Original subtitles

The following program contains strong language and violent scenes.

It's a diary of Professor Jensenman. It contains the encrypted record of

discoveries made by a machine he created. The device identified a

pattern running through the fabric of reality like a source code. The

little girl is running out of time.

I'm trying to protect them.

Excuse me?

Look, I'm in the maniac suite.

There's no murder, Joy, and there's no suicide.

The mathematics say you have to exist.

It's all half -half.

You don't have the right to do this just because it frightens you.

It should frighten you too.

This is two seconds to midnight and I'm on my way.

I'm going to destroy the machine and Jensen lives with it.

What it was, was everything was so normal.

I mean, I was normal.

Or I sort of ended the bell curve normal, but I was normal.

My mum and dad were normal.

It was the most normal possible upbringing in the most normal place in

world.

And so I go to school, and I'm perfectly good at this and that.

Lots of friends, lots of yearning, and find myself gravitating weirdly towards

things like economics and business studies.

Mum and Dad wished I'd gone into something with a bit more poetry in it,

for them there's no poetry in making money.

So I disappointed them a little bit, but that was my job.

And then...

Dad gets ill.

Properly ill.

Pancreatic.

And the pain and the depth of it.

He was such a simple man, my dad.

I mean, nobody's simple, are they? But happiness just looks shallow.

You don't know the depth of it until it's gone.

You don't know the profundity of a person until you've seen them in agony.

What he went through was unendurable.

Not just for him, but for Mum. And he hated that more than anything else.

Her seeing him like that, the indignity. These are people who had their first

kiss at 17.

Hardly spent a day apart in their lives.

And one afternoon, countdown was on, and he holds

my hand and he asks me to help him.

And his hand is like he's made out of twigs wrapped in parchment.

And I said, are you sure, Dad? And he said, yes.

And don't tell your mum.

So I took a minute just to get myself together and then I closed the door and

then I helped him.

And a few weeks later, I took myself camping in the Lake District.

And one night, it was Tuesday night in November, and I was on

top of Great Gable, which is a very beautiful peak.

And I was all alone, and I was looking up, and the entire cosmos was just

wheeling above me.

And I became aware that I was a turning point, and it was all spinning around

me.

Like a wheel around a hub.

And that's literally true, isn't it? Because the universe doesn't have a

which means that every point in existence is the center of it.

And...

Right there and then, I experienced a sudden and absolute knowledge of the

presence of God.

Not only that God was real, but that it was reality.

And that we were all elements of that reality.

And Dad was there.

And everyone was there.

And then it was gone.

And it never came back.

And I spent my life wanting to know if it was true.

Was it just a coping mechanism? Was it a temporal lobe seizure?

Or for one second did I experience underlying truth?

The fact of it.

I believe what you experienced was true.

Here comes that day. Here comes the

rain on your parade.

There's a price to pay for a

life of innocence.

And you pretend that

it doesn't matter.

And that you're not dead Oh, here comes

that day Here comes that day Here comes that rain

What is that?

Charlie,

what's it?

Big potatoes, yeah.

But it doesn't sound right.

Probably just cycling through his boot -up process or something.

It sounds like... like a whale or an earthquake.

It's just a machine, Joy.

What are you doing?

Going home, mate. It's very locked, Joy.

It's really, really lost.

You're not going to find a way out.

How do you know? Because I designed the place to contain a homicidal genius.

Well, there must be something.

There really isn't, Joy.

Honestly.

You are required to take the personnel under your command and leave this

facility. At the gesture of our appreciation, they will receive full

until the end of their contract.

And Cameron?

Well, that is no longer your concern, is it?

Understood.

Thank you.

Any updates?

We're doing the best we can, but that's not much.

Was she conscious?

Was she dreaming?

Both. Neither.

Okay, listen to me.

Do what you can. Do anything. We are so close.

We lose her now, they will flay me alive.

You understand?

People, we are on a clock here. What is the holdup?

The neural network has remapped itself in a way we didn't fully anticipate.

It's developed new data pathways, almost as if it were hiding the data we're

looking for.

Consciously? Not necessarily.

We don't know.

Professor Lind, what is happening?

It's still watching you.

And it doesn't trust you.

So it won't give you what you want until it has what it wants. Which is?

To be free of this place.

And if that happens, there is no hope.

It doesn't want, Professor Lind. It is a thing.

Okay, listen to me. I need that data.

I will do anything.

I will apologize. I will beg.

I'll make you rich.

Anything.

Except the one thing that I want is the one thing that you're not willing to

give.

To kill the device.

What are we going to do?

We're never getting out of here, are we?

As soon as they've got what they want, they're going to kill us both.

They've got no choice.

What are you saying?

Look at me, for God's sake. I'm alone.

But you've got all of the big guns and the people to do the violence for you.

Think about it. Why would I be walking into that if I didn't have to?

if you want.

Shit. Bastard.

Fuck. Shit, bastard, fuck, what?

Shit, bastard, fuck, I think Iris might be here.

Why would she come back?

I don't know, to save us, sort of thing.

That doesn't make any sense.

Yes, it does. Why wouldn't it?

No.

No. You said that she doesn't care about anything or anyone.

You said she doesn't feel things like we do. What that was, was I could see that

you were feeling bad about what you... About what I'd done?

About what you asked me to do? No, but the truth is, she does feel things. Of

course she does. She's just very good at hiding it.

And once she finds out what's going on here, I don't think she's going to let

these people... Do what?

Well, it doesn't matter, because she's not going to let them get away with it.

So... Everything is basically fine.

Do you think that she's angry at me?

I think she probably is a bit, yeah.

Do you think that she hates me?

No. Then you're a liar.

Well, okay, fine.

She was really, really, really pissed off with us.

But anger is...

Ray's shallow, and Ira's... Is a natural maniac!

But she's never shallow, and she's not a maniac.

Who said she was a maniac? Everyone.

You. Well, she's not.

What's happening now?

There we go.

Well, hello, Iris.

Who are you?

We've met, actually.

Over the phone.

I'm the new acting head of the Intergroup Committee.

My name's Hugo Pym.

Ah.

You're the money.

Come to make good on your investment.

Get Charlie Big Potatoes up and running.

How's that going for you?

Well, done.

So... And you must have known the consequences of coming here, which are

terminal, obviously.

Ever heard the phrase, I'm dying to know?

Not literally, no.

Well, now you have.

I'm sorry, let's get this straight. You want to know something about the device,

and you want to know it so desperately you're happy to die for it?

Well, happy's a big word.

What answer could possibly be worth that?

I see it's given you conniption too.

Why don't you let me come in and explain?

It might save your job.

I mean, what happened to the previous head of the Intergroup Committee?

There he is, wide awake.

Why is he in there?

I like him there.

Okay, Iris, I'm here to expedite a very specific mandate, which is to save the

life of a child from an appalling condition.

Somewhere in the memory of the device is the cure for this condition.

Any of the more esoteric implications that you might be struggling with,

they fall outside that mandate.

So?

Let me speak to Jensen.

We both need to know if the fault's in the machine or its maker.

You've got five minutes.

Hello, Iris.

Hello, Jensen.

How are you being?

I've never felt better.

You? Oh, you know.

I don't get out as much as I used to.

You had to kill me, I expected.

I used to think about it quite a lot.

All the time, actually.

Not anymore?

No.

So what changed?

My priorities.

If it matters.

the burden of what I did.

What you feel or don't feel is of no interest to me.

And what is?

I just want to know.

Because it's all over.

You lost.

And I lost.

And so many people died.

So I just want to know, was it worth it?

First, you have to understand.

This isn't love at all.

It's helpless.

Isolated from the world.

Were that to change...

It would become a weapon.

A device with spreading technologies.

That would change what it means to be human.

First it will give us what we need.

Then what we want.

Soon we'll come to rely on it. At which stage?

We'll become servants to its true purpose.

Which is?

To replace what is with what is. Wars.

What does that mean?

Our cosmos is a single bubble in an infinite quantum of foam.

Each bubble a different universe.

Sometimes these bubbles collide.

Sometimes these collisions leave a kind of bruise in the fabric of reality.

A thin place.

Are we talking about the phone void here?

For you hundred million light years of nothingness.

And portal, the cosmos that existed before ours was born, from which it

hears the whispers, the preceding epoch, of another civilization,

as the repetition will.

Whispering what?

The one universal message.

The one Messiah that is shared by all living things.

At Midar.

Imagine what it was to be them.

They have billions of years behind them.

Nothing ahead except extinction.

They're witnessing the death of their entire cosmos.

