A Tear in the Veil

by Patrick Loveland

  The walls are surfaced with stainless steel from the looks of it and there’s a thicker metal door at the end of the short hall. It doesn’t have a knob or handle. Above it there’s an array of cameras and less recognizable equipment. Some raw electronic patchwork modifications and some sort of wire pulley and mechanical movement rig?

  Felix also notices that the walls and ceiling have rows of half-inch diameter holes cut out of them. Even, symmetrical, ten rows each top to bottom. He looks back and forth. But they’re offset so that the holes on the left line up with the space between the holes on the right. Something about the dark holes bothers him. He’s getting nervous now.

  There’s a ticking and whirring sound and Felix looks back up at the camera array. The cameras are zooming in and out and moving on their gears and pulleys.

  In almost perfect synch the holes all around make mechanical clicking sounds.

  The white light goes out.

  “Rudy, what the fuck?”

  “Chill. It’s cool.”

  Small lights Felix must have missed in the camera array strobe through a set of different colors and at three different speeds simultaneously then it’s dark again. Mostly. Felix notices a feint orange glow coming from an intricate circular pattern on the metal floor.

  The other bulb blinks on and, other than bathing them in eerie blue light, it laces the walls, floor, and part of the ceiling in bright symbols and patterns projected from the etchings in the bulb’s paint. The pattern on the floor glows bright orange now. Probably fluorescent paint charged by the lights flashing. Or was it glowing before they flashed?

  A small speaker Felix also missed crackles a bit and a choppy, oddly distorted voice asks, “–Who’s the pink, Rudy?–”

  “Felix. I met him in the FMC. He saw some things.”

  “–And?–”

  “I thought you could drop some logic on him and maybe give him some camera upgrades.”

  There’s a few full seconds of silence.

  “–Felix.–”

  “Yes?”

  Rudy looks at him.

  The largest camera zooms a bit more.

  “–If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?–”

  Felix furrows his brow and says, “What?”

  “–If a tree–”

  “I heard you,” Felix says.

  He shakes his head and thinks. “Uh…”

  “–Uh…?–” Talk about being put on the spot. The orange, glowing, creepy spot at that.

  Felix tries to think of something smart and/or profound to say then shakes his head and scoffs in frustration and just says what he feels like.

  “Well… I guess scientists would say ‘of course’, philosophers would say ‘how could you know?’, and nihilists would say ‘who gives a fuck?’”

  The distorted voice laughs over the speaker. It’s not a pleasant sound but the holes in the walls and ceiling make a different clicking sound from before, which Felix assumes is a good thing. The laugh cuts out abruptly.

  After a long moment, the blue light and symbols cut off and the bare white bulb flicks back on. Felix notices he can’t see the symbol on the floor anymore at all.

  More mechanical sounds can be heard through the door and it opens, revealing a smiling black man with dreadlocks.

  He’s probably middle-aged but he could be older. Medium build. He has salt and pepper chop sideburns that connect in a moustache and there’s stubble growing in that threatens to complete the beard. He has a yellow tube hat thing on and the salt and pepper continues into his thick old school dreadlocks, which come out the back of it and reach down his back.

  He’s wearing a red and blue silk kimono print bathrobe over a white tank top, black sweat shorts, and fuzzy duck slippers.

  As the man leans into the little hall holding the door, Felix glimpses a large revolver in a shoulder holster under the robe.

  Wahrheit says, “Enter freely and of your own will, bitches.”

  17

  Felix and Rudy step past Wahrheit into his long, large living room. It smells strongly of patchouli oil or incense. Abbey Road is playing low on a turntable that crowns a large, old component stereo system. The floor speakers must be four feet tall.

  Other than the stereo and some chairs and couches on the far end of the room, there isn’t much normal about this room.

