"The movement of the sea was among the first movements on earth." "The countless number of times in which flow followed ebb showed a certain regularity, a steadiness that began long before our age and would outlast us forever." "But where did the certainty come from, that every night would turn to day, every winter would turn to summer, and every ebb would turn to flow ?" "The day the tide failed to come in the people from the village were utterly amazed." "But this amazement soon gave way to a feeling of unease." "It wasn't just the high tide that had gone missing, it was more than that." "Even as they were standing on the beach, staring into the emptiness, a sense of foreboding came upon them." "And they knew they'd never be the same again." "Search parties ranged the village and the surrounding area for months." "They followed every lead and left no stone unturned." "There wasn't a single villager who didn't draw their suspicion." "They were looking for a crime, an accident, for some kind of explanation, but they couldn't find it." "The children of the village had vanished without a trace." "WE ARE THE TIDE" "Man, what are you doing here?" "I'd like six beers and have one yourself." "Is it your birthday?" "Much better." "I got a Yes." "Who from?" " Princeton!" "Next term I'm off to the States." "Congrats." " Thanks." "18." " Keep the rest." "How's your project going?" "Your project, how's it going?" "I'm attending on the committee tomorrow." " Great." "So it's going well." "You know the score." "Keep fighting!" "That's what I did." "GRAVITATIONAL ANOMALY WINDHOLM It's why we need you as physics pioneers." "And with that, welcome to the Humboldt University of Berlin." "Here's the first lesson we will teach you." "We don't applaud here, no, we follow the old gentleman practice of knocking on the benches." "You may try it out now, as I introduce to you one of our finest." "My assistant will acquaint you with one of the institute's current research priorities as presented in his PhD thesis." "Here is ..." "Michael Wiedmer." "People say we live in a time that no longer holds secrets." "During your study of physics you will at least learn one thing: this is not true." "On the 5th of April, 1994, off the coast of Windholm, the sea disappeared." "One morning the periodic change of ebb and flow was disrupted by a spontaneous anomaly." "The tidal range, usually about 4 meters, had shifted dramatically because of it." "It left a steady, semi-radial dry area of 11.5 km at its widest point." "The cause of this anomaly remains unexplained to this day." "My research project involves a further series of measurements and a stay in Windholm to check these values." "The gravitational constant was taken for granted in all previous measurements ..." "Well, it is a constant." "In a world that follows natural laws, yes, but ... why assume so in the case of Windholm?" "I mean, of course it is bold, but it's also a new approach." "If you would come to a conclusion?" "Certainly." "This project has been accompanying me for years." "And with your support" "I would like to take it a further step forward." "We have to take some risks." "Again, and not for the last time in the history of science." "Thank you for your attention." " Thank you." "Please take a seat outside while we confer." "When will this stop?" " What?" "Sitting outside their doors, waiting." "I thought you were in Lisbon." "No, that was Almada." "Didn't you see me yesterday?" "You've got a new project, right?" "No." "Not submitting anything?" "I'm just dropping by the secretary's office." "Why?" "I quit." "I ..." "Okay, you can come in now." "I'd really like to know how you thought this was going to work." "These villagers lost their children!" "Do you know what's going on there?" " Yes, but that was years ago." "And to this day they don't know what happened." "They believe in all kinds of hazy theories." "You can't just march in there and take measurements." "I'd just need a day to get the data ..." " That's our responsibility." "Windholm's no place for novices." "People have been going in and out for 18 years." "It's my hypothesis, am I right?" "Too far-fetched for you?" "Here's a question for you, Professor." "Weren't you going to promote my project?" "Thanks to Prof. Feuerstein you've got a chance at a postdoctoral project at all." "He's agreed to offer you a part-time position in his current research project." "Phase-conjugating SBS mirrors." "An exciting field of work, I think." "You can prove yourself there too." " Stick with it." "Learn to fight for your ideas." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Has anyone changed their mind?" "If you want to stay overnight, you could check in with a two-day pass." "I've been paying for your studies for nine years!" "Has it all been in vain?" "Maybe I just never found a subject?" " How could you, on holiday in Portugal?" "Self-discovery rubbish, or something?" "Or burnout?" "Dad, I don't have burnout." " Then what is it?" "You know what?" "Maybe I do have burnout." "See?" "It'll all pan out." "It was a good day today, right?" "Listen, when you leave lock up again, okay?" "Have a nice evening." "RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT for Michael Wiedmer" "What's going on here?" "I'm not into SBS optics." "They'll know right away that the equipment's missing." "If I find out anything in Windholm, nobody will care where the gravimeters came from." "I'm taking a plane back on Friday." "In that case ..." "Micha, are you running away from me?" "Me, from you?" "I've been here the whole time." "I stuck with this thing all year." "You're the one who comes and goes and ..." "I can manage by myself!" " How will you get there?" "By city train?" "Get in." "Hi there, IDs, please." "Wiedmer, Research Seminar Windholm, Humboldt University of Berlin." "You're not on my list." "We do have authorization." "In writing." "And who's she?" "My boss's daughter." "Could I have those ..." " I'm keeping them." "Where are we?" " We're here." "Excuse me, we're looking for a room." "We're from Berlin, from the Institute ..." " Of Creative Self-discovery." "We're like those wasted city folks who want to do some relaxing and take our minds off things." "Is there anything available?" "Man!" "Do you pay cash?" "What were you saying?" "We don't want everyone to know." "Besides, it's true." "Hang on, Jana." "Where is this thing?" "It should be marked here." " Looks like an ordinary low tide." "Very different from the photographs." "There it is!" "Where?" "Yes, that's it." "Luckily you brought a map." "It downloads the data from the tower over a radio link." "That means ... you just enter the values you need," "light-pointer deflection, oscillation duration, swings ... and off we go!" "12 hours?" "Maybe the reception isn't ideal." "How strange that nothing grows here." "Antenna seems okay." " ..." "After 15 years?" "You're not even listening, are you?" "Not a single plant?" "Maybe there's a problem with the signal strength on the other side." "It must've been some current!" "It's amazing that they never found the kids." "And then these little wind wheels the parents put up." "Every one of them representing a child." "And you show no reaction?" "Don't you care at all?" "I can't be bothered with that right now." "I just skipped the meat." " That's fine, thanks." "And if there's anything else you would like ..." "No, thanks." "They're proper guests!" "He keeps staring at us." "Tobias!" "Daniil, get a grip!" "But it's him!" "What are you doing here?" "What?" "Get out of here." "This isn't a zoo!" "Yeah, it's all right." "Leave it." "Come on, let's go." "Stay!" "I've got some desert ..." "No, thanks." " Maybe next time." "But it's him!" "Tobias!" "CONNECTION TO TERMINAL INTERRUPTED" "Shit." "Who did this?" "Which one of you meddles with stuff he doesn't know anything about?" "That's what I'd like to know!" "I don't think anyone here knows what you're talking about." "I'm talking about the fact that I was close to getting a major step ahead." "With that ... we could've returned your damned sea." "Guests from the city, eh?" "A lousy nobody from that crappy institute is what you are!" "You were welcome here ..." " Never talk to them like that again!" "What do you want?" "You won't find out anything here." "What do you know?" "Bugger off!" "I'm sorry." "You wouldn't have done this in the old days." "You'd have been on fire." "How's this my fault?" "You know as well as I do." "If you hadn't disappeared, your dad would've waved the project through." "That's what you've been thinking?" "Pitiful." " What's pitiful is you quitting university and hiding in Portugal." " So what was I doing in Portugal?" "You don't even get why I'm here!" "You're not