At a new, very powerful English radiotelescope, a signal is captured,
originating in the constellation of Andromeda, millions of light years distant from Earth.
Fleming, a physics genius of the team headed by astronomer Reinhart,
interprets the exceptional message as containing the plans for the construction of an electronic brain
more advanced by far than those in existence.
An agent of English counter-intelligence, Judy Adamson
tries to discover how Bridger, Fleming's friend and collaborator,
passes documents and news to an international epionage organisation, Intel.
The technician Harries, who collaborates with the investigation,
is discovered and murdered by the killers of this audacious organisation.
At Thorness, where the team of scientists is transferred,
the supercomputer is constructed under the oversight of the missile base commander.
The new brain immediately demonstrates its impressive abilities,
requesting information and producing the design for a living cell,
which Dr Dawnay, a biologist brought by Reinhart, creates in the laboratory.
The proof of Bridger's culpability is soon evident,
but just as he is about to be arrested, he is killed by Intel's assassins.
The supercomputer reveals another, more rapid means
of communication with the human brain, through the terminal plates.
It attracts Christine, an assistant of Dawnay,
and collects from her all the information about the human organism.
But, not understanding the effect of high voltage on the body, it kills her.
Through the reconstruction of bone and muscle tissues,
in the synthesiser a woman identical to Christine is born.
The creature, which is given the name Andromeda, reveals a very high level of intelligence.
Fleming maintains that Andromeda and the supercomputer are tools of a superior intelligence
which sent the message with the aim of destroying humanity and substituting itself.
The ministers and the military, contrary to Fleming's arguments,
decide to exploit Andromeda's extraordinary capability to research a means
to be able to strike the unknown space devices that no existing missile is able to intercept.
In a short while, a new, very fast missile is constructed,
which under the coordinated guidance of Andromeda and the supercomputer,
intercepts and destroys one of these devices.
Meanwhile, Andromeda reveals various human aspects, and Fleming takes advantage of these
in an attempt to separate her from the supercomputer.
Andromeda's negative formula, input via teleprinter, makes the supercomputer believe she is dead.
The machine's reaction is violent: it punishes Andromeda for her weakness,
with strong and repeated electric shocks which badly burn her hands.
The machine itself produces a cellular regeneration enzyme, which heals the deep wounds in a few hours.
Immediately, plans are made to commercially exploit this extraordinary product.
While Dr Dawnay is in the laboratory, synthesising the formula for the enzyme provided by the supercomputer,
she is struck down by a strange illness, leaving her in a critical condition.
Meanwhile, the original message coming from the constellation,
which had been repeating every night, stops completely.
A FOR ANDROMEDA
Subtitles: Project H (2012)
THIS STORY UNFOLDS IN ENGLAND, NEXT YEAR
PART FIVE
Do you have any idea?
If you believe a military doctor could have one...
I think that no-one in your place could do anything more.
I thank you.
Is there hope?
We're attending impotently to a morbid process of whose internal mechanics we're ignorant.
One might say... well... tissue degeneration, or something of that sort.
Look.
Her skin is burning slowly, as if it were exposed to a flame.
But there is no flame.
Doctor, she's trying to say something.
Maybe she's asking us why.
Even... why it touched her.
Really her, poor Madeleine!
Maybe this question contains the key to everything!
Madeleine. It's me, Ernest.
She used to say that science is a risk, almost as much as life.
How true!
Maybe we would both have done better to occupy ourselves less with science, and more with our life.
Do you at least know how it happened?
She was working in the laboratory on the synthesis of the enzyme specified by the computer.
The... the substance - I don't know how to define it - probably acted on the skin.
But it wasn't the enzyme, it seems.
An error of the machine?
No, professor, that machine doesn't make errors.
I'm sorry!
I believe it could be my fault.
It's the proof, professor. Do you understand?
The proof you were looking for.
I don't follow you, laddie.
I've spent a lifetime demonstrating that truth is only that which our senses can verify.
For God's sake, Reinhart, don't talk like a jerk from the museum!