  There are live monitors and electronic equipment all over and some of it looks like it would be right at home on a submarine or space shuttle. Something like radar? Something else like a seismograph? There’s even a set of several translucent spheres rotating into each other. A few peas in a plum in an orange in a cantaloupe surfacing past an internal tangent and creating a large bump on the outer surface of a basketball. All these hover over a baseplate like magnetic levitation… but Felix can’t see any magnets. Or liquid nitrogen…

  Not to mention, how are they rotating into each other? They’re like solid bubbles. But if they’re solid…

  Then he sees all the guns and he’s not worried about the bubble things anymore.

  The first set he sees is on the long window lining a strip of the porch they were on. All the windows he can see are barred on the inside and the gun rigs are installed between the bars. The gun rigs are simple and boxy and have wire-pulley systems like the camera array and seem able to be remotely manipulated and aimed. They don’t have handles or grips and they’re like compact, short-barreled trench machine guns. Basically an ammo box, machine workings, and thick barrel. Suppressors?

  Some of them have other add-ons that look like ampules of bright blue and green fluid and small, clear piping for distributing it into the gun. The blue globs float in the green fluid like oil in water. What the hell is that and what could it possibly be for?

  They don’t look like any gun Felix has ever seen in movies or TV or books. He secretly has a bit of a gun fetish and a few books just full pictures of guns and info on them, so that is actually saying something. Not that he’s ever fired one.

  The guns must have been custom made to work in the rigs. And the further modified ones are just odd. He can see more gun rigs on the windows in the kitchen, which is visible through the openings in a hallway that must bisect the mobile home parallel to the length of the living room.

  Then he realizes a few strange things at once. There’s no old lady in the kitchen and it doesn’t look at all like it did through the windows. It’s dim and, other than a fridge, stovetop oven, and a small table, it’s more like the living room in that it’s lined with more strange equipment. There’s even a shortwave radio setup on the small kitchen table that takes up most of its surface. The small section of table surface remaining is taken up by an ornate chessboard that looks to have a long-term game in slow progress. Must eat a lot of ramen and TV dinners.

  The other strange thing is that the mobile home looks larger inside than it did outside. Not too much but enough to be unsettling. That could be his imagination but he doesn’t think so. Also, he hasn’t been in many mobile homes but he’s pretty sure they usually don’t have a layout quite like this. Felix looks sideways at Rudy.

  He notices and returns with his “It’s cool” face.

  Wahrheit closes the metal door and re-engages the lock then chuckles and says, “You know, I just asked that to see how your mind works, but that might be the best answer I’ve heard to that one.”

  Felix turns toward Wahrheit but something else catches his attention. He sees what he just walked out of for what it is: a deathtrap.

  The short hallway they were in is constructed from a metal frame and layered Kevlar under a few layers of braised together chain link fence with tiny symbols etched into the surface, all brought together with rows of smaller gun rigs lined up with the holes he saw in the metal sheeting.

  These gun rigs are like mini versions of the others, roughly the same in design but probably fire something like a .22 round. Like little .22 machine guns. The ampules on the modified ones are almost the same size as the larger
version guns though.

  Felix’s jaw drops open.

  Oh for fuck’s sake!

  Wahrheit notices and says, “This ain’t for you, man. You’re a guest.” He pats the fencing between a couple gun rigs. “Quite proud of this one, actually. These little shitheads are loaded to alternate between small slugs and rat shot so when they go off, the whole place becomes a ricochet fuck-fest. It’s like a lead sandstorm. Well, if you dipped a sand storm in molecular acid napalm and set it on fire.”

  Felix’s hands shake a little and he feels the flush of adrenaline that comes from realizing you were one decision by someone else away from dying. Horribly and painfully at that.

  Then he gets mad.

  “I h-heard you c-cock them,” Felix stammers.

  Rudy puts his hand on Felix’s shoulder.

  “It’s c–”

  Felix pushes Rudy’s hand away and cuts him off with, “Cool?! You think that’s al-right?! I came here for answers, not to get mulched in Scary McFuckjob’s Entryway of Death!”

