Terrors

by Richard A. Lupoff

  By converting the digital data from the imbedded wire to standard nine-track 2420 format and reading the tape into the university’s Model 195 data processing system, Bloch-Erich stated that he could have the computer decode the information, transmit it to a modified 7774 audio I/O device, and convert it back to standard audio tape form. This in turn led to a further pair of problems.

  One of these, Bloch-Erich complained, was that after his computer program had decoded, edited, and transmitted the audio content of the Heyworth wire, there remained a kind of data-detritus which Bloch-Erich was unable to explain. He guessed that the Heyworth film was intended originally for some sort of projector or other reader which could detect not merely pictorial and audio recordings, but others as well, and that the surplus code that remained after the audio data was filtered out contained messages intended to be perceived other than visually and aurally.

  The second problem encountered by Dr. Bloch-Erich was that the audio track produced by his equipment, while sounding relatively coherent and, after suitable bench-work, synching accurately with the image in the fragment, made no apparent sense. This intriguing aspect of the fragment will be alluded to again. For the moment it should be noted that Dr. Bloch-Erich and his machines are attempting, thus far without notable success, to find some meaning in the (presumed) words.

  The final technical problem to be dealt with was the frame-rate at which the film should be projected. As the fragment itself was found in a format approximating, although clearly not identical with, 16 millimeter, it was first assumed that the film was meant to be projected at 24 frames per second. The first converted 35-millimeter print was projected at this speed, but immediate discrepancies were noted in the movement of the actors, mechanical objects, and other objects in the film.

  The more this problem was considered, the more baffling it became. Movements of hands, feet, or mouths could be observed, but to establish the proper speed was not simple. A man walking at a normal brisk rate will usually approximate the military march of 90 paces per minute, or two-thirds of a second per stride. But how could it be determined that a person in the film was in fact moving at that rate—perhaps he was meandering at half that speed, or pacing rapidly at a far greater rate.

  The Sound track, once Dr. Bloch-Erich had decoded it, seemed at first to offer assistance, but again, unless the voice characteristics of the actors were known, the proper speed for the tape could not be determined either. Did a particular figure speak in a basso profundo—or a piercing falsetto? If this were known, the projection speed could be determined, or vice versa. But without one item of information to start from, the other must remain equally a puzzle.

  At length a tentative solution was reached when a scene was found in which water was poured. Giving this the normal 32 feet per second squared rate of acceleration established a frame-rate for the rest of the film that appeared fairly normal, and gave the voices a level not unacceptable to the ear.

  There remained in several scenes apparent anomalies in the behavior of light, but these had to be accepted as “given” rather than adjusted for, as any further adjustments to the frame rate to allow for these items would have thrown all the rest of the contents of the fragment into a state of utter confusion.

  3. Content of the Film—Scenes. The fragment contains only five scenes, each running for approximately the same footage or duration. The intended projection time of the scenes is not known with assurance, as this depends obviously upon the intended projection rate, itself not fully ascertained. However, by the gravity-test previously mentioned, the established frame rate indicates an overall running time of somewhat longer than two minutes, or approximately 25 seconds per scene.

  It should be emphasized, however, that this is not firmly established. It has been suggested, for instance, that the fluid being poured is not water at all, but a clear substance of highly viscous consistency, which would pour far more slowly than water due to its own gooey nature. This suggestion is not taken very seriously, but in the face of so little data it cannot be wholly disregarded.

  An even farther-fetched suggestion is that the filming was done on location in a setting where acceleration due to gravity is not equal to the familiar 32 feet per second squared. The individual responsible for this suggestion will remain unnamed as he himself regards the idea as ludicrous; nonetheless, it is a possibility not to be excluded from consideration.

  The contents of the scenes themselves are as follows:

  First, a room. Camera work in this scene, as in all, is technically proficient but static and unimaginative. The cameraman seems to have set up his equipment, obtained correct lighting and focus, and made his shot in a single take, entirely without camera or lens movement of any sort. Characters move in and out of the frame, block one another from view, appear off-center our even partially out of the frame, entirely without regard from the cameraman or director.

  The room itself is bare, sparsely furnished, with apparent plaster walls in a nondescript pastel shade slowly crumbling away. Visible furniture consists only of a chair, or presumed chair, and another article of uncertain nature. The presumed chair is so identified because one character is seated upon it throughout the scene; the item of furniture is itself almost entirely blocked from view. The second article of furniture is made of a glossy material colored a dark orange; it stands upright beside the seated character, who at no time touches it although in several frames the character seems to be looking at the object out of the corner of the eyes.

  Neither ceiling nor floor is visible in the scene. The edge of something presumed to be either a window or a picture frame is seen, but only this much.

  Second, an exterior landscape. The ground can be seen for some distance from the camera. It is covered with low vegetation, apparently low shrubs, some grasses and other small plants. Representatives of the Botany Department have been unable to identify the growth, but have given assurances that there is nothing extraordinary about them.

