Chapter One

C.G. McDermott fingered a pack of Lucky Strikes as the elevator dropped.

�You�ll get a kick out of this, Chris,� he whispered. �I�ve been working on it for months.�

When the doors opened, he hurried me down the street and into a narrow alley, out of the wind and rain.

�Watch closely.�

C.G. pulled back the sleeves of his coat and fished a slightly bent cigarette out of the pack.

�Take one of these, untouched by human hands...�

He stuck one end in his mouth, grimaced a bit, and the other end suddenly started burning!

�Well, what do you think?� He blew smoke in my gapping mouth and chuckled.

�Pretty cool, huh?�

�What the hell was that, McDermott?�

�Your �light of another heaven,� that�s what. Time?�

�Six-twenty. Way time for a drink.�

�Technically true, but it is also Thursday, October 27, 2005, and we�ve just terminated this old hologram.� He took another hit and blew it over his shoulder. �And it ended with a butt, not a whimper. Mark your calendar.�

�Sounds dangerous.�

�Exactly right!�

Only a half hour before I had been staring despondently down at the traffic writhing eastward over the Bay Bridge when the picture of C.G. tippling a martini suddenly popped into my head.

We had once worked together on a line of lemon-flavored ketchup that bombed--nobody�s fault, really, just bad timing--but had gradually lost touch. Of course, back in those days he was just an eccentric nobody advertising man on the thirty-third floor, so I grabbed my coat and elevated my person to see if C.G. could go out and play.

When I got there, BBG&O�s glass-and-marble doors were wide open and all the lights were on, but the place was totally deserted. That should have told me that something was out of kilter, but I shuffled on to McDermott�s box with the low-rent view. I found my man bent over his keyboard, with his back to the door, so I slipped in and sparked his ear a good one, but he didn�t even turn around.

�Hey! Chris!� he said, as if he were expecting me.

�Have a seat. How�s things?�

�Hey, C.G.,� I said, wondering how the hell he knew it was me. �Same old Brussels sprouts. What say we pound down a couple of cold ones?�

�Perfect. Just a sec. I�ve got a surprise for you.�

McDermott was in his early thirties, stood a pudgy 5�9�, and had dark blond hair that was long on the sides and thin on the top, like a symphony conductor in a Three Stooges movie. His eyes were blue and he wore horn-rimmed glasses which were totally out of style. His face was moonish, with a slightly receding chin, and such a light beard that he could go for days without shaving and not look grubby. His voice was on the high side, he giggled rather than laughed (which was actually kind of cute), and he liked to exclaim �exactly right!� whenever anybody said anything that was even remotely near the mark. On the minus side, he smoked, wore turtlenecks, and ate Gerber�s Baby Food for lunch. Cold. Out of the jar. On the plus side, however, McDermott displayed indications of old money but never talked about it, and was clever with words like most people in advertising. He was also a stand-up guy when it came to buying expensive booze. Bottom line? Aside from his occasional lapses in food and clothing, C.G. McDermott was a slightly dorky guy with a great deal on the ball. I liked him.

His office was not your typical ad-man cave filled with big glosses of pretty girls flashing teeth and ankles. No; his had at least a couple hundred CD-ROMs stacked in neatly tottering tiers, along with scads of rare and intimidating books. There was Western history, Eastern philosophy, a good deal of physics and chemistry, literary criticism, inflammatory political tracts, and some comparatively new works like The Medieval Reader, which I was really glad to see out in paperback. I picked up The Selected Works of Unamuno and gave it a quick once-over. Just as I had feared, it was mostly mumbo-jumbo, but on page forty-seven I found something that he had underlined, circled, and highlighted in pink, so I read it out loud:

��It is from the depths of this anguish, out of the abyss of the sense of our mortality, that we emerge into the light of another heaven.� What the hell�s that supposed to mean, McDermott?�

�Come on, I�ll show you.� So off we went, down and out...

I mention this pre-immaculate-ignition episode for two basic reasons: (1) you should start thinking about deep things like light and heaven right now, because it will be real important later on, and (2) there was a funny light that flashed through my brain that stormy San Francisco night as I incredulously watched McDermott puffing away on his magic Lucky Strike.

