Videodrome: Days of O'Blivion (13 page)

“Relief?”

Barry sighed. “I’ve
been staring into insanity. I’m aligned with people who want to
commit murder by television… Mass murder… When we partnered with
Consec and I started working on a project of bringing affordable
eye care to the Third-World, I thought it was going to be my
legacy. I was proud of it. I thought I would be remembered as the
man who brought sight to the world. Instead I’ll be remembered for
Videodrome. The only way I could see to fight against the insanity
was to become a complete monster. I’m not a monster, Brian. Not
yet, not entirely. I hope you still believe that, my friend.”

----- X -----

Brian went to buy
televisions and hit the jackpot on his first enquiry. A store
called Irwin Television Rentals offered hire purchase and rental of
TV sets and had a bulk lot of sixty used sets of various sizes and
models. They were about to put them all up for sale and were happy
to sell them as a job lot, happy to deliver them and even happier
to be paid in cash.

The second problem was
tables and chairs. Brian took some of the vagrants who hovered by
the mission and scoured the second hand furniture stores. He
offered the derelicts a few dollars on the spot to carry it back
and promised a few beers when the furniture arrived back at the
mission. Some of the furniture didn’t arrive but most of it
did.

By the evening, the
homeless were eating their soup and drinking their coffee to the
light of the cathode ray. Of the sixty TV’s only ten were
connected, the rest would be installed tomorrow but Brian was
pleased with how well it had gone. By tomorrow night he would have
sixty televisions capable of bathing the homeless in the affirming
radiation of Veraceo-One. He would need content of some kind.
Something to encourage them with. Something uplifting that made
them want to achieve. Inspirational programs of people overcoming
obstacles in their life.

It was liberating to do
something productive. He felt motivated. He had a purpose.

He had a mission.

----- Chapter Five -----

Barry Convex visited
the soup kitchen a week later. Workmen were hanging a sign outside
that named the building the Cathode Ray Mission. He had to jostle
past vagrants at the door as they pressed through to get their free
coffee and television fix. It was a bitterly cold morning and the
derelicts would rather be indoors than out.

“Hello Barry,” Bianca
said. She gave him the slightest kiss on his cheek.

“I haven’t seen you in
a long time.” He stepped back to take a look at the girl, now a
woman.

“You’re looking well,”
she said.

“Thank you. Although I
feel a little overdressed.” He looked around at the homeless
watching their TV screens. “Is this a clean signal?”

“No, it’s Veraceo-One
at a very low level. About eight percent of maximum.”

Barry nodded but turned
away from the screen and involuntarily shielded his eyes with his
hand. “What are they watching?”

“Read All About It.
It’s a children’s programme to encourage reading, writing and
history. We’re hoping this kind of educational content, mixed with
some Veraceo might help patch them back into society. My father is
upstairs.”

Barry went up alone and
found Brian sitting at a desk, speaking his mind to a video camera.
Barry quietly took a seat to the side and allowed him to
finish.

“The technology of
television has become so pervasive that the education of not just
our youth, but of all society, should be aimed at immunising
against television. That is not to say that television is a
disease, at least not a disease of the flesh. Rather it is a virus
similar to the mind virus of a religion. There shall be a two tier
system in North America. Those who are educated and therefore, have
an immunity against television; and those with no immunity at all,
who shall be swallowed up by the messages of the cathode ray tube.”
Brian stopped the video recording.

“How are you feeling,
Brian?”

He shook his head
slowly. “I feel renewed and refreshed, but the doctor says
otherwise. The doctor says I am ready for more chemotherapy and the
fast growing tumour is still fast growing. What do you think of the
mission?”

“Impressive,
considering you only dreamed up the idea a week ago. What are you
recording?”

“My legacy. I had a
vision after seeing your computer, a vision where all the knowledge
of the world’s libraries could be searched and indexed through a
televisual device. I imagined that your computer was connected to
all the knowledge in the world. One day that future may come and I
am preparing the content for that future.”

