The spiders come, tumbling out of his nose and mouth, some lazily grabbing for a hold on his face at the last moment while the others just roll down off onto his lap and thighs. Yevgeny chortles in short bursts as the last of the hit burps out of his mouth. This sends a last wave of stoned spiders pouring out, their glow pulsing now.
Trippy.
Felix tries to match Yevgeny’s enthusiasm and says, “Yeah, that was totally it! Brain Wrap! How you been, man?”
Yevgeny gestures around at the pipe and the computer in front of him as if to say, “How could I complain?”
Felix nods his understanding and follows Hirofumi to the stairs up to the house inside the house.
Hirofumi says, “Zhenya, come on. I need you to keep stress testing those new features.”
“Just saying high to a good friend I thought might be dead somewhere in ditch, master.”
“I thought he was writing his screenplay,” Hirofumi retorts.
Yevgeny says, “One or the other, yeah?”
Hirofumi swats the air, deflecting what he sees as silly banter and pantomimes someone using a mouse and keyboard in deep concentration. Yevgeny sets his pipe down and flips Hirofumi off with one hand as he lifts his headset back up over his ears and mouth with the other.
Felix follows Hirofumi up the stairs into the living area. The soothing sounds of Portishead get louder as they climb, especially when Hirofumi opens the shop door at the top. He holds it open and Felix enters past him.
The backlit fake windows have been changed out apparently. The first one Felix sees is a view out onto Machu Picchu in Peru. Huayna Picchu looms in the background. Hirofumi leads Felix to the big bedroom. Windows in here now look out onto an ice flow in the arctic. Kaori is lying on her back on the big bed, head obscured by a big manga anthology magazine she has propped on her stomach. That one has her favorite serial, Hook-up Battle Fight. It’s about a competitive underground crocheting league. Crochet to the death! There’s also a subplot about a shady organization needing an intricate mandala thing crocheted to bring about heavenly peace or damnation something. It’s that weird pseudo-Christian fundamentalism by way of misguided aesthetic fetishism you find in a lot of manga and anime.
Hirofumi crosses to the bed and gently tugs on Kaori’s sock-covered toes. She makes a cute sound of annoyance and disapproval. He tugs again. She slaps the magazine down on her chest and exclaims, “Fuzakeru na!”
Kaori sees Felix and in one smooth motion she drops her comic on the bed, rolls off it, and wraps herself around him, hugging tightly.
“Don’t do that! You are mean to worry us!” Kaori says half into Felix’s chest.
Hirofumi agrees, “Yeah, jerk. You’re not cool.”
“I’m really sorry, guys. I had to get away. Audrey–” Felix stops himself when he realizes he has no idea how to explain what’s going on with her or if he should.
Plus, I have no idea myself.
Kaori asks, “Where is Audrey? She’s not here with you?”
“No. I haven’t seen her in a while.”
Kaori pulls her head away from Felix’s chest and frowns a little then looks sideways at Hirofumi but he ignores it. Instead he asks, “So, why are you here, man?”
“I need your help with something.”
Kaori has gone from ecstatic to cautious already.
“Have you talked with Audrey at all?” she asks.
Felix thinks for a second and says, “No. We… We had a fight.”
“Felix, it’s been weeks since you–”
Hirofumi interrupts Kaori, “What kind of help?”
Felix and Hirofumi enter Hirofumi’s editing and programming computer room on the first floor. Kaori stands at the threshold. Other than the light from some blue bulbs in the hallway it’s almost pitch black down here. Kaori breaths in and out deeply and deliberately and makes a little nasal cooing sound until Hirofumi notices and he flicks the switch to a soft bulb in the ceiling. Kaori is super nyctophobic. They have silly nightlights in their bedroom and installed anywhere with a plug from there to the bathroom they use.
Hirofumi’s main workspace was installed within the old main electrical room for the warehouse and, unlike the heavily altered upstairs, most everything down here is original besides a few framed movie posters and three computers and a cable patch bay installed on a long metal table they slid in from the warehouse floor. It could actually use one or two of the fake windows like upstairs, in my opinion. There aren’t any real ones so it kind of feels like an artificial cave.
