The Iris Affair (2025) s01e06 Episode Script

1
The following programme contains
strong language.
Alright, Joy.
She just made you collateral.
I'll come and get you, I promise!
I bring you the diary.
-You give me Joy. -Swapsies, it is.
Has she called yet?
About swapping me for the diary?
Because he said
he would cut my hand off.
I need you to find a man
called Jensen
and get some of his DNA for me.
If Joy is doing something for Iris,
there's a way to use that knowledge
to your own advantage.
Alfie, I need that book.
We hate people who knowingly
provide assistance
to people who murder
police officers.
If you actually want to know
what happened
up to you, Nico.
The police are here.
Forgive the intrusion,
Professor Lind.
I appreciate that privacy's
very important to you.
My name is Pym.
And as I'm sure you've inferred,
I represent the syndicate
who debt-financed
development of your device
back when the project
hit some cash flow issues.
In fact, I'm the new acting head
of what they call
the Intragroup Committee.
Now
we, your admirers and supporters,
we're keenly aware that contained
within the neurological pathways
of your device
lies certain conjectures
that you'd much prefer
remain undisclosed.
So, let me reassure you.
I am here only to discuss
some comparatively minor work
you did on protein misfolding
in the PRNP gene.
The gene that encodes
an incurable prion disease
known as Fatal Familial Insomnia.
Now, at the very head
of my organisation
sits an extremely wealthy man.
And the thing he cherishes most
in the entire world
is a grandchild.
Now, her family learned
that she'd inherited this condition
while still in utero.
So, the previous head
of the Intragroup Committee
was given the task
of securing a treatment
before she became symptomatic.
And sadly this wasn't to be.
Symptoms appeared a few weeks ago.
It started with tremors
gait abnormalities
involuntary eye,
hand and arm movements.
Her time is growing
desperately short.
Soon, she'll be unable to sleep.
She'll experience terrifying
delusions, waking nightmares.
Followed by severe dementia
and then death.
She's nine years old.
So, the reason I'm here,
is to offer you, in person,
my absolute assurance that we
have no intention of exploiting,
financially or otherwise,
any of these more
abstruse conjectures.
In fact, I would happily see
the machine entirely erased,
if that is, indeed,
what you truly want.
All I ask
is for you to wake it.
Just long enough
for me to take
just what I need.
This is about a child,
Professor Lind.
I'm sorry.
Did you give me your name?
I-I did. Yes, it's Pym.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I shit you, Pym.
I shit you out.
Ahhh!
The man's a cabbage.
Let's do it the easy way.
SIOUXSIE: Here Comes That Day ♪
Oh, here comes that day
Oh, here comes the rain
on your parade
There's a price to pay
For a life of insincerity
And you pretend
That it doesn't matter
And that you're not scared
Oh, here comes that day
Oh, here comes that rain
on your parade. ♪
Oh, no, no, no!
Why are you here?
Come on, tell me.
She She invited me.
Who? Iris.
How long have you been running
this YouTube channel?
Er, t-two years, more or less.
I mean, it takes it takes a while
to gain traction.
Sorry.
I'm really sorry I couldn't, erm
Yeah, I can try.
Let me out! Let me out!
Please, let me out!
Let me out! Please, let me out!
Ugh! Ugh!
Bathroom's over there.
Ugh! Ugh!
"A remarkable genius once
observed that 'the first gulp"
"'from the glass of natural science
will turn you into an atheist."
"'But at the bottom of the glass
God is waiting for you.'"
"And so it came to be,
"the deeper I drank from the well
of what is yet to be known,
"the more profoundly I've been
drawn to Hindu cosmology
"a credo consecrated
to the astonishing principle
"that, the cosmos, reality itself,"
"experiences as an infinite
cycle of birth, death and rebirth."
"And this we call Brahman."
"I believe I have glimpsed
the shadow of Brahman, Mr Beck."
"I believe there is form
in the void."
"And you may call it God,
if you will."
So, this is Jensen,
as I'm sure Iris described him.
When she told
you to sneak into his room.
But this is who he actually is.
Cameron trusted you.
Which makes him an idiot,
and you very lucky to be alive.
I'm looking at it now.
Of course.
No, tell them
that we have a plan of action
that we'll retrieve
the password imminently.
A matter of hours, all being well.
