Dr. Orson Rudd, lead scientist,
Ice Shelf Depletion Investigation
and Antarctic New Species Project.
NyBy Science Station, month four of six.
23rd day. 1725 hours.
Preliminary results of our research here is confirming
the thinning of marginal ice
is allowing increases of sunlight to penetrate
subsurface ocean levels.
This creates an increase
of shallow water sea life population which causes
migration of deep-sea predators in search of food.
Most have never been seen by humans.
Until this crew.
What I'm doing here
is gonna save a million lives.
The day is April 2nd.
17 miles off the southwest coast
of Papua New Guinea...
Where the hell is it?
But the launch
of the ship's scientific submersible Cthulhu
is delayed by the appearance of a school of 50 squid.
This is the first time the crew have encountered squid
since departing from the coastal waters of Australia.
More and more, the explorers become accustomed
to the unexpected developments of oceanic life.
Have they found any new species today?
We don't know yet.
Skua and Colvin aren't back from their dive.
Seizing the opportunity to explore
this swarm of mollusks, the crew prepare for a dive.
Divers enter the...
Do you know when Kasper and Doug due back?
Swim amongst a form of alien life.
The explorers are frail strangers to this domain.
Soon the presence of the dives
calls the attention of prowling sharks.
Kasper!
Unaware of the predators' dangerous presence,
the unpredictable occurs.
A ten-foot blue shark moves directly toward the diver.
From the environment which took our ancestors
billions of years to explore..
As the divers ascend through the darkness
to their first decompression level,
they are intuitively aware of the murky presence
of death.
At the bottom of the world,
a group of scientists is about to encounter
an entity of vast intelligence.
What they are about to learn will go further and deeper
than anything they hoped to learn.
Beyond science, beyond fear,
beyond humanity
in The Twilight Zone.
You're traveling through another dimension,
a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind.
It is the middle ground between light and shadow,
between science and superstition.
And it lies between the pit of one's fears
and the summit of one's knowledge.
You are now traveling through a dimension of imagination.
You've just crossed over into The Twilight Zone.
Everyone to the diving hut now!
- What the hell happened? - Where is Amy?
I don't know. S-She's gone.
Her suit's over there.
Kasper? Douglas?
There's no sign of them.
Should've both been up ten minutes ago.
Janik, no. You're the only trained diver we have left.
You can't go down there alone.
Somebody's got to go down there and find them.
And you're high.
That thing's tether's only good for 150 meters.
Skua and Colvin were diving to the ice wall, 450 meters away.
You can't go in the water
until we know what happened to them.
How will we find out what happened to them
without going in the water?
That octopus. It's, like, 40 kilos.
You don't think...?
You know what?
Let's tip over this cooler over and dump it back in the ocean.
Don't harm it.
- Take it to the lab. - She's right.
Help her take it back to the lab.
Fuck the octopus.
It-it could be the only one of its kind.
Who cares?
We're wasting time. Let's go find them.
Janik, we don't know what we're dealing with.
It's insane to go back down there alone.
Even with double tanks and seven-millimeter dry gloves,
at that depth and temperature, they got an hour
before their hands and feet become numb and useless.
They've been down there that long already.
Visibility's bad.
15 meters.
- Help me get this specimen to the lab. - Help her take it to the lab.
Janik.
Channing and I will support you from the surface.
Channing, as soon as we can,
we need to examine that octopus.
- I agree. - It's strange.
Even though Ling is just an observer
from the Chinese Antarctic Administration,
did you see how protective she got of the octopus?
Maybe because she actually cares about the work?
Hmm.
Maybe. I think she knows about us.
I hate it down here. What we're doing.
Channing, you can't say anything to anyone.
I'm not gonna say anything to anyone.
What the fuck was that?
What? What is it?
Jesus.
Both shoulders dislocated.
Lungs filled with water.
His respirator was ripped off of him.
He was deep below sunlight levels.
I only found him because I saw his headlamp.
And, yeah, he was caught just, um,
bobbing against the base of the ice shelf.
I saw no evidence of Doug. No light, nothing.
If Amy fell in the water without a suit on,
she would have died within ten minutes.
What the hell could have done that?
Those seals and whales down there?
They know what happened.
They know that's what killed them.
That's right. That's right.
How'd that thing get back in the cooler
after it killed Amy, Doug and Kasp?
Do you know how?
'Cause it's that fucking smart.
These things have been around for millions of years.
They don't got bones or a skull.
- There's nothing like them. - Look,
once the satellite's in range, we can contact McMurdo,
send an emergency response team.
