-Sorry to keep you waiting.-Who are you?-Who I am is inconsequential. The question is who you are?-I want to talk to an attorney.-Have you eaten?-Ok. There are laws. This isn’t Moscow, this is New Mexico. It’s my constitutional right as a citizen…-Actually, it isn’t New Mexico. Within the confines of these fences, you are no longer in the United States or the purview of its constitution. Technically, you are nowhere talking to no one. Now how about a sandwich?-Look, there’s been a mix-up, I took some papers, I admit that, but they pose no threat to security. They involve X-rays, high-speed photography. It was my own research. I thought I could license the findings. It was stupid.-To whom? You were planning to sell military secrets.-I am not a spy. Jesus, I was gonna call Eastman Kodak.-You physicists…you have a natural talent for splitting hairs. The world I live in is much more black and white. Pss,pss,pss,pss. Poor thing. Stranded in the desert. Remind me which one of you wunderkinds came up with the theory of the cat.-Uh, Erwin Schrodinger.-Schrodinger, yes. I read about him in “Popular Science”, a cat is locked in a steel chamber with a bottle of cyanide. It’s either been poisoned or it hasn’t. but, until you look inside the chamber, the cat is both dead and alive simultaneously. How do you explain that?-It’s complicated.-Is it? The question seems simple enough to me. Is he alive or is he dead? Maybe it depends on what the cat does next.-“You are the best and bravest son a mother could hope for. I think of your valor on that beachhead and my heart fills to bursting. When you’re down in the trenches and the bullets are flying…”-Lying to your own mother?-What am I supposed to say? Today I held the door for some eggheard? I haven’t fired a gun since we left Fort Dix.-War is hell.-We had an arrangement.-You said you would protect Sid Liao.-I said I’d put in a good word with the powers that be and I did.-I want to see him now.-That’s not possible. Your group is intact. You got what you asked for. Now you’ve got a guilty conscience? T side parties have taken an interest in your man.-The department of Justice?-It’s no longer my concern.-Is that a piece of costume jewelry on your chest?-Excuse me?-You’re the high-ranking military officer on this base…O-6. If you weren’t here, you’d be in a tent in the pacific with 4,000 lives at your command.-We all have to make sacrifices.-On this Hill you are the powers that be, so stop acting like a guest in your own goddamn house.-So that’s our girl. The isotope that launched 1,000 ships. Hope the Brits have good umbrellas. -It’s gonna be raining Nazis in Piccadilly Circus.-Hi, Charlie. Settling in all right? Some of the boys have been telling me you’ve been talking a blue streak about civilian casualties. You know, you got anything on your mind, my door is always open.-Well, sir, respectfully, we got some of the best minds in America here, maybe the world. If we redirected our efforts towards particle beams or sonar, anti-submarine technology, we could potentially…-Charlie.-Yeah?-I want you to be happy here.-Thank you.-But I need you to be helpful. You are a gear in a complex machine with 1,000 moving parts.-I understand that.-We cherish life. It’s in our nature. Unfortunately, our enemies do not. Doubt is a luxury we cannot afford.-Sorry, how are sanitary napkins gonna fix my stove?-Ok, stay here. Keep an eye out for MPs.-Hey, Nana.-Okay, let’s go. Now, this is lophophora williamsii. They natives say it glistens, so they call it peyote. It’s a drug.-Oh, I don’t even smoke.-It’s not for you. It’s for Tiny. The fry cock at the mess hall. Abby, you need a hot plate. If you order it from the commissary, you’ll get it after-V-day. Tiny can give you one today. Just don’t eat the change.-Shit,shit,shit,shit,shit,shit.-You all right?-uh, yeah. Shit.-You know, Einstein said the definition of insanity is…-Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, yeah. It wasn’t Einstein, though. It was Alcoholics Anonymous. Anyway, you want insane? You should talk to me when I lose my job and I have to move back to Perryville to live with my mother.-Perryville?-Mm-hmm.-I’m from Missouri.-Really?-Yeah.-Well, you, me, and the Pony Express. He’s not coming back, is he?-Lancefield? No, never works past 7:00. Protestant work ethic.-I was supposed to pick up the plutonium sample. Now I have to explain to my group that we lost a good night’s work because I was trying to get a call through to my…my boyfriend.-Let’s be honest, my…my ex-boyfriend. They already think I’m a circus around here, you know? A girl with PhD. That’s like a monkey with a harmonica.-There was a girl in my graduate class. She could solve Lagrange equation in her head.