Proof (2015) s01e06 Episode Script

Previously on "Proof" I also know that you nearly drowned and that's when you had your own near-death experience.
Her father offered to send me to medical school, my future has already been decided for me.
Well, do you love her? - No.
- Then you have to tell her that.
I love you, Zedan.
But there will be consequences.
Get to the point, Dr.
Richmond.
I can run some tests, but before I do, is there anything I should know? I've recorded another couple of Terabytes.
About 16 hours.
I got a few landscapes like we talked about.
All right.
Let's see what's in there.
Sam you're receiving? Yeah.
You're connected.
See if you can tell me who this is.
Dude, is that Wyatt? You tell me.
- Hey, man.
- Yeah, that's Wyatt.
So cool! Let's try something more complex.
I got up early, and I went to the park.
Cool.
We've been working on the programming for bilateral activation.
I think we've made some progress.
Are you ready? Hit me.
I'm seeing trees.
Looks like a guy riding a bike.
Whoa! Whoa, hey.
You okay? - Yeah, just - Ethan? I lost the image.
Ethan! - Something's wrong.
- What's going on? I don't know.
Ethan! He's not breathing.
Call 9-1-1.
Does he have a pulse? I don't think so.
Shit! I think he's dead.
There's no way.
Start CPR.
Oh, my God, Sam, I think he's really dead.
Then what is it still recording? Ethan worked for me for years.
He was in my lab when he collapsed.
It just doesn't make any sense.
He was standing right there, totally fine, and then, uh I told them that you could help us to understand what happened.
Well the cause of death appears to be sudden cardiac arrest which is most likely caused by a congenital defect.
I'm sorry.
Was he in any pain? It's unlikely.
I mean, in most of these cases, death is almost instantaneous.
Ethan was one of the family.
An incredible young man with a brilliant mind.
If there's anything that you need, Julie, you ask.
He really loved working for you, you know.
He was so excited to show you his progress.
He was I'll give you some time.
Just give me a second.
I need to talk to you.
Ethan was working on something remarkable.
- The man just died.
- I know, and it's terrible, but his team was doing some fascinating research.
They were developing brain-mapping technology for a new video-game project.
I don't have time to talk to you about a video game.
No, no, this isn't about a game.
It's about our investigation.
What have I said about discussing that at the hospital? Well, that you would rather not.
No, "forbid" is the word that comes to mind.
Just two minutes.
For the last two weeks, Ethan was wearing a neural helmet that was tracking his brain activity in response to visual stimuli using FMRI data and motion-energy encoding models.
I guarantee you will find this interesting very soon.
You have until the end of the hall.
All right Ethan's helmet was recording brain waves and creating a visual vocabulary of images.
Basically, if Ethan saw a tree, the computer would record what his brain looked like when he saw that tree, then later, when Ethan just thought of the tree, the computer would read his brain waves and re-create the image of the tree.
Your time's almost up.
All right, I'm getting to the good part.
Ethan was wearing the neural helmet when he died.
And the computer continued receiving data.
After he was dead? Do you know what this means? Probably that your computer downloaded a ton of meaningless and random brain activity? Or that we recorded an actual experience of what somebody has when they die.
It's worth investigating, don't you think? I do.
Hey, Zed.
Dr.
Badawi.
- Hello? - Hmm? Oh, yes.
Hello, Doctor.
There must be something good in that letter.
Ah, not really.
Just some news from home.
Private news? Love letter from a girlfriend, maybe? Yes.
Love letter.
Cool.
You trying to steal my intern again? - We're just talking.
- You know, guy stuff.
Right, well, when you're done having bro time, I need you.
Oh.
Yes.
Right away, Doctor.
It turns out there was an explosion of data in the seconds after Ethan died.
Exabytes of it.
I presume that's a lot.
It's like the entire contents of the Library of Congress hundreds of times over.
In just a few seconds, his brain off-loaded five times as much as it had in the past three weeks.
We're still decoding the data and turning it into information to find images.
We still have a long way to go, but I genuinely believe that we are going to see things no one has ever seen before.
So, this is what death looks like.
Well, it may not look like much now, but there could be something extraordinary hiding in there.
