Videodrome: Days of O'Blivion Read online

your father there? It’s urgent.”

  She passed the phone over. “Barry, for you. He said it’s urgent.” Brian took the telephone.

  “Brian, thank God. You’ve got to get out of there. Consec have turned ugly and they see you as a threat. I’ve just been at a meeting where they decided to murder you. Drop everything now and get out. Just run. Get away from there now. Go now!”

  Bianca was stood close by and could hear the muffled voice. She picked out enough words to know they were in danger. She moved to the window and moved the curtain. A man in the street looked up at her, he was holding a… was it a gun? Oh, Jesus… “Father, there’s a man outside with a gun.” She looked again to see this man crossing to the front door of the mission, a second man followed but jogged past the first, heading around the building.

  The telephone line went dead in Brian’s hand. Barry was still talking but the phone line cut out. “Turn off the lights,” he said to Bianca. Think, he had to think. “What did you see outside?”

  “Two men. One went to the front door…” There was a bang from downstairs as the front door kicked in.

  Covered in darkness, Brian edged to the balcony. The mission was formerly a church and Bianca’s living quarters and office were on a galleried ledge that looked down into the main hall. It was covered in curtain which Brian eased open. There was a man in the darkness inside the hall. He was looking around, surveying the surroundings but not moving. Then came another loud bang and a shattering of glass. Brian held his breath as he watched the second man move into the hall. They both held pistols.

  Bianca was waiting for instruction. “Turn on the televisions,” Brian whispered. She moved to the patch bay and threw a few switches as the men began walking past the TV sets. Suddenly the room came to life with cathode ray static. Brian went to the patch bay and pointed Bianca to the curtains. "Keep watching them. Tell me where they are.”

  Bianca moved to the balcony and held the curtain only an inch apart to look into the hall. “They’re checking the doors at the far end,” she whispered. Brian plugged in the colour bar test generator. “All the TV’s have changed to a test pattern. They’ve stopped. They’re looking around.”

  Brian connected the Viper-Sig module. "Cover your eyes, Bianca. Don’t look at the screens." She stepped back from the curtain as Brian turned the signal to one hundred percent. He grabbed a copy of the clean Pittsburgh cassette, the Double Interracial tape. He played it. Viper-Sig at one hundred percent with Double Interracial played out across sixty televisions. From within the hall came the grunts and screams of the Videodrome torture. The black man and white woman locked in a double collar cried out and echoed from sixty televisions. Brian and Bianca were behind the curtain and shielded, but the two assassins amongst the screens were exposed. He let the whole tape play out then connected the video camera and turned on the desk lamp to illuminate himself. He switched the output to the sixty TV’s to the live view from the camera, still embedded with Viper-Sig. He took a seat in front of the camera. “I’m talking to the men who have just entered the Cathode Ray Mission. Take a seat in front of a television. I have something to give you.”

  Brian and Bianca both listened carefully. They heard the sound of chairs moving in the hall.

  “Will it make them do what they’re told?” Bianca asked.

  “I think so. I’m going to turn off the signal for a second,” Brian whispered. “When I do, look out quickly and tell me what you see.” He placed his hand on the Viper-Sig controller. “Now, look now.”

  Bianca peeked behind the curtain and came back a second later. “They’re sitting down, watching you on the screen.”

  Brian turned the Viper-Sig module back on and whispered to Bianca, “It’s going to be okay. I have a plan.”

  He did have a plan, but more than that he had rage, he had understated fury coursing through his veins. Consec had sent men to kill him… To murder… To kill Bianca too, probably.

  Bastards… Fucking son’s of bitches…

  They’d robbed him of his work, of his choices, of his health and of his very identity.

  His identity was gone. The old Brian Olivier was gone. Erased.

  Violence is the outcome of a man stripped of his identity.

  Violence is the outcome of a man stripped of his identity.

  Violence is the outcome of a man stripped of his identity.

  They had picked a fight with the wrong man. They picked a fight with a weaponised man. A dying man with nothing to lose. A man stripped of his very identity and purpose in life; and a man who had the means to send them into oblivion.