-Really? And where is she now?-I don’t know, Married.-Right.-You’re not as… you’re not as loathsome as the rest of Akley’s drones.-Oh, thank you.-No, I mean, I … I read your paper, no offense, but… I thought you’d be an arrogant horse’s ass. I’ll give Missouri your best.-Really?-First we precipitate plutonium fluoride. And then we fire up the cyclotron and count the neutrons per fission.-Meek, what are you talking about?-You know even less about chemistry than you do about acting. It has no known effects on human physiology.-It was just discovered. We don’t know anything about it yet.-We know plenty. It’s a transuranic radioactive chemical element. With a high boiling point and a half-life of 240,000 years.-You mean 24,000?-What?-Plutonium.-No, Kryptonite.-Kryptonite.-Fritz, Meeks, Charlie Isaacs.-Oh, let me ask you something. Suppose you had to estimate the force of gravity on Krypton.-Krypton, the fictitious planet?-Yeah,-Yeah, just a ballpark figure.-Okay, Um… they say superman can leap a tall building in a single bound.-Yes, and you figure, what, the Chicago Board of Trade building is 500 feet tall?-And let’s say an adult male in peak physical condition can jump five feet. Stands to reason Krypton’s gravity is 100 mes that of Earth’s.-978 meters per seconds squared. Thank u, Charlie.-No, impossible. You know what’s impossible? Either of you two ever having sex with a woman. -What the hell is going on in here?-I’m talking to you, Isaacs.-Would you like to explain yourself?-What I would like is my share of the plutonium.-You share. What, do you think we’re running a commune here?-Perhaps, I was insufficiently clear yesterday.-You refused to help me get the resources I need to do my job. So I helped myself.-If there’s so much as a microgram missing…-Dr. Akley is a competent manager. He may even deliver a working bomb.-I appreciate the vote of confidence.-But that won’t matter. Because by the time he does, New York will already be an ashtray. You studied with Heisenberg at Leipzig. Do you think we even have a prayer of beating him with Thin Man? The implosion model is more efficient. It will save us time. We are building a better mousetrap.-Let me ask you a question. Did you study axial chemistry at Leipzig? No? what about the Clark Effect? It’s because they’ve never been proven. These are Frank Winter’s contribution to science…pipe dreams. Implosion is a fascinating theory, but you cannot drop a theory out of a Lockheed B-29 Superfotress.-Boeing.-If Frank could prove that implosion was more than a fairy tale even at the most rudimentary level, I’d give him all the plutonium he want , he could have the keys to my Buick. He could sleep with my wife.-Fine.-Fine what?-I’ll prove it.-How?-Get up. I want you to get the group together.-Winter. I’m talking to you, asshole.-Barath gave us 24 hours. They’ll give us the plutonium if we can prove that our design will work. -we can’t prove it’ll work without plutonium.-Yes, we can.-Well, we can walk them through the math, but it doesn’t actually prove anything.-Before the Wright brothers built their first plane, they flew kites off the dunes of Kitty Hawk. This is a kite.-I assume we’re gonna blow the up and not fly it.-No, no, not up. In. Mechanically, it is no different than the implosion bomb. It’s just that we’re gonna turn this…into this.-Oh, we’re gonna turn it into a cigar.-We’re going to implode a pipe into a solid mass same size as that cigar.-Wait, by tomorrow? That’s absurd.-What’s the rush?-Our friend from Washington, he’s not Department of Justice.-What is he, OSS? FBI?G-2?-It’s the ones that don’t have a name you have to look out for. We got a real problem here.-I thought it was Liao’s problem.-There are dark corners in this war, Frank. Men like him, they don’t have an office or a title. He is just a line item on a budget. He make problems disappear. He makes people disappear.-I don’t feel good. You want to hear it again, put a nickel in the jukebox.-You even hear the expression. “man is as sick as his secrets”?-Look, I’ve already told you. Three weeks ago, I took the papers back to the dorm room. I stuck them down the front of my pants. It was easy. They don’t search you when you’re leaving the tech area. I hid the papers under my mattress. I was going to sell the patents. I’m not a spy. I’ve got a five-year-old kid. She’s got myeloma. I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. you want me to put it in writing?-Why don’t we start from the beginning?-Jesus Christ. It was three weeks ago…-That’s not the beginning. That’s the end.-What?! You want to know where I was conceived?