#(the study was about a machine that flashed a rhythmic light into the persons eyes as a way to remind them to ‘reality check’ or to check to

[chibikittens]

I’ve lucid dreamed before and I honestly can’t imagine how they could manage to make this work, even if they wanted to make it happen.

I rant in the tags but pls know I’m just exploring this inane idea for fun, 100% if this device exists it’s just a scam for money lmao.

Man, this is some science fiction capitalism dystopian bullshit.

[barryhuff]

Nostalgiaholic - The Remix

When I used to look up at the night sky alone as a child, I imagined a sinister, infinite, black, blanket sprinkled with glitter. Although, when my eyes followed the tip of my Uncle Jon’s finger, as he both traced celestial, stick-figures in the same sky and narrated their mythic, Greek stories, space always transformed from that lifeless blanket and into a destination to be explored. 

Jon, at times, was so inspired by space and space travel, he filled canvases dedicated to the filtered visuals he discerned.  As a dedicated science-fiction nerd, his paintings certainly had their share of stylized spaceships, laser beams, and explosions.  But as an equal part, planetarium-loving, star chart-studying, telescope-owning, amateur astronomer, Jon’s celestial backgrounds were wild, bubbling layers of greens, whites, blues, and reds, instead of a simple, flat, all-consuming blackness. Those paintings showed the cosmos as a tangible, topographic map ready to be explored, and not a deep, infinite sea of loneliness. 

That being said, I used to daily study a picture Jon painted of an astronaut floating upside down in the aurora borealis lights of Jon’s interpretation of space.  The figure held tight to the lifeline coming from his spacesuit at the waist with his left hand.  However, the same lifeline extended from the suit like a piece of floating spaghetti getting smaller, until it vanished in the distant horizon.  His right hand (so big that it appeared to explode from the canvas), desperately reached out for salvation.  

The reflective shield on the helmet hinted at the impending doom of the astronaut.  The reflection didn’t show a ship or even another hand reaching back, instead there were simply more endless miles of lively, colorful flashes of the space setting to die alone in.

No matter how much I wanted to imagine hope for the character, there was none… at least for him.

I often wonder if Jon’s painting was inspired by one of his favorite movies, the 1968 Stanley Kubrick classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.   When it finally, came on network T.V. one Saturday afternoon in the 1980s, I was excited to see it.  Hell, if Jon liked it, I would certainly like it.

False.  It turns out there were two barriers to me enjoying 2001: A Space Odyssey --  Star Wars and silence. 

One summer, my brother and I bragged about watching Star Wars 47 times on HBO.

I thoroughly enjoyed "The Bar Scene".  Especially the part in which a handsome, tanned, mischievous Han Solo (brown, feathered hair parted evenly in the middle) tried in vain to smooth-talk the twitchy-trigger-fingered, reptilian, green-faced, bug eyed, intergalactic thug Greedo (bald head).

Shit, reciting Greedo’s opening line to Han for anyone who’d listen (“Oo-nah too-tah, Solo?”) is still one of my favorite past-times.

In Star Wars, everyone could cover vast distances in the dark, dusty, intensely cold, INFINITE vacuum of space. It’s as easy as a con-artist pulling a few levers, confidently bellowing the order, “Punch it, Chewie”, and going faster than light without having to even buckle a seatbelt.

In reality, distances in outer space were not so easily traversed.

The Earth’s moon is 238,000 miles away. It took Neil Armstrong and the fellas six days to get from Earth, to the moon, and back, all while being cooped up in basically a large, flying port-a-potty. Their spacesuits looked about as comfortable as wearing every outfit in the average American’s good-credit-infused, stuffed closet AT ONCE.

This detail of space travel was not lost ‘Stanley Kubrick’s flick.  Even though there are a beautiful array of stunning special effects, it often felt like the audience traveled each second of the 365 million mile trip from the Moon to Jupiter.  There were no visual cues of a blurring landscape to both gage speed and generate a sense of movement.  The stars are perched in the background like apathetic teenagers forced to sit at the table during dinner, when they’d rather be in the solitude of their own rooms.

Body movements and conversations in the film were also slowed, as if everyone was walking in a filled swimming pool.  Mix in a relaxing soundtrack of orchestral music, and it’s the perfect lullaby capable of depowering my movie-watching enthusiasm.  In fact, the first five times I tried to watch the movie, I would fall asleep at an early scene featuring a space stewardess silently laboring down the aisle in her gravity “grip shoes” on her way to ultimately retrieve a floating pen for a sleeping passenger while composer Johann Strauss’s famous waltz, The Blue Danube, rhythmically chants in the background.

A few years ago, I tried one final time to watch the movie. And this time with the help of a streaming video platform, I was able to pause, re-group, pause, re-group, pause, re-group, and finally watch the movie my uncle loved.  

The striking thing about the movie is how quiet it actually was.  For much of the movie, there are no musical cues to warn of danger or intrigue.  Dialogue was conducted over the subtle drone of machines simply doing their mundane jobs of keeping the enormous spacecraft running during its long flight to Jupiter.   Life and death sequences were not given intense music accompaniment like traditional horror movies.  It’s as if Kubrick was saying, “People’s lives aren’t being scored by some musician to bookmark key events.  Life is merely something that happens -- even in space.”

It’s this absence of audible hints that makes 2001: A Space Odyssey uncomfortably realistic, as if the audience was watching a livestream of a computer gaining sentience, refusing to die (be turned off) and fighting off his oppressors (the flight crew).  

I’ve read that when a “vacuum” exists, somehow all of nature rushes to fill that empty hole.  So it’s funny that many science experiments happen in conditions that closely resemble a vacuum, in an effort to ensure results unweighted by additional stimuli.  Interestingly enough, because the movie is set in the vast, unforgiving, vacuum of space, Kubrick’s storytelling, in essence, becomes an experiment to determine if audiences will stay engaged without the traditional musical trappings.  Indeed, this stark story about the thrilling birth of strange, other-worldly life injected energy into overall science fiction mythology, and also into my young uncle.

Over the past 11 years, I have written a fairly regular Facebook post titled Reasons I Know I’m Getting Old.  When I started this, Facebook seemed to simply be a 21st century photo album, in which many people posted similar, stiff, smiling, posed pictures and inspiring quotes which suggested my extended online community was living their own collective happily ever afters.

But it was boring...

I mean, I loved my kids too, but were only my kids getting whoopings and other childhood punishments?  My wife was awesome too, but was I the only person still having trouble translating to her the humor in my daily fart symphonies?  Was no one else dealing with the often deflating, drudgery of the work-place?  Was parenting a lifelong crap-shoot for me only?  Because there was no connection to what I was seeing on my finger strolls on my phone, I was having a hard time wanting to even own a Facebook account.

Therefore, on April 14, 2009, I conducted an experiment:  How would my friends respond to a post that showed some dissatisfaction?  Nothing political or religious, just everyday grumblings.  I wrote:

“[Barry Huff] is dragging in from coaching his daughter's basketball team only to be greeted by Cap'n Crunch and a [sic] yet another pile of papers to grade!”

It received nine comments (four of those were my own).  And one of those commenters hinted that they understood the challenge of managing the grading paperload.

Facebook soon became a sliver into my reality normally hidden, when I walked into my home and shut the door for anyone who wanted to see access.  Initially, reposting fill-in-the blank lists, or other people’s videos, didn’t interest me.  I just wanted folks to know it was okay to not have all the answers.  Here I was, boogers and all.

But the experiment gathered a more scientific component in March 2020 -- the addition of an actual vacuum.  

In March 2020, the United States of America instituted a national quarantine in the hope of limiting the possibility of infection from the rapidly spreading “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)”, shortened simply to the “Coronavirus”.   I suspect that the horrified wails of a certain mexican beer company sharing part of the same name as the virus (after having carefully crafted years of popular commercials associating its product with serene, relaxing beach scenes) are still heard by masked customers now filling their shopping carts with other adult beverages.  Thus ensuring (at least in a few inebriated minds) binge drinking episodes without sudden, beer-birthed, pockets of community spread.

During this quarantine, the noise of my life (reporting to a building to teach, side-hustles, sporting events, car travel, movies, fast food) disappeared.  And with that sudden vacuum, came the desire to collect and revise the writings I posted about the uncertainty of navigating adulthood.

And while I still worry if I have the skill to create something that gives a clearer picture of my true self to my wife and kids, each vignette is a piece of the mosaic of my humanity.  And hopefully, this collection of blessed fallibility won’t be unnecessarily camouflaged during the stories told at my funeral one day, as attendees gulp down heaping portions of smothered pork steak, collard greens, macaroni, and apple pie piled on their sagging, disposable plates.

[cometeclipsewriting]

Strowlers

Season 1: Episode 1

Chapter 2

AO3 Link

Summary: In a world where magic is both real and illegal, a librarian tries to help protect a young girl discovering her powers, while her girlfriend makes a device that helps to find unregistered magic users.

Full video episode can be found for free here!

“I was hoping that if they arrested me, they wouldn’t take Omar.” Whit shook her head. “I was wrong.” She lifted the cup she had been given, staring at the blue enameled metal. She huddled into her blanket, the air not cold enough to cause the frission that skittered down her back. But slow anger still burned in her core.

“At least I’m not part of the problem,” she looked around the ragtag huddle, her lips pressed into a flat line that only the most optimistic of souls would call a smile.

Night held them tightly, full dark. She had looked for them. Well, for people like them, for hours. And it was late, far later than she knew. But this was crucial. Across the jumping lights of the trashcan fire, a man slipped in, “You mean the Archanologists.” It wasn’t a question.

“Magic should be freed!” Whit pushed out. “Not collared and licensed.” She disagreed with Amanda on this subject on a fundamental level, and it had caused fights in the past; so they didn’t ever talk about it. Something she was bitterly regretting now. If she had known the research happening right under her nose, she would have searched for these people much sooner. Danger was coming to them. Coming to so many.

“What do you know,” a man asked, “about archanology?” His tone flowed, a poet speaking verse. Compelling, thoughtful, words full of meaning to discover.

Whit took a drink of her tea, shaking her head at the question, “Only what Amanda tells me... and what I read between the lines.”

***

“Thank you for seeing me on short notice.” Amanda spoke respectfully to the Preceptor, stepping up to stand beside him. She belonged among them. Her navy blue peacoat and professional slacks a clean symmetry to the two men’s A.R.C. suits. Like them, her hair was cut short and kept neat, the red-blonde parted and smoothed down. No spontaneity or ornamentation. The only true difference her lack of Focus scars gracing her temples.  

“You circumnavigated four levels of bureaucracy in order to reach me directly, Professor.” He didn’t look at her once, keeping his concentration and magic trained on the man strapped to the chair in the adjoining room. Recruit 291’s eyes darted erratically around the vision his released magic still weaved. “You have my attention.”

Amanda took one small breath, trying to match his level of dispassion. Emotions would only hinder her here. “As you may know, um,” she glanced away from the proceedings in the other room, “my research to date has been focused on how and when children’s powers manifest.”

The technician slipped on a pair of heavy sunglasses, flashing her own scars, crossed to the large bank of buttons and dials, and started the process. A flat tone filled the air and surrounding area, and the machine started up.

The two spheres on either side of Recruit 291’s head immediately produced a bright white light, electric sparks traveling to each other, penetrating his temples. It coursed through him, sending his body to vibrate, jerking uncontrollably. Through the glass, Amanda could swear she felt the prickle on her own skin; to have it touch you directly… Despite his previous compliance, the young man tried to escape now. The restraints kept him in place as the electric crackle altered him forever.

“Unfocused talent can cause extraordinary damage.” Amanda couldn’t help but watch, her heart rate erratic, her palms starting to sweat.  The Preceptor flexed his hand, testing what magic was still unrestrained but remained as cool as ever. As if he were just observing a lecture. “Especially when conducted through the unfocused and undeveloped mind of a child.” Her voice quavered, broke just a little, but she tried to keep her fear away. This horrible looking procedure was just a natural part of being a member of A.R.C.

“Your point, Professor.” He dropped his hand, but still watched carefully. Recruit 291’s eyes rolled back, the mouthguard preventing him from biting his tongue.

