02x01 - The Damage Done

[bunniefuu]

[MARGOT] We need to tell them the truth.

[CELL PHONE BUZZES]

[PEOPLE CHATTERING]

- [PAVANI] Dude, where have you been?
- Hey. I'm right here.

- Come on. Let's go. Ready? After you.
- [ALLIE SIGHS]

Put my bag down.

[PAVANI] Okay, let's start from the top.

So, for those of you who don't know me,

I come from a background
of predictive modeling

with an environmental focus.

I started out as a post-grad with
the idea of predicting variation

in bird migration patterns based
on climate change projections.

What can I say, I like birds.

Okay, pause here for polite laughter.

No one's gonna laugh. I like birds.

Just try not to look at your
notes so much and have fun.

[SIGHS] Previous methods
of doing that mostly relied

on statistical correlative
analysis of tracking data.

But the way I started out, I
was correlating bird movement

using decision byte rules drawn
from statistical mechanics.

And, yeah, it went from there.

Pretty soon, I'd cooked up a
recursively self-improving predictive,

non-obvious relationship
matrix. That's pretty dry.

Yeah, but just remember, have fun.

- This is... This is fun.
- Okay.

Then a couple of years back,
Pavani here stumbled across my work.

- That's your turn. I get to sit down.
- Okay. Yes.

Uh, some super obscure research paper.

Long story short... And this is all
my bit. [STAMMERS] Uh, yeah, okay.

Uh, we seed investment, offer
Allie a spot on the incubator.

Because at this point, it is very clear

that the relationship matrix has a
number of real-world applications.

That's you.

For example, governments and NGOs

are using satellite data to
predict the spread of H N ,

avian flu, cholera, malaria.

And sure, they get decent results.

They get... They get workable results.

But we, we get better results.

By extrapolating data in a way
that hadn't been possible until now,

we can micro-target populations
vulnerable to climate-based disruption.

Because political
instability, climate change,

economic unrest, famine, w*r,

uh, pandemics, these
things exist in, uh,

- kind of a weather pattern...
- Okay, wait.

W... we need to work that
middle section. It's not...

Why?

Because we're selling positives
here, not disasterbation.

- That's a stupid word.
- I appreciate you very much too.

But let's dial back on
the famines and pandemics,

the whole end of days vibe.

And, you know, throw
in a couple of pandas.

Keep things upbeat.

Hey, where you going?

Let's just start again tomorrow.

Oh, dude, we're almost there.

[STAMMERS] Just...
Just one more rehearsal.

Just think less Ebola and more
dolphins, couple of penguins.

All right, more penguins.

Come on, man, just...
It's super important.

- I have to go talk to my wife.
- What? Is this good news?

Are you guys back together?

- [STAMMERS] It...
- Oh, yeah.

Look, do what you gotta
do. But let's just...

let's pick up tomorrow, okay?

- Bright and early, do not be late.
- Totally. I won't be late.

Okay.

Jesus Christ.

[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]

[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]

[COMPUTER CHIMES]

[SIGHS]

[CAN OPENS]

[SNIFFS]

[COMPUTER CHIMES]

Hey, how are you? Good to see you.

Oh, hey, it's good to see you too.

So?

Oh, so, yeah, uh...
Sorry, I'm here. Just...

I've been noodling with this
idea that might help you guys out.

Ice.

You see that? Civilization, right?

It's hot there. You're gonna need that.

Do you know what's civilization?

It's basic infrastructure,
sewage, water, lights.

We need builders and engineers, Allie.

[BREATHES DEEPLY] You know
I would love to, but I can't.

Why not?

I got responsibilities.

To what?

[INHALES SHARPLY] It's
not what, it's them.

And you know that.

Except she doesn't want you, Allie.

She's made that perfectly clear. But us?

We could really use you down here.

Well, the invitation's open.

If you ever decide you wanna get away,

you know you've got a place
down here, people who need you.

[CALL ENDS]

- You're late.
- Uh, d... didn't really sleep.