The computer only recognizes images Ethan previously encoded.
You mean like what you were talking about before about the tree? That if Ethan saw an image of a tree, the computer could re-create that image based on his thought patterns.
Exactly.
The computer was creating a digitized ideographic vocabulary.
Unfortunately, there's no vocabulary for most of the data.
And it takes 100 computational processes to see what Ethan's brain could decode in a split second.
So we have a recording of what someone sees when they die, only we can't see it.
Yet.
We can't see it yet.
Guys, let's try a log-linear transformation on the negative.
Better.
Let's try five degrees more saturation.
Dr.
Tyler, do you see something? N-no, I just, um What? It's nothing.
Did you recognize something From your own experience? What do you mean? What experience? Dr.
Tyler, did you really have a an NDE? I don't understand You have stated very clearly that you do not believe in near-death experiences.
I never said that.
I just don't believe they're positive proof of an afterlife.
They could be nothing more than a surge of brain activity that occurs at the moment of death, which is exactly what we could be looking at in there.
But you saw something.
I will meet you at the car.
I assumed that you'd told them.
Well, I hadn't.
It's nothing to be ashamed of.
I am not ashamed.
It's just private, which I expected you, of all people, to understand.
You don't want the world to know about your illness, and I've respected that.
You're right.
I'm sorry.
I was just excited by what you saw.
I didn't see anything.
But something happened in there.
I just I just had a A feeling.
A feeling! What kind of a feeling? It's just hard to explain.
It just it felt Familiar.
- To your NDE? - Yes.
Fascinating.
We have no idea what that means.
Not yet, but if Ethan's data is reminiscent to your NDE, that could be that could be validation for your experience.
Yes, I-it could be the burst of energy in the brain that we've talked about, or it could mean that we are closing in on discovering that there really is something more, and that's incredibly exciting.
Look, I would love to believe that's true just as much as you, t-to find that what I saw The things that I saw were real, but But you need something more.
So do I.
So get us more of that image.
I can't believe Dr.
Tyler had a near-death experience and she never told us about it.
Well, that I can believe.
You can take that if you want.
Oh, it's no one.
Didn't look like no one.
I was accepted to a residency In Kenya.
Ah I-I didn't realize you were applying in Kenya.
I didn't apply.
I thought I'd hoped that I could stay in America for my residency.
This is about that girl The one whose father paid for your school.
That was her calling, wasn't it? You told me you didn't want to marry her and go back to Kenya.
I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth.
And now it is too late.
I must go back.
Dr.
Tyler would be very upset.
What would I be very upset about? If we questioned you about your NDE.
You're not interested in discussing it, and we can respect that.
Good.
Let's go.
Room 216 can be discharged.
Is my angioplasty out of recovery? Just moved.
He's in room 200.
I have a day job, you know.
Yeah, and I've heard you're very good at it, mostly from you.
I need you to come back to the lab as soon as possible.
I have patients to see.
We've cleaned up more of the image.
I'll come by when I get off later.
Later? Fine I'm sure what could be the greatest discovery in the history of humanity can wait till traffic lets up.
Would you prefer I tell my patients I don't have time to check their vitals because I have to go stare at blurry fuzz on a computer screen? You know it's not just fuzz.
I'll get there as soon as I can.
Okay, I'll see you later.
Dr.
Richmond.
Hey.
Can you pick up Sophie after school I something came up.
Everything okay? Yeah.
Fine.
Ohh, sorry.
It's Ivan Turing.
It's Medics International stuff.
Yeah, I'm still at work.
I don't care.
Thai food is fine.
Yeah, I'll see you later.
Medical crisis in Thailand? We have a meeting.
Having a lot of those lately.
So, can you get her? - Yeah, yeah, not a problem.
- Okay.
Thanks.
Hey, um, about this weekend Will's room.
It's not gonna get any easier.
Right.
You're right.
Well, I'll I'll pick up Sophie.
Okay.
Thanks.
We already have four R&D projects in the red.
And I'm sure we can afford a fifth.
You always say that.
I'm working on something unique.
You always say that, too.
Look, I know that Ethan's death is hard on you, but the project lost its leader.
We can't afford to waste any more resources on this.