here at all." "Forgive me." "I've been looking for you." "I didn't mean to frighten you yesterday, and today ... today I didn't mean to either." "Sorry." "Forget it." "You know what the worst part is?" "That he just disappeared." "There was never any goodbye." "Every day I ask myself what Tobias would look like now." "I recognize him ... among the tourists." "On TV." "When I saw your friend yesterday ..." "I'm sorry." "You're still so young." "You've no idea what I'm talking about." "I do." "Sure." "Jana, please open the door." "What do you think it was like for me when you'd left Berlin all of a sudden?" "You could've at least given me call." "Two weeks later some new guy was in your chair." "He didn't make copies after hours." "He went home at five." "Man, Jana, all the stuff you made copies of." "Poor rain forest." "It wasn't easy to carry on without you." "Now you are just looking on." "Yet you know how everything works." "Better than anyone." "You think I don't know?" "Maybe it really is better to go home." "Please don't leave." "What are you doing in our room?" " I wanted to see who you were." "I live downstairs with Sophie." "She's my mum." "I didn't know there were any kids left." "No, there aren't." "I'm the only one left." "Why do you two want to leave again?" "Somebody broke off the antenna, so there's nothing left for me to do." "Come up with something." "What?" "Hanna?" "Be at the bus stop at six." "Hanna?" "What's up?" "Many people used to recuperate here by the seaside." "They stayed in the hospital and went for walks on the beach during the day." "Karl used to be outside quite a lot before the fence was put up." "He was with the soldiers when they were looking for the children." "When they left he bought their equipment and carried on searching by himself." "There's an idea!" "Why don't you go there yourself?" "What?" " Well, you could go to the tower and get what you need yourself." "It's them." "The children didn't drown." "They're still there." "They aren't children." "They're charged particles of the solar winds hitting the earth's atmosphere." "Electrons and protons." "Listen here, Wiedmer, do you still have all your marbles?" "Could you explain to me why I get a call from Windholm, saying two of my students are wandering around there?" "'Cause I don't really understand." "Yes, I'm so sorry about the way things turned out, but I'm on the brink of ... you're not on the brink of anything!" "you're on the brink of being fired!" "The values ..." "The gravitational constant's values ..." " I don't care about your constant!" "Wiedmer, you can't do this!" "you and my daughter get back here, and I'll keep that nighttime call to myself." "Wiedmer?" "Wiedmer, did you get that?" " Yes, thank you." "Shit!" "What are you doing here?" "Give me a hand!" "Who's there?" "Where've you been all day?" "I just had to get away." "About this afternoon ..." "I'm sorry." "You were right." "I really used to be on fire about this." "Somehow I can't go for it anymore." "We gave up everything for it last year." "But we're still outside their doors, waiting." "Come on, just to the tower." "We're far too quiet." "NO JUMPING OFF THE EDGE OF THE POOL" "We won't wait anymore!" "You hear?" "Fuck you!" "Take care of your own shit!" "Fuck you!" " D'you think we're afraid of you?" "PLEASE JUMP OFF THE EDGE OF THE POOL" "You know what happens when we get home with results?" "GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT G" "They'll shake hands at the institute and say they've always supported us." "SIGNIFICANT DISCREPANCY ... 827 DATA PACKETS ANALYZED NO SIGNIFICANT DISCREPANCY FOUND" "Man, Micha, forget about the numbers." "Maybe this is about something else." "Maybe you just can't calculate what happened here." "Did we make a mistake?" "I won't go any further." "Why not?" "Is there anything you want to tell me?" "Did we make a mistake?" "Did we make a mistake?" "Did we make a mistake, Micha?" "Go on, tell me!" "Did we make a mistake?" "Micha!" "Micha, come on!" "You're scaring me, Micha!" "Micha!" "Shit." "Are you crazy?" " Why didn't you leave, like I told you to?" "Suddenly I was left alone with this decision." "I kept going through every scenario." "I learned about the pregnancy ... and Berlin was so cold." "I didn't feel like strolling through frozen dog shit." "In the middle of my studies, no money ..." "We