"You mean as the theme in the film."
"No, I mean really."
"In the real world?"
"Yep."
"That would explain 'Thomas'."
Kevin nodded.
"Broke through," I said, "and then separated again."
"Leaving Richard Nixon walking along a beach in California in his suit and tie wondering what happened."
"Then it was purposeful."
"The dysfunction? Sure."
"Then it's not a dysfunction we're talking about; we're talking about someone or something deliberately manipulating time."
"You got it," Kevin said.
I said, "You've sure gone 180 degrees away from the 'Fat is crazy' theory."
"Well, Nixon is still walking along a beach in California wondering what happened. The first U.S. President ever to be forced out of office. The most powerful man in the world. Which made him in effect the most powerful man who ever lived. You know why the President in Valis was named Ferris F. Fremount? I figured it out. 'F' is the sixth letter of the English alphabet. So F equals six. So FFF, Ferris F. Fremount's initials, are in numerical terms 666. That's why Goose called him that."
"Oh God," I said.
"Exactly."
"That makes these the Final Days."
"Well, Fat's convinced the Savior is about to return or has already returned. The inner voice he hears that he identifies with Zebra or God -- it told him so in several ways. St. Sophia -- which is Christ -- and the Buddha and Apollo. And it told him something like, "The time you've waited for -- '"
"'has now come,'" I finished.
"This is heavy shit," Kevin said. "We've got Elijah walking around, another John the Baptist, saying, 'Make straight in the desert a highway for our Lord.' Freeway, maybe." He laughed.
Suddenly I remembered something I had seen in Valis; it came into my mind visually: a tight shot of the car which Fremount at the end of the film, Fremount re-elected but actually now Nicholas Brady, had emerged from to address the crowd. "Thunderbird," I said.
"Wine?"
"Car. Ford car. Ford."
"Ah, shit," Kevin said. "You're right. He got out of a Ford Thunderbird and he was Brady. Jerry Ford."
"It could have been a coincidence."
"In Valis nothing was a coincidence. And they zoomed in on the car where the metal thing read Ford. How much else is there in VALIS that we didn't pick up on? Pick up on consciously. There's no telling what it's doing to our unconscious minds; the goddam film may be -- " Kevin grimaced. "Firing all kinds of information at us, visually and auditorily. I've got to make a tape of the sound track of that flick; I've got to get a tape recorder in there the next time I see it. Which'll be in the next couple of days."
"What kind of music are on the Mini lps?" I asked.
"Sounds resembling the songs of the humpback whale."
I stared at him, not sure he was serious.
"Really," he said. "In fact I did a tape going from whale noises to the Synchronicity Music and back again. There's an eerie continuity; I mean, you can tell the difference, but -- "
"How does the Synchronicity Music affect you? What sort of mood does it put you in?"
Kevin said, "A deep theta state, deep sleep. But I personally had visions."
"Of what? Three-eyed people?"
"No," Kevin said. "Of an ancient Celtic sacred ceremony. A ram being roasted and sacrificed to cause winter to go away and spring to return." Glancing at me he said, "Racially, I'm Celtic."
"Did you know about these myths before?"
"No. I was one of the participants in the sacrifice; I cut the ram's throat. I remembered being there."
Kevin, listening to Mini's Synchronicity Music, had gone back in time to his origins.
10
It would not be in China, nor in India or Tasmania for that matter, that Horselover Fat would find the fifth Savior. Valis had shown us where to look: a beer can run over by a passing taxi. That was the source of the information and the help.
That in fact was VALIS, Vast Active Living Intelligence System, as Mother Goose had chosen to term it.
We had just saved Fat a lot of money, plus a lot of wasted time and effort, including the bother of obtaining vaccinations and a passport.
A couple of days later the three of us drove up Tustin Avenue and took in the film Valis once more. Watching it carefully I realized that on the surface the movie made no sense whatsoever. Unless you ferreted out the subliminal and marginal clues and assembled them all together you arrived at nothing. But these clues got fired at your head whether you consciously considered them and their meaning or not; you had no choice. The audience was in the same relationship to the film Valis that Fat had had to what he called Zebra: a transducer and a percipient, totally receptive in nature.
Again we found mostly teenagers comprising the audience. They seemed to enjoy what they saw. I wondered how many of them left the theater pondering the inscrutible [sic] mysteries of the film as we did. Maybe none of them. I had a feeling it made no difference.
We could assign Gloria's death as the cause of Fat's supposed encounter with God, but we could not consider it the cause of the film Valis. Kevin, upon first seeing the film, had realized this at once. It didn't matter what the explanation was; what had now been established was that Fat's March 1974 experience was real.
Okay; it mattered what the explanation was. But at least one thing had been proved: Fat might be clinically crazy but he was locked into reality -- a reality of some kind, although certainly not the normal one.
Ancient Rome -- apostolic times and early Christians -- breaking through into the modern world. And breaking through with a purpose. To unseat Ferris F. Fremount, who was Richard Nixon.
They had achieved their purpose, and had gone back home.
Maybe the Empire had ended after all.
Now himself somewhat persuaded, Kevin began to comb through the two apocalyptic books of the Bible for clues. He came across a part of the Book of Daniel which he believed depicted Nixon.
"In the last days of those kingdoms,
When their sin is at its height,
A king shall appear, harsh and grim, a master of stratagem.
His power shall be great, he shall work havoc untold;
He shall work havoc among great nations and upon a holy people.
His mind shall be ever active,
And he shall succeed in his crafty designs;
He shall conjure up great plans.
And, when they least expect it, work havoc on many.
He shall challenge even the Prince of princes
And be broken, but not by human hands."
Now Kevin had become a Bible scholar, to Fat's amusement; the cynic had become devout, albeit for a particular purpose.
But on a far more fundamental level Fat felt fear at the turn of events. Perhaps he had always felt reassured to think that his March 1974 encounter with God emanated from mere insanity; viewing it that way he did not necessarily have to take it as real. Now he did. We all did. Something which did not yield up an explanation had happened to Fat, an experience which pointed to a melting of the physical world itself, and to the ontological categories which defined it: space and time.
"Shit, Phil," he said to me that night. "What if the world doesn't exist? If it doesn't, then what does?"
"I don't know," I said, and then I said, quoting, "You're the authority."