The Spectators

by Rich Lamb

*********************** 1 ************************

K massaged his temples and thought, " This damn hookup's too tight. I should check the warranty". He rolled out of bed, hit the reverse button on the VDR and stretched his way into the bathroom.

K never cared for what he saw in the mirror at six-thirty a.m. but he always thought he'd rather be naked than stuffed in that damn monkey suit in which he'd be by seven. Have to put the act on one more time to make people believe their satellite could malfunction at any moment. Who would've believed I'd be selling satellite insurance at the age of twenty-nine? I figured to be in a more lucrative position by now. Three years of drugs and one of REHAB would slow anyone down I guess.

He heard the VDR click off, finished drying his face and with a little more life to his walk put some water on the stove and hit the play button on the Video Dream Recorder.

It was a scene from grade school, fourth he thought, but K was his present age sitting at his desk. He was fishing in a pond in the back of the room. A dark murky eel-like thing with human eyes peered up out of the water, bit his hook and then yanked the pole from K's hands and darted away. The picture dissolved. The next

scene appeared with K in the cockpit of an old jet, his face pressed against the window (K put instant coffee in a cup and added the boiling water). The jet was following a logging road, a familiar hiking trail of K's youth now another "environmental" development, about twenty feet high sweeping in and out of the tall pine trees. K immediately recalled that brilliant feeling of dream flight, the uplifting sensation that would be with him for a couple of days. I must be doing something right he thought. Unfortunately, the dream didn't last long. It dissolved and what reappeared was K walking down his street with his suit on headed to work. Yes, he recognized the exact place, Liberty and Vineyard near the MacDougal building. It seemed exceedingly normal. Even my dreams are getting boring K thought as he took a slug of coffee and reached for his suit jacket. It was a normally crowded street. A car seemed to pace with K's walk and a man wearing a dark hat seemed to peer through tinted glass directly at K. The dream faded into a lengthy hiss.

K hit the stop button, glanced at the clock. Only five minutes late. This is going to be a good day he thought as he stepped out into the brisk sunny morning.

K liked to formulate his "day of attack" (as he called it when he would approach new accounts and hound the old ones) during his twenty-five minute walk to work. Who to call, when to call and figuring the appropriate approach for each client. The insurance biz. He was doing such mental gymnastics when his thought was pervaded by a feeling. The feeling grew to become an actual sensation but an indescribable one. "Deja vu" flashed into K's now heightened perception as he glanced left into the street. A car was slowing next to K and in the mirrored reflection of the back window, seemingly drifting in the clouded glass, were eyes under a hat -cognizant eyes that K felt were seeing into him. And as K began to recover from this odd, uninvited inspection and return the glare, the car sped up and disappeared around a corner.

As K returned to himself he stopped on the sidewalk. Only perhaps fifteen seconds had passed and his body was still involved with the effects of adrenaline. He stared up at the blue sky behind the MacDougal building and suddenly thought "Ah, Liberty and Vineyard, just like my dream last night. Maybe that's what a deja vu is. A dream coming true into reality. With all these VDRs in the market it's a wonder everyone isn't having them". He began walking again but forsaking his "day of attack" he perused the feeling he had just experienced. It was sharp like a high contrast photograph but at the same time vague as if through a clouded lens. It was not unlike the drug highs he had experienced before his rehabilitation. He wondered whether that guy in the car was actually looking at him or not. If he was, then who was he? Why was he checking me out? My drug days are over. I paid my price and I've been clean for years and they know it. The feelings gradually faded as the distance from the event grew and as K walked the steps to the office all immediate thought about the matter had quieted, too.

K did have a good day. Two new policies and a third almost. He called Marie to celebrate. She was fun and pretty and seemed to enjoy being single as much as he. The sun and the blue sky can do wonders and Marie was up for a night of dancing and a couple of drinks. K spent the night at her place. He had a good night, too.

Although they awoke in each others arms, the buzz of the alarm clock and a gasp from Marie about being late didn't allow much time to enjoy the embrace. Marie was a go-getter and was ready to go even before K was out of the shower. As he was stepping out, she came into the bathroom, kissed him and pinched his bare ass.

