How do you do, Mr. Miller?
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
FLOYD
A screenplay character in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
- lines
- 79
- words
- 1,451
- scenes
- 2
- dialogue
- 17%
- avg words / line
- 18
- shortest / longest
- 1 / 372
Sample dialogue
Good day, gentlemen. When you see this briefing, I presume you will be nearing your destination, Saturn. I hope that you've had a pleasant and uneventful trip and that the rest of your mission continues in the same manner. I should like to fill you in on some more of the details on which Mission Commander Kaminsky will have already briefed you. Thirteen months before the launch date of your Saturn mission, on April 12th, 2001, the first evidence for intelligent life outside the Earth was discovered. It was found buried at a depth of fifteen metres in the crater Tycho. No news of this was ever announced, and the event had been kept secret since then, for reasons which I will later explain. Soon after it was uncovered, it emitted a powerful blast of radiation in the radio spectrum which seems to have triggered by the Lunar sunrise. Luckily for those at the site, it proved harmless. Perhaps you can imagine our astonishment when we later found it was aimed precisely at Saturn. A lot of thought went into the question of wether or not it was sun-triggered, as it seemed illogical to deliberately bury a sun- powered device. Burying it could only shield it from the sun, since its intense magnetic field made it otherwise easily detectable. We finally concluded that the only reason you might bury a sun-powered device would be to keep it inactive until it would be uncovered, at which time it would absorb sunlight and trigger itself. What is its purpose? I wish we knew. The object was buried on the moon about four million years ago, when our ancestors were primative man-apes. We've examined dozens of theories, but the one that has the most currency at the moment is that the object serves as an alarm. What the purpose of the alarm is, why they wish to have the alarm, whether the alarm represents any danger to us? These are questions no one can answer. The intentions of an alien world, at least four million years older than we are, cannot be reliably predicted. In view of this, the intelligence and scientific communities felt that any public announcment might lead to significant cultural shock and
scene 15 — INT. SPACE STATION – LOUNGEYes, very pleasant.
scene 14 — EXT. STREAM – MASTER OF THE WORLDThree, darling. One... two... three. Be sure to tell Mommy I called.
scene 15 — INT. SPACE STATION – LOUNGEHow did they manage to do that without any communication?
scene 15 — INT. SPACE STATION – LOUNGEFirst of all, I bring a personal message from Dr. Howell, who has asked me to convey his deepest appreciation to all of you for the personal sacrifices you have made, and of course his congratulations on your discovery which may well prove to be among the most significant in the history of science.
scene 15 — INT. SPACE STATION – LOUNGE
Bookends
disorientation. Discussion took place at the highest levels between governments, and it was decided that the only wise and precautionary course to follow was to assume that the intentions of this alien world are potentially dangerous to us, until we have evidence to the contrary. This is, of course, why security has been maintained and why this information has been kept on a need-to-know basis. And now I should like to show you a TV monitor tape of the actual signalling event.