weren't even really a couple." "Still, there was one image that never left me." "I even dreamed about it." "I'm at my old shared apartment, coming down the stairs." "Am I doing the right thing?" "Someone's sitting there." "Holding me back." "I know it's you." "Then what?" "Then nothing." "You weren't there that day." "There is someone out there!" "Did you see anything?" "Are they out there?" "The emptiness scares some people." "When they're standing in front of the fence they wonder what they've achieved." "What's become of them." "When they look out over the emptiness they don't feel like they're looking out, but like they're looking into themselves." "They put up a fence, but no fence can protect them from that." "They can't run away from it." "It's not this village, it's not the vanished children, not the deserted parents, the fear comes from within themselves." "What are you hiding?" "What's happened to your children?" "They're out there!" "Do you think it'll do any good?" "The pool?" " Yes." "So things get back to the way they were." "Well ..." "I wouldn't say it won't do any good." "The things you all wouldn't say!" "Why won't anyone say what he would say?" "I'm not a child anymore." "So who's going to swim here?" "I'd jump in, but I forgot my arm floats." "Do you see that?" "It's tilting." "The water's tilting." "You're back, yeah?" "What's happened to you?" "Fell down." "Hobo." "Micha, we've been so stupid." "Everyone's been stupid." "We've all been looking for something that attracts the high tide, but what if there's something that repels it?" "Negative gravity." "Dark matter." "I've found a swimming pool in which the water is tilting." "On shore!" "Look at it!" "If the gravitation works on land too, the anomaly isn't a half-circle." "but a circle all round the village." "And a circle has a center." "That's what we have to find." "What's the matter?" "I thought you'd be with me right away." "This is no longer about some data that these pen pushers sent us." "We can make a real discovery here!" "I saw a child out there." "Jana, a boy." "What?" "Where?" "Behind the fence." "On the mudflats." "We can't undo this anymore." "Do you think I'm going crazy?" "I don't know." "Find out." "Hanna?" "Hello." "Hanna?" "Who's that boy?" " I don't know." "They're my mom's." "Where did you go to school around here?" "Months before the kids disappeared, one of them was sick all the time." "Matti." "In the end he stopped coming to school at all." "Wait a minute." ""Unfortunately, your son Matti failed to answer a single question." "Instead he made calculations during the test the nature of which defies me." "We need to talk." "If I'm right, his maths are on the level of a college graduate."" "Daniil wrote that." "This can't be right." " What?" "If this is true ..." "Matti made the exact same calculations." "These are my calculations." "Matti knew the sea would disappear before it happened." "He's a special boy." "So this is where Daniil used to live." "We can't go in there." "What?" "I thought you'd be with me!" "Daniil's wife killed herself here." ""My biggest wish is to sail round the world in a boat."" ""I want to be a helicopter pilot."" ""My biggest wish is to be able to stop time." Matti, 10 years old." "I'm going to get Oskar." "Matti!" "Matti!" "Here!" "I'm here!" "Come back!" "I'm waiting for you." "Matti!" "Anybody there?" "Matti?" "Matti?" "Mom?" "Are you there?" "How much longer are we going to wait for them, Mom?" "What if they don't want to come back?" "Mom?" "The wind's good today." "Let's fly the kite." "What do you say?" " Okay." "I've got everything here to fix it." "It'll be ready to fly in no time." "It's gonna go off like a rocket!" "THE MOON" "We've almost found the center." "Here, I've measured the deviation in several places." "Here's the swimming pool, on shore." "The anomaly forms a circle." "If the center is made up of dark matter, it could reject the water in all directions." "Come on, we're nearly there." "What are you doing in his room?" "This is my son Matti's room." ""Tunguska 1908" always was the code." " Get out." "You've no business here." "I know each and every one of these books." " Get out, I said." " I had that very same moon base!" "I wanted to be an astronaut too." "Those are my calculations!" "Mine." "A nine-year old can't do them." " What do you mean he can't?" "They're