[Original Novel] Persistence of Vision, Part 3
The past is destroyed by the future. Impossible to visit, impractical to recreate. Our memories, then, are ghosts. Lingering echoes of a world which no longer exists. I don’t know which view is stranger. That time isn’t real, or that we all amount to moving pictures with the appearance of life.
Upon prying the door open, I discovered one of the windows was busted. I cursed myself for not noticing sooner, else I might’ve just crawled in through it. A frigid gust stung my skin as I edged around the mess of broken glass on the floor, countless little shards sparkling in what little sunlight came in through the opening.
A light rain began to fall outside. Just as well. A whole new building to explore, exactly what I came looking for. And all things considered, not such a bad place to wait out the weather. A reception desk in the corner sat strewn with reminders of the past. Rolls of unsold tickets. A hand stamp, a coffee mug. Not even moldy inside, just a solid lump of dried black crud.
The lid of an electrical box mounted to the wall behind the desk hung open, revealing row after row of bulky, archaic fuses. It subtly hummed. Evidently this building also still receives power. As I proceeded further in, I found the floor littered with what I first mistook for overhead projector transparencies.
When I picked one up to study it more closely, I found it was instead an animation cel...depicting a very familiar monochromatic possum. More and more of them as I continued, until I couldn’t avoid walking on them.
Along either wall hung light tables of the sort used to display X-rays in a doctor’s office. Many with animation cels pinned to them, though the bulbs were long since burnt out. I swept my light across the far end of the room and, to my surprise, there was some sort of indoor ride.
Nothing fast or exciting like a rollercoaster. Rather, individual moving booths like the ones in haunted house attractions, or the educational rides that carry you slowly through a variety of life sized historical dioramas.
I searched for some way to reactivate them, but the only obvious control panel was rusted out. Wouldn’t have done me much good anyway. After edging past the halted people carriers for a ways, the track abruptly ended. Dismantled by someone, only a sheet metal floor beyond that point.
The ceiling, curiously, was also sheet metal. Both scratched up as if somebody’d been over them with steel wool. Bit by bit I worked my way down the darkened, serpentine tunnel. Soon I reached a section with working lights.
One of the walls in this section of the tunnel was lined with pull down projector screens. Tied to a motion sensor I guessed, as once I drew near enough, projectors mounted in alcoves along the opposite wall sputtered to life.
I doubled back, worried the sensor might’ve set off an alarm somewhere. Or that at the very least, the commotion might attract unwanted attention. That’s when I saw it. Laying on the seat of the nearest moving cart, perched on the end of the dismantled track.
Now, it could’ve been anyone’s stuffed Peter the Possum...if not for the initials drawn on the tag in black permanent marker. It knocked the wind out of me. All these years without finding the slightest trace, now I held Natasha’s own stuffed animal in my hands!
The police. The damnably corrupt, lazy police. They might’ve found this six years ago if they just searched more thoroughly. But they only ever do as much as procedure requires, if that. Anything more depends on how generously you bribe them.
I should never have taken their word for it. Should’ve gone searching myself the very day she disappeared, rather than wait for government stooges to half-heartedly bumble through this park before declaring it hopeless.
“NATASHA!!” I cried out. “NATASHA!!” My voice echoed down the remaining length of tunnel, meeting with no reply...until a scratchy voice answered back. Not from the end of the tunnel, but from just beside me.
“Use your indoor voice, little comrades! Respect the other visitors! Haha, dumpity doo!” I spun around looking for the source. The projectors, having warmed up during my panic, now cast moving images of a familiar figure on the pull down screens opposite me.
Black and white. Surrounded with momentary black flecks, dust caught in the film or defects from wear and tear. A certain possum in suspenders performing that familiar, perpetual dance. His beady little black eyes, unseeing, simply dark spots on film, nevertheless seemed to follow me as I headed further down the corridor.
Another straight passage with projectors to one side and screens to the other. Another motion sensor brought them to life in a synchronized clickety clack of spinning film reels. “Hey! Yeah! My name is Peter the Possum, but you already knew that!”
Still bobbing rhythmically as he walked, Peter seamlessly moved from one projection screen to the next. What probably passed for an astonishing trick back in the day, really just accomplished by synchronizing the four projectors.
“Today you’re going to learn about the magic of animation! Haha, wow! Dumpity doo!” He’d not said but three sentences, and was already aggravating. His voice not high pitched, really, but somehow shrill nevertheless. Distorting mildly here and there due to fluctuations in the current powering the projectors.
Peter walked slowly across the screen, leaving behind a trail of after images to reveal all the frames in his walk cycle. He whistled. “Lookit all those drawings, just so I can walk around! Yeah, dumpity doo! That’s a lotta work!”
I continued around the corner, leaving the rest of the film to play out behind me. “I’m talking to you.” I paused, then peered over my shoulder. Couldn’t be, surely. “Hey! Dumpity doo! That’s twelve frames for every second! Think of all the time put into bringing me to life, even for a minute!”
I again turned and pressed on, wondering what exactly I hoped to find. Realistically? Her remains. Some bones, perhaps a few scraps of her clothing. Enough to bury, I hope. Around the next bend, yet another row of screens and projectors.
They hummed to life as I drew close, flickering cones of light given the appearance of mass by the plentiful dust drifting through. Each little mote visible only while illuminated, as if springing into existence the moment it enters the light’s path.
“Ah, there you are. Cartoons sure are great, little comrades! Dumpity doo! But they always end too quickly, because of so much work for every second. What if there is better way? Bright minds at Soyuzmultfilm always are thinking about the future!
There’s a secret project in the works. You can keep a secret, can’t you little comrades? Sure you can. Imagine, if you will...a cartoon that never has to end. Wouldn’t that be something? Hey, wow! Dumpity doo.”
Gimmicks, I figured. The carts would accelerate as if hurrying past, synchronized with the film so that Peter appears to scold them for it. Smoke and mirrors. Eventually I came to a section of the tunnel that was even less put together.
No wall panels here. Just bare concrete, a skeletal steel framework for supporting the ceiling, and electrical wiring snaking up and down the walls. Exposed conduits passed overhead, supported by the rusted metal beams. For lighting presumably, though some sort of transparent plastic tubing ran along with the cables.
No projectors, though. Just screens for a ways, then stretches of corridor with dusty white sheets instead. To cover up the exposed electrics I assumed, until a strange contraption rounded the far corner.
I backed away, no idea what the rolling pile of parts could be. Having never seen anything like it before or since. Something like the mobile base of a power wheelchair, with an up-facing monochrome CRT monitor mounted to it, a mirror positioned above the monitor at a 45 degree angle, then a fresnel lens to magnify the reflected image.
Stay Tuned for Part 4!