American Elsewhere

CHAPTER THIRTY




Now, there are many odd situations that life has prepared Mona for. But she has no idea how to approach her current predicament, in which a man who seems to have stepped out of an old photo, or maybe an old filmstrip, is standing before her, addressing her as her mother. This is, to say the least, unexpected.

So all she can manage to say is, “What?”

The grainy, gray, washed-out image of Coburn cocks his head. “What?” he says.

Mona keeps staring at him. She manages, “Uhh…”

He grows a little frustrated, leaning forward eagerly. “Did you say something?”

Mona just looks back at him, confused, helpless.

“What are you doing here?” asks Coburn. “How did you get here? Were you caught in the storm as well?”

She sits up a little at that. “No,” says Mona. “I wasn’t in the storm… I actually think you have me confused with someone else, uh—sir.”

Coburn frowns and peers at her. His image flickers like it’s being received by mangled bunny ears on an old television, and Coburn shrinks, sputters, expands, before returning to his original state. Though the act is silent, Mona mentally accompanies it with the sound of hissing static.

“Jesus Christ,” says Mona.

“This is quite odd,” he says. “Your mouth is moving but… but no sound is coming out.”

“Uh, I am afraid you’re wrong there, too, sir. I think I’m even making an ech—”

“No, no,” says Coburn. “No, nothing at all. And you do seem to be talking.” He studies her. “Can you hear me, Laura?”

“Well, yes,” says Mona. She is still too confused to broach the Laura topic.

He sighs, exasperated, rubs his forehead. “I just said I cannot hear you, so if you just said yes—and it looks like you did—I didn’t hear it. Please nod or shake your head.”

Mona, irritated, nods her head in an exaggerated fashion.

“So you can hear me, but I cannot hear you,” says Coburn. “Interesting… I wonder why this is.”

“Maybe you’re deaf.”

“I could be deaf, of course,” he says, tapping his chin and looking away, “but I can still hear the wind… God, how I wish I could stop hearing the wind. I wish we had a pen and paper, but obviously there would be none in place like this.”

He looks around, face baleful. She wonders if he’s crazy. It’s an odd thing for him to say (if this pale shadow of a person is a him, that is), because if he is really Dr. Richard Coburn, then he founded this laboratory, so he must have worked in it, and so he must know that there’s plenty of paper back in the hall there. And she can’t hear a damn bit of wind.

“You want paper?” asks Mona. “I can get you paper. Wouldn’t be a minute.”

But Coburn is not paying attention. He is grimly staring straight into the wall. “I wonder where you came from… everything is impassable, except the way I came. Perhaps through there?” He points at the wall. “Or perhaps up from that gully there?” He points down at the floor, where there is certainly no gully. He seems more and more like a maddened transient, albeit one rendered in flickering monochrome. “I doubt if you did,” he says, “because that way is quite treacherous, unless you had some sort of way to pass lakes of acid. And it doesn’t look like you do…”

“I don’t know what the f*ck you’re talking about,” says Mona. “There’s no such thing here.”

“We don’t have much time here,” he says, glancing up at the ceiling. “The moon is out, but it won’t be for long. That’s when things get dangerous,” he says softly. Without warning, his image sputters and fades a little.

“Hello?” says Mona.

Coburn flickers back to existence in mid-sentence, as if he is totally unaware of the change. He is saying, “—ow are you here at all? I thought I was the only one who was transposed here. I haven’t seen anyone from the staff since. And it has been”—he turns to consult something on the ground—“my God, over half a year since the storm.”

Mona gets an idea. She holds up her hands to get his attention.

He glances up. “Mm? Yes?”

“You,” she says, and points, “you stay,” she holds her hands palm out, and mimes pushing on him, “right here,” and she points down at the ground. She does it again, to make sure he catches on.

He watches her, blinking. “Ah. You want me to stay here? Well, fine, fine, though I can’t imagine why. Where do you have to go?”

“Well, let’s see,” says Mona, and she slowly backs out of the room.

She’s about a dozen feet away from the crackling image of Coburn when his mouth drops open. “My goodness,” he says. He stares around himself. “Where… where did you go?” He turns completely around. “Laura? Laura? Are you still here?”

“What the f*ck is going on,” says Mona softly. She turns around and jogs down the hall to the administrative offices. She finds a yellowed, ancient notebook on one of the desks and a piece of colored chalk from one of the blackboards. Then she returns to the room with the mirror.

“Oh!” says Coburn. “And there you are again.” He looks at what she’s brought. “Wh—where did you get those? Those are… I know that stationery. That’s from the lab. How did you get those?” He whirls around, staring at the walls. “Did some part of the building get transposed here, too? I’ve never seen any suggestion of it…”

Mona writes: “where do u think u are?” and turns it around to show him.

He reads it, and says, “Well, I’m right here. Why do you ask?”

Mona writes: “cause right now Im in ur lab.”

“What!” says Coburn. “What do you mean?”

She pauses, frustrated, and points to the notebook—I mean this, what I wrote.

“You’re in the lab?” he says. “You mean CNLO? Right now?”

Mona nods.

“Are you… you sure?”

She nods again.

He stares around her, his eyes taking in things totally invisible to Mona. “How?”

She shrugs, as if to say—You’re the f*cking scientist. Then she points to the first question: “where do u think u are?”

Coburn is so shaken that it takes him a moment to answer. “I suppose I don’t know. It is a terrible place, where I am. The ground is glassy and black, there are lakes of bubbling fluid I dare not touch. I have lived off of terrible fruit that grows on strange trees in sodden fields. It is an abandoned place. But how can you be here if you are in the lab?”

Mona glances around. Naturally, she doesn’t see anything that he describes: just the cold, dark metal walls of this room.

Coburn thinks. “Unless, of course, you are not here. And I am not really there, in the lab, with you, which, I presume, is what you’re seeing. The lab, I mean.”

She shakes her head.

“Am I wrong?” asks Coburn.

Mona writes: “no. u r right. agreeing. u look all black and white like an old tv show”

Coburn squints to read her answers. “I do?” he says, astonished, and he looks at his arms and hands. “How marvelous. I see no effects here. What is wrong with your writing, though? It’s horrendous.”

“Well, f*cking forgive me,” mutters Mona.

“Are you… let me guess.” He looks over his shoulder, but evidently he can’t see what he’s looking for. “Are you in the room with the lens, Laura? Right now?”

Mona glances at the mirror. She supposes it could be a lens, though it’s not transparent—at least, not in any way she can see. But she hasn’t seen anything else that could be called a lens, so she nods.

“You are? How fantastic!” Even though Coburn sounds like he’s in dire straits, he appears fairly delighted with what she’s told him. He licks his lips and glances around, thinking very quickly. “Then it’s true, I suppose. You know what this is, of course?”

Mona shrugs.

“You don’t? Why, this is bruising, my girl. Just like we always discussed! I expect it can’t be affecting a particularly wide area—not if you vanished only a few yards away. It must not extend that far past the lens. But I cannot imagine it’d be anything else. You and I would be quite pleased, my dear, if it hadn’t had such awful consequences, wouldn’t we?”

“Huh?” says Mona out loud.

“I wish I knew what I looked like right now. An image projected across realities… though it is projected poorly, if your suggestions are correct. I don’t know why, but I can see you plain as day, though you are a bit colorless… I guess the bruising must be more severe on your end. Have you witnessed any other effects? Any other symptoms?”

“What?” asks Mona.

Coburn looks at her, perturbed. “Why do you look so confused? Laura, have you been injured? Is something wrong with you?”

Mona decides the jig is up, and writes: “not laura.”

This just pisses him off. “What do you mean, you’re not Laura? That’s not… you look exactly like her. If you’re not Laura, then who the hell are you?”

Mona glances at him warily, and writes: “her daughter.”

When Coburn reads this it’s as if all the air gets knocked out of him. He staggers back a little, then sits down on the ground. “What?” he says softly. “Her daughter?”

Mona nods.

“You’re telling me the truth?”

Mona nods again. She sits down on the floor opposite him.

“You look a little different, I suppose… but I thought you’d—she—had changed. She vanished before it all happened, but… I thought she’d come back to help me. What happened to her?”