There are also racks of video and film equipment against the far wall and a long, puffy green couch against wall the opposite the computer table.
There’s only one chair in front of the computers at the moment so Hirofumi grabs a padded folding chair from against the wall, opens it, and sets it down a few feet down the table from his throne of an ergonomic computer chair.
Kaori flops down on the couch, Felix takes the folding chair, and Hirofumi sits in his master-control throne.
Hirofumi rotates back and forth in his chair like an impatient child and says, “Okay, what do you want to show us?”
Kaori is trying to act open-minded but seems worried.
Felix unslings his pack and camera bag. He sets the packs down on the floor near the folding chair and the camera bag on the metal table. He unzips the bag and says, “Proof.”
“Of what?” Hirofumi and Kaori ask, one starting right after the other.
“That I’m not delusional and I’m not hallucinating. I was in the hospital for the wrong reasons.”
“You are joking,” Hirofumi says with a frown. Kaori lets out a disappointed sigh and looks at the ceiling.
“Seriously. Listen, you are the closest friends I have. Give me one chance.”
Hirofumi and Kaori look at each other. Kaori’s face is a mask of guarded disapproval but she doesn’t say anything.
Felix pleads, “Please.”
Hirofumi looks away from Kaori and nods affirmative to Felix and carefully says, “One chance.”
Felix opens the bag and takes the HDV-426 out then sets it on the table.
Hirofumi studies it and asks, “What kind of tape?”
“Solid state drive. They went with USB three-point-oh.”
“I have that,” Hirofumi says as he presses a few switches and re-hooks a BNC tipped cable from one spot to another on the patch bay to his left. Felix hooks a cable to the camera and hands the other end to Hirofumi. He hooks it to an extension, which disappears, behind his patch bay.
Hirofumi gently slaps the spacebar on his keyboard, shooing away his animated looping screensaver depicting Winnie the Pooh doing calisthenics in front of a mirror. “Okay, where do I go?”
Felix says, “It saves in separate raw files. They can be opened as AVIs. Just access it like a drive.”
Hirofumi navigates to his drive list and opens “HDV-426” then peruses a set of folders for firmware and PDFs of instruction manuals. He double-clicks the “CLIPS” folder icon. There are hundreds of them on the drive. Hirofumi right clicks on a blank spot in the window and switches the view to thumbnails. The small images themselves aren’t that strange. He looks at Felix with his “Well?” expression.
“Just open one, man,” Felix says, anxious about getting past the convincing part and on to his planned task at hand.
Hirofumi double-clicks on an image of people walking down the sidewalk near a busy street. This should be good. That’s a shot from Walnut Creek. I was crossing through an intersection and some swimmers flew into view from inside a Fuddruckers building and chased each other through the air over the street and then a parking lot before disappearing over the Target it serves.
Hirofumi frowns and says, “What am I looking for?”
The sights and sounds of the swimmer’s frolicking are clear as day to Felix. “Are you serious? Play it again.”
Hirofumi restarts it and Felix leans forward. When the swimmers emerge from over the Fuddruckers, Felix ex
tends his hand and traces their movement on the screen, careful not to touch it and piss Hirofumi off. One of his other huge pet peeves.
“See that? Either way, don’t you hear it?” Felix asks.
Hirofumi’s eyes follow Felix’s fingers and he concentrates. “I… I see something like blurry swirling. Hear what?”
Felix hears the swimmers chiding each other clearly. Granted, he’s used to it, but it’s a pretty distinct sound not unlike high-pitched goats bleating or dolphin whistles and clicks but with a reverberating echo on the back end.
Felix says, “Try another one.”
Hirofumi does. The image is of a field. The Felix of that moment is panning as if to follow something. A creature like that thing that tried to eat me in the Port Chicago train cutout area was loping through a field, spindly legs mostly exposed. It had a different coloration than the other and was a little larger. Felix watches Hirofumi examine the screen with a look of skepticism.