  In the distance can be seen a roadway and beyond it woods. Again, the composition of the woods is unascertained. The roadway is apparently of a hard surface, light in color. Movement can be seen upon the roadway, but frustratingly it is at such a distance that it is impossible to determine the nature of the vehicles in use. Extreme magnification of the film does not provide sufficient resolution to identify the vehicles other than to establish them as being drawn rather than self-powered. The animals pulling them cannot be clearly seen, and debate has developed as to whether they are four-legged beasts drawing in tandem or even troika fashion, or (absurdly perhaps) previously unidentified creatures possessing more than four legs.

  At one point it was even suggested that the creatures were not animals at all, but human beings tethered and forced to draw wagons of passengers and freight.

  Third, a corridor. The relationship between this scene and the first, that of the room, is unknown. It is hypothesized that the corridor is located in the same building as the room, perhaps even that the room opens off the corridor. There is no evidence to support this idea.

  The walls, floor and ceiling of the corridor are apparently of identical construction. No seams are visible, suggesting either that they have been concealed architecturally or that the corridor is made of a single fabric, as by casting in a mold or hollowing from rock. Light is provided by a series of convoluted strips which seem to be embedded in the walls and floor. It has been suggested that the convolutions of the strips represent script of some sort, but all attempts to identify this have been unsuccessful and it has been tentatively concluded that the strips are arranged in abstract decorative patterns.

  The corridor is lined at irregular intervals with what seem to be mechanical devices of roughly human conformation. These have been identified by various faculty representatives as suits of XIVth Century Germanic armor, positronic robots, astronauts’ space garb, and (in one case) cryogenic mummy cases. Each faculty representative has prepared a justification for his identification, and in
all cases the argument has seemed so powerful and thoroughgoing that, in the absence of contending suggestions, any one might be readily accepted. However, in the presence of the varied hypotheses, no one has achieved general paramountcy.

  Fourth, another exterior shot. Unlike the previous exterior scene, this was apparently made at night. Also, it seems to have been made from a very high angle, indicating a very high boom mounting of the camera, or its mounting atop a very tall structure of some sort, or even an aerial mounting. This last possibility is not in concert with other aspects of the film, but even if it is considered, it must be noted that the characteristic absence of camera movement, while evidence of lack of ingenuity in normal circumstances, indicates in the case of aerial cinematography the development of extremely sophisticated techniques of aviation and cinematic equipment.

  The camera is directed toward the horizon. There appears—again, most frustratingly, in the extreme distance—what seems to be a city. Tall structures rear skyward; they are dotted with lights of great brilliance and variety of color, which wink on and off in apparently non-random fashion. Attempts to decode the pattern thus displayed have led to the tentative conclusion that esthetic considerations alone cannot account for the blinking, although it is noted that the esthetic effect is also highly pleasing, and a number of undergraduates who had access to the converted film compared it favorably to the so-called “light shows” that are sometimes utilized in conjunction with their electronic concerts.

  A small portion of night sky is visible beyond the city. Unfortunately the intensity of the city’s lights obliterates the stars which might otherwise be visible. Brilliant objects can nonetheless be seen in the sky, moving toward the city. None reach it in the footage included in the fragment. Because these objects are visible only as points of variously colored light, it is not possible to determine their size, distance from camera, or velocity of movement. Any of these data would be most useful in determining the others, but lacking all it defies analysis to determine any.

  Fifth, a close-up. The subject is the person seen seated in the first scene of the fragment. Because of the subject’s unfamiliarly styled clothing it is impossible to determine his (?) sex. The subject faces directly into the camera. His face is covered with bruises and there are traces of wiped-away blood. One eye is puffed badly and the hair is disheveled.

  The subject speaks to the camera imploringly; his voice is heard on the sound track. No words are understood, of course, but the tone leads one to believe that the subject has been beaten, perhaps tortured, and is pleading with the viewer for assistance or rescue.

  After some time a hand or hand-like object enters the frame line and moves rapidly toward the camera. Before the hand or other object reaches the lens (or goes out of focus—the technical quality of these scenes is remarkable!) the fragment ends.

  It appears fairly obvious that the five scenes comprising the Heyworth Fragment are not a complete film. What other material should have preceded and followed the five extant scenes is wholly conjectural.

  5. Remaining Questions. Because the fragment is so short and obviously incomplete it has raised many more questions than can presently be resolved. In particular the locale in which the footage was recorded is puzzling. The race of the characters—the person being interrogated, the interrogator, a woman seen weeping while devouring a raw joint of meat (?) in the first interrogation scene—is unknown.

  Variations in skin tone and facial configuration between the interrogator and the interrogatee may be merely individual characteristics, or may be indicative of different racial stock. If so, which races are represented? In no case is skin color or configuration so unusual as to suggest that the persons are not earth-humans, and yet they do not fit comfortably into any known line of human stock.

  Similarly, the language spoken has never been identified. It sometimes sounds maddeningly familiar, yet no linguist—and the film has been screened repeatedly for the full Language Department—has made positive identification. Further, the speech of the interrogator is not identical to that of the interrogatee. Individual variation? Regional dialects? A “foreign” accent on the part of one of them? If so, which one?