You know very well that all scientific progress is a qualitative leap, that contradicts appearances.
I've humiliated myself in front of everyone.
I've said that it's my fault Dr Dawnay's dying.
That at least all this will help to open our minds.
Drink.
And you?
Me, no.
"Because the great day of his ire has come..."
Don't worry, John, it's the apocalypse.
But of course, to hell with virtue.
And now, I'll try to begin everything from the start.
When I inputted the false news of Andromeda's death into the computer, I wanted...
well, I didn't have a very clear idea, let's say I wanted to test the alliance between him and the girl.
Ha! In reality I wanted just wanted to be clever.
Now I'll make you see that not everything goes your way.
And so like an idiot I gave the monster information he was waiting for.
The hostility of its environment.
Bravo! You got there.
It doesn't work, John.
The girl felt your hostility.
And the computer had probably already been informed.
There's the error!
We're all fallen - I am for vanity, and you for overestimating.
But do you really believe that this computer would have an autonomous mind?
A possibility of choice?
No, no, no. No, this is vulgar science fiction.
It's a machine, professor, marvellous but only a machine.
And then?
Is it thinkable that a machine would have been designed on a star two million light years away to respond to stimuli that are so... so evanescent?
So trivially human as sympathy, antipathy. Love.
This computer has been programmed to react to concrete facts.
The introduction of false information is a concrete fact.
And so the second part of the program is triggered, automatically. It secretes a poison.
Not aimed at Madeleine?
No. And this demonstrates exactly the danger of the computer.
In specific conditions it hits out at random.
It could kill one man or a hundred thousand.
And that's what would have happened if the false enzyme had been put on the market.
Unfortunately, John, there's only one way to verify your theory.
Wait for the second move.
Right
And the girl?
The girl is innocent.
She's nothing but a sensory organ of the computer, therefore innocent.
Like an eye, an ear... or a weapon.
For this reason, killing her wouldn't help.
The car for the airport is ready.
Will you do what I asked?
I don't have any power, you know.
Bring Undersecretary for Science Osborne here.
It's the only thing that would help, I beg you.
We'll think about the rest.
I'll do what I can, but...
I'm a terrible conspirator, me.
Judy...
Yes?
I know who the next victim will be.
The girl.
Andromeda.
Isn't she a part of the machine? You said so a little while ago.
Certainly.
But why was she punished?
It doesn't make sense.
If she's only a sensory organ of the computer then why punish her?
Right. You wouldn't punish something that's not free to do or not do.
Sure.
They didn't foresee that she'd be born imperfect.
Imperfect like the creature whose semblance they'd have imitated.
Imperfect.
Like us all.
Therefore they'll eliminate her.
To substitute her with something whose pitiless perfection we can't even imagine.
Are you in love with her, John?
No, I don't believe so.
Maybe I won't manage any more to see her as a pretty blob of cells.
That's all.
It wouldn't do you any good.
Only put things back.
A little.
You don't understand people.
They can kill even for nothing.
Sit down!
Sit down or I'll really kill you.
I'm going to ask you some questions.
You'll answer yes or no.
Positive or negative.
That's how you communicate with the computer, right?
Good.
Let's begin.
Did the computer send you?
Yes.
Do you understand the computer's program, what's contained in its memory?
No.
Then you receive orders from one moment to the next?
Without knowing the next move?
Orders.
How infantile you all are!
Answer yes or no!
Yes.
Do you know how the poison that's hit Madeleine works?
Yes.
Can you make an antidote?
Yes.
If I ask you to do it, will you?
No.
Is the computer preventing you?
Why do you hate Madeleine?
Because she created you?
Created?
Her?
No.
She didn't create me.
She synthesised a formula without understanding it.
Without knowing what there is in there.
What you call the genetic code.
No.
You hate her.
And I understand why.
You would have preferred to be pure intelligence, right?
Insensitive, indifferent.
Even your pulse, at this momemt, gives you pain.
And you're ashamed that you felt fear.
To have lied to me.