"Nice butt but I gotta go. Give me a call, cutie."

"You bet I will, you animal. Maybe this weekend. Have a great day out there", K replied with a smile.

A couple of winks and their night together was over. K left for work soon after. More than once he thought about Marie, about her being so fun and so smart, about her gorgeous body (so fresh in his mind), and about maybe he was getting serious. The rest of the day was uneventful except for the fact that the "third almost" canned K's company for another who had underbid them. That evening K was worn from the romp the night before and went to bed early. As he put the dreamtrodes on he remembered that he should check the warranty about them causing sore temples. He pressed record, lay down and was soon asleep.

*********************** 2 ************************

Next morning K woke up groggy from too much sleep. Without getting up he hit rewind and thought "This is a good day to be late". His temples again ached from the hookup and this time he thought he'd take the whole damn machine back. I'll tell them I'd squeeze my head in a vice if I wanted a headache and it was a wonder I wasn't dreaming about the damn things attacking me. Maybe I should invent dream insurance K mused and hit play. The scene appearing was similar to the last one a couple of nights ago - a busy morning street with K on his way to work, wearing his suit, sharing the sidewalk with countless others, everything exceedingly normal. K sat up in bed remembering his deja vu and wondering about the possibility of the same dream happening over. It was the same. The car pulled alongside K. (It was the same car that morning he thought). Then K discerned the eyes under the hat in the fogged back window looking right at him and saw his own eyes looking back in his dream. But the scene went on this time. The car paced him a few more feet and in the lower left corner of the window something else appeared. Something black and shiny, cylindrical and before K could distinguish what it was the car sped off. The dream faded. How weird this all is K thought reversing the tape a little. He hit play again and paused the recording at the image in the corner of the window. K studied the frozen picture a moment and shuddered as he realized the man was pointing a gun at him. No doubt now with this stop action, the goddamn guy has a gun on me thought K. Where the hell did this dream come from? I have a gun but I never use it or even think about it anymore. I got my license to target practice but I stopped doing that years ago. It even looks like the same guy as that morning. It's like a continuous dream. I should check to see if there have been any accounts of that happening. There have to have been. My brain ain't that far gone to be a weirdo. K was awake now perplexed as he was but he calmed down as his emotion gave way to rationality. It is just a dream K decided and probably continued because that deja vu was such a strange and memorable coincidence. I wish I could place that guy's face, though. Maybe someone I know through work was put off by me and the dream is my unconscious perception of his ire. Being an insurance man, sometimes I am a bit forcible. I bet I do bug people. What a racket this insurance business is; making people aware of all the worst possibilities and starting a fire under that fear, feeding it, blowing on it with the hot breath of bullshit and creating a sweat in your client and offering to take all that worry away for (by comparison) an insignificant amount of money. What about that guy from Telestar who opted out at the last minute yesterday. With a hat on he might look just like my dream man. I bet that's it. I must have pissed him off with my engaging personality. I did move pretty fast on that one. I was already in fourth and the light had just turned green. Oh well, can't win 'em all. Sorry Mr. Telestar man. Feeling a bit settled, K saw he was an hour late and figuring that to be fashionable enough, dressed quickly, grabbed his jacket and headed out into another day, another dollar.