It's not a waste.
Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.
What I understand is the bottom line.
It's my job to answer to the shareholders.
Without me, you wouldn't have this job.
Without me, you wouldn't have a company.
You let your employees talk to you like that? She's not an employee.
She's the chief operating officer of my company! And she's my sister.
I didn't know you had a sister.
Yeah.
What else don't I know about you? There's something I want to show you.
We've constructed a Bayesian reasoning model and applied a multi-agent computational process.
Look, if you want to go toe-to-toe talking fancy jargon, I can talk transapical aortic cannulation all day long, but neither one of us has the time.
We've made some progress with the image.
Okay.
Does this look familiar to you? Um, I do I don't know.
Can you make this part clearer? Uh, guys, we've got some aliasing here.
We'll pass it through a Gaussian filter.
Does that mean anything to you? ISaw a woman.
She was with She was wearing green.
In your NDE? And you and you think this could be her? I don't know.
Maybe.
That that would be quite something.
Yes, it would.
No, that's That's not her.
Um, I think that's Ethan's mom.
No, it can't be She died when Ethan was, like, 10 or something.
And we should only have images from the time he started wearing the helmet.
Trust me, that's her.
I've seen pictures.
He could have seen a photo when he was wearing the helmet.
Play through the rest of the data.
Let's see what else we've decoded.
It's like we're watching his memories.
That's impossible.
Theoretically, it's quite possible.
In addition to whatever else it recorded, the computer could have accessed the memory center of Ethan's brain at the moment of death.
That would explain why there's so much data.
I need to talk to you about something.
Okay.
Hey, guys, take a break.
The image of Ethan's mother reaching out I saw something similar in my NDE.
I thought you said you don't recognize her.
I don't, but I saw my son reaching out to me.
Ethan saw his mother.
In many of the accounts of the NDEs, people talk about seeing loved ones.
You you think we could be looking at Ethan's NDE.
Maybe Except Ethan didn't have a near-death experience.
When Will reached out to me, that's when I came back.
But Ethan didn't.
Ethan kept going.
Ethan went all the way.
He crossed over.
How much more of the data do you have to decode? We've only processed a tiny fraction.
So, we could have the whole thing.
Yeah! Whatever we have, it's mixed in with all that other data These images, these memories.
It's it's hiding what really matters, and the brain doesn't store things sequentially, so we have no way of knowing what's from before Ethan's death Or elsewhere.
This could take years.
I'm gonna call Ethan's wife, Julie, and have her come to the lab.
No, no.
I thought the whole point was to keep this thing quiet.
She knows his life better than anyone.
We need to strip out every image, every memory from before Ethan's death.
If we can do that, what's left - just might be - Something more.
Yeah.
And we might have our proof.
The scan revealed a mass on the left side of your brain, affecting Broca's area and eroding into the middle cerebral artery, which explains the aphasia.
So, my cancer has spread.
Could be unrelated, but I'm sorry.
Can you take it out? Unfortunately, our options are complicated by the treatments of your pre-existing cancer.
My recommendation is avoid surgery and treat the tumor with radiation.
You're the expert, but I imagine that irradiating the brain comes with some significant side effects.
You would probably experience further deterioration of your language center, a loss of memory, and an impairment in your ability to process and retain information.
Well, that's not an option.
What else? Well, we can remove the tumor.
Good.
Let's do that.
But that means stopping all the treatments to your cancer your body's not strong enough to survive the operation and the treatments.
For how long? A month.
Maybe more.
Enough time for the cancer to gain significant ground Ground you won't get back.
So, if I have the tumor removed, I could be shortening my life.
Yes.
- But my brain would be spared.
- Yes.
But you have to ask yourself, what good is that if the cancer kills you? What good is being kept alive if I don't have my mind? Of course Look, is there someone A family member that you can talk this over with? No, I prefer that we keep this between the two of us.
Well, take some time.
Think about it.
Zedan! Have you heard the good news? Yes, I-I received the letter.
I told my father how much we missed each other, so he made this arrangement.
Isn't it wonderful? Halima, I am very grateful to your father, but I can't go back to Kenya so soon.
I-I need to be here.
There's just so much left for me to learn.
You can understand that, can't you? Yes, of course.
You must be where you can learn the most.
Thank you for understanding.
And if you must be there, then I must be there, as well.
So, I will come to Seattle.
Um, that's not I Hal Halima, I can't ask you to do that.
I'm going to be your wife.
It is my duty.
Um, but are you sure that is the right thing to do? But I thought you would want us to be together.
Is that not what you want? What's that noise? That is the hospital.
It's paging me.
I have to go.
I will call you back.
I'm sorry.
Apparently, Mr.
Turing's been held up in a meeting he said to start without him.
Oh.
Well, I'm sure Ivan has told you that Ethan's device recorded a massive amount of data - at the moment of his death.
- What kind of data? Well, that's what we're trying to figure out.
But they were hoping you could identify some of the images.
That's the first place we lived together.
And that's where we got married.
How do you have all this? I thought you only got images from when he was wearing that helmet.
Well, it's possible that at the moment of Ethan's death, the computer received data from the memory center of his brain.
You're saying you have Ethan's memories? Is that what this is? Ivan thinks so.
And he thinks there might be some incredible discovery buried in all this.
And you're going through all of it? Every single image? All 3.
4 exabytes.
It might take us a decade to find it.
That's why we need your help.
Oh, my God.
That was when he first told me he loved me.
You shouldn't be watching this.
What? Turn it off, please.
Nate? W-we can't.
We could lose all the data.
It's not data.
It's our life.
Turn it off.
Turn it off! I-I'm sorry.
Julie.
Julie.
They have no right.
Those are Ethan's memories His private memories.
It could also be incredibly valuable research.
I thought you were a doctor.
Why do you even care about all this? What could be so important that it's worth all this? There's a possibility That Ethan's data may contain a recording of his transition from life to Whatever comes next.
You mean, like The afterlife? Pearly gates? That's what you're looking for? We don't know what we're going to see.
That's what makes the data so important.
I can tell you what you're going to see Nothing.
There is no "next.
" And I'm not gonna let them paw through his entire life to find something that doesn't exist.
You don't know that.
Ethan was a scientist.
Don't you think he would want us to keep looking if it led to a new discovery? But that's not for anyone to say Not you or me or Ivan Turing.
Look, Julie, I understand how hard No, you don't.
No, that is Ethan's life Our life in there.
I don't care what you think you're going to find.
It doesn't make this right.
What are you doing here? I'm not allowed to come to your hospital to talk about our investigation, and you get upset when I ask you to come to my lab, so How about the phone? I don't discuss sensitive matters over the phone.
Julie is suing Turing Industries.
Is something burning? What does she want? She wants us to destroy the data all of it.
Can she do that? No, I own it.
And I have more lawyers than I can count.
That's not the point.
The point is that You shouldn't have brought her to the lab in the first place? The point is that this could be a P.
R.
nightmare, and the last thing that either of us want is for our research to become news.
She wouldn't do that.
This has all been about violating Ethan's privacy.
She wouldn't go public.
It might be her only option.
She doesn't have the law on her side.
Trying this case in the court of public opinion might be her only chance Grieving widow, husband's final thoughts.
It's a good story.
You can't let that happen.
You know, if people found out I was doing this research Let's just say it would be a disaster for both of us.
That data is our best hope at actual proof.
I'll let it be destroyed over my dead body.
Or my dead career.
Don't let her contact you.
From now on, the only people talking to her will be my lawyers.
Huh? Is that? Just Medics International stuff.
At 8:30 in the morning? He's a busy man.
So, I-I guess we better get to this.
Like you said, it's not gonna get any easier.
Keep or donate? Keep.
Donate.
You guys haven't agreed on anything.
Big surprise.
Mm, still smells like the fire from our camping weekend.
A total disaster, as I recall.
I got poison oak, and Sophie bitched the whole time 'cause there was no cell service.
I can hear you, you know.
And Will caught on fire.
Something involving the even distribution of char on the marshmallow.
Oh, my gosh.
I think Will had a girlfriend.
- What? - Who? I don't know.
There's no name.
I'm sure we would have known if he had a girlfriend.
Maybe not.
