Love, Death & Robots (2019) s02e08 Episode Script
The Drowned Giant
is closed permanently.
We've known that for some time now.
There had been
a big storm the night before.
And so, it was late morning
before the town heard the first news
of the arrival after it had been spotted
by local fishermen.
Being scientists, my colleagues and I,
of course, discounted the first reports
as exaggerations or a trick of the light.
But as ever more eyewitnesses
returned from the beach,
we finally decided to investigate
for ourselves.
Come on, then, Steven.
No time to waste gawking.
Right behind you.
He must displace at least 60 tons.
I'd say closer to 80.
The bones alone must weigh 30 tons.
The vast proportions of his features
made it impossible to assess
the age of the giant,
but his classically modeled mouth and nose
suggest he had been a young man
of discreet and modest temper.
It was a noble face,
possessed of an ornate charm
that belied
the brutish power of the giant's physique.
His magnificent Homeric stature
offered a more authentic example
of a drowned Argonaut
or a hero from The Odyssey
than the conventional human-sized
portraits previously in my mind.
What I found so fascinating
was partly his immense scale, of course,
but above all, it was simply
the categorical fact of his existence.
Whatever else in our lives
might be open to doubt,
this giant existed in an absolute sense
providing us a glimpse
into a world of similar absolutes
in which we spectators on the beach
were such imperfect and puny copies.
Say, look over there.
Who is that? Come on.
Oh, it's rubbery.
How is it up there?
Is it funny?
Teddy, you bastard, I nearly fell.
You looked so scared.
From a distance,
it looked as if he was merely asleep
and could, at any moment,
clap his heels together
and crush the miniscule replicas
of himself that swarmed around him.
But as time passed,
the magical spell
cast by the giant began to dissipate.
We'd best get back to town.
It'll be dark soon.
Yeah. I suppose you're right.
Three days passed
before my next visit to the beach.
Sensing a particular interest
in the giant,
my associates at the institute
delegated the task
of keeping
the giant under observation to me.
There was nothing morbid
about this because, for all intents,
the giant was still alive for me.
Indeed, more alive
than many of the people around me.
No, it's not. This bastard's big.
If the butchers start here,
we can soon get access to the thigh bone.
And we can work our way up to the hip.
Going to be some overtime,
getting this done.
The following day,
I deliberately postponed my visit
until late afternoon,
hoping that I'd find
fewer people on the beach.
Prolonged immersion in seawater
and the tumefaction of his tissues
had given the face a less youthful look.
His features now had
an appearance of well-fed maturity,
hinting at the growing corruption to come.
This was the beginning of his surrender
to that all-demanding system of time,
in which
the rest of humanity found itself.
However repellent it may seem,
this ceaseless metamorphosis,
this visible life-in-death,
is what gave me the courage
to finally set foot on his corpse.
This new perspective made me more aware
of the last physical agonies of the giant.
No less painful
for his unawareness of them.
In the end, his face had been transformed
into a mask of exhaustion
and helplessness.
Caught in that same twisting whirlpool
for which
all our finite lives are destined.
And his suffering was made
all the more tragic by the isolation
in which he endured it.
Cast like an abandoned ship
upon the empty shore.
The amputation was but the first
of a series of depredations.
Two days had passed,
while I struggled to overcome
my reluctance
to witness the end
of this magnificent illusion.
Despite his immense size,
these insults to the giant's body
made him appear more human to me.
More vulnerable.
But that weakness has released
a sudden flood of repressed spite,
encouraging the mutilation of the colossus
by the tiny creatures around it.
When I visited the beach
the following day,
I found, almost with relief,
that the head had been removed.
Some weeks had lapsed
before my next journey to the beach.
And by then, any human likeness
held by the giant had vanished.
Evening, mate.
And with the loss of those
few remaining traces of personality
that had clung tenuously to the figure,
the interest of the spectators had,
at last, expired.
Months later, after the giant's arrival
had been generally forgotten,
various pieces of the body
began to reappear around town.
Most of those remains were bones.
These mighty yet disembodied fragments
seem to better convey the essence
of the giant's magnificence
than my last memories
of his bloated appendages.
I have no doubt
that if I search the town's pubs,
hotels, and eateries, I'd also find
the mummified nose or ears of the giant
hanging on walls and fireplaces.
Tickets, get them here!
Oi! Get out of here.
You wanna look, you pay for it.
As for the immense pizzle,
this ends its days
in the freak museum of a small circus,
which travels up and down
the northwest coast.
That monumental apparatus,
stunning in its proportions
and once potency,
occupies a complete tent to itself,
though, sadly,
it is mislabeled as belonging to a whale.
Even those who came and saw the giant
after the storm now remember him,
if at all, as merely a large sea beast.
But the giant is still alive for me.
I often dream of his resurrection.
