Metamorphosis

Aw, I was beginning to think you weren't coming.

Game is almost over.

Doesn't look like I missed too much.

It's a game between teachers and students of the various departments.

Mike, who is the power behind Houseman?

Behind Houseman? God.

The board of director likes him about as much as a blast of smoke in the eyes.

Then how is it last year he was able to attain financing of 200,000 dollars?

Oh, yeah, yeah!

Because our young, eccentric and subordinate Dr. Houseman

is the most brilliant genetic engineer the American University

has produced in the last 10 years.

You don't ask a genius how he spends his money.

That is Peter Houseman.

Physiology and medicine have cast light on the most

inaccessible recesses of our organisms.

Immunology has routed hundreds of invisible enemies to our health and...

Embryology has accomplished the joining of ovium and spermatoza in-vitro.

But human genetics has taken only the first tentative steps forward.

The genome is formed of approximately three billion components.

These components are the letters in the genetic alphabet.

Now calculate that if one wished to print the genome of man

with an average of 10,000 characters per page...

Aren't you exaggerating a little?

I only want to see if I can make him stutter.

...1,000 pages each.

And it is in the vast encyclopedia that our...

Hereditary patrimony of our species must be contained.

Not only the color of our eyes.

Not only the color of our hair.

Not only the masterpiece of nature

which happens to be the exciting thighs of our generous Patricia.

But also the memory of millions of years of evolution.

Fading shadows of races and generations

which have all disappeared. It is our family album.

Now, to be able to leaf through it from beginning to end

and read it would be to know our past.

Who we were,

who we are and most importantly, what we will become.

Professor, message.

Dr. Houseman, please, a moment. You can't go in there!

There is no point being angry with me. I can't do anything.

And just whose good idea is this?

Not mine.

The commission has decided that all funding requests

must be accompanied by a report which details all work in progress.

As well as the obligation to publish all experiments funded during the past year.

This is not the agreement that we made

when you offered to have me teach at this university!

Peter, be reasonable.

It's an order from the head office in New York.

This is a private university.

They want to know where the money they invest in research ends up!

If they send a woman from the administration to inspect,

it's not up to us and we can't do anything.

I took this job because you assured me a full liberty

to carry on my research with no strings attached.

No one wants to attach any strings.

They only want a report on your experiments to date.

Christ, Peter! Your department has gobbed down almost

a quarter of a million dollars in two years and you haven't published a line!

- Oh, Lloyd, how are you? - Oh, hello, Mike.

- Dr. Owen. - Hi.

Sally, this is Professor Lloyd, leads the biology department.

Oh, Miss Donnelly!

And Dr. Owen is his assistant.

- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.

So, you're from New York.

Mike!

Excuse me.

Mike, I need your help.

- If I can, Peter... - Of course you can!

You're one of the most senior members of the staff

and the only one with a little brains.

Mike, some inspectors-type is sticking her nose

into the allocation of funds for research.

- Peter, I don't think... - And I am being

categorically forced into publishing my work before it's finished.

Each of us has to publish his work, myself included.

I don't see why you should be the exception.

Because I don't write jokes and I wouldn't get the same laughs as you.

I'm sorry, Peter. I can't do anything.

- Mike! - We'd better go. Gentlemen.

Mike!

Publishing my work before it's concluded is as much as calling it quits!

And it's all the fault of some hysterical old maid in menopause!

You were at the game yesterday, weren't you?

Peter Houseman.

Maybe you can convince him to change his mind.

I'll try.

But I wouldn't expect too much from an hysterical old maid in menopause.

Oh, Christ!

What's the composition?

Nine parts serum and one part glucose dioxide.

One part in 14.

- Triple the glucose. - But we'll kill him!

I know, but I don't want to run the risk of losing direction if it's too weak!

I'm sorry, Willy, we're running out of time.

It's not my fault.

It's penetrated the suprachiasmatic nucleus.

Delta waves normal. Two cycles per second.

Cardiac pressure normal.

Willy, it's perfect.

No, no, it's not perfect.

The alpha and beta waves are increasing.

The pressure is rising.

It's an effect of the radiation on the limbic circuit evolution.

It's absorbing too quickly.

Still rising.

Absurd. It's ridiculous!

Well, it is, nonetheless, a fascinating theory.

If the data is exact.

It's impossible. He's making fun of us.

Houseman, your report is as scanty as it is fascinating.

And notably imaginative.

It would therefore be timely for you to elucidate

the objective of your research.

Given your request for new funding of 150,000 dollars.

I was requested to report on what I was doing

and to justify my expenses of last year.

In my report, everything is specified down to the last cent.

Now, as far as my experiments are concerned,

they are based on the theory of the mechanism

of auto-destruction by Brunet.

A ridiculous theory which was abandoned by Brunet himself!

He abandoned it because, at the time,

technology for proving it didn't yet exist.

Today, it is possible.

And you have been successful?

Yes, even if further experiments are needed.

You mean to say you've successfully identified the genetic sequence?

- Yes. - But that's magnificent!

Undoubtedly.

Now, let me see if I have this right, Dr. Houseman.

If you inhibit that protein,

canceling the genetic code which creates it,

in practice the cells will reproduce themselves integrally

and in a constant manner, hmm?

- Yes. - So then,

the organs would no longer become diseased.

The cells of the liver, brain,

bones, the skin would reproduce themselves forever.

Which means that old age would be defeated.

- And even death. - Perhaps.

You are not only arrogant and megalomaniacal,

you're also stupid.

- May I go now? - Dr. Houseman,

your experiments carried out to date, on what have they been performed?

On cell cultures.

This I took for granted. But of what parasite?

No parasites.

On rats, monkeys?

Human embryos.

Those sons of bitches! Those bureaucrats!

The only thing they care about is their soft job,

and that pig Lloyd would trade his only remaining leg

to see me with my back against the wall.

Perhaps a more detailed research. One with...

With all the results of the experi...

No!

I want to finish the experiment and then report on it

when it's unequivocally successful.

Only then will I publish everything.

Don't worry. We'll find the money somehow.

Even if I have to trade my shoes in.

Well, I certainly hope it doesn't come to that.

I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

Look for the receipts, Willy, with the bookkeeper's here.

Forget it, Willy. I am not the bookkeeper.

Excuse the interruption.

That you are here?

Excuse me, I have some things I have to do.

I got things I got to do, too.

From the little I understand of your experiments, they're really extraordinary.

What's that?

That's a computer I supply with molecular anatomy.

Fantastic. I know as much about it as I did before.

What does it do?

Are you really interested?

Well, I am going to be 30.

I'd like to stay that way.

Every living organism, from the moment it is born

begins a slow and inexorable deterioration,

which I believe is predetermined by genetic information.

Why predetermined?

From the moment that life stirred in an organism,

it has no more or no less evolved.

Always adapting itself into the environment in which it found itself.

Casual genetic errors of reproduction

produced mutations which the environment selected,

rewarding the most adaptable and suppressing the others.

Do you understand?

It's the environment itself which establishes the rules of the game.

Try to imagine what would happen if among many genetic errors occur

one produced an individual which never aged,

therefore didn't die and who reproduced other individuals like himself.

Well, first the environment would reward such a species.

But before long, the species would become so dominant

that every source known to man and space would be used up.

Is that what you mean?