“I… haven’t recorded anything yet.”
Wahrheit glares at Rudy.
Rudy shrugs and says, “I know, right?”
Wahrheit shakes his head and says, “At least tell ‘em something, man.”
Rudy says, “Sorry. He wasn’t ready until today.”
“Whatever. Hey, you know where I keep the upgrades, right? You wanna try it?”
“Hell yeah,” Rudy says. He stands and crosses to the door kitty corner to the gun rack wall and he’s out of sight down the hallway.
Wahrheit says, “Okay, let’s start again. What’s that expression? ‘Do over’? So, what brings you here, Felix?”
“A few months ago, I got that camera. The first one I had I mean. My girlfriend was driving us home from a party. I pressed that one button on the lens and her face and voice started to like distort and… and…”
Wahrheit takes over with, “Break apart and warp and such? Twist and pull? Glowing and weird dark… brightness? Started in the eyes and got stronger when she got more upset?”
“Yeah… exactly.”
Felix just looks at him, bewildered. He smokes often enough that the one hit he took isn’t wrecking him, but with that and the scotch he is getting a little high so this is all pretty trippy to him. Then he realizes Rudy could have still just told him about what… actually, no. This is all pretty damn real. He can’t explain several things about this place let alone the fog shit outside. Best to just go with it for now. I guess this is what I came here for.
And then there’s the look on Wahrheit’s face. He seems sad and lost in thought. It’s the most serious he’s been since he opened the door by far. Then he shrugs it off, grabs his lowball, and drains what’s left in it.
He sets the glass down and asks, “What else have you seen?”
“Glowing, see-through bugs and animals. People with smoke coming out of their mouths and they have like growths on them and sometimes glowing creatures… well, in them. I mean… what the fuck are all those things?”
“Where to start? Your entire life and well before it, those things and many more have been around. You just couldn’t see them until you pressed ‘that one’ button. Well, see is just part of it. Without chemicals, an intense maybe life-threatening experience, or whatever that camera does, you can’t see, hear, smell, feel, or taste any of this stuff that you would think of as out of the ordinary. I still don’t know what that damn camera triggers exactly…”
“Okay. Why couldn’t I?”
Wahrheit takes the bottle of scotch and pours another couple of fingers into his lowball. He sets the bottle back down then takes a sip and Felix does the same.
“Think of it like this… at any given moment, you are sharing space with other realms as complex, diverse, and, well… fucked up as the one you know. There’s a symbiosis between some things but our side doesn’t generally know about them because they’re generally benign. Now, whoever made those cameras… it forces you to see and hear these neighbors and stuff but, believe you me, they are always there. We don’t see them due to the power of suggestion. Or, more accurately, a lack of any suggestion or reason to think they are there. Why would we, right? So, the camera kicks in and forces you to see just enough to put the suggestion needed in place. Then the fun starts and the wild weirdness opens itself to you.”
Trying to keep up, Felix says, “Like ghosts or lost souls or something?”
“That would be over-simplifying one small element of one area of interest, but it is part of the bigger picture. The things you are describing are nothing like ghosts. More like inter-dimensional flora and fauna.”
Wahrheit takes another small sip and continues, “There is no super natural. It’s all part of the same complex thing. Natural natural.”
He grabs the whisky bottle and stretches to refill Felix’s tumbler without asking then sits back down. He goes back to making his bullets.
Rudy returns and extends his hand expectantly toward Felix. After a long stoner moment, Felix catches on and opens up his camera bag. He tears the Velcro securing straps off of the HDV-426 and hands it to Rudy who then sits down and starts ‘upgrading’ it.
He gingerly applies decals and stickers to the solid-state housing, the lens, and viewfinder. Then he starts applying the foam and plastic cosmetic pieces and it occurs to Felix that those must be to disguise it more than anything else. One of the pieces goes over the tiny red light that comes on when filming, obviously for stealthy shooting.
Felix sips and thinks.
“What about a figure that sucks in light? It was a creepy, human-shaped black hole that moved like liquid. Completely silent too.”
Rudy stops upgrading and looks at Wahrheit. Wahrheit stops writing a weird symbol equation and looks at Felix.
Rudy asks, “Yeah, what about that?”
“What you saw was different, Rudy. Felix, where did you see this ‘figure’?”
“Pier thirty-nine. It was on one of those docks by the sea lions. I watched it checking one of them out and then it noticed me. Then it was just right in front of me.”
“The fact that it knew you could see it and you are sitting here says a lot. About what, I’m not sure.”
“Why?” Felix asks.
“That’s one of the old guard, you might say. Hey, finish that up, Rude.”
Rudy shakes his head and goes back to placing mostly clear decals in certain spots on the camera.
“Old guard? What, like angels?” Felix asks.
Wahrheit grimaces and says, “Why do you keep trying to jam the huge circular peg shit I’m giving you into a tiny cross shaped slot, man? I know religion is forced on people at the very least subconsciously in this country and other large parts of the world but none of that shit is true. None of the religions you know of are true. None of them.”
Wahrheit sets down his tools then pantomimes and makes a show of opening and peering out through a set of imaginary curtains. He mocks, “Yep… We lost over half the audience with that one.”
He picks his tools back up and says, “Good riddance. In truth, I’m the first one to say I could very well be wrong, but if you can’t stand dissenting opinions, I have no time or patience for you. I love it when a vocal majority likes to pretend it’s the oppressed minority and can’t stand even the slightest implication that their beliefs could be false. A lot of religious people love to talk and talk about their beliefs given half a chance but the moment a differing view is brought up, it’s immediately met with self-crossings and stone throwing or the verbal equivalent and maybe even some hissing and shit. In my experience, the closest it gets to religions being accurate are small outbreaks of people getting the sight or people misinterpreting things and coming up with their own stories about them. Religions make great morality tales and are extremely helpful in controlling people’s hearts and minds on a large scale, but they’re still bullshit. Nothing wrong with that… until the knives and guns come out. What’s funny is that even a tiny amount of the reality of things as I see them is far stranger and more frightening than the whacky shit religions come up with to scare people into giving them money or being good for selfish reasons to get into some fluffy after-life Disney-verse. If you believe any of those lovely religions out there, feel free to hate me. All I ask is that you hate me for the right reasons.”
Felix says, “Not my thing, no. I mean, I don’t know what I believe exactly but I know it’s not what other people try to tell me. I’ve read at least a little about every religion I’ve heard of and none have seemed like much more than cool stories and instruction manuals for behavior. If I’m going to read stories, I prefer the horror and sci-fi section. At least they don’t try to convince you what’s in them is real… past suspension of disbelief I guess.”
“That’s a good start, actually. You ever read any of those pulp magazines from back in the day?”
Felix answers, “I had a collection of shorts from like Weird and Amazing, yeah. It was my dad’s copy and it was real old. From
the seventies I think.”
Wahrheit laughs and says, “‘Old, from the seventies’. You’re too funny. I read those magazines as a boy and they scared the living shit out of me. Toothy, gooey creatures and cosmic boogeymen and shit. My point is, people would be better off reading those old, spooky pulps than scripture but that would still only leave them slightly better prepared for the true horrors under the existential bed and in the pitch dark closet of the great beyond. The big things with real power are not something to be worshipped. Feared and hidden from at all costs more like. The big nasties in the pulps could be a bit too cuddly, though. Also didn’t account for some of the weirder variables. Anyway, all that said… No, Felix. These old guard I mentioned are nothing like ‘angels’. Referees in an endless cosmic soccer match, more like. Or maybe secret police… space… ninja… demigods.”
Your basic SPSNDs. Spaznoids? Spaznoids, definitely.
Wahrheit takes a sip of scotch as he studies Felix’s eyes then asks, “So, is the blue or brown one better?”
Felix knows what he’s referring to but doesn’t understand the question and says, “Huh?”
“I always wondered… when someone’s eyes are different like that, does one work better than the other?”
“Not that I’ve noticed.”
