"The satellite," Fat said. "VALIS. Vast Active Living Intelligence System. It fires information down to them?"

"It does more than that," Kevin said. "Under certain circumstances it controls them. It can override them when it wants to."

"And they're trying to shoot it down?" I said. "With that missile?"

Kevin said, "The early Christians -- the real ones -- can make you do anything they want you to do. And see -- or not see -- anything. That's what I get out of the picture."

"But they're dead," I said. "The picture was set in the present."

"They're dead," Kevin said, "if you believe time is real. Didn't you see the time dysfunctions?"

"No," both Fat and I said in unison.

"That dry barren field. That was the parking lot Brady ran across to get into his car when the two men in black were stationed and ready to shoot him."

I hadn't realized that. "How do you know?" I said.

"There was a tree," Kevin said. "Both times."

"I saw no tree," Fat said.

"Well, we'll all have to go see the picture again," Kevin said. "I'm going to; ninety percent of the details are designed to go by you the first time -- actually only go by your conscious mind; they register in your unconscious. I'd like to study the film frame by frame."

I said, "Then the Christian fish sign is Crick and Watson's double helix. The DNA molecule where genetic memory is stored; Mother Goose wanted to make that point. That's why -- "

"Christians," Kevin agreed. "Who aren't human beings but something without sex organs designed to look like human beings, but on closer inspection they are human beings; they do have sex organs and they make love."

"Even if their skulls are full of electronic chips instead of brains," I said.

"Maybe they're immortal," Fat said.

"That's why Linda Lampton is able to put her husband back together," I said. "When Brady's mixer blew him up. They can travel backward in time."

Kevin, not smiling, said, "Right. So now can you see why I wanted you to see Valis?"he said to Fat.

"Yes," Fat said, somberly, in deep introspection.

"How could Linda Lampton walk through the wall of the mixer?" I said.

"I don't know," Kevin said. "Maybe she wasn't really there or maybe the mixer wasn't there; maybe she was a hologram."

"'A hologram,'" Fat echoed.

Kevin said, "The satellite had control of them from the get-go. It could make them see what it wanted them to see; at the end, where it turns out that Fremount is Brady -- no one notices! His own wife doesn't notice. The satellite has occluded them, all of them. The whole fucking United States."

"Christ," I said; that hadn't dawned on me yet, but the realization had been coming.

"Right," Kevin said. "We see Brady, but obviously they don't; they don't realize what's happened. It's a power struggle between Brady and his electronic know-how and equipment, and Fremount and his secret police -- the men in black are the secret police. And those broads who looked like cheerleaders -- they're something, on Fremount's side, but I don't know what. I'll figure it out next time." His voice rose. "There's information in Mini's music; as we watch the events on the screen the music -- Christ, it isn't music; it's certain pitches at specific intervals -- unconsciously cues us. The music is what makes the thing into sense."

"Could that huge mixer actually be something that Mini really built?" I asked.

"Maybe so," Kevin said. "Mini has a degree from MIT."

"What else do you know about him?" Fat said.

"Not very much," Kevin said. "He's English. He visited the Soviet Union one time; he said he wanted to see certain experiments they were conducting with microwave information transfer over long distances. Mini developed a system where -- "

"I just realized something," I broke in. "On the credits, Robin Jamison who did the still photography. I know him. He took photos of me to go with an interview I did for the London Daily Telegraph. He told me he covered the coronation; he's one of the top still photographers in the world. He said he was moving his family to Vancouver; he said it's the most beautiful city in the world."

"It is," Fat said.

"Jamison gave me his card," I said. "So I could write to him for the negatives after the interview was published."

Kevin said, "He would know Linda and Eric Lampton. And maybe Mini, too."

"He told me to contact him," I said. "He was very nice; he sat for a long time and talked to me. He had motor-driven cameras; the noise fascinated my cats. And he let me look through a wide-angle lens; it was beyond belief, the lenses he had."

"Who put up the satellite?" Fat said. "The Russians?"

"It's never made clear," Kevin said. "But the way they talk about it... it didn't suggest the Russians. There's that one scene where Fremount is opening a letter with an antique letter-opener; all of a sudden you have that montage -- antique letter-opener and then the military talking about the satellite. If you fuse the two together, you get the idea -- I got the idea -- the satellite is real old."

"That makes sense," I said. "The time dysfunction, the woman in the old-fashioned long dress, barefoot, dipping water from the creek with a clay pitcher. There was a shot of the sky; did you notice that, Kevin?"

"The sky," Kevin murmured. "Yes; it was a long shot. A panorama shot. Sky, the field... the field looks old. Like maybe in the Near East. Like in Syria. And you're right; the pitcher reinforces that impression."

I said, "The satellite is never seen."

"Wrong," Kevin said.

"'Wrong'?" I said.

"Five times," Kevin said. "It appears once as a picture on a wall calendar. Once briefly as a child's toy in a store window. Once in the sky, but it's a flash-cut; I missed it the first time. Once in diagram form when President Fremount is going through that packet of data and photos on the Meritone Record Company... I forget the fifth time, now." He frowned.

"The object the taxi runs over," I said.

"What?" Kevin said. "Oh yeah; the taxi speeding along West Alameda. I thought it was a beer can. It rattled off loudly into the gutter." He reflected, then nodded. "You're right. It was the satellite again, mashed up by being run over. It sounded like a beer can; that's what fooled me. Mini again; his damn music or noises -- whatever. You hear the sound of a beer can so automatically you see a beer can." His grin became stark. "Hear it so you see it. Not bad." Although he was driving in heavy traffic he shut his eyes a moment. "Yeah, it's mashed up. But it's the satellite; it has those antennae, but they're broken and bent. And -- shit! There're words written on it. Like a label. What do the words say? You know, you'd have to take a fucking magnifying glass and go over stills from the flick, single-frame stills. One by one by one by one. And do some superimpositions. We're getting retinal lag; it's done through the lasers Brady uses. The light is so bright that it leaves -- " Kevin paused.

"Phosphene activity," I said. "In the retinas of the audience. That's what you mean. That's why lasers play such a role in the film."

"Okay," Kevin said, when we had returned to Fat's apartment. Each of us sat with a bottle of Dutch beer, kicking back and ready to figure it all out.

The material in the Mother Goose flick overlapped with Fat's encounter with God. That's the plain truth. I'd say, "That's God's truth," but I don't think -- I certainly didn't think then -- that God had anything to do with it.

"The Great Punta works in wonderful ways," Kevin said, but not in a kidding tone of voice. "Fuck. Holy fuck." To Fat he said, "I just assumed you were crazy. I mean, you're in and out of the rubber lock-up."