[SIGHS] But I'm sorry.

Are you okay? You look a little, uh...

Yeah. Just... I got
this thing coming up.

You know, they're making
me jump through hoops

with the East Coast guys.

[MARGOT] That's what happens
when you sell your soul.

To support our family, so
your parents didn't have to?

No. [SIGHS] It was about
you, validated by the money.

Margot...

It's not about the
money. [INHALES SHARPLY]

[DINA] Daddy!

Ooh, there she is. Hi there.

[CHUCKLES, GRUNTS] Ah!

- [ALLIE CHUCKLES]
- [DINA SQUEALS]

Oh, I got a silly monkey around my neck.

[CHUCKLES] How am I
supposed to get you off?

- What did you do? What are you doing? Oh!
- [CHUCKLES]

- Should I unleash the tickle g*ns?
- [DINA] No.

No? [CHUCKLES]

- Where's your bag, honey?
- Up your butt.

[ALLIE] How'd a bag get up my butt?

The cookie monster did it.

- The cookie monster did it? What?
- [MARGOT] Dina?

Come get your things, sweetheart.

Yes, Mom.

Good girl. Come on.

You want to take your teddy bear? Yeah?

[MARGOT] Dina, enough
fooling around. Let's go.

Daddy's waiting, sweetie.

No rush!

Still trying to get
a bag out of my butt.

- [MARGOT SIGHS] Okay. It's Daddy Day.
- [CHUCKLES]

- It's Daddy Day. All right.
- Sleepyhead. How are you? Hi. [KISSES]

- Oof. Come on.
- Come, Dina. [SIGHS]

[SIGHS] So, how long
you been seeing this guy?

- Who?
- Here, give me that.

Richard. The North
Dakota pipeline thing.

What does it matter?

He's having breakfast in our house.

He's a colleague.

[ALLIE] Okay.

- Come on, let's walk to the car.
- [DINA CHUCKLING]

Right now. Go, run! Come on! [CHUCKLES]

[SCOFFS, INHALES SHARPLY] Wow.

Come on, you know he
wasn't always like this.

Of course he was. People don't change.

They just reveal themselves over time.

I don't want to talk about Allie, okay?

All you need to know is he's
not gonna be a problem for us.

And you don't get to
insult him in front of me.

That's not something
you get to do. Okay?

Yeah. I'm sorry.

- [MARGOT] Thank you.
- [INHALES SHARPLY]

- Hey.
- [MARGOT] Hey.

So, did you get it? [INHALES SHARPLY]

[SCOFFS]

, years ago, there
were a million beings.

years ago, there
were a billion of us.

[DRILL WHIRRING]

Okay.

Now, pour some of this in there.

[RICHARD] That the melting
permafrost releases CO

and methane gas in such volumes
that a cascading tipping point...

The root of the problem of environmental

and animal annihilation
is human privilege.

Don't even breathe.

- [ALARM CHIMES]
- [GASPS]

[GRUNTS]

Come on, Allie.

From the moment it began to crystallize,

the American literary canon was
regarded as essentially pastoral.

Preoccupied by, uh,

nature and rurality versus urban
and thus European and civilized.

But Marinelli suggested
that "Arcadia" is, in fact,

"the landscape of an idea.

The middle country of the imagination."

The... "A place of
becoming rather than being."

So however good this "good place,"

it was actually a place
of better potential.

I mean, there was a whole new
world to be subjugated and bound.

And not least by a
coast-to-coast railroad network.

So, as a result of which,

the pioneer rather than the shepherd

becomes the key figure in the
specifically American pastoral mode.

Thanks so much. [CHUCKLES]

"Becoming rather than
being." That was pretty cool.

Allie, I have an appointment.

Wanna, maybe, get a cup
of coffee or something?

Not really. Isn't it
your day? Your pitch?

In a little bit. I got time. [SIGHS]

So, listen, the reason I'm here is...

Hey, can we just talk somewhere?

