The fifth Savior: a rock star.

"When was Valis made?" I asked Kevin.

"The film? Or the satellite?"

"The film of course."

Kevin said, "1977."

"And Fat's experience took place in 1974."

"Right," Kevin said. "Probably before work began on the screenplay, from what I can piece together from reviews I've read on Valis. Goose says he wrote the screenplay in twelve days. He didn't say exactly when, but apparently he wanted to go into production as soon as possible. I'm sure it was after 1974."

"But you really don't know."

Kevin said, "You can find that out from Jamison, the still photographer; he'd know."

"What if it happened at the same time? March 1974?"

"Beats the fuck out of me," Kevin said.

"You don't think it really is an information satellite, do you?" I said. "That fired a beam at Fat?"

"No; that's a sci-fi film device, a sci-fi way of explaining it." Kevin pondered. "I guess. But there were time dysfunctions in the film; Goose was aware that somehow time's involved. That really is the only way you can understand the film... the woman filling the pitcher. How'd Fat get that ceramic pot? Some broad gave it to him?"

"Made it, fired it and gave it to him, around 1971 after his wife left him."

"NotBeth."

"No, some earlier wife."

"After Gloria's death."

"Yes. Fat says God was sleeping in the pot and came out in March 1974 -- the theophany."

"I know a lot of people who think God sleeps in pot," Kevin said.

"Cheap shot."

"Well, so the barefoot woman was back in Roman times. I saw something tonight in Valis Ididn't see before that I didn't mention; I didn't want Fat to fizzle around the room like a firecracker. In the background while the woman was by the creek, you could see indistinct shapes. Your still-photographer friend Jamison probably did that. Shapes of buildings. Ancient buildings, from, say, around Roman times. It looked like clouds, but -- there are clouds and there are clouds. The first time I saw it I saw clouds and the second time -- today -- I saw buildings. Does the goddam film change everytime you see it? Holy fuck; what a thought! A different film each time. No, that's impossible."

I said, "So is a beam of pink light that transfers medical information to your brain about your son's birth defect."

"What if I told you that there may have been a time dysfunction in 1974, and the ancient Roman world broke through into our world?"

"You mean as the theme in the film."

"No, I mean really."

"In the real world?"

"Yep."

"That would explain 'Thomas'."

Kevin nodded.

"Broke through," I said, "and then separated again."

"Leaving Richard Nixon walking along a beach in California in his suit and tie wondering what happened."

"Then it was purposeful."

"The dysfunction? Sure."

"Then it's not a dysfunction we're talking about; we're talking about someone or something deliberately manipulating time."

"You got it," Kevin said.

I said, "You've sure gone 180 degrees away from the 'Fat is crazy' theory."

"Well, Nixon is still walking along a beach in California wondering what happened. The first U.S. President ever to be forced out of office. The most powerful man in the world. Which made him in effect the most powerful man who ever lived. You know why the President in Valis was named Ferris F. Fremount? I figured it out. 'F' is the sixth letter of the English alphabet. So F equals six. So FFF, Ferris F. Fremount's initials, are in numerical terms 666. That's why Goose called him that."

"Oh God," I said.

"Exactly."

"That makes these the Final Days."

"Well, Fat's convinced the Savior is about to return or has already returned. The inner voice he hears that he identifies with Zebra or God -- it told him so in several ways. St. Sophia -- which is Christ -- and the Buddha and Apollo. And it told him something like, "The time you've waited for -- '"

"'has now come,'" I finished.

"This is heavy shit," Kevin said. "We've got Elijah walking around, another John the Baptist, saying, 'Make straight in the desert a highway for our Lord.' Freeway, maybe." He laughed.

Suddenly I remembered something I had seen in Valis; it came into my mind visually: a tight shot of the car which Fremount at the end of the film, Fremount re-elected but actually now Nicholas Brady, had emerged from to address the crowd. "Thunderbird," I said.

"Wine?"

"Car. Ford car. Ford."

"Ah, shit," Kevin said. "You're right. He got out of a Ford Thunderbird and he was Brady. Jerry Ford."

"It could have been a coincidence."

"In Valis nothing was a coincidence. And they zoomed in on the car where the metal thing read Ford. How much else is there in VALIS that we didn't pick up on? Pick up on consciously. There's no telling what it's doing to our unconscious minds; the goddam film may be -- " Kevin grimaced. "Firing all kinds of information at us, visually and auditorily. I've got to make a tape of the sound track of that flick; I've got to get a tape recorder in there the next time I see it. Which'll be in the next couple of days."

"What kind of music are on the Mini lps?" I asked.

"Sounds resembling the songs of the humpback whale."

I stared at him, not sure he was serious.

"Really," he said. "In fact I did a tape going from whale noises to the Synchronicity Music and back again. There's an eerie continuity; I mean, you can tell the difference, but -- "

"How does the Synchronicity Music affect you? What sort of mood does it put you in?"

Kevin said, "A deep theta state, deep sleep. But I personally had visions."

"Of what? Three-eyed people?"

"No," Kevin said. "Of an ancient Celtic sacred ceremony. A ram being roasted and sacrificed to cause winter to go away and spring to return." Glancing at me he said, "Racially, I'm Celtic."

"Did you know about these myths before?"

"No. I was one of the participants in the sacrifice; I cut the ram's throat. I remembered being there."

Kevin, listening to Mini's Synchronicity Music, had gone back in time to his origins.

It would not be in China, nor in India or Tasmania for that matter, that Horselover Fat would find the fifth Savior. Valis had shown us where to look: a beer can run over by a passing taxi. That was the source of the information and the help.

That in fact was VALIS, Vast Active Living Intelligence System, as Mother Goose had chosen to term it.

We had just saved Fat a lot of money, plus a lot of wasted time and effort, including the bother of obtaining vaccinations and a passport.

A couple of days later the three of us drove up Tustin Avenue and took in the film Valis once more. Watching it carefully I realized that on the surface the movie made no sense whatsoever. Unless you ferreted out the subliminal and marginal clues and assembled them all together you arrived at nothing. But these clues got fired at your head whether you consciously considered them and their meaning or not; you had no choice. The audience was in the same relationship to the film Valis that Fat had had to what he called Zebra: a transducer and a percipient, totally receptive in nature.

Again we found mostly teenagers comprising the audience. They seemed to enjoy what they saw. I wondered how many of them left the theater pondering the inscrutible [sic] mysteries of the film as we did. Maybe none of them. I had a feeling it made no difference.

We could assign Gloria's death as the cause of Fat's supposed encounter with God, but we could not consider it the cause of the film Valis. Kevin, upon first seeing the film, had realized this at once. It didn't matter what the explanation was; what had now been established was that Fat's March 1974 experience was real.