“I don’t see anything.”
Felix points at the thing and follows its movements with his finger.
Hirofumi says, “There’s some blurring or something like the other but I would not call it proof of anything.”
It occurs to Felix that you might have to look through the camera or be on Wahrheit meds to see it like he does. But I haven’t seen anything in the warehouse other than those things using stoned Yevgeny as a thrill park. That probably wouldn’t be a good place to start.
“Try another.”
Kaori makes a scoffing sound of exasperation from behind them on the couch. She gets up and walks toward the doorway. Hirofumi stops her with a sound in his throat and a kind of whine sound. She turns back and looks at Felix. He can’t take the expression so he looks away and pretends to check cables on the patch bay. She’s looking at him like he’s another person. Someone she doesn’t like.
In his peripheral vision, Felix sees Kaori spin her index finger around near her ear while mouthing “kuru-kuru…”, then make a fist and flick all of her fingers up and out like a little explosion, mouthing a big silent “PA!” It’s a Japanese expression similar to the western finger spinning gesture for “Cuckoo” or “Crazy”. Then she’s whispers something low in Japanese about Hirofumi trying to see something that isn’t there and how she loves ‘him’ too but wanting to see something doesn’t make it real. Hirofumi tries to protest but she’s already gone down the hall by the time Felix looks over. Hirofumi shakes his head and looks at the screen. He takes a Dunhill menthol out of a pack on the table and lights it then takes a big drag.
As he exhales he says, “You said one chance…”
“Hiro, come on. Maybe if we go outside and you look through the camera.”
“No, I don’t think so,” he says before taking another drag.
Felix takes his pack of Kamels out and lights one.
Hirofumi notices and says, “Audrey is going to kill you.”
“Yeah, we’ll see.”
Felix knows he is pretty much past his grace period and he tries to think about the few variables he even knows about in the situation. And I don’t understand those well even, truth be told.
“I don’t know how to make you see it other than that but I’m not going to fight you in the alley over it.” Felix imagines picking up Hirofumi, throwing him on the ground, and laying an elbow drop down on him before trying to force him to look at a passing swarm of spiderflies through the viewfinder.
Then the last part of Kaori’s scolding of Hirofumi reminds Felix of something Rudy did the first time he went to Wahrheit’s house.
“Okay, play another one,” Felix says.
“Why?”
“Just play one. If this doesn’t do it, I’ll let you drive me to the FMC. Hell, I’ll drive.”
“Yeah, right. You get the sweats on Autopia, Felix.”
“Look… There’s not much for me out here if my best friends don’t believe me.”
Hirofumi takes another drag, exhales, and opens another clip, all while staring into Felix’s eyes like he wants to slap him. When the clip opens, he rolls his eyes toward the screen.
A man sits in a “Mr. Pickle’s” sandwich shop in a strip mall in Dublin(CA). The view is a telephoto zoom from table-level across the shop. His sandwich appears to be a turkey, cream cheese, and avocado “Big Jake” and if the man’s silence and concentration can be trusted, it is quite delicious.
Hirofumi looks over at Felix again. He raises his eyebrows in mock expectance.
Felix starts, “Okay, you see this guy. He’s loving this sammich like it’s his first time stuck up in someone. Normal looking guy, yeah?”
“Exactly.”
Felix continues, “There are glowing, see-through tentacles all over his face that are swatting away smaller glowy see-through bug things.”
“Bullshit.”
“Glowing, flicking tentacles. Glowy bugs.”
“Not that I can see.”
“Now…” Felix extends his hand again and does a quick continuous sketch of the moving tentacles and the movement of the bugs. “Glowing tentacles and bugs.”
“I see blurring still.”
“Let your eyes relax a little. Glowing tentacles and bugs all in and around his face.”
“I don’t see it…” Hirofumi seems to be really trying now.
“Let them relax like a stereogram. Remember those? Kinda like that.” Felix says while he continues to follow the movement of the tentacles and bugs on the screen. Hirofumi blinks a few times then tries to relax.
