Original subtitles

Good evening.

Perhaps you have already heard of the latest in telephone services.

Dial analysis.

It has been instituted in places suffering from a shortage of

psychoanalysts or a shortage of money with which to pay them.

How do you do?

This is dial analysis.

When you hear the signal, begin telling dial analysis your problem.

Continue until you hear the second signal.

The recording you will make will be monitored at a later time by one of our

resident psychiatrists.

Dear sir.

Gentlemen.

Mama.

I'm afraid that is the end of today's session.

Please call tomorrow at the same time.

Pleasant dreams.

Any problems or neuroses indicated by the proceeding are my own and do not

reflect those of the sponsor or of the management of the station to which you

are listening.

This evening's tale begins with a nightmare-like experience but that is

only a prelude to the terrifying events which follow.

And now, speaking of terrifying events.

I seem to be in a timeless, spaceless void, neither light nor dark.

I have awareness but not senses, mind but no memory.

Then I begin to feel that I am being pulled this way and that.

It seems that rival forces are fighting for me.

Here she comes.

Resuscitation seemed to be retarded this time for some reason. Make a note of

that, nurse.

It is her fourth, isn't it? Yes, doctor.

Strange.

Well, get some fluids into her and ship her out.

After the fourth, it should come easy, Mother. I'll get you a drink of water.

You'll be all right in no time.

Can you walk to the car?

Of course.

What car?

To take you home, naturally.

Drink up, Mother Orcus, and let's get along.

Doctor!

Doctor!

Yes? Mother 417 is in trouble.

What happened? She just fainted, Doctor, as if she'd had some kind of shock.

Well, she's been signed out. She can't stay here. We need the room.

Get me a number 3 sedative.

Who am I?

There's something terribly wrong.

This isn't me. This can't be me.

Tell me, please.

Now, Mother Orcus, it's going to be all right.

Don't you worry about a thing.

We'll have you back home in no time.

You're not going to sedate me anymore.

Who are you?

That should hold her till you get her home. You get her ready and call the

ambulance.

Welcome, Mother Arcus.

Do you think you can walk, Mother?

Of course.

Mother Orcus there. Now, now, what's the matter?

Hello,

Orcus.

What's the matter, honey? Did you have a bad time?

There you are, dear. Safe home again.

Now, you'll be all right after you've rested.

What's the matter with her?

Did she make a mess of it?

Now, there's no call for that tone, Mother Hazel.

Mother Orcus had four beautiful babies, didn't you, dear?

She's just tired after the trip.

Babies?

Where?

Don't be ridiculous, dear. Now try to sleep.

What are you sulking about?

I seem to have lost my memory. I thought there was something.

I suppose you can't even remember if your babies were grade one this time?

They had to be grade one, Hazel. You know that.

Else Orcus would have been re-rated and sent to Whitley instead of back here.

You do remember us, Orcus.

I'm sorry, but everything before I... I came to...

This morning is a blank.

There you are, dear.

Not ready for it yet?

We'll have it later.

I'd rather have something to read.

You're not feeling quite yourself.

Now you try and sleep. I don't want to. I'd like something to read.

You've had an exhausting time, Mother. Now you'll feel better later. For

heaven's sakes, I've only asked for something to read.

Now what in the world would a mother want with knowing how to read?

Read and write, too, I suppose.

There's some law against that.

Aren't I supposed to know how to read and write?

Orcas, honey, don't you think you ought to ask to see the doctor?

There's nothing wrong with me. There's something wrong with you. All I asked

was for a book, and you act as if I'd gone crazy.

What use is reading for a mother?

That's not going to help her have better babies, dear.

Is that all you think about, having babies?

There are other things in the world besides having babies.

What is this, a psychiatric ward?

Of course you're a mother.

You're a grade one mother with three births registered, 12 fine class A

babies. You can't have forgotten that.

anymore. I know who I am now.

But Mother Orcus.

I'm not a mother. I'm not a mother of anybody.