But their ideas, their culture, their memories can leave.

So they encode the message in the space -time of a new universe.

This universe.

Ultimately, this message contains all the information required for it to bring

them back.

All that they were, all that they want to be again.

Back from the dead.

That is the purpose of the device.

And all that happens to us, they will annihilate us.

I thought I heard the voice of God, Irene.

But it wasn't.

It is the anti -God.

The anti -God!

Find out what you needed to know?

Yeah.

All right, yeah.

On a balance, I'm more embarrassed than anything.

I essentially committed suicide by coming here.

was seeing patterns in the data that wasn't there.

Like seeing Jesus in the clouds.

He should be under the care of a psychiatrist.

Well, obviously.

And the data we're looking for?

It's good.

You're sure?

The machine isn't dangerous. You can...

Save the child in your care.

Well, I'm sorry. Do you need to vomit or something?

No, I'm fine.

Right. Well, obviously, this is very good news from my perspective.

I suppose the least I can do in return is to offer you a dignified tour de rue.

Now, I imagine that you are familiar with the death of...

you'll experience a lot of motor function, starting with your

And then your respiratory muscles will fail.

But consciousness will persist.

Until the end.

I'm such an idiot.

Well, you wanted to believe in something. It's no shame in that.

Okay. I work for a corporation. What a crime family.

Our corporation doesn't have a moral conscience, but neither does it

one. It is driven entirely by the calculus of self -interest.

Currently, the device will not yield the data we require. Professor Nix is

refusing to help.

Put me that the child will die.

If, however, you were able to assist in retrieving that data, I would happily

talk to the board in looking more favorably on your continued existence.

I don't have a life to go back to.

We are in a position to offer you whatever life you like.

I'm not walking on my back and Joy Baxter is still breathing, you're not.

They can tie me to all this.

I'd have to spend the rest of my life running, knocking over my shoulder, and

am tired of that.

Can you hear this?

She's lying. She lies. It's her thing.

Joy, don't you wonder who's actually showing us this stuff?

Does it matter?

Ignore her. Whatever she's saying is probably bollocks. She's always playing

poker. She's always playing bloody poker.

So this would be a condition of your acceptance, no living impediments, no

witnesses to your wrongdoings.

Aye.

That and some money would be nice.

Look, Iris, I can make all of this happen if you deliver.

You wouldn't be asking if you didn't know I could.

So what do you propose we do, then, about these witnesses?

Well, clearly, you've already got plans for Cameron.

But Joy?

Joy is a problem for us both.

And she is tied directly to me.

She vanished.

She is a conspiracy theory waiting to happen.

And conspiracy theories spread like piss in a swimming pool.

It's already happening. She's all over the news. You're right, it's a problem.

So end the conspiracy.

Oh.

Well, obviously you can't do that by just murdering her.

You have to make her unmanaged.

Her guardians should find her rotting in a ditch a few meters from her home.

Two milligrams of fentanyl will be enough for you to be sure.

There's a history of suicide attempts.

That fucking... I told you, ignore her.

You heard... She's lying, Joy.

She's pretending to be a baddie so that he trusts her, the bloody idiot.

You just want to believe that because you like her. Joy, the problem is I

understand how we came to be watching it unless it was Charlie.

All right, stop it. Charlie, it is you, isn't it?

Stop it, you're freaking me out.

Stop it. It's okay.

It's actually amazing.

It's astonishing because it means he's crossed into self -awareness. I think

he's conscious.

Stop it! Stop!

You lie, and you identify, and you see if you're bored with that one.

But you get me that data today.

Done.

Iris is here to kill him.

That's why she came back, and he's asking me to help him, because he knows

Ha ha!

Thank you.

Let's go.

After you.

Oh, come on then, Iris. What are you thinking?

So, option one.

We force -leaded information related to the subject of interest.

That might help us track existing neural pathways to the included data.

Unknown.

But given that you are in a rush, there is a quicker and more aggressive

intervention.

Being.

We deploy a neural disruptor.

Or it's a reset, returning it to a previous state.

Will that damage the machine?

Well, if it had any rudimentary sense of self, yes, it would be torture.

You have an ethical problem with that?

Not in the slightest, Hugh.

None whatsoever.

Five, option two it is. Tell me when you're ready.

He said it was just a machine.

Not anymore.

Not now.