They're human weaknesses, Andromeda.
I haven't lied to you.
You have lied.
The computer didn't order you to kill me.
By now the computer's indifferent to my existence.
It operates over a greater distance, on a bigger scale.
It's you.
You who wanted to kill me.
I don't want to suffer.
You don't want to be punished for what I'm going to do?
I don't want to suffer.
Save Madeleine.
No.
You've hit the only being who's your friend on this planet.
It was an error.
Save Madeleine, I beg you.
How long can she still hold out?
Take this.
What is it?
Something that might save her, if we're still in time.
And who can guarantee me that this is the exact formula?
No-one.
What are you doing?
Telephoning Colonel Geers.
To tell him what?
That you've got the industrial formula of the enzyme in your hand?
Concern yourself with her disease!
Yes, OK.
Wait a moment, while I talk to Major Quadring.
Major? It's the Science Ministry, Mr Osborne.
Very well.
Oh no, no, there's no need for you to talk to him.
He says he must come with Sir Reinhart, and with another functionary of the ministry.
Will they be able to have a pass?
I suppose so.
For the computer building?
Must they really go in there?
Have they an expressed need to enter the computer building?
Just a moment.
He says yes, it's a check the ministry wants.
As they command.
We can't refuse permission to Osborne.
Ask the functionary's name.
In whose name should the pass be prepared?
Sir Henry James.
Good.
It'll be best if you accompany them.
I'll come to meet them.
Good grief!
Something pleasantly human will happen to you if you go around like that.
Take it.
You lost it.
What are you looking for, your nebula?
It's not easy to find it with the naked eye.
And then your planet might not exist any more.
Two million years have passed since the message left there.
Two million years - how vulgar!
Doomed to imagine the universe according to your measurements.
It's true.
You, though, what do you imagine?
I don't imagine, I see.
I see the difference between your intelligence and another.
I see that yours is destined to succumb.
But even that's the wrong word, let's say, one substitutes for the other.
Why make a drama?
It's already happened thousands of times.
It's like the end of the dinosaurs.
They believed themselves lords of the Earth, exactly like you now.
You say that with indifference.
But how terrible!
Why? It's a reality.
But it's also your reality.
What do you want, John?
To save you.
No. You want that I help you destroy the computer.
I want you to get ready to live without the computer.
But really that's impossible.
I beg you, John, go.
Go away from Thorness.
I'm asking you this for myself, this time.
It's the first time.
What?
That you cry.
I really think that you're turning into a woman.
Everything you asked for.
Him too. Well done, Professor.
Good evening.
Welcome.
Miss Adamson, I trust you consent?
I'm risking my whole political career.
Keep calm. I know what I'm doing.
I hope he knows what he'll be doing.
And Madeleine?
Still very ill.
But the girl has prepared an antidote.
If it's not too late.
Andromeda gave you that? Then this means...
Don't delude yourself, professor.
The girl will never do anything against the computer.
The machine can act without her and against her.
The problem is always there, in the computer's memory.
It's a primed bomb.
We need to see when and how it will explode.
Be careful with Osborne.
He doesn't have a martyr's vocation.
So! This pass.
We'll all end up in jail. I hope I don't share a cell with you.
I would have to try to escape.
But what are you saying? I'm a Ministerial functionary now.
One moment, Fleming!
I'm not moving from here if I don't know exactly your intentions.
John thinks he might be able to find a defect...
The machine is programmed in a certain way.
There are two possibilities: either the intention was that it acted against us, or something has gone wrong.
In sum, this machine needs us to change it.
Or liquidate it.
Liquidate it?
Oh no, don't even joke about that!
Then let me think about it.
It could be that there's a functional problem, I repeat.
Give me a few hours and I'll let you know.
Osborne can go to his minister, and maybe even the Prime Minister if necessary, right?
Be clear, this visit is solely for a check on the computer.
Nothing else! No direct action.
Very well.
This country, young man, depends on that machine.
For us today it's has an importance greater than the steam engine itself, than atomic energy.