Obviously not interested in elaborating more about this ‘old guard’ and fresh out of weird questions about Felix’s appearance, Wahrheit asks, “Alright, so who was your head-fucker in the FMC ward?”
“Uh… Sometimes Doctor Menlo.”
Wahrheit chuckles softly and says, “Sasha Menlo ain’t no doctor. Anybody else?”
“Mostly Doctor Fleischmann.”
Wahrheit winces a bit and gently rubs his robed forearm. He’s lost in thought again but instead of sadness, now he looks angry. He says, “The man himself.”
Felix chuckles.
Wahrheit flashes on him and his eyes seem to glint with the reflection of an unseen light and Felix could swear the table and monitors are vibrating as he says, “I say somethin’ funny?!”
Felix sobers quickly and says, “N-no, no. Sorry. That’s just what one of the orderlies said too.”
Wahrheit takes a deep breath and lets it out then says, “Sorry. Took it the wrong way. Well, it makes sense someone else would say it too because he almost never deals with patients anymore.” Everything goes back to normal as he relaxes.
“Why did you call him a ‘head-fucker’?” Felix asks.
Rudy chuckles. Wahrheit rolls his eyes toward him with a slightly annoyed expression then looks back down at his bullet work.
“In a nutshell, unbeknownst to almost all of its members, one the main jobs of the mental health industry is to keep pinks who start seeing what surrounds and interacts with us drugged and believing it wasn’t real.
Now don’t get me wrong; there are genuinely mentally unwell people. It’s just that what they see or hear isn’t real. Well, in a nitty-gritty way at least. Gets even weirder when one of the genuinely crazy can see too, I’ll tell ya. Although, crazy and sane are relative as well.”
Felix asks, “How so?”
Wahrheit thinks and says, “Hmmm… how to explain–Ah, since you’re so stuck in it, I’ll go with–Okay, mmhmm, yeah… So, let’s say you got a normal mental ward. Not concentrated with people who definitely see like in FMC. Regular, real crazies mixed in. You got Shlomo Jenkins in a padded cell ‘cause he gets real worked up about TV sets watchin’ him in reverse and sending the sound and image feeds back to a giant ice cream cone floating at the center of the hollow Earth. This ice cream cone judges us and sends big Maraschino cherry men after the ones it doesn’t like; they got cherry stem arms and legs and shit. Follow so far?”
Felix nods slowly but says, “Sounds pretty crazy.”
“Hear me out. So, you got Shlomo and then you got Rosetta Lim, a nurse working in that ward. She pities Shlomo because he’s so crazy. She prays for him. She prays to a man she’s never met who died two thousand years ago. There are stories about this man collected in a book that many people like herself have believed since roughly that time. They believe this man is the creator of everything or the maybe the son of that creator and somehow a ghost too and that he listens to every little prayer they make and really cares about their decisions and guides them every day. He created everything… The whole universe… and he did it only a few thousand years ago for the sole purpose of giving these little people-things, which bear a striking resemblance to a few other types of creatures he created at the same time, a place to make decisions and be judged and work off a debt he created for them to damn themselves with. For some reason, he also made an unfathomably huge, vast empty space filled with planets and other stars like and unlike ours and apparently that’s all just scenery or a mistake or waste products… maybe trial runs in the first couple days of the week it took to do this? So, she has been raised to believe that this magical man is all-powerful and cares about her. He rode dinosaurs, and can walk on water, and do crazy shit like convert substances into more intoxicating ones. That’s a good trick. Oh and if you drink his blood and eat his body, you are good to go for another week or so before having to do it again. Now, she also believes that anyone who doesn’t believe that this magical man is the one true badass of the universe should go to a bad place and be tortured forever. Those who do believe in it but don’t make the right choices go to the same bad place, so these believers are real careful to do good things because they don’t want to be tortured forever. She believes this because she has been told to from a very young age and it’s been reinforced every few days for her since then in church. Oh, and there also happen to be millions of other people who believe the same thing so it couldn’t possibly be untrue. It’s like a big club. I’m picking on this group… playfully ribbing I’d say, but there are also many other groups of millions of other people who believe variations on this same setup or totally different, no-less-ridiculous ones; rival clubs with their own agendas. They argue, yell, and