Mona wonders how to put this. Her own experiences with death have blunted any sensitivity to grief, so she mentally rummages through some greeting card expressions before giving up. She pulls a face, sighs, writes, “died,” and shows it to him.

Coburn slumps forward in shock. “She died? In the storm?”

Mona shakes her head.

“Then… she died of natural causes, I hope.” Mona diplomatically chooses not to correct him on this point. “But if you’re her daughter, how… how are you so old? How old are you?”

Mona winces. This, she knows, is going to be a nasty surprise for this guy, who seems to have had quite a lot of those in the past couple of years, or months, or however time works for him. But she guesses these things have to be done like Band-Aid removal, quickly and ruthlessly.

She writes down her age and shows it to him.

He sits up, and his hands fly to his forehead. “What? You are thirty-seven?” There are pops of white at the edge of his image, and he briefly grows translucent. When he comes back, he is saying, “—irty-seven years old?”

Mona nods.

“But then… then how long ago was the storm? What year is it over there?”

She sighs, writes down the answer, and shows it to him.

He stares at it. His hands slowly drop. “No.”

Mona nods.

“No. No, it’s not possible.”

She nods again, then shrugs with her palms up—My sympathies, but what can I do?

“No. It can’t be, it just can’t. I can’t have been stuck over here for… for over thirty years! I just can’t! I remember everything like it was yesterday!”

Mona watches him helplessly.

“Is everyone else dead, too? Did we lose everyone, everything?”

She shrugs.

“You mean you don’t know?”

She writes, “dont know a damn thing sorry”

“But surely some of them have to be around, if you’re at the lab?”

She writes: “abandoned”

“The lab? The lab is abandoned?”

She nods.

“Oh, my Lord,” says Coburn. He slouches forward, face in his hands. “Then I’ll… I’ll never get back. How could this have happened? How could things have possibly gotten worse for me?”

To her discomfort, he begins sobbing. Mona is sure he’s in some pretty trying circumstances, since apparently he’s actually trapped somewhere horrific, but it still feels weird to see him, this shabby old man sitting on the floor, sobbing his eyes out. She wonders what to say, and decides grief counseling is not something that can be done via pen, paper, and a vocabulary that’s been adversely affected by texting and the internet. So she just sits, and waits.

When his tears taper off, she writes: “what happened to u”

It takes him a while longer to gather himself. He stares into his lap, hollow-eyed, and says, “There was a… storm. A storm during one of our tests. I am not sure if it coincided with our tests, or if our tests… if perhaps our tests were the cause. But it was… it was apocalyptic. I cannot even describe it.”

Mona, remembering her vision at the house, doesn’t doubt it. She nods.

“You were—” His image suddenly grows fuzzy and his words hiss, as if his signal, being projected from wherever he is, is losing its strength. When he returns he’s in a different pose, sitting up. It is an unnerving sight, changing abruptly from one position to the other. He finishes, “—at the time?”

Though she missed the majority of that, Mona takes a wild guess and shakes her head.

“Well,” he says. “I suppose you wouldn’t have been, would you. Did your mother ever”—a flicker of static—“—rk here, or do you have any, erm, theoretical physics background at all?”

“Sure don’t,” she says, and she shakes her head.

“I see. Well. I don’t know how best to explain this, which makes me a bad scientist. It is fairly complicated stuff. I wish your mother had told you a little about it. She was crucial to its development.” Another flutter of static.

“Bruising is also called universal collision signatures,” he says. “It is, in layman’s terms, when one univ—”—his image stutters, shrinks, returns—“—shes into another, like bumper cars. Because there is not just one universe. Think of it like bubb—”—his face freezes, while the rest of his body moves, hands gesticulating excitedly—“—face of water around a waterfall, all rubbing, bumping, popping into one another.”

“Uh-huh,” says Mona, who wishes he would stay still.

“This is what we were meant to examine here. Because if we could understand bruising, we could understand how the world works—how all worlds work—at the most fundament—”

He breaks up again, this time for a long, long time, more than a minute. Mona is sure he isn’t coming back, and, panicking, writes, “BREAKING UP BREAKING UP” on her notepad.

When he comes back, he is saying, “—id you go again? Did you leave? It didn’t look like you walked aw—”

He leans forward and reads her note card. Though he is black and white, she can see he pales a little. “Oh, no. Breaking up? Me? That must be why you faded out just then. Something’s wrong. Whatever connection allows this, I guess it’s”—his face blurs, solidifies—“—ill so much to explain, th—” His image begins strobing, one hand frozen, the other still in motion.

When he comes back, he is standing, his eyes alight, face fixed in mid-shout. “—ongest hall, west side! Do you hear? On the w—” He fills with static, rivers of bursting gray and white. When he returns, he is panicked, yelling, “—ear me? Plank! Plank! Six six two six! Do you hear me? Six six tw—”

Then he begins to fade out, a clearness starting in his center and moving to the edges until he is no more than a faint outline of a man in the air. Then he is gone, as if he had never been there.

Mona sits there, staring around, wondering what just happened. Then she feels it again.

Something clicks. It’s some indefinable change in the room, but it’s the same as when she was staring into the mirror (or the lens, as she reminds herself). But this time it’s like something clicks out of place rather than, as she now feels happened before, clicking into it. She is reminded of those old phone operators in the fifties, taking a cord and plugging it into one jack, then unplugging it and plugging it into another. It’s like the cord just got ripped out of here, the room, the lab, everything. But what could have caused that?

She looks at the lens. She is not sure why, but she is sure it has moved. Perhaps only minutely, but she’s positive it’s changed.

Is it a lens, she now wonders? Or is it an antenna, communicating with someplace very, very far away…

And perhaps when she was staring at it before, she somehow activated it, and it made some kind of connection to… wherever it is Coburn is, the poor bastard. She is not sure how she could do such a thing, yet she feels it’s true.

She looks down at her notes. She did not realize it, but she was desperately scribbling down everything he said in his final moments. Scrawled at the bottom of the paper in pink slashes is:

SIX SIX TWO SIX

It was something he wanted her to know. Something important. Maybe a frequency? Or a code to something? She guesses she’ll have to find out.

Mona sighs. “Well, shit.”


It takes her a couple of hours of fruitless, frustrating, aimless searching to find it. Or she thinks it does. It’s hard to tell time in here. What little power is coming out of the generator doesn’t reach a lot of the offices, so it’s just Mona and her flashlight, roving through the dim mess, scouring room after room of decaying, modernist clutter. Conference rooms. Stationery closets. Bathrooms with brown streaks on the walls, the remnants of ancient flooding.

Then, in the western part of Coburn (as, after all, the good doctor said something about the longest hallway on the west side), her beam falls across what looks like a white wall. She very nearly passes it by when she realizes there’s a faint outline in it, like that of a box or a panel…

Or a door.

She walks to it and realizes she’s right: there’s a thick metal door here, painted the exact same color as the rest of the wall. She runs her hand along its edges, trying to find a handle or a button, but there is nothing.

She steps back and examines it. Curious, she kicks it. It’s solid as all hell, but she’s sure it’s hollow on the other side.

There’s a room there. Maybe this is what Coburn was directing her to. But how to get in? The door is heavy enough to be a vault door, which would explain the six-six-two-six combination he told her about, but she can’t find any place to punch or enter it in.

Frustrated, she glances around. The door is innocuously placed behind a rather small, barren cubicle, probably that of a lower-end employee. She looks at the desk, which is fairly uninteresting: pencils, graph paper, a beat-up typewriter, some pictures on the wall. Then she looks at the pictures.

One is of the guy’s family—wife, two kids, the wife sitting in a tire swing. She doesn’t recognize any of them. Then her eye falls on another picture, but this one’s a black-and-white photo of what looks like the stuffiest, most interminably boring man on earth. He’s bald with a thick, droopy mustache, tiny spectacles, and dead, tired eyes.

There’s an inscription at the bottom. It reads: MAX PLANCK.

Maybe Coburn wasn’t saying plank at all. Then she remembers something from high school: Planck’s constant. That’s a thing, isn’t it?

“Six-six-two-six,” she murmurs. She thinks, then lifts the picture up off the wall.

Set in the wall behind it is a tiny brass combination lock, like one for a briefcase, with four little shining wheels with tiny numbers inscribed on them. Mona turns them until they read 6-6-2-6.