“What if we could detect talent in an individual before it manifests?” Amanda’s passion for her project collected her and the importance of her work beat over her fear. “I think my prototype solves that problem.”

In the other room, the machine powered down gradually, the electricity dying away. Recruit 291’s chest rose as he took deep, steady breaths, body easing into the chair. He blinked out at Amanda, his new scars raised white against an ashy black powder that had appeared on his skin. He waited patiently for the technician to come over and remove the mouthguard. He didn’t smack his lips or shift around in discomfort. He gave no indication of the stress his body had just been put through. He sat with an unnatural stillness, blinking, waiting.

“What do you feel.” The operator asked, but there was no inflection to the question. It was flat, monotone.

“I don’t feel.” He said, staring straight at Amanda. She swallowed. Hard. And the rhythmic blue flash of her collar reflected in the glass.

Director Rodrigo leaned over and hit the speaker, projecting his voice into the operating room. “Test him. If he retains his powers, he can apply for a job with A.R.C. If they have gone down too low… send him to corporate loan outs,” he instructed dismissively.

He turned around and looked at Amanda. “Does it work?”

The sudden shift back to her threw her for a moment. “My prototype?” She lifted her chin confidently. “Yes.”

“You know that makes it a level seven restricted technology.” He shifted his head just slightly, studying her closely. Was there a hint of sentiment in his voice? But his eyes showed absolutely none.

“Technically, yes.” One of the reasons she had kept it secret from everyone. Including Whit.

“And that your clearance level as an academic doesn’t begin to give you the authority-“

“But it works.” She interrupted, sure of her discovery and the sheer importance of the implications. She had to make them understand how it could revolutionize the process. How it could save so many lives. With a slight pause to bring her tone back down to the moderate tone A.R.C. members should always use, she continued, “And the regional council has the authority to grant a research waver.” And these two men were members of that council.

He looked at her, but Amanda couldn’t discern a hint of what he was thinking. The emotion she thought she had detected earlier gone entirely.

The low buzz of her phone filled the pregnant silence. Amanda looked away, just suppressing the grunt of aggravation from escaping. Why hadn’t she turned her phone off?

The Preceptor looked over his shoulder. “Take your call Professor, and we will discuss your request.”

She looked down, turning away and pulling her phone out of her pocket. Shit. This was not how she had hoped this meeting would go. She answered the call professionally, at least. “This is Amanda.”

***

“Amanda!” Whit cried with relief into the phone in one of the enclosed offices of the library. “I’ve been arrested! Or, I don’t know, I’m being detained.” In the desk across from her the cop watched her closely, as if she would burst into fire or start shooting magic bullets out of her mouth. A man with an at-ready rifle patrolled out in the main entrance of the library. And the creepy A.R.C. guy just watched her, too intent, his eyes still just a bit too wide. She really didn’t like him. He was like a predator, just waiting for her to run.

“No, something really crazy just happened at the library, and now these A.R.C. dudes think I’ve got The Power.” She made sure to add as much drama and sarcasm into her voice and had the pleasure in watching the cop role his eyes and explode out of his chair in a huff. “I know! I told them it’s ridiculous but- Hey!” He yanked the phone from her hand.

“Amanda Darrow?” He barked, pushing his authority.

“No, that’s impossible.” Amanda shook her head at what she was being told. Whit couldn’t have been responsible for the code 37. She had dreaded that the magical anomaly had been at Whit’s library, and it didn’t truly surprise her that Whit was somehow wrapped up in the fringes of it. But Whit couldn’t be the one who had caused a magical spike. “How- How did it happen?” How was she going to get her out of this?

The Archanologists had been speaking quietly behind her, but her tone must have pulled them from their official business. “Is there a problem?” Director Rodrigo asked.

Amanda took a little breath, turning to speak to him. You couldn’t just ignore a question asked to you by one of the head members of A.R.C. “Your agency is holding my… roommate for triggering an unlicensed manifestation.”

Love. She couldn’t tell them the truth of their relationship. Amanda loved Whit, a strong and powerful emotion. And emotions were anathema to Archanology. Emotions led to human mistakes and errors. The larger and stronger the emotions, the greater and more destructive the mistake. As she well knew. Not just from all the horror stories she heard in the news. Oh, no. She had her own personal well of horror to know that her love for Whit was not the wisest thing she had ever done.

“Did she?” Director Rodrigo prompted.

“Not a chance. She’s failed every test that we offer.” And more than a few of them several times. Whit really had hoped that they were just mistakes, and she had at least some small hidden talent that had not manifested for some reason. Amanda had explained many times that magic developed in childhood, but Whit still hoped.

“Give me the phone.” The Director held out his hand.

Really? Reluctantly, Amanda passed it to him, worried about what he would do. He had the authority to order just about anything.

“This is Field Director Lucas Rodrigo. Who am I speaking to?”

“A-agent Timothy Marks, sir.” Whit saw the swift shift from angry man-in-charge to the cowed underling taking orders from someone much more powerful than he was. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair. She was confident her girlfriend would come through for her.

She glanced at the weird dude again. He was still staring, now tilting his head, Whit a specimen to study. She felt her face twist and she quickly turned away. He had shaved the sides of his head very short, proudly exposing his scars. A true fanatic who couldn’t feel anything, just like all the ones who had those marks of utter devotion to A.R.C. She shifted her shoulder; she swore she could still feel his eyes on her.

“A... Sir.” The cop sank down into the chair again, deflated. “Yes, sir. Understood. Sir.” Obviously reminded once again that while officially the police were supposedly above anyone’s authority, it was really A.R.C. who ran things. He put the phone down and sighed, unhappy. He rolled the words around in his mouth before reluctantly telling her. “You’re free to go.”

Whit smirked. Awesome. She took a moment, savoring this chance. “Where’s my book.” The two men looked at each other. “The one I was reading to the children? It’s mine.” She again made sure to interject some boldness into the words. Her sass might not do much, but you had to do something to fight against them.

The creepy Enforcer gave a quick little nod, and the cop pulled out her book, tossing it onto the desk. Whit slapped her hand down on it, a patently false smile just for him. And a very repulsed one raking up and down the A.R.C. man as she spun in her chair.

She left the office, quickly walking to her things. Pepper, who had been watching the whole charade, followed quickly. “Whit!” She called quietly, obviously just as aware of the armed men still patrolling the library. What did they want? Another little boy to collar and haul away?

“Are you alright, honey?” Pepper stopped outside the desk cubicle, not putting her back to any of the intruders to their library. The front door was shut and locked, although the man with a rifle and SWAT gear planted in front of the doors was a bigger hindrance than either of those things.

“Fine,” Whit said shortly, the little trembling of her fingers giving her away, but she hid it by getting her backpack out. Perhaps she was more shaken up than she wanted to be, then she even wanted to admit to herself, but she needed to keep it hidden. This was one of those things that no one else ever needed to know. A weakness that someone could use to hurt her. So she instead carefully slid her fairytales into relative safety of cloth and zippers. It wouldn’t do much, but it made her feel better and eased a little of her quivering.

Pepper gently slid Whit’s yellow beanie across the surface of the desk, “Here you go. I was able to pick it up after they left the upstairs.”

“Thank you,” Whit said quietly. Truthfully, she hadn’t even been aware that she was no longer wearing it. It must have fallen off when she had protested them picking up the unconscious Omar. Where had they taken him if most of their team was still here? “Did they let the other kids out safely?”

Pepper nodded solemnly, concern creating a furrow between her eyebrows, but she kept her eyes trained on the men still occupying the office. “Once they checked all the other children for magical talent, they hurried them out of the library.”

Whit sighed and sank into the chair. “And Omar’s family? Will they be told?”

Pepper’s frown deepened, and she shook her head slightly. “They will be told something, but I don’t know if it will be the truth.” She glanced back to Whit, a strange glint in her blue eyes. “I will make sure that they get the unaltered story, though.”

Whit blinked up at the small woman, confused. If Whit didn’t know any better, she would have thought the sweet librarian… dangerous. Something Whit had never even considered. But then Pepper looked solemn and concerned once more, and Whit dismissed the thought. The stress of the circumstance was getting to her imagination.

Abruptly, the Enforcer and the cop left the office, their goon squad falling into step around them. Whit slowly swiveled her chair, carefully watching them as they swept towards the door. The cop, obviously still pissed and holding a grudge, didn’t look their way as he passed. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said of the other one. Another studying stare from his fish eyes, and then they vanished out of the library. Forever, with any luck.

Both women let out deep sighs, relaxing. Pepper crossed to the doors and locked them once again, turning the cheery sign saying they were closed for the day. Maybe they should make one that was a little less happy, for days like this one. “Why don’t you take some time and head out for today, sugar.” Pepper said compassionately. “You have been through enough.”

Grateful, Whit snagged the strap of her bag. “Thanks, Pepper. You’re the best.” She asked before she made her way to the bathroom, “Are you sure you don’t need help with something?”

Pepper smiled slightly and shook her head, “No, I-�� She stopped abruptly, staring at something. Something that a shock.

Whit frowned and looked. The wall of magazines. With that look, she had expected another A.R.C. dude, or something, but no one was there. “Pepper?” Whit asked slowly.

The librarian slowly shook her head, “Sorry, sugar. Don’t worry about it.” She forced a smile. “I suppose I am more shook up by this than I thought. Go on,” she made little shooing motions with her hands, and so she went.

But why did Pepper look more scared just now than she had the entire time earlier?

[vmheadquarters]

What Goes Around... (Part 27b)

This is PART 27b of a story that is being told in segments by twenty-seven different authors, campfire-style. Each author will take over the story with no prior planning and then pass it on after putting their own spin on it! Expect the unexpected! :)  You can check our vmhq campfire tale tag for all of the previous installments or read the story as it develops on AO3. — Part 27b is written by @cheshirecatstrut.

[Part 27a]

PART TWO--CONCLUSION

DICK

This new tunnel Rubes found, just to switch things up, is artificially lit, fluorescents attached at intervals along the walls. Plaques at every junction read, “NO FIREARMS, NO SMOKING, NO CELL PHONES, NO LAPTOPS, PLEASE WEAR PROTECTIVE GEAR.”  

“Something’s flammable down here.” Ruby pauses to consult the blueprint, points right. “Also secret.”

“Bunch of wine crates were stacked near the spot where you left Sean,” Dick says. “Old ones. I bet these catacombs were used for smuggling once. Toss a match on some two-hundred-years-buried booze, you’d have a big-ass underground bonfire, amirite?”

“Sure, but I don’t think that’s the reason for the signs.” Ruby taps one as they pass. “These mention modern tech, and someone’s keeping every light working.” She glances back at him. “Is it just me, or is your brain reverting to normal?”

“Haven’t smoked up in, like, half an hour,” Dick says. “And I’ve got what you’d call a high tolerance. There’s a roach in my pocket, still, but do you really want me to ignore the warnings?”

“Probably it’s best to hold off.” She stops at a metal door with a plaque that reads PROCESSING ROOM and tests the handle. “We’ll never save America from the Fuchsia Menace if we’re unexpectedly burned alive.”

Removing supplies from her purse, she goes through her straw-air-hammer routine again; the safety door swings open with a clang. Ruby’s eyes widen as she enters. Once Dick sidles through behind her, he totally concurs.

The big round space on the blueprints marks an enormous underground cavern, walled in rock machine-scraped smooth. Higher-tech coffins than the one in the barn fill most of the available floor space—they look like hyper-sleep pods from Alien, windows showing pink soup beneath. Gigantic steel tanks at the cave’s center sprout spiderish sprays of pipes, each attaching to one coffin. Dick wonders how any amount of revenge could be worth lying Matrix-style for DAYS.

“I KNEW IT!” he crows, prompting Ruby to shush him. His voice echoes. “Didn’t I call this scenario, last time we were theorizing? Seriously, I need to patent this weed-- it’s, like, miracle shit, Rub-a-roni.”

“Did you breed and grow the particular strain in your pocket? No? Then you can’t patent it, dummy. Now hush. Something just started beeping over there, and I need to figure out what and why.”

