by Lee McGeorge
nothin’ man, I won’t press charges. Please. Jesus. Jesus. Stop. Fucking Stop!” The Punishers dragged him along the floor and clipped a karabiner from a winch cable to his wrist cuffs and began hoisting him high. As his feet began to lift from the floor he started screaming again. “Stop! Stop! Why are you doing this, man? I did nothing to you.” Tears streamed from his eyes. One of the Punishers brought over jump cables, ordinary vehicular jump cables. For effect he sparked them together ahead of the prisoner sending a flash of electrical sparks through the air.
Brian walked out of the studio. He kept his head down. He made his footsteps light. He left the room without being seen by the filmmakers.
The first floor had changed. The corridor was now emblazoned with signs saying Consec Security. Brian looked inside the first room to see a metal cage had been assembled turning the office into a prison cell. He looked to the next office and found another cage. In the third room he found a cage with a woman in a light-blue hospital gown curled into a foetal position, her back to him. She was a prisoner. Really a prisoner.
This wasn’t acted…
This was real…
He backed away and went for the staircase, up to the first floor and the editing bay. In the first room he found the equipment had been upgraded. The latest, broadcast quality under-scan monitors were built into racks. Every screen had one of his Veraceo detectors attached ahead of it. They had been refined, showing whether the TV signal contained Veraceo-One, Veraceo-Two or was a clean signal. A piece of equipment in a rack mount caught his attention. He’d never seen it before but he recognised the instrument panel immediately. It was a Veraceo-Two signal generator, no longer looking like hacked electronics, now it was a custom built piece of broadcast hardware.
Then he saw the most damning offering this place had to offer. U-matic video cassettes. The label on them said the title ‘Videodrome’ with an episode number. There were twelve of them. When he picked up the cassette he found a red ribbon hanging from the plastic hole that prevented accidental erasure. On the ribbon was the legend, ‘Veraceo-2 ARMED’, followed by the ominous warning, ‘Optical Radiation – Risk of Death – No Safe Limit’.
Videodrome… a cassette labelled Videodrome that carried a red ribbon saying it was armed with Veraceo-Two.
There was a noise at the door. Somebody called his name. “Brian?” It was Peter Fluorite. “Jesus, Brian you’ve lost weight. How are you feeling?”
“I’m getting stronger... I came to find information on a test subject from Toronto, a girl.” He held up one of the U-matic cassettes, “But I found this.”
Fluorite leaned against the doorframe and nodded. He grimaced slightly. “I was told you were off the project. Barry Convex told me you were recovering from chemotherapy.”
“That’s right, I am recovering. I’m still with the project but I’m not fully in the loop. What is this? What is Videodrome?”
“That’s what we’re calling the show. The cassettes are thirty minute test programmes for broadcast. We’re going to see what happens when Veraceo-Two is broadcast in the wild.”
“You’re not serious. You know it causes cancer, right? That’s why I’m battling a brain tumour; it’s from exposure to this.”
Fluorite nodded. “I know. The plan is for a small scale test on society outliers. People at the bottom. We want to see how many…”
Brian lashed out. He grabbed Fluorite as hard and fast as his weakened frame could manage and pushed him back up against the wall. “...Are you fucking insane? You’re going to fucking broadcast this?”
Fluorite held his hands in surrender. “Si, Pátrone… You really are out of the loop. I think I should call Barry.”
“What about the people downstairs. I just found a woman in a cage.”
Fluorite looked aside, sheepish. “The brain can tell the difference. It knows when we’re faking.”
“So you’re really torturing these people?” Brian dropped him and backed away. “Why? Just answer that one question, Peter. Why are you doing this? Why broadcast? Why go to such criminal lengths to manufacture a programme that gives people cancer?”