�Damn it, C.G., quit playing with smoke! What�s this all about?�

�The universal hologram.� Puff, puff. �You like?�

�What�s not to like?� Cough. �When�s the launch?�

�That�s good. But it�s not for work. Seriously.�

�But, it�s some kind of gag, right?� We trotted off toward the local boozerie, ignoring the falling rain. �Practical joke?�

�Nope, no gag.�

McDermott finished off the cigarette and tossed it in the flowing gutter. �You�re the first person to see it, other than me, of course. So now it�s official--no turning back!�

Accepting for the moment that the Lucky thing wasn�t a flim-flam, I let the matter drop until we had polished off our chile verd� pot stickers and were well settled into our second (third?) double martini.

�So what�s the deal here, McDermott, you going into special-effects? Starting a new career? And is it only cancersticks, or what?�

�I could do your drink, but that would be a waste.�

I put my hand protectively over my glass.

�Now you tell me something,� he said, leaning forward and getting ultraserious. �What were you thinking about when I did it? You were looking at it, right? Wondering when I was going to light it?�

�I guess so, sure. But it�s a magic trick kind of thing, right?� C.G. shook his head. �So, okay, level with me, what�s the deal?�

�You could say it started with that old movie, Moby Dick. Gregory Peck and that other guy, what's his name?�

�Call me Ishmael.�

�That�s the one.� C.G. struck a theatrical pose. ��I alone remain to tell the tale!��

�Lucky guy.�

�But remember how Ahab gets tied to Moby�s back and drowns? And then his arm starts floping across his chest?�

I looked blank, which I was.

�He�s dead, see, but he signals for the rest of the crew to follow him, remember?� McDermott dropped his jaw and stared vacantly, moving his arm across his chest, just like Captain Ahab.

�Sure, C.G.� I searched the room for a waitress; much like whales, they�re never there when you need them. �Dead.�

�And they follow him to their doom?�

�Happens at work all the time. Now he wants refried peas.�

�That�s it! You play follow-the-leader with your life, you�re dead. Another round?�

Being the pathetic follower that I am, I indicated my assent. C.G. lifted two fingers and winked at a hidden waitress, who must have been lurking behind me all the time.

�But that�s not the best part. There are these light metaphors woven all through the story. Ahab�s harpoon glows with St. Elmo�s fire--which is not really fire at all--and, of course, the owners of the ship were Quakers.�

�Oatmeal light?�

�No, stupid, inner light. George Fox.�

�Back to the Future. Lightning. I get it.�

�You�re an idiot, Bookbender, did you know that?�

�And you�re a jerk, McDermott. Continue enlightening.�

�It was all that dying mixed with the light angle that got me thinking.� He laughed and finished his drink. �And then, a little while later, I was with this gorgeous little brunette, and it suddenly hit me--practically passed out. I saw all these fantastic lights sparkling inside my head, and I made the connection--�

�--I know exactly what you mean!� I said, the image of sparkling lights suddenly calling forth one of my favorite episodes in cross-cultural pollination. �Dutch girl. Nineteen. Looked up with these big blue eyes. �Und noo, Kris,� she�d say, �noo vee gooo verrrry slooowly.��

I twitched and shuddered. �That kind of thing sure makes you think.�

�Only in my case that�s when I made the connection that if you study really important things--life and death and stuff like that--when you get right down to the nitty-gritty, you always find some kind of light, either real or metaphorical. So I asked myself, what the hell is light? Right? It�s a wave unless it hits something, then it�s a particle, and it travels faster than anything else in the universe except gravity. It�s the ultimate indestructible reality, and it�s always associated with goodness.�

�Genesis,� I said, deflated that the topic of conversation had turned away from my favorite subject. �Let there be Edison.�

�It�s true about everything. Take Marxists, for example. Those guys talk economics all the time, but the class struggle is really just politics. Then you unpack their politics and find that they�re just a bunch of atheistic, materialistic, commie rats. See? It�s your epistemology that matters, whether you know it or not. If you keep asking questions long enough you wind up talking about religion or quantum physics, and they�re really the same thing! It�s like the golden aura medieval artists painted around the heads of saints--�

�--Like a cigarette lighting itself.�

�Exactly right!�

I was stunned.

