Michael Crichton - Rising Sun

Standing alongside me, Theresa Asakuma breathed slowly, regularly. In and out. I glanced at her.

"Pay attention."

I looked back.

The lovers were in a passionate embrace. The man pressed Cheryl back against a desk. In my top view, I could see her face, looking straight up as she lay back. Beside her, a framed picture on the desk fell over.

"There," I said.

Theresa stopped the tape.

"What?" she said.

"There." I pointed to the framed picture. It lay flat, facing upward. Reflected in the glass, we could see the outline of the man's head as he bent over Cheryl. It was very dark. Just a silhouette.

"Can you get an image from that?" I said.

"I don't know. Let's try."

Her hand moved swiftly across the controls, touching them briefly. "The video image is digital," she said. "It's in the computer now. We'll see what we can do with it." The image began to jump, growing larger in increments as she zoomed in on the picture frame. The image moved past Cheryl's frozen, grainy face, her head thrown back in an instant of passion. Moved down from her shoulder, toward the frame.

As the picture enlarged, it became more grainy. It began to decompose into a pattern of dots, like a newspaper photo held too close to your face. Then the dots themselves enlarged, formed edges, turned into small blocks of gray. Pretty soon I couldn't tell what we were looking at.

"Is this going to work?"

"I doubt it. But there's the edge of the frame, and there's the face."

I was glad she could see it. I couldn't.

"Let's sharpen."

She pressed buttons. Computer menus dropped down, flashed back. The image became crisper. Grittier. But I could see the frame. And the outline of the head.

"Sharpen again."

She did that.

"All right. Now we can adjust our grayscale . . ."

The face in the frame began to emerge from the gloom.

It was chilling.

Enlarged so much, the grain was severe – each pupil of the eyes was a single black spot – and we really couldn't see who it was. The man's eyes were open, and his mouth was twisted, distorted in passion, or arousal, or hate. But we couldn't really tell.

Not really.

"Is that a Japanese face?"

She shook her head. "There's not enough detail in the original."

"You can't bring it out?"

"I'll work on it later. But I think, no. It won't ever be there. Let's go on."

The images snapped back into full movement. Cheryl suddenly shoved the man away, pushing his chest with the flat of her hand. The face disappeared from the picture frame.

We were back to the original five views.

The couple broke and she complained, pushing him repeatedly. Her face looked angry. Now that I had seen the man's face reflected in the frame, I wondered if she had become frightened of what she saw. But it was impossible to tell.

The lovers stood in the deserted room, discussed where to go. She was looking around. He nodded his head. She pointed toward the conference room. He seemed to agree or accept.

They kissed, clinched again. There was a familiarity in the way they joined and parted, joined again.

Theresa saw it, too. "She knows him."

"Yes. I'd say."

Still kissing, the couple moved awkwardly toward the conference room. At this point my monitors were no longer very useful. The far camera showed the whole room, and the couple moving laterally across it, from right to left. But the figures were tiny, and difficult to see. They were moving between the desks, heading toward—

"Wait," I said. "What was that?"

She went back, frame by frame.

"There," I said.

I pointed to the image. "See that? What's that?"

As the couple moved across the room, the camera tracked past a large Japanese calligraphy scroll hanging on the wall near the elevator. The scroll was encased in glass. For a brief moment, there was a glint of light in the glass. That was what had caught my eye.

A glint of light.

Theresa frowned. "It's not a reflection from the couple," she said.

"No."

"Let's look."

She began zooming again. The image jumped toward the hanging scroll, growing grittier with each step. The glint enlarged, broke in two fragments. There was a fuzzy spot of light in one corner. And a vertical slit of light, running almost the length of the picture.

"Let's rock it," she said.

She began to make the image go forward and back, one frame at a time. Flipping from one to the other. In one frame, the vertical slit was missing. In the next frame, it was there. The vertical bar lasted for the next ten frames. Then it was gone, never to reappear. But the fuzzy spot in the corner was always present.

"Hmmm."

She pushed in on the spot. Under ever-increasing magnification, it disintegrated until it looked like a cluster of stars from an astronomy picture. But it seemed to have some kind of internal organization. I could almost imagine an X shape to it. I said so.

"Yes," she said. "Let's sharpen."

She did that. The computers worked on the data. The fuzzy cluster resolved itself. Now it looked like Roman numerals.

I IX?

"What the hell is that?" I said.

She kept working. "Edge trace," she said. The outline of the Roman numerals appeared more clearly.

Theresa continued to try and resolve it. As she worked, in some ways the image seemed to get better, and in some ways, less clear. But eventually we could recognize it.

TIX?

"It's the reflection of an exit sign," she said. "There's an exit at the far end of the room opposite the elevators, is that right?"

"Yes," I said.

"It's being reflected in the glass of the scroll. That's all it is." She flipped to the next frame. "But this vertical bar of light. That's interesting. See? It appears, and is gone." She ran it back and forth several times.

And then I figured it out.

"There's a fire exit back there," I said. "And a staircase going downstairs. That must be the reflection of the light from the stairwell as someone opens the door and closes it again."

"You mean someone came into the room," she said. "From the back stairs?"

"Yes."

"Interesting. Let's try and see who it is."

She ran the tapes forward. At this high magnification, the grainy image spattered and popped like fireworks on the screen. It was as if the smallest components of the image had a life of their own, their dance independent of the image they assembled to make. But it was exhausting to watch. I rubbed my eyes. "Jesus."

"Okay. There ."

I looked up. She had frozen the image. I couldn't see anything but erratic black-and-white dots. There seemed to be a pattern but I couldn't tell what it was. It reminded me of the sonograms when Lauren was pregnant. The doctor would say, The head is here, that's the baby's stomach there. ... But I couldn't see anything. It was just abstract. My daughter still in the womb.

The doctor had said, See? She wiggled her fingers. See? Her heart is beating.

I had seen that. I had seen the heart beating. The little heart and the little ribs.

Under the circumstances, Lieutenant, don't you think –

"See?" Theresa said. "That's his shoulder. That's the outline of the head. Now he is moving forward – see him getting larger? – and now he is standing in that far passageway, looking around the corner. He is cautious. You can see the profile of his nose for a moment as he turns to look. See that? I know it's hard. Watch carefully. Now he is looking at them. He is watching them."

And suddenly, I could see it. The spots seemed to fall into place. I saw a silhouetted man standing in the hallway by the far exit.

He was watching.

Across the room, the lovers were wrapped up in their kiss. They didn't notice the new arrival.

But someone was watching them. It gave me a chill.