A colossus
striding through the streets of town,
picking up the fragments of himself
on his return journey to the sea.
We've known that for some time now.
There had been
a big storm the night before.
And so, it was late morning
before the town heard the first news
of the arrival after it had been spotted
by local fishermen.
Being scientists, my colleagues and I,
of course, discounted the first reports
as exaggerations or a trick of the light.
But as ever more eyewitnesses
returned from the beach,
we finally decided to investigate
for ourselves.
Come on, then, Steven.
No time to waste gawking.
Right behind you.
He must displace at least 60 tons.
I'd say closer to 80.
The bones alone must weigh 30 tons.
The vast proportions of his features
made it impossible to assess
the age of the giant,
but his classically modeled mouth and nose
suggest he had been a young man
of discreet and modest temper.
It was a noble face,
possessed of an ornate charm
that belied
the brutish power of the giant's physique.
His magnificent Homeric stature
offered a more authentic example
of a drowned Argonaut
or a hero from The Odyssey
than the conventional human-sized
portraits previously in my mind.
What I found so fascinating
was partly his immense scale, of course,
but above all, it was simply
the categorical fact of his existence.
Whatever else in our lives
might be open to doubt,
this giant existed in an absolute sense
providing us a glimpse
into a world of similar absolutes
in which we spectators on the beach
were such imperfect and puny copies.
Say, look over there.
Who is that? Come on.
Oh, it's rubbery.
How is it up there?
Is it funny?
Teddy, you bastard, I nearly fell.
You looked so scared.
From a distance,
it looked as if he was merely asleep
and could, at any moment,
clap his heels together
and crush the miniscule replicas
of himself that swarmed around him.
But as time passed,
the magical spell
cast by the giant began to dissipate.
We'd best get back to town.
It'll be dark soon.
Yeah. I suppose you're right.
Three days passed
before my next visit to the beach.
Sensing a particular interest
in the giant,
my associates at the institute
delegated the task
of keeping
the giant under observation to me.
There was nothing morbid
about this because, for all intents,
the giant was still alive for me.
Indeed, more alive
than many of the people around me.
No, it's not. This bastard's big.
If the butchers start here,
we can soon get access to the thigh bone.
And we can work our way up to the hip.
Going to be some overtime,
getting this done.
The following day,
I deliberately postponed my visit
until late afternoon,
hoping that I'd find
fewer people on the beach.
Prolonged immersion in seawater
and the tumefaction of his tissues
had given the face a less youthful look.
His features now had
an appearance of well-fed maturity,
hinting at the growing corruption to come.
This was the beginning of his surrender
to that all-demanding system of time,
in which
the rest of humanity found itself.
However repellent it may seem,
this ceaseless metamorphosis,
this visible life-in-death,
is what gave me the courage
to finally set foot on his corpse.
This new perspective made me more aware
of the last physical agonies of the giant.
No less painful
for his unawareness of them.
In the end, his face had been transformed
into a mask of exhaustion
and helplessness.
Caught in that same twisting whirlpool
for which
all our finite lives are destined.
And his suffering was made
all the more tragic by the isolation
in which he endured it.
Cast like an abandoned ship
upon the empty shore.
The amputation was but the first
of a series of depredations.
Two days had passed,
while I struggled to overcome
my reluctance
to witness the end
of this magnificent illusion.
Despite his immense size,
these insults to the giant's body
made him appear more human to me.
More vulnerable.
But that weakness has released
a sudden flood of repressed spite,
encouraging the mutilation of the colossus
by the tiny creatures around it.
When I visited the beach
the following day,
I found, almost with relief,
that the head had been removed.
Some weeks had lapsed
before my next journey to the beach.
And by then, any human likeness
held by the giant had vanished.
Evening, mate.
And with the loss of those
few remaining traces of personality
that had clung tenuously to the figure,
the interest of the spectators had,
at last, expired.
Months later, after the giant's arrival
had been generally forgotten,
various pieces of the body
began to reappear around town.
Most of those remains were bones.
These mighty yet disembodied fragments
seem to better convey the essence
of the giant's magnificence
than my last memories
of his bloated appendages.
I have no doubt
that if I search the town's pubs,
hotels, and eateries, I'd also find
the mummified nose or ears of the giant
hanging on walls and fireplaces.
Tickets, get them here!
Oi! Get out of here.
You wanna look, you pay for it.
As for the immense pizzle,
this ends its days
in the freak museum of a small circus,
which travels up and down
the northwest coast.
That monumental apparatus,
stunning in its proportions
and once potency,
occupies a complete tent to itself,
though, sadly,
it is mislabeled as belonging to a whale.
Even those who came and saw the giant
after the storm now remember him,
if at all, as merely a large sea beast.
But the giant is still alive for me.
I often dream of his resurrection.
A colossus
striding through the streets of town,
picking up the fragments of himself
on his return journey to the sea.