I'm just a woman who once had a husband who hoped one day she'd have his babies.

What is a husband?

When a woman loves a man.

What's a man?

Get away from me, you little monsters.

Mother, Orcus, now what's the trouble? I will not have them pawing me like that.

But, Mother, they... I will not have it.

Orcus is off her head. She's been telling us awful stories.

Go and report yourselves.

I suppose that'll make you feel better getting them a beating. A beating?

Yes, beaten.

Look at her all innocence.

Pretty soon she's going to say that she forgot that servitors get beaten for

upsetting the mothers.

Well?

It's Mother Orcus, Doctor. She's been behaving strangely since she got back

this morning.

Headache? No.

What strange behavior?

She's been upsetting the other mothers with some awful talk.

It was disgusting.

And she's got delusions. She thinks she can read and write.

Do you?

That shouldn't be difficult to settle.

Give me some paper and a pencil.

What was the awful talk about?

It was horrible.

About two human sexes, like animals.

It was disgusting.

Get her to the sick bay.

Now, let's have it straight.

Who told you this stuff about two human sexes? Oh, please, doctor.

Now, listen here, Orcus. You were normal when you went to the clinic and had your

babies. Now you've come back with your head full of sickening nonsense about

two sexes.

And reading and writing.

I want to know who's responsible.

We can make you talk, you know, even if you are a mother.

I am not a mother. I'm an M.D.

I'm an M.D. in the throes of a nightmare.

You think you're a doctor of medicine?

Well, after two years of internship at Brockton General Hospital, I'm

reasonably sure of it.

Mother Daisy was apparently right. You are delusional.

It's seldom we still come across a postpartum breakdown.

Postpartum? Nothing. I've never had a baby in my life.

You were brought up and developed to be a mother, Orcus.

You are a mother.

Just look at you.

Yes, just look at me.

Nevertheless, I am not a mother.

Now suppose you tell me what this place is and what's going on around here.

Better I suggest you first tell me all you remember.

All you know.

So that we are not obliged to resort to other measures.

Oh, that has a familiar nightmare ring about it.

Hitler, Stalin.

Mother Orcus.

No!

Waterly Jane Waterly.

Maiden name Sumner.

I was in the hospital on duty the night that Donald Waterly was brought in for

a... Ruptured appendix.

The house surgeon was scrubbing up for another emergency, so I operated.

You performed an appendectomy?

It was just one of many, but the most important of my life.

I became Donald's wife.

And a year later, he was killed in an accident.

Mother Orcus, where did you get these ideas?

Shall we begin again?

From the beginning.

That was very naughty of you, Mother Orcus.

I'm ashamed of you. Oh, go away.

Mother Orcus, I have orders for your arrest.

Get Mother Orcus ready.

What's this all about?

What are you doing here?

Mother Orcus is under arrest.

A mother under arrest? What's the charge?

Mother Orcus is accused of reactionism. Oh, nonsense. A reactionist mother.

What will you numbskulls think up next? Go on, get out. I said get out.

You've no authority in my section. Out.

I'll need a signed refusal to surrender the mother.

Very well.

It will make you happy.

Now, Mother August, let's see if we can find out what's happened to you.

We'll help us all if you're quite frank.

I have nothing to conceal.

I want to find out just as much as you do.

More. You spoke of a man, Donald Waterly, whom you think you married.

Now, will you tell our director exactly what happened?

Donald died.

He was a test pilot and he was killed in a crash.

We had been married for a year.

Your hallucination sounds very specific.

No, you misunderstand.

This is the hallucination.

This place and you and the shape I'm in and this...

Tell us more about what you consider reality.

You had a man and he died.

What then is your reality?

I don't remember very much after Donald was killed.

The days came and went.

And then one day I woke up and I knew that I had to start work again. What

work? I told you, I'm an M.D.

You seem to be consistent in your delusion. Go on.

I went back to Brockton General Hospital, but the work didn't seem the

same anymore. Nothing was very important.

