The Man from Earth Page #4

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Strangers were suspect.

It seemed as though I

was always moving on.

I learned some

new tricks--

Even faked my death a couple of times.

I continued east

To india,

Luckily at the time of the Buddha.

Luckily.

Most extraordinary man I've ever known.

He taught me things

I'd never thought about before.

You studied... with the Buddha?

Until he died.

He knew there was something

different about me.

I never told him.

This is fascinating.

I almost wish it were true.

Yeah, if it was true,

why are you telling us?

I mean, we might leave here today,

Go out there, tell everybody.

It would vanish in disbelief.

A story that goes around the room.

No credibility.

Even if I could make you believe me,

In a month, you wouldn't.

Some of you would call me a psychopath,

Others would be angry

at a pointless joke.

Some of us are angry now.

This--This

was a bad idea.

Uh, I love you all, and I do not want

To put you through anything.

Then why are you doing it?

'Cause I wanted

to say goodbye--

As yourself.

I think you've done that,

Whoever that self is.

Easy, Edith.

We're just grading his homework.

I see what's going on. You're

playing the good cop, Dan.

That's fine. Just enjoy it.

All right, I think this

whole thing is just a crock!

I should leave, but I'm gonna stay.

You know why? 'Cause I wanna

see what this is all about.

So do I. What is this all about?

Let's ask Dr. Freud,

who's just arrived.

Hey, will! Will!

Art. Hey.

John!

I'm glad I caught you.

Someone mentioned

that you were leaving--

Called you, told you that I've lost it.

Glad you're here. Things are

going in unexpected directions.

Yes, so I hear.

Hi.

Are you hungry?

Uh, thank you, no.

Whiskey? Johnny walker green.

Oh, yes.

( Closes door )

You look very familiar,

my dear. Linda murphy.

I'm in your tuesday

psych 1 class, Dr. Gruber.

Ah, well, this lesson may be something

I could not have imagined.

I regret being so

obvious about this, John,

But these people are all

very concerned for you.

Yes, I'm cutting out paper dinosaurs.

I really wish I'd been

here from the beginning.

Me too.

Let me just say something right now.

There's absolutely no

way in the whole world

For John to prove this story to us,

Just like there's no way

for us to disprove it.

No matter how outrageous we think it is,

No matter how highly trained

some of us think we are,

There's absolutely

no way to disprove it.

Our friend is either a

caveman, a liar, or a nut.

So while we're thinking about that,

Why don't we just go with it?

I mean, hell, who knows,

He might jolt us into believing him,

Or we might jolt him back to reality.

Believing? Whose reality?

So... you're a caveman.

Yes. Uh...

uh, I was a Cro-magnon, I think.

You don't know if

you're a caveman or not?

No, I'm sure about that.

A Cro-magnon, then.

When did you first realize this?

When the Cro-magnon

was first identified,

When anthropology gave them a name,

I had mine.

Well, please continue.

I'm sure you must have more to say.

Would you like me to lie on the couch?

( Laughs ) as you wish.

As a physician, I'm curious.

In this enormous lifetime you describe,

Have you ever been ill?

Sure, as much as anyone.

Seriously ill?

Sometimes.

Of what? Do you know?

In prehistory, I can't tell you.

Maybe pneumonia once or twice.

Last few hundred years,

I've gotten over typhoid, yellow fever,

Smallpox...I survived the black plague.

Bubonic?

Oh, that's terrible.

More so than history describes.

And smallpox-- But

you're not scarred.

I don't scar.

No, John, that is not possible.

Please, let's take John's story

At face value and explore

it from that perspective.

If he doesn't scar, it's

no stranger than the rest.

John, would you please stop by my lab,

Suffer a few tests from

Your friendly neighborhood biologist.

I'm leery of labs.

Afraid I might go in and

stay for a thousand years

While cigarette smoking

men try to figure me out.

You don't think that I would betray you?

Walls have ears.

Medical tests might be a

way of proving what you say.

I don't wanna prove it.

So you're telling us this,

The yarn of the century,

And you don't care if

we believe it or not?

I guess I shouldn't

have expected you to.

You're not as crazy as you think I am.

Amen.

I've always liked you.

Why, thank you, dear.

Now that's changing.

Surely you don't believe this nonsense.

I think we should remain

courteous to someone

Who we've known and trusted, Edith.

Here you sit--You

can't break his story.

All you can do is thumb your nose at it.

Is that what you're doing, John?

Are you laughing at us inside?

I wish you didn't feel that way.

What you're saying--

It offends common sense.

So does relativity,

quantum mechanics--

That's the way nature works.

But your story doesn't fit

into nature as we know it.

But we know so little, Dan.

We know so little.

How many of you know

Five geniuses in your field

That you disagree with...

one you would like to strangle?

Strangle them all.

It's bad enough we have to listen

To Harry's idiotic jokes.

Thank you very much, Edith.

Maybe when I'm 110, I'll

be as smart as you are.

If you lived as long as John did,

You still wouldn't grow up.

Come on, guys. Take it easy.

How often do we get to meet someone

Who says he's a stone age man?

Well, once is enough.

Edith.

All right. A guy

with your mind--

You'd have studied a great deal.

I have ten degrees,

including all of yours...

except yours, will.

That makes me feel a trifle lilliputian.

That's over the span of 170 years.

I got my biology degree

at oxford in 1840,

So I'm a little behind the times.

The same in

other areas--

I can't keep up with the

new stuff that comes along.

No one can.

Not even in their specialty.

So much for the myth

Of the super-wise,

all-knowing immortal.

I see your point, John.

No matter how long a man lives,

He can't be in advance of his times.

He can't know more than

the best of the race knows,

If that--I mean, when the

world learned it was round,

You learned it.

It took some time.

News traveled slowly

Before communications were fancy.

There were social obstacles,

Preconceptions, screams from the church.

Ten doctorates.

That's impressive,

John. Did you teach them?

Some.

You might have all done the same.

Living 14,000 years

didn't make me a genius.

I just had time.

Time.

We can't see it, we can't hear it,

We can't weigh it, we can't

measure it in a laboratory.

It's a subjective sense of becoming

What we are instead of what

we were a nanosecond ago,

Becoming what we will

be in another nanosecond.

The hopis see time as a landscape,

Existing before and behind us,

And we move-- We

move through it,

Slice by slice.

Clocks measure time.

No, they measure themselves.

The objective referent

of clock is another clock.

How very interesting. What

has it got to do with John?

Oh, he--He

might be a man

Who lives outside of time as we know it.

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