American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,137

damn expert on loading projectors, she feeds the film in, turns the projector to face one of the blank walls of the records room, and starts her up.

As before, there’s no audio. Just dingy, yellowed images fluttering across the wall. She fiddles with the lenses until they resolve.

The film shows the big, metal-walled room with the lens. Dr. Coburn is in front of the camera, standing so he’s blocking the lens from view. He’s dressed in a brown coat with elbow patches, and he sports a tremendous beard (very late-seventies, Mona thinks). He looks a little nervous, his eyes flicking about, his fingers rising up to adjust (and readjust, and re-readjust) his tie. Someone must say something to him from off camera, because he perks up, appears to say, What? Oh! and steps aside so that the camera has full view of the lens.

Only now there are two lenses: the second arm of the contraption, which looked so conspicuously empty, now has the missing mirror, or lens. A great deal of wires run down out of the top of the arm to somewhere off camera, probably behind whoever’s filming.

Coburn is muttering quietly to someone, again off camera. He nods at them, eyebrows raised—Are we ready? He nods again, then clears his throat, smiles stiffly, and, after a pause, begins addressing the camera.

Of course, Mona hears none of it. She has to sit and wait for him to get through his whole spiel, which takes about five minutes. While Coburn talks, some assistants or scientists come in and hold up sheets of paper or boards with the date and time written on them, as well as a test number. Coburn, still stiff as starch, awkwardly gestures to them. Then he begins pointing back to the lenses.

Coburn reaches into his pocket and takes out a bright red ball, about the size of an orange. It’s a croquet ball, Mona sees. Then, still talking, he takes out a knife and makes a long scratch down the side. He walks forward to the camera, holding the ball out (the operator has to hurry to adjust the focus) so that the viewer can see the scratch: it’s shallow and made in the shape of an S. Then he walks back to the lens, and the camera zooms in and follows him (along with a boom mike that floats into view now and again).

There are two small metal tables on opposite ends of the round metal room, with the lenses in the middle. Coburn places the ball on the left table, square in the middle, where it’s marked with a big X of black tape. He points to it, and talks to the camera a bit. Then he points across the room, and the camera whirls, eventually settling on the table on the right-hand side of the room. This table is empty, but also has a big X of tape. The camera zooms out and refocuses on Coburn. He talks at the camera a bit, and points at the lenses hanging from the ceiling. The camera zooms in to study them.

It appears that age did not touch the remaining lens at all. Its twin is the same: they are both perfect, maintaining a queer sheen even in the dingy light of the metal room.

The camera zooms back out. Coburn is advancing, gesturing to the room, then to his staff, who are still off camera. He looks excited, anxious, terrified as hell. He points off camera again, bows, and exits stage right. From the shadows Mona sees on the ground, it looks like all his people are leaving too. Then it’s just the camera, still rolling, filming a wide angle that captures the table on the left with the croquet ball, the lenses in the middle, and the empty table on the right.

Mona sits forward. Obviously, it isn’t safe for people to be in the room with whatever’s about to happen.

She keeps staring at the room. Nothing happens. Then, slowly, the lenses rotate, so that one points at the table on the right, and the other points at the table on the left. A light on the base of the arm, near the ceiling, flicks on. There’s a long, long pause, more than five minutes long, ten minutes long, more. Mona wonders what sort of SUCCESS!!! this could be.

And then it happens.

It takes her a minute, but she notices something’s wrong with the curvature of the walls on the sides of the room. She can’t tell which