Recursion

In the shower, 38-year-old Helena Smith is struck by Déjà vu. It’s common for her. Her dad calls from Colorado, asking about her work. Helena’s mom, Dorothy, has Alzheimer’s. Helena offers to come home, but her dad encourages her to complete “her chair.” Privately, Helena thinks that work is a long way off.

Later, in her messy neuroscience office in Palo Alto, a neat, brightly smiling stranger visits Helena. His name is Jee-woon Chercover. Jee-woon says his employer admires Helena’s work. He offers her a position with unlimited funds to work on her chair—a project that she hopes will be able to record and project memories from Alzheimer’s patients. Helena agrees. Jee-woon tells Helena his employer’s name and gives her a contract to sign.

Barry meets his ex-wife, Julia, for lunch. They share subdued small talk. Barry fantasizes about clearing the air, but it doesn’t feel right.

Their daughter, Meghan, died young. Today would be her 26th birthday. They speculate about what she’d be doing now and reminisce about their time as a family in New Jersey.

After lunch, Barry walks to Central Park. He thinks about how he used to miss Julia terribly, but doesn’t love her anymore. Now, he just misses the person she used to be.

Barry texts his friend Gwendoline Archer, who leads a counterterrorism SWAT unit with the NYPD. They meet up at a bar. Gwen is in her mid-thirties, blonde, and regal looking. She’s 15 years younger than Barry, but they had sex once. Barry can remember drunkenly vomiting on Gwen’s floor, but not the sex itself, which they pretend never happened.

They discuss FMS. There have been at least 64 cases. No one knows where it comes from, but 10% of people who get it commit suicide. Sometimes people in the same social circle get it collectively. FMS comes with terrible Déjà vu, which both Gwen and Barry acknowledge they sometimes get. Gwen suggests Ann might have just been crazy. They get very drunk, ending with Gwen taking Barry home with her. Barry thinks about his dad, who died young, and about Meghan.

Helena rides in a helicopter to a refurbished oil rig in the middle of the ocean, 173 miles from shore. Upon landing, her new employer, Marcus Slade, runs to meet her. He’s a hugely influential 34-year-old inventor, business mogul, and philanthropist. He has a messy beard and seems enthusiastic and laid back.

He tells her he named the rig Fawkes Station, after Guy Fawkes. The rig is extremely private and secure. Helena speculates he’s interested in her work because he knows there will be a huge demand for Alzheimer's treatments soon and informs him that her "primary goal is to help people.” Slade says they can help people and still make money.

Slade shows off technology that covers the station in fog, making it disappear. He asks Helena if she wants to change the world with him.

Barry reads a police report on the attempted suicide of a woman named Franny Behrman, wife of Joe Behrman. Joe stopped the suicide by arriving on the scene and convincing Franny to leave the ledge where she planned to jump.

Barry rereads the report three times. He finds the Behrman address in Montauk and decides to visit them by train.

Over her first year on the rig, Helena’s work progresses tremendously. The rig feels like a resort with housekeepers, chefs, and exercise areas.

Her subordinate teams build a magnetoencephalography, or MEG microscope, and a chair for human testing. When she tells Slade she needs more technical power, he says he’s already ordered brand new prototypical quantum processors. Helena notices Slade watching her closely and considers how isolated they are.

Helena misses her parents, but visitors aren’t allowed. She suspects Slade listens to her phone conversations. Helena has sex with Sergei, a Russian electrical engineer, and develops a crush on Rajesh Anand, a software engineer.

The new quantum processors arrive on Christmas, and soon they’re ready for human trials. Helena insists on being the first test subject.

364 days after arriving, Helena goes to the testing bay where engineers are connecting the finished chair to the floor. Helena sits down, ready to test the chair. She focuses on a memory for them to try mapping.

Barry takes the train to Montauk, arriving around 8pm. He takes a taxi to the Behrman house, where Joe Behrman comes out, looking older than his picture. Franny also appears and invites Barry inside, and then she leaves them. Barry asks Joe about Franny’s suicide attempt, and Joe becomes defensive. Barry mentions Ann, but Joe claims not to know her. Joe tells Barry to leave, and Barry does, feeling certain that Joe is lying.

Barry goes to a diner in Montauk. A man with a shaved head comes in, pretending to look at his phone. Barry ignores him, but then he experiences a stabbing headache and a nosebleed. He is flooded with alternate memories from the past three days, in which he never encountered Ann or Joe. He wonders if he caught FMS from Ann. He stumbles back to the train station, where he again sees the bald man from the diner.

After Helena tries the chair, her team examines images of her brain. The memory they mapped was from when she was six in the Rocky Mountain National Park, fishing with her dad. A hook was caught in her thumb, and her dad had cut it out. They recreate the experiment for days to break the memory down further.

On Christmas Eve, they attempt to reactive the memory. Helena gets into the chair and clears her mind. They start the reactivation, and Helena has an extremely vivid memory of the thumb injury. The team cheers, and Helena starts crying.

They spend a month mapping memories from the whole team. 500 days into her employment, Helena tells Slade they should publish something soon. Slade wants the memory reactivation to be more immersive. He suggests they make a sensory deprivation tank and find a way to stop the subject’s heart while they’re in the tank. This should release DMT—a psychedelic, which is also the brain chemical responsible for dreaming, and which is released as a person dies.

Helena worries her mom is running out of time. She feels certain Slade knows more than he should and worries that he could grab complete control of the project.

Barry wakes up on the train to four missed calls and a voicemail from Joe. He calls Joe, who, weeping, acknowledges that he remembers his marriage to Ann.

Joe explains that he saw an ad in the newspaper, asking “Would you like a do-over?” He called the number and was taken to a secret Manhattan hotel, only accessible through an underground garage. He gives Barry directions to the garage.