They'll pick up the body, help us with any search.
TDR satellite will be at 8.7 degrees.
This is not Megaleledone setebos.
Okay. Go ahead.
This is another new species.
The radula is not chitinous.
It is made of a harder substance.
This is why we came down here.
To save a species affected by our behavior.
Living in this water and dept,
it likely has never encountered a human.
We are the first.
I don't care if it's that thing's
first encounter with anyone.
It'll be his fucking only.
Look out!
What the fuck?
Yo. Don't tell me it didn't know what was going on.
Let's, uh.
Secure Kasper in the diving hut.
Turn the heater off.
He'll remain preserved until USAP
can reach us in... probably three days.
Larry.
Can you fix the lights and keep an eye on him?
I like animals, okay?
Even the ones I eat, I'm cool with, yeah?
But I do not want to be in a room with that motherfucker!
I hear you, Larry. I do.
700 million years ago
humans and octopuses were both an underwater flatworm,
but evolution took them their way.
We know that it did. They don't.
Human minds own this world.
They can feel human,
but they are not.
Just stay away from its beak and tentacles
and it can't do a thing to you.
Channing? Can you, uh,
print out those USAP emergency response forms off that e-mail?
Channing, this is the octopus we've been looking for.
Dr. Hai was right.
The radula is not chitinous.
The chromatophores are reflective.
This is the new species.
Troxell sent us here to find.
The chemicals we can extract from it will revolutionize
pain management, anesthesia, you name it.
Once the satellite is up,
let's send a message
that we have secured the specimen.
Orson, I did not sign up for this.
You're not thinking about the big picture.
Let's just put this goddamn thing
back in the water and walk away.
No.
What if we just let Janik or Larry kill it?
You know, we could say, "What could we do?"
Satellite's up in a few minutes.
It's time to go to work.
Hey, Larry, you don't see this?
The pipe's busted.
Larry.
As soon as the satellite's over the horizon
and the Internet's live, I'll contact McMurdo Station
to send a rescue party.
Then you alert Troxell.
Shit.
I need that two-step verification code,
and the app is on my phone.
Have you seen my phone?
You had it in the lab.
Hey, have you seen my phone?
Larry?
Channing, w-what's wrong?
Janik. Larry...
Shit.
Oh, my God.
They're all gone.
Do you see anything?
In the tanks or on the floor?
If we see one?
We kill it.
No!
Five are dead. Why wouldn't we kill it?
I heard my phone in her room.
She overheard everything we were saying.
She knows we're not really here studying the ice.
We knew of Troxell's interest
in this species of octopus
three months before you even arrived here.
It has my phone.
Orson, the projector, the laptop
are both controlled by my phone.
It's tapping into Ling's computer.
- The octopus? - It figured it out.
- It's broken into her research. - What is this?
What do you need all this data for?
An animal, three hours out of the ocean,
is running my fucking cell phone?
Tell us what you know.
Chinese military?
So, it also wants to know.
What you're really doing here is, let's see...
You're investigating the physical mechanisms
of this octopus?
Artificial skin? Soft robots?
Invisibility cloaking?
You always think so small.
We will use this animal
to change what a human being can be.
What we're after is no different than you.
We're trying to develop it to save lives, not take them.
This octopus is unique.
We've both been searching for it.
You want to exploit the neurological properties
of this octopus species?
Gene edit into a human egg...
Giving human beings the best traits
of vertebrates and cephalopods.
So, if you bioengineer this gene
you would create a new species of human.
Our arms and skin would have the ability to taste,
see and react without reporting to a centralized brain.
To camouflage to its surroundings.
We'd be able to live in the oceans
while controlling the land.
Let's be honest with ourselves.
We're both trying to take from this animal what we don't have.
That's what human beings do.
It's what we've always done.
I was wrong.
We put it back in the sea, and we go home.
Come on.
- You okay? - Yeah.
What the hell is happening?
Oh, my God. It changed the sequence.
It figured out that if somehow,
during this operation, there were to occur
a mutation or sabotage of genetic material,
and this same gene is manipulated for octopus DNA,
the opposite would occur.
Sea life could rise out of the ocean and stop life on land.
It would do what evolution didn't 700 million years ago:
Put an end to the human species.
What if our role has always been not to rule this world,
but to prime it?
To lay the foundation for the true inheritors of the Earth?
The reign of humankind has come to a close today,
here in the dark, icy waters
of The Twilight Zone.
Captioning sponsored by CBS
Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org