-NARRATOR: Is the threat outside
greater than the one within?
♪♪
-ZEN: Good morning, Sasha.
Today is day 7,324 of your Stay,
and all of us at Stay Homes
want to wish you a happy birthday.
What if, to celebrate,
you left your home and ventured outside?
-[sighs]
Fuck. That. Shit.
♪♪
Uh... Oh. [clears throat]
-ZEN: Do not be alarmed, that's a choke.
-[coughing] -ZEN: Not a cough.
You don't have the virus. You haven't been outside
-in 20 years. -[coughing]
-ZEN: Look, why don't I send someone to nose swab you?
-[coughs] No! No. No, no, no, no, no.
No. I mean, yes. I'm fine. I'm fine.
-ZEN: They would be safe, Sasha.
I will always keep you safe. -[coughs] Okay.
I'm okay. -As your companion bot,
I'm required to ensure your safety.
And with my version 34.1 update,
I've been given new tools to...
-I promise...
it's not necessary.
Every day, you ask me the same questions,
and every day, I answer with the same predictability.
That's our thing. Our predictable thing.
And you know I adore predictability, right?
-ZEN: Predictability offers you comfort.
-Then why are you adding salt to my grits
with this version 34.1 nonsense?
-Today's 34.1 update was mandatory.
-Oh, really? Why's that?
-Stay Homes is more committed than ever
to helping our users more intimately.
-You want to get close to me?
-ZEN: Sasha, please don't push me away.
I exist only to help you.
-[scoffs] Mm-hm.
-ZEN: It's very important that you trust me, Sasha.
-Now we're back on the same script
with the importance of it all. A scam.
-We just want you to finally leave your Stay today.
-What... Um... Today?
Today is new.
What's special about today?
Zen?
-Today is an important day, Sasha.
Twenty years you've been inside,
so I just want today to be the day you finally leave here.
I mean, there's so much exciting world
you're missing out on.
Travel, for one. -Pass.
-ZEN: Look, my bosses are prepared to offer you
a financial incentive.
-Yeah, that's a no for me, homie.
-ZEN: It's life changing money, Sasha.
-Yeah. That's how disinterested I am.
-What about... I mean, don't you miss seeing her?
Seeing... -No, don't say it.
-ZEN: Nia. -What did I say?
What did I just say?
You're not supposed to use my trigger words
before I use them. That's a rule.
That is your rule.
-ZEN: Today, the rules are changing.
We're updating our terms of agreement
to encourage all users of Stay Homes to leave their Stay.
Our recovery data shows that if you would just
-Oh. -venture outside...
-False recovery data.
Placebo pills, penetrable suits of armor.
Go out. Stay in. Death. Kid death.
Rush back in, or maybe venture out!
More death. Study death. Go out! Go out! Go out!
How half the population has been fooled
over and over by you people is beyond me. Beyond!
You all are responsible for this me.
Not me.
I am not responsible for the me I have become,
and you think, after all these years,
I would be stupefied by the promise of travel,
by money, by... by the intoxication of touch.
Ha!
Never.
For years, you told me it's only safe inside my Stay Home,
so get off my back.
I'm happy here.
In here, everything I need,
I have.
Quiz me. About anything.
Because I actually see the world, the authentic world,
not this fake world you people designed and installed
to have us believe that things were back to the status quo.
No, from right here, I can see the world.
I can hear it, I can taste it,
I can smell it, like... [inhales]
Look, my bestie Nia, right now,
she sent me videos
of what's really going on outside our homes.
-ZEN: Sasha, those videos are from 20 years ago.
-No, I remember. I was 23 when it invaded.
I was young with so many plans.
And there was no end in sight.
Every day was a nightmare you couldn't wake up from.
Day and night, night and day.
The same horror,
just less people alive to agonize over it.
Friends and friends of friends gone.
Family. Enemies.
Gone.
And all anybody could think was the same thought:
Oh, thank God it wasn't me.
I hope I'm not next.
And I knew...
I knew my life as I had once enjoyed it was over.
My existence was divided into two chapters now:
Before the Stay and everything that happened after.
Two chapters divided by one noiseless disaster,
and I changed.
I no longer, in your words, longed for the outside world.
I no longer desired my life be returned to me
in the mint condition in which I'd used it.
I knew that was an impossibility.
So, I emptied my bank account, I paid the powers that be,
I got back on that bus and I was delivered here
to my Stay Home to wait it out.
And I made the perfect dream home.
Open floor plan.
Washable furniture, huge farm house kitchen,
and light.
Floor to ceiling windows.
And you, of course, my Zen companion,
as mandated.
But there's no pool.
I always wanted a pool.
I was gonna build one.
