Your Next-Door Neighbor Is a Dragon (4 page)

Anders directed me toward another security door, this one in better repair and marked with three-dimensional chrome letters that spelled
OFFI
. I reluctantly followed him to the door, picturing zee basement as a rat’s maze of claustrophobic passages choked with rusty, steaming pipes and pressure gauges with needles vibrating in the red.

I calmed my nerves by reminding myself that I had braved the
Twilight Zone
episode that was Hermosa. I didn’t see a stray bunch of red balloons floating purposefully down the street. I didn’t have my face melted off by a pigeon. Hermosa was a way worse scene than some stupid creepy basement in a factory.

Fortunately, zee chamber in zee basement was nothing like I had imagined. We descended a perfectly normal enclosed staircase and passed through a door into an open and well-lit space. It looked more like an artist’s loft than a dank industrial basement.

It was almost the exact opposite of dank. It bordered on pleasant and warm. It was definitely clean. We were standing on cherry parquet flooring. There was a drafting table and stool and two Apple computers sitting atop two black Ikea desks. The desks were so new there were a few assembly stickers visible as we walked past.

The lighting was warm and sufficient, provided by a mixture of overhead lamps in brushed metal fixtures and standing lamps that seemed chosen to go along with a whimsical set of purple couches. I think I even heard soft music playing. Distant strains of Feist.

“Not vat you expected, ja?” Anders laughed, detecting my surprise. “Come, I show you zee chamber.”

The chamber was a separate room that resembled a racquetball court. It had three white walls, a white ceiling with starkly bright recessed lighting, and a one-way glass back wall and door. In the center of the room was a chair that looked like an ergonomic dentist’s chair. It was black and articulated, with a foot rest and padded armrests. It looked creepy, but also very comfortable. Good lumbar support.

I pressed my palms against the glass to get a better look and I realized that the white walls were not walls at all. They were made from floor-to-ceiling strips of a faintly iridescent white fabric stretched taught over a metal framework.

“What are the walls?” I asked.

“Ooh, you vill see.” Anders had taken a seat behind one of the Apple computers. “Come sit down. Vee must talk before you go into zee chamber.”

“I’m not going to sit down in there and end up on a beach talking to my space dad, am I?” I asked as I took a seat.

“No, of course not,” Anders said with complete seriousness.

He had somehow missed my insanely clever reference to the movie
Contact
. My opinion of him was plummeting.

“Before ve begin I must know vie you have come here to see zee chamber,” Anders said. “Vat do you vant to learn from me?”

“I want to learn why people become who they become on the Internet,” I replied.

Anders nodded.

“I want to know if the online personality is distinct from the person in the real world,” I continued. “Whether they create an idealized self or whether their environment shapes—”

“Ooh, ja, this is the key!” Anders interrupted. “Nature verzez zee nurturing. Do zee lonely become strange from seeking a sense of belonging or is it like-minded individuals they seek? Forget zee uzzer questions. Zee real question is when zee man is given a choice of identity does eet spring from zem or from zee surroundings?”

“Attraction versus actualization?” I asked.

“Ja, something link that. Und why do you think zee chamber can help you answer your questions?”

I wasn’t really sure how to answer. I wasn’t even sure about zee chamber’s intended purpose. I needed a starting point for my journey through the Internet’s subcultures and since I wasn’t going to be offering any insight I thought I could hijack some from a real expert. My search for an Internet sociologist, psychologist, or anthropologist in my area had eventually brought me to Anders Zimmerman’s fairly obscure work.

“I don’t know,” I finally said. “You claimed to be working on a diagnostic tool and I thought I could subject myself to it.”

“Nein,” Anders replied. “Not diagnosis. Experimentation. I am not a medical doctor, I am a researcher. I am observer. I do not treat.”

“So you tell me. How does the chamber work?”

“Ooh.” Anders stood. “You vant to find out, ja? First, some rules for you, Herr Parsons.”

He settled himself uncomfortably against the corner of his desk. I winced at the awkward pose. It looked as if it could lead to toilet problems.

