♪ ♪
[music intensifies]
♪ ♪
[people yelling, screaming]
- Dri!
- What's going on?
- We need to go.
- [grunting]
- [panting]
- Oh, my God!
- What's happening? [both whimpering]
[people screaming]
- [panting]
- No, no, no!
[shimmering tone]
- Why do you have a Union card?
- There's a lot you don't understand.
[jet engines whirring]
- Chase is...fighting them.
[crash]
Aah!
[both panting]
We'll be safe in here!
[energetic electronic music]
♪ ♪
[indistinct chatter]
[children shouting]
[laughter]
- Through Ascension, you join our ancestors in the Flow.
All become one, in the true community.
- You're all fucking insane! [people gasp]
- Shh!
- I can't spend any more Sundays
watching people kill themselves!
- Baby, if you just give the Omnifaith a chance--
- The Union's responsible for killing my brother!
Your son!
- Whether or not you share my beliefs,
my job is to protect you.
- I'm done listening.
- [crying]
Merciful inhabitants of the Flow.
You who are together, my ancestors
and my enemies as one,
please protect the only child I have left.
- [gasps]
- Juju. Mama's here.
- Ma? You're alive!
Am I...dead?
- No, baby, you're alive. We're alive.
- What's happening to me?
- You are saved, child.
We 12 never knew each other,
but we had two points of commonality:
we were all atheists, and scientists,
working to harness nano-technology
to stop the climate collapse that races toward us still.
- The Flow is powered by the Kaaba!
You really think heaven would need a battery?
Wake up!
- Then, our own nano-technology consumed us.
I woke up in the HereAfter. A miracle!
- Ugh.
I've heard this boring story a million times.
- And you will hear it a million more
until you accept the truth. [person shushing]
- Naked before the Kaaba,
surrounded by relics of the Old Religions,
fate's message was clear:
to survive the death of our ecosystem,
we must bring all faiths together.
And so we built Babylon.
Here, we prepare for the Twilight:
that glorious day when all have accepted the Omnifaith,
and the last man Ascends.
That day, the Nano-Euphrates will run gold
as the rays of the sun,
to signify humanity has finally beaten death.
The sun has set.
May those who have earned Ascension step forward.
Through this rite, you join our ancestors in the Flow.
You become one in the true community.
- Juju? Baby?
- You know, I used to be embarrassed
when you called me that.
But I gotta admit,
it sounds good right about now.
Ma, where are we?
Last I remember, the Union slashed my eye.
I thought I was dead, but I'm still in gen:LOCK.
- The Union saved you.
- Ma, the Union aren't good guys!
They're zealots marching to their deaths for fairy tales.
- The Miracle is not a fairy tale.
You don't understand.
The Flow used Brother Tate to answer my prayers.
I prayed for a reunion with my children every night.
- Children? Who else is there?
- Baby? What can I do?
- In our attempt to free Chase from the Polity,
he was badly damaged.
I'm so sorry, sister.
We did not know he would be so broken.
- Pain that only gets worse.
Memories vanishing, he doesn't have a body.
What kind of life is that?
- No kind of life at all.
But I've been thinking
maybe there is a way for his suffering
and yours to have been worth it.
- You want to Ascend?
You have no proof of an afterlife
in the Flow, Baba!
- The testimonies of the Saint Scientists
are proof enough for a billion people.
[coughing]
- Yasamin, your father is sick. He is in great pain.
Ascension will free him.
And I want to go with him.
- [gasps] But you aren't sick!
- You don't need us. - [wheezing]
- You're an adult now, Yasamin.
- Do you not see, daughter?
We cannot Ascend while you are without faith.
[coughing]
- But-- - No, buts!
Your disbelief is the only reason
your father lives in pain.
- These sheep just "go with the Flow."
[crowd cheers] [laughing]
And I, Meshach,
will wake them up. [laughs]
crowd: Meshach, Meshach-- [broadcast powers off]
[solemn music]
♪ ♪
- Juju, do you remember your father?
- Only in flashes.
I feel...empty where he's supposed to be.
- Your father and I were children
when the United Nations rebranded as the Polity.
They changed their name, but the old hierarchies
didn't go away.
Mother Earth still got sicker.
The poor, poorer.
To me, it was a farce.
But your father believed in making change from within.
He had so much optimism. It radiated into me.
Until he passed away.
When I didn't have his faith in the Polity around,
I found once again that I had none of my own.
So I became the "traitor" you now see before you.
- Mom, I'm scared. Was Dad ever scared?
- Of course, but he put on a brave face.
- That's...good to know.
- Terrorists destroyed these monuments long ago.
The Flow rebuilt them,
only for the Polity to destroy them again.
- And foolish the Polity was to destroy them.
Hello, Julian.