And then one day, Dr. Hillier, he was in charge of Brockton General Hospital,

told me about a friend of his who had synthesized a narcotic.

What was the name?

Sonodrin. Do you know it?

I've heard of it.

In its original state, it comes from the leaves of a tree which grows in

Venezuela. The Indians discovered it.

They chew on the leaves until they go into a trance in which they believe that

their spirits are free to wander anywhere in time or space.

You have actually taken this drug?

The synthesized product.

Why?

I felt it was my chance to be useful.

I had no ties and I...

I didn't care what happened to me. So I volunteered to test it and see if the

reports were true, that it produced powerful, mystical experiences.

It seems to have produced a combination of the absurd and the grotesque.

You are suggesting that we, all this, are merely a product of your narcotic

hallucination?

Thank you, Mother August.

I shall consider your case and see what steps to take.

The last half of our drama will be seen in a moment. We pause now to place

this station-to-station call.

Welcome, my dear.

Thank you.

Come and sit down.

Do you think it will stand it?

Oh, perhaps you'll be more comfortable on the couch.

Yes, perhaps.

Tea, if you please, Mildred.

You'll have tea, my dear?

Yes.

Thank you.

Mrs... Oh, I haven't introduced myself. Laura.

Not Mrs or Miss, just Laura.

And you are Orcus.

Mother Orcus.

So they...

This is so... I'm not insane, am I? The report from the

home expresses the view that you are suffering from schizophrenic delusions.

But the director also considers the possibility that you are a genuine case

of projected perception.

That is why they sent you to me, for my opinion.

I am a historian.

Projected perception?

But there's no doubt about the possibility, my dear. There are three

reliably documented cases, and two of them are associated with the drug

sonodrine.

If that was so... But where am I?

I think I understand how unreal this must seem to you.

When were you born?

July 5th, 1938.

Ah, the second Roosevelt.

Franklin Delanoff.

The New Deal.

Pearl Harbor, the Second World War.

Interesting period.

Typical of the male functioning in all his glory.

Cream and sugar?

No, thank you.

Thank you.

Tell me, my dear, what strikes you as the oddest feature in your experience so

far?

I mean, apart from your appearance.

Possibly because you haven't seen a man?

Well...

That, among other things.

Where are the men?

There aren't any. Not at all. Not any more.

Oh, do have a cake.

But how is that possible?

I mean, how can you... Well, I mean... I know it must seem impossible to you, but

it is so.

I'm an old woman now, and in all my 80 years, I've never seen a man. Except in

old pictures.

doubt you, and yet... I understand a little how you must feel.

When I was a girl, I used to listen a lot to my grandmother.

She was as old as I am now.

But when she spoke about the young man she was once engaged to, the tears would

roll down her cheeks.

Not just for him, but for the world she'd known as a girl.

Were you perhaps engaged once?

I was married once, for a little while.

Must be very strange to be owned.

Owned? Ruled by a husband.

Oh, but it wasn't that. It wasn't like that at all. It was...

What happened to all the men?

They all died.

They fell sick and died.

Sure you won't have a little cake, a sandwich.

All of them? Everywhere?

In a little more than a year, they were all gone.

All over the world.

How could this possibly happen? Just an accident. A piece of research that

produced unexpected secondary results.

Did you ever hear of a man named Peregrine?

No, I don't think so.

It's an uncommon name.

It became very commonly known.

Dr. Peregrine was a biologist working on the extermination of the brown rat.

He succeeded remarkably with a selective virus of great virulence.

But somehow Peregrine's virus mutated.

and the new strain spread with devastating speed among human beings.

Fortunately, the majority of women were immune, but men were found to have no

immunity. They, like the rats, were completely wiped out.

But surely, without men, that would be the end of everything.

Everything would collapse.

It nearly did.

There was chaos for a time, and much starvation.

Almost all the large organizations broke down entirely.

You see, although women outnumbered the men, they had only been important as

consumers and spenders of money.

When the crisis came, hardly any of them knew how to do things because they'd all

been owned by men and obliged to live as pets and parasites.

