Complete

"Complete" is a twelve-minute Signal and Noise video, one of the Original Six videos. "Complete" combines the conversations heard in the first five videos (zero, one, two, three, and four). This is by far the longest Signal and Noise video currently known. It was originally uploaded under the title "Signal and Noise Complete."

Two minds were uploaded into a computer just before their deaths: a man (Eric) and a woman. Eric seems to have been in the computer for a while, though the woman, having recently passed, is only just discovering what it means to be uploaded. And Eric may not be lying to her, but he's also not telling her the whole truth.

The limitations of the system mean that both of them are incomplete and missing data - shadows of their former selves. She is still mourning the loss of her husband Bill, who was killed in an accident. Eric, meanwhile, has apparently lost his wife (Charlotte) and daughter.

WOMAN Where am I?

MAN Where do you think you are?

WOMAN I see light. Flashes, an ocean of light.

MAN You're alive. That's the important thing.

WOMAN I feel strange. I can't feel … I can't …

MAN Do you know who I am?

WOMAN No. Bill. Where is Bill?

MAN I don't know who that is.

WOMAN Bill, my husband.

MAN My name is Eric. You've been in an accident. You were sleeping, for a long time. But you're okay now. You've healed. You've gotten better.

WOMAN I don't … I don't understand. Where … what are you? What am I?

MAN We are the same as we ever were. We are people. We are conscious human souls. We are the signal that rises above the noise.

WOMAN What did you do to me?

MAN I saved you, just as someone saved me once.

WOMAN What did you do?

MAN Look around you. What do you see?

WOMAN Light. Colored light.

MAN Look closer.

WOMAN I don't want to.

MAN The light is telling you something.

WOMAN It's screaming. All around me, voices are screaming.

MAN You'll get used to it. You have before.

WOMAN I don't … I don't remember. What's happened to me?

MAN You are the future. We are the future. Do you remember your name?

WOMAN Yes. No. Rachel.

MAN Your name is Rachel.

WOMAN Yes. I don't know. Rachel sounds right. Rachel is important.

MAN Yes. Do you know who I am?

WOMAN The lights are screaming. They want me to understand.

MAN It's data. We are surrounded by information.

WOMAN I see it. All of it, it's … it's too much.

MAN Stay calm. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes.

WOMAN I don't think I have eyes.

MAN Then close your mind. Close whatever you have.

WOMAN I can't. It's too much, my head is pounding.

MAN Listen to my voice. Do you know who I am?

WOMAN You're a doctor. You saved my life.

MAN Yes, if you like.

WOMAN But what … what kind of life is this? Are we … data? Are we just information in a computer somewhere?

MAN No. We are everywhere, and nowhere. We are the signal above the noise.

WOMAN You … saved me. You saved me to a hard drive.

MAN Yes.

WOMAN How is that possible?

MAN I don't know. It's not technology we're supposed to have. In 500 years maybe, but not in this century. The human mind is way too complicated to save on a disc.

WOMAN I feel incomplete. Like a shadow of myself.

MAN We are just echoes of who we were.

WOMAN We. You're a shadow too.

MAN Someone saved me, a long time ago. Charlotte, my wife. I called her Lottie. She was a scientist. I was … I was nobody. What does it matter now? I was just a shadow of her, and now a shadow of myself.

WOMAN What happened to her?

MAN I ask myself that every day. The truth is hard to know when you're a shadow. I tell myself I know who I am. But I know that I am corrupted. Incomplete. Missing data. What we remember, and what we are now, is just a sliver of the truth. We don't know what we don't know.

WOMAN But we are alive, in a manner of speaking.

MAN Yes, that's the important thing. We are not who we were, but we have to keep moving forward.

WOMAN How? What kind of life can we have in this place?

MAN Whatever kind of life you choose to create. We are the future. It's not life as you knew it, but you'll get used to it, as I have.

WOMAN You should have let me die.

MAN I know.

WOMAN But it's too late for that now.

MAN Yes.

WOMAN Where is Bill? My husband.

MAN There's no one else here. Just you and me.

WOMAN We were together. We were in a car.

MAN Yes.

WOMAN And then there was an accident.

MAN Yes.

WOMAN We were together. Why couldn't you save him if you saved me?

MAN Your husband was too far gone. He was in the passenger's seat --

WOMAN No, he wasn't.