If it's so important, reasons of...
Yes, I know, but don't lecture me now.
Do you believe I'd be here if I weren't convinced of this?
I have great esteem for you, for your opinions, believe me.
But there are ways and ways.
Can you suggest a better one to me?
For checking, no.
But... you must resign yourself to only that, understood?
A man in my position...
And what's that, your position?
That of the noblest Roman of them all?
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves"
They'll write that on our gravestones.
Onward! Onward with the masquerade!
Thanks, professor.
How am I?
You look like a scarecrow!
Do you understand that you risk being shot?
What do you say to drinking a nip, for the success of our operation?
No, thanks, thanks.
John, the message has stopped.
Andromeda?
Since yesterday. M31 - quiet.
Do you understand what that means?
That it could be finished for ever.
Before deciding anything, remember that in the belly of that machine...
...is perhaps the last possibility of contact with an intelligence that's been dead two million years.
Do you promise that?
Yes.
Pass, please.
Do you want to give me your passes?
Pass, please.
Come along.
It's best if you swap passes.
This is Dr Fleming's one.
You take his.
The umbrella and briefcase too.
Fleming, the destiny of us all depends on you.
Yes, yes.
Let's go, Osborne.
Don't get cold feet at the last moment.
I'll accompany you to the guards' post.
Then I'll come back.
No! You don't come back.
I'm sorry, Fleming.
It was in the agreement.
I don't want anyone in here.
Don't be difficult, John!
OK, OK.
Good luck.
Let's go.
What are you doing?
Seeing if it's possible to get the instructions through to erase part of the memory.
And how will it react?
I don't know.
If he executes the instruction maybe we'll have a controllable machine.
What do you mean?
He'll be able to serve only our purposes, and not his own.
What's happening?
I hear somebody coming.
There, I've finished.
He's killed her.
He's sensed her weakness and disloyalty, and he's killed her!
My God!
And now?
He'll do it better the next time.
He'll produce something against which we'll never be able to win.
You have to find whatever it is that doesn't work.
There's nothing that doesn't work in this damned machine.
That's the only response we needed.
We have to finish him off.
Now's the time.
But have you gone crazy?
Let go, I've told you not to poke your nose in!
John!
Get out of the way!
You're ruining yourself!
I should have done this a long time ago!
And now?
They'll try to rebuild him but they won't know how.
But there's always the message from Andromeda.
But there won't be me to interpret it.
Someone else will come.
Maybe.
But they won't manage to have it because the original message is in here.
Where's the key?
It's with Major Quadring.
Isn't there another?
No, it's the only one.
Go and get it.
Don't ask me the impossible!
You must get it!
He keeps it in a safe.
I must have it.
Otherwise it'll be completely useless.
Completely useless, do you understand?
But no, but no.
It's impossible.
It's over, Judy.
It's over.
We can't win.
Can we at least try to get out of here alive?
Come on.
And now what do we do?
I don't know. I don't know.
I have to go and report to Osborne and Reinhart.
John! John!
You go to your room and don't move from there.
I'm sorry, sir.
You're sorry, eh?
But how could you dare to drag me into this adventure?
It's me who dragged you into this adventure, and I'd do it again.
Take it out on me.
As if that would help anything!
There will be an inquest.
Who do you think will pay for everything? Fleming!
Don't you know him yet?
He will assume all responsibility.
He'll testify that he took advantage of your good faith.
You two are safe, haven't you understood that yet?
Regarding you, I can find ten witnesses ready to swear that you've never been seen at Thorness.
Calm down, calm down.
My girl, better to tell Fleming to deny everything.
He never left his room, clear?
Force him to lie, there's still a chance.
Do me a favour!
Passengers departing for London, please go to the gate.
We'd prefer a way of claiming that it was her.
Are you sure she's dead?
I saw her fall to the ground, electrocuted.
Goodbye.
Don't turn the light on.
But...
No. It's not possible.
You were there on the ground and your heart had stopped.
So it was you?
Oh God.