I have an appointment,
Allie, I told you.

Appointment, sure. It's just
that... Look, the main thing,

the... the big thing
is your guy Richard.

He's not my guy, he's a guy.

- A guy who's hanging out with my kids.
- [SIGHS]

And if he's objecting to human
exceptionalism over the Cheerios,

- I wanna know about it.
- What's this actually about?

[BREATHES DEEPLY]

It's about... Tell me
this. Tell me one thing.

What's an English professor doing

with a folder full of
schematics for some bio-tech lab?

I just...

- You... You left this thing lying there.
- Yeah.

Meaning you had to take a look?

Because it'd be a weird f*cking thing

to respect someone's privacy, right?

- It's my house.
- But it's my folder.

Did he ask you to get that
information for him? Richard?

I'm not having this conversation.

Listen. Just hear me out,
please. Just for one second.

[INHALES SHARPLY] Now, I know
you miss it. The way things were.

The tree-spiking, the
batons, the pepper spray.

- The craziness of it all.
- You think it was about craziness?

Truthfully? A little
bit, yeah. Sometimes.

And sometimes, these days,

I think you're just a little unhappy

because things, you
know, went wrong and...

Which one of us are we actually
talking about here? Hmm?

Doesn't matter. Just back off.

Good luck with your pitch.

Dude! Pick up your phone.
Where have you been?

I know. Look, I'm sorry. I was just...

You look like sh*t.

- Huh?
- Yeah.

What's wrong?

[CEO] I mean, honestly, Allie,

it is such a thrilling
space for us to be in.

Now, green initiatives and climate
crisis mitigation are % core

to the company's vision going forward.

But here's the thing, I've
been liaising with the OSM.

It's the Office of Strategic Management.

And it occurs to us, well,

the software has any number
of marketplace applications.

It could radically disrupt online
marketing or supply chain logistics.

But in terms of homeland security,

Allie, we could be looking

at a form of predictive
intelligence gathering

that is truly disruptive in the space.

Right. But we're not really
talking about that, are we?

Now, technically it's
not up for discussion.

Your work is our property
to disburse as we see fit.

But we're not looking
at an either-or here.

More of a both-and kind of deal.

See, government investment in the
project underwrites our investment,

and so facilitates all the good

and important things
that you want to do.

So... [INHALES SHARPLY] I'm
sorry, what are you asking?

That you help trial the program
in partnership with our new client.

And who is that exactly?

[INHALES SHARPLY]

The NSA? Are you f*cking kidding me?

Oh, get over yourself. No one's
whoring anything to anyone.

They're asking you to
trial a program for them.

That's not that much to ask,
is it? You kiss one frog.

It's more than a kiss. And
it's not on the f*cking mouth.

So? Who cares? This is
the real world, Allie.

It's the cost of doing business.

Sometimes you gotta shake
the hand that feeds you.

[COMPUTER CHIMES]

Assuming that our species
even make it to

without a third world w*r,

I think that nature
herself might take control

of the human catastrophe
by producing an even more...

[CAN OPENS]

[SIGHING]

[CEO] Well, the software has any
number of marketplace applications.

It could radically disrupt online
marketing or supply chain logistics.

But in terms of homeland security,

we could be looking at a form of
predictive intelligence gathering

that is truly disruptive in the space.

Hey! Hey, we've got some
kind of incursion here.

Somebody's in!

k*ll the session.

Sir, that's the first thing I tried.

This user has some
sort of rootkit access.

Security assured us
that couldn't happen.

A rootkit like this,
it's on design level.

Sales and marketing guys
won't know it's there.

All right. Let's get a team down there.

[VEHICLES APPROACHING]

[SIRENS WAILING]

[TYPING]

We have a team on the
way. We're heading up now.

[OFFICER] They're gone.

[RADIO CHATTER]

So that's the story? That's it.

You hacked a database?

Illegally accessed. Different thing.

What was even on it?

Metadata.

[SCOFFS] f*cking metadata.

