Tarnished Image (24 page)

With a fluid motion, Aberdene brushed back her thick hair and then seized the plastic tube, lifted it three inches off the desk, and then slammed it down. The startled insects quickly escaped the container and flew around the room in random motions. One landed on Archer, who quickly brushed it off.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he shouted and stood to his feet. Jack joined him. Soon both men were swatting at the tiny swarm.

“Relax, gentleman,” Aberdene said with a laugh. “They’re all males. They won’t bite.”

“You’re crazy,” Archer spat.

Slowly, Aberdene rose from her seat and crossed the room until she was standing face-to-face with the AIDS-ridden man. She raised a finger. “No,” she corrected, “the last thing I am is crazy. Remember that.”

She stepped to her office door and opened it. “Thanks for coming,” she said.

The men hastily left the room. Aberdene stayed behind and admired her mosquitoes.

“Thanks for coming, Calvin,” David said. “This is Greg Cheney. He says that he has something interesting for us.”

Calvin shook the young man’s hand and turned to David. “I’m glad you chose to meet here.” David, Calvin, Kristen, and Greg were in a small office next to the communication department.

“It seemed wise considering all that you told me,” David replied, remembering the revelation that the electronic sweep of David’s office had indeed discovered several electronic listening devices. “But we can talk about that later. We don’t want to take up too much of young Mr. Cheney’s time.”

“No problem on time,” Greg said. “I’ve got nothin’ better to do today.” Greg returned his attention to the electronic devices situated on a work station. I didn’t expect you to have video-editing equipment.”

“We use it to edit video from our field workers,” Kristen explained. “We use video for reports, promotions, education, and such.”

“It’s a pretty good system,” Greg said. “It will speed things up.” He placed the video he had been carrying into the cassette compartment and adroitly switched on the other equipment.

“Looks like you’ve done this before,” David said.

“Like I said in the lobby, it’s my major. I spend hours behind equipment like this.” He turned a knob on a black control panel that sat on the desk. The tape began to fast-forward. “I made a copy of the report that aired on the news. That’s what we’re about to see.” The image that had been burned into David’s mind came alive on the monitor that sat on a platform above the editing equipment. The images scurried across the screen. Greg turned the knob again, and the image slowed to normal speed.

“OK,” Greg said. “At first I just took the video at face value—a simple surveillance shot of a man caught in the act. No offense, Dr. O’Neal.”

“None taken,” David quickly replied. He felt his body tense as he saw the events play out before him. Glancing at Kristen, he saw that she too had tensed. Only Calvin and Greg seemed untouched by the display.

“Then I thought it might be interesting to see how much detail I could pull from the images. I assumed that the footage was shot with a secret camera. There are lots of them out there. Some have lenses smaller than the head of a nail. Anyway, I thought it would make a good school project. You know, analysis of secret tapes. That sort of thing. So I took my copy of the tape to the college and took a closer look. That’s when things started to fall apart.”

“Fall apart?” Calvin said. “How so?”

“Well, the first thing I noticed was that it was rather grainy. I assumed that it had been shot on film in low light. But that didn’t make sense. Why use film when it is so much easier to use videotape? So I realized that I was seeing video noise, not grainy emulsion.”

“Is that unusual?” David asked.

“Not particularly,” Greg answered, his eyes fixed on the image. “When a dub is made from the original tape, a little quality is lost. If you make a dub of a dub, you lose a little more. What I was seeing looked like a tape several generations down from the original, like someone had made a copy and then gave the copy to someone else who then made a copy and passed it along. Do you see where I’m headed?”

“Not really,” David answered. “I would expect that the news media received a copy and not the original. Those tapes are everywhere. Every television station got one as well as every department head in Barringston Relief.”

“Let’s not forget the FBI and the INS,” Calvin said.

“I wish I could forget,” David said somberly.

“Right,” Greg said. “A copy. Not a copy of a copy of a copy. There’s too much degradation of the signal for this to be a copy off a master.”

“Which means that whoever sent these didn’t have the original.” Kristen leaned forward and studied the images. “Is that what you’re getting at?”

“No,” Greg answered quickly. “While that’s possible, I don’t think that’s what happened at all.”

“Then what?” Calvin said. David sensed his annoyance.

“I think the degradation in signal is intentional,” Greg leaned back in the chair and watched the video. “I think the artist that did this is trying to muddy the water.”

“Artist?” David raised an eyebrow.

“Computer artist,” Greg answered. “A good one too. Really knows his stuff—or her stuff or their stuff, whatever.”

“Can you prove this is the result of computer hocus-pocus?” Calvin inquired seriously.

“Ah, now there’s the problem,” Greg replied. “I’m no lawyer, so I don’t know what constitutes proof. There’s no doubt in my mind, but I don’t know what a judge and jury would think.”

“Why do I feel that you found something else?” David said. “What makes you so sure this is a fake?”

“I do have more. Let me show you.” Greg reached out, took hold of the jogger knob that allowed him to change the direction and speed of the video, and cranked it to the right. The images raced by at high speed. The screen went blank for a moment before David’s face appeared. It was large and filled the monitor. Greg twisted the control knob back to the stop position. The image of David’s face was frozen on the screen.

“I used the college’s computer editing equipment to make an extreme closeup of Dr. O’Neal’s face. There it is,” Greg said with the wave of a hand and a broad smile. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.” He chortled.

“I don’t get it,” Calvin said. “It’s just a closeup of David.”

“And not a very good one at that,” David added.

“Like I said,” Greg replied. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.” There was silence. “Look,” Greg continued. “What’s this look like?” He leaned forward and, with his index finger, pointed at a gray area under David’s nose.