There’s a soft clunk from behind her. She returns to the white door, and finds it’s moved forward about a centimeter, enough to get her fingers around. She pulls it open.

On the other side is a surprisingly large room with walls covered in wooden cubbyholes. Inside are three old film projectors, about a dozen tape players and recorders, and an absurdly huge box of batteries. Hanging from the ceiling by small chains is a sign reading RECORDS.

“Huh,” says Mona. She walks in and starts looking through the cubbies.

There are hundreds and hundreds of binders here. She flips through a few. They’re all figures and transcripts of not only experiments, but discussions about experiments, and meetings about discussions about experiments, and on and on and on. She never had any idea that science involved so much writing. Everything in this lab must have been carefully recorded somewhere, somehow, from the figures that went into the studies, to those that came out of it, to the model, make, year, etc., of all the equipment involved (even the batteries, for God’s sake, which apparently they made here specifically for the experiments).

Why lock all this up? Why should they be so secretive?

Well, they would have to be, she thinks, if what they were recording was incredibly, incredibly important, or expensive, or dangerous. And after talking to Coburn (or the picture of Coburn) she thinks that it might’ve been all three.

Mona looks at the film projectors. This would explain why her mother had so much film in her attic. She must’ve gotten a hookup at work.

She looks at the film canister labels. They all sound fairly boring or obscure, except for one, which bears the rather unprofessional label of SUCCESS!!! She pops the top off of the lid, and sees the film is intact.

She tests the wall socket, and finds that the generator is apparently putting power through to here. Since she’s now a damn expert on loading projectors, she feeds the film in, turns the projector to face one of the blank walls of the records room, and starts her up.

As before, there’s no audio. Just dingy, yellowed images fluttering across the wall. She fiddles with the lenses until they resolve.

The film shows the big, metal-walled room with the lens. Dr. Coburn is in front of the camera, standing so he’s blocking the lens from view. He’s dressed in a brown coat with elbow patches, and he sports a tremendous beard (very late-seventies, Mona thinks). He looks a little nervous, his eyes flicking about, his fingers rising up to adjust (and readjust, and re-readjust) his tie. Someone must say something to him from off camera, because he perks up, appears to say, What? Oh! and steps aside so that the camera has full view of the lens.

Only now there are two lenses: the second arm of the contraption, which looked so conspicuously empty, now has the missing mirror, or lens. A great deal of wires run down out of the top of the arm to somewhere off camera, probably behind whoever’s filming.

Coburn is muttering quietly to someone, again off camera. He nods at them, eyebrows raised—Are we ready? He nods again, then clears his throat, smiles stiffly, and, after a pause, begins addressing the camera.

Of course, Mona hears none of it. She has to sit and wait for him to get through his whole spiel, which takes about five minutes. While Coburn talks, some assistants or scientists come in and hold up sheets of paper or boards with the date and time written on them, as well as a test number. Coburn, still stiff as starch, awkwardly gestures to them. Then he begins pointing back to the lenses.

Coburn reaches into his pocket and takes out a bright red ball, about the size of an orange. It’s a croquet ball, Mona sees. Then, still talking, he takes out a knife and makes a long scratch down the side. He walks forward to the camera, holding the ball out (the operator has to hurry to adjust the focus) so that the viewer can see the scratch: it’s shallow and made in the shape of an S. Then he walks back to the lens, and the camera zooms in and follows him (along with a boom mike that floats into view now and again).

There are two small metal tables on opposite ends of the round metal room, with the lenses in the middle. Coburn places the ball on the left table, square in the middle, where it’s marked with a big X of black tape. He points to it, and talks to the camera a bit. Then he points across the room, and the camera whirls, eventually settling on the table on the right-hand side of the room. This table is empty, but also has a big X of tape. The camera zooms out and refocuses on Coburn. He talks at the camera a bit, and points at the lenses hanging from the ceiling. The camera zooms in to study them.

It appears that age did not touch the remaining lens at all. Its twin is the same: they are both perfect, maintaining a queer sheen even in the dingy light of the metal room.

The camera zooms back out. Coburn is advancing, gesturing to the room, then to his staff, who are still off camera. He looks excited, anxious, terrified as hell. He points off camera again, bows, and exits stage right. From the shadows Mona sees on the ground, it looks like all his people are leaving too. Then it’s just the camera, still rolling, filming a wide angle that captures the table on the left with the croquet ball, the lenses in the middle, and the empty table on the right.

Mona sits forward. Obviously, it isn’t safe for people to be in the room with whatever’s about to happen.

She keeps staring at the room. Nothing happens. Then, slowly, the lenses rotate, so that one points at the table on the right, and the other points at the table on the left. A light on the base of the arm, near the ceiling, flicks on. There’s a long, long pause, more than five minutes long, ten minutes long, more. Mona wonders what sort of SUCCESS!!! this could be.

And then it happens.

It takes her a minute, but she notices something’s wrong with the curvature of the walls on the sides of the room. She can’t tell which way they’re curving now… is the right side of the room curving in, completing the circle as it should? Or is it somehow curving away? It’s so bad her eyes begin to hurt. After a lot of blinking, she thinks she’s got it figured out: when she looks at the left side of the room, she gets the uneasy sensation that she’s actually seeing both it and the right side of the room at once; likewise, when she looks at the right side, she feels like she’s also seeing the left side of the room. It’s as if someone took two film negatives and laid them one on top of the other.

Then she notices something else odd. There is a shadow in the center of the empty table on the right. But it appears to be a shadow projected by nothing, hanging loose like the shadow from Peter Pan. It looks a little like the shadow of a ball… perhaps a croquet ball.

Then, slowly, like someone gradually increasing the light on a lamp, something faint and red begins to appear in the center of the table on the right.

Mona looks at the table on the left. The croquet ball is still there. But when she looks back at the table on the right, she sees something. It’s not exactly a red croquet ball, but something a lot like it, like its ghost, if croquet balls could have ghosts.

It keeps growing brighter. And then there are two croquet balls, each sitting on its own table.

The light on the arm of the lenses flicks out. And when it does, the curving walls overlaid on one another vanish, along with the ball on the left-hand table. Which leaves only the croquet ball on the right-hand table, which doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

After a pause, Dr. Coburn bounds into view with a Geiger counter in hand. He remembers himself, and assumes the stately walk of an established academic. He walks to the right-hand table with the croquet ball and holds the Geiger counter over it; the camera wiggles a bit as whoever was running it reassumes his or her position, then it zooms in to show the readout on the Geiger counter: Mona doesn’t know much about radiation, but judging by Dr. Coburn’s face, and his cavalier attitude, the number must be very low.

Dr. Coburn picks up the ball and walks back to the camera. He holds it out again, and the camera focuses on its front.

Running along one side of the ball is a meandering, carven S.

“What the hell,” breathes Mona.

Dr. Coburn, obviously pleased as punch, pops the ball back into his pocket. Hands folded before him, he addresses the camera with a few choice words. After remaining calm and respectable for a bit longer, he finally bursts out laughing. Two of the assistants (grad students, probably) come running in, one, the girl, to hug him, and the other, a pudgy, bearded man, to shake his hand. Then the camera operator walks around to adjust something below the camera’s lens.

Mona gets only one glance at that face, which is serenely triumphant, the face of someone who’s been holding winning cards for a long time and knew she’d take the pot but is still damn pleased to see it happen. And when she does, Mona can say only one word:

“Momma.”

Then the screen goes dark.


Mona watches the film two more times. Then she starts to look at the records around her.

The reports don’t make any sense to her, and since she has no intention of staying here all night she drops them and moves on.

The tapes, though… the tapes and the transcripts are worth something.

After about a half hour of gathering material, she starts playing a couple of the recordings and reading the files.

With a bit more arranging, they start to resemble a story.





WHERE THE SKY TOUCHES THE EARTH





TAPED REHEARSAL OF MEETING WITH CHAIR OF AERONAUTIC DEFENSE SUBCOMMITTEE

AUGUST 4TH 1973, 10:30 AM ST

STAFF INVOLVED:

DR. RICHARD COBURN, PROJECT MANAGER

MICHAEL DERN, CHIEF OF STAFF



[STATIC]

RICHARD COBURN:—not even pertinent. I’ve never met this man, nor do I wish to. We have people for that, I thought. I’m sure I’ve seen some of them on the payroll at some point in time.

