Dean Koontz - Night Chills

Now he had more time to puzzle it out on his own. If Sam was in the store the next time Buddy went there, he would tell him the story. But not for a few days yet. He sat in the patterned late-afternoon sunlight that came through the curtain, drank Coca-Cola, and wondered.

Eight Months Earlier:

Saturday, December 18, 1976

IN THE COMPUTER CENTER of the sealed wing of the Greenwich house, seven days before Christmas, the monitor boards and systems bulbs and cathode-ray tubes and glowing scopes, although they were mostly red and green, had not reminded Salsbury of the holiday.

When he entered the room, his first time there in months, Klinger looked around at the lights and said, “Very Christmasy.”

Strangely enough, it was rather Christmasy.

However, because he hadn’t perceived something which had registered with the general in mere seconds, Salsbury felt uneasy. For almost two years now, day and night, he had been telling himself that he must be quicker, sharper, more cunning, and more forward-thinking than either of his partners — if he was to keep his partners from eventually putting a bullet in his head and burying him at the southern end of the estate beside Brian Kingman. Which was surely what they had in mind for him. And for each other. Either that or slavery through the keylock program. Therefore, it was quite disturbing to him that Klinger-hairy, flat-faced gorilla that he was — should make, of all things, an aesthetic observation before Salsbury himself had made it.

The Only way he could deal with his own uneasiness was to

put the general off his stride as quickly as possible. “You can’t smoke in here. Put that out at once.”

Rolling the cheroot from the center of his thick lips to one side, Klinger said, “Oh, surely—”

“The delicate machinery,” Salsbury said sharply, gesturing at the Christmasy lights.

Klinger took the slender cigar from his mouth and appeared to be about to drop it on the floor.

“The waste can.”

When he had disposed of the cheroot, the general said, “Sorry.”

Salsbury said, “That’s all right. You’re not familiar with a place like this, with computers and all of that. You couldn’t be expected to know.”

And he thought: Score one for me.

“Where’s Leonard?” Klinger asked.

“He won’t be here.”

“For such an important test?”

“He wishes it weren’t necessary.”

“Pontius Pilate.”

“What?”

Looking at the ceiling as if he could see through it, Klinger said, “Up there washing his hands.”

Salsbury wasn’t about to take part in any conversation meant to dissect or analyze Dawson. He had taken every measure to protect himself from any attempt on Dawson’s part to plant bugs in his work area. He didn’t believe it was possible for anyone to spy on him while he was in here. But he couldn’t be positively, absolutely certain of that. Under the circumstances, he felt that paranoia was a rational vantage point from which to view the world.

“What all have you got to show me?” Klinger asked. “For a start, I thought you’d want to see a few print-outs from the key-lock program.”

“I’m curious,” the general admitted.

Picking up a sheet of computer paper that was folded like an accordion into dozens of eighteen-inch-long sections, Salsbury said, “All three of our new employees—”

“The mercenaries?”

“Yes. All three of them were given the drug and then shown a series of films, ostensibly as evening entertainment: The Exorcist, Jaws, and Black Sunday, on successive nights. These were, of course, very special copies of the films. Processed right here on the estate. I did the work personally. Printed each of them over a different stage of the subliminal program.”

“Why those three movies in particular?”

“I could have used any I wanted,” Salsbury said. “I just chose them at random from Leonard’s film library. The movie is simply the package, not the content. It merely establishes a reason for the subjects to stare at the screen for a couple of hours while the subliminal program is running below their recognition threshold.” He handed the print-out to Klinger. “This is a second-by-second verbal translation of the images appearing on the screen in the rheostatic film, which begins simultaneously with the movie. Wherever the computer prints ‘This Legend’ it means that the visual subliminals have been interrupted by a block-letter message on the rheostatic film, a direct command to the viewer.”

SUBJECT CODED — KEY LOCK

REVISED PROGRAM/STAGE ONE

STORAGE MATERIAL

PROGRAM STORED: 8/6/76

THIS PRINT: 12/18/76

PRINT

SECONDS SUBLIMINAL CONTENT

0001 NO CONTENT

0002 NO CONTENT

0003 VISUAL — WOMAN’S BREASTS

0004 VISUAL — WOMAN'S BREASTS

0005 VISUAL — WOMAN’S BREASTS

0006 VISUAL — WOMAN’S BREASTS

0007 VISUAL — WOMAN’S BREASTS

0008 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH

0009 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH

0010 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH

0011 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH

0012 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH THIS FILM

0013 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH THIS FILM

0014 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH THIS FILM

0015 VISUAL — DETUMESCENT PENIS

0016 VISUAL — DETUMESCENT PENIS

0017 VISUAL — DETUMESCENT PENIS

0015 VISUAL — PENIS IN WOMAN’S HAND

0019 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0020 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0021 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0022 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0023 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH THIS FILM

“The first sixty seconds do nothing but insure that the subject will pay close attention to the rest of the movie,” Salsbury said. “Beginning with the second minute and continuing throughout the movie, he is very carefully, very gradually primed for stage two of the program and for eventual, total submission to the key-lock behavior mode.”

“Carefully and slowly — because of what happened to Brian Kingman?” the general asked.

“Because of what happened to Brian Kingman.”

0061 VISUAL — WOMAN FONDLING TESTICLES

0062 VISUAL — WOMAN FONDLING TESTICLES

0063 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0064 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0065 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0066 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0067 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0068 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0069 VISUAL — ERECT PENIS

0070 VISUAL — ERECT PENIS

0071 VISUAL — ERECT PENIS

0072 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0073 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0074 VISUAL — WOMAN SMILING AT ERECT PENIS

0075 VISUAL — WOMAN SMILING AT ERECT PENIS

0076 VISUAL — WOMAN SMILING AT ERECT PENIS

0077 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0078 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0079 VISUAL — DOG STYLE INTERCOURSE

0060 VISUAL — DOG STYLE INTERCOURSE

0081 VISUAL — DOG STYLE INTERCOURSE

0082 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0083 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0084 VISUAL — MALE DOMINANT INTERCOURSE

0085 VISUAL — MALE DOMINANT INTERCOURSE

0086 VISUAL — MALE DOMINANT INTERCOURSE

0087 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0088 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0089 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

0090 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

0091 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY