next day, I brought it back.

The librarian caught me pulling it out of my bag.

I wasn't allowed in the library for three months.

Oh, it killed me.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

What's that?

A fire?

Can you pull over for a moment, please?

Let's toss them on there.

What's going on?

What's this about?

Why are you burning books? Some of these still have words inside.

They're bad.

They got germs.

First they eat your letters and then they eat your money. We got to kill

We got to kill them all.

Give it to me, honey.

Honey, you have to give it to me.

Please, Samantha, give Daddy the book.

We have to burn it.

Ladies and gentlemen, normally at the commencement of a service like this, I

would ask you to pull out your missiles and follow along with today's reading.

Obviously, today there are no words in the missile for you to follow along

No lyrics in your hymnals to sing.

No church bulletins to tell you when the women's group is going to meet, or who

got baptized, or who's getting married.

I just heard on the television before I came in that we've now lost

the last original print of the Gutenberg Bible, the one they keep in the

Library of Congress.

Let's join hands and pray.

Dear Lord,

Give us the strength to confront the feelings of despair that engulf us as we

watch our printed history wither before our eyes.

Our stories blown away like so much dust.

Our memories taken from us while we sleep.

Don't worry, son.

They'll find a cure for this.

They find a cure for everything, eventually.

Give us the patience to understand that there is always a reason behind your

riddles. And give us the wisdom to see it.

Amen.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long -handled

brush.

He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him, and a deep melancholy

settled down upon his spirit.

Thirty yards of board fence, nine feet high.

Life to him seemed hollow, an existence but a burden.

Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank.

Repeated the operation.

Did it again.

Compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far -reaching continent

of unwhitewashed fence.

And sat down on a tree box, discouraged.

I'm sorry.

It's gone.

The rest of it's just gone.

Hi, it's me.

I guess I overslept.

Are you with Mr. Wiseman?

Good.

Have we heard word back from the CDC on the blood work we did yesterday?

What do you mean, what blood work?

What day is today?

Let me call you back.

297. 298.

299.

300. Great.

Now let's just do one more set of 300, and we'll hit the pool.

Are you on crack?

Excuse me?

Were you there when they pulled the puddle that was me off those tracks and

the rest inside the figment of some phys -ed major's imagination?

Mr. Weissman, I do not appreciate your tone.

I'm simply trying to carry out Dr.

Morris' instructions.

Gentlemen.

That's not fine.

Hey, the regular teacher's back. It's a good thing, too. None of the kids like

the substitute.

So where you been?

Okay. For $200 in Final Jeopardy, what's in the bags?

Oh, well, actually, something for you, Mr. Wiseman.

Who's this?

Tom Sawyer.

You mentioned you wanted it.

Remember, a week or so ago, lights went out in the bedroom, and you said, bring

me back any book, anything.

Tom Sawyer. Well, there it is.

Doc, that was last night.

Oh, yeah, I guess it was.

Forgive me, but I'm confused.

You just gave me.

A book.

Now, in order to use this, in order to appreciate this, in order to

enjoy this, what does that mean I'm going to have to read it?

And aren't you the guy who said that if you ever found out I was reading, you

would make sure that I went blind or crazy or got warts on my hand?

Well, I guess I changed my mind.

I think I was wrong.

This is scary.

I have some Grisham in here for you.

Grey's Anatomy.

It was just there, and I thought, well, I'll keep this.

And, anyway.

You mean it.

I can read.

Wow.

Thank you.

Oh, get your hands off me, please.

I'm going to go put these in my room.

This is like Christmas.

And God bless us, everyone.

You sure you're all right?

Yeah.

I think so.