8
Eight Months Earlier: Saturday, December 18, 1976
In the computer center of the sealed wing of the Greenwich house, seven days before Christmas, the monitor boards and systems bulbs and cathode-ray tubes and glowing scopes, although they were mostly red and green, had not reminded Salsbury of the holiday.
When he entered the room, his first time there in months, Klinger looked around at the lights and said, “Very Christmasy.”
Strangely enough, it was rather Christmasy.
However, because he hadn’t perceived something which had registered with the general in mere seconds, Salsbury felt uneasy. For almost two years now, day and night, he had been telling himself that he must be quicker, sharper, more cunning, and more forward-thinking than either of his partners — if he was to keep his partners from eventually putting a bullet in his head and burying him at the southern end of the estate beside Brian Kingman. Which was surely what they had in mind for him. And for each other. Either that or slavery through the key-lock program. Therefore, it was quite disturbing to him that Klinger — hairy, flat-faced gorilla that he was — should make, of all things, an aesthetic observation before Salsbury himself had made it.
The only way he could deal with his own uneasiness was to put the general off his stride as quickly as possible. “You can’t smoke in here. Put that out at once.”
Rolling the cheroot from the center of his thick lips to one side, Klinger said, “Oh, surely—”
“The delicate machinery,” Salsbury said sharply, gesturing at the Christmasy lights.
Klinger took the slender cigar from his mouth and appeared to be about to drop it on the floor.
“The waste can.”
When he had disposed of the cheroot, the general said, “Sorry.”
Salsbury said, “That’s all right. You’re not familiar with a place like this, with computers and all of that. You couldn’t be expected to know.”
And he thought: Score one for me.
“Where’s Leonard?” Klinger asked.
“He won’t be here.”
“For such an important test?”
“He wishes it weren’t necessary.”
“Pontius Pilate.”
“What?”
Looking at the ceiling as if he could see through it, Klinger said, “Up there washing his hands.”
Salsbury wasn’t about to take part in any conversation meant to dissect or analyze Dawson. He had taken every measure to protect himself from any attempt on Dawson’s part to plant bugs in his work area. He didn’t believe it was possible for anyone to spy on him while he was in here. But he couldn’t be positively, absolutely certain of that. Under the circumstances, he felt that paranoia was a rational vantage point from which to view the world.
“What all have you got to show me?” Klinger asked.
“For a start, I thought you’d want to see a few print-outs from the key-lock program.”
“I’m curious,” the general admitted.
Picking up a sheet of computer paper that was folded like an accordion into dozens of eighteen-inch-long sections, Salsbury said, “All three of our new employees—”
“The mercenaries?”
“Yes. All three of them were given the drug and then shown a series of films, ostensibly as evening entertainment: The Exorcist, Jaws, and Black Sunday, on successive nights. These were, of course, very special copies of the films. Processed right here on the estate. I did the work personally. Printed each of them over a different stage of the subliminal program.”
“Why those three movies in particular?”
“I could have used any I wanted,” Salsbury said. “I just chose them at random from Leonard’s film library. The movie is simply the package, not the content. It merely establishes a reason for the subjects to stare at the screen for a couple of hours while the subliminal program is running below their recognition threshold.” He handed the print-out to Klinger. “This is a second-by-second verbal translation of the images appearing on the screen in the rheostatic film, which begins simultaneously with the movie. Wherever the computer prints ‘This Legend’ it means that the visual subliminals have been interrupted by a block-letter message on the rheostatic film, a direct command to the viewer.”
“The first sixty seconds do nothing but insure that the subject will pay close attention to the rest of the movie,” Salsbury said. “Beginning with the second minute and continuing throughout the movie, he is very carefully, very gradually primed for stage two of the program and for eventual, total submission to the key-lock behavior mode.”
“Carefully and slowly — because of what happened to Brian Kingman?” the general asked.
“Because of what happened to Brian Kingman.”
Klinger said, “The penis doesn’t become erect until the viewer is told that obedience to the key equals satisfaction.”
“That’s right. And you’ll notice that both the man’s and woman’s orgasms are represented. This program would be effective with either sex.”
“Was all this taken from some porno movie?”
“It was shot especially for me by a professional pornographic film maker in New York City,” Salsbury said, pushing his glasses up on his nose and wiping his damp forehead. “He was instructed to use only the most attractive performers. He shot everything at regular light intensity, but I used a special process to print below the recognition threshold. Then I intercut the sex footage with the block-letter messages.” He unfolded some of the print-out. “This first sequence lasts another forty seconds. Then there is a two-second pause, and another message is presented in the same fashion.”
“I see the pattern,” Klinger said. “How many of these ‘legends’ were there?”
They were standing at one of the computer consoles. Salsbury leaned over and used the keyboard.
One of the screens mounted on the wall began a line-print:
KEY/LOCK STAGE ONE BLOCK-LETTER MESSAGES, IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE, AS FOLLOWS:
Salsbury touched a tab on the console.
The screen went blank.
“The series was repeated three times through the film.”
“The same thing the second night?” Klinger asked.
“No.” He picked up another folded print-out from the seat of the console chair and exchanged it for the stage one analysis. “The first minute is spent securing the subjects’ undivided attention, as it was in the first film. The difference between stage one and stage two becomes evident starting with the second minute.”
“The second stage of the program alternates between negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement,” Salsbury said. “The next twenty-five seconds are devoted to a sex reinforcement sequence much like those you saw on the first print-out. Skip ahead just a bit.”
Looking up from the print-out, Klinger said, “Do you mean that death is as effective as sex in subliminal persuasion?”
“Nearly so, yes. In advertising, subliminals can be used to establish the same sort of motivational equation with death as with sex. According to Wilson Bryan Key, who wrote a book about the nature of subceptive manipulation a few years back, the first use of death images might have come in a Calvert Whiskey ad that appeared in a number of magazines in 1971. Since then hundreds of death symbols have become standard tools of the major ad agencies.”