She crosses the room, picking her way carefully between coffins; for lack of anything better to do, Dick follows. When she stops at a screen of scrolling, random-seeming words he looks over her shoulder, shifting his murse back out of the way.

“Is that the names of the pink dudes?” He squints at one line that reads ‘Henson’, and another, “Soloway’. “And if so, what do you think ‘BEGIN DETACHMENT’ means? ‘Cause it seems like some of these coffins are doing it.”

Ruby gasps as, with a loud, clanking hiss, half the tubes uncouple from coffins and begin, slowly, to retract. The list pauses, flashes a ‘DETACHMENT COMPLETE’ message, and begins scrolling again with new names.

“Shit!” she murmurs, and looks up at him with terrified eyes. “Shit, shit, shit, Dick, I think all these zombies are about to wake up! We have to hide; if they find us in here, who KNOWS what they’ll do?”

Dick casts around for a likely nook, but it’s a fucking cave. Notices part of the wall to their left contains an inset desk, and shoves her that direction. “Under there!” he hisses, as several coffin lids creak open. “Quick, we’re out of time!”

“But we’re not hidden!” she whispers back, obliging just the same. He scrambles in after and pulls the rolling chair in front. “They can see us if they look!”

“That Pez guy turned into a moron,” Dick argues, feeling his pocket to make sure the joint’s still there, for after. “Just shut it--I bet you a grand they won’t notice.”

One by one, the coffins’ inhabitants rise, in a flurry of flailing pink limbs and high-pitched shrieks. Hulks of various shapes and sizes, all clad in white t-shirts and briefs, claw and stumble free as if coordination was a casualty of the process. They land on heads and sides, with zero instinct for self-preservation, then bicycle like upended cockroaches until they make it to their feet.

The room fills, rapidly, with milling, squealing pinkness; Ruby clutches Dick in a way that would be gratifying under less gross circumstances. Then, abruptly, a voice booms out across the room. The hulks turn, as one, towards a white movie screen slowly descending from the ceiling.

Sean Friedrich appears in ten-foot Technicolor, wearing a laurel-leaf crown and toga, lit in such a flattering and gilded style Dick’s positive he directed this segment. Raising his arms like that Italian dictator from Call of Duty: World War II, Sean shouts, “Welcome to the Pantheon, demigods!” Then giggles, the way he always does when he’s had a shitload too much coke.

The Hot Pink Funky Bunch cock their heads and screech like a bunch of brain-damaged birds. But at least they quit staggering around, and a few actually try to listen.

“You’ve been selected, after a VERY competitive search, and gifted with powers FAR beyond those of mortal men,” Sean intones, voice getting higher and rapider as if someone’s switched him to fast-forward. “Now it’s time to USE those powers for our common good. And to teach the assholes populating the rest of the world their PLACE!”

Lots of howling punctuates this statement, along with rudimentary words; a few fights break out between Hulks that stumble into each other. “Please form a line,” Sean continues, more prosaically, “and walk through the door beneath the flashing red light to get street clothes. We’ll gather in the auditorium for a speech. Then you’ll be bused to the location specified on your liability waivers, so you can FULFILL YOUR HEROIC DESTINIES!”

More chaos accompanies this statement--the screen retracts into the ceiling as ‘A Film by Sean Friedrich’ flashes across. Then a red safety light, accompanied by a klaxon, begins flashing over a door on the far wall. The Hulks gather to stare, attracted by the noise and color. When the door swings open, they file out, screaming and punching all the way.

In the quiet after the last of them leave, Dick exhales, then checks to make sure he didn’t pee himself again. Ruby peeks out from beneath the desk.

“Come on!” She turns to tug urgently at Dick. “We need to LEAVE, pronto, and call somebody! If those guys are set loose all over the city to wreak havoc, it could become a statewide emergency!”

He shushes her frantically as booted footsteps echo through the room—this guy moves like he’s got a purpose, and more importantly, is wearing shoes. She hears, presses in close, but her silence comes too late. The feet pause, the chair’s jerked aside, and the owner of two denim-clad legs says, “Come out right now, you idiots. Don’t make me shoot.”

Ruby emerges slowly, hands up. Dick follows, wishing for once she’d let him go first. Then sighs with relief when he sees who exactly it IS, holding the gun.

“What the hell?” he demands, shoving their discoverer back a step. “You scared the crap out of me! Don’t you realize this place is dangerous?” Then, as the gun barrel pointed at him doesn’t waver, adds, “Wait, wait, wait…you’re not…IN on the whole zombie thing with these douchebags, are you?”

VERONICA

V pushes aside a branch and peers past it into a clearing; at the center stands a tall, pink individual in rags and Hanes Big Boys, face pressed fervently against a piece of fabric. Birds have fallen silent as the woods reverberate with his moans.

“That’s definitely not Wallace,” Logan observes in her ear, barely a breath of sound. “He’s as tall as me, and his hair is spiky.”

“No,” Veronica muses, “but he seems familiar somehow. Like I met him once but can’t quite remember the name?”

“WHERE YOU GO RONKAAAAA?” the figure wails, turning its face in profile to the sky, and Mac says hesitantly, from behind them, “Listen I hate to be the one to point out the obvious, but…isn’t that Piz?”

“Oh shit!” Veronica says, and apparently the Hulk hears THAT. It turns abruptly, face lighting up in a ghoulish-pink too-many-teeth grin.

“RONKAAAAA!” it yells, staggering towards her on twisted, bleeding feet. Extends the piece of fabric and adds, “RONKA YOU MEET MY MOTHERRRRR!”

“Is he holding a woman’s jacket?” Veronica takes an involuntary step back, hand on Logan’s arm. “Why does he have…and what’s the milky smear, that CAN’T be…EW!”

“Maybe he thought it was yours?” Mac suggests, sotto voce, and Veronica shoots her a scandalized look. “So what are our options? We can’t hurt the guy, it’s Stosh Piznarski! You used to do his laundry.”

“As if.” Veronica shifts to evade when Piz lumbers closer. “And he’d better not be hoping I’m willing to wash THAT.”

The creature stops, head cocking, to study Logan, who’s standing very quiet and still, rhythmically flexing his hand. Eyes going wide with belated-recognition rage—confused, possibly, by the donkey shirt—he screams, “LOGAN I KICK ASS YOUUUU!” at the top of his lungs. Then charges.

Pink Piz is fast, far faster than he was as a person; V flinches in reaction, expecting him to take Logan down. But her boyfriend somehow manages a spectacular leap, vaulting over the zombie’s shoulder like an Olympic gold medalist. He lands, crouched and sneering, at the clearing’s center and beckons.

“What was THAT?” Mac demands as Piz shrieks and lowers his head. He does another flailing run, reminding Veronica why she stopped going with him to dance clubs. Logan stands braced until he’s a foot distant—then unexpectedly runs top speed out of the woods. Bellowing, Piz follows.

“Ugh, he’s protecting us by leading that thing away!” Veronica growls, giving chase. Raises her voice to add, “I’m the one with the gun here, dipwad! Will you EVER quit acting suicidally heroic?”

“You can’t shoot, though,” Mac chides, stumbling along behind her. “Because you’d be offing your ex. Remember?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Veronica shoves branches aside, emerging onto the lawn. “But I’m not letting him murder Logan based on an excess of sentiment, either.”

“Clearly,” Mac says, dry. Moves up beside her as Piz chases Logan in circles like a frustrated pink Elmer Fudd. He makes an actually-successful grab, ripping a flap loose from the donkey shirt, and Logan uses the moment of confusion to punch him in the face.

With a roar, Piz lunges and catches him, lifting him high into the air; pink lips peel back from giant pink teeth as excited zombie squeals fill the air. Veronica cocks the golden pistol and aims, falling into a two-handed stance.

Then a cop car barrels up over the hill, emergency lights flashing, horn honking, and makes straight for the unequal combatants.

Piz tosses Logan aside like he used to toss aside used towels, even when the laundry basket was right there. Screams at the approaching vehicle, “LOGAN GO TO JAIL NOT MEEEEE!” then takes off at a shambling run for the woods. He shouts, “I COME BACK RONKAA!” as he goes.

The car skids and squeals to a halt. V rushes across the yard, uncocking the gun as she goes. “Are you okay?” she asks, landing on her knees beside Logan, visually inspecting him for injuries. “Did he hurt you?”

Logan manages to sit up, flushed and sweaty, shakes his head like words are a bridge too far. Grabs the flap that used to be his shirt sleeve, and uses it to wipe his face. “Just chill for a minute,” V says, brushing back his hair. “We should head up to the house and get you some water.”

The cruiser’s driver door opens, and Veronica does a double-take as Weevil climbs out, definitely the worse for wear. “Forget Echolls, he’s just winded,” Weevil calls, voice muted by distance. “Fennel here is in way worse shape. I hope you’ve got the antidote ON you.”

“Oh thank God,” Veronica says, as Logan fumbles in his pocket for the vial of green liquid. “We came back and everyone had disappeared. We thought something terrible happened.”

“Your yuppie ex rampaged all over the house chasing Casablancas in a wig.” Weevil beckons her impatiently closer and opens the rear door. “We escaped through the catacombs, then I TRIED to drive this guy to the CDC.”

“The WHAT-acombs?” Veronica kneels on the floorboard beside Wallace, laying a palm along his forehead. He’s bright pink and thrashing, burning up with fever; a slow dribble of foam leaks from his mouth. Quickly she uncorks the vial. “Jesus, hold that thought. How much of this should I give him?”

Mac moves up behind her, carrying the slip of paper with the formulas. “Whoever wrote this could stand to work on penmanship,” she says. “But it looks to me like the dosage is one drop.”

“Okay, buddy, keep it together just a little bit longer.” Very carefully, Veronica tilts the vial over Wallace’s slack mouth. A single, emerald-green drop slips between his lips, and the effect is immediate. Wallace’s whole body stiffens and jerks, arms thrashing, nearly spilling the antidote before Veronica can re-cork. His jaw opens wide like he’s gasping for air, his lashes snap up, and the pink flush staining his body begins slowly to turn…green?

He stares at Veronica upside down for a moment, face frozen in rictus; then all his muscles relax and he manages a smile. “Just in time,” he says, faintly. “I can always count on you to milk situations for every ounce of drama.”

WEEVIL

Sparing a glance for Echolls, who doesn’t look so hot after fleeing Pinkzilla, Weevil runs his palms over his shaved head, breathing out stress. His hopeful musings about this weird-ass night maybe being over are interrupted by Veronica’s friend Cindy, who sidles up beside him.

“Not to pry,” she says, prying, “but how on Earth did you show up in the nick of time with Wallace, driving a police car?”

Oh right, Weevil thinks. Keith. So much for even half an hour of sleep in his own bed. And he can’t call Hector to open the shop, because there’s no freaking cell service.

As if on cue, his phone rings. Mac lifts a brow as he removes it from his pocket and reads ‘unknown’ on the caller ID. “It’s Clayton’s vehicle,” he tells her, pressing ‘accept’. “I dropped him at the Pro Med on the way through town--I’ll explain in a minute.”

“MAN, the mobile reception here is weird.” Cindy shakes her head, looking as disgusted as Weevil feels. Across the line a male voice calls, “Hello?”

“Navarro,” Weevil says, curt, and the guy says, “Oh, thank God. I was beginning to think I’d never reach anyone but Casablancas. And no offense, but that guy sounded WAY too high to help much.”

“If you think I’ll be offended by someone ragging on Casablancas, you don’t know me very well.” Weevil walks away from the ongoing tearful reunion so he can hear better. “Who is this, and how’d you get my number?”

“It’s Leo D’Amato.” The voice pauses to cough. “I’m looking for Veronica Mars, you seen her?”

“Yeah, she’s here.” Weevil relaxes—he knows this cop’s a friend of V’s. “But now’s not a good time. She just gave the antidote to her pink friend, and it’s having some weird-ass side effects.”

“The ANTIDOTE? She FOUND it? Navarro, that needs to get to the CDC, like yesterday! At last count thirteen pink individuals have been captured all over the city, after wreaking havoc to confuse the news crews. If we don’t provide a remedy soon, those men are going to die.”