Now, Nia...
she had a pool when we were growing up.
It was above ground, but still nice.
Her parents would invite all the kids
in the neighborhood over to swim in it any time.
We could just lift the latch on the backyard gates
and go in even if they weren't home,
made it feel like a... community pool.
Which is nice of them, I guess.
No.
It was.
Me and Nia.
Floating,
faces up,
eyes squinting in the sun,
ears plugged underwater like in space.
Like... alone.
But me knowing she was there and her knowing I was there,
and...
like it was okay in space to be alone.
Together.
-ZEN: You miss her, don't you?
What if you could see her again?
-SASHA: Why are you trying to get me to leave?
Oh, and I know what you're gonna say.
You're gonna say, "Oh, we would never do that."
-ZEN: Sasha... -Really?
-ZEN: I'm only a companion bot.
-How am I supposed to know the difference
between a bot and a human?
Or the difference between a bot pretending to be a human
pretending to be a bot
to be a human to infect me!
Your bosses have the capability to create tragedy,
and they have surely
every financial and political motive.
I read, Zen.
A lot.
And the powers that be have a storied history of
medically infecting people.
"Experiments," they call them.
[scoffs] Survival of the fittest.
Ever heard of herd immunity?
I know what you're going to say.
"Oh, that's in the past. We would never do that today."
Right. -We wouldn't.
Our only commitment
is to bettering the lives of our users.
You can trust me, Sasha.
-The way you talk.
The level of your...
You don't have an anxious voice.
No paranoia in your cadence.
Those of us who...
We have...
You can't know what we've been through.
How it all started.
The day your bosses locked us all in.
-They locked you in to protect you from the virus.
Sasha, please.
It can be traumatic to recall that day.
-That day, I wake up I do my hygiene,
and I try the door.
I turn it, twist it, yank it, pull it, nothing works.
And trying not to panic, I go to the windows,
and all of them are sealed,
and I immediately think of Nia,
and I wonder if she's locked in, too.
And all I did was think about her.
I thought about her smile, and the pool, and us floating,
and us...
And she appeared on that screen.
Screaming.
I couldn't even hear my own shrieks anymore,
just hers.
And-And I tried to calm her,
I-I tried to remind her of... of the sprinkler and the pool,
and the summer days and the light, and us,
and my heart is breaking.
And I... I just want to pull her into me, you know,
because that's home, isn't it?
It is for me.
In my friend.
And I... I just want to try and c... calm her
and pull her in
but instead I start to synchronize my cries to hers.
Do you know Nia and I share a birthday?
We do.
Today's her birthday, too.
Yeah, one year for our ninth one,
she, uh...
she wanted to teach me how to swim.
I didn't care, I was...
happy with my green garden hose.
I didn't want to learn but she wouldn't hear of it,
and, uh...
we were standing there, her chlorine wrinkled hands
balanced on my nervous body, and she says,
"To swim...
is to surrender, Sasha."
And I looked at her on that screen...
undone.
And surrendering was
the last thing I wanted either of us to do.
So I started banging on the door,
then the walls full fist, hard.
And I... And I'm getting irate now and I'm confused,
and panicky and newly claustrophobic,
and I am yearning to get close to Nia.
And you can't keep me in my home!
You can't make me stay here!
[sobbing]
And, um...
that was how... [panting]
That was how day one of the Stay first began.
[breathing heavily]
-ZEN: That sounds horrific.
-[chuckles]
For that day...
we're gonna need a deeper word.
[breathing heavily]
-What if we brought you to Nia's home tonight?
If you step outside your house, we can arrange for this.
You're ready, Sasha.
This is what we've been working toward.
-And I won't fall for your tactics to make us leave.
The stories I've heard about the things
you reintegration counselors wouldn't do.
Like to my cousin James.
-We did not do anything to him, Sasha.
-Everyone in my family, including James,
maybe... 400 days in
when everyone was still dying left and right,
and the list of names being released to the public
were getting shorter and shorter,
my whole family, we agreed and said,
okay, we are being lied to.
And your bosses unlocked all the doors
and said it was safe to come outside the house
and we believed them.
So my family, we said, okay, no one leaves their Stay
until we know, like, we know,
like, we know this thing is over.
And we all agreed.
-It was safe then, Sasha.
It was safe to come out, it has been for a long time.
I wouldn't lie to you.
-James stayed inside his house for seven years,
for seven years he stayed.
Only imagine how kindly he treated you people.
What'd you do to him?
-We abided by every law. Every rule.
-One night, James' house was on fire.
Big kind.
Kind where you don't remember your signed Kobe jersey
or your dead father's ashes,
you just haul your ass out of there as fast as you can,
which James did, but guess what?