MICHAEL DERN: Yes, we’ve got people, but he’s not coming to meet with people. He’s coming to meet with you.

RICHARD COBURN: Oh, that’s preposterous. Any… anyone else would be better. Why can’t you do it? You’re a perfectly sensible young man, more or less.

MICHAEL DERN: More or less?

RICHARD COBURN: Well, certainly. I mean, I don’t know everything about you, but you seem…

[PAUSE]

MICHAEL DERN: Keep that charm flowing, and I’m sure our funding won’t be touched.

RICHARD COBURN: Oh, but he can’t really touch our funding. He’s some junior senator, or something or other. There’s that, I don’t know, the overarching defense committee. They control our funding. They’re the big boys we have to please.

MICHAEL DERN: And who do you think reports to them?

[PAUSE]

RICHARD COBURN: Are you serious?

MICHAEL DERN [CLEARS THROAT]: Why don’t we get started?

RICHARD COBURN: Fine, but started where? I’ve never had to—to pitch myself to laymen before. Communication is not my strong suit, Michael. This is not the job for me.

MICHAEL DERN: Well, you’re not going to be just pitching yourself. You’ll be pitching all of us. Not to put any pressure on you, but a lot’s riding on this. Hence my urgency. I wanted to make you flash cards, but—

RICHARD COBURN: I am not using flash cards. Don’t be ridiculous.

MICHAEL DERN: Well. Then you’d better get started now. Start at the beginning. Like… what… what do you want to accomplish here?

RICHARD COBURN: Well, that is… hm. We set out to examine… well, originally we set out to examine the behavior of, of subatomic particles under conditions highly similar to, if not exactly similar to, those of cosmic bruising—

MICHAEL DERN: Okay.

RICHARD COBURN:—by which I mean multiuniversal breaches—though this term is under some scrutiny—whose signatures could only initially be registered by various frequencies of background radiation—

MICHAEL DERN: Yeah.

RICHARD COBURN:—and certainly have never been witnessed or measured in any location close to Earth. The reason being that, if there had in fact been multiuniversal contact, friction, bruising, or what have you, then there’s a significant chance that the rules that reality usually observes could… I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You know all this.

MICHAEL DERN: Yeah. Yes. But you’re not telling me. You’re telling him. And let me give you a word of advice.

RICHARD COBURN: Mm. Yes?

MICHAEL DERN: Don’t tell him that.

RICHARD COBURN: What? Which part?

MICHAEL DERN: Any of it.

RICHARD COBURN: Why not?

MICHAEL DERN: Because to some junior congressman, or senator, or whatever from Illinois, that’s going to sound like a bunch of abstract horseshit not worth spending money on. And that’s what he’s here to figure out. He’s not here to be educated in the mysteries of the universe. He’s here to figure out why this place, in the middle of a mountain, is worth the millions of dollars it’s costing the American taxpayer. And he’s gonna say that, too. He’s gonna actually look you in the eye, and say the words, costing the American taxpayer. Those will be this guy’s favorite words. I guarantee it. It’s how he got elected, I’m sure. So we’ve got to give him his proverbial bang for his proverbial buck. Him and his taxpayer.

[SILENCE]

RICHARD COBURN: Oh, for God’s sake, Michael. I, I told you I’d never be any good at this.

[CHAIR SCRAPING]

MICHAEL DERN: No. No! Come on, Dick, you are not getting up. You need to sit down and practice this! This is important!

RICHARD COBURN: There is no amount of practice I can do to make this go well, I am convinced of it.

MICHAEL DERN: Just… you know. Here. Do the whole Feynman thing. Explain it to a kid.

RICHARD COBURN: Feynman… my God, don’t get me started on… and I enjoy the company of children even less than I do that of politicians, just so you know.

MICHAEL DERN: Well, I, I am f*cking sorry. I am sorry you don’t like politicians, or kids, or anyone without some amount of letters after their name. But this needs to get done.

RICHARD COBURN: Don’t you cast me as an elitist! I’m not, it’s just, it’s hard to—to talk to people like that. We don’t operate in the same sphere, so, so, so I… why are you looking at me like that? Don’t look at me like that. Don’t.

MICHAEL DERN: To a kid. Go on. Talk.

RICHARD COBURN [SIGHS]: Well. Let me see… it is… well, it is… suggested that there are other universes than ours. That’s a pretty big thing to fit your head around, but it appears to be so. It’s thought that there have always been these other universes, stretching back to the Big Bang, though we don’t know exactly how many. And during the Big Bang, and especially the time directly, directly after, these various universes made a lot of contact with one another. They bumped and banged and scraped into one another. It has taken us some time to measure and quantify this theory, but we’ve found certain levels of background radiation near—

MICHAEL DERN: Drop that. And the names of the stars.

RICHARD COBURN: I hadn’t even gotten there yet. How did you know I’d name them?

MICHAEL DERN: Just drop it. Stick to the basics, Dick.

RICHARD COBURN: You do know I’m your boss, don’t you?

[SILENCE]

RICHARD COBURN: Fine. Well, the places where these universes bumped into one another did not fully heal, to use medical terminology. They bruised. And, since these places did not heal, the nature and behavior of these universes does not work… quite right there. Like a football player tearing a tendon—it will heal, but it won’t have the same range of flexibility, or it will twinge and pop sometimes. You know… is this a good metaphor?

MICHAEL DERN: It’s a fine metaphor.

RICHARD COBURN: I feel like athletics is very fertile ground for metaphors for politicians.

MICHAEL DERN: Athletics make great metaphors for politicians. Keep going. Tell him why this matters.

RICHARD COBURN [SIGHS]: Well. Well, if we can mimic these conditions—if we can create our own bruising, in other words, without having a whole universe crash into ours—then a whole host of possibilities opens up. Concepts like time, distance, tensile strength—

MICHAEL DERN: Tensile strength?

RICHARD COBURN: Yes. We did the tests with rope, remember?

MICHAEL DERN: It’s awful specific.

RICHARD COBURN: How about just strength, then?

MICHAEL DERN: Sure.

RICHARD COBURN: All right. Strength and everything all becomes malleable, unpredictable. What we are chiefly interested in is… travel.

MICHAEL DERN: What?

RICHARD COBURN: I am simplifying this for him.

MICHAEL DERN: Simplifying it into what? What do you mean?

RICHARD COBURN: I am referencing the neutrino signatures.

MICHAEL DERN: Ohhh. Oh. Say transportation, then.

RICHARD COBURN: Oh, that’s good! I should have thought of that. Yes. Transportation is what we’re concerned with. Because the primary consequence is a confusion of distance. Reality itself experiences aphasia—it forgets where certain things are, in other words. It’s almost impossible to control, or at least it’s possibly impossible, but we are attempting to see if it’s possible to have one item traverse a distance—any distance—without actually moving.

MICHAEL DERN: Saying possibly a lot.

RICHARD COBURN: I know. I just thought that.

MICHAEL DERN: So how does the lens work?

RICHARD COBURN: Well… how much will he know about the lens?

MICHAEL DERN: He’ll know it’s over forty percent of our budget.

RICHARD COBURN: Hm. I see. Well, the lens was conceived to try and examine if our own day-to-day activities—at a subatomic level, of course—might hold some similarity with that of cosmic bruising. No reality is perfectly stable, in other words, just like no person—or, ah, football player—is perfectly healthy. But we quickly found that the lens had side effects. Not dangerous ones. At least, we don’t think so.

MICHAEL DERN: I would definitely cut that.

RICHARD COBURN: Hm. Probably smart. Anyway, the side effects were that, if we examined a particle with the lens in a certain manner, then… it… well, the lens caused bruising itself. It seemed impossible at first, but, well, there you are. The closer we examine, the more the lens interferes, or disturbs, or interjects itself in such a way that it upsets things, like trying to look so close at someone that you actually knock them down.

MICHAEL DERN: You are doing great with the metaphors.

RICHARD COBURN: Oh? Should I stop?

MICHAEL DERN: No, no. Keep going. This is good, this is very good.

