[Original Novel] Persistence of Vision, Part 4

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Previous parts: 1, 2, 3}

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“Haha, wow! Dumpity doo! What is a cartoon character, anyway? Am I just a collection of lines? Am I the light coming from the bulb, or television screen? You’re mostly water, but are you that water? Or are you the rest?”

A moving projector. Not literally, I could see no spools of film. Rather, the mirror redirected light from the monitor through the fresnel lens, casting the contents of the screen onto the white sheets lining the walls.

Sparks flew from beneath the wheels, and fell from overhead as the contraption trundled towards me. I could see a brushed electrical contactor at the top of the pole, sliding along the metal ceiling. And another beneath the wheels, touching the floor. The same way bumper cars are powered.

“I’m not the light, am I? That’s just the medium. I’m the painstakingly drawn black marks which block light, defining the shape of my body. The absence of light. A living shadow! All to realize the age old dream of bringing life to the lifeless. Duuumpity dooooo.”

No longer jolly, the tone of his voice had begun to change. Particularly the dumpity doos. They now had a tense, vaguely threatening quality on top of the unsettling distortion. I jogged ahead until I came upon the first of several rooms.

Inside I found something like an automated printing press. Rolls and rolls of printed tickets. Every few seconds the roll would rotate, dispensing another row of tickets to be cut by the next machine. Then one of the separated tickets would be deposited in an envelope, sealed, and funneled into a cylindrical capsule of some sort.

The capsule was then loaded into an opening in the side of a transparent plastic tube. I realized it must connect to the tubing I saw running along the ceiling of the corridor on the way here. A moment later, with a pneumatic hiss and a loud “thoonk”, the capsule was sent on its way.

To be mailed out. Had to be. Some kid would get it in the mail, tantalized by the promise of a new life someplace fantastical and comforting. Then he’d go to the address on the back and wind up here. For what purpose?

How could the machine know their names, or what addresses to send the tickets to? It couldn’t. Must be controlled from somewhere else. For that matter, why is any of this still running? I never thought to question why the park’s power hasn’t been shut off.

The next room I passed through looked something like a dentist’s office. A row of swiveling, full body chairs lined one wall. Instead of headrests, each had a sort of metal harness shaped like the contours of the human head, for holding one as still as possible.

These head braces all had dried blood on them. More dried blood coated the floor around each of the seats. I began to feel queasy and once again considered turning back. Only the stuffed animal in my jacket pocket deterred me.

Why would any of this be in an animation studio? One that’s part of a theme park, no less. What happened here? I rummaged through boxes in a corner. Full of odd little gadgets, metal cubes the size of dice but with a screw-like protuberance on one end and a tiny red bulb on the other.

I heard an electrical whirr and the sound of sparks. When I turned around, there was the mobile projector. Following me? Looked that way. It cast Peter onto one of the walls as it moved, walking along.

The background scenery was now simply blackness, so only Peter was actually being projected. Gave the rudimentary appearance that he was occupying the room with me, if two-dimensionally. As he plodded along, as before, his eyes seemed to follow my movements.

Could it really be watching me somehow? I studied the wheeled contraption anew, this time noticing something like a closed circuit television camera nestled in there among the wiring, vacuum tubes and so on.

The next two rooms were behind doorways inset in the right hand wall. The first bore a sign reading “high speed xerography”. I pried it open with my multi tool. The only light inside came from a bulb beneath a fast moving spool of transparent plastic.

I recognized the markings on it as frames of animation for Peter. Must have something to do with the roving projector in the corridor. Made that same incessant clickety clack, ratatat sound as the reel to reel projectors earlier.

The dust was so thick that I had trouble breathing. Waving it away from my face didn’t help, only made the dust swirl madly about. I searched for a light switch and found one, but flipping it accomplished nothing. Another dead bulb.

The next door bore a sign which read “Prototype dimensionalizer”. What? I pried the door, deadbolt tearing away a chunk of the wall with it. The inside of this room was as dark as the last, but this time the bulb worked. When I flipped the switch, after a long hum and some flickering, the room was at last bathed in warm tungsten light.

I couldn’t understand what I was looking at. Something like a power transformer occupied half the room. The machine which occupied the remainder looked like a convoluted maze of small mirrors and lenses. For channeling laserlight, as I discovered when I turned it on.

The first component to activate was a pump. For circulating coolant, according to the label. Next I heard various clicks, an electrical hum faded in, then something began to appear on the central pedestal.

Faintly at first. Like a ghost. Then it grew increasingly sharp, clear and solid until it appeared to me as if the apple sitting on the pedestal before me was actually there. On a whim I reached out to pass my hand through it.

Only it was solid. I couldn’t believe it even as I wrapped my fingers around its contours and picked it up. The damn thing had real weight to it! Without thinking I took a bite, then immediately spit it out on account of the bitter flavor.

When I withdrew it the fruit bled a syrupy black liquid that, from the stains on my teeth and sleeve, I figured for ink. Only around the bite mark though. Somehow the core of the apple consisted only of static. Like what you see on a television not properly tuned to any channel.

No seeds, no juice, nothing sweet to sink my teeth into. Just erratic black and white fuzz that I dare not touch. I set it down and did my best to wipe the residual ink from my hands and face, succeeding only in spreading it around.

I continued examining the machine, this time searching for clues as to what the apple was made from. Instead I found someplace to load film or slides. The slide already in the machine was, unsurprisingly, a photographic image of an apple. No wonder it came out so realistic! On the outside, anyway.

From a shelf by the transformer, I withdrew a spool of film still in its protective canister. Upon opening the canister and holding a length of the film up to the light, it turned out to depict a crudely drawn egg. I turned the machine off, then noticed a moment later that the apple was gone. Abruptly vanished into thin air...as if it were never real?

I puzzled over that for a few seconds, trying to work out whether the machine actually created a solid object or only a convincing illusion. Some sort of tactile hologram? Or actual conversion of light into matter? But then why did it vanish?

Useless to guess, I decided. The only answers would come from experiment. With that, I carefully attached the spool and fed the film into the indicated slot. Curiosity was now firmly in the driver’s seat, urging me forward.

Clickety clack, clickety clack. The projector lurched into motion, reels spinning, light slowly intensifying as something new appeared on the pedestal. Grainy, monochrome, yet with the appearance of solidity.

As I looked on, cracks appeared in the egg. I expected a trickle of ink. Instead, a cartoon chick emerged. The creature appeared stylized in that old timey way, like Peter Possum. But with an undeniable physical presence. It finished climbing out of the shell and took its first steps.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 5!}