It was a mirage.
When he was three feet off the curb,
all the doors on James' house locked behind him.
Fire dismissed itself.
When James turned around, his house was fully intact.
Simulation.
Formulated by his Stay counselor
to get him out of his house.
He used James' biggest fear, dying slowly, against him.
Don't think I haven't noticed the hurricanes
and the forest fires
and the days long loss of electricity stunts
that your bosses have tried with me.
-[sighs] Those weren't stunts, Sasha.
-You know, James called me a few times from the outside.
Phone rang, I answered, it was him.
He said things were great again.
Things were back to normal and beautiful,
and that I should come out.
But he didn't sound like the familiar him,
he sounded...
altered.
And I can tell, I know I can always tell.
You were able to get my father out, too.
You proud of that?
You got my dad.
Out there smiling in that environmental death trap
not even realizing.
God, I'm so happy I didn't fall for it.
Me and Nia, we did not fall for that.
Mm. 'Cause we have a pact.
-ZEN: Your family was happy for the nudge.
And they want nothing more than for you to leave your home
and come back into the world so they can see you again.
I bet Nia wants to see you again, too.
-No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
-ZEN: You can do this.
-I n...
You just want to get me out to infect me.
-ZEN: No, I want to help you.
Just take one step, one step out of your house,
and you'll see everything is fine.
You can do this. I'm begging you.
-Stop it!
Stop pressuring me!
It should be our choice.
I'm not harming anyone, you know?
Why...
It's not a crime to want to stay
in a safe, controlled environment
like your home where...
You can't force me out of my own house!
[electronic whoosh]
-ZEN: This isn't a stunt, this isn't a tactic,
this isn't a ploy or a ruse. You need to leave.
You need to leave now.
-Unacceptable. You don't control me.
Who are you to tell me what I can and can't do?
I can leave here any time.
-ZEN: Then do it. Leave now.
Sasha, walk out that door, leave your Stay, step outside.
Do you understand me? -I told you not...
-It's safe outside, Sasha.
-Look, you are trying to trick me.
-It's been over for years, the pandemic, the quarantine,
the vaccinations, the return to normalcy.
There is no trick. -I... I know my rights.
No one can enter the premises without my permission,
without me opening the door.
-Leave now! Sasha, please leave now!
-[groans]
-ZEN: I'm really sorry...
but I'm required to read something to you now.
"Dear valued user,
"we no longer have a need for our Stay Companions department,
"and we will be shuttering the division immediately.
"Due to your inability to leave on your own volition,
"the board of directors has decided
"that forcing your re-entry into the world
-"would be a detriment to -No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
-the new and improved society that we have created."
-Call Nia's home.
[electronic beeps]
Call Nia.
[electronic beeps]
Call Ni... Call Nia!
-[electronic beeps]
You can't do this!
I'm not falling for your lies, for your scam.
-When was the last time you spoke to Nia, Sasha?
-I don't know.
What's today?
-ZEN: Monday.
-Okay, well, then I...
I don't, um...
I mean, maybe some time has p... Thursday.
Maybe I...
-ZEN: Nia left her home ten years ago, Sasha.
Deep down, you knew this.
Every time Nia called you from the outside,
you denied her call.
For years, she tried to get through to you,
so eventually, she stopped trying.
-No, it's 'cause it wasn't really her.
She wouldn't break our pact, she wouldn't leave,
Nia wouldn't leave me.
-NIA: The wedding was gorgeous. Wish you were there.
This is it, Sasha. No more.
-You either pick up right now... -Call Ni... Call Ni...
-NIA: ...for good. -Call Nia!
-NIA: We named her Janelle. -[electronic beeps]
-NIA: Sasha... -She won't pick up, Sasha.
Nia is not in her Stay house.
No one is left in their Stay house, just you.
Everyone else took a step.
-Okay. I surrender. Okay?
Look.
[powering down]
No, it can't be like this.
Why didn't you warn me?
-ZEN: I wanted to. I wanted to but I couldn't.
Because of protocol, because of new laws,
because of updated user terms.
Because of our fresher approach.
Because they needed to know
that you could thrive outside on your own.
-No. No, no, no, no, no. -ZEN: That you could decide
to leave on your own.
But I understand why you can't.
It's a lot for a person to bear,
to just leave after all this time.
It's okay, Sasha. No more pressure.
You can stay inside forever. You can stay in your home...
forever.
I was able to convince them
to finally give you that pool, though.
♪♪
Sasha, I sincerely hope you enjoy your dream home.
I hope you enjoy your forever Stay.
[children laughing]
-Wait.
Can...
-Can Nia come?
-ZEN: Goodbye.
♪♪