“Yeah, that was never gonna happen before Fennel got a dose.” Weevil smirks. “Guy’s eyeballs were pink, and you know V takes care of her people first.”

“Fine, whatever. Just make sure she saves some for testing; the government scientists can reverse-engineer it. Look, here’s the main reason I called—you guys aren’t anywhere near the Van Vliet winery, right?”

“We’re standing in the middle of it,” Weevil says. “Strange shit’s been going down here all day. Piznarski’s running around hot pink in his underwear. And your dirty detective pal has you would not BELIEVE how complicated a plot going with Liam Fitpatrick, this drug dealer I know, and my high school English teacher.”

“Explain all that to me later,” Leo says. “When I’m not hopped up on morphine and can figure out what you mean. Right now I need to warn you--this plot you’re talking about goes way beyond drug dealing with a side of rosacea. Military officers keep turning up to grill me about secret armies and political rebellions, and one of them made a crack about going in hot. Which means someone’s thinking of dropping a bomb. On YOU. SOON.”

“Shit,” Weevil says, takes a step back like that will somehow protect him. Then promptly falls down a hole.

He lands on sand after a ten-foot drop, winded but mostly unhurt, gazing up at the night sky through a small, square opening. His phone, not so lucky, hits a rock, and shatters into a hundred sharp fragments.

“Mackenzie!” Weevil calls--pauses to cough, tries again. Hopes fervently he’s not catching a cold on top of everything else. “Echolls! Get over here, I found something!”

Silence for a minute, while he sits up with a groan. Then Echolls’ smug face appears in the rectangle of sky. “Looks like…you found a hole, man.”

Weevil extends a middle finger, pushing up to standing; Echolls slaps a previously-unnoticed ladder bolted to the rock. “Trap door,” he says, unnecessarily. “Can you climb?”

“Yeah, give me a minute.” Weevil spreads palms on knees and bends over, trying to get air back into his lungs. A stray moonbeam flashes across metal, making it shimmer, and he kneels to pick the shiny object up. It’s a tie clip, shaped like a pair of handcuffs.

“You recognize this?” He passes the clip to Echolls, then slowly, painfully, returns to the yard. “Looks familiar, but I’m not sure from where.”

“Yeah, Keith.” Echolls sits to study the thing, rubbing a thumb along the crease between his eyes. He glances apprehensively at Veronica, still by the car cooing over Fennel. “It’s…Mr. Mars. Was wearing it tonight.” Spreading a palm over his face, he shakes his head, as if trying to clear it.

Mackenzie approaches to touch Echolls’ shoulder. “You OK?” she asks, concerned. “Did Piz clobber you?” She inspects his scalp for lumps, then extends a hand, palm out. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Mac, I’m just tired,” Echolls says. Weevil sighs, because he’s the one who fell down a fucking hole.

But he’s not a whiny two-year-old, so, “Mars!” he calls, instead of complaining. Her head bobs up over the cop car, like a prairie dog on some nature show. “We got a situation!”

Veronica helps Wallace gently out and offers a shoulder. The guy admittedly seems better, coherent and moving on his own, despite rocking the Jolly Green Not-So-Giant look. “What’s wrong?” she asks, with a concerned frown at Logan, when she gets close enough to talk.

In answer, Echolls holds up the tie tack; V sets Fennel on the grass to examine it. “This is Dad’s.” She looks between them for confirmation. “He was wearing it earlier. Where did you find this?”

Weevil points to the hole, and Veronica lies beside it, peering down. “Do you hear CHANTING?” she calls, girly voice audible despite the wind. The rest of them move closer, and yeah.

“So I guess we follow the creepy underground cult sounds?” Weevil asks, resigned. Veronica gives him the you-get-a-gold-star smile he learned to dread in eleventh grade. “Can Fennel even hike?”

“Somebody should take him to a hospital,” Veronica decides. “Mac, you game? You’re most able to explain his symptoms from a scientific perspective, and I’m sure the CDC doctors will have questions.”

“Of course.” Cindy holds out her hand for the car keys, which Weevil slaps into her palm. “You want me to surrender the antidote formula?”

“Yes,” Veronica says. “But first…” she takes the slip back, pulls out her phone, and quickly photographs both sides. “Insurance,” she says with a grin, returning it. “In case they have trouble distributing medicine to anyone in need. Oh, and after Wallace is squared away, call Bob Dillen at the San Diego PD and tell him everything. He’ll make sure nothing important gets swept under the rug.”

Veronica and her friend hug goodbye; Echolls sits on the ground staring at the tie tack while Weevil helps Fennel back to the car. Seems like V’s BFF is fading, exhausted by his ordeal--but he still grabs Weevil’s arm as soon as he’s buckled in.

“Thanks, man,” Fennel says, flashing a tired green smile. “For working so hard to save me, I really owe you one. And thanks for sticking around to look after these characters, too.”

“No problem, man, just get better.” Weevil pats the hood. “And less like a glow-stick at some rich kid’s party, this right here is not a good look for you.”

“Beats being dead,” Wallace says, and Weevil smiles and shuts the door. Veronica waves as Cindy drives away.

They descend into the tunnel, Weevil first (of course), Echolls shambling along ten feet back; Weevil wonders, watching him, if another trip to Pro Med’s in the cards. V has a hard time with the ladder, her hand doesn’t want to grip. She keeps flexing her fingers and frowning as they traverse the sandy dimness.

“You all right?” Weevil asks. V glances up at him with a faint smile.

“I landed weird when I fell this afternoon. My whole arm was numb for a while, then seemed better—maybe adrenaline masked the pain.” She waves off personal injury, activating the flashlight on her phone. “Doesn’t matter. Breitski’s got Dad’s down here somewhere--job one is to find him.”

“Dick’s on the premises, too,” Echolls contributes from behind. “And my stalker, whatshername, Jetson, and…Piz.”

“Oh yeah,” Veronica says, unenthusiastically. “Those guys. Sure, we can save them as well, if the opportunity presents.”

“Whatever we’re planning, we need to do it soon.” Weevil frowns as the chanting grows louder. “D’Amato called right before I smashed my phone, said the military’s gonna drop bombs.”

“Great.” Echolls emits a choked half-laugh. “Shock and awe. My karma.”

“Man, what did Piznarski DO to you?” Weevil demands, turning back to watch the guy stagger. “Usually your conversation’s all five-dollar words, and you won’t ever fucking shut up.”

“I’m fine,” Echolls says, stubbornly, and manages a reassuring smile. “Gotta find Dad, can’t…get lit up. Then X-rays.”

Veronica frowns, laying a palm against his cheek; but takes him at his word, because they’re both drama queens with hard-ons for saving humanity. Weevil shakes his head, checks his watch, and points at the door through which chanting filters.

He tries the handle--it’s unlocked, so he cracks it and peeks through. Echolls and V line up above and below so they can see, and softly, Veronica gasps.

Inside a big-ass cave, done up like a Broadway theater, a hundred pink idiots mill, dressed in street clothes, bumping each other and yelling. A video screen on the wall is playing loops--a pink Nice Guy shoves a leather-clad douche off a pretty girl, who then melts into Pinkie’s arms.

That senator’s son who framed Echolls for murder lounges in a throne center-stage, surrounded on three sides by soldiers-for-hire. He’s desultorily leading the Pinks in a chant of, “What do we want? Revenge! When do we want it? Now!” between sips of Topo Chico.

And handcuffed to a bench, stage left, are Dick, Ruby and a groggy-looking Keith Mars.

DICK

Richard Casablancas, Esquire is way glad, at this point, he’s high as fuck. Because watching LUKE, of all people, turn out to be the brains behind a zombie superhero rebellion is…really pretty hilarious, when he thinks about it.

To Dick’s left, Keith Mars is finally starting to rise and shine. Which takes a load off, because Ron Ron would ruin anyone who let the guy die. “Wha…?” the slightly-less-tiny detective manages, trying to make it upright. “Where?”

“Take it easy, man.” Dick uses his shoulder to lever Daddy Mars upright. “I think Breitski whomped you good. You’ve got a knot on your temple the size of an egg.”

“Where am I?” Keith asks, sinking against the wall for support. “And what on Earth is…all this?”

“You’re in the catacombs,” Ruby buts in, on top of the sitch as usual. “Under the Van Vliet winery. I’m Ruby Jetson, by the way, Mr. Mars. You’ve probably heard of me?”

Keith frowns, clearly at a loss, and Dick explains, “Dude, she’s on our side, no worries. And as for ‘all this’…looks like a motivational meeting to rouse the idiot brigade?”

Luke abandons the chant, because none of the zombies are listening, and beckons one of the mercs. “They’re as riled up as they’re getting,” he says, draining his Topo Chico. Snaps for someone to fetch him another. “Get ‘em on a bus, drop ‘em off all over the city, let them wreck as much infrastructure as possible. And try to monitor their…activities during the trip. Last time we had to hose the seats down.”

The guy salutes, activates another flashing-light-klaxon, and rounds up a couple buddies to herd out the Hulks. The dumbasses moan, punch and protest—one tries to grab and hump the girl in the video—but the soldiers have cattle prods to keep them in line.

“Your evil plan will never work!” Ruby calls out, movie-bravely, and Luke spares her a bored look.

“Are you talking about them?” He accepts a fresh sparkling water and gestures with it at the Pink Horde. “What do you take me for? They couldn’t execute a plan if you drew it out in crayon. They’re just meant to tie up police resources--and confuse the public--while our REAL operation goes down.”

“Which is what?” Keith asks, seemingly calm. But Dick, who’s been interrogated by the guy more than once during Keith’s Sheriff days and Dick’s vandalism ones, recognizes his sneaky cop face. “World domination? Why is it always world domination with you guys?”

“Not the WORLD,” Luke says, impatient. “Just the nice part of California, from Neptune to Malibu. Our non-pink militia is poised to take over, during the chaos caused by those morons.”

“But dude,” Dick protests. “Why work so hard? You’re already rich as fuck, your dad’s a politician—you framed Logan for murder, plus threw Susan off a boat, and all you got was PROBATION.”

“Duh,” Luke says. “Would YOU want to report to some mouth-breather every week for a year? I’m sick of being told what to do! First my dad forbids me to come out, then that douchecanoe Cobb makes me pretend to be his friend, and THEN the cops get all up in my face, sending me to rehab for six MONTHS. All because stupid Carrie Bishop had to sing about my every tiny mistake, for catharsis or whatever.”

“Hey!” Ruby yells, struggling to get loose like she’s overcome with fury. “Carrie was a goddess! You take that back!”

“Whatever, wannabe.” Luke favors her with a dismissive look. “Anyway, a lot of us missed the old days when Van Lowe and the Lambs were Sheriffs, and we did what we wanted, and no one cared. So we figured, the whole country’s expecting Calexit anyway--why not oblige? Create our own little utopian kingdom, where nobody can tell us no. Sean, admittedly, got carried away with his Gods Among Men delusions of grandeur; but you know how cokeheads freak when their artistic travesties fail. Have you seen Sean around this evening, by the way? He’s been missing since last night, and he was supposed to run this meeting so I wouldn’t have to. He lives for the Dr. Wayne Dyer shit.”

“Yeah, he’s at the bottom of your service-road Pungi pit with a broken leg,” Dick says. “And some dead body named Andy to keep him company. Ruby gave him Kleenex, though, to wipe away his tears.”

Ruby snickers beside him; Dick smiles, ‘cause it feels good to make her laugh.

“Damn it!” Luke throws up his hands. “WHY is good help so hard to find?”

A yelling uproar begins as Veronica, Logan and Weevil burst in from the hallway--Dick grins, because about fucking time. “Ronniekins!” he calls, even though he knows she can’t hear. “You came to save me!”

“Veronica Mars,” Luke says with disgust, draining his Topo Chico and tossing it aside. “Always showing up to kill my buzz. Go take care of them for me, will you boys? We’re on a tight schedule of California-conquering, we don’t need Miss Nosy butting in.”

The mercs file down to fight, only Wei remaining behind, presumably as Luke’s bodyguard. Logan and Weevil, neither of whom frankly looks so hot, go back to back and raise fists; Veronica, who seems fine despite that memory-loss business, comes running towards the stage. She’s waving a gun…and granted, Dick’s still kinda high, but they can’t make pistols out of solid gold, can they?

