PROJECT VALIS
Voice off camera; "'VALIS'? What's that, general?"
Deep authoritative voice. "Vast Active Living Intelligence System. You're never to -- "
Whole building detonates, into the same pink light as before. Outdoors: missile rising. Suddenly wobbles. Alarm sirens go off. Voices yelling, "Destruct alert! Destruct alert! Abort mission!"
We now see Ferris F. Fremount making campaign speech at fund-raising dinner; well-dressed people listening. Uniformed officer bends down to whisper in the President's ear. Aloud, Fremount says, "Well, did we get VALIS?"
Agitatedly, the officer says, "Something went wrong, Mr. President. The Satellite is still -- " Voice drowned out by crowd noises; crowd senses something is wrong: the well-dressed people have metamorphosed to the girl cheerleaders in red-white-and-blue identical uniforms; they stand motionless. Like robots unplugged.
Final scene. Vast cheering crowd. Ferris Fremount, back to camera, making Nixon-type V-for-victory signs with both hands. Obviously he has won re - election. Brief shots of black-clad armed men standing at attention, pleased; general joy.
Some kid holds flowers to Mrs. Fremount; she turns to accept them. Ferris Fremount turns, too; zoom in.
Brady's face.
On the drive home, back down Tustin Avenue, Kevin said, after a period of mutual silence among the three of us, "You saw the pink light."
"Yes," Fat said.
"And the lateral-lens third eye," Kevin said.
"Mother Goose wrote the screenplay?" I asked.
"Wrote the screenplay, directed it, starred in it."
Fat said, "Did he ever do a film before?"
"No," Kevin said.
"There was information transfer," I said.
"In the film?" Kevin said. "As story line? Or do you mean from the film and audio track to the audience?"
"Tm not sure I understand -- " I began.
"There is subliminal material in that film," Kevin said. "The next time I see it I'm taking a battery-powered cassette tape recorder in with me. I think the information is encoded in Mini's Synchronicity Music, his random music."
"It was an alternate U.S.A.," Fat said. "Where instead of Nixon being president Ferris Fremount was. I guess."
"Were Eric and Linda Lampton human or not?" I said. "First they appeared human; then she turned out not to have any -- you know, sex organs. And then they stripped those membranes off and they did have sex organs."
"But when his head exploded," Fat said, "it was full of computer parts."
"Did you notice the pot?" Kevin said. "On Nicholas Brady's desk. The little clay pot -- like the one you have, the pot that girl -- "
"Stephanie," Fat said.
" -- made for you."
"No," Fat said. "I didn't notice it. There were a lot of details in the film that kept coming at me so fast, at the audience so fast, I mean."
"I didn't notice the pot the first time," Kevin said. "It shows up in different places; not just on Brady's desk but one time in President Fremount's office, way over in the corner, where only your peripheral vision picks it up. It shows up in different parts of the Lamptons' house; for example in the living room. And in that one scene where Eric Lampton is staggering around he knocks against things and -- "
"The pitcher," I said.
"Yes," Kevin said. "It also appears as a pitcher. Full of water. Linda Lampton takes it out of the refrigerator."
"No, that was just an ordinary plastic pitcher," Fat said.
"Wrong," Kevin said. "It was the pot again."
"How could it be the pot again if it was a pitcher?" Fat said.
"At the beginning of the film," Kevin said. "On the parched field. Off to one side; it only registers subliminally unless you're deliberately watching for it. The design on the pitcher is the same as the design on the pot. A woman is dipping it into a creek, a very small, mostly dried-up creek."
I said, "It seemed to me that the Christian fish sign appeared on it once. As the design."
"No," Kevin said emphatically.
"No?" I said.
"I thought so, too, the first time," Kevin said. "This time I looked closer. You know what it is? The double helix."
"That's the DNA molecule," I said.
"Right," Kevin said, grinning. "In the form of a repeated design running around the top of the pitcher."
We all remained silent for a time and then I said, "DNA memory. Gene-pool memory."
"Right," Kevin said. He added, "At the creek when she fills the pitcher -- "
"'She'?" Fat said. "Who was she?"
"A woman," Kevin said. "We never see her again. We never even see her face but she has on a long, old-fashioned dress and she's barefoot. Where she's filling the pot or the pitcher, there's a man fishing. It's flash-cut, just for a fraction of an instant. But he's there. That's why you thought you saw the fish sign. Because you picked up the sight of the man fishing. There may even have been fish lying beside him in a heap; I'll have to look really hard at that when I see it again. You saw the man subliminally and your brain -- your right hemisphere -- connected it with the double helix design on the pitcher."
"The satellite," Fat said. "VALIS. Vast Active Living Intelligence System. It fires information down to them?"
"It does more than that," Kevin said. "Under certain circumstances it controls them. It can override them when it wants to."
"And they're trying to shoot it down?" I said. "With that missile?"
Kevin said, "The early Christians -- the real ones -- can make you do anything they want you to do. And see -- or not see -- anything. That's what I get out of the picture."
"But they're dead," I said. "The picture was set in the present."
"They're dead," Kevin said, "if you believe time is real. Didn't you see the time dysfunctions?"
"No," both Fat and I said in unison.
"That dry barren field. That was the parking lot Brady ran across to get into his car when the two men in black were stationed and ready to shoot him."
I hadn't realized that. "How do you know?" I said.
"There was a tree," Kevin said. "Both times."
"I saw no tree," Fat said.
"Well, we'll all have to go see the picture again," Kevin said. "I'm going to; ninety percent of the details are designed to go by you the first time -- actually only go by your conscious mind; they register in your unconscious. I'd like to study the film frame by frame."
I said, "Then the Christian fish sign is Crick and Watson's double helix. The DNA molecule where genetic memory is stored; Mother Goose wanted to make that point. That's why -- "
"Christians," Kevin agreed. "Who aren't human beings but something without sex organs designed to look like human beings, but on closer inspection they are human beings; they do have sex organs and they make love."
"Even if their skulls are full of electronic chips instead of brains," I said.
"Maybe they're immortal," Fat said.
"That's why Linda Lampton is able to put her husband back together," I said. "When Brady's mixer blew him up. They can travel backward in time."
Kevin, not smiling, said, "Right. So now can you see why I wanted you to see Valis?"he said to Fat.
"Yes," Fat said, somberly, in deep introspection.
"How could Linda Lampton walk through the wall of the mixer?" I said.
"I don't know," Kevin said. "Maybe she wasn't really there or maybe the mixer wasn't there; maybe she was a hologram."
"'A hologram,'" Fat echoed.
Kevin said, "The satellite had control of them from the get-go. It could make them see what it wanted them to see; at the end, where it turns out that Fremount is Brady -- no one notices! His own wife doesn't notice. The satellite has occluded them, all of them. The whole fucking United States."