RICHARD COBURN: Well, I’m not sure where else to go. The lens causes what we are choosing to call subatomic aphasia. It interrupts our reality and elbows into a couple of others, a little, simulating bruising. Our reality forgets that that particle—or particles—is there. And in that moment, the thing it is examining is shoved—partially—into all those various other realities as well. So it could exist in a variety of states, places, et cetera. Even times, possibly, though of course that is quite hard to quantify. What we wanted to do was reduce the amount of possibilities until we had it in a binary state—that is, the particle is in two places at once, two physical places, I mean, within our reality. Or it seems to be. We’re not quite sure. Then we would need to simply shut down one avenue, one possibility—again, this is all so very theoretical—and then ta-da, it’s there. We’d like to be able to see if we can transport larger items, but, again, we’re not sure. The most interesting thing about all this—

MICHAEL DERN: More interesting than practical application?

RICHARD COBURN: Incredibly more so, yes. The most interesting thing we’ve found from the lens is that it suggests our own experience of reality is myopic. It is a bit like… I don’t know, like an ant crawling along a string stretched across a large room. The ant’s experience is largely two-dimensional. It only cares about what’s happening along the surface directly in front of it or behind it in a straight line. That’s us. We’re the ant. But the lens allows our perspective to expand outward. Our perspective gains more dimensions: there are things below us, above us, to our sides. There is an enormous, unexplored gulf of existence, of realities, all around us; we simply can’t experience it because our perspective is a bit nailed down. You see?

MICHAEL DERN: Hm. Well…

RICHARD COBURN: What’s wrong?

MICHAEL DERN: I… don’t think this metaphor is a good one.

RICHARD COBURN: Why not?

MICHAEL DERN: Because he’s gonna ask—what’s in the corners?

RICHARD COBURN: The corners of what?

MICHAEL DERN: Of the room. There’s this big huge room. Maybe there’s something in the corners.

RICHARD COBURN: Well, we just don’t know. That’s the curious thing about it.

MICHAEL DERN: Ehh. I’d leave it out. These types of guys, they tend to fixate on stuff like this. It’s the war mentality, I guess.

RICHARD COBURN: I can almost guarantee that there are no Soviets in the corners of this metaphorical room.

MICHAEL DERN: You know what I mean.

RICHARD COBURN: Well… well then, if it comes to that, I will just say to him that, that… that we just don’t know. And… and that’s why we need money, Mr. Senator. We need lots of it, all of it. In big bags. We need it to figure out what the f*ck is going on.

MICHAEL DERN [LAUGHS]

RICHARD COBURN: Did you like that? It was rather good, wasn’t it.

MICHAEL DERN: You say that and Laura will kill you.

RICHARD COBURN: I’ve no doubt.

[STATIC]





TRANSCRIPT OF PROGRESS INTERVIEW

c10.37a-jc

CONDUCTED BY MICHAEL DERN, CHIEF OF STAFF

JANUARY 3RD, 1974



: So it’s one hundred percent necessary that this is taped.

MICHAEL DERN: One hundred percent.

: Why? Who’s going to listen to this?

MICHAEL DERN: Um. Not many people.

: How many is not many?

MICHAEL DERN: One?

: One? One person?

MICHAEL DERN: They get played, once. Then they get stored. Safely.

: Come on, Michael.

MICHAEL DERN: You’re awful curious about this.

: Yes, I am awful curious about what happens to tapes made of me, of me talking. How would you like it? Wouldn’t you be worried?

MICHAEL DERN: I have been taped so many times, I don’t even notice anymore.

: But you do know what happens to the tapes.

MICHAEL DERN: Yes. The tapes get transcribed.

: Okay. Then what?

MICHAEL DERN: Mm. Probably shouldn’t. But. Then the transcriptions get circulated to a committee—a really important committee—with your name removed.

: What? Why the hell would they do that?

MICHAEL DERN: Because there’s always a chance that someone—I don’t know who, but some a*shole—could leak the interview.

: Ah. Because we do such [singing] topsecret work.

MICHAEL DERN: Yeah. You do. You do, you know.

: Yeah. I know all about that.

MICHAEL DERN: Still, they want to hear, you know, thoughts, opinions, et cetera. They want to hear it out of your mouth. But not, you know, your mouth.

: Is your name redacted?

MICHAEL DERN: Nope.

: Well aren’t you special.

MICHAEL DERN: My name is a matter of public record. So yeah. Yeah, I am special. Not as special as you, though, but

: You sure know how to sweet-talk

MICHAEL DERN: I do. So how’s it going?

: That’s it? Just how’s it going?

MICHAEL DERN: We’ll start there, sure.

: Seriously?

MICHAEL DERN: Seriously.

: Not good.

MICHAEL DERN: No?

: Yeah. Not good. And I’m saying that knowing full well that I could lose my job, and the job of everyone else here. It’s not good.

MICHAEL DERN: What’s so not good about it?

: The results we’re getting. is excited about them, sure. His but you’ve got to understand that… like, think of looking at a dark room. You see a flash on one side. Then you see it again on another. What’s the guarantee that it’s the same light? Isn’t a much more practical explanation that it’s just two different lights that appear similar?

MICHAEL DERN: You know I’m a physicist too, right?

: Yeah, but you went to Stanford, so.

MICHAEL DERN: Very cute. So you’re saying you disbelieve

: hypothesis about the photon tracking.

What I will say is that I think we’ve made more progress exploring photon signatures than we ever have on cosmic bruising. If there’s one great contribution we’ve made to science, it’s that.

MICHAEL DERN: What do you feel is the problem?

: It’s the math. Listen, I… I know this theory is popular. The multiverse theory, or what have you. Of course it is, it’s dippy and crazy and fun. But the math isn’t right. They can always adjust for whatever results they get. Nothing can get disproven. And if nothing can get disproven, nothing can get proven, Michael. And while I think is making progress in a lot of fields, they’re not the ones we’re supposed to be making progress in. We have not found any evidence that we are anywhere close to simulating suspended bruising. Nor have we found any evidence—hard evidence, mind—that the phenomena we’re witnessing, if we could call them that, are a result of bruising. which I know is just his absolute baby, is an impressive device that has led to remarkable breakthroughs in particle physics. None of which he was looking for.

MICHAEL DERN: None of which you were looking for either. You helped design it. A lot of this was your idea.

[PAUSE]: Yeah. Yeah. But. I mean, eventually you have to grow up, don’t you?

MICHAEL DERN: How do you dispute the photon signature?

: I dispute it because the two signatures—which appear to be the same, but, again, they can prove anything, because of how they’re fiddling with the math—appeared an insignificant distance apart. I saw nothing suggesting transportation. It’s not what we wanted to see.

MICHAEL DERN: What you wanted to see.

: No. No, it’s not what I wanted to see. I wanted to see something much larger. I don’t know. I wanted to be talking nanometers, not Planck’s lengths. Millimeters, even. F*ck, centimeters.

MICHAEL DERN: That’s… extreme.

: Well, we wanted extreme. What we were first shooting at—when we were using solid numbers, I mean—was something extreme. If we could honestly induce subatomic aphasia—really, really create our own bruising—then we would be seeing something extreme. Significant displacement. Indisputable duplication. I don’t know. That’s the thing. We just didn’t know. And here we are. Now, I know are all excited over this. But they have their own club, and, you know, they all get together and titter over things. And yeah, it’s not fun that I’m excluded from that group just because . But I’m being impartial here. I really am. I don’t think they’re right. Even if they’re using my math, my research. And the f*cking competition…

MICHAEL DERN: You think it’s harmful?

: Are you stupid? Of course it’s harmful! We’ve got all these people who do essentially the same thing, many of whom have been rivals for a damn long time, all cooped up in the desert spending their time inside a f*cking mountain not getting the results they wanted. It’s shark-infested waters here, Mike. Even if the sharks are wearing… what’s that sweater that wears?

MICHAEL DERN: Alpaca.

: Yes. F*cking alpaca sweaters. Jesus Christ. You want us to lay aside our differences, sit down, create something great. Like they did at Los Alamos. But this isn’t Los Alamos. There isn’t a war going on, or at least not a real one. And we’re not Oppenheimer, or Bohr, or Feynman, or any of the rest of them. Just a bunch of a*sholes in the desert gnawing their arms off.