Are you decent? No! Just a sec!
Is it now?
Are you nervous.
Yeah-huh.
Duh! There's no need.
Yeah, right.
Look, If it's really bad, we could
probably dig you out some medication
just to take the edge
off the anxiety.
Do you do that?
Not recreationally, no.
I don't actually do anything
recreationally anymore.
But I do take something
to help me go to sleep.
And something to help me
get out of bed.
And something
well I've been having the odd,
sort of, panic attack thing.
I think I'm OK, thanks.
Good choice. Just say mostly no.
Ah, so this is Joy, is it?
Nice to meet you at last, Joy.
It's OK. Don't worry.
Go on.
Hey, Iris!
Hello, Cameron.
"I saw the internet. How's Italy?"
Have you ever had a cocktail
on the roof terrace
of the Hotel Roma Antica?
Oh, my God.
"So, where are you, really?"
Rome.
"Very good. Very funny."
So, is she with you?
She certainly is.
Miss Brook?
"How are you, Joy?"
I-I'm OK. I'm
I need to hear her speak, Cameron.
"She spoke. You heard."
That could be a voice memo.
OK.
Then no fun and games.
Joy, I'd like for you to think back
to our lessons
so you can answer some questions,
OK?
OK.
A dung beetle walks into a bar
and says
Excuse me, is this stool taken?
What does "DNA" stand for?
National Dyslexic Association.
Why did the chicken
cross the Mobius strip?
"Oh, to get to the same side."
""
"OK. So how are we gonna do this?"
Can we try something with a bit less
shrapnel this time, please?
"Meet me at Roma Aurelia at 4pm."
No, Iris.
We can't do that.
We won't get there in time.
"Oh, you're only in bloody Slovenia,"
"and you've got a helicopter.
Of course you can, if you skedaddle."
Before things get too convivial,
I do have something to add.
Sorry, who am I speaking to?
Someone who needs more assurance
of good faith before I allow
Joy Baxter to leave
the premises with her skin on.
Cameron!
What the fuck are you doing?
"The usual due diligence."
And it's necessary
to do it like that, is it?
Does hurting her
prove something about you
that we don't already know?
Might prove something to Iris.
Oddly, it won't! Oh, Cameron!
It's OK, Joy.
He's not gonna do this anymore.
Because if he does,
he's not gonna get what he wants.
And what he wants,
he wants very, very much.
Show me the book, please, Iris.
"Your face in the picture. Stick out
your tongue. Close your left eye."
"Iris. Do it, quickly! Cameron!"
"Cameron!"
There we are. Everybody happy?
Is that the actual diary?
Of course it is. Let her go.
And we'll have no more of that.
We're not fucking barbarians.
Hm. Iris, you still there?
Roma Aurelia. 4pm.
Oh.
OK.
You were telling the truth.
So let's go and get Joy Baxter.
We've got five minutes.
We'll be there.
This, please.
Nico!
Grazie. Arrivederci.
I see them.
We're here!
The traffic was mental,
but we're here.
"Hop on the bus in front of you.
The one to Tivoli"
Oh, come on.
Don't make me get on a bus.
Why don't we do it on a train?
I quite like a train!
I'll text you the stop
you need to get off at.
What?
Nothing.
I know what nothing looks like.
That's not nothing.
She must be watching us.
Well, we don't have a choice
because I'm stupid
and I gave her a job.
I'll be watching.
You won't be alone.
Goodbye, Joy. Good luck.
I hope you manage
to put this all behind you.
I think this is it.
Iris knows how to pick
a rendezvous, doesn't she?
"Meski, is there anything?"
Not yet.
Be patient.
Erm
Why can't you sleep?
Oh, you know.
Stuff goes round and round my head.
What, like
all the embarrassing things
you've ever done?
All your own cringe
come back to haunt you.
Something like that, yeah.
You?
Yeah.
You know who Neil Armstrong was?
Spaceman. Walked on the moon.
Well, I think about him quite a lot.
I think about
when he stepped on the moon.
He was basically an ambassador
for the entire species.
The whole world was watching.
So, it's got to be a candidate
for the most optimistic moment
in history.
But do you know who history forgot?
Sigmund Rascher.
Is he the one that said that men
want to diddle their mums?
No. Different Sigmund.
This one was a Nazi.
