InAlienable (2007)

Richard Hatch: Dr. Eric Norris

Quotes 

• [first lines] 

  Adam Norris : Charlie, Charlie, Charlie!

  Eric Norris : We don't have time for Charlie, Adam. Mommy's waiting.

  Adam Norris : Charlie, Daddy, please!

  Eric Norris : Adam, how many times have you seen Charlie? A hundred times? A million times? A gazillion times?

  Adam Norris : Charlie, Charlie, Charlie!

  Eric Norris : Okay. You wanna see Charlie?

  [He looks out the window to the driveway, where Miriam begins to honk the horn to fetch them] 

  Miriam Norris : Come on!

  Eric Norris : All right, here: Charlie on Red Bull.

  [He begins a theatrical shuffling toward Adam, who laughs in delight] 

  Eric Norris : [Waving to an imaginary audience]  Thank you, everybody! Thank you so much!

  Adam Norris : Charlie doesn't talk.

  Eric Norris : You're the only four-year-old in the world that knows that! Mommy's waiting. Let's go.

• Eric Norris : [Holding a syringe in his lab, speaking to a Rhesus monkey]  Come on, Maggie. It may be a jab in the ass to you, but it could be one large step for mankind.

• Shilling : I read your report. You can't compare one diseased animal to another. That monkey might have lasted three months longer regardless! Your proof is flawed. Can you even remember the last time you were published in The New England Journal of Medicine?

  Eric Norris : No. But I bet you do. Month, day, hour. Position of the Earth, the Moon.

  Shilling : Whatever humor you think you're finding at my expense has its own very steep charge. You'll find that out when your keys don't fit here any longer.

• [Dr. Proway and Eric are looking at X-ray scans] 

  Dr. Proway : Well, as far as I can tell, it isn't a virus or a bacterial infection. It's nothing you contracted at the lab. Old tight-ass Shilling won't have to worry about his insurance rates. And it's not a tumor.

  Eric Norris : You've told me what it isn't.

  Dr. Proway : As of now, some form of as-yet unidentified parasite that is growing inside you at a very rapid rate. It seems to have tapped into the cardiovascular network through thousands of filament-like protrusions that act as conduits. It has also compromised your respiratory system. Like a true parasite in host, it is getting everything it needs to survive from you.

  Eric Norris : Right. Oxygen, blood nutrients.

  Dr. Proway : Mm-hm. It really is grotesque.

  Eric Norris : Yeah.

  Dr. Proway : A monstrosity. But evidently, it has a physiology compatible with yours. Do you have any idea how you could have come in contact with this?

  Eric Norris : No. And to remove it?

  Dr. Proway : Well, that's the bitch, Eric. It has integrated itself so insidiously into your biology that to remove it would cause massive hemorrhaging and instantaneous death.

  Eric Norris : [grimly]  Prognosis?

  Dr. Proway : I've never seen anything like this.

  Eric Norris : Prognosis?

  Dr. Proway : Well, it'd just be a guess. But I think, either way, it will kill you in a very short period of time.

• [Eric, panting and in great pain, has shown Amanda the parasite under his skin] 

  Eric Norris : I asked you here because I know it's going to kill me. And when it does, it needs to be immediately removed and placed into an environment where it can maintain. I don't trust anyone else to do it.

  Amanda Mayfield : No. That can't be our only option.

  Eric Norris : It's going to need to have a continuing blood supply with my blood type, and an oxygen source if it hasn't matured enough to function on their own. I don't think it can survive outside the host in any case, but you gotta keep it alive long enough to conduct some experiments.

  Amanda Mayfield : You're not making any sense!

  Eric Norris : We're talking about extraterrestrial life here.

  Amanda Mayfield : Eric!

  Eric Norris : This is going to be the scientific discovery of the millennium.

• Amanda Mayfield : Okay, well, tell me. What symptoms have you experienced?

  Eric Norris : I don't know. Uh, vomiting. Cramps. Um, cold sweats. Stuff like that.