“First and most important, zis is not a toy. Zee chamber is a complex scientific instrument and it is not an amusement. Not a joke. You said your book is funny, ja?”

“Oh, don’t worry.” I held up my hands. “My book won’t be funny at all. That’s just what the publisher thinks.”

“Ja, vell, no jokes. A joke could produce zee false result,” he scolded. “Und no getting up. Once vee start you must continue to zee end.”

“Why is that?”

“Zis is a complex process und once I start there is no shtopping. I see concern on your face, Herr Parsons. Do not fret, there is no danger to you. If you follow meine instructions nothing vill go wrong.”

Being told “there is no danger” and “nothing will go wrong” by a guy who sounds suspiciously like an Igor from a low-budget Frankenstein remake is not really reassuring. However, other than the slightly creepy chair the chamber did not look all that scary.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Ja, you are not epileptic, richtig?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Zen vee are ready, Herr Parsons.”

Anders led me to the glass door and held it open. There was a slight pressure change when the opening door broke the seal. I could see the fabric covering the walls sway almost imperceptibly.

“Take off your shoe, but not your sock, und have a seat on zee…seat,” Anders instructed.

He watched me untie and remove my shoes and then I stepped into the room. Anders followed me in and walked me to the seat. Every movement, everything that should have made a sound, was muffled and deadened by the acoustics of the room.

I sat down in the black reclining chair. It was difficult to settle into properly, but with a little help from Anders I found the right position. At that point it became very comfortable, so comfortable I might have been tempted to nap were the room not so bright. Anders hydraulically adjusted the seat using a foot pedal on the floor and then adjusted the back so that I was facing forward and slightly up.

“Zee chair will turn slowly,” he said. “Zis, accompanied wiz everything sometimes make a person sick.”

He pressed a tightly folded paper bag into my hand.

“If you feel zee sickness, use zis,” he said.

I nodded.

“Remember, do not get up during zee process,” he said, and I replied in the affirmative.

Anders gave me one last check, adjusted the chair’s height again very slightly, and then stepped back.

“Okay, gut, you are ready,” Anders pronounced. “I will give you instructions over zee speakers. If I ask you a question you must answer immediately; do not hesitate. Hesitating can contaminate the response. Inshtinct is zee key.”

“I’ve got it,” I said, and gave him two thumbs up.

Anders walked out of zee chamber, sealing the glass door and leaving me alone with the bright whiteness. There was a mechanical thump overhead and the lights within the chamber suddenly switched off.

Faint techno music began to play from three sides. I did not recognize it, but it was driving and repetitive. It was the sort of moronically pounding music that might play over the sound system at a car show as models in bikinis posed next to an ergonomic green Frisbee on wheels. It was hypnotic twenty-first-century Jock Jams.

The music began to increase in volume, and I realized there were also speakers built into the headrest of the chair and a booming subwoofer pressed against the small of my back. The drum and bass was beginning to vibrate my insides. The sensation wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Yet.

Digital constellations of colors burst across the walls in synchronization with the music. Red and green showers of pixels exploded with each drum hit. Smaller eruptions of blue and yellow exploded into being with machine gun rapidity and tracked in glowing strips that crisscrossed from one wall to the next.

The room had become a mathematical visualization of the music, hypnotic and a little overwhelming, like the bars on a giant, psychedelic equalizer.

I presumed the effect was achieved by using some sort of projectors concealed behind the fabric and framework of the chamber’s three walls. Even knowing this, it was still impressive and a little disorienting.

The chair began to shake. For a moment I thought it was the subwoofer blasting into my spine, but as my view of the procedural fireworks began to shift I realized the chair was rotating. It swiveled on the hydraulic lift until the dark glass of the windows was on my left side, then it rotated back in the opposite direction until the glass wall was on my right.

“You vill listen to my voice,” Anders boomed from the speakers as if I had a choice. “You are entering zee Matrix.”

On cue the visualizations shifted to the green alphanumeric waterfalls popularized by
Zee Matrix
.