That had been illegally
gathered on American citizens.

Who gives a sh*t?

Turns out, only the government.

Not the people whose
information got hoovered up.

Give me convenience or
give me death, right?

You don't do this. You
don't run away and hide.

You do what anyone does in
America. You hire a lawyer.

Except we're talking about
violating the Espionage Act of .

Theft of government property, maybe.

Willful retention of
national defense information.

Best lawyer in the world?
I was facing years.

For looking.

Yeah. At stuff they didn't want me to.

[SIGHS]

[INHALES SHARPLY] Mom...

And what, you just...
you dropped everything

and went with him?

Yeah.

Mom, what about your career?
Your life? [STAMMERS, SIGHS]

Why?

Because he's your dad and I love him.

- [SIRENS WAILING]
- [RADIO CHATTER]

[BOTH GRUNTING, PANTING]

[AGENT] We got him.

[SIGHS]

Thank you, guys.

Hey, Allie.

I'm Agent Raban. Agent Pinto.

Sorry to have kept you
waiting for so long.

You comfortable? Get you
anything? A cup of coffee?

No. I'm good, thanks.

Good. Good, good, good.

So... [SIGHS] We're very
interested to know what...

what you were doing, hacking
into a secure government database.

I wasn't hacking anything. I was
just accessing a database, you know.

You guys are running a trial
using the software that I designed,

so I got curious.

- Took a peek.
- You took a peek.

[ALLIE] Mm-hmm.

When you say you took a peek,

you mean you exploited some sort

of undisclosed backdoor
of your own design?

Which looks less like tire-kicking
than malicious infiltration.

With respect, that's bullshit.

Just wanted to know what
you were doing with it.

Why?

- Because it's mine.
- [RABAN] Not by law.

By rights.

Hey, Allie, you know Orville Wright?

- Guy that invented the airplane?
- Sure.

It turns out that he
was around long enough

to see newsreels of Enola Gay
dropping the b*mb on Hiroshima.

And how'd he feel about that?

No one knows. And nobody gives a sh*t.

Okay. Point taken. Lesson
learned. Can I go now?

So, you and your wife...

Margot, right?

- Yes.
- You and she have a, uh...

a background in... uh, what
do we call it, Agent Pinto?

Direct action?

Domestic terrorism.

[ALLIE] If that's what you
want to call a bunch of kids

waving around a bunch of pickets
in front of Walmart, sure, yeah.

[BREATHES HEAVILY]

- [RICHARD] You okay?
- Yeah.

You ready?

No, no, no, no, no.

I think you're doing
yourself a disservice there.

Looks like Margot got herself
arrested a bunch of times.

Back in her wild days, huh?

[ELEVATOR BELL DINGS]

[CAR ALARM CHIRPS]

[ENGINE STARTS]

[PINTO] Sabotaging logging
operations, tree-spiking,

chaining herself to this... and that.

A naked protest at an arms fair.

She was pretty cool, right?

See, I guess the thing of it is,

we're interested in why you would
piggyback into a government server

just to access information
on this one particular guy.

Beaumont? Right?

What do you want me to say, you know?

The guy's sleeping with my wife,

so I just, you know, figured maybe
I could dig up some dirt on him.

We've all been there, I guess.

Or somewhere like it.

Did you find anything?

Here's where we are.

[CLEARS THROAT]

I'd like us to be friends on this thing.

You're a clever guy.

- It's your baby, you made it.
- Mmm.

We'd like you to be a part of it.

Now, what happened tonight? Make
no mistake, you broke the law.

But the way I see it,
you were in a bad place

and you got tempted to do what
any man would in your situation.

A little peek inside Pandora's Box, huh?

So I'm willing to let that slide.

But this is a one-strike deal.

You pull this kind of sh*t
again, we hang you out to dry.

Rain down the kind of force majeure

that'll make your head start spinning

like that little girl in The Exorcist.

Government will prosecute,
you will go to jail,

and you'll be seeing your
kids from behind glass.