MICHAEL DERN: And do you think they treat you differently? Even from the others?

: What, because I’m or because I’m a good-looking

[SILENCE]

: That’s very tactful of you, Mike. To answer your question, yes, I think they treat me differently. I think I’m excluded from a lot. But it doesn’t stop there. The town treats us differently.

MICHAEL DERN: You think the problems extend to Wink?

: Not these exact problems. And they’re not overt problems. It’s a… sense. A way they look at us.

MICHAEL DERN: Wink was built to support you all.

: And you don’t think that pisses them off? Christ, I’d be disappointed. I mean, have you met us? They don’t even have good television out here. They only broadcast shows from, like, fifteen years ago. The Ozzie and Harriet reruns… I’m surprised we don’t have any suicides. But what’s really bad about it is that we all know, somewhere in the back of our heads, that this is all supposed to be perfect. This place is supposed to be…

MICHAEL DERN: The future.

: Yeah. Yeah, the future. We give a little to the town. The streetlights. Power. Other little innovations. But they know, deep down, that it’s not a real place. It’s… invented. It’s fake. Like Las Vegas, but worse. At least Vegas makes money.

MICHAEL DERN: What makes you think this facility doesn’t make money?

: I guess that’s a good point. We could be shoveling out patents and they’d never tell us. I guess could have cooked up a whole lot of patents and they’re just waiting to get out and… well. That would never happen, would it.

MICHAEL DERN: No. There are a lot of eyes on you all.

: You mean us all.

MICHAEL DERN: Right.

: For now, yeah. If we don’t make more progress, I’m sure the eyes will look at something else. And the funding will go there too. Listen, I’ve said what I came to say. Anything more you want to ask me?

MICHAEL DERN: Relationships.

[SILENCE]

: Yeah?

MICHAEL DERN: Are you involved in any?

[SILENCE]

: No, Mike. No, I am not.





INVESTIGATION OF EQUIPMENT MALFUNCTION

DR. RICHARD COBURN

AUGUST 13TH, 1975

It is important to note when considering this case that the equipment involved (the Suspended Bruising Lens, or simply “lens”) has so far functioned without issue, or noticeable issue, for the better part of half a decade. I have personally never witnessed any error with the equipment, and though our reports show what they show, I have some reason to doubt them, for reasons that will be made clear. But for the moment I would ask all of you to remember that thus far the lens has given no hint of genuine anomaly in its performance, or at least not one on this scale. In short, I believe my testimony below will lead you to believe, just as I do, that the issue is likely one of personnel, rather than an error in equipment, equipment maintenance, or data input.

Some background:

Steven Helm is our chief lab assistant, and while previously his record was without blemish I must report that he has voiced some (unfounded, in my opinion) concerns regarding the lens with increasing frequency. These were never voiced to me directly, nor have they ever been reported on record with Michael Dern (COS), but his issues have filtered through to me mostly from Eric Bintly and Laura Alvarez, who are, as you no doubt know, our primary researchers on staff. I did note some curiosities in Mr. Helm’s behavior, but I chalked it up to simple laziness or restlessness, which is, I feel, quite a reasonable assumption considering our location, our seclusion, and the high-pressure nature of this work.

The greatest symptom of Mr. Helm’s suspicions was his reluctance to enter the testing chamber, which was of course quite an obstacle. Whenever someone needed him to enter the chamber, Mr. Helm was either not to be found or he would formulate some elaborate task that had fully engaged his time and efforts. Thus we, the project manager and primary researchers, would have to do his duties for him, which often consisted of adjustments, measurements, and other tasks that required little to no education. This went on for about a month before the incident. I suppose it is my fault that I allowed this behavior to continue; we have been working on this project together for so long, and have become so familiar with each other, that our strictures may have become a bit lax.

The second symptom is one I did not witness myself, for I was never present. (I assume the relevant testimonies are being presented to you independently—at least, I hope they are.) But on the rare occasions when Mr. Helm could be coerced to enter the chamber to do his work, he avoided the lens plates. Specifically, he avoided looking into their reflective surfaces. It was Dr. Bintly who first noticed this behavior, and he treated it with great levity (so I understand), making the usual comments one can expect about vanity, fixing one’s hair, checking for food in one’s teeth, etc., but Mr. Helm was not at all receptive to such humor, and I am told his reaction was quite rude, shocking both Dr. Bintly and Dr. Alvarez. Dr. Alvarez later confronted Mr. Helm about his comments, and Mr. Helm admitted he did not feel “all right, at all” around the lens. His reasons for this were vague and unclear, but if I may be honest I believe he thought that when he looked into the lens plates he imagined seeing something. I even believe he thinks he saw someone in the mirror who was not himself, i.e., a reflection of someone who was not there.

Naturally, this is quite ridiculous. I have requested to have Mr. Helm removed from my staff, as any responsible project leader would. But, since the mishap with the lens occurred before Mr. Helm’s impending departure, you must understand that I have reasons to suspect him in what happened. I do not find it at all surprising that some minds cannot bear the burden of the tasks that have been laid upon our shoulders, especially considering the manner in which they were laid upon our shoulders. Though I am sure you know this, our lives are solitary and highly disciplined, receiving little return or reward day after day, and though we and the rest of the staff enjoy our time in the constructed village, it often feels as if civilization is worlds away. Which, I suppose, it is.

The next issue, and the one I feel is most unfortunate, concerns Dr. Bintly, whom I have always considered a very reliable and respectable scientist (I would not have him on my staff otherwise, but even by my standards he is most excellent), and thus I find his actions a cause for deep regret. While he has never voiced any concerns about the lens, or the nature of our work, despite its frustrating and often elusive nature, there were two events that I feel almost suggest a break with reality. I am very sympathetic to Dr. Bintly, and I understand that, again, our isolation and seclusion here, along with the nature of our work, will naturally have some pretty dire repercussions on the state of one’s mental health (I myself am not above such maladies, and have even taken up meditation to remedy it, which I cannot recommend highly enough), but even so I cannot allow him to pass from suspicion.

The first event occurred over half a year ago (I cannot recall the date) on a very late evening spent in the chamber, going over some statistical models that were not behaving as we had forecasted. Mr. Helm was not present—it was only Dr. Bintly, Dr. Alvarez, and myself. Dr. Alvarez and I left Dr. Bintly alone for a brief period to perambulate about the offices while we reconsidered the nature of our problem, and we later returned with some possibly fertile ground (which proved quite fertile indeed, I am happy to say). But we heard Dr. Bintly talking quite agitatedly within the chamber. We looked in and found him flipping through the statistical models, angrily discussing their contents aloud, even castigating his imaginary audience for not knowing what he was talking about, when they (I do recall that he later referred to them as “they”) knew quite well what he meant as they’d all been talking about it for the past four hours. Dr. Alvarez interjected from the door, and Dr. Bintly looked up, surprised, and asked how we’d gotten “over there” so quickly, and why we had changed clothes. Dr. Alvarez and I were quite confused by his comments, and reminded him that we’d only gone on a quick walk, and had not changed clothes at all, which caused Dr. Bintly to stare into the far side of the room with a puzzled look on his face as if expecting to see someone there. When no one appeared, he seemed quite disturbed, and he chose to retire for the evening, which we all agreed was the smart thing to do.



This situation was much more distressing. I had been meditating on the mesa top, as is part of my morning ritual, and I descended to find Dr. Bintly shouting at Dr. Alvarez with considerable alarm and volume. This attracted the attention of the other workers, who began to mutter and mill about as I suppose such people do. Yet when he saw me, coming down the stairs in my robe, he stared and almost fainted. We took him to the medical room straightaway.

Dr. Bintly was most reluctant to discuss the matter. Dr. Alvarez privately informed me that he had come running out of the chamber shouting that I, personally, was in trouble. So agitated was Dr. Bintly that he was unable to articulate the precise nature of my trouble, but I assure you I was not in any trouble, having been sitting atop the mesa doing breathing exercises at the time.

