by Curtis Hox
Their conflict had begun in those early days when she’d ridiculed his contributions of pulp fiction, or later when she’d demeaned his ideas in public about Lucid Media Projection as a form of therapy. He knew she must hate the fact that Hexcom’s most secret operation owed its partial success to her.
All those times when young Hattie and Dreya had watched movies together, Hattie couldn’t help but interpret the strange insertions as noise. Corbin had listened and taken notes and remembered. His original series of media projections came from her insistence they were nothing. Both of them knew, however, she had been reading meaning from the films the entire time. Why else speculate how they got there? Only the ones that were meaningful ever held her attention.
Corbin knew she couldn’t stand the fact his Lucid Media Projection method had been a success and that her own readings helped Hexcom—and that people paid to access his material. She called Hexcom’s activities mystical dreaming, creative madness, “nothing more than hyperactive manifestations … a sure way to never wake up.” She had lambasted the numerous examples of copycat attempts, more than one ending in an overdose of a young, healthy teenager reduced to a vegetable. She accused Hexcom and the state of legitimizing a harmful process for monetary gain. Still, her smear campaign hadn’t worked.
Hexcom was the only respected corporation that actively offered media therapy. He wanted to do more than that, at least in the short term. He wanted to prove to her that all her work in generating an apple meant nothing, not compared to what he intended. She had even scoffed at his inclusion in the journal and the symposium, saying, “Corbin Lyell’s faux scholarship is beneath the dignity of the publisher, and the university.” He wanted a showdown. He planned to challenge her publicly, yes. But, he would do much more than that.
Corbin would bring a living weapon with him.
And he planned to unleash it.
* * *
On this most important of trial runs before the symposium, Corbin watched as the technicians vamped up the juice in Mr. Packer’s cocoon. Hattie’s star student had proven highly resilient in their experiments. Just one more variable needed to be tested.
The projected figure in the chamber emerged slowly as if struggling to form. The light shifted, blurred, as it appeared, again, standing. In a moment, the instantiation solidified as much as it would.
The barbarian, Krall, looked around, confused, as always. This time, at his feet, he saw a massive sword.
Instantly, he squatted and grabbed the hilt, readied the weapon, and remained alert. Corbin felt the thrill of success. The barbarian hadn’t wondered where the weapon came from, or marveled at its brilliant construction, or even casually inspected it. The sight of the weapon triggered alarm, and he reacted instinctively.
Good. Just what I want. He’s ready to strike. And he’ll know exactly who his tormenter is because it’s in the script.
“Turn it off,” Corbin said.
The technician adjusted some dials to release the sedative that numbed Towns’s mind.
In the small room adjoining the chamber, Towns lay in his cocoon as the drugs opened up a warm place to rest. A few moments later the images of the figure stopped flickering in his cocoon as if the light from a projector was about to burn out. Then the barbarian disappeared. The sword fell and hit the hard, cold floor, no sound penetrating the protective barriers.
Towns was asleep, no longer projecting.
If ever a time had come to strike, it was now, Corbin thought. The timing was perfect.
“Let him rest. Then prepare him again. Have him ready for the symposium.”
* * *
Corbin left the control room and returned to his office on the top floor of headquarters. At such a late hour, no one but security walked the halls.
His corner office was bigger than Siegen’s, of course, and nicer, even though he rarely used it. Staff had cleared a large space in the center of the room. They’d spread a few items on the floor he had collected over the years, costing him a small fortune.
Corbin picked up a steel cap from which sprung two short bull horns curving downward under the ears. He placed this at the head of a shirt of mail and plate armor. It had been handcrafted by a company in Ireland; he considered it a work of art. Also, the tunic of reinforced leather buffered finely crafted chain links and plates fashioned into a sleeveless vest with leather straps up each side. A wide, leather-and-iron studded belt supported a massive dirk. Greaves and vambraces of reinforced steel had been crafted to fit perfectly. Even the sandals were handmade for Corbin’s favorite, barbarian son. A soft-leather skirt and metal codpiece finished the outfit.
A fast-acting sedative in the food that Corbin planned to place in the chamber would give a team of six security personnel time to get the barbarian dressed for the show.
A massive seven-foot rectangular box on rollers stood at an angle against the wall. An industrial-strength system of hardy locks provided security. The locks would open, oh yes, but at the right time.
Corbin stepped into the box, making sure the lid couldn’t fall closed. He imagined the scene and wondered what would go through his barbarian’s mind when he saw the sorceress who tortures him in the story. He also wondered what Hattie would think when it opened and she realized what stood before her.
She would know; she would remember the moment she went too far.
The end of their relationship came after he’d asked her to take a look at a film about R.E. Howard’s most famous character. This film, Conan the King, was an attempt at realistic fantasy in which the life of Conan was depicted on an epic scale from his time as an orphaned youth to his time as king of Aquilonia.