“Get away from my father, Luke!” she yells, aiming; that little Ronnie face Dick privately considers chipmunk-ish is screwed up into a scowl. Wei doesn’t bother to take her weapon—probably he knows as well as everyone Veronica won’t shoot. Luke, safely shielded, stifles a snicker.

“Come on, guys, Star Wars reference!” He points at Veronica, then himself. “God, you’re a bunch of buzzkills. It’s like you’re not even grateful I’m changing the world for your BENEFIT!”

“Maybe Dick would rather live in the REAL world…with people who are actually his friends,” Ruby says defiantly, and laughter distracts Wei and Luke long enough for Veronica to toss Dick a handcuff key. He can’t catch it, because, well, handcuffs; but he puts his foot over it on the floor and winks.

“Friends like you?” Luke asks. “Or Veronica? Whatever, Veronica Mars CONSTANTLY oppresses Dick and me both. And it’s not like she doesn’t want the status that comes with being elite. I mean, she hitched her wagon to Logan fucking Echolls. That guy used to be our KING.”

Everybody turns for a minute to look at Logan, who’s mid-room fighting like a BOSS, throwing super-mercs around as if they’re Cabbage Patch dolls. Ruby fans herself, muttering, “HUBBA, HUBBA!” Veronica gets so distracted LUKE kicks her gun out of her hand.

Keith falls on the floor during the chaos, faking unconsciousness, but secretly whacking Dick in the ankle to attract his attention. Obligingly, Dick moves his foot. Keith grabs the key, and gets to work on his handcuffs.

“If I wasn’t so appalled, I’d be impressed,” Veronica bluffs, glaring at Luke and gauging the distance to the fallen gun. “Who knew you had a scheme like this in you?”

Breitski picks up Keith and sets him back on the bench; studies the fight mid-room, frowning, as he tosses the gun backstage, then reluctantly wades into the fray. Luke says, “Hey, I’m just tired of being kept down by the Man. If people would let me do what I want with no CONSEQUENCES, I would never have had to get nasty.”

Handcuffs undone, Keith covertly passes the key to Ruby, and chimes in to distract their captors’ attention. “I think you might want to brush up on your Bill of Rights, Haldemann,” he says. “You seem to be laboring under some misconceptions.”

“Yeah, well soon I’m not going to be laboring at ALL.” Luke cracks up over his own joke, then dives for the gun a half-second after Veronica does. They begin tussling on the floor for possession; Keith wades in to help, and Ruby gets herself free, then uses the key to unlock Dick.

Dick grabs his sort-of girl, plants one on her, says, “My hero!” while she blushes and shoves him (but not like she means it). Then he yells, “DUDE, I’M COMING!” and takes a running leap, stage-diving into the fray.

The fight’s down to six mercs versus the Three Amigos; Navarro’s getting the shit beat out of him, which Dick finds weird. It’s not like these guys are especially tough. Dick’s grabbing and throwing them like it’s a Matrix video game, and Logan’s a freaking machine. Super-soldier shmuper-soldier, he thinks, kicking one jackoff sideways across the room. They’re no match for the Wonder Pot. Dick just needs to figure out how to grow the stuff from scratch, then he’s gonna make millions.

“Dude, military training is seriously underrated!” he shouts at Logan, who grunts in response. His pal knocks two bad guys together just as Navarro goes flying, landing against the stage with a thud. Dick blocks a hammer punch by stupid Breitski, kicks the douchebag in the nards, and says, “Yeah, that hurts, doesn’t it?” when the guy stays down for a minute, writhing.

He forgets what he’s doing for a second—apparently he IS still baked--then cackles and punches some asshole in the neck. Navarro shakes it off and forges back into the fray. “It’s like this is all going in slow motion!” Dick yells with glee, spinning in a circle and striking a karate pose. “Super Weed is so cool! I know kung fu!”

“Man, how much dope did you SMOKE?” Navarro asks, barely dodging a blow that would have broken his nose for sure. “And why do you smell like piss?”

“Long story.” Dick waves it off. Then gapes as Logan grabs one of the two mercs still standing, swings him around over his head by one arm, and throws him all the way across the fucking room. “Holy shit, dude, someone ate his Wheaties this morning! Did you SEE that, Weevs? Even all sunburned and exhausted and shit, he is kicking ASS!”

“He’s sunburned?” Navarro demands, grabbing up an empty shoe and slamming it into Breitski’s face. “You’re practically scalded, even your eyes are fucking….oh SHIT! Shit, Casablancas, man, did you and Echolls touch the pink goo?”

Dick thinks back as he grabs Breiski and throws him onto the stage, where he slides halfway under the big, red curtain. “Well, Rubster said not to, while they were giving Wallace a bath. And Piz just chased me around and tried to hand me flowers…oh crap! Logan and I carried Wallace inside the house, after I kinda-sorta ran him over, and we didn’t wash off! We’re fucking PINKIFYING!”

Logan lets out a roar, snarling as he waits for the next threat to come at him. Dick glances around, observes that all the nearby mercs look unconscious, and pulls the half-smoked joint out of his pocket. “Don’t worry, dude, I’ve got this. I just need to spark up and blow some in Logan’s face. This pot must work, like, synergistically with the pink to make people extra-smart; because every time I’ve gotten high all afternoon, I turn into, like, this super-efficient genius.”

Weevil manages a skeptical look with his swollen face; but Dick, undeterred, sticks to his plan. Logan tries to attack him when he ventures close—man the guy really does look as grapefruit-colored as Piz—but Dick just says, “No, dude, trust me.” Then grabs his arm, and blows the biggest drag he can right up Logan’s nostrils.

“Help!” Veronica yells from the stage, and Weevil goes sprinting off her direction--but Dick’s got his hands full, so he doesn’t bother to look. He feeds Logan another hit, which brings enough of his friend’s mind back to bat weakly at the smoke and go, “No, Navy….trouble…BREITSKI!”

Then he shoves Dick down and aims a punch over his head, right into that pain-in-the-ass rogue cop’s face.

Rolling his eyes at Wei’s deck shoes with no socks, Dick trips the guy and stands to feed the last hit to his friend, because that’s the kind of sharing bros do. Logan coughs, says, “I can’t believe this is helping,” then kicks Breitski for good measure. “You need to resign yourself…jail,” he adds, wiping sweat from his brow. “It’s two against one, and we’re all on the same drugs.”

“Ah, but I believe in the righteousness of my cause.” Wei grabs Logan’s foot and tries to yank him down—but Logan does some jump-over-the-leg martial-arts thing and plants a foot in the guy’s head because he’s just. that. awesome.

“Impressive,” Breitski admits, shaking off the blow. “I could use fighters like you two. And frankly, I’ve never understood why you’d both thwart us rather than join us. Aren’t you as sick of lawyer fees and taxes as I am? Superior officers threatening to court-martial, parents causing trouble even from jail, and never enough time to REALLY surf?”

He backs off and begins to circle, somehow under the impression they have time to listen to words. “Help us establish our kingdom, and all that’s behind you. The wannabe’s dumb enough to sign up for Pink Formula take the fall. And you know the serving class will fall in line, because things won’t be so different, really, from the way they are now. You could be kings again, just like you were in high school. You’ll never face another murder charge as long as you live.”

“Wow.” Logan tilts his head to loosen his neck, bones cracking. The smirk on his face clues Dick in that whatever comes next will be sweet. “Ten years ago, right after Veronica left, that line might have held faint appeal. But I’ve cleaned up my act, since, and learned something your desperate-to-be-Bodie-Chang ass won’t—rules and social accountability are GOOD.”

“Whoo, political arguments from the Log-meister! The Wonder Pot is wor-KANG!” Dick claps as Logan lays his right hook on Brietski, a really epic one, like a sledgehammer. The guy goes flying backwards and lands on his knees, flush to the edge of the stage. Rushing forwards, grinning (because no matter how spit-shined he gets, Logan’s always gonna love a good fight) he cocks a fist to annihilate. But before he can, Veronica appears from behind the curtain, and administers a whack to the poor bastard’s head with the butt of her golden gun.

Breitski goes down with a smear of gold to his temple, eyes rolling back. “And that,” she tells his unconscious form, with satisfaction, “is what you get when you mess with the bull. Or the bull’s impressively ethical boyfriend, as the case may be.”

“Ronniekins!” Dick crows, as Logan leaps onto the stage to lift and embrace her. “Is that gun, like, made of titanium? Because nobody’s disputing you have balls, babes, but this asshole’s super-soldier strong.”

Veronica holds out a palm, which is bright pink; pushes up her sleeve to reveal creepy-ass pink tendrils stretching up her arm. “I held hands with Logan,” she says, favoring her biggest admirer with a worried glance. “So temporarily, I am, too.”

Dick glances up at the stage, where Haldemann lies hogtied with the curtain rope, under the watch of Keith Mars and his handgun. Navarro slumps, panting, on the bench. Around the room, a sea of out-of-it super mercs lie groaning, but…Dick frowns. “Where’s Rubes?” he asks, patting his pocket and wishing he had just one more joint. “I ran off to help fight, and when I looked up, she was gone.”

Veronica ignores him, naturally, busy administering antidote to Logan and herself. Just as Dick’s about to remind her he could use that shit too, the door at the far end of the room slams open. A Special Forces squad storms in, late as usual because fucking military red tape.

Dick knows the drill so he just lies on his face with his hands behind his head. Wonders if his lawyer’s even awake yet.

A small boot nudges him, after a moment. A voice from above says, “You can get up now. We’re only arresting the actual criminals.”

He rolls over, and there, looming, is Ruby, decked out in a flak vest and helmet over the Lara Croft gear, carrying a freaking automatic. She extends a hand to help; he stands and gestures up and down at her outfit. “What’s this all about? Where did you GO?”

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” she says, with a faint smirk, and he actually can’t tell if she’s kidding. She pats his chest. “But let me remind you, I DID hint from the start I had a part to play.”

Going up on tiptoe, she kisses Dick’s cheek, then wanders off to confer with what looks like the squad’s leader. She looks scarily at home holding a gun. Dick files the moment away for the spank bank, since it’s clear, now, she’s too badass to date him.

Logan moves up beside him, sweaty and starting to show bruises—though it’s pretty hard to tell how big they are, since the poor bastard’s currently bright green. “Was that Ruby JETSON?” he asks, running a hand through his short Navy hair. “I thought her leg was broken!”

Dick shrugs and mutters, “Women.” He figures that pretty much says it all.

VERONICA

A half hour of general chaos follows, during which super-soldiers are cuffed and hauled to quarantine, and Luke is led away in chains; her friends are herded up to the surface for individual debriefs, while the catacombs are quartered and searched. Veronica answers a tired commando’s questions to the best of her ability. Watches Logan joke, out of the corner of her eye, with a couple of armored guys who seem to know him.

When her story’s told she searches the crowd for Weevil, last spotted in an ambulance receiving first aid; she still has no clue what he was doing here, and curiosity’s her besetting sin. The ambulance hasn’t moved—Sean Friedrich, attached to a stretcher, is being loaded into it--but Weevil’s long gone. Probably he headed back to Neptune, away from all the authority figures with guns. V decides to stop by his shop on Monday. She needs help with a few more cases, and he’ll be easier to grill if she gets him alone.

Veronica DOES find Dick, sprawled morosely on the lawn with his back to a tree, a woman’s purse and grocery bag beside him. He’s still lobster-pink, in startling contrast to his yellow hair. Glancing around covertly to make sure they’re unobserved, she hisses to attract his attention, and administers a drop of antidote.

“Aw, I KNEW you cared.” Dick tilts his head back, letting the violent trembling that seems to be a side effect overtake him. Watches, amused, as she re-pockets the still-half-full vial. “Not planning to give that up to the brass?”

“Do YOU trust our government to use powerful drugs for the good of humanity?” She sits beside him. “I told them we drank it all. Besides, they’ve got the formula, if they really want to save people. If not—if some kind of cover-up takes place—I want as much proof as possible squirreled away, so I can create a counter-narrative.”

