(electricity popping)
- I used to only trust in science until he came to me.
Ever since that day,
my whole life has been devoted to the Lord.
(Etienne gasping) (playful music)
- [Narrator] When he awoke that morning, Etienne should have
known that life was going to play a trick on him.
He loathed the cold sciences.
For him, they were medieval practices that had to stop.
(glass breaking)
Like UFO's, homeopathy, religion, or even hip hop.
He had developed this phobia because of a figurine
of Jesus that had traumatized him in his early childhood.
A figurine he had only seen once around the neck
of a priest he remembered all too well.
But whom he never spoke about.
He had suppressed this event from his memory,
and only felt better about it.
Work and science had been his gateway to success.
(camera clicking)
Etienne was a brilliant scientist.
His aversion for all alternative beliefs had led him
to write a book about skepticism, which had made him famous.
He had become the leading figure of an entire generation
who swore only by him.
He could get anything he wanted
in just the blink of an eye.
Science had brought him method, money, and even women.
But the only one with whom he could be himself
was none other than Magali.
They had met at university
where Etienne occasionally taught mathematics.
She was wearing a broach
in which he noticed a dead lacewing.
This insect fascinated Etienne
because unlike other avid hunters, lacewings,
to protect their flowers, do not only eliminate
aphids alone, but also any species that approach them.
This unusual fascination for the ridiculous assassin
was the catalyst that brought them together.
Everything in his life had unfolded
without a hitch, until at this critical moment.
At the lake during a picnic, when Magali decided
against all odds to defend the values of homeopathy,
he blurted out a sentence that was just trivial to him.
- Your sensitivity only equals your ignorance, Magali.
You're leaving?
- [Narrator] At that very moment,
when Magali was only a few meters away from him,
Etienne's life was once again turned upside down.
And he witnessed something he could never forget.
(waves lapping)
(wind blowing) (leaves rustling)
(melancholic music) (paper rustling)
(rain falling)
Etienne was broken.
Overnight, his life lost all meaning.
His mind wanted to speak but his body refused to.
He became silent.
He continued his life without ever uttering a single word.
- What brings you here, Etienne?
(tape rewinding)
- [Narrator] As years went by, the ghost of the man
that Etienne once was tried to find evidence
of their existence.
(waves lapping)
For lack of speaking, Etienne began to put together
theories from clues he thought he found around him.
Like that little triangle
drawn in the research centers' toilets,
which remained intact even though the cleaning lady
came every day at 8:00 a.m.
to remove even the smallest particles of dirt
accumulated in this place that she wanted sterile.
(electricity buzzing)
Other similar phenomena regularly occupied his mind.
Until this morning of November.
(pensive music)
Through a camera he got used to putting by the lake,
the final habit that kept him alive, Etienne saw it again.
This flying saucer sparked a new hope in him.
(pensive music continues)
A flower.
He had been fooled by a flower.
(melancholic music)
With a shattered heart, Etienne resigned himself.
He started speaking again.
Something he was unable to do for the last seven years.
The annunciation of the few words he tried to pronounce
acted as a revelation.
- Seven years ago, above the lake, I witnessed,
something happened to me.
- [Narrator] He cried for the first time
since his early childhood.
- Oh god.
- Why are you crying?
(Etienne crying)
You know, it doesn't suit you to cry like that.
- I know no one will believe this,
but that's just the way everything happened.
If you had stayed longer, you would have seen it.
Please give it to me.
(melancholic music continues)
(dispirited music)