A year after its release, fanboys argued about the insertion of a series of disconnected scenes and elements. Corbin had showed her. She’d refused to admit they were meaningful bleedover insertions/interpolations, like those found in books. But she did, finally, in a moment of exasperation admit the elements could be “stitched, if they were meaningful.” Corbin didn’t know it at the time, but she was reading for him. She arranged the elements, identifying each one’s syntactical place and semantic function. She provided what she called “introductory elements,” then the “substantive elements,” then “predicative.” All of them were contained in the interpolation.
Finally, Hattie said something that had haunted him for years. “If you add this scene,” a series of images that coalesce into a human form, just like they later would, “you have the enactment.” Corbin didn’t understand at the time even though she said, “the thing that makes it real. See, it’s right here. Everything’s in the film-text … if it actually meant anything. It’s all in the arrangement. You’d probably have to watch it a million times to see.” Hattie backtracked when she realized what she was admitting, that interpolations with meaning might also be in film. “I mean, hypothetically …”
Corbin couldn’t prove it, but he knew that her experience with that film convinced her cinematic bleedover existed, even though she never gave him credit.
In the years that followed, Dr. Hattie Sterling eventually presented her articulation of N.P.B. literary bleedover in a series of books, many of which categorized the different types of interpolations. She balked at admitting Corbin Lyell had found one in film, in the very type of story the younger Hattie had denigrated as pulp and unworthy of their group, and about Corbin’s favorite character, the very type of clichéd masculinity she argued had been superseded decades ago by strong female characters. She had balked and then outright ignored it.
All of that was ancient history, but Corbin had never forgotten. He had fantasized over the years that she would call him and admit her mistake, asking forgiveness, maybe even inquiring into this work. He had given up on that, though, because the voices said to, and now he had his chance to prove her wrong.
Corbin stepped out of the box and closed it.
A knock on his door.
“Come in.”
Two security guards placed the case
with the sword on the ground, then left without a word.
He moved to his desk and turned on two overhead lamps. He’d asked for everything Hexcom had on Howard’s Conan.
Cardboard boxes of comics sat in nice stacks on one side, while a rack with over one hundred paperbacks sat off to the other. On his desk were the original Howard stories, in several different editions. Corbin was glad to see the ones edited by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, as well as those by Jordan. He cracked the first one to prepare himself for his presentation at Riodola’s symposium. Just to get in the mood.
Corbin knew that what Towns would project would just be a reinterpretation of a rip-off, and not even close to the real thing, but it would still do the job.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The symposium began on a Friday morning in Riodola’s Stephen Jay Gould Amphitheater. The large hall was packed, each tier in the semicircular rows filled with students and faculty, some visitors forced to sit in the aisles.
Masumi sat in the back row at the top, ready to start filming with a small digital camera on a tripod. Bernard Corrigan arrived early, looking every bit as out of place in his lawyerly garb as possible. Max Siegen, as if shadowing his sparring partner, sat on the opposite side but in the same row, neither of them acknowledging the other. Brad Dellis blended in, choosing a random seat in the center. Dr. Sterling had made him promise not to bring his gun. So he sat unarmed, wondering if that were a mistake.
Everyone’s eyes were on the platform on which sat a table draped in Riodola silver and gold. Behind it, a large curtain obscured the back of the stage. Dr. Stephan Ross sat on the left end of the table. Lined up in a neat row sat six other important scholars who’d published articles about the N.P.B. in a special edition of the International Journal of Science and Culture.
Dr. Sterling sat on the opposite end, quietly reviewing her notes, while the stragglers filed in. The remaining seat to her right was for Corbin Lyell, who would contribute a piece of pseudo-scholarship about the N.P.B. and his Hyborian Age and Lovecraftian Mythos theses.
He eventually appeared at a side entrance, dressed in a smart suit (no tie), and approached the stage. He took his seat and casually arranged a notepad.
Dr. Sterling’s heart raced and her breathing hitched in her chest.
“Hattie,” he said. “Today I finish what we started.”
She nodded, unable to speak.
* * *
Hattie listened as Stephan began by encouraging everyone to make space. He explained that initial comments by the presiding panel members would open the major morning session, followed by comments and questions. Individual sessions would then begin in classrooms nearby. He and Hattie would both host “The N.P.B.: Hoax or Happening?” session.
Hattie tried to ignore the fact Corbin sat right next to her, wondering if they’d ever make it to the afternoon sessions.
Stephan explained that the day would end with students invited to attend a colloquium investigating her controversial actions and their intellectual ramifications. This open hearing was designed to provide a consensus on what was happening in culture today.
“True media manipulation by unseen agents, or a hoax?” Stephan asked, unable to resist. “These two issues we hope to decide.”
No way that’s going to happen, Hattie thought. Not if the day goes as planned.
Because of her important article, and the earlier demonstration, she would be the last (Stephan would be first) of the serious scholars to speak. To close, Corbin would offer a presentation she feared would be more dramatic than anyone expected.
That order was fine with her. She wouldn’t say much. Just enough to make her case. She hadn’t prepared for her presentation, not at all, not that she needed to. Hattie had spent the entire week preparing for another battle. These bright-eyed students and wary faculty members who stared at her knew the cultural studies professor had something important to say.