“You leave your body behind und your consciousness flows into zee digital realm. You are not any longer constrained by zee physical body. You can now be whoever it is you choose. Vatever you vant.”

The green letters and numbers faded away and were replaced by a dynamic collage of faces. They appeared to be clipped from family photos and class pictures. Most were anonymous, but I recognized Anders among the faces. And there was President George W. Bush. And…Shannon Tweed. And was that her again in a red wig?

“Now it is time to discover who you are and who you will be, Mr. Parsons!”

Anders’s delivery was overwrought and almost gleeful. He was plainly enjoying his role as the disembodied voice of the Wizard of Oz.

“The new you will begin to take shape from your unconscious and your consciousness. Your instincts will guide you. Are you ready?”

I waited for a moment to be sure he wanted a response and then I answered, “Yes!”

“Good. You are now immersed in zee stream of zee sensory data. You are beginning your journey of discovery. Look at zee images you see before you…”

The screens faded to black.

“…as each appears, speak aloud zee first word zat comes into your head. Do not hesitate. Do not think about your answer.”

What might have been simple association was complicated by the audio that began to play along with the images. As the first image appeared—a photograph of a white cat rubbing its face against the corner of a coffee table—words began to bubble out of the speakers on the chair’s headrest.

As the cat fully resolved on each of the walls I heard a steady stream of contradictory words and phrases.

“Gold,” said a computer-generated woman.

“Pickles,” said a computer-generated man.

“Red. Red. Woman. King. Zero. Champion. Guitar,” the voices babbled in my ears, switching sides and overlapping.

“Answer quickly!” Anders shouted over the main speakers.

“Cat!” I answered.

“Pumpkin. Pigeon. Book. Crease,” the voices continued, my auditory focus shifting through several bands of spoken words emerging from the speakers.

A new photograph faded in on the screens. An image of a gleaming samurai sword held in a clenched fist.

“Finger,” said the woman’s voice.

“Finger!” I blurted.

The image of the sword dissolved into a photograph of a basket full of apples.

“Crane. Shoe. Hiccup. Porridge,” the voices babbled.

“Fruit basket!” I shouted, but I had to think for a moment and resist the urge to simply parrot the words being spoken directly into my ear.

The experience would be alien to most people outside of the former Soviet Union and parts of Cambodia. Maybe a few captured American spies were subjected to something like this by the KGB, but the average person has never been led into an empty room, sat in a dentist’s chair, and asked to yell out responses to images while techno music and random words blasted in their ears.

The closest common experience might be attempting to count to a high number and being confused or losing your place when you hear other numbers. That was the sort of maddening mental failure I endured for much of the exercise. It was a constant struggle for my brain to react to the images independently of my ears. I got the hang of it after several pictures, but as it progressed I realized my defense mechanism was simply naming what I was seeing in the photo.

“Very good,” Anders announced, even though I was feeling stressed out by the exercise. “Take a moment to regain zee composure. Listen to zee music und relax. Vee vill continue to zee next phase once you tell me you are ready.”

The digital fireworks returned and the music grew a bit louder. The chair continued to swivel from side to side. I had to admit, the sensory overload was becoming slightly nauseating.

I fought through the ache in the pit of my stomach and announced my readiness.

“Excellent. You are doing vell, Mr. Parsons.”

The music softened a bit as the screens once again faded to black.

“Now vee vill be reversing things a bit,” Anders said. “I am going to ask you a series of questions. You vill see images on zee screens, but you are to respond only to my questions. Zer is no right or een-correct answer to zees questions. Answer however you like and recall your goal is to manifest your inner self.”

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Ja!” I replied.

“Vee begin…now!”

Images began to flash rapid-fire across the screens. It was an accelerated version of the earlier collage of faces, but covering a much broader spectrum of subjects. It was an onslaught.

Mundane images, violent images, strange images, and pornographic images exploded in complete disharmony across three walls of the chamber. One moment a black-and-white photograph of a ranch house appeared and a moment later it was covered by a photograph of genital herpes from a medical textbook. A moment later the herpes disappeared behind an image of kids cheering on a roller coaster.