K was taking his time (the later I am the more they miss me) and not feeling as aggressive as usual, he found himself thinking about Marie and realizing his thoughts of her were more and more of a serious nature. It was odd when a man gets serious about a woman. A woman in love, however, seems so natural. As if there is no thought or question about the sequence of events. She seems to yield to a higher force, a natural flow of order. Everything falls in place when a woman falls in love. But a man detaches himself from this feeling (if he allows himself to feel it at all) and creates colorful fantasies for himself in which the future looms only black and white as possibility or impossibility. K noticed the distorted, rainbow colored, oily film of a puddle near the concrete gray curb as he stepped up out of the street. It was hard to flow for a man. He was engaged in such analytical fantasy when slowly he felt his consciousness pervaded by that feeling of distorted reality he had sensed the other morning. And to be sure he almost had to force himself to see the Vineyard and Liberty street sign. The sensation today was interpreted more explicitly. It was fear that turned K to the street as the car pulled alongside, the man, eyes lucid, piercing but almost sorrowful, definitely worn with experience, the hat dark, medium brim. Then a glance to the left hand corner of the clouded glass and horror as the memory of what it revealed filled the image of something not quite distinguishable. Horror shown in K's eyes, brow and gaping mouth as the car sped up and turned around the corner. K knew he wasn't dreaming now although a slight feeling of disassociation touched him as he battled for control of his shaking body. And he knew he had seen a gun pointed at him and his mind screamed, pleaded "What's happening here". A disorientation, a dizziness overcame K as he realized that what had just happened to him, no one else -not one had even taken the slightest notice. That in itself wasn't what created the vertigo. It was the sense of being among thousands of people separated by mere centimeters of cranial wall and no one could feel the terror and screaming in K's mind but him. Everyone was at a normal day of work. K steadied himself on a parking meter trying to let the feeling die of it's own accord. When he had regained control, he made his way across the crowded sidewalk to a coffee shop, sat and ordered a coffee. In the mirror behind the pies K saw himself, unconsciously combed his hair with his fingers and staring into his own eyes thought, "What just happened to me? Am I losing it? I'm not going crazy, am I? That did just happen. I know that. And I dreamed it last night. I know that, too. Can this be an incredible coincidence happening?" K blew on the cup just delivered and took a sip more of air than coffee. "Should I go to the police? They'd think I'm nuts. It's just weird. That man looking at me, only me on the whole street. And with that gun, this is scaring the shit out of me". For three cups of coffee K went over and over his dilemma, examining, questioning and trying to comprehend the events of the morning and of two days past. The only prospect that calmed him was to talk to Marie about it that night over dinner. Sharing the problem with her might help relieve this feeling of uneasiness that had grown in him.

For most of that morning K was at work only in body. His preoccupation with that morning's mishap began many times over each time slipping into his consciousness through some quiet forgotten back door in K's mind. The single thought became a train and then a network of confusion as thoughts turned on themselves, biting their tails, fraught with anarchy each time as in delirium. Each time, K tried to put it out of his mind with thoughts of Marie and concentrate on his work. Nearing the end of the day he was exhausted and returned home quickly, made a drink and called Marie. Her house mate answered and replied to K's inquiry that Marie had gone out of town for the day and night on business and would return home tomorrow. There was a special message for K from her that if he called to say she had had a wonderful evening with him two nights ago and that she was excited about seeing him again. Maybe Friday night? K was quietly stunned that she wasn't there, said thanks and hung up. He was still perplexed and disappointed not to be able to see Marie tonight and yet he was deeply relieved to know that she cared for him. He even relaxed enough to think that the fear he was going through with this bizarre incident was fostering the need to love Marie. Maybe this craziness is happening in my life at this time so I will learn how vital it is to need and love and share with another human. Quite possibly without this trauma I would remain stuck in the lonely singles life convincing myself I'm having a good time but actually knowing and being close to no one.

By far, K felt the best he had all day and another drink, a few deep breaths and his new thoughts of Marie's affection helped him relax more as he lay down thankful for a nice bed. He was coasting off to sleep easily as exhausting as the day had been and feeling much more sure of things, he decided he would put the dreamtrodes on and prove to himself that these last few days had been an extraordinary occurrence and nothing more. The trodes didn't even bother him as much as he hit record on the VDR. Calmly, he fell away like a droplet of dew rolling off a velvet leaf into an effortless sleep.

It was two-thirty in the morning when K gasped for air. Out of a nightmare he jerked up in bed not capable of knowing if he was asleep or awake. He felt his heart pounding against his chest, heard it's rush in his ears and felt he could see it's fuel bathing him in white electric light. He shuddered sitting up in bed in uncontrollable spasms. Waves of concentric tightness passed over his cranium beginning at eye level till the circle became a bolt of electricity at the crown of his skull. He couldn't feel his body. He felt larger than his body could ever hold. All he felt in seconds. The white light he sensed lighting the room began fading after five seconds. The room grew dark as K's shudders subsided. His eyes remained wide open gradually sensing the return of familiar shadows. And finally a gear turned in K's mind and he was able to think again.