Peter straightened his clothing. “Like I said, it's a test. We need to know what it can do. There is a problem in society, Brian. You know this. There is a problem with the haves and have-nots. The workers and shirkers. There are people at the bottom who do nothing but complain about how the rich get richer. In their mind they see the rich as being the problem never realising it is they themselves who are rotting us away. They are the weak. They are the people who decry our way of life and beckon communism to come in and take over their lives. These people do nothing but try and destabilize a society that has offered them opportunity after opportunity. They would dismantle everything that productive people have built rather than lift a finger to help themselves. These people have become an anchor on society, they’re a drain on our resources. They need to either join the world and catch up, or be cut loose.” Peter approached the table of Videodrome cassettes. “But what if we could isolate them? What if we knew their viewing habits? What if we could find the scum television stations whose audience is nothing but the filth of the Earth.” He motioned the cassettes with their red ribbons. “Look at what we’ve created. A horrible TV show of violence and torture. There’s no plot, there’s no story. Now who the hell would watch a show like that except the worst people in society. Only scum would watch a show like Videodrome. Wholesome people wouldn’t watch it. Decent people wouldn’t watch it. God fearing Christians wouldn’t watch it. Only the worst people in our society would tune in to a show that flogged naked men until their skin tore and bled. Only the worst people could watch a woman raped and call it entertainment; and this is our chance to cut that diseased flesh from our society once and for all.”
“And when did you come up with this amazing philosophy? What was it that made you think it a good idea to broadcast a TV show that causes brain cancer?”
“It’s not a what, Pátrone… It’s who… It was Barry Convex. He’s the one who convinced me… Videodrome, is a force for good; and along with Consec, we’re going to change the world together.”
----- X -----
Brian flew back to Toronto feeling the life slowly draining out of him. He wanted to crawl away and die. His resonance replaced with a cold, despairing misery. What a fool he’d been. To give himself cancer, to expose others and shorten their lives. Those people were victims of his mistake, but this new application was not a mistake. It was designed. His technology was in the hands of people whose very ideology regarded the poor, downtrodden and unproductive as the enemy. His folly was irredeemable.
But it spurred in him something else. Rage. A quiet brewing anger looking for an outlet. He wanted to set fire to the Consec building and watch it engulfed in flames. He wanted to force Consec Leader to watch all twelve of those Videodrome programmes. He wanted to make the man choke on his own filth until the cancer was bubbling out of his ears.
That feeling again. That desire for violence.
On arrival in Toronto he went to a payphone. He was so demoralised his arms barely had the strength to lift the receiver. “Hello,” he croaked. “I’d like to speak with Suzanne Webster.”
There was a girl on the other end of the line and the sound of more young women in the background. Suzanne’s address was on a university campus. Brian reasoned it was likely a student house. “Who is calling please?”
“My name is Brian Spectrometer.”
“And how did you know Suzanne?”
Brian felt the last ounce of warmth leave his body. How did you know her? Past tense… Oh Jesus… “I was… We…” Brian fumbled for words. He took a deep breath and forced the speech out of his mouth. “She was doing some work with me. Some experimental work with television programming. Is she there? Can I speak with her?”
There was a moment of silence. “I’m sorry, but Suzanne passed away a few weeks ago. We’re still trying to come to terms with it.”
"Can I ask ho
w she died?”
“Exposure. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s what the hospital said. She’d suffered some kind of mental breakdown and refused to come indoors because she felt the walls were breathing. She sat outside for days and died from exposure to the cold. Is there anything I can help you with? Do you need her parent’s number or anything?”
“No,” Brian whispered. “There’s nothing you can do for me… There’s nothing anyone can do for me.”
He walked away from the phone booth like his shoes were made from lead, shuffling, stumbling, unable to consciously control his movements. Suzanne Webster had been exposed to Viper-Sig and suffered a mental collapse that ended her life. Bradley Etherington was exposed to Viper-Sig and had a psychotic episode that ended in a police shootout. Thank Christ Consec didn’t have Viper-Sig too.
He sat in his car and desired the same end as Suzanne Webster. Maybe if he sat here long enough he would get cold and die from hypothermia.
It was then that the vision began.
A wonderful vision derived from his new and cancerous brain matter.
He felt he was looking at himself in a mirror, but quickly realised he was watching a television set. His own face staring back out at him. “Brian,” his TV reflection said. “You have found yourself in a difficult position.”
“I’m in hell,” he