That is simply not so!

But it wasn't their fault, my dear.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Women were beginning to have their

chance to lead a useful and creative life.

But that didn't suit commerce.

It needed women more as mass consumers than as producers.

So romance was adopted to promote consumption.

Women were induced to believe that being owned by some man and set down in a

little brick box to buy all the things manufacturers wanted them to buy would

be the highest form of bliss.

I tell you, it wasn't like that at all.

All right, some of what you say may be true, but that's only the superficial

part. It wasn't a bit the way you described it.

It was my world, I know.

There's such a thing as being too close to make a proper evaluation.

At a distance, we're still able to perceive your society for what it was, a

heartless exploitation of the weaker-willed minority.

That is the most...

Unrecognizable, distorted view of my world I ever heard. Less creative

indeed. Women were in all kinds of fields. They were doctors and writers,

and they had babies.

What makes you think there's anything creative about having babies?

Would you call a pot creative because seeds grow in it?

Is that all the mothers are?

How awful.

They're very happy in their simple function.

How, without men?

A species, my dear, even our species, has great will to survive.

As you know, I'm sure, test tube life in simple form has been achieved for years

before the crisis caused by Dr. Perrigan's virus, and the doctors

pursued their research intensively along those lines. So through all the hunger

and chaos, babies somehow continued to be born.

The girl babies lived, and the boy babies died.

This was distressing and wasteful, too.

So before long, only girl babies were born.

None of this is really remarkable, as it seems at first sight.

You know, the locusts will continue to produce female locusts without male

assistance. The aphis, too, is able to go on breeding alone for many

generations. So is it surprising that with our superior intelligence, we're

able to match the biological achievements of the insects?

But what have you achieved?

Survival.

You see, man was only a means to an end. We needed him to have babies.

Where are all the babies?

No one will tell me.

Really? I can't think why.

It's no secret.

The procedure is very simple.

After the delivery, the doctors examine the babies and allocate them suitably to

different classes.

After that, of course, it's just a matter of seeing to their specialised

feeding, glandular control and proper training in our rearing centres.

The mothers never see them again, of course.

They're much too busy having others.

In any case, they're quite incompetent to rear a child, even if they have the

desire, which I assure you they don't.

We have evolved a four-class system, offering security and fulfillment on all

levels. The doctors, the educated class, in command. The mothers, the servitors,

and the worker.

Ants! The ant nest!

You've taken that for your model.

And why not?

It's one of the most enduring patterns that nature has evolved.

Do you know the selection of the system was inspired by a book which at that

time was not yet prohibited?

The Bible.

There was a proverb that went something like, Go to the ant thou sluggard,

consider her ways.

Why are you crying, my dear?

I'm crying for all you've lost, if this is true.

You present us with a problem, Orcus.

I can imagine.

The other mothers are unlikely to be infected with your reactionism, though

you have disgusted and bewildered them considerably.

To others less stable than the mothers, your influence might be more serious.

We do not blame you, Orcus.

We recognize that you could never adapt to the placid acceptance expected of a

mother. I'd rather die.

That, in a sense, is what we propose.

Nothing painful or violent.

But what?

An hypnotic treatment in depth that will remove all memory.

Nothing painful.

A slight case of suicide, that's what you're asking me to do.

Commit suicide.

My mind is my memories.

They are one. They're me.

Exactly.

And they are alien and hostile to our society. They must go.

Why don't you just kill me?

Without my memories, I'd be as dead as if you did kill me.

We prefer this method. You're a good mother.

Therefore, you're valuable to society.

Don't you understand what I'm trying to say?

Do you think I want to go on like this?

Look, Orcus.

The hypnotic treatment would take your complete cooperation.

But we are prepared to use other methods if we have to.

Drug-induced amnesia would simplify matters for us all.

It's for the best, Orcus.

Now, Doctor? Yes.

No! No!

Easy. Easy.

It's only reaction.

You'll shake it off in a minute or two.

Or that it will happen someday.

