The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (25 page)

“Exactly.” Buckaroo nodded. “Except she knows better and must have ways of keeping informed as to our every move.”

“John Parker?” I asked. “Or that big radio receiver in the sky?”

“I doubt it. I doubt we’ll ever know,” he replied. “But John Parker could be useful to us. Tell him I’d like to see him.”

We were standing in World Watch One, our sophisticated electronics eavesdropping post aboard the bus, where Big Norse had succeeded in opening a channel of communications with what we believed was the Adder father ship. As I flicked on the intercom and told Pinky Carruthers that I’d like to see John Parker upstairs, I watched Big Norse listen to the Adder signal in her headphones and write out two words—Nova Police.

“Tell them we have a message for John Emdall,” Buckaroo said.

“In their code?” Big Norse asked.

Buckaroo assented. “In their code, their language, whatever it is. Tell them it’s urgent.

While she sent the message, Buckaroo simultaneously placed a call to the President. It was the first the outside world would learn of our extraordinarily perilous situation and the expedition we were embarked upon.

S
o much has been written about our raid upon Yoyodyne that I confess to having nearly succumbed to the temptation of leaving it out of this journal altogether; and yet I recognize—how can I not?—its continuing hold upon the popular imagination. One would think we would be satiated with the details by now. Certainly, its main events need no repeating, as they have been stylized and improved upon by better writers than I. Every schoolboy and girl now knows of the adventures of Scooter Lindley who at the point of a gun reclaimed the OVERTHRUSTER for the Banzai Institute. Equally incorporated into the public mythology by now is the aerial triumph of John Parker and Buckaroo Banzai over Whorfin’s Panther ship in the skies of Grover’s Mills, the fate of Earth literally hanging on the winner. How does a writer embellish upon such a
Wassercheide
of human history? Whose pen can add one meaningful word to the documented result? The planet and the race were saved—this is the legacy of our deeds; the rest is only so much gossip.

However quarrelsome I might be with the idea of recovering this ground, the expected advent of this published journal has brought me numerous letters and inquiries from the public, many of them dealing specifically with the question of our combat against the Lectroids . . . “How did you fight them?”, “Were they as stout as advertised?”, “Are any left among us?”, and the like. In order, then, to allay some doubts and raise others in terms of certain falsities about the raid that have been disseminated, I now address myself to the truth of what happened, using transcripts and my own hitherto unpublished notes to keep to a minimum the natural tendency of any writer to enhance the facts.

8:33 P.M.—B. Banzai’s call to the president’s hospital room at Walter Reed is patched through after great difficulty with atmospherics. With the President, the Secretary of Defense, whose almost frantic desire to get his hands on the OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER is well known.

Buckaroo Banzai:
Hello, Mr. President. How’s my favorite patient? Any tenderness?

The President:
Buckaroo! What’s it like out there . . . (unintelligible) . . . in the real world?

Buckaroo Banzai:
Not too terrific, sir. I apologize for the interruption—

Secretary of Defense:
Buckaroo—

Buckaroo Banzai:
Mr. Secretory—

The President:
What’s going on?

Buckaroo Banzai:
Something very unusual. We have reason to believe that there are, moving freely among us, alien space creatures known, as Lectroids, disguised as humans and the owners and operators of Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems.

The President:
Yoyodyne Propulsion?

Secretary of Defense:
The people working on our top secret Truncheon sub hunter-killer? Under control of alien nationals?

Buckaroo Banzai:
Not exactly, Mr. Secretary. Alien Lectroids from Planet 10, a planet in a distant two-star system. There isn’t much time to explain, but
camouflaged
as human beings, what they’re really doing, forget your Truncheon sub hunter-killer, is building an enormous rocketship to escape back through the Eighth Dimension, and—

The President:
Buckaroo, Buckaroo . . . slow down . . . (unintelligible). We go back a long way together.

(John Parker has arrived in World Watch One, and B. Banzai immediately urges him to speak.)

John Parker:
Excuse me, but time is short. To prevent John Whorfin’s escape, my comrades at this very moment are taking up a geostationary position over New Jersey. The situation is explosive.

The President:
Who the hell are you?

John Parker:
I am John Parker. Who are you?

The President:
I’m the President of the United States. What are you talking about, man?

Buckaroo Banzai:
This “man” as you called him, is not a human being, Mr. President. He is an Adder, a representative of the Nova Police.

Secretary of Defense:
Nova Police? What’s that, a rock band?

8:37 P.M.—New Jersey joins Professor Hikita at the microscope to look at a sample of Lectroid tissue taken from John Parker’s “fingernail.” Without the antidote synthesized by the professor, the sample appears to be human flesh. One whiff of the antidote, however, and the sample is seen as it really is . . . a dark wine-colored scaly material. Though the exact mechanism of the camouflage ability is unclear, the principle is not. True to B. Banzai’s revolutionary theory of consciousness as a force transmitted by subatomic particles, the Lectroid tissue disguises itself by speeding the emission of consciousness particles, akin to speeding up a movie to the point where it is no longer visible except as an indistinct object. The human imagination does the rest, connecting the dots, as it were.

New Jersey:
You mean the brain of the observer sees an indistinct human form—? A piece of clay?

Professor Hikita:
Yes, on the subconscious level. An interesting experiment would be to try hypnosis on the observer.

New Jersey:
I doubt it’s that simple. Otherwise, why not just hypnotize all of us instead of using the antidote?

Professor Hikita:
Not everyone is equally susceptible to hypnosis, and what the antidote does is amazingly simple and effective. It increases the speed of neurons within the brain, allowing us to see the creatures in sync.

New Jersey:
You mean like speeding up the turntable from 33½ to 45?