Unconsciously, David leaned forward. “What? Stubble? Five-o’clock shadow?”

“Shadow is right,” Greg enthused. “Not five-o’clock shadow, but just your everyday shadow. Now you can see the border of the shadow caused by your nose and the light area next to it. Do you see that, Dr. O’Neal?”

“Yes. It looks like a faint diagonal line.”

“Which way is it pointed?” Greg asked.

“To my right,” David answered.

“Correct. Next question: Where was the light source in the room? I mean the room where the video was taken.”

“I don’t know,” David admitted. “I wasn’t looking at the furnishings.”

“I can understand that,” Greg said. “But I did look at the furnishings.” He ran the tape back to the original scene and paused it. David could be seen at the end of the table with the two men on each side. “Where’s the lamp, Dr. O’Neal?”

David studied the image, and for the first time looked at the room instead of himself. “To my right. In the corner. It’s one of those contemporary lamps that shines the light up toward the ceiling.”

“Correct again.” Greg rubbed his hands together with excitement. “Now here’s the big question: If the lamp is on your right, which way should your shadow cast?”

“To my left,” David said softly. “But on the closeup it’s going the opposite direction. They made a mistake. That proves it’s a fake!” David clapped his hands.

“Maybe,” Calvin said cautiously.

“It’s a definite fake all right,” Greg said. “But it’s not a mistake. It’s a tell.”

“What do you mean?” Kristen asked. “What’s a
tell?
”

Greg looked surprised. “None of you have ever played poker?”

“I have,” Calvin said. “Used to play on a regular basis.”

“So what’s a tell?” David asked.

“A tell is something a player unconsciously does that reveals the nature of the cards in his hand. Some players when they get a good hand bounce their leg or raise an eyebrow or, if they were chatting a lot, suddenly become quiet. A good
poker player will spend the first few hands studying his opponents to see if they display any tells.”

David turned to Greg. “Are you saying this shadow is intentional?”

“Yup. He wants to give himself away. All the other shadows in the room are correct. I checked each one. They’re all perfect except this one. He put that shadow there so someone would find it.”

“Why?” Kristen asked.

“I have no idea,” Greg said. “But there’s more. I’m going to go back to the closeup and then advance the tape slowly. You tell me what you see.” With quick movements, Greg adroitly did as he said. “Now watch and think simple.”

The tape played. David’s image was speaking.

“It looks … awkward,” Kristen said.

“That’s a good word for it,” Greg said. “It’s not Dr. O’Neal’s face. It’s a computer fabrication. Most likely a composite of actual video and computer modeling.”

“Can they do that?” Calvin asked with surprise. “Can they put someone’s face on someone else’s body?”

“Oh, sure,” Greg said. “It’s done all the time. The technique was used in several music videos and in the movie
Jurassic Park.
You did see
Jurassic Park
, didn’t you?”

“Sure,” Kristen said. The men nodded.

“Do you remember the scene where the little girl falls through the ceiling and is hanging by one arm? There’s a dinosaur below her that is getting ready to leap up and take a bite. Well, a stuntwoman actually did the drop, but there was a glitch in the shooting. When the stuntwoman dropped through the ceiling she acted out her part well, but she looked up into the camera. That meant the viewers would know it
wasn’t the child actress. Rather than reshoot the scene, they simply added the actress’s face over the stuntwoman’s. No one knew the difference.”

“That’s what they did here?” David asked.

“Probably,” Greg answered. “The problem is speech. The human face is filled with muscles that work together. Everything from the twitching of an eye to a smile takes several, if not dozens, of muscles. It’s hard to duplicate in a computer what the human face can do. Not impossible, but pretty hard. It also requires sophisticated and expensive equipment and someone who knows how to use it.”

“Who would know such things?” Calvin asked. “I assume I can’t just look in the yellow pages.”

“The communities in and around Hollywood have companies that specialize in computer animation and computer-generated images. One of those companies could do it, or one of their employees. With the right equipment, that is.”

“How hard is the equipment to obtain?” Calvin asked.

“Not hard at all,” Greg answered. “All you need is money. With enough money and practice, I could do this.” He nodded at the screen.

“You could create a tape like this one?” Kristen asked.

“No, not really. Not yet anyway. There is as much art as there is technology involved here. Knowing what needs to be done is one thing; having the experience to do it is another. Whoever did this is a practiced artist. He’s great.”

“That’s not the word I’d use for him,” David interjected.

“You should thank him, Dr. O’Neal,” Greg countered. “If he hadn’t dropped these little clues in the tape you would never be able to prove this was a fabrication. Since videotape is purely an electronic media, it’s impossible to trace physical
changes. Unlike film, which has emulsions that can be analyzed, video comprises electronically recorded data. Since the image is really a recorded electronic signal, it can be easily manipulated. And there is no way to prove that such manipulation has occurred. You can’t tell what the video camera really saw and what was added later. All you can do is look for mistakes in lighting, shadows, and detailed movements like that of a human face speaking. You’re fortunate that the artist decided to give himself away.”

“If he hadn’t done it in the first place—”

“They would have got someone else to do the job,” Calvin interrupted.

“They?” Kristen said. “How can we be sure that it’s more than one person?”

“It’s a gut feeling at the moment,” Calvin said. “Besides, I don’t think a computer graphics artist would contrive such an intricate plan and then give himself away. No, someone has it in for David, and we’re going to have to find out who that is.”

David nodded. “Greg, could the same thing that was done on this video be done on still photos?”

“Oh, sure,” Greg replied with hesitation. “That’s easier yet, especially with digital cameras that record images electronically and can be directly downloaded into a computer. With a photo you’re dealing with just one frame; with video hundreds of frames must be altered.”