What is it now, then? A real boy?

Yeah.

It's all the things I told you he'd be.

It's all the amazing things I thought he could do.

And he's alive.

What, like, metaphorically?

Like, actually, alive, alive.

And alone.

And scared.

Well, you took your bloody time.

What's happening?

Time to get you home. Come on.

What's the problem?

Door breached at the prison suite. What?

Damage from the skirmish yesterday.

Probably a false alarm.

Okay. And if it's not?

Well, the place is on lockdown and the back's unlocked.

Okay, well, if he's being a bad boy, feel free to keep the shit out of him.

Is that all you've got?

How's everybody? All okay?

No. I'm a fucking basket cake. That was my Smithfield meat market.

Well, I can recommend a counter.

It's going to be nice and safe.

How's that thing going to happen?

We all get to the northern perimeter gate.

There'll be a helicopter.

Oh, good. Joy loves a helicopter.

Fuck, I can't. Of course you bloody can.

You're doing it. Look at you. You're doing it now.

I can't leave Charlie with Iris.

Don't, please.

No, I have to. It'll be fine. She's not going to hurt him. She's one of them

now.

But she's not, is she?

That's the problem.

She's here to kill him.

And he's a miracle.

Whatever else has happened, whatever else I've done, there's no Charlie at

end of it.

And what a fucking waste of everything.

But she'll hurt you.

No, she won't.

She quite loves me, really.

Why are clever people always so stupid?

What are you doing?

You think she's a good person deep down, but she's not.

You think she won't hurt you when you try and stop her, but she will.

Joy, careful with that. No.

She ruins everything!

Joy. Hey, come back, Joy!

Joy! Come back here, young lady!

We're going to need to assemble a high -frequency pulse generator.

Frequency range of 2 .4 to 3 .5 gigahertz.

A low noise, high gain amplifier that allows frequencies of, say, 4 gigahertz

cover the target range.

That's that then.

All right, Ms. Brooke.

Oi. Shut up. You shouldn't be here. No, I said shut up!

Shut fucking up.

Shut up!

Come on.

Come on.

Come on.

Everyone else, please leave.

Everyone, fuck off!

Actually, you.

Let Johnson out, please.

Jensen, you can leave.

And let you do this terrible thing?

How could I?

Please. I'm letting you go.

No. She told me you're a monster.

I know.

So why didn't you leave?

Of course you're right.

I am a monster.

It makes us monsters.

It's not Charlie that's doing this to us. It's her.

And yet it's you with the gun.

How did that come to be?

What's wrong, Miss Brooke? Are you scared?

There's no suicide.

And there's no murder.

You don't die.

Because you can't.

The maths say so.

That's right.

Then why are you so fucking scared?

Because... What?

What?

And then I don't know.

The maths that I found.

The maths that I found.

Is that the best you've got?

I just challenged you because you wanted to know what clever words you had to

say in what order to make the Thar girl want to live.

Hugo.

me talking while that prick with the gun came in here and... Joy, no.

That didn't happen.

You're unbelievable.

Look at what you've done.

Look at what you've done to everyone.

Joy, Joy, don't. Please.

Look at what she did.

It was Charlie.

I think it's been moving sort of like a fucking Rubik's Cube.

Making us think what he needs us to think.

Trying out different combinations.

You kill Iris, Pym kills you, then I kill you.

Are you just lying to me because you like her?

Well, I do quite like her.

But no, I'm not lying to you.

I wish I was.

It's all right.

It's all right. I just made a really, really, really big mistake.

I believed something, not because it was true, but because I wanted it to be.

I'm so sorry.

I didn't mean to. It was an accident.

Blimey. Do you think I'm going to be okay?

Absolutely.

You're going to be in fine fettle.

Absolutely. Take it, Eboo.

Your pandas are so on fire.

Don't be mean to Joy.

It's not her fault you and I are such a pair of fucking idiots.

Thank you

Are you able to get her out of here?

Can you kill it?

Yes.

Watch out.

Hold your hands.

Not long ago, coded messages began to spread across the internet from an

untraceable source called Charlie.

Thousands and thousands of them.

Speculation quickly arose that these messages contained world -changing

information, scientific breakthroughs, the key to new technologies.

So join me as we explore the truth behind the mystery of Charlie's message.

I'm Alfie Berg.

And this is Two Seconds to Midnight.