Eventually we were able to extract the truth from him, or the truth he was willing to give us. He claimed he’d been working on the lens data feeds when suddenly the chamber filled up with a great shouting. He was so astonished he leaped up and saw—and here I do pity him—me, Richard Coburn, standing in the chamber in ragged clothes, sporting a full beard, shouting the word plank over and over again. Then he claims I abruptly vanished.

But this does not compare to his later actions, which, if I took them at all seriously, would be quite upsetting for me. For it seems he had been hiding

It is quite sad to see that Dr. Bintly’s mind has been so affected by our work. I have put through a request for transfer for him, and though I am dispirited by these developments I do not regret my actions. Moving him away from the facility—perhaps only for a time, as his contributions are so valuable—will aid his mental health enormously.

Dr. Alvarez, however, remains my most trusted and valuable colleague. I am aware she had issues with our work in the past (she is a little too devoted to details, I feel, and often misses the forest for the leaves) but these have been resolved and in recent months she has been more dedicated to our researches than ever. I say this because I am very aware that, since Dr. Alvarez is the one who was directly involved with the incident, the most suspicion will inevitably fall on her. But as she has no history of erratic behavior, unlike her other two colleagues, and since the nature of her involvement was so incidental (I presume you have seen the film), I cannot imagine that she had any intentional hand in what happened.



The facts are simple:

On Monday evening, Dr. Alvarez did a final check on the lens equipment. This is standard operating procedure for us, after which we always lock up the chamber.

Approximately four minutes into her check, she began to shut down the recording equipment.

Not long after that, the power flow to the lens abruptly spiked. This we know due to the electrical monitoring systems I insisted be installed (which we now all agree was quite wise). The duration of the spike was a little over forty seconds.

Three seconds into this spike, the lens plates rotated a full twenty-three degrees, clockwise. Then they stopped.

The spike persisted for another nine seconds. Then it ended.

And this, really, is all we know, which is not much. There is a lot of hoopla going on about the data outputs, and though what was recorded does suggest something very close to suspended bruising, But we obviously cannot trust it because it occurred during what honestly seems to be either equipment malfunction (unlikely) or sabotage (in my opinion, much more likely).

There is also the position of the plates. While a reenactment of the incident does suggest that the plates rotated to point toward Dr. Alvarez’s position in the chamber, I do not lend this development much credence. It does not stir any suspicion or concern in my mind. The position of the plates has so far proven coincidental to any success at suspended bruising.

What concerns me most—as it must also concern you—is





However, none of this can be proven to any satisfactory degree.

Dr. Alvarez remains an exceptional scientist—possibly, except for myself, the most exceptional one I have ever known—and she herself did not register anything out of the ordinary during her time in the chamber. Due to the nature of the lens, she did not even hear it rotate. And she did not notice anything during the time that, per the reports, suspended bruising was achieved. Though there was some concern she had been exposed to but totally ridiculous. I also have no reason to believe she was involved in the change in the lens.

To be frank, the behavior of the lens can only lead me to think it was the result of external control. I am not sure if either Dr. Bintly or Mr. Helm has the means of setting up this sort of control. But the sequence of events—power, rotation, data output—does not seem accidental. Someone, somehow, was controlling the lens.

I have requested your security teams examine and interrogate the facility staff in detail as a result. I am quite eager to hear what they will find.





INVESTIGATION INTO DISAPPEARANCE OF LAURA ALVAREZ

TAPED INTERVIEW c10.36-aB

CONDUCTED BY CHIEF OF STAFF MICHAEL DERN

SUBJECT: ERIC BINTLY

DECEMBER 14TH, 1975



MICHAEL DERN [CLEARS THROAT]: This interview is the first of the staff-conducted investigation into the disappearance of Laura Alvarez. It’s, uh, important to note that, as of right now, this interview is not… officially sanctioned. Our instructions are still forthcoming. For now, we’ve been told to sit tight, but I figured that we… well, we needed to do something now, to prepare ahead of time, so no one got the idea that we were preparing statements.

ERIC BINTLY: So how do they know this isn’t a prepared statement right now?

MICHAEL DERN: I think it’s likely they’ll understand we haven’t had the time to prepare anything.

ERIC BINTLY: How do they know that? These aren’t the most understanding guys in the world, am I wrong? Are we just promising them that we’re making it right after she left?

MICHAEL DERN: You know you’re on tape, right?

ERIC BINTLY: Yeah, yeah. But how do they even know when she left?

MICHAEL DERN: Eric, I’m going to level with you right now and say that… they have a lot more ways of keeping track of things out here than you’d expect.

ERIC BINTLY: Like what?

[SILENCE]

ERIC BINTLY: Cameras? Mikes?

[SILENCE]

ERIC BINTLY: Jesus Christ.

MICHAEL DERN: Let’s just start from the top. Start from your return from your…

ERIC BINTLY: From my vacation?

MICHAEL DERN: Sure, let’s call it that.

ERIC BINTLY: Well… it wasn’t that long ago, but… things had obviously changed. We’d made huge advances. They had, I mean. I hadn’t been there for it. They’d actually simulated bruising several—

MICHAEL DERN: No, Eric, what they want to know about is Laura. Tell them just about her. Just Laura.

ERIC BINTLY: Okay, okay. Let me think. Now… now, there were marked differences in how she, uh, acted since when I left and when I came back. I was only gone a couple of weeks. But I could tell… something was off. Something was wrong, I guess. She was… [PAUSE] Can I ask you something, Mike?

MICHAEL DERN: Me? Sure, I guess.

ERIC BINTLY: Did you… think I went crazy?

MICHAEL DERN: I’m sorry?

ERIC BINTLY: When they sent me away. Did you think I’d had a, a psychotic break? Because I don’t. I wasn’t sure at first, but now I am.

MICHAEL DERN: That’s not really what we’re asking about.

ERIC BINTLY: Yeah, but, see, it kind of is. You think Laura’s disappearance is an aberration. You think it’s unusual behavior. But I’m not so sure it is. Maybe it’s something else.

MICHAEL DERN: So you think it’s perfectly reasonable to just jump in your car, with no preparation at all, and leave, all the way out here in the desert?

ERIC BINTLY: I’m not saying it’s reasonable. I’m saying… there might be other factors at play. Listen, Mike, I know that, on paper, I am a wildly untrustworthy witness. I am an untouchable, really. I’m here solely because Dick likes me, and I know it. But… that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

MICHAEL DERN: Wrong about what?

ERIC BINTLY: About the lens. About what it does.

MICHAEL DERN: I know what the lens does.

ERIC BINTLY: You know what it does on paper. But it does more than that.

MICHAEL DERN: For God’s sakes. You sound like Steven.

ERIC BINTLY: And maybe we should have listened to Steven. I mean, he had problems with it well before all this happened. Before I… left. Before Laura.

MICHAEL DERN: Okay. Fine. Keep telling me about Laura. What was different about her?

ERIC BINTLY: Well, she used to be… to look quite… vivacious. There was an aliveness to her. You know? She used to run laps around the mesa like it was nothing. But when I saw her again, she looked unhealthy. She looked tired. Like something was being pulled out of her.

MICHAEL DERN: That was noted. We did two physicals, nothing showed up.

ERIC BINTLY: Right, and you attributed it to exhaustion. Which is a rational thing to do. But Dick was working just the same amount, right? And he didn’t look that exhausted. And yeah, yeah, maybe it was all the meditation and the green tea. Jasmine green tea. But I don’t think so.

MICHAEL DERN: So what was it?

ERIC BINTLY: I wasn’t sure. I’m still not sure. But sometimes while I was talking to her, she’d suddenly look to the side, like she’d seen something, but nothing was there. Or she’d wince, like she’d just heard something loud or grating, right in her ear. It was like… me.

MICHAEL DERN: Like you?

ERIC BINTLY: Yeah. Like how I was. That was why you all thought I was crazy. Because I… saw things.

MICHAEL DERN: You said you saw the members of the research team in random places throughout the facility.

ERIC BINTLY: Yeah. I saw them. And we thought it was a hallucination. I did, too. But maybe not.

[SILENCE]

ERIC BINTLY: And maybe Laura was seeing and hearing things, too. Things that were actually there.

MICHAEL DERN: But things only she could see. Right. I’m gonna go ahead and remind you, one more time, that you are on tape.

ERIC BINTLY: I didn’t just see staff, you know. There were some things I… I didn’t tell you.