There's a note! "Will, I just wanted to say that last night was amazing.
I know we were both really nervous, but it was so much better than I" - Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
- Oh, my gosh.
No.
You don't think he Yeah maybe he did.
Woh, there's more "You're real important to me, and I'm so glad we shared this moment together.
" Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait stop.
No, I don't think we should be reading this.
Chill out, Mom.
It's not a big deal.
Well, maybe not for you.
But obviously, Will didn't want us to know about this, and I think we should respect that.
Your mom's right.
If we wouldn't have looked at it when he was here, - we shouldn't do it now.
- Oh, come on.
You want us to go into your room and start going through your stuff? I didn't think so.
We need to talk.
Hey! Just in time.
The computer's decoded a whole new flood of images.
It's learning at an exponential rate.
We're getting some incredible stuff.
That's what I need to talk to you about.
What's going on? I think this is wrong.
We shouldn't be looking at this.
What are you saying? You want to destroy the data? We're violating Ethan's privacy.
These are his most intimate memories.
Which might hold the answer to the greatest secret of all time.
Yeah, but at what cost? You may own the machines and the data, but you don't own this man's life.
You have no right to exploit it.
Every great step forward comes at a price.
I mean, we've we've explored every corner of this world.
We've landed on the moon.
Now we may be able to look beyond death.
I understand the potential, but this is not the right way to find what you are looking for.
I'm not shutting this down.
Look, I want answers as much as you do.
It's how you knew I would agree to do this in the first place, but I do not want to find out this way.
It's not right.
There may not be another way.
There is always another way.
We will keep looking.
We have time.
Maybe you do.
You're getting the treatment.
I may be stopping that.
Why? Why would you do that? It's in my brain.
And if I want the tumor removed, I have to stop the cancer treatment.
Ivan I'm so sorry.
What are you gonna do? I don't know.
But that data might be my last best chance to know what's waiting for me.
I know how much this means to you, but ask yourself, what would you want if you were in Ethan's shoes and these were your thoughts and your most private moments? I would want the research to move forward.
You're the most private person I know.
You've hardly told anyone about your cancer.
I didn't even know you had a sister.
Does she know you're sick? Who I choose to tell about my health, or not tell, is not getting in the way of our research.
So you do believe we all deserve to choose what's known about us.
What about what we leave behind And what we take to the grave? Ethan couldn't make that choice, so now you need to make it for him.
What are you gonna do? Mr.
Oumandi.
I-I did not expect you.
I was hoping to speak with Halima, sir.
Yes.
I've spoken to my daughter.
She tells me you are not planning to come back to us.
Perhaps it's best if I speak to her, sir.
Zedan, you are a good man, and you would make a very good husband for my daughter, but only if it is what you really want.
Is that what you really want? I care about her very much, sir, and I would I would I would never want to hurt her.
I understand.
Do not worry, son.
There are many men who will be happy to hear she is no longer engaged.
She will be fine.
So, I will let you out of our agreement.
Thank you, sir.
I'm very grateful to you, sir.
I was young once.
There is no need to apologize, Zedan.
However, I did pay for your education, and if you are not willing to uphold your end of our contract, I expect to be paid back Tuition, living expenses.
I believe it's roughly $250,000.
It is only fair, don't you think? Um yes, sir.
My lawyer will contact you to arrange payments.
Good luck to you, Zedan.
Your assistant said I'd find you here.
I've decided to move forward with the surgery.
Ah.
So, I assume that there's no point in trying to talk you out of it.
No, I've already contacted my oncologist and stopped treatment.
I want to schedule the surgery as soon as I'm strong enough.
As your doctor, I have to make sure that you understand that you could be giving your cancer a foothold, and that could be it.
Is that what you think? This is it? That this is all there is? We Well, that's not a question I'm usually asked by - my patients, but - In my experience, usual questions lead to usual answers, and those don't interest me.
Um my father was a devout Baptist.
My wife insists that we raise our kids Catholic, so I couldn't begin to tell you what's true.
But in my professional life, I've devoted myself to studying the brain.
And if it's taught me anything, it's that there's always something.
Hmm? Something Profound, beyond what we can see, beyond what we can imagine.