-I assume it was in Bloomington, Indiana. That’s where your parents met, right? Your mother was born Mary Agnes Costello. She died in 1938 in her bedroom, stroke. Your father taught mathematics as Shanghai University. Now he’s washing dishes at the Foxhead Steakhouse. He was raised in Soochow. But you’ve never been there, have you?-No.-They have the most marvelous gardens. Something to see before you die.-Why are we here? Whatever you want to know, just ask me.-You probably know from talking to your daughter’s oncologist, some cancers you can treat with a course of radiation. Others you have to cut out at the source.-You want to talk about my kid?-I want to talk about your colleagues in the tech area. You were recruited by Frank Winter. Let’s talk about him. In 1936, he took a leave of absence from the University of Chicago. Do you know where he spent that year?-Why don’t you ask Frank?-Because I’m asking you.-Three weeks ago, I took the papers out of the tech area and hid them in my dorm room. I was going to sell the patents, I am not a spy. If you want to charge me, at it.-I’ll come back when you’re feeling better. Try to get some rest.-Yeah, boys, look at it.-I got Joseph Goebbels, boys.-Sergeant, sir. Did you get my request? I put it for transfer, sir. For deployment overseas…the pacific theater, Europe, wherever I’m needed, sir.-Gate C, 2200 hours. You have the graveyard shift, private.-Sir, due respect, I want to see some action.-So watch the RKO newsreel. At great expense, your president gathered…-It’s all filled out, sign the bottom line. Prove you’re still in chare here.-What is this?-It’s what Sid Liao deserves… a fighting chance.-I could not recognize his voice, so I connected the call.-Again?-See you tomorrow.-Bonsoir.-Are you ready to go? That tickles.-You need this, honey.-Okay.-No, no, no, no, we have to go. Yes. Charlie, please. I told her we’d be there at 7:30. Reschedule. -No.-after the day I had, all I want to do is get into bed with my life. I’ll do that thing you like.-Two nights in a row? You’ll sprain your back. Besides, you have to eat.-I’m not hungry. who’s that?-The sitter.-Look, just tell your new friend…-You met her the other night at the barbecue. Hello, come in. Charlie, this is Callie Winter.-You’re Frank Winter’s daughter?-Ostensibly.-Let me introduce you to Joey. Callie was sweet enough to offer her services while we have dinner with her parents.-You know what? I am developing a bit of an appetite.-Oh, and they have Tommy Dorsey. Oh, you might have to take me for a spin. We were just about to call a search party. Hello.-Frank, this is Abby Isaacs and her husband Charlie.-We’ve crossed paths at the office.-Have we?-They’re staying for dinner. Who needs a drink?-I have all his albums back at home.-He does have a lovely voice.-Are you a jazz fan?-I prefer silence.-Mmm.-Frank is very sensitive to noise. Is that right?-Would anybody like dessert?-I’ll help you. I can take this.-Thank you.-So what’s your problem anyway? Just bulldoze anyone in your path to get what you want? I figured it out. Why you were the one guy that rejected my paper.-I doubt that.-You’re afraid I’m the meteor that’ll make you go extinct.-What is it with little boys and dinosaurs?-Charlie’s usually more fun.-Physicists need to sniff each other out mark their territory. You’d think there’d be enough universe to go around.-I don’t know what’s gotten into him since we got here. Half the time he’s brooding and half the other half… honestly, it’s like our honeymoon. He can’t keep his hands to himself.-They’re all like that at first. They find it easier than talking. Eventually they stop doing either.-You know, when I was a kid… you mind? My father used to drag me with him, when he played Mississippi Stud. And sometime after dawn, the guy would scoop me up off the sofa in the back of some dilicatessen and he’d tell me that what mattered was that he had balls. See, because whatever kind of beating he took at the table, he still thought he was a maverick. Even after we’d lost the house, in his mind he was always a genius card shark just waiting for that one lucky river card. But the most pathetic part isn’t that my father doubled down on the wrong bets over and over again, it’s that he was never man enough to admit to himself that he was a sinking ship. I don’t feel bad for you. I feel bad for those suckers in your group that you’re taking down with you. Come tomorrow, they’ll be a punch line. Just like you.-Get home safe.-Abby.-It was one dinner. They’ve gone. Are you happy?-They’re not our friends.-We don’t have friends. You have work, what do I have?-You have Callie. I don’t want those people in our house.-Maybe you should just write me a list of who I can and can’t talk to. I understand. There’s some kind of crisis at work.-You have no idea.-But this is our life. There’ll always be a crisis.。