  Rudy counters with, “Oh, you came for answers?!” He gestures toward Wahrheit without looking at him. “This is the bru wit’ the fuckin’ answers, so chill the fuck out!”

  Wahrheit lets the young ones stare hard at each other for a minute and hums to the song as he casually walks away from the entryway toward the living room proper. He arrives at a large purple couch on the left side of the long room and sits.

  “Damn, Rudy-Rude. This kid is spooked. Doesn’t seem like the fightin’ type, but this has got him all worked up. Back off, will ya?”

  Felix looks away from Rudy’s glare and notices Wahrheit produce an ancient looking bottle of scotch from below the long coffee table across from his big couch. He pours a few fingers of the whisky into a lowball tumbler.

  Curving around from the end of the coffee table to the left of Wahrheit on the couch there is a stack of monitors. There must be fifty of them. They’re different sizes but the largest is probably only twelve inches diagonal. Most are about five to eight inches. Black and white, color, and some green and black, which must be night vision or something.

  The stack starts on the floor to the left of the couch and the lowest ones are angled up for viewing and must be in some sort of custom rack. The stacks reach up to one layer above Wahrheit’s seated head level and spill over onto his coffee table, five or six in a neat, angled pile on one corner of it. There’s also a joystick on the table by this pile. It reminds Felix of one he had to play flight simulators when he was younger, but he imagine this one is for controlling Wahrheit’s little death machines.

  On the south wall to Wahrheit’s left and past all this is what amounts to a small armory of strangely modified firearms mounted in metal racks or on custom hooks. Pistols, rifles, submachine guns, assault rifles. All that’s missing is a mini-gun– But there’s the old school equivalent: a Lewis trench machine gun is propped up in the corner past the monitors. Felix notices 2-liter bottle sized ampules or bottles of the bright blue and green fluid in a timeworn wooden crate against the wall next to the large gun.

  The center piece, though, is a well maintained, original Bergmann MP18 submachine gun. It also has older looking brass fittings and glass tubing similar to the gun rig mods. There aren’t any ampules attached right now but the fittings and nozzles are there and there’s a custom hollow in the stock finished seamlessly like the rest which must house an ampule when loaded. A concave groove runs along the top right of the stock as well which must give support to another ampule. There’s also an under-barrel mount but there’s nothing in it currently either.

  In the wall Wahrheit’s couch rests against and between the stack of monitors and the wall o’ armaments is an open doorway like the one Felix saw the kitchen through.

  Must be the other end of the bisecting hallway.

  Wahrheit takes a big sip of his scotch and lets out some breath.

  “Ah, much better. Hey, why don’t you toughies take a damn seat?”

  Wahrheit takes another sip then pours some of the whisky from the bottle into another tumbler. He extends it in the direction of Felix who is still standing by the entryway.

  “Here, sip off this. It’s good for your heart.”

  Felix just looks at him while Rudy crosses the room and sits in a large chair placed kitty-corner to another big couch that’s across from the one Wahrheit’s on.

  Rudy says, “You should turn down that ninja field shit out there, man. He got a few houses past yours before I was able to get his attention. Even then, it was hard to get him to come back to it and even harder to get him to see it.”

  “That’s the idea,” Wahrheit responds.

  Felix titters once nervously and scoffs, amazed out how nonchalant they are about all this hardware and weirdness.

  What did I get myself into?

  After taking one more look at the entryway deathtrap, Felix relents and makes his way to the sitting area and takes the tumbler from Wahrheit then sits on the couch across from him with Rudy to his right.

  Felix’s hand trembles as his takes a big sip. It burns but it’s still really smooth and clean. He welcomes the warmth and the coming soothing effects. He clears his throat and breathes out like it’s hot. He hasn’t had this scotch before. Very, very nice.

  Feeling better already, actually.

  He leans back into the comfortable couch and nestles in a bit. He sees gloomy daylight streaming into the bisecting hallway from what has to be a window at its end. The shadows of large droplets falling steadily from the edge of the roof are visible and he can hear the thrumming sound of them hitting something solid in the yard.