So you think there could be some kind of conscious life beyond this one? Yeah, I do, uh, but I would still fight like hell to stay right here, celebrate every birthday I could with my kids, eat every good meal, watch every sunset with my wife and a bottle of 2005 Haut-Brion.
I've always been more of a sunrise person myself.
I once climbed to the top of Mt.
Fuji because I heard that it was one of the greatest sunrises in the world.
So, how was it? Eh.
Hmm.
The great thrills in my life have come when I was alone in my cluttered garage, just tinkering, building something new, something that the world has never seen before.
When I can't do that anymore, it's time to see what's next Whatever that may be.
Maybe by then, you will have figured out a way to come back and tell us all about it.
I have people working on it.
Why am I not surprised? I don't think we've been officially introduced.
I'm Len Barliss, Carolyn Tyler's husband.
Ivan Turing.
Ex, isn't it? Separated.
Ah, right.
Look, I don't know exactly what's going on between you two, and maybe it's none of my business, but I just thought you should know that it's not over between us.
I'm sure you have several Billion more dollars than I do, - and a spaceship, I hear, but - Dr.
Barliss Cat and I we have a child and a life together.
Dr.
Barliss, I'm gonna tell you something that very few people know.
I don't have long to live.
I'm sorry, what? I'm putting your fears to rest.
Given the present circumstances, romantic entanglements aren't something I have time for.
Wow, I'm I'm sorry.
I'm such an asshole.
I can't say whether or not that's true.
I don't know you that well.
But I do know Dr.
Tyler.
She is an extraordinary woman.
So trust me If things were different, you'd have a fight on your hands.
And I do have a spaceship.
Actually, two of them.
In the larger scheme of things, I think it's a small price to pay for control of your own life.
I don't know if I'd call it a small price, but I suppose it is worth it.
I could talk to Ivan.
I-I'm sure he could arrange a loan or a grant or something.
Thank you, but I want to handle this on my own terms.
I have a meeting at a bank with a loan officer.
I will make this work.
I'm very glad you're staying, so Me, too.
Thanks.
Oh, no.
I got this.
I I meant what I said.
If you're gonna try to convince me to look at another image There are no more images.
You shut it down? Wiped the data, reformatted the hard drives.
It's all gone.
Wait permanently? There's no getting it There's no getting it back? You're not doubting yourself, are you? Because you're the one that convinced me to do it.
No, no, it's the right thing to do.
We'll keep looking.
You might want to pick up the pace a little.
I don't have a lot of time.
So, you're going ahead with the surgery? I feel like my appetite's already beginning to return.
I realized we never had that Thai food I promised you.
I had a chef flown in from Phuket.
Really? I have a lot of money.
Might as well enjoy a good meal while I can.
Have you ever seen the sunrise from the top of Mount Fuji, Dr.
Tyler? I can't say I've gotten around to it.
It's a little overrated.
But we should go sometime.
What's wrong? Is everything okay? It's it's fine.
I, um I came to apologize.
I've been acting a little crazy over this whole Turing thing.
Len, there is nothing I know, I know.
I-I talked to him today.
He told me what's going on.
He did? Yeah, out of the blue.
He told me he was dying.
Oh Kind of an odd guy.
Yeah, you could say that.
Anyway, I-I know the truth now, so I just wanted to say I'm I'm sorry for butting in.
This is amusing to you? It's just you never used to be the jealous type.
There's a lot of things I used to take for granted.
It's not actually The whole story with me and Turing.
Okay.
Do you want to tell me the whole story, or should I just stand here and go crazy? Turing asked me to investigate life after death.
I'm looking for scientific proof of what happens when we die.
Really? And in exchange, he's donating money to Medics International.
I know it sounds crazy.
But it's a lot of money, and there are a lot of people I don't think it's crazy, I think it's pretty brilliant.
You do? Sure, why not? You give a dying man a little hope, and in exchange, millions of people get better medical care.
That's a savvy move, if you ask me, Dr.
Tyler.
- Right.
- Yeah.
So that's it? The whole story? That's it.
You're not buying into any of this life-after-death stuff, are you? What? No! No.
It's been interesting, though.
Well Good night.
Good night.