He spent his scientific career
freezing human beings to death
in ice baths
and suffocating other human beings
to death in pressure chambers.
He was a monster.
But without that research,
we would never have known
about the tolerances
of the human body in extremis.
And the spacesuits
that the NASA programme used
for the Apollo programme
could never have been made.
No Sigmund Rascher,
no Neil Armstrong.
No worst of us
no best of us.
So I think about that sort of thing
quite a lot when I can't sleep.
All the enormities
we foist on each other.
All the iniquities and the horrors.
And I wonder
if it all evens out in the end.
"Heads up."
Almost there. I can see them.
How're you getting on?
Almost good to go.
You look nervous.
Yeah-huh, duh.
How are you, Joy? Are you OK?
I'm good.
Yeah, I'm alright.
This will all be over soon.
How was the bus?
It was actually really nice.
Where's the book?
I'm taking Joy home,
but I'm not giving you the book.
You see that?
I do.
That's mine. It's armed.
Meski's the pilot.
She sends her worst regards,
by the way.
Hey, Meski.
So, if I don't give you the diary,
you-
Riddle you with bullets,
type of thing.
Hm.
Cameron, this is Nico.
All she cares about
is getting Joy home.
She doesn't give two hoots about you,
or me.
And definitely not the bloody diary.
Which is why she will burn it
if she has to.
Even if I beg her to stop.
You don't have the right to do this
just because it frightens you.
It should frighten you, too.
It does.
But burning a book
doesn't mean it not true.
And if the book ends up burning us?
Well that's not a judgement
you get to make.
OK, Nico. Chocks away.
Once it's lost, it's gone forever.
All those lives it could save, Iris,
you're burning them too.
Say the word.
OK, Meski, stand down.
You, arsonist, mask woman,
you can stop too.
OK. Off you go.
And what about you?
What will they do to you?
Oh, honestly?
Don't worry.
I'll think of something.
Go on, off you go.
Remember to drink lots of water.
Eat the rainbow.
Well, that's that, then.
Look after her, keep her safe.
Yeah. Try and die
in some terrible accident,
or something.
It's really horrible,
having to hate you.
Did you get it?
His DNA?
It's from his hairbrush.
Good girl.
Yes!
So, you were right,
you bitter old meanie.
It was the only way to play
the hand she had.
I thought
you were gonna let it burn.
Yeah. That was a bit tricky.
Please tell me you've got them.
Of course. Marking them now.
It's a big old bloody risk.
Diary.
They've picked up the book.
They know we're watching them.
Well, she'd be worried
if we weren't.
Let it play out.
What? Hi, Joy.
Nice to see you.
Let's go!
Don't let me down, Cindy.
Watch your fingers.
Shit!
Come on Alfie, come on.
"What's happening?"
Countermeasures.
Counter what bloody measures?
"They're trying to lose us
by taking out the drone."
How?
Fuck! Brute force.
"Don't lose them."
I don't intend to.
Damn. They're way faster!
How long till the tunnel?
Less than a kilometre!
Ah, shit, shit. I missed it.
Come on.
Cindy, come on, come on.
Nico, how much longer have we got?
Not long.
Come on, sweetie.
Quite soon, yeah? It is soon!
Last chance. Come on, Alfie!
Shit.
Almost there!
Go! Now!
Yes! Yes!
Yeah! Yes!
"What's happening?"
They've stopped in the tunnel.
"Can you see them?"
"Have you got them?"
Shit! "Meski?"
We can camp here for the night.
OK?
OK, if you can repeat the question
in the answer, sort of thing?
And that way, it'll have
a really nice, professional vibe.
Yeah? OK.
Yeah. Is that what they do?
It is, yeah.
You ready to go.
You got this.
OK.
Rolling!
So, tell us who you are.
Joy Baxter.
Oh, sorry. Erm
My name is Joy Baxter.
Amazing. Well done. You're a
You're a natural.
So, Joy
can you tell me in your own words,
what happened to you over the last
few days?
I suppose what happened is a few
days ago I was basically kidnapped.
'There was this bloke
called Cameron.
'He took us to this massive base.
'Locked me in,
showed me this big computery thing
'and then tried to swap me
for a book.'
'Do you think this will work?'
Yes.
Because I'm thinking she's literally
the devil, so it might not.
She's literally the devil,
which is why it will.