We clear on that?

Hey. We clear on that?

Sure.

I guess you're free to go.

[ALLIE INHALES SHARPLY]

[INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER]

- [KEYPAD BEEPING]
- [LINE RINGING]

- [VOICE MAIL CHIMES]
- Margot, it's me.

Listen to me. Please listen to me.

You gotta stop what you're doing.

I'm coming to find you.
Just stop. Just wait.

[NSA AGENT] He's home.

There are people still working.

It's usually empty by : a.m.

Let's go.

[TYPING]

[KNOCKING]

- Hey!
- Hey, Brendan.

- How are ya?
- I'm good.

- Good. You wanna come in? I got...
- No.

Say, how would you like
to make the quickest

bucks you've ever made?

[LINE RINGING]

[NSA AGENT] Okay, he's on the move.

[RABAN] Stay with him.
See what he's up to.

[ENGINE STARTS]

[COMPUTER BEEPING]

Come on, come on, give me something.

That's it, sir. We're locked out.

Of what?

Everything. The entire project.

This guy completely
salted the earth. [SIGHS]

[SCANNER BEEPS]

[MUSIC PLAYING THROUGH HEADPHONES]

- Good night.
- Night.

Good night.

Don't worry, they're all
gone. The place is empty.

[SCANNER BEEPS]

[RICHARD] The genetic
material is in here somewhere.

[MARGOT] Then this is it.

Genetic modification at work.

Margot.

[TIMER BEEPING]

[HORN HONKS]

[TIRES SCREECHING]

[BREATHING HEAVILY]

[EXHALES SHARPLY]

[CHUCKLES]

f*ck, she works here.
We have to go back.

- [PANTS] We can't.
- Yeah... Yeah, we can!

[TIMER BEEPING]

- [RICHARD] There isn't time.
- There is time.

- There isn't time!
- [TIRES SQUEALING]

[MARGOT PANTS]

f*ck! [BREATHING HEAVILY]

There's nothing we can do.

You f*cking prick.

- [GRUNTING] f*ck you.
- [SCREAMS, BREATHES HEAVILY] sh*t!

[BREATHES HEAVILY] Wait! Wait!

Stop! Stop.

[PANTING]

[MUFFLED MUSIC PLAYING
THROUGH HEADPHONES]

Stop!

Hey!

Hey! Hey!

[PANTING] Oh, God. Oh, God.

[TIMER BEEPING]

[MUSIC CONTINUES PLAYING]

[BRAKES SCREECHING]

[BEEPING CONTINUES]

Hey! There's a b*mb.

You gotta get out!

[ALARM BLARING]

How'd you find me?

Margot, we have to get out of
here, now. [INHALES SHARPLY]

Margot, come on. Let's go.

There's no point. They're
coming for me anyway. [SOBS]

Me too. [BREATHES SHAKILY]

[SCOFFS] Allie, whatever
you think you did tonight,

you know you can walk it back.

[BREATHES SHAKILY] But this?

There's no way to make it right.

She... She left her
phone. I tried to stop her.

Look, there's nowhere for
me to go. [BREATHES SHAKILY]

They'll be looking forever, so you
need to leave and take the kids.

Please. [SOBS]

The kids need us both.

[SIRENS WAILING]

[INSECTS CHIRPING]

[BIRDS SINGING]

So, we're just going
to keep lying to them?

Their whole lives?

Well, just... It seemed better for them

to keep blaming me than to blame you.

What good's that going to do for anyone?

Fine, then. [STAMMERS] Go
ahead, tell them. Wake them up.

Tell them. I don't know why
you'd want to do that, but...

Fine, tell them.

Margot, it doesn't matter.

None of it matters.

Look, getting us this far, it
didn't go the way I'd hoped, but...

I'm sorry. But that's behind
us now, and we've made it.

Everything's gonna be
different from now on.

Easy-breezy.

People don't change, Allie. They
just reveal themselves over time.