above all, fight based on differences in opinion on whose version of this dead dude or other ones is most correct. They are willing to kill each other based on differences in these beliefs. Saw the head off a living human being and shit. You have any idea how filled with the magic of faith you have to be take a knife… and saw a man’s head off in cold blood? Noises coming out of him like a terrified animal while his hot blood pumps up out and his body is jerking. Tendons. Arteries. Spinal cord. That’s a fuckin’ human being, man. His eyes are wild and he’s pissing and shitting and… and I know you don’t want to know what that whole situation feels like. But put yourself in his place. Just for an instant. You can’t see the knife that’s working through your neck… but you sure as shit can feel it. All you can see are masked men and a camera and your blood pouring and spraying out onto the floor and pooling like a bright red rain puddle. All you can think about is a perfect summer cookout you had with your family when you were seven or skiing or a girl or boy you never got to kiss again. Think about that horror and pure, real evil that’s being enacted upon you based on differences in belief in one form or another. Faith… Faith is where you find that special brew of accepted, encouraged delusion and blind, furious self-righteousness. Then, when questioned for proof of there being anything to these magical guys they believe in so much, they get real angry and defensive and try to turn it around by saying, ‘prove they don’t!’ Some people say, ‘you can’t prove a negative!’ That gets into messy things like inductive arguments and blah, blah, blah–Doesn’t matter. What they fail to see is that the burden of proof is on those who believe the un-logically-believable, you feel me? Not to mention that people should and very well can be moral and good for the sake of it. What’s more selfish… being good because you’re afraid of punishment from on high… or being good because it’s the right thing to do? The human thing to do. If you’re only good because you believe you are being watched and someone’s keeping score, then fuck… you. You’re not good… You’re a sick, hypocrit
ical, self-serving parasite. That’s not to say there aren’t genuinely good religious people. I’m cool with those. If they respect other’s beliefs or lack thereof and can bring themselves to be rational or at least not bring it up, sure we’re cool. Like Rudy here. He’s still convinced there’s a Bearded Hippie God hiding in the sky but he’s open-minded about the rest. We’ve had some fun talks…”
Rudy smiles sarcastically while he struggles with an attachment.
Wahrheit continues, “There’s just so damn many of the two-faced, self-deluded variety around that it makes me want to vomit on them. Now back to Shlomo and Rosetta. Millions of people believe in their heart of hearts that the crazy-sounding stuff Rosetta believes is completely, literally true or close enough and they should make decisions in daily life based on those beliefs. Only one person believes the nonsensical stuff Shlomo believes which also makes him act strangely, so Shlomo is insane. Maybe he should start preaching about it. Convince a few others to do the same… start franchising to even it out over another few thousand years. All the while, both of them are susceptible to the brutal effects of say… falling off a high building. The concrete at the bottom believes in you whether you believe in it or not. Try praying it’s not there on the way down. Good luck with that. It rests, just waiting to kiss your skull and you will lose that fight. But Shlomo and Rosetta let their imaginations and fears rule them in this world where concrete being hard is a constant.”
Felix furrows his brow a bit as he thinks about all this.
Wahrheit studies his face and eyes and concludes, “That’s a gross over-simplification for rhetorical purposes, but I stick by the core logic of it. Obviously Shlomo is playing with a light deck, but how far is he really from people walking down the street believing it’s genuinely important what celebrities wear or think or what work they’ve had done; or believing that the Holocaust never happened or we never went to the Moon; or that the shadowy powers-that-be secretly employ rappers and R&B singers as a some unknown part of their global domination schemes… and then let them fill their videos and tracks with multiple references to said shadowy organization? Might as well call them reptoids and jump off that cliff the whole way. Just keep the thought in your mind and listen to things people say. Make a little archive of the nonsense people say or think or believe because they can’t be troubled to do any real research or… they don’t want to. With animals as complex as we are, like I said, sanity is relative.”
A Tear in the Veil Page 19