You should probably stop drinking.
Have a drink. I'm working.
You're fired. Have a drink.
I don't drink. Since when?
Since I lost my job.
Un altro.
Do you ever feel mugged?
Of what?
Oh, of little things.
But big little things.
Having kids.
Taking buses.
You like buses now? I do.
It turns out, I like a bus.
Are you married?
Yes.
How long?
For longer than I wasn't.
And has it's been good? Yes.
So, would you say you were happy?
It's not something I think about.
Oh, well, that means you are!
Happiness is like sex and money.
You only say it doesn't matter
if you have enough of it.
Then I'm happy.
But happiness
and joy aren't the same thing.
All I'm saying is,
what if you spend so much time
trying to achieve big things
you miss the chance
to be part of something
small?
Stop drinking now, please.
You're being quite boring.
But consistent.
So And after all this
time in hiding, Iris
why come forward
to have this conversation now?
Well, because if I were to die,
which is beginning
to look quite likely,
I need to leave behind a record
of what happened and why.
And this record somehow
connects to the book in your hands.
It does.
So, tell me about that.
It's the diary
of Professor Jensen Lind.
It contains the encrypted record
of discoveries
made by a machine he created.
And there's a lot of good in here.
Profound good, really.
I mean, imagine being able to grow
a new heart, new eyes.
There's a solution to nuclear
fusion, untested, of course.
Superconductors at room temperature.
There's a solution
to the Collatz Conjecture,
tossed off
as a kind of afterthought.
But
there are weapons
described in here also.
Genetically targeted viruses.
What looks like some
kind of Harmonic Resonance Device
designed to emit seismic waves.
An earthquake generator, basically.
A terrible thing.
Well, would these weapons
actually work.
Well, from what I can tell, yes.
But that's not what frightens you.
Is it?
Not even that.
Not even that, no.
So, what does?
The device identified
a recurring pattern.
In the Cosmic Microwave
Background Radiation.
In bird migrations,
in galactic rotation, in the tides.
The rise and fall
of the stock market.
The pulsation
of the Northern Lights.
Running through the fabric
of reality.
Like a source code.
A source code to what?
The four pillars of Dharma
reduced to one.
The Eschaton.
The Great Annihilator.
Annihilator of?
What is.
But what does that actually mean?
I'll know as soon as I get
Jensen's DNA sequence from this.
Use it to crack the last key
of the cipher.
Giving me access to the final
pages of the diary.
All the way to the End.
Is it possible, erm
this is all just the delusion
of a troubled man's mind?
Well, it's more than possible,
it's highly probable, almost certain.
But there is a non-zero possibility
that it's not.
And if you can prove
that it's not a delusion?
Then I'm gonna destroy the machine
and Jensen Lind with it.
Just to be sure.
Right Ascension, 14 hours,
50 minutes, zero seconds.
Declination plus 46 degrees,
zero seconds.
Right Ascension 14 hours, 50 minutes-
What was that?
What was what?
The words you were muttering.
It's co-ordinates.
Co-ordinates to what?
Nothing.
That doesn't make any sense.
All coordinates lead somewhere.
Very good. Very true. Gold star.
So?
Well, it is coordinates to the
Bootes Void. The Great Nothing.
It's basically a big
hole in the Universe,
three hundred light years across.
A scale we can't even
begin to comprehend.
We'd go mad if we tried.
Can fit the Milky way into it
a billion times, and some.
Well, that can't be true.
Maths don't lie. Only people do that.
It's up there.
In the constellation of Bootes.
The herdsman pushes
the plough around the North Star.
A big bubble of absolute oblivion.
Can I ask you something?
Course you can. I'm your teacher.
Everything you did to get me back.
Was that actually about me?
Or was it
just to get what you wanted?
It was both.
Because I've been thinking
about it.
And you sent me in to Jensen,
which seems
I don't know
dangerous, really.
I didn't think he could hurt you.
I thought he'd be sedated.
That makes sense, yeah.
And he didn't hurt you.
No.
He was really kind, actually.
Well, there you go.
See, that's the difference
between Cameron and me.
I respect you enough
to tell you the truth.
I don't tell you what you wanna hear.
I know. I know.
And I appreciate that.
Thank you.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
What's wrong?
No.
Do you fancy some breakfast?
Yeah.