[SILENCE]

ERIC BINTLY: So that makes me wonder—what did Laura see?

MICHAEL DERN: Are you serious?

[SILENCE]

MICHAEL DERN: You saw this, and you didn’t tell us?

[SILENCE]

MICHAEL DERN: It’s really… it is so irresponsible that you were… that you withheld things from us, Eric. You were in danger, you should have told us everything.

ERIC BINTLY: I know. But I didn’t want it to be real.

MICHAEL DERN: Want what to be real?

ERIC BINTLY: Well, it’s like you said. I saw the lab crew, and I saw them in different places… but in different sets of clothing, at different ages. I didn’t tell you that. Like, I saw you and Dick walking around, examining the facility, but you had hair, Mike, and I swear Dick had like half the wrinkles he has now. I saw Laura, and she looked about five years older, but she was filthy, dressed in a tank top and cargo shorts, and she was carrying around a f*cking gun, for whatever reason. And I saw myself. When I didn’t need glasses. Just doing whatever. Paperwork. Smoking. And once I saw…

MICHAEL DERN: Saw what?

[SILENCE]

MICHAEL DERN: Saw what, Eric?

ERIC BINTLY: I saw you. And Dick. And a lot of the other staff. Screaming. The walls were shaking. And the floor and ceiling were cracking. Lights going out. And someone said… “There’s something up there.”

[SILENCE]

MICHAEL DERN: What did he… do you mean?

ERIC BINTLY: I don’t know. But… I thought he meant that there was something on top of the building. The mesa, I mean. I don’t know.

[SILENCE]

MICHAEL DERN: Jesus Christ. Why didn’t you say any of this?

ERIC BINTLY: Because I wanted to come back. Because I wanted to keep working. But now I know I shouldn’t have. When I saw what Laura was doing… well, why tell you this. I’m sure you have it on film.

MICHAEL DERN: Have what?

ERIC BINTLY: What she was doing with the lens.

MICHAEL DERN: We don’t… [PAPER RUSTLING] I don’t, uh, think we have any recorded examples of any… uh, misbehavior with the lens.

ERIC BINTLY: You don’t? At all?

MICHAEL DERN: No.

ERIC BINTLY: Well… I swear, she would just do it for an hour or something…

MICHAEL DERN: Do what?

ERIC BINTLY: Just… stare into them. She would just stare into the lens plates. With her nose about an inch away. Like she was transfixed. I caught her several times. That was when I really knew something was wrong.

MICHAEL DERN: I don’t have any… God. I don’t have that at all.

ERIC BINTLY: Then I guess she was screwing with the records.

MICHAEL DERN: She couldn’t.

ERIC BINTLY: Well, she did, or someone did. I think I found her like that at least three times. And each time I caught her, there was something wrong with her eyes. It was like there was something else in there.

MICHAEL DERN: What do you mean?

ERIC BINTLY: I wasn’t sure until I stopped her, on the day she left. The day she just jumped in her car and started driving east. Before that, I stopped her in the hall and asked what was wrong, because she looked troubled, and she stopped and looked at me and… it was like… it’s impossible to describe. It’s like there was someone else in there. In her head. Someone who wasn’t Laura at all.

MICHAEL DERN: I’m going to just say, once more, with feeling, that you are on tape.

ERIC BINTLY: I know.

MICHAEL DERN: A tape that will be heard by important people.

ERIC BINTLY: I know. And I also know what I saw. I’m telling you, she didn’t know me, Mike. Total lack of recognition. She wasn’t sure who or maybe even what I was. And there was this shivering, or wriggling, all in her corneas, as if behind her eyes there was nothing but worms…

[SILENCE]

ERIC BINTLY: I let her go. I was so unnerved, I let her go. I shouldn’t have done that.

[SILENCE]

MICHAEL DERN: No. You shouldn’t have.

ERIC BINTLY: The lens does something, Mike. I’m sure of it. It pushes at the boundaries of things. I remember Dick once said the way it transports is like a kid throwing a ball up through one skylight so it comes down through another skylight a couple of walls away. And that just stuck in my head.

MICHAEL DERN: Why?

ERIC BINTLY: It was actually something you said before, about another metaphor of Dick’s. The ant on the string in the room.

MICHAEL DERN: Oh. I think… yeah, the thing with—

ERIC BINTLY: The corners. What’s in the corners?

MICHAEL DERN: Right.

ERIC BINTLY: Yeah, so… while his comparison with the skylights isn’t correct—because that’s not really how the lens works—it just makes me wonder if we are making holes somewhere, in some part of the world we can’t measure or quantify, and if the holes are there, then… what else can come through?

MICHAEL DERN: You sound like—

ERIC BINTLY: I know. You said it already. Steven.

MICHAEL DERN: Did he—did he tell you everything, Eric? Because Steven told me everything. After all, he couldn’t go to Dick, so he came to me. And it was f*cking. Insane. It was f*cking insane, Eric. He said the, the lenses were windows, and there was someone on the other side of them. That’s what he said, to me. He said there was someone on the other side, watching, and then—I swear I am not making this up, this is what he said—he corrected himself, and said, “or something.” And he was dead f*cking serious. Now, is this really something you want to get behind, Eric? Do you really want to discuss this, seriously, on tape, with me, and throw your career behind this sort of shit?

ERIC BINTLY: I don’t know. I saw what I saw. There’s no way around it.

MICHAEL DERN: Christ.

[SILENCE]

ERIC BINTLY: They’ll have set up a perimeter, right? One of those search nets? APB, all that stuff?

MICHAEL DERN: I think so. I assume that’s why no one’s here to tell us what to do. They’re all looking for her.

ERIC BINTLY: I ask because… I think she made a lot of changes to the lens before she left.

MICHAEL DERN: What kind of changes?

ERIC BINTLY: I don’t know. I’m not allowed to be around the lens that much since I got sent away. And besides… I was never as good as she was.

MICHAEL DERN: You’re sure? Sure she made changes?

ERIC BINTLY: Pretty sure.

MICHAEL DERN: Well… f*ck, man. Let’s hope it wasn’t anything important.

ERIC BINTLY: Dick will take care of it.

MICHAEL DERN: Yeah. Yeah. He’d f*cking better. Jesus.





SOUNDTRACK TAPE TO JLB [FILM STOCK MISSING]

MAY 13TH 1983



[FOOTSTEPS, ECHOING]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Hurry! Come on!

UNKNOWN VOICE 2 (RICHARD COBURN?): I am hurrying! You should have warned me about this…

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: I did warn you! I told you two days ago it was happening.

POSSIBLY RICHARD COBURN: I don’t even—

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: It wasn’t just me. It doesn’t matter now. Just come and look.

[BANGING, SQUEAKING, POSSIBLY HINGES]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Through here.

RICHARD COBURN: Is it really necessary we go all the way u—

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Yes, it is! Come on. Up the ladder, you go first.

RICHARD COBURN: Oh, well, I…

[RUSTLING, BANGING]

[STATIC]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: You’re sure the lens is on?

RICHARD COBURN: Of course it is! The test is scheduled to continue for the next fifteen minutes, so we—

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Good. Then it lines up perfectly. Let me just—

[RUSTLING]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Push!

[HINGES SQUEAKING]

RICHARD COBURN: My God, it’s cold up here. I haven’t…

[CRACKLING]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Do you see it?

[SOUND OF WIND]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Yeah. There—there it is.

[SILENCE]

RICHARD COBURN: My word.

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: Yeah. Jesus.

[SILENCE]

RICHARD COBURN: It’s heat lightning.

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: No.

RICHARD COBURN: No?

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: No. I’ve seen heat lightning before, and that is not heat lightning.

RICHARD COBURN: Then what is it?

[SILENCE]

RICHARD COBURN: And you say every time we perform a test, then…

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: The lightning comes. Yeah. I don’t even know how long it’s been going on for. Paul just happened to notice it. It isn’t on any meteorological forecasts.

RICHARD COBURN: It is so odd that it’s silent.

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: I know.

[SILENCE]

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: So what do we do?

[SILENCE]

UNKNOWN VOICE: So what do we do?

[SILENCE]

[STATIC]





THE PEOPLE FROM ELSEWHERE