He pulled the dreamtrodes off his head, yanked them from the VDR and threw them across the room into the darkness. Applying pressure with his palms and fingers he massaged his skull almost frantically as if to reassure that it was still intact. A deep guttural groan escaped as he reached over, clicked the light on and lay back down. He was wide awake now, his mind racing, kicking up bits and pieces of what had just happened and stirring up clouds of fear. K couldn't immediately recall his nightmare but knew it ended in a death situation. He had long ago heard that if you were falling, for instance, in your dream and landed without waking, you would actually die in your sleep. Of course, K never knew it to be true. It was one of those frightening tales that passes through the minds of children at a certain age. But K definitely felt, without really knowing, that he had come close to death in his nightmare and luckily, just in case the tale was true, he had awakened in time. K was more fearful of the actual nightmare (it lay black and vile at the edge of his awareness) than of his experience with the white light. As he studied the latter sensation he thought it to be almost orgasmic in nature. The feeling of losing yourself to an encompassing, uncontrollable sensation seemed to be the link of similarity. Rationality was calming but at the center of K's effort to relax the dark foreboding pit his nightmare had spaded swallowed any real foundation for recovery. K knew he would have to study the dream as he would any other to get beyond it. He knew it was recorded on the VDR. He knew he probably wouldn't sleep anyway. But with all this knowledge, he still hesitated as fear loomed casting shadow over all common sense. Finally he hit rewind, waited until it stopped, then quickly...play.

K audibly gasped "no", then swallowed hard as he watched for the third time the beginning of the exact same dream of himself walking on his way to work. Approaching Liberty and Vineyard, the same car pulled along side. The now familiar eyes hovered in the tinted glass under the brim of a dark hat. K watched himself look at the man and slow his walk. Everyone else on the crowded street took no notice of the two men. In the left hand corner of the window K saw the gun and shuddered with himself in the dream. This time the dream continued. The window electrically, evenly and slowly began to slide down. K watched himself mouth gaping begin to yell. He was stopped now fully facing the car, frozen with terror as the window slowed to half-open. The man with the hat now seen clearly by K, older than he thought, wrinkles under and crows feet around the lucid eyes, brought the gun into clear view above the window and fired it into K's chest as the dream abruptly ended into visual hiss.

K would not sleep the rest of the night. To explain the roads of insanity he traversed that night, the forays into his tangled and overwrought consciousness, would be impossible and dangerous. When the tendrils of rational thought have crossed and recrossed and curled around certain objects and disregarded others, a short circuit happens and to follow one linear thought along it's progression without untangling and severing countless others is impossible. What is dangerous is that like the runner of a plant, once the tendrils are severed no new plants or thoughts (in this case) will ever happen. Seeing K the next morning as he studied his eighth or ninth cup of coffee, one would say he only looked a little tired. But through the long night along paths only he could follow and follow only once with no chance of retracing steps, K had reached a decision and he believed it to be right and he believed it to be his only choice.

*********************** 3 ************************

K knew by the angle of light entering the kitchen window it was time to head for work as usual and test his decision. As he left, he paused atop the stoop, heard the door close locking cleanly but thought of little else besides his walk and the ensuing possibilities. His nerves were exposed from no sleep, too much caffeine but he moved slowly, deliberately with the weight of his decision about him like an anchor down the steps down the sidewalk. A pigeon preceded him as he started and he took notice of the odd method of locomotion. The pigeon's head would thrust, the neck would stretch and as if being pulled by elastic the plump body would catch up and snap the head forward again. It led him a half block and on a whim took to flight. K watched it settle in the morning shade of a third storey sill as it became the spectator, cooing at the parade.