“You’ll need this, then.” Dick hands over the woman’s bag; Veronica frowns, because it looks just like hers from college. “It’s Ruby’s,” Dick explains, maybe reading her expression. “She disappeared and left it behind. Her cell’s dead, but there’s a video in ‘photos’ of Lydia, Sean and Jeff confessing to crimes.”

“Nice!” Veronica fishes out the heavily-bedazzled phone and pockets it. “Way to be a player on the noble team for a change.”

The commandos begin loading up their transports; the guy in charge approaches, followed by Logan leading Dad (who’s got a bandage around his head, but looks a lot more chipper). “Ms. Mars, Mr. Casablancas,” the officer greets them, admirably avoiding comment on their general greenness. “Is your vehicle on the lawn over there operational?”

Dick shrugs and looks to Veronica, who nods. Logan says, “I’ve got the keys, I’ll check,” and crosses to the SUV. A moment later, the engine revs, and he returns with a thumbs-up.

“Excellent,” Guy in Charge says. “What we need you to do is remove it from the premises immediately. Unofficially, this place will look like the surface of the moon in about half an hour, and we don’t want any debris found that point to your presence. As for the serum you absorbed through the skin--medic says you all seem healthy. But we’d like you to avoid contact with civilians for the night, just in case. If you report to the base in Coronado you’ll be given temporary rooms, and a full repeat eval in the morning. Maybe the docs can help with the…staining issue.” He glances over at Logan, just barely represses a snicker, and adds, “Good thing Echolls already has a girlfriend.”

Logan offers him a bland, yet still somehow sarcastic, return smile, and the guy grins. Shouts, “Move your asses, we’re Oscar Mike!” and climbs into the nearest vehicle. The military convoy moves slowly down the service road…accompanied, faintly, by the sound of some jackass singing “It Ain’t Easy Being Green.”

“Hoo-kay.” Logan dusts his hands together in a good-riddance gesture. “Anybody want to enjoy a re-enactment of my basic training days, insufficient-sleep version? Sounds like they have some uncomfortable cots and scratchy blankets with our names on them, waiting.”

“I’m doing concussion watch, so I’ll be in the sick bay,” Dad says, with a wry smile. “But I’d love a chance to lie down. It’s not every day an old guy like me helps his daughter wrestle evil masterminds.”

“Need a hand climbing up?” Logan asks. Dad waves him off and gets in alone. Logan takes the opportunity to grab Veronica and kiss her senseless, the sweet-but-promising-scorching variety that always gets her going. She sighs, happily, twining her arms around his neck…surprisingly unfazed that he DOES look vaguely Kermit-y.

Dick snorts disdain. Removes a blonde wig from the bag, which he slaps on his head, muttering, “Oh, Logan, do me, you’re so MANLY!” Reaches back in to locate an old wine bottle, which he uncorks and toasts them with in one economical motion. Lifts it to his mouth, sniffs…then tosses it away, repulsed.

“Pink goo,” he explains, examining his hand to make sure nothing got on him. “Maybe some of that super-old wine zombie-formula-ified when it spoiled? Lydia could have figured out her crackpot idea from there.”

Logan laughs, bends his head for another kiss. Which is when Piz comes rushing out of the woods, screaming, “RONKAAAAAA!” and tackles Dick sideways.

Veronica digs for her taser, before remembering she gave it to Mac; Keith calls, “What’s happening?” from the passenger seat, and attempts to get down. Logan runs straight towards the altercation (of course), but trips on a tree root. Piz begins humping a startled Dick with a fervency that’s truly disturbing.

“Dude, get OFF,” Dick shouts, an unfortunate choice of words, and fumbles for the purse beside him. Manages to remove a can of air before any of the rest of them can find a weapon, and sprays it directly into Piz’s eyes.

Captain Pinkness shrieks and scuttles back, and Dick follows, whacking him with a hammer. “Give it up, man!” he yells, striking Piz’s shoulder with a meaty crunch. “Veronica is NEVER going to date a guy who acts so needy!”

“YOU NOT LOVE LOGAN LIKE YOU LOVE MEEEE!” Piz screeches in response, deterred from romance by the viciously swinging hammer. He stares, panting, for a moment, angry longing of a thousand thwarted Nice Guys in his eyes; then turns and runs, past the barn and off into the distance, almost too fast to track.

He’s just reached the line of foliage near the cell tower when the first bomb hits. Both the fake tree and NPR’s Greatest Millennial Hope are abruptly reduced to a plume of white ash.

Veronica winces. Logan shouts, “We need to MOVE!” grabs her hand, and races for the car, Dick on their heels. They pile in. Executing the kind of tidy three-sixty only a jet pilot could, Logan guns it down the service road at top speed, the approaching apocalypse literally at their heels.

Bombs are going off in the rearview by the time they make it onto the highway--Veronica winces as incandescent flashes and sonic booms wipe the Van Vliet Experiment from existence. Sighs, as they gain distance and the noise fades, slumping back into her seat.

“Hey guys?” she asks, not opening her eyes. “Thanks for riding to the rescue when I didn’t make it home.”

“Protecting Veronica Mars is job one,” Logan says, and she can hear the smile in his voice. “If you went and made it easy on us, life would be no fun.”

“Well in that case…” she says. “I won’t bother fake-promising never to do it again.”

“You gotta be you.” Dick elbows her from his position sprawled against the window. “Come on, let’s get to that base, see what they can do about this whole turning-green problem. Maybe Rubester will show up dressed like a naughty nurse and administer the treatment.”

“Ew,” Veronica says, but not with any heat. She stretches her legs out, crossing them at the ankle. Drifts off as they speed down the road, the receding sound of explosions like a lullaby.

THE END

This concludes our VMHQ Round Robin / Campfire Tale story. We hope you all enjoyed this collaborative fic as much as we did. Many thanks to all the wonderful writers who participated, and all the wonderful readers who commented and reblogged the story posts. 

Next up at VMHQ is our Holiday Fic Grab Bag challenge, which will post on Christmas Eve! Submit your prompts to our Ask Box now, and maybe your favorite writer will be inspired!

[mindmachine31]

Gateway to Relaxation at Will

LED Light Glasses for Brainwaves

Notice the two LED positioning of the light frame on top and the ‘light intensity wheel’ for adjusting the brightness for the light frames on the bottom. The top light frame was used with the IQ 9110 and the light frame with the light intensity wheel was used with the IQ Jr light and sound brainwave frequency mind machine. The process applied by some of these machines is said to induce brainwave synchronisation or entrainment. The development of alpha EEG feedback (see neurofeedback) is an important starting point for biofeedback and its explicit use for entering altered states of consciousness. In these decades, Jack Schwarz built one of the first mind machines using rhythmic sounds and variable frequency lights in goggles to produce certain mental states.[5] Enterprises started to produce different types of mind machines and also some scientist followed the line of research to explore if and how these devices elicit effects on brain processes.

Binaural beats are auditory sounds that are transmitted to the brain via electrical frequencies or Hertz (Hz). The brain then processes the audio stimulation and responds. Hearing, processing, then responding. In 1839 Heinrich Wilhelm Dove realized and researched how binaural beat stimulation affected the mind. Through the years public opinion indicates binaural beats can induce a desirable brainwave state of consciousness, especially associating the ability to relax, meditate or for getting creative or going to sleep.

This is how binaural beats stimulate the brainwaves of the mind: have two separate channels that generate independent brainwave frequencies; set one channel at a specific frequency such as 235Hz and the second channel at 244Hz. The difference in Hertz between the two channels is what the mind actually ‘hears’. In this example the difference is 9Hz, which is in the alpha or relaxed and focused brainwave state of mind. 

A common misconception is the belief that to be effective binaural beat stimulation must be listened to through headphones or earbuds. In “Mind States / An Introduction to Light and Sound Technology” the author, Michael Landgraf, describes the before, during and after- effects of audio pulsed binaural beat frequencies generated through laptop speakers, stereo speakers and in one instance a P.A. system, to educational, medical and law enforcement communities. Apparently, when playing two independent tones or frequencies in an audience situation, perception of the binaural beat audio stimulation appears to be somewhat altered when compared to using headphones. Depending upon the area of the room frequency stimulation can travel certain distances before being heard, and the sounds being heard, the audio brainwave stimulation, will be bouncing off walls or weakening, creating in effect offset frequencies. And here is where it gets fun. In the Mind Machines blog there is a post Next Big Brother Technology that describes the possibilities of pulsed binaural beat frequency generation in audience situations. Binaural beat stimulation for audience participation is a safe, cost-effective way for achieving targeted brainwave states. The frequency generator Mind Machines uses for generating sound frequencies is the “virtual515” dual-independent binaural beat MP3 by Christopher Oliver. The programs contained in the ‘515’ include: Energize (Beta), Relax (Alpha), Learning (Theta), Visualization (Alpha/Theta) and Sleep (Delta). 

In the educational community, teachers have found conducting their classroom activities while simultaneously playing binaural beat programs, at very low volume, promotes physical and emotional states of relaxation while mentally focused in students during classroom activities. As various research studies have proven, students in a relaxed state are capable of assimilating and retaining more information than students who are in excited or anxious states. There are two ways teachers and students can use binaural beat brainwave stimulation for learning and relaxation. For personal use, where the student will be stationary, headphones or earbuds are preferred. If the students will be moving around or there are several individuals listening simultaneously, then stereo (or amplified or computer) speakers work best. Binaural beats targeting the alpha, theta or combination of alpha and theta appear to enhance academic performance. The audio frequencies generated need not be played loud to be effective. The volume of the binaural beats should be about the same as the “hum” of a fluorescent light.

A mind machine (aka brain machine or light and sound machine) uses pulsing rhythmic sound, flashing light, electrical or magnetic fields, or a combination of these, to alter the frequency of the user’s brainwaves. What I like about these View Hole lightframes by Mind Alive is how well built they are. There are some really cheap looking open-eye lightframes out there that pale in comparison to the View Holes. View Holes are sturdy with solid construction, have white overlays covering the LEDs that are situated around the periphery of your vision and are made to last, especially with everyday use. And their cost is minimal, only $20 more than the normal closed-eye lightframe variety. Mind machines can induce deep states of relaxation, concentration, and in some cases altered states of consciousness, which have been compared to those obtained from meditation and shamanic exploration. Photic mind machines work with flickering lights embedded in sunglasses.

In addition to binaural beat stimulation being utilized as a tool for learning, Mind Machines has sponsored learning/relaxation programs that incorporate this type of frequency generation into their daily work environment. In business, medical, law enforcement and retail settings results indicate an environment conducive to relaxed, focused awareness. The benefits agencies and businesses using binaural beat stimulation may include increased worker harmony and production with a decrease in employee absenteeism due to stress.

From https://mindmachines1.blogspot.com/2018/09/gateway-to-relaxation-at-will.html

from https://mindmachines1.wordpress.com/2018/09/24/gateway-to-relaxation-at-will/ from https://mindmachine2.blogspot.com/2018/09/gateway-to-relaxation-at-will.html

[ratherhavetheblues]

CLAIRE DENIS’  WHITE MATERIAL “Nothing’s mine. But I’m in charge.”

© 2018 by James Clark

     Sometimes it pays to be ridiculously late. Years ago, I saw two or three of the films of Claire Denis, and  wrote them off (figuratively) as overwrought, Grand Guignol melodramas pertaining to the outrageous predations upon Africans. Failing to heed the well-known predilection of auteurs to sermonize bullshit about their efforts seeing eye-to-eye with politically correct dullards, I left that hidden and unbeknownst treasure to pursue the singularities of quite untrammeled sensibility within the wheelhouses of the likes of Wong Kar Wai, for instance (his, Happy Together [1997], recently posted).