Barry squirmed in the
chair a little. “I got a call this morning. From Consec.” He paused
as though waiting for Brian’s acknowledgement but there was none
forthcoming. “I’m invited to a meeting tonight to discuss what
you’re doing here. They’ve had a private investigator come in as a
vagrant. He used a Veraceo detector and they know you’re
experimenting. I don’t think they know what you’re doing but
there’s anxiety on their side.”

Brian smiled. “My idea
of being off their radar hasn’t lasted very long.”

“No, it hasn’t. I told
them I was aware of your side research and that I authorised it,
but they want me to shut you down. They’re paranoid; no, more than
that. They’re terrified that Veraceo may slip into communist hands
and they want it all sealed up in one location. When you showed up
in Pittsburgh with a working security card it spooked them. They
fear that you’re a loose cannon. They fear that you’re
unpredictable and I came to tell you that if the meeting goes sour
tonight, all of this may come to an end.”

----- X -----

Barry was taken by
helicopter to Home Base. Cueball was there to greet him. “I think
we should talk before Leader arrives.” He took Barry to a small
meeting room. “What’s the story with Brian Spectrometer? I
understand you visited him this morning.”

“I did,” Barry replied.
He tried to put confidence into his voice. “I wanted to make sure I
understood precisely what he was doing. I believe I do. It’s
interesting work.”

Cueball exhaled
heavily. “Barry… You need to be very careful… Your role at this
time is to weaponise Veraceo and nothing more. If you deviate from
that, you’ll be considered a Consec threat. Do you understand what
that means?”

Barry shook his head.
“No, I’m not sure I do. Spell it out for me. Don’t beat around the
bush, tell me what…”

“...You’ll be killed.”
Cueball interrupted. He went quiet for a moment then spoke softly
to say, “That isn’t hyperbole, that is precisely what will happen.
Men from Consec Security will come and murder you… Veraceo is a
game-changing technology that Consec has decided they must have
exclusively. Brian has been identified as a weak link. The reason
Leader is coming tonight is to decide whether to eliminate him. Do
you understand? Tonight we’re going to take a vote on whether to
kill Brian Spectrometer. You’re going to be in the meeting too and
you’re going to have to raise your hand and vote ‘yes’ when asked
if Brian Spectrometer should die. If you don’t, you’re going to be
the next weak link.”

“I don’t believe
you?”

“Then don’t believe me.
But the reason I’ve pulled you aside is to make sure you know what
is going to happen. Veraceo is worth more than the life of its
inventor. Brian has socialist and liberal leanings. We know what
he’s doing. He’s trying to turn Veraceo into a saviour of society’s
dead flesh. He’s exposing Veraceo to the world to try and improve
the productivity of a handful of vagrants. Consec Security lost
their shit when they discovered that. This is as dangerous as the
atomic bomb, but when the Manhattan Project made the bomb they did
it locked up with military security. They didn’t do top secret
weapons research from a soup kitchen with an open door to the
world… This is a do or die world we live in, Barry. You’re a doer,
don’t be the one who dies.”

He left Barry alone in
the meeting room. Bare concrete walls. A plain white table.

Was this a bluff of
some kind?

They wouldn’t kill
Brian, would they? Or him?

Reality dawned slowly.
It began with a tight stomach and a feeling that he couldn’t move.
What the hell had happened? How had things become so murderous so
quickly?

The door opened and he
saw the woman he’d met on his first visit to Home Base. “We’re
about to start.”

Barry made his way out
of the room. The world was spinning.

“Barry. Good to see
you.” Consec Leader strode to him. He looked a picture of health
and confidence. The tall man with his close cropped silver beard
and deep blue eyes. His demeanour changed on seeing Barry up close.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost my friend. How are things in
Pittsburgh?”

Barry put on his best
fake smile. “We’re making real progress in Pittsburgh,” he said
thinly. “With every test we’re learning how to make Veraceo
stronger and deadlier. It’s going to change the world.”

----- X -----

“We have found that
primates respond to Veraceo-Two in the same way that humans do.”
Barry was briefing the room with the latest findings. He was trying
to shrug off what Cue Ball had said and to maintain a professional
appearance. “Rhesus monkeys in particular behave strangely after
viewing and we believe they are responding to hallucinations.”