  Amanda Mayfield : Okay. What about the emotional changes? Eric, you just bought yourself a sporty new car. You've got a big hello for everybody. You've been practically euphoric.

  Eric Norris : I think we can attribute that to other sources. I believe I've fallen in love with you.

  Amanda Mayfield : [after a pause]  Damn you. Damn you. Damn you, Eric! How dare you tell me something like that, the same time you're telling me you're going to die?

  [She lifts her hands to her face] 

  Amanda Mayfield : This thing is not just a hole in your tissue, okay? It dilates with tactile stimulation. What if there's another answer, huh? What if there's another answer what this thing is? Something that's not going to kill you.

  Eric Norris : What do you mean?

  Amanda Mayfield : What if this is not just a parasite? The vomiting, the cold sweats, the cramps - what if this thing somehow hooked itself into your vital organs and then attached itself into your reproductive system? Oh, my God, this is completely nuts, but - I, I, I'd have to run a whole bunch of tests.

  Eric Norris : You're saying that it harvested some of my sperm, when we made love? That it, uh, somehow enabled me to impregnate myself? But, if that was true, it would likely have some of my genetic coding, wouldn't it?

  Amanda Mayfield : I don't, I just threw something out there. Right now it's nothing more than a postulation.

  Eric Norris : [beginning to weep]  What if I'm going to give birth to it?

• Eric Norris : I had a beautiful son. I can't be the father of a monster!

• Eric Norris : It's protecting me! It won't let me hurt myself. I have to live so it can be born.

  Amanda Mayfield : Baby, you need to stop. Let me help you, Eric. I want to help you.

  Eric Norris : Don't touch me. Don't touch me.

  Amanda Mayfield : [angrily]  Why not?

  Eric Norris : It needs me alive to be born. It needed me in love to be conceived. Without it, without it, I don't think we would have been together. I don't think I would have let you into my life. Without it, I'm not sure that I would be in love with you.

• Eric Norris : I can't lose him. I can't lose Benjamin.

• Shilling : And still, I was living with it. And you know why? Because before the accident, she confessed to me that she wasn't happy in her marriage. That she made a mistake. That she should never have left me for you. But before we could act on it, before we could smooth that bump in the road, you took her from me for the second time.

  [Eric's jaw has been working, but he remains silent] 

  Shilling : When you killed her, Eric, my dear friend, you killed the last hope I'll ever have.

  Eric Norris : [whispering, with tears in his eyes]  I'm sorry, Frederick. I've been sorry every minute for the last eight years of my life.

  Shilling : I don't know. Can you ever get even with someone for the loss of a loved one? Maybe not. But seeing you here, in this courtroom, knowing that you're going to lose, knowing that this monster you so pathetically call your son is going to be taken from you forever...

  [He stands up and speaks bitterly] 

  Shilling : Well, I guess that's as close as payback will ever come for me.

• [Eric Norris is on the witness stand, almost weeping while declaring that Benjamin is his son] 

  Eric Norris : The connection that we have had since he was born, before that even took over, there is no stronger bond in this world - in any world, apparently - than that between a parent and his or her child!

• Eric Norris : [speaking to the courtroom]  The photos you have been asked to look at, in horror, this strange creature you saw dancing with me, on the tape - this thing with its long appendages and large, flat face, that maybe looks like an octopus to some - is my son, Benjamin Norris.

• [the Prosecutor has Benjamin, in a cage, wheeled into the courtroom. Benjamin is frightened and Eric shouts in protest] 

  Attorney Barry : THIS is what the petitioner would have you believe is someone's child. A human being's son! Would you want this thing crawling around out there? Would you want this thing marry your families? Look on my work, you mighty, and despair! This is not God's work!

  [Eric leaps up and the bailiff grabs him; they struggle together] 

  Eric Norris : I'm going to kill you!

• [last lines] 

  Eric Norris : Son of a bitch! No!

  Gerhard : Emil, drop the gun! Drop it!

  [Emil fires the gun, then the film cuts to 7 Months Later]