Equilibrium

23.976 English

In the first years of the 21 st century...

...a third World War broke out.

Those of us who survived knew

mankind could never survive...

a 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.

Get down!

We have an unknown number

barricaded in the southeast end of the compound.

Read that. Tetragrammaton team en route.

Cleric, lights out. Maybe more than a dozen inside.

When the door's down, blow the bulbs.

Yes, sir.

Go.

Where is he?

Shut up.

Anybody get him? Did anybody hit him?

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.

And I thought I'd take it down myself...

get it done properly.

How long, Preston, till all this is gone?

Till we've burned 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 fades from our understanding.

At last...

we... are... whole.

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-10

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 Nethers to the city,

it reminds why we do what we do.

It does?

I beg your pardon.

It does.

The following items have been rated EC-10...

condemned...

seven works of two-dimensional illustrated material,

seven discs of musical content,

20 interactive strategy computer programs.

Seven works of two-dimensional...

Thank you for coming, Cleric.

I assume you know who I am.

Yes, sir. Of course.

You are Vice-Council Dupont

of the Third Conciliarly of the Tetragrammaton...

Father's voice.

Quite frankly, Cleric,

I am told that you are very nearly a prodigal student,

knowing almost instantly if someone is feeling.

I have a good record, sir.

Why, do you imagine, that is, Cleric?

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?

My spouse was arrested and incinerated

for sense offense four years ago, sir.

By yourself?

No, sir... by another.

How did you feel about that?

I'm 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 Nethers to the city,

it reminds why we do what we do.

It does?

Every time we come from the Nethers to the city,

it reminds why we do what we do.

It does?

It does.

Prosecutorial evidence for A.N.R. 136890.

I need it.

It was late this afternoon.

May not have showed up in the records yet.

I'm very sorry, Cleric.

Nothing has been logged

and nothing is pending under that entry.

It was an item of evidence 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 through the gate into the Nether

every night for the last two weeks.

We assumed it was enforcement-related.

You always knew.

"But I, being poor...

have only my dreams."

"I have 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 even 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'd 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 when 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 later 20th century

saw the fortuitous and simultaneous rise

of two synergistic political and psychological sciences.

The first, the revolutionary precept of the hate crime.

John?

Yes?

I saw Robbie Taylor crying today.

He didn't know, but I saw.

Do you think I should report him?

Unquestionably.