  ----- X -----

  The assassins called for helicopter support to take them back to Home Base. “The Spectrometer partnership is dissolved,” they said. “But we have something from him that must go directly to Consec Leader. We’re bringing it in now.”

  The helicopter picked them up at the business park and brought them in. Cue Ball was there to meet them. “This is for Consec Leader only,” they said. One of them held a video cassette. The label read, ‘From the office of Professor Brian O’Blivion.’

  Cue Ball reached for it. “I’ll take it.”

  “I’m sorry, Sir. This is too sensitive, it’s for Consec Leader eyes only.”

  Cue Ball took a step back and scrutinised the assassin. Company Men like these were renowned for their loyalty and ability, typically they were twenty year veterans with impeccable credentials. He knew better than to question. He made the call. "Consec Leader, this is Cue Ball. The Company Men have returned from the Spectrometer assignment. The partnership was dissolved but they have a package for you and you only.”

  They waited three minutes.

  The elevator pinged on arrival.

  “What do you have?” Leader asked the assassins.

  It was Cue Ball who answered. “They have a video cassette that is too sensitive even for me, Sir.”

  “What is it?” He asked again.

  The assassins looked to one another, then one of them said, “Before he died, Spectrometer gave me this and said it was his confession of what he has done with the technology… You need to see it.”

  “Spectrometer said Consec is in danger,” the other assassin added. “Grave danger.”

  Leader took the cassette.

  Cue Ball had as much apprehension written on his face as he held in his voice. “Sir, I would advise against watching any video that came from Spectrometer.”

  Leader smiled and gave him a wink. “I have Veraceo detectors on my screens upstairs. Don’t worry. I’m not that foolish.” To the assassins he said, “I want you two men to remain here whilst I watch this. I may have some questions for you.”

  Leader walked to the elevator and took the cassette back to his pure white apartment. He sat down at his bank of televisions and positioned his two Veraceo detectors ahead of the central screen. As the cassette started he had his hand raised to shield the screen whilst watching the detectors.

  Spectrometer came on the screen, underneath him was the legend ‘Professor Brian O’Blivion’.

  "Consec Leader,” Brian said, “you are seeing this tape because Brian Spectrometer is dead.” Leader looked to his two Veraceo detectors, both of them had the green light of a clean signal; he lowered his hand to watch the screen. “But you can’t really kill something of the television age. Copies are made. Duplications of the video. I understand now the title of your programme, Videodrome. The video arena. An arena in which to battle for the mind of North America. I understand Consec’s philosophy of wishing to control people. Your desire is not just to control one corner of the globe, but to have authority across all people and with Veraceo you had the perfect tool. Except, you didn’t. There is a mistake you made in your relentless drive for destruction. Your mistake is blowback. You showed me the depths of your madness. A desire to commit mass murder by television to improve GDP per capita. A truly destructive plan. With your Videodrome programme you could have aimed for the stars, yet your appetite wa
s simply for Armageddon. Your quest was for violence. So, I have set out to destroy Consec and Videodrome and I can do so from beyond death.”

  Leader glanced back at the Veraceo detectors, still showing the green light of a clean signal. To the screen he whispered, “I don’t think so, Spectrometer.”

  On screen Brian O’Blivion grinned. “Before I tell you why you’re really watching this, I need to preface my confession with a philosophy; and I’m going to tell you about violence. Not the sort of violence that you were seeking, but the violence that you have brought upon yourself. All forms of violence are a quest for personal identity. When a man has no identity, when he is a nobody, he gets very tough and he must prove that he is somebody; and so he becomes very violent. Identity is always accompanied by violence. Ordinary people become violent as they lose their identity. The threat to people’s identity makes people violent. Terrorists and hijackers, these are people minus identity. They are determined to make it somehow, to get coverage and to get noticed. Do you notice me? Do you see me now, Consec Leader?”

  Leader stared at the screen. he felt like he was shaking his head, but somehow it didn’t feel right.

  On the screen Brian continued to talk. “You have Veraceo versions one and two, but you’ve never seen Veraceo-Three,” Brian sniggered, “until now… you’re watching it, Consec Leader. Your brain is exploding with cancer proteins. Worse yet,