“How do you know when a
monkey is hallucinating?” Leader asked.

“Well, it’s an educated
assumption. We make video recordings of the animals and it’s very
clear in the playback that their eyes are tracking imaginary
objects. You can see the animal’s eyes focus on an empty point in
space as though there is a solid object there. Sometimes they reach
out and try to interact with imaginary objects.”

Leader nodded.

Barry was briefing the
room of mostly the same people as when he and Brian first came
here. Cue Ball, Marylin Bricks, Steven Watercolour and the ominous
sounding Mister Harpoon of security were there. Consec Leader sat
at the head of the table plus two more women and a man who looked
like a nightclub doorman. The women were amusingly titled Left Eye
and Right Eye and were introduced as ‘long range strategists’. The
nightclub doorman was codenamed Mister Crucial; his position was
unspecified but he and Leader seemed to have a manner with one
another, an ability to exchange ideas or confirm suggestions with
eye contact. It looked like they worked together closely, or had
known one another for a very long time.

Barry continued with
his report. “We’ve done a number of biopsies of monkey brains and
the results are indistinguishable from the human tests. This means
future testing can be done with lab animals,” his voice dipped
slightly, “rather than with people.” He swallowed hard to clear his
throat. "Life Sciences have confirmed that the c-Myc proteins that
cause the unregulated growth begin forming within seconds of
exposure. We believe that Veraceo-Two can trigger cancer growth in
as little as fifteen seconds of exposure and we’ve not yet come
across a subject, either primate or human, who it hasn’t worked
on.”

Mister Crucial raised a
finger for attention. “I’d like you to tell us about the side
project run by Spectrometer?”

Barry took a moment to
compose himself. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone as he
spoke. “As you know, Brian Spectrometer invented Veraceo and there
is nobody who knows more about it than him. He is the man we need
to improve or repurpose Veraceo.”

“But what is he doing?”
Crucial asked again.

“He’s running an
experiment to repurpose vagrants. One of the key social weaknesses
in North America today is low productivity. There are many sections
of society that are grossly unemployed or underemployed. For
example, in black communities. Black youths have the highest rate
of unemployment and the highest rate of criminal arrests when
compared to any other subgroup. An unproductive subgroup like this
is a drain on the resources of North America. With Veraceo-Two it
would be possible to broadcast a cancer causing television
programme aimed at black-youths to eliminate them. It’s one
possible, but somewhat drastic way to tackle the problem. So,
Spectrometer has come up with an alternative idea. His thinking is
rather than the eradication of the unproductive, they can be
repurposed. He is experimenting with Veraceo-One as a tool of
social engineering. His goal is to change the thinking processes of
the unproductive, repurposing them as hardworking members of
society.”

Consec Leader nodded.
“That is an interesting proposition, Barry. However, we must remain
on a single course. Your task is to weaponise Veraceo, not social
engineering.”

Barry looked to Cue
Ball who was very gently shaking his head. An invisible signal
telling him to be careful. “I understand,” Barry replied. “But with
a technology as new and untested as this, and that’s the key word,
‘untested’, it seemed imperative that all avenues are explored. We
wouldn’t want to miss something. It may be that this research opens
up more avenues of research. There could be a key breakthrough just
on the horizon that transforms North America, or even the
Communists. It would be foolhardy not to pursue all avenues. But I
understand your concern and if you so desire I’ll shut down the
side project and bring all resources onto weaponisation.”

“We do desire.” Leader
said.

As Barry looked around
the table he noticed all eyes were on him. The faces were cold and
stern. He knew he’d made a reasonable case, but realised now that
they didn’t care. He could see their motivation was as deep as
their madness. Given a choice of using Veraceo for growth or
destruction they would chose to destroy. They coveted the power of
Armageddon. They were even prepared to test their killing methods
on their own people. What did they care what happened to its
creator? Isn’t that what Cue Ball had stressed when he took him
aside? ‘Brian is a weak link’ he’d said, ‘you’re going to be the
next weak link.’ He took a deep breath then said, “I’ll shut down
the side project immediately.”