- [groaning] I can't live like this, Ma!
- Thankfully, you do not have to.
- What? I-- - Hush now. And listen.
Years before the Miracle,
I was a young man living in Australia,
when fire ate the continent entire.
I lost everyone. My wife. My children.
But that suffering, that unreal suffering,
I believe, is why fate chose me.
- It's not just the pain. It's the fear.
I can see the dark places in me.
It's like I'm watching myself...vanish.
- Julian, there are many ways one can earn their Ascension.
But by far the hardest way
to earn Ascension is through suffering.
None have earned their Ascension
through suffering more truly than you.
- The Union has the technology to make you
Ascend the way you are,
to build a temporary biological body for the transfer.
You can be free of pain, in heaven.
- I'm scared to Ascend.
I've died twice, and it was...terrible.
- Which is why I'm gonna show you
that Ascension is not death, but glorious eternal life.
[somber organ music]
♪ ♪
- Through Ascension, you join our ancestors.
You become one in the true community.
- Come here, baby.
Don't worry.
When you're ready, I'll be here in the river of us all,
waiting for you.
- I'm ready.
I'm ready to join her.
- I'll have your transfer body ready tomorrow.
I am honored to shepherd you through this.
- Six weeks you haven't been to a meeting.
Now you want us to bomb the freaking Kaaba?
- The only time we can go unseen is night,
but then the Flow runs dark.
It won't let us get anywhere near.
- Ah, but the holy boats are immune!
Narong, stop eating the grain
that keeps the bombs from shifting around.
- Even prisoners get a last meal!
[boom]
- [gasps] That's a Polity Plane.
[people screaming]
[electric crackling]
[booming]
[power down hum]
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Oof--
Ohh...
Aah!
- Mission successful.
Union nano energy source, eliminated.
Civilian death toll stands at--
- All their talk of peace while producing something
as dangerous as nanotech,
refusing to allow our inspectors in.
We couldn't let the Polity live under that threat.
- Our after-life is gone.
- Oh.
Oh, ye of little faith. [both cry]
The short notice with which you called this meeting
is a disrespect. You are not my superior.
I am the only one among us with a military background and--
- Your military background is a black stain,
not a bragging right.
The 11 of us are Athenians,
while you remain ever the Spartan.
[automatic gunfire]
- They have a copy of Julian?
- And the new gen:LOCK recruits besides.
With the ability to copy souls,
the Polity will no longer be limited
to the rare plastic mind they happen across.
Now they can just copy the ones they have,
make infinite Holons.
They will surely build an army of these bodiless souls.
- To stop the salvation we bring.
I'll do what I must.
- As must we all, together.
citizens: Together! Together! Together! Together!
[chanting continues]
- [laughing in amazement]
- [gasps] How can it be?
[indistinct chatter]
- Close that, you'll get us caught.
- I'm gathering intel!
- Despite the destruction of our great Kaaba,
the Flow carries on.
- What? But that's impossible!
- The Flow no longer requires the Kaaba.
It has the capacity to self-perpetuate,
A second Miracle! But no longer can we let those
who trespassed against us go unpunished.
[cheers and applause]
The Polity attacked.
They attempted to destroy Heaven itself.
[crowd booing] They just started a war.
We will end it. [cheers and applause]
And we've already begun.
Our drones caught footage of Union terrorists
aiding the Polity in their attack!
We are dealing with them... now.
And Ascensions continue!
When our great intellectuals, Minu and Farzin,
found out their daughter was not only a disbeliever,
but attempted to doom all humanity.
- [screaming]
[intense music]
♪ ♪
[crowd jeering]
- We can't stay here.
We'll be safe in the Euphrates until night.
- Night has already fallen for me.
- Bless me, Sister, for I have sinned.
When the Polity struck the Kaaba, the 12,
we knew the Flow had long
before ceased needing an external power source.
We only kept it secret so the Polity would not know.
Now our enemy possesses the means
to build an army of Holons impervious to our nano-tech.
And if we are to stand a chance against that army,
I must break a promise to a boy
to free him from his great pain.
- [chuckles] Correct me if I am wrong,
but are not Spartans remembered largely
on account of their great strength?
- Thank you for helping me Ascend, Brother.
Since I woke up, I've seen so much kindness in the Union.
But none greater than yours.
- To take this journey,
you'll have to go into a body one last time.
- I'm coming, Ma.
[electricity crackling]
What's going on?
- I'm so sorry, Chase.
But my duty is to all the children of the Union.
The Polity will build an army using your soul,
and damn mankind to death without the HereAfter.
Every faith had one like you chosen to suffer in winter,
to bring forth spring.
But through suffering, you will earn your Ascension.
Like a golem, you will protect us.
- [yelling]
Kill the copy.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