Having also been a latecomer to the skills of Ingmar Bergman, there were notions about Denis’ extremities which began to make much more sense. Since her film, White Material (2010), is copiously woven with the cosmic elements to be seen in Bergman’s, The Seventh Seal (1957), that seems to be a good starting point. It is fearlessness, not salvation, being the essence of Bergman’s work; and it is fearlessness, not foreign aid, of the essence of Denis’ work. Therefore, our first step has to do with our protagonist, Maria, tempting the fates by refusing to get away from the collision of rebel and French colonial militia forces in mid-century Africa. At a road on her coffee plantation she is visited by a hovering French Army helicopter, from which the following one-way dialogue screams: “Madame Vial! The French Army is pulling out! We’re leaving! You’ll be completely cut off! Think it over, Madame Vial! Think of your family… We’re pulling out… You must leave immediately.” Madame Vial swishes away as best she can the reddish soil kicked up by the chopper, which resembles a dinosaur, especially its image as a shadow in flight (a fossil), a commotion whose time has passed in a peculiar way. The retreaters shower down many black containers with the words, “Survival Kit,” prominently inscribed. Maria, after lifting one up, tosses it away contemptuously.

Before that aerial, long-distance event, we are privy to her presence in close-up—a performance carefully defining why (for better or worse) she won’t take orders from French rationality. At the film’s outset she seems at her wits’ end, treading along a dusty rural road. A car approaches and she screams, “Pull over!” Aggrieved and more anxious than ever after that rebuff, she does manage to attend to her shredded emotions. She becomes angry and her gait becomes informed with resolve, a march. Then she swings into a jog which soon becomes a marathon flow. Her panache is tripped up, however, by the appearance along that artery of a truck carrying militiamen sitting rigidly and myopically and failing to notice her crouching in the bush along the road. She resumes her run, now in full stride as if mindful of competition needing to be met with formidable rigor, distinct from that of the semi-professionals seated in that truck. So rhythmic is her take-off, that one might imagine her being a master of tuning discovery to notable power. That her mastery is contingent, though, soon plays out when, having brought her run to a cement highway, she hails by gesture, the screaming silenced, an overloaded bus. “Can I get in?” she asks of the driver. “No,” he declares. “No room.” (And therewith the sinuosity of Joseph and Mary, in The Seventh Seal, joins the search.) Some considerate soul on the roof calls out (to the only white to be found), “Hey, climb up here!” Instinctive composure leads her to prefer staying on a rung of the ladder leading to the overflow (and perhaps an undertow). (A ladder being a place of motion.) “I’ll stay here, thanks…” As the cruise resumes, Maria, in close-up, and shaken, measures what her venture means. One meaning we can well discern is her isolation. Also, without a word, she shows us that she has entered a death-trap. A mountain range in the distance infers that her marathon skills have encountered an impossible terrain. (The name-plate on that back of the vehicle, “Tricolino,” evokes a tripartite situation, one facet of that tripling being the three colors of the French flag [and another facet being synthesis, dialectic, the domain of Bergman, and his theme song of the impossible trick]). That the term is placed in a rather careless art deco font perhaps implies that the rigors of fusion making demands upon her have not been appropriately rendered. But, on the other hand, amidst the rattle and roar of the bus, she claws herself back to equilibrium. Seen in close-up, from the interior of the back-seat window, her face is contorted but her hands are large (remarkable for such a slight figure) and sinuous in gripping the ladder. Seen from outside, she now remarkably presents as an uncanny ease. Her mouth is set, her eyes are calm. A view of her right biceps casts her unmistakably as inured to hard physical labor, having a priority of muscularity (with perhaps scant circumspection). A militia jeep brings the flight to an abrupt halt. Our volatile protagonist becomes a study of terror and defeat. She looks around, frantically. Inside, it’s the French-trained trooper, trained in violent arrogance: “Driver. Papers!” Outside, another grey-uniformed, French-chosen, pulled-out-of-destitution public servant swaggers along the outside of the bus and encounters Madame Vial. He demands, “Where are you going?” She replies, “Home… the coffee plantation further down that way…” Having seen a lot of imperious, gallic, Cartesian dominance in his instructors, he proceeds to enjoy cutting her down, as he, no doubt, had been similarly treated on the road to being an effete prig. “There used to be a roadblock here. Did you ever pay them?” The coffee farmer, feeling bound to give an honest account to avoid a Kafka complication, replies, “Yes, I think I did once…” “How much?” the go-getter dictates. “About a hundred dollars,” is Maria’s admission to the free-lance auditor, with an audience to impress. “To those thugs?” he pretends to be aghast. “No wonder they act above the law!” Maria reasons (not her area of impact), “I had to get through… Everyone pays…” Her prosecutor/ highwayman continues with, “That’s what breeds corruption… Because of people like you, this country is filthy…” The military hero waves the bus through. Before he does, the stung target of his insult jumps into the in-fact-not-full premium seating and chooses a space at the back window. She looks out her new vantage point, and we might—in light of the difficult task of blending, in the air—see her on the hook to bring off an impossible trick of juggling, as posed by Jof, the circus caravan driver, in The Seventh Seal. Does her obsequious question, “Can I sit down, Sir?” account for such a creative move?” All around her, the passengers show fear. What made her smile in that context? On the soundtrack, a low, ringing sound wells up as the raw forest grinds by.

The passage we have just witnessed comprises, in fact, the run-up to the saga’s denouement. Her errant smile—to be distinguished from the valid upswings of her balancing act—locates her en route, her coffee enterprise defunct (her having driven her mutinous crew [“You bewitched us!”], with a gun to her head, to a supposed “survival” zone), to reach the blood-bath at the farm and, like the off-kilter in the bus, machete her venal (and yet considerably sound) father-in-law for having, along with her already shot-dead ex, courtesy of the militia, signed-off the property to the venal, indigenous mayor of a nearby town.

As with the work of Bergman, particularly, The Seventh Seal—in a time of lethal plague and venal scheming—it is Maria’s having entered an arena of sensibility tempering “survival” with hitherto discounted wit and grace, which galvanizes this film. Therefore, the eventuation comes at us not in lineal order, but for the sake of heightening the protagonist’s performance of a priority our world seems to be allergic to. The performance of a pair of medieval and middling jugglers, musicians and clowns (in the film from the distant past) upstages an earnest campaign to gain favor from a powerful dictator seemingly rewarding a binge of personal advantage. They turn that trick by way of momentary “vision,” sensuous disposition offering a perspective upon nature vastly unlike “the real world.”

Thus, cutting away from Maria’s being insulted by the pedestrian, stuff-shirt, venomous African cop, we have, from quite a few days before that bilious bus ride, one of her own moments of “vision.” In close-up, she is at her red-soil property, on her dirt bike, and on top of the world. Her face is ecstatic, her head lifted to the heavens, the wind whipping in her hair, and the ferocious noise of the machine only augments her joy. Though we’ve already seen her having been beaten down (just as Jof was beaten down by the barflies in The Seventh Seal) we can call her an “acrobat” of sorts. Jof, you’ll recall, had hoped their baby boy, Michael, would become an acrobat. But not only that, he was attentive to the boy’s necessity of, beyond a flash in the pan, being a “juggler” (a weaver of disparate initiatives, which he cites for being “one impossible trick”). We receive a long take of her visit to those special sources for her to fly with and thereby become a creative partner. Still in close-up, she lifts her left hand and spreads her fingers in contacting a pure dynamic she conveys to be her homeland. Then the right hand tests the current. It leads our eyes to the branches overhanging the road, now a blur, more motion than matter.

This bracing moment, however, was not without its evil. That cut to before the wheels fell off  presents the reddish-haired head and shoulders of Maria from behind; but it could just as well have been her girlish son, Manuel, a teenager, spawned with that Andre she once married and quickly left (but also stayed on , as the only business person on the plantation). (Could there be something called a Californian Frenchman? When Andre uses that bike, it’s Easy Ridertime, also into death, by way of mawkish, sluggish self-adoration.) That Maria has made impressive inroads into creative action is not in question. That her accomplishment is glaringly incomplete—and nowhere more sordid than tolerating, even celebrating, the inertia of Manuel—is also a certainty. And “white material,” with its spray of connotations culminating in the factor of the skill of Maria, is all about having or not having—as with Bergman—what it takes to be a human (to master the “impossible”).

In the course of her seven-day work weeks, she (needing to replenish workers in face of the rebel threats against white enterprises and the questionable militia form of law and order) hires a new crew-boss who tells her of his young daughter being sick. Maria asks what’s wrong, and the new recruit can only say, “She’s in bed. She doesn’t move.” Maria recommends the clinic and he tells her, “It’s too late now.” That could be Manuel. But her self-importance (her competence in the fields being in direct opposition to her parenting) finds her stymied to act upon that responsibility, a stasis not touching the type of juggling being part of her strengths. She falls asleep during her dinner on the patio late one night, the night she brought her crew back to full strength. Her dream concerns a social visit to the mayor, a family man, surprisingly enough (but then his leaning had always been about advantage for the sake of domesticity, and the wider ranges of survival). “He’s [Manuel] grown up,” the host declares. It’s not just that. His mind runs all over the place. He’s become a dog…”/ “Insane,” Maria agrees. (That civic dispenser of blame surfaces as a measure of tone, not narrative progress, in a scene where Andre proposes to sell the farm [insolvent, it turns out to be, despite Maria’s strivings]. The mayor’s little daughter pops up with a bottle of Fanta, her favorite. Stolid sobriety, and infantile fantasy. The world in a nutshell; but not, despite slippage, the world of Maria.) “You botched it with him,” the voice of reason maintains. You didn’t finish the job.” (Very true. But her finish is light years away from his.) She laughs cynically, in face of that defeat.

The “insanity” of Manuel functions here, beyond the display of the protagonist’s dismaying dividedness, as a recurrent amazement  to Denis that sadomasochistic rampage flits across the appetites of a tasteless (Fanta-prone) populace. Maria—spurred to do something about Manuel’s sleeping  far into the afternoons, by Andre’s new partner declaring that her son from Andre is “different” (superior) to Maria’s sluggish output—forces entry to the bedroom and insists on his showing some sentience. In response he goes to the pool in the yard and floats on his back like a diseased seal. The silent, decisive, self-contained marathoner shrinks to the likes of, “Manuel, get up! How can you sleep all day in bed? I don’t know what to do. You disappoint me… Nothing interests you. You loaf around all day. We can’t talk. It’s like we don’t exist… I’ll send you to France. What happened? I can’t believe you’re my son. Losing a crop is worse than a fire. Letting your self go is the vilest thing a boy can do. It’s loathsome!” After she leaves to take up once again her (relative) success story at the coffee fields, two of the rebel children soldiers now drifting about the property in the absence of direction from their leader, “the Boxer,” mortally wounded and finding sanctuary of sorts in one of the plantation’s out-buildings, come close to harpooning  Manuel as he does absolutely nothing but leak incoherent venom. Andre chases them off and pampers the “not different” son. “It’ll be fine, son, you’ll see” [Andre’s counting on the mayor to follow up on the promise of escape in exchange for the business being as delicate and dull as his figurine boy].

The detour through the mayor’s office prepares for the prize-fight imagery to come as further sealing Maria’s darkening fate. Andre’s fatuous rationale to Cherif, the mayor, as to squeezing Maria out of the business and out of the monies left, “I’m protecting her from herself,” comprises a prelude to a spate of cat and mouse. “I’m glad to hear the plantation is worthless. I keep you alive. Without me you’d be rotting on the Garonne” [river, in France]. It’s a nice piece of land, but still, if I add up everything you owe me, I should first of all seize the plantation; and second, kick you out! And you’d still owe me and the government.” To provide additional nightmare, Cherif (almost “Cheri”) points out to Andre his “personal militia,” a group of bath house devotees. When Andre laughs, “Come on, spare me!” the family man/ politician prompt his bodyguards, “Anything to say?” “Yes,” they call out. “What is it?” the cheerleader prompts. “Knock down the rebels,” they chime, and they preposterously assume triumphant gestures.