Professor Hikita:
Yes. As the neurons of the reticular activating system carry the visual information faster, the images come into focus. You see, their camouflage works because we are all under the deception that we possess sensory continuity. But that is simply not the case, given that the firing of neurons within the brain is of a finite order—like frames of celluloid moving through a projector, giving the impression of uninterrupted viewing. The trick is, we cannot see the “gaps” in our vision any more than we can see the gaps between frames on the celluloid. The brain simply knits itself over these time gaps to give itself the illusion of continuity.

New Jersey:
Like it knits faces and human characteristics on the Lectroids—

Professor Hikita:
Yes—

New Jersey:
But, that means—

Professor Hikita:
Yes—?

New Jersey:
If our minds invent their faces, kind of like potato heads, none of them ever looks the same to more than one person.

Professor Hikita:
Right. All the people in a room would see the creature differently. In fact, if you met him yourself on separate occasions and did not know in advance who it was, you would likely see him as a totally different individual.

New Jersey:
But if I knew in advance . . .

Professor Hikita:
Then your mind would remember him. He would look the same, depending on how good your memory is.

New Jersey:
But he would never age.

Professor Hikita:
I think you’re onto something, New Jersey.

New Jersey:
That would explain how John Bigbooté could have run Yoyodyne since the late 1930s—nearly fifty years—and still look like a man in his forties. Isn’t that right, Reno?

Reno:
I would say early forties. They all looked to be in their early forties.

Professor Hikita:
Funny. To me they appeared to be in their seventies, like me.

New Jersey:
How strange!

8:40 P.M.—The conversation with the President continues. The Secretary of Defense leaves the room to call John Bigbooté of Yoyodyne.

John Parker:
Mr. President, I have delivered a message from my own leader John Emdall, who has made it clear that unless John Whorfin is destroyed, she intends to fire an over-the-horizon particle beam weapon from your airspace at the Soviet Union, incinerating one of its cities and provoking them to attack.

The President:
My God, that’s an outrage! You can’t be serious. Who is this person—? John—?

Buckaroo Banzai:
John Emdall, Mr. President. I believe she is quite serious. Her ship is at this moment—

Big Norse:
Four hundred—

Buckaroo Banzai:
Four hundred miles and closing. You may have heard of the atmospheric disturbances we’re experiencing.

The President:
Yes, we’ve been having . . . (unintelligible) . . . trouble with the Hot Line.

Buckaroo Banzai:
I’ll see what I can do, Mr. President. I have a call into her now. But it may be too late for the Hot Line.

The President:
Too late for the Hot Line? Oh, my . . . (unintelligible) . . . I don’t know what to say, Buckaroo. I’m flabbergasted. I mean, you and I go back a long way. You’re my personal physician, but . . . (unintelligible) . . . aliens from some Planet 10, nuclear extortion, a girl named John—

8:42 P.M.—The Secretary of Defense returns to the room.

Secretary of Defense:
Buckaroo, I couldn’t reach John Bigbooté at Yoyodyne. Some other guy answered.

Buckaroo Banzai:
John Whorfin?

Secretary of Defense:
How did you know? I admit something’s funny over there. You say you’re on your way there right now?

Buckaroo Banzai:
Right, Mr. Secretary.

Secretary of Defense:
Maybe I should meet you. We could go in together. You might need my clout to get in.

Buckaroo Banzai:
It’s not exactly a social call, Mr. Secretary.

Secretary of Defense:
Well, be that as it may . . . (unintelligible) . . .

The President:
Yes, I think that’s a good idea. The United States Government has a lot riding on that place.

Buckaroo Banzai:
Unless they are stopped, Mr. President, there won’t be a United States.

Secretary of Defense:
Fine, then. Have your aide give my aide the coordinates, and I’ll be there by chopper within the hour.

Buckaroo Banzai:
We may not have an hour, Mr. President.

The President:
Well . . . (unintelligible) . . .

Secretary of Defense:
By the way, Buckaroo, where is the Jet Car?

Buckaroo Banzai:
It’s with us. It’s safe.

The President:
Yes, I think that’s the best plan. You two meet and go in together. Maybe there’s a logical explanation for all this. At any rate, they, owe us an explanation why that bomber is so damn far behind schedule. The GSA is supposed to be looking into it—

Buckaroo Banzai:
Well, you’re the Commander in Chief, Mr. President.

The President:
That’s right, (to an aide) Get me SAC HQ and NORAD. See what there is to this atmospherics stuff . . . (unintelligible) . . . okay, Buckaroo?

8:44 P.M.—Communication is established with the Nova Police father ship. John Emdall is unavailable, but John Parker speaks with John Penworthy, Commander of the Fleet. Parker apprises him of the situation, at which point Buckaroo Banzai breaks off communication with the President and informs John Penworthy that the Lectroids have managed to obtain the OVERTHRUSTER but that it should take them some time to program it and that, in the interim, we are going into Yoyodyne after them. John Penworthy is noncommittal; says he must consult John Emdall. We wait.

8:46 P.M.—A phone call from someone identifying himself as Dr. Lizardo via the Institute. Buckaroo Banzai accepts the call and the charges.

“Dr. Lizardo”:
Well, well . . . (unintelligible) . . . Dr. Banzai?

Buckaroo Banzai:
Speaking.

“Dr. Lizardo”:
Dr. Lizardo here. Perhaps you don’t remember me?

Buckaroo Banzai:
Of course I do. Professor Hikita speaks of you often.

“Dr. Lizardo”:
Fond memories, I’m sure. We know the same people, don’t we?

Buckaroo Banzai:
Some of them.

“Dr. Lizardo”:
One of them has just arrived here in fact. Dr. Penny Priddy, your associate.