  To return to the second scene, what or who pull the wagons?

  In the third scene, what are the figures lining the corridor?

  In the fourth scene, what is the message of the lights, and what are the aerial objects moving toward the city?

  In the final scene, what is the appeal of the interrogatee? Who was the cameraman and why does the interrogatee think it worthwhile to address his appeal to the camera? Was it an act of desperation, or did he really believe that the film would be seen by someone able to come to his aid?

  In any case, why and how did the cameraman get away with his film? And, emphatically not to be forgotten among the many enigmas of the fragment, how did the film find its way into Tuck Heyworth’s projection booth?

  For the comfort of any persons who may find these questions and this entire affair disquieting, it should be noted that both the original Heyworth Fragment and all additional copies made, plus Dr. Bloch-Erich’s tapes of the sound wire, have been delivered to the appropriate Federal agency. All may rest assured that the final disposition of the Heyworth Fragment will be handled with the full wisdom and responsibility of our democratically chosen leaders.

  Streamliner

  The lonely wail of a steam locomotive echoed across the moonlit prairie. Tall saguaro cactus cast frighteningly human-looking shadows in the bright January moonlight. The train had left Chicago in the midst of a driving snowstorm, the worst that city had experienced in a decade. Now, as it roared across the Arizona desert the light of a full moon and a million stars reflected off the bellowing behemoth.

  The war was over and nearly two years had passed. The nation had welcomed its millions of uniformed heroes home, thanked them for their service, and sent them back into the teeming streets of its cities and the lush fields and pastures of its farms.

  Time to earn your way as civilians once again, boys. If the jobs just aren’t there, if the horrors you lived on the beaches of Normandy and in the caves of Iwo Jima haunt your dreams like bloody phantoms, well, you’ll get over it. Just smile and accept the thanks of a grateful nation.

  The hour was late, very late. Almost all the passengers had retired for the night, the well-to-do in their private compartments, the middle-class in folding berths, those less fortunate slouching in their seats, hoping to catch a few hours of shut-eye before the desert sun came glaring over the horizon.

  By this time the club car should have been darkened, too, but a few neatly folded bills, discreetly passed across the polished hardwood to a receptive bartender, had persuaded him to stay open for a handful of carefully selected customers.

  Two of them were perched on tall barstools. Seen from the rear, they could have passed for brothers. Or perhaps for professional colleagues, on their way to a convention of clergymen.

  Or undertakers.

  Each was dressed in a black suit, elegantly tailored and maintained with care. Each wore a pair of black shoes, polished to a brilliant shine. Perhaps oddly, each also wore a black fedora. Most passengers remove their hats to ride in trains, but who are we to criticize, eh? Leave them to their foibles.

  The two men had been drinking separately when the club car manager sent most of his customers on their way for the evening. Some had drunk discreetly. Others were — how shall I put it — let’s say they were feeling no pain. But what harm was there in getting a little bit tipsy, maybe more than a little bit tipsy, while heading toward Los Angeles on the Desert Cannonball? Nobody was going to drive into a lamppost, that’s for sure.

  Finding themselves the only customers left at the bar, the two men struck up a conversation. Well, there’s no harm in that. A couple of lonely souls, happy to have someone with whom to while away the hours.

  Names were a problem, but only a small one. One man asked the other to call him Whistler.
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br />   “As in James McNeill Whistler?” asked his new acquaintance.

  “No. It’s a nickname I got because of a little habit I picked up a long time ago.” He paused and whistled an eerie tune. It wasn’t exactly pretty, but the other found that it lodged, somehow, in his brain. A very odd melody, melancholy, haunting, as if it would draw you in and keep you there — somewhere — whether you wanted to stay or not.

  “You see?”

  The other man said, “Yes.”

  “That’s why they call me — Whistler.” He paused to sip his beverage, the ice cubes clinking softly with the swaying of the train. “And you?”

  “Traveler.”

  “Just Traveler?”

  “Yes. Some people think there’s something mysterious about that, but most simply accept it. I hope you will, Mr. Whistler.”

  “Just Whistler.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by a white-jacketed porter clearing away the remnants of the evening’s business. Ash trays were emptied, glasses and bottles were removed from tables and carried to the bar to be washed. Abandoned magazines and newspapers were gathered up.

  One of the dark-suited men asked the porter to leave a newspaper with him. It was a copy of the Chicago Tribune, the self-styled World’s Greatest Newspaper. He spread it on the bar and scanned the headlines. Chicago was still reeling from news of the death of Al Capone at his winter home in Florida. Chicagoans who had quailed in terror at the violence of Capone’s mobsters two decades earlier now felt a strange nostalgia for the brutal mobster. In international news a Frenchman named Henri Verdoux was suing the producers of the Chaplin film Monsieur Verdoux that portrayed its eponymous character as a serial murderer. Closer to home the police promised a prompt arrest in the daring daylight robbery of the Farmers and Cattlemen’s Bank on State Street. And on the sports page, fans of both the White Sox and the Cubs were beginning to stir in anticipation of the coming baseball season.