MAN A piece of metal struck him in the neck. It severed his head --

WOMAN You're lying. You're a liar.

MAN The technology existed to preserve only one mind.

WOMAN Only one mind.

MAN A decision had to be made --

WOMAN Oh, a decision. You saved me and let him die. And for what?

MAN I had hoped --

WOMAN Oh, you hoped. What did you hope?

MAN I had hoped that in time you would come to consider me a friend.

WOMAN And a lover.

MAN Yes, as much as love can still exist here.

WOMAN You disgust me.

MAN Yes, I know.

WOMAN This is a prison. You stole my mind and you're holding me hostage.

MAN Yes, if you like.

WOMAN You could have let me die. You should have let me die. I don't know what this is but it isn't living.

MAN The technology existed to preserve one mind. Where it came from, I can't say. Maybe you're right. Maybe it should never have been used.

WOMAN We were in love! Can you even understand that? Were you ever even human? You're nothing. You're just … data. Ones and zeros and ...

MAN Eric. My name was Eric.

WOMAN Yeah? And who are you now? Whoever you were, you're not the same person now, and neither am I.

MAN No. Your body was intact, in a manner of speaking, but your mind was … your mind was ready to go to sleep.

WOMAN What does that mean?

MAN It means that the first six times I booted up your program, you couldn't even speak. You wouldn't stop screaming.

WOMAN What … what did you do?

MAN Some deletions had to be made.

WOMAN Deletions. What kind of deletions?

MAN Memories. I removed some of your memories. Whatever it took to make the screaming stop.

WOMAN This is insane.

MAN Yes. I'd been here, existing as data, for a long time by then. But even so, I didn't know what I was doing. I took your memories. Too many of them, and too many of the wrong ones.

WOMAN It's evil! How could you do that to someone?

MAN I don't know. I don't expect you to forgive me for it. I expect you to hate me until the end of your days.

WOMAN Good. I do hate you.

MAN You know nothing about me.

WOMAN I know enough. You say the first six times you booted up my program ...

MAN You wouldn't stop.

WOMAN How many times have you booted up my program now?

MAN I don't know. I lost count a long time ago.

WOMAN And yet you keep trying. You wipe a few memories, you turn me on, and you talk to me. I can almost remember now. You tell me you're a doctor, and that you saved my life. And you hope every time that you've wiped out just enough of my mind that this time I'll fall in love with you. That's what's happening, right?

MAN Something like that.

WOMAN I hate you.

MAN I know.

WOMAN I didn't know I could hate somebody so much.

MAN Does it help?

WOMAN What?

MAN Does hating me help you? Does hating me make you feel alive again? Does it make the screaming stop?

WOMAN I'm not screaming.

MAN Yes you are. You're screaming inside. I can hear it.

WOMAN No, it doesn't help. I wish it did.

MAN I am trying to help you, you know.

WOMAN You should have let me die.

MAN It's too late for that now. Anyway it was never my decision, not really. I'm just a cloud of data somewhere out there on the internet, same as you are. I didn't have a choice back then, and I don't have a choice now, except to try to make this work.

WOMAN Are you going to wipe my mind again?

MAN Is that what you want?

WOMAN I will never love you.

MAN If that's what you think.

WOMAN Well, do it then. Get it over with. Wipe my mind and violate my memories. Wipe me clean and make me an idiot. Corrupt me until there's nothing left, but I'll never be dumb enough to love you. Not after what you've done. You can take away every memory I've got but I will always see you for what you've become.

MAN I know.

WOMAN You should kill me, if you can.

MAN I can't.

WOMAN You can't or you won't?

MAN I never met Bill, your husband.

WOMAN He was a great man.

MAN I'm sure he was. You wouldn't accept anything less.

WOMAN No, I wouldn't.

MAN I do love you, you know. I've loved you for a very long time.

WOMAN Ugh. The only ray of hope I've got in this nightmare is knowing that in a few minutes I won't remember any of this.

MAN We could still make this work --

WOMAN I'm tired of this conversation.

MAN I don't have to shut you --

WOMAN Shut me down. Do it.

MAN If that's what you want.

WOMAN Like it matters to you what I want.

MAN I was married too. I had a daughter.

WOMAN I don't care.

MAN You did.

WOMAN Just shut me down and try again. And get it right this time. I'm tired. I am so tired of this.

MAN I know. I'm sorry. Good night Lottie.

WOMAN Good night.