�You�ve got to be kidding.�

�I know it�s late, but this light stuff is important.�

The next round came and C.G. pulled out another Lucky.

�Hey, C.G.,� I said, feeling the searing heat from a dozen pairs of enraged eyes.

�Don�t you think you should put that thing away?�

He shoved it between his lips.

�No problem. I can handle it.�

�We�re talking serious jail time here, McDermott. Cool it.�

C.G. ignored me, shut his eyes, and struck his holographic match. I was ready to bolt for the door, but when he exhaled there was only lung air--no smoke!

�When I tell you I can handle it, I can handle it, okay?�

�Christ, C.G., you�ve absolutely got patent that. It�ll be worth a fortune.�

�Chris,� he said, taking a long pull, �when we get this

holographic campaign out of the box, money�ll be the least of our worries.�

�What�ll be the most?�

�Keeping things from going haywire.�

�What things?�

�No more lemon ketchup. From now on, it�ll be life and death, war and peace--you know, the eternal hologram.�

Unfortunately for my future well-being, that remark went completely over my head, primarily because I couldn�t get over the smokeless cigarette.

�That smokeless business is phenomenal.�

�You like that? Have you heard of the Shroud of Turin?�

Amazingly, I had. �Fake picture of Christ, on a sheet.�

�Too new to be the shroud of Christ, but it�s not fake, they just haven�t been able to figure out how it was made. The important thing is even if the image isn�t divine, it�s damn well somebody. Somebody who got his image burned onto this piece of cloth with an instantaneous burst of high-energy light...�

For the first time that night McDermott totally spaced out, and it was more than a few beats before he started in again, but by that time I was feeling pretty spaced myself, so I let C.G. ramble on about Herakles and the burning robe, biochemistry, Hindus and holograms, and �that thing we call ourselves.� All very jumbled to me, but whichever way he went he always came back to sparks, lights, and electricity. Even television figured into his grand design, and

computers, �each dot on the screen, every bit of memory, just like a ray of light.�

Then he got back to the cigarette business and I reengaged.

�It wasn�t a trick. Far from it. It was a conscious, willful manifestation of holographic essence of the universe. We all wanted it to burn. You did, I did, and it did. I just focused all that wanting, pushed our collective shutter release, and made a three-dimensional reality out of our common thought. It�s all in the hologram.� He tapped at his forehead again.

�Mind over matter.�

�Yes, exactly right. When the frequencies of our mental images came together with the frequency of the cigarette�s being, the thing we wanted to happen happened. No choice. Once I figured out the theory of the thing, all I needed to learn was how to focus the energy. And that, as it turns out, is just good old-fashioned willpower with the volume turned up. Concentration of consciousness. Meditation. With the proper training, even you could do it.�

�Maybe I could if I knew what the hologram you were talking about, McDermott,� I said, desperate to rid my mind of the image of a floating three dimensional skull in a ghastly gilded frame.

�I thought holograms were for the crystal ball crowd.�

�You don�t know what a hologram is?�

McDermott was surprised by my confession of ignorance.

�Tacky?�

�It�s simple. You split a laser beam, shinning half of it on something--a tomato for example--then take the reflected tomato-laser light and the unused laser light and expose a special film. Result? A negative with a mass of wavy lines and jiggery circles that looks like absolutely nothing until you shine the same frequency of laser back at it, then it projects a three dimensional image of the original tomato.�

�Fascinating.�

�It�s how human consciousness creates the image of a three dimensional reality from the electro-chemical input we get from our senses. It�s the ultimate illusion.�

�Touchdown,� I said, flicking a peanut into the ficus.

�Yes! The blind archer!�

C.G. slapped the table.

�Focus!�

Unfortunately, after a liberal dose of double martinis, focusing was becoming pretty darned difficult, so I naturally ordered another drink and struggled to keep my eyes in C.G.�s general direction, but I didn�t care, because I was drunk. If I hadn�t been, I wouldn�t have given him a check for $10,000.00 in return for his solemn promise that I could �be there on the Big Day.� Needless to say, I can�t remember anything about the miracle of getting back home to Orinda in one piece.

COPYRIGHT 1997, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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