“Yeah, but I sucked at those things–What the…”
“What?”
Hirofumi leans forward for the first time, blinking and squinting at his screen. “I think I… see them…”
The clip freezes, paused at its end. He restarts it and silently watches the whole thing again.
Hirofumi turns and looks into Felix’s eyes, waiting for a smirk or anything to relieve his confusion. Felix just stares gravely and nods in the affirmative that Hirofumi saw what he wanted him to.
Hirofumi opens another clip, this time a view of the sky above the Carquinez Bridge, part of a toll road between Selby and Crockett area and on up to Glencove and Vallejo.
Hirofumi asks, “Alright, what’s in this one?”
Felix traces and follows the movement as he describes what he already sees to a newly fascinated Hirofumi. “It’s a blimpwhale. That’s what I call them. See-through and glowy like the tentacles and a lot of the other stuff out there. It’s floating through the air and like barrel-rolling around the bridge. They love that. They roll around whatever they come across. Chase each other too. I saw one–”
“Just… tell me what it looks like,” Hirofumi interrupts as gently as he can in his state of cautious excitement.
Felix realizes he got ahead of himself and trudges through his embarrassment, describing and sketching until Hirofumi’s eyebrows slowly rise and his eyes widen.
“Masaka…”
Hirofumi restarts the clip and watches in amazement. He blinks deliberately a few times before relaxing again. He starts another and Felix sketches the scene of a bulb pumping through the air with his words and hands. Then a clip of a few swimmers race each other down a street, diving in and through cars on their way to an unseen finish line. A zoomed in close up of spiderflies buzzing around a big dog’s head trying to claw burrowpedes out of its face. The zoom pulls out a bit and the oblivious owner pulls the dog on a choke chain.
Felix guides Hirofumi through a few more, always leaving out descriptions of the myriad black chunks looming in the sky and why once in a while there’s a shot of a white van which seems out of place without explanation of the blue-black equipment and antennas on top or the Monster Cosmonaut Cops they haul around inside.
A clip of a luminous amoeba roughly ten feet across crawling through a vacant lot with beams of bright light pouring out through intermittent breaks in its surface comes to an end. Hirofumi looks down at his keyboard, eyes darting back and forth in t
hought. His excitement has become confusion and maybe a little fear.
“You had this done by someone? Professional effects hidden in optical interference pattern or something? Like an illusion?”
Felix shakes his head and says, “Those are raw shots. Haven’t touched a computer that could do anything like that in weeks. Not that I would know how to anyway. Not like this.”
Hirofumi grimaces a bit and keeps searching his mind for a rational answer. He says, “Then it’s in the camera. Automatic motion tracking, rendering, and some kind of visual encryption. A big practical joke by disgruntled designer?”
“Sure… except that I see this stuff without the camera.”
Hirofumi locks eyes with Felix. “No way. That’s bullshit.”
Felix says, “I shit you not.”
Hirofumi thinks some more then gets out of his throne and crosses to the hallway. He leaves the room and Felix hears him yelling at Yevgeny: “Zhen-ya! Don’t ignore me, shithead! Come back here. I said come back here! Oh, and you too please, Oscar.”
Felix hears Yevgeny grumbling in Russian and understands enough to know that he’s lucky Hirofumi doesn’t speak a lick of it.
Hirofumi comes back in and sits and Yevgeny enters a moment later, holding his glass pipe and lighter in one hand and an unopened bottle of Anchor Steam “Old Foghorn” in the other. He sits on the big couch behind them and sets his pipe on a metal end table. Oscar comes in and sits on the big arm of the couch. Yevgeny uses the lighter to pop his bottle top and sets it next to the pipe. The bottle cap hits the concrete floor with a tinny sound and Felix winces. A memory he doesn’t want tries to pierce its way to the fore. Yevgeny puts the bottle under his nose and inhales, holds it, and lets it out with a squeak.
“That’s the shit, man,” Yevgeny says before taking a swig off his bottle.
A Tear in the Veil Page 33