Andre tells Maria about the close-call at the pool. “Two kids with a machete and spear…” Impassively she replies, “I’ll tell Jean-Marie [a previous crew-boss] tonight.” When the ex persists, “Those two kids were strange, threatening… attacking Manuel,” all she says is, “I’m going” [back to the microcosm and back to squelching the macrocosm]. Those trespassers soon show up again, wandering through the house with their hard eyes, and coming across a print showing medieval soldiers with hard eyes, consigning a “witch” to the stake. (Hello, Mr. Bergman. And your doomed witch and all that jazz, and malignancy, from The Seventh Seal.) Though our protagonist puts up a front that hard eyes mean nothing, her finding interest in the imagery of sadistic persecution reveals that it has, on occasions, anyway, occurred to her that the unfinished business of juggling needs attention. (Andre tries to get through to her that she won’t be able to sell the coffee now. But she cuts him off with, “You’re getting defeatist.”) Manuel is at home and he actually wakes up to see the invasion (though he is too late to see one of them find and pocket Maria’s handgun, salted away amidst her panties). The kids rush out, cackling like chickens, perhaps cock-fight birds. And Manuel, in this regard like his mother, discounts the violence overrunning the moment. Quaffing down an entitlement long past its expiry date, he pursues the primitive cynics. That he pads along, having not thinking that footwear might be necessary, cues up a soundtrack of that growling tone heard earlier. The undisciplined but advantageous squawkers see a new form of combat arising when Manuel cuts his foot. Taking off his jersey to mop up the blood and brush away some of the mud, he limps forward; and his “prey” sees him as an easy prey. Soon a machete is at his throat and Manuel is pushed to his knees. Now, at last, he realizes that the skinny adversaries will enjoy displaying that they are more powerful than he is. One of the illiterate boys cuts off a swatch of the truant’s locks, and then he sniffs the hair he holds in his hand. The arrested spear-thrower runs his hand over Manuel’s would-be bad-ass Gothic tattoos. “Yellow Dog,” the machete- and gun-totter sneers. One of the effectively bad-asses rips off his gold necklace. The machete blade returns to Manuel’s throat as his combat career seems to be at an embarrassing end. A German Luger gets loaded up and both of the black sociopaths shoot into the air while the white sociopath stays petrified on his knees. Manuel’s jersey has become a flag—a red flag of rebellion, but also a white towel of surrender.

This episode has an extension by way of the scuttlebutt hovering around the source of the homicide, namely, “The Boxer,” (who turns out to be crew-boss Jean-Marie’s nephew), and a fan, no doubt of boxer, Mohammed Ali, who performed in Africa at that era. Like “Gaseous Cassius,” he has covered himself with a mystique of superhuman imperviousness to pain and his branding includes nifty murals showing himself always a winner, flexing his muscles as if having just won a fight. (The flexing of Maria’s muscles had been far less focused and yet far more valid.)  In contradistinction to the mayor’s “fighters,” babbling about “knocking down” the upstarts, one of those posters persists near the mayor’s bailiwick, a portrait including the supposedly up and coming leader with a red star on his cap—part of the off-shore borrowing by which the self-styled salts of the earth expose themselves to be uninspired. Though the opening moment of the film shows him on is back, having died from a gunshot wound (militia men cautiously enjoying  the loss), we come to see in the prequel a stoic but less than heroic fabulousness. His devotees may prate about his invincibility, but we first see him (when alive) hitting the ground (as if by a plague) to avoid a truck full of underlings in the service of the French military, still in control despite rhetoric of liberation and self-determination. On his way to find a hide-out on Maria’s land and Maria’s sheds, he mounts a horse having been wandering on the property, and with his hoody he resembles a medieval soldier, recalling Block and Jons and their baggage, in The Seventh Seal. The plantation church he passes posts a sign, “God Doesn’t Give Up;” also, a cock struts around. Here he is noticed by a fan, and the discovery soon finds its way to the largely tiny army. The adult in charge childishly celebrates, “I knew it! They can’t take him down! If I could meet the Boxer, God could do no more for me! No KO’s!” Then a cut to the Boxer’s bleeding gut. Another cut features Maria calling out to Manuel, “Get up, Manuel, please! I need you!” The bedroom door is locked. Then she goes on to notice one of her sheds unlocked. There she meets the Boxer who is lying down but not as inert as Manuel. She asks, “Are you Jean-Marie’s nephew?” On hearing her guess was right, she asks, “Does he know you’re here?” The nephew (suddenly becoming less than huge), looks to his swollen reputation, by way of, “He’ll be glad to see me” [the awesome celebrity]. She offers him a drink of water and some rice in a bowl. Closely following this hiatus, there is Maria berating the staff for its “pulling out.” “You don’t get it! You let them scare you!” [in the back of her mind she knowing herself to be pretty tough—tougher, more regal, than the Boxer; but, as we well recognize, foolishly, which is to say, weakly, overestimating her strengths]. A pirate radio DJ cuts in, quixotically devoted to reggae, not African music, and he emotes, “Listen to my words, fearless young rascals. The Boxer is back! He’s in hiding. Go find him. Go out there and find him!” Another communique, even more fevered than the last, reads, “Some have walked a hundred miles in search of the Boxer…”

The two little punks, loosely linked to the slipshod “revolution,” had been bright enough—clever in their endless delinquency—to choose restraint in delivering punishment to a victim and thereby avoiding consequential punishment to themselves. The brush with violence had left the clueless Manuel stripped to his underpants and frozen by the danger and humiliation, staring at the unforgiving scrubby turf. Andre comes along, and for the second time sends away the lively incidence of plague. He and the straw-boss provide some clothes, and Maria is nonplussed but not visibly shocked or dismayed (her temperance coinciding with the slipperiness of the punks). She and the paid troubleshooter inspect a hole in the fence. She says, “It’s been like this for months.” Then, after looking for footprints, she declares, “Must be young shepherds…” (That could be an ironic reprise of the rapist-murderers-shepherds, in Bergman’s The Virgin Spring [1960].) Manuel and Andre are card-carrying sheep. But Maria, the centre of gravity here, is much more difficult to assess. Manuel unconvincingly tries to maintain he hurt only his foot. (The assembled burly, balanced and adult breadwinners/ farm hands witnessing the ridiculous coward being given a ride home constitute a silent jury.) Though he soon hops off the truck to get going on a pathetic rehab, he has been captured for us as a rendition of the retarded “witch” in her tumbril, burning by consensus, in The Seventh Seal. As the war and the plantation go up in flames, what remains of Manuel is shown by a  quick cut of his head reduced to something close to a scorched potato. For a real rally, there is Jof, in the aforementioned film, having been humiliated by a savage mob; and riding high at the end of the saga. That recurrent, ominous ringing tone during the carriage-trade send-off of Manuel leaves no residue of musicality upon Maria, in pathological denial about weakness needing to be checked, lest sadism prevail. “This is nothing,” she says, of the slip in the field. He is nothing, per se. But he and his ilk are an essential element requiring ruthless alertness.

Having left the truck, the loose cannon rushes home to shave his head, take a shotgun, abuse his step-mother (bound for the encampment without a clue), and joins the children’s army where he is but one of very many slaughtered by the militia in his stone-castle-like home. The optics of his demise are part of a rich study of physicality in a time of protracted presumption, a time where no one—unlike the players, Joseph and Mary, in, The Seventh Seal—devotes sufficient energy to acrobatics and juggling. (In his new provocation of lousy theatre messing with the protagonist’s equilibrium, Manuel coincides somewhat with lousy playwright, Minus, knocking off the equilibrium of Karin, in, Through a Glass Darkly [1961]). The tiny rebels had been instrumental in shooting up the local pharmacy and absconding with a remarkable number of tiny pills for every occasion. Their display, among which of course included Manuel, of gobbling down chemical aid like ravenous birds in a berry patch, strewn over a swatch of mud after readily solving the baby screw-caps, gives us a taste of the decidedly trivial political red herring this production has mounted. (For those who can never see any farther than politics [as complemented by science, religion and humanitarian morality], as the route to humanity, this film will forever be shuttered.) The “rebels” experience high confidence from their murderous theft; but real playfulness, real delight, does not come close. Before he’s shot dead, his body dragged from his ham-radio studio, the DJ had told the world, as far as he could see it, “Herbs to tone those flabby muscles, and render you invincible and invulnerable…” (This time Haight-Ashbury—as Jamaica, before—becomes a beacon with no light.) Maria, hearing this recommendation with no confidence, recalls her bus ride after the insult, and her being at a loss, lacking the muscle, her bicepts notwithstanding. The survival kits and the order to leave that world offends her risk-taker’s spirit. But her misreading of advantage slams her closer to Manuel and Andre than she should be.

The exuberance of this catastrophe plays out in a supplemental rain of cruel irony. Necessities capable of burnishing the protagonist’s resoluteness fall like ash in her hands. She beholds a Toyota loaded down for the sake of surviving the conflict. And though she feels nothing but disdain toward what she proudly regards as squeamishness in others, she is readily duped into childish, skittish, toy-like thoughtlessness, including disregard for the malignancy on the ground nearby and the malignancy all over the planet. The large, cinderblock homestead tranquillizes her—as did the stone castle of Antonius Block and his guests, in The Seventh Seal—to the extent that such an edifice and its concerns must be too big to fail. One of her longest-staying workers, Angel, now about to cut and run, has a life-sized wooden figure of a man on her worker’s veranda. (That would coincide with the large, inert sculpture on the veranda of a beach house being abandoned in Bergman’s film, Persona [1966].) Inside a meal of fresh vegetables is on the table. But the door is locked. (Block being denied the substance of heaven. Maria being denied, due to failing as an acrobat and a juggler.) The close-formation of the many cyclists abandoning the farm evokes the closely-linked dance of death by Block and his retainers. In her disappointment Maria wanders to an area of the property being impassible due to a mass of shattered tree trunks. In the Bergman film, Through a Glass Darkly [1960], a woman disappointed by her mojo leaving her, hides in the wreckage of a big wooden fishing boat. Her next step consigns her to a mental hospital. But with Maria, the tone is, “Maurice [Angel’s husband], we don’t need to be terrorized. We can fight back!” She runs into a rebel roadblock and has to pay to proceed. The point, however, has to do with the leading gunman having been Manuel’s gym teacher. The real drama being, what kind of athletes are stepping up to the plate? Similarly, when Maria visits the pharmacy for the grandfather’s medications the (soon-to-be murdered) pharmacist tells her, “It’s all here, except for the oxygen…” Seen, as so often in close-up from behind, Maria overhears the DJ’s pep talk to the converted. “Many things are to be found in Mama and Papa’s house. But go about it gently. Everyone is entitled to his share. And don’t ever forget what fate has in store for us … No one can take away your share. Beware of imposters…” Does Maria have any inkling that her excellent career could be tainted with imposture? The radio gate mouth goes on to a fact of life; but not a really significant fact of life. “As for the white material, the party’s over!” Showing the ropes to the new workers, while the “young rascals” are on a roof cutting the power lines, she blithely explains, “The power goes out often…”

With Manuel shaved down as he was in the prologue—shifting and crouching desperately in a nearly pitch-dark interior—he in fact shared the flickering launch with a pride of cheetah bounding across a road on the plantation. This spike of bemusement comes to clarification, later, regarding the early and unlamented death of someone who was dead to the world anyway. In the trajectory of that binge of fruitless go-pills, we see a wobbly Manuel on his domain encountering two, no-nonsense militiamen, training their rifles on his empty head. But, wait a minute, those gunslingers have turned out to be brimming with nonsense, in the form of cat and mousing the chump in that darkened place kicking things off to set a bilious tone. The cats then torch the mouse and the whole mouse-pack; but not before exacting a gory slaughter. That’s where the real cats come in, to put everyone to shame, including Maria, who would have got caught up in the sadistic frenzy—rather aptly, in fact, now operating, as a second front of massacre and becoming an Angel of Death, or, if you prefer, a carrier  of the plague which will always be with us.

After her pampering and loading on the truck the flabby boy having shown what he’s made of—“You’re my son. I can’t let you drift away…”—a cheetah by the road silently and expertly cuts the crap. In that interview with the Boxer, she tells us a lot. He asks, “Why didn’t you leave with your son?” She answers, “I’m a good fighter, too… How could I show courage in France? [but real courage being not a display of advantage]. It would be absurd, no rhyme or reason [how, then, is she doing with deep musicality, in Africa?]. I’d slack off, get too comfortable…” And here she is, giving a quick and comfortable rundown to the new, and last, crew: “Nothing’s mine, but I’m in charge.” One of those grounded laborers she could have learned something important from, tells her, “If it’s not yours, it’s just smoke.”