In Manhattan, Barry walks to the address Joe mentioned. He finds the garage protected by a keypad and surveillance camera. The garage door opens, and Barry goes inside, where an elevator automatically opens for him. It takes him to an empty hotel lobby. He finds a bar, where a beautiful bartender named Tonya is serving two men. The bar napkins are printed with the words “HOTEL MEMORY.”

Barry drinks a whiskey and listens to the men. One of them, named Amor, is in his seventies, and will be undergoing a procedure tomorrow.

Barry tries to ask Tonya about the hotel, but he feels groggy. Tonya says Vince will help him to his room. Vince is the same man from the diner. He takes Barry’s gun and phone. Barry says that he’s from the NYPD. Vince responds, “So was I.” Vince takes Barry to a room and shoves him inside. Barry passes out.

He wakes up strapped to a chair with an IV in his arm, surrounded by computers and medical equipment. A man with a messy beard and bright blue eyes watches him. He says he’s going to give Barry a gift. The man forces Barry to recount his last memory of Meghan, starting up the computer.

After hearing the plan to stop subjects’ hearts, most of the team quits. Helena, Sergei, Jee-woon, and Slade remain. Jee-woon is finding new team members. Helena doubts Slade would let her leave even if she wanted to. Slade stops letting Helena speak to her family. She feels he has stolen the project.

One morning, Slade knocks on Helena’s door and tells her they’re conducting a test with a new subject. Slade has heard she isn’t eating or exercising, and Helena asks why he won’t let her leave. He says she can leave if she wants, but it will be a contract break, meaning she won’t be paid. He invites her to come witness the test.

Strapped to the chair, Barry recounts his last memory of Meghan. It was 11 years ago. He was watching the World Series on TV, and his almost 16-year-old daughter had asked if she could go meet her friends at Dairy Queen. Barry starts crying, which the man says is a good sign. Barry can’t remember for certain if he told Meghan he loved her before she left. He remembers around 10pm wondering why she hadn’t come home yet.

The man ends the computer session and dispenses liquid through Barry’s IV.

Helena follows Slade to the lab, where a skinny man who looks like a heroin addict is waiting naked in front of the sensory deprivation tank. He has a tattoo of the word “Miranda” on his shoulder.

Helena watches through one-way glass with Slade, Jee-woon, Sergei, and Dr. Paul Wilson, the new medical project manager.

The subject’s name is Reed. He expresses nervousness but climbs into the tank. Slade says that if it works, he should tell Slade that his mother’s name is Susan. Slade tells Helena that they gave Reed his tattoo yesterday. They mapped that memory, because it’s easier to map a memory vivid with pain.

Helena expresses disapproval and shock at what they’re doing. Slade insists Reed knows what he’s getting into.

Once Reed is in the tank, they chemically stop his heart, and wait until the computer detects DMT. The memory program takes two and a half minutes to run, but after it finishes, Slade insists on running it again. Helena and Sergei object, and Dr. Wilson says it’s unlikely Reed will regain consciousness without brain damage. Nonetheless, he runs the program again. Horrified, Helena and Sergei try to leave, but they’re locked in. Panicking, Dr. Wilson tries to tell the team in the test room to resuscitate Reed, but Slade reveals he has muted the intercom. Helena grabs a chair and runs to hurl it at the glass. 

Barry opens his eyes in a sensory deprivation tank. Something attached to Barry’s arm buzzes, and he becomes paralyzed. He can’t breathe. He feels his heart stopping. He sees colors, then white, and then everything fades to black.

Suddenly, he smells his old home in New Jersey. He tastes beer and the cigarettes he used to smoke. He sees the TV, playing the World Series, and then Meghan, asking him to drive her to Dairy Queen. Internally, he is screaming at himself to stop Meghan, but he’s not yet in control of his body.

Finally, he gains control. He’s very confused, but he realizes this is the night that Meghan is killed by a hit and run. Barefoot, Barry runs frantically after her.

The same day starts over again. Helena is woken by a knock on her door and feels intense Déjà vu. It’s Slade, with champagne and a DVD. They repeat the exact same conversation from the last time they interacted: Slade has heard she isn’t eating or exercising, and Helena asks why he won’t let her leave.

Slade says he’s there to celebrate. He pours them champagne, but says celebrations must wait until about 10:15. He puts on the DVD. It’s a video of Reed getting tattooed. Helena doesn’t recognize Reed. In the video, Reed suddenly stops and says the experiment worked. He tells Slade that his mother’s name is Susan, and that they did the experiment at 10am tomorrow.

At 10:15, suddenly both Helena and Slade get gushing nosebleeds and piercing headaches. Helena starts to remember the alternate timeline, in which she watched the experiment with Reed. Slade drinks his champagne and tells Helena that the chair has made it possible to send people back in time through memories.

Barry runs down the street, feeling younger and lighter than he has in years. He calls Meghan’s phone, but she doesn’t pick up. He sees her ahead and screams her name until she finally turns around. A black Mustang whizzes past. If Meghan hadn’t turned, it would have hit her. Crying, Barry embraces Meghan. Meghan is confused, but she tells Barry she’ll see him soon and goes to meet her friends.

Vince, the man from the diner and the hotel, approaches Barry. He looks younger, with no neck tattoo and a full head of hair. He gives Barry a few rules: don’t use his knowledge of the future for personal benefit, don’t make any additional big changes, and never tell anyone what happened. Barry feels intensely grateful for the opportunity to save his daughter.

Vince tells Barry that once, Vince was a corrupt cop with the NYPD. He went back in time and instead opened a fly-fishing shop. He says that all of time is happening simultaneously. He wishes Barry luck and walks away.