Hattie refused to believe she was just a curio to them or that the salacious reporting about her had drawn them. Stephan’s latest caricature of her that appeared in the New York Review of Books had been cruel: she was an old shrew slowly losing her marbles but, protected by tenure, was allowed to create fanciful theories dressed up in science. Hattie saw a desire to know in the audience, even in those few who had turned the N.P.B. into an arena of fandom. They were easy to spot in their Hexcom T-shirts, the only manufacturer with a brand fanboys could latch onto. These weren’t ideological, but were simply products selling silly stuff. The crowd mostly came to hear her and Corbin, though, having little idea about their conflict.
If they only knew what she’d planned …
She had done her homework these last few days.
Masumi had been kind enough to deliver the requested stack of old paperbacks. Some standards by McCaffrey, Atwood, her old friend Ursula, some more popular writers like Modesitt, Cherryh, and others. Hattie had read through these and wondered if they had been enough to prepare her. She also wondered how far removed society was from the repressive times of Cotton Mather and the Salem witch trials.
What would they do to her, if they knew what she’d created with her portal? Culture science, at this point, looked nothing like science, although the results were predictable and repeatable. Would that matter if they ever learned about her portal, or her ability to stitch, or to incant? More importantly, what would they do when this was all over, after they saw what she planned for the symposium?
Hattie calmed herself while the first speaker (a physicist and philosopher of science) argued that the N.P.B., regardless of its ontological validity, required our attention because of misuses done in the name of science. This sort of thing would have piqued Hattie’s interest last month, but she had a hard time paying attention to the simplistic argument while her mind reeled at the titanic possibilities of her new understanding.
What had she begun when she’d decided to resist Corbin? She would use the N.P.B. as a weapon.
Hattie had no choice.
At first, she’d thought she might simply scare Corbin into retirement. Make him beg for forgiveness, then demand he disappear. But when she heard that he had brought a prop to the symposium, a stabbing nervousness meant the final conflict had arrived.
She’d signaled for Masumi and told her to investigate. Masumi had returned, clearly shaken.
“It looks like a coffin, a big one.”
Yes, Corbin would force Hattie to respond, in this public place. She would act out of self-defense. She would not be able to hide these actions, not as she had hoped, to possibly broker a deal to get Towns back and then demand penance from Corbin for Alice and Eliot’s deaths. No. He had chosen the symposium to strike. She had an idea what he intended. Old arguments were about to be settled.
* * *
All but one of the serious scholars finished; then Dr. Ross said a few words before break was called. Dr. Sterling and Corbin Lyell sat next to each other, neither so much as glancing at the other nor speaking any word beyond the initial acknowledgment of the conflict.
Corbin had reviewed his notes, only pretending to listen to the other speakers.
Both he and everyone on that panel knew his scholarship wasn’t on the same level as that produced by the major research universities represented by the panel. Corbin peddled genre fiction, really, and highly speculative articles about the N.P.B. that most critics deemed pseudo-scholarship. Still, he’d been offered a place in the journal (according to the editor) because his company, Hexcom United, provided a non-academic voice and outlet of investigation into the N.P.B. Because of this he was also slated to go last, almost as an addendum after the serious comments.
Besides, Hattie insisted that he have the final word.
As the audience hurried to water fountains or bathrooms the panel did what all panels do in these moments and talked among themselves.
Corbin turned to her. “I’m sorry about the girl, Alice. That was a mistake.”
Hattie kept a rigid smile on h
er face. “You’ll pay.”
“How did you generate that donation?”
“You’ve always been wrong, Corbin—maybe a little right—but not enough.” Hattie pretended to shuffle papers, needing a few precious seconds to steady herself. “Your insanity and your pride led you to murder. Today, it ends.”
“I’ve killed no one,” Corbin said. “Well, today we’ll see whose methods are correct.”
Hattie spotted Masumi in the crowd, sitting by herself way at the top, waiting with her camera.
“Without me, you’d have nothing,” Hattie said. Without Margery neither of them would have anything. A part of Hattie wanted to resist that truth; she secretly hoped that the lock of hair gave her inspiration but that she would have had the intellectual fortitude to understand on her own. “What do you have planned?”
Corbin checked his watch. “You’ll see.” She waited, hoping to keep him from sidling by the issue. “Howard was right—”
“Right? About what?”
“He said that Conan came to him and told him the stories—”
“This again? A metaphor …” Hattie realized how silly that was, knowing what she knew. This was the central theoretical disagreement they had, beginning so many years ago. “I mean, maybe he started writing these tales of, what was it called?”
“The Hyborian Age.”
“He wrote them, just as Lovecraft wrote about his cosmic mythos, and made them real, not the other way around.”
Hattie knew that literary bleedover occurred and that it was possible that Howard might have been documenting one of the first occurrences. What if one of Howard’s characters from an unwritten story came to him to dictate the events? Was that so impossible?
Maybe Howard didn’t write the stories and then they became real … maybe they were real, and they came to him, and then he wrote them into existence …
His old man’s face with the deep lines and hollow eyes and that hideous smile of gleaming porcelain teeth frightened her.