there." "They're all there!" "All of them!" "He was a real inventor." "An explorer." "Not just in here, in here!" "But he never had the chance." "Do you have any idea what it means when a boy goes up to his father and says," ""Daddy, why?"" "and you can't answer him?" "So where is he, your boy?" "Yes, I think it's here." "Come on." "April 5th, 1994." "Matti dies and the sea disappears that very same day." "That can't be a coincidence." "Here are all the old files." "Maybe there's something in them about Matti." "The values are getting worse here." "That's why he came here more often, and stayed longer." "It says here he loved to go to the beach." "At the end he started hallucinating." "He really believed he could stop time." "Because time was running out for him." "So do you think anyone can make it move forward again?" "At least let me call my father." "Put some clothes on." " That's ours." " Get dressed!" "Put the phone down." " What's going on?" " Illegal entry onto a restricted military area and vandalizing state property." "Come with us." "Jana!" "No signal." "I can't reach him." " Let's go." " Come on!" "I can't reach anyone." "Hurry up!" " Micha, we have no contact to the outside world." " Move it!" "Come along!" " Where are you taking us?" "To the base." " You'll be picked up tomorrow." "No!" "If we leave now, everything will stay the way it was." "Let's rest." "Tomorrow we'll be out of here anyway." "I can't leave yet." "There's no one there anymore." "We're in sort of a hurry." "Come on!" "You've got what you wanted!" "They'll give us a roasting, but we have the data." "They'll save us." " You think that's what I wanted?" "What?" "Maybe, just once, I wanted to save you!" "Quiet." "Dear Daddy," "I heard you crying every night ever since I asked you, "Why?"" "Why I have to die, even though I am just a child." "And you're right." "There is, after all, a law of nature, saying boys bury their fathers, not the other way round." "But you don't have to be sad any longer." "Since the laws of nature no longer apply, I will stop time." "I've been going to the beach every morning for a year." "The intervals are getting bigger." "The low tide keeps lasting longer." "I'm waiting for the day when the high tide reaches our village for the very last time." "At school we were told to make a drawing of our biggest wish." "So I drew just that:" "how the sea disappears and time stops." "you told me dreams may come true, if we truly believe in them." "It was my mistake last year." "I'm sorry I wasn't there that day." "The day will come when all this changes." "And when, on that day, the other children from the village come to my bed they will no longer find me." "On that day I will take the boat and put out to sea." "With its dying strength the sea will carry me forth until the boat runs aground." "At that spot you can walk in every direction." "When I get out, it will be like this:" "everything has stopped." "Nothing moves anymore." "And then they will all follow me into this world where you never have to grow up, never have to die." "Who knows?" "Maybe the children are in a better place now." "My biggest wish is a house in the hills." "I want to get good grades." " I want my parents to get back together." "I want peace and freedom for all peoples of the earth." "Time passes and it always has." "Children turn into adults, dreams give way to reality, and people disappear." " Micha!" "And even if there's nothing we want more, we can never turn back." "The first days after Micha disappeared we stood on the beach, beaten." "Everything had happened all over again." "He had followed them too, fleeing from a world that disappointed him." "That's what we thought." "How wrong we were is something we only understood much later." "For something had changed." "Come on, come on ..." "Fly!" "Yes, it's flying!" "As kids we dreamed of a better world." "We wanted to be a movement." "We wanted to be many, like the incoming tide." "Now that we're older, the low tide has long caught up with us." "It will no longer let go of us." "But we're not afraid of it anymore." "It has grown on us." "It is part of us." "It will not get the better of us." "We're on the brink of change, starting to arm ourselves and make plans, even if you fail to notice yet." "One of us went out   and brought back the tide." "You can drive on today, this was my last tour."