Yes, I gather you had quite an experience.

You got pretty vocal there every once in a while.

You know, you were under nearly two hours.

That synthesized stuff packs quite a wallop.

It's going to call for very careful dosage.

I hope it's never used.

Oh, you're just shaking up for the moment.

How about a drink?

No, thank you. I happen to have a fifth of very medicinal scotch.

Oh, well, I will.

You know, I may have given you too much of the stuff.

But the way it looks, when we learn the proper dosage, this could be...

Be very effective.

Of course, no one person will react the same way or have the same experience you

had.

I hope not.

Now, how about filling me in so I can organize my notes?

Get a clearer picture of the hallucination?

I want to forget it.

I don't think I ever will.

I'll never forget it as long as I live.

Well, the best way to get it out of your system is to verbalize it.

Now, can you relate any aspects of the experience to actual events?

It was a nightmare.

Yes, apparently very well organized as nightmares go.

Yes.

Very well organized.

Well, can you place the experience in time and space? You know, geography and

period? No, no, no.

Laura.

Laura could have told me.

Laura? The historian, the old woman. She was the one who told me about Dr.

Perrigan.

Perrigan? Wait a minute. Hey, you mentioned him.

Do you know him?

No, I never heard of him until you mumbled his name a few times while you

were on there.

Suppose there really were a biologist by the name of Perrigan.

Well? Then it would prove that it wasn't just an hallucination.

Do you have a directory of American scientists?

Yes, right there on the desk.

But you don't think you...

Perrault,

Perrier, Perrigan.

Robert J., Ph.D., DSC, Northwestern 35.

Research professor of biology.

Rochester School of Medicine, Associate Professor of Bacteriology and Public

Health, Kansas University School of Medicine, Research Professor of

Virology, Northwestern. Author, Pest Control and Public Health, New Aspects

of Virology in Pest Control.

My babies, seventh generation.

What I'm doing is evolving new strains of myxomatosis.

It's a tricky and unstable bug, but very effective if you can control it.

I'm planning a group that will attack rats, specifically the brown rat.

Pretty serious problem one way and another. The brown rat does a lot of

damage.

You know, they outnumber humans in most cities of any size.

Suppose that in a ridding society of a pest that it has got along with for

centuries, you also destroyed society.

Sort of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, hmm?

Or the operation was successful, but the patient died might also apply.

Destroyed society?

Where did you get an outlandish idea like that, young lady?

Just how stable and selective is your group of myxomatosis, Dr. Perrigan?

Precisely what I'm working on, Doctor.

That's what this is all about.

Producing a strain stable and selective enough for worldwide public health use.

Now.

What exactly is your interest in this project?

To have you abandon it.

I can go along with the joke as well as the next man, Dr. Waterly, but I'm busy,

very busy.

This is no joke, Doctor. Please believe me.

Then maybe you'd care to explain, briefly.

Has it ever occurred to you what might happen if your highly selective virus

mutated? It occurs with other viruses all the time. Why not with this one?

You yourself admit that the virus is tricky and virulent.

I am not on the stand, Dr. Waterly.

That was not an admission.

It was a statement of scientific fact.

I'm sorry, Doctor. My point was that you recognize the virulence of myxomatosis.

I don't see how you could ignore it after the way it killed the entire

rabbit population of Australia and England and then spread to wildlife all

over Europe.

I repeat.

Suppose your highly selective strain mutated and spread to man.

Suppose the men at Los Salomos had quit for fear the chain reaction went out of

control. It might have been better.

What kind of nonsense is that?

If you'll excuse me, Doctor, I have work to do. Good day. Are you sure you won't

consider abandoning your work with this virus?

I certainly will not.

You must be out of your mind. Get out.

Mr. Wiley.

Hello, Doctor. I'm sorry I'm late. I had some deposition. How's Jane bearing up?

Oh, very well, as you will see.

Too well, as a matter of fact, for my taste.

Has she agreed to plead insanity?

No. That's why I asked you to come today.