Sooner than he realized K reached the spot of his nightmare. Mid-block he again felt the juxtaposition of his dream settle on his reality and fought against the rising fear, his chest pressing up on his throat. He breathed slowly, mimicking his dream as he turned left and saw the car already pacing him, the eyes, always the eyes first, the hat floating amid the translucent glass. The gun, black, cylindrical and shiny coming into view in the lower left hand corner and as K turned to face the man he faced his decision. The window evenly, smoothly, sliding down coming to halfway as K saw the man's right hand slowly rising. Then eyes again, not of his nightmare, clearer behind no glass. He stared at them for a fraction of an instant that lasted forever as time grew still at the furthest swing of a pendulum. Behind the experience of the lines about the eyes, behind the lucid stillness in them, behind eyes that belied a mind of too much thought, behind all this, K saw eyes that said..."I'm sorry".

The right hand was just coming into view over the half open window as K became the knowing servant to his decision. K reached into his inner suit pocket, pulled his target practice gun, clean from lack of use, and fired one shot from the five feet that separated the two, into the man's forehead. Later K claimed that he saw the bullet enter as in slow motion, heard the dull thud at impact as the skull fragmented and that even the immediate smell of warm blood was vivid. The pendulum began to move again and time resumed the pace of a city, one experiencing a frantic occurrence. The people nearest screamed and fled but K stood facing the stopped car. The man had been blown onto his back, his head snapping violently with the blast, the body faithfully following it's owner across the back seat. The driver was out yelling for police. K was still, dangling the gun at his side, as an officer cleanly and roughly grabbed his arm and yanked both hands back into handcuffs. Finally K spoke to him as the reality of the cuffs dug into his flesh and brought him out of his stupor. "Take these off. I am not dangerous. I shot that man in self defense. He was about to shoot me. Look and find the gun in his hand". The officer swung the back door wide and as K hadn't moved he could easily see the prostrate dead man and the blood spattered interior. Still clutched in the right hand of the once well dressed man was the shiny black, cylindrical and curved handle of an obviously expensive umbrella. The driver came over looking pale with fear and sickness and mumbled that the man was only going to ask directions when K had pulled a gun and shot him.

K said nothing as they took him away and has since said nothing rational even through the trial. Nothing is revealed in his barren stare. A pen forced into hand rests uselessly on the paper like an awaiting bean pole on unfertile ground. It's as if K's thoughts occur as bursting seeds lacking germination while he searches for his sanity amid the vacant hulls. His mind, rhizomatous (his spirit trapped) never reaches for the light of day but lays buried alive, quiescent in a pit of nightmarish dark.

EPILOGUE

Deep in the wells and labyrinths of our secret police and intelligence community there exists a large number of projects of which we, the informed public, never hear. We hear, of course, if our ears are open wide enough, of some of the psychic research on telepathy, ESP and so on. But of the newer research on dreams after the advent of the Video Dream Recorder, there is little released. Recently, through an informant of mine, I received an official, highly secret dossier on a project run several years ago that I found most inhumane and in my eyes in need of public attention and scrutiny.

V-MID PROJECT

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The VDR Manipulation and Infiltration of dreams.

TECHNICAL EVIDENCE: Through manipulation of FCC regulation 316c, the Video-Analyzer (part V-84) became mandatory in all VDR machines. Through analyzer, recorder can become transmitter through standard 120 volt lines, into VDR, through dreamtrode hookup (part V-107), into subject.

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT: To place in subject a sequential dream process and by mirroring process in subject's daily life, to create aberrations and defects in character and personality. Project agent Frank Peterson acted in the filming of the dream sequences used in the VDR infiltration and then reenacted the dreams in real life sequences the following morning.

PROJECT MOTIVE: To create abnormal, anti-social behavior in previously normal subject. Uses of this technique against non-aligned governments in the creation of anarchy would be devastating.

PROJECT OUTCOME: Success. Through three sequential VDR manipulations and real life mirroring, subject was brought to states of fear and agitation and finally made the leap from mental stress to abnormal action. Subject, Karl John Collins, age 29, found guilty of murder of Frank Charles Peterson, agent code #687-32. Subject committed to Marcy Correctional Asylum, Marcy,N.Y. Subject catatonic.