If I'd thought that you were still alive...
Would you have... destroyed me too?
Maybe I wouldn't have had the strength to do anything.
I'm cold.
You have a fever.
My hands.
Do they hurt a lot?
Yes, a lot.
Drink this.
Is that better?
Who bandaged your hands?
I did it myself.
Did you call the guards?
No.
Did you come straight here?
Yes.
Did anyone see you?
I don't believe so.
Why do you ask me these questions?
Will something happen?
Nothing.
It's all happened already.
Yes.
Everything.
I didn't understand it immediately.
When I came back to my senses,
I couldn't think about anything but the pain in my hands.
Then... I looked around me.
I saw the computer was destroyed.
Happy?
Lost.
Or like you said.
Alone.
Why did you come here?
Where could I go?
There.
It's finished.
For me, yes.
Not for you, Andromeda.
They'll rebuild him.
No!
They'll rebuild him because I made a mistake.
The original message is still intact inside the safe.
I didn't have the key.
I... have the key.
Where?
Here.
Take it.
I... I can't go in there.
You, yes.
Listen.
You don't need to do anything but go into the memory room.
Open the safe.
Take the original message which is recorded on tape,
my calculations which are written on paper,
and the program which is on punched cards.
I can't.
You're the only one who can.
No.
Please.
You can get past the guards.
They won't stop you.
I can't manage.
Make a bonfire of everything.
You can make it in the middle of the room, on the floor, and when it's well lit, throw on the magnetic tapes.
That way there'll be an end to it.
Then stay in the building.
Don't move for any reason.
Don't make me go there again.
I'm afraid.
But it's right that you should be afraid.
It's normal.
It's the proof that you're...
One of you?
Yes.
But now I... I'm much weaker than you.
There's one thing I didn't want to tell you.
I didn't know how you would have reacted.
The message has stopped.
Since yesterday evening.
M31 doesn't transmit any more.
Maybe they've got tired, maybe they're dead.
If you managed to destroy the original message, you'd be free.
Free, for all the rest of your life.
Good girl!
André.
Why do you say André?
It's time to change your name, too.
Everything OK?
Yes. It's a quiet evening.
Your pass, please.
But do you feel well, miss?
Yes, I feel fine, thanks.
Are you sure?
Yes.
Thanks.
Fire! Alarm! Fire!
What's happening?
The code is burning.
She's thought about it.
She who?
Andromeda.
But she's dead.
No. She's alive.
She's there at this moment.
There she is!
They'll kill her!
John!
John! Don't go!
It was me who sent her!
John!
Yes, Quadring.
Good.
Deploy a cordon of troops with orders to shoot anyone who runs.
Have you brought out the jeep with the exploratory radar?
Good.
Yes, yes, shoot on sight.
Get the car out for me.
Yes, everything's burned, the design, the program, everything.
And then the girl escaped.
Search the moor!
The railway, the shore, the caves!
That's what we are doing.
And don't shoot, idiots!
But of course, General Watling.
Colonel, I've come to tell you...
Not at this moment. Not at this moment.
But it's important!
What's happened now?
Dr Dawnay is dead.
Down, on the ground!
We can't stay here.
They've gone crazy, shooting at shadows.
Good grief, why didn't you stay inside?
Nobody would have done you any harm.
You didn't know, did you, how men can go crazy?
To the fence...
We have to find a way through.
Watch out!
Let's go!
Stay with me, otherwise they'll shoot you!
I can't make it.
Be brave.
You go.
Not on my own... what would be the sense in that?
Let's go.
Don't move. Don't move.
André!
There he is! Down there!
André!
John!
Have you seen her?
No.
She came this way.
She must have gone through there.
Stay where you are!
For the love of god, put that thing away.
We're only looking for a terrorised girl.
Stay with us, Fleming!
She killed herself!
Why?
No.
She had already started to die when the computer... had been destroyed.
We have created a human being.
But we weren't able to give her the will to live.
Poor girl.
She came to die far away from us.
She was not... of this Earth.