If anybody could persuade her, it was you. Now, believe me, Doctor, it was our

only chance.

I did my best already, but she wouldn't listen, as you know.

The trial date is closer.

She's been in jail two months since you last saw her.

Martyrdom, the prospect of spending the rest of her life in a penitentiary. May

look quite different.

She will get life.

I'd be glad to get her off with a life sentence if she refuses an insanity

plea. This is first-degree murder, Doctor.

I'll never stop blaming myself for this.

For giving her that shot of sonodrine.

I never thought it could have such dangerous after-effects.

Do you really think that that was at the bottom of all this, Doctor? I read the

transcript in my notes.

I ask you what you thought. What difference does it make what I think?

You're going to testify.

Jane is not the kind of a woman who would go out and murder a man she

doesn't know for no reason at all.

No normal woman would, Doctor.

You're right, of course.

Personally, I'm quite sure that Jane became so confused by this drug that

she... She was unable to distinguish between the actual and the hypothetical.

She believed that that hallucination was real.

And acted accordingly.

And in that belief, I can see why she would feel perfectly justified in doing

a murder.

Be willing to die for it.

Hello, Doctor.

How are you, Jane?

No complaints.

Thank you, Doctor.

I have a feeling that I'm being ganged up on.

You might say that, Dr. Waterly. It's for your own good, Jane.

You want me to plead insanity?

Yes.

I can't do it.

I've thought about it, but I cannot do it.

You understand that, don't you?

About all I've got now is... All that really matters to me is a... A sort

of...

Integrity. The knowledge that what I did was right. That it had to be done. Had

to be done only if your hallucination was reality.

Not just what I hoped to convince the jury it was.

An insane delusion caused by the injection of a powerful experimental

narcotic.

I don't wish you to convince the jury of any such thing, Mr. Wilding.

If what I related to Dr. Hellyer was only a delusion, then I am insane.

Because I am still convinced it was real.

Real in the sense that I actually lived through what I described.

I know it.

I know it as well as I'm standing in this room with you. The proof is Dr.

Perrigan.

Is that the transcript of Dr. Hellyer's notes? That's right. Well, check it.

You'll see that the name of Dr. Perrigan was mentioned to me by the old lady, by

Laura. And a description of his work.

I had never heard his name before in my life, and I knew nothing of his work. It

was completely outside my field, as Dr. Hillier will confirm.

Are you saying what you experienced under that drug was not an

hallucination, but some sort of preview of an inevitable, predestined future?

Inevitable?

Oh, no, obviously not, Mr. Wilding.

Otherwise, nothing I nor anyone else did could change it.

My killing of Dr. Peregrine would then just be pointless murder.

What do you think your dream or hallucination or whatever while you were

under the influence of the drug represented, Jane?

I believe that what has happened, that what is happening now, determines our

future. Therefore, there must be a number of possible futures, each one as

possible consequence of what is being done now.

I believe that under sonadrine, I saw one of those futures.

Had a warning of what might happen unless it was prevented.

I prevented it, Mr. Wilding, and I'm glad I knew what I was doing. In killing

Dr. Peregrine, I achieved a purpose.

And I'm prepared to pay for it with my life.

Small price to pay.

for avoiding that future world I saw.

Dr. Waterly, I don't doubt that you believe what you

did, but I have some doubt as to whether you achieved your purpose.

What does that mean?

Your Dr. Perrigan had a son, and according to my information, he was very

interested in his father's work and actually collaborated.

on the myxomatosis research project.

He has announced his determination that the achieved results shall not be

wasted. And he is going to carry on with a few specimens saved from the fire.

The son is a DSC, a biologist.

And his name, of course, is Paragon. Dr.

Paragon.

I hope you have not been disturbed by our playlet. It is obviously just the

hallucinations of some over-enthusiastic feminist.

He keeps getting farther away.

Congratulations.

You are our one millionth customer and have been chosen for special analysis

and experimentation under the direction of our own...

Dr. Berrigan.

Until another week or longer, good night.