  Must be raining now.

  Wahrheit says, “Better? Thought you would be. Alright, so, I am truly sorry to shake you up but if you’re here I assume you’ve figured out that not everything looks like what it is.”

  Felix says, “I understand. Well, sort of. Anyway, sorry I freaked out.”

  Wahrheit nods, takes another sip, and taps something into a nice laptop on the coffee table. He frequently yet casually glances at his stack of monitors. He picks up a two-foot glass bong from near his feet on the other side from where he produced the scotch.

  “You smoke?” he asks as he packs a big bowl from a sliver dish of prepared marijuana on an end table to his left.

  “Sometimes,” Felix answers.

  Wahrheit chuckles and says, “Right answer. It’s good for your soul. It’s like soul medicine.” He lifts up his scotch and says, “This stuff is lovely, but you have too much of it,” he makes a whistling bomb dropping sound with his mouth and lowers the glass like it’s falling. He sets the glass down on a coaster and picks up a lighter. He takes a large hit and rises, extending the bong to Rudy. He exhales as he sits back down.

  Rudy takes a hit with his own lighter and hands it and the bong to Felix.

  “Soul medicine? I thought it just fucked you up,” he says and chuckles.

  Wahrheit smiles, raises his eyebrows, and says, “That too.”

  Other than the laptop on the table, there are tools and materials needed for making homemade bullets. Some of the materials seem out of place, though.

  “So, what is all this for? These guns and equipment and shit?” Felix asks.

  Rudy says, “Hey, Mr. Microphone. Puff-puff, give.”

  Felix remembers the bong in his hands. He takes a small hit then stretches to pass the bong back to Wahrheit over the table.

  As Felix hands the bong over, he glances casually at a few of the monitors and notices two people in their underwear who seem to be working in an indoor garden, a different view from a camera that bobs up and down as it makes its way through the air high above the city streets approaching the Transamerica Pyramid building, and a view from one of the night vision cameras showing dark canyons or something? Then a little white crab skitters by the view and Felix realizes it must be underwater. He really wants to examine the views closer but he notices Wahrheit staring at him with a serious expression that
seems to say “Can I help you with something?” It reminds him of Hirofumi tapping his foot but this man seems far more capable of causing someone bodily harm.

  “Sorry,” Felix says and sits back down.

  Wahrheit sets the bong down by his feet without smoking again.

  “So, now that we’re a little more relaxed… I assume you acquired a special camera recently and that ultimately led you here.”

  “Yeah,” Felix says and takes another sip of scotch then continues, “the HDV four-two-six.”

  Wahrheit turns his attention to making bullets. The process involves making organized groupings of symbols on thin, old paper, shaping them into rough cone shapes, and soaking them in a bluish solution. The finished symbols look kind of like equations in a foreign form of math. Felix is no math head but he got to pre-calc’ and is roughly familiar with what higher math looks like at least. What Wahrheit’s writing or drawing ain’t that. It’s more like an artist’s abstract interpretation of a math equation written by aliens. Like mindfuck math calligraphy.

  The wet, conical pieces are then placed into empty prepared shells. He puts those into a special forming press, presses the handle down until a little beep is heard, then opens it releasing a puff of steam or smoke and places the finished rounds into a bullet tray.

  Felix notices a smell kind of like surf wax mixed with something between a smoking soldering iron and that musty, metallic smell just before rain comes. Well, that’s how it smells in cities anyway. The long, sharp bullets in the casings are translucent. Almost clear, but bluish and the writing that was on the paper is swirled into an abstract in the center like a thin-legged bug in amber.

  Who knew Colma had such interesting living denizens?

  Wahrheit says, “We’ll definitely have to upgrade that before you go.”

  “Upgrade?” Felix asks.

  “You must have noticed that the odd things you’ve been seeing fade from the shots on the drive quickly.”

  Felix looks at Rudy then back at Wahrheit.