Dracula Lives (8 page)

“Not a comforting thought for your guests, to have him right outside their door.”

“True. Consider that a small test of your love of horror.”

They rounded the corner and headed down another long, windowless corridor. Quinn began counting his paces, wanting to create a mental map of the layout. He had counted thirty when they came to another finely crafted wooden door on the right.

“Johnny’s quarters,” Markov said without slowing.

Thirty-one paces later they came to a similar door and stopped.

Markov pulled out a skeleton key. “Not exactly the most sophisticated locking system, but I didn’t want to keep track of countless keys. This way I need only one. There was also the matter of not violating the set design. The movie of my life is a period piece.”

“I thought I saw a modern lock on the door to Johnny’s quarters.”

“Everyone needs their privacy. The need is especially acute for two people in such an … unusual relationship, so cut off from the world. Johnny’s apartment is the only exception to my one-lock rule.”

“A good policy,” Quinn said. “By the way, I must compliment you on your Art Direction and Set Decoration. Cedric Gibbons would approve.”

“Oh, come now. I have a high opinion of my talents, but Gibbons is the god of art directors. He won eleven Oscars. You flatter me.”

“No, I don’t. You’ve done an excellent job of designing a home that blurs the line between movies and real life.”

Markov gave him the now-familiar stare. “In my case there isn’t one. My horror film is the record of the horror of my life. They are one and the same.”

Johnny sat at the control panel in the steward’s quarters, watching them on one of two dozen large monitors that gave views of every part of the castle and grounds. Markov and Quinn had stopped by the Grim Reaper to discuss something. Alongside the bank of monitors was an array of controls for everything from panning or tilting a particular camera to starting the coffee in the kitchen. Johnny pushed a button.

A tiny camera embedded in one of the eye sockets of the Grim Reaper took a picture that would enable it to instantly recognize the new soul that had come into their realm.

Markov led them into his laboratory. After he closed the door, Johnny pushed another button.

The scythe made a vicious
whoosh
as it rent the air.

Practice.

Markov unlocked the door and pressed a button on the inside wall. Fluorescent light bathed a vast studio. The windowless square, filled with modern audiovisual equipment, was a jarring contrast to the gloomy Gothic design of the rest of the castle. Walls and floor were carpeted, no doubt to improve the acoustics. The wall to the left was mostly shelving. Quinn glimpsed cans of film and blank recording media.

Markov led him past a huge instrument panel on the wall to the right, filled with monitors, gauges, and dials.

He gestured at the panel without stopping. “Master control for all the various systems of the estate.”

A plush leather swivel chair on casters for tending to the impressive array made Quinn think of Captain Kirk in
Star Trek
.

Labels under each monitor told which part of the castle or grounds it showed. Two in all capital letters under much larger monitors caught Quinn’s eye: LAGOON and GARDEN. Unlike the other monitors, these were turned off, their screens black.

After the instrument panel came a door. On the way here they’d passed Johnny’s quarters. The two spaces must be adjoining. Markov seemed to like keeping his steward nearby.

A few steps past the door, they stopped at a bank of half a dozen computers, their widescreen monitors resting on a shelf built into the wall. To the left of the computers, a 35-millimeter projector faced a five-foot screen. Everything was immaculate and precisely arranged. This was the workspace of a perfectionist.

“My remastering/editing console,” Markov said.

Quinn made a polite nod. His attention kept being drawn to the lurid horror movie posters arrayed on the carpeted wall behind the console:
Horror of Dracula, The Mummy’s Ghost, House of Horrors, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Man-Made Monster,
The Monster Maker.

“My wall of inspiration,” Markov said. “Come. Let me show you how the 21st-century version of the mad movie scientist creates his monsters.”

He led them to an area that looked like the place where a kid who loved monster movies kept his toys. There were reproduced miniatures of King Kong, Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Robby the Robot, and several others.

“For whatever reason,” Markov began, “people are given certain abilities. I have already mentioned my genius for technology. From my first day at Universal, I understood the importance of technology to filmmaking, so I made it my business to learn each new innovation. In particular I wanted to learn how to make the most realistic movie monsters the world had ever seen. In the ’60s, I taught myself robotic animation and started with Robby. I was able to move my creations around, and they were very good, but never quite realistic enough to suit me. Then the digital revolution begat computer animation, and …” he gestured at the array of miniatures “… these creatures became extinct.”

“Are they still functional?”

“Oh yes. As are some other robotic things I keep around for my amusement. I was in my seventies when home computers came in, but I didn’t run from them like most people my age. I couldn’t wait to get one. In 1975, I ordered the Altair 8800 from
Popular Electronics
. The model generally considered to have launched the home computer revolution. You ‘tinkered it together’ from a kit.”

“Quoting Morbius again,” Quinn said.

“I still think
Forbidden Planet
is one of the best sci-fi films. Way ahead of its time.”

“Maybe the inventor of the Altair 8800 loved it, too, since Morbius lived on the planet Altair 4.”

“The thought crossed my mind,” Markov said. “I also found it an interesting coincidence that your name is Quinn. There’s a character named Quinn in
Forbidden Planet
.”

“Yes. The engineer. When I first saw
Forbidden Planet
as a kid, I thought it was cool to have the same name as one of the guys on the spaceship. Until he gets killed by the Monster from Morbius’s Id.”

“One of the great movie monsters,” Markov said.

“Absolutely.”

“When I first started to teach myself computer technology, I did indeed fancy myself as a kind of Morbius. I learned everything there was to learn, down to the last bit and pixel. When the first DVDs hit the market, I knew a revolution had begun. I immersed myself in learning all the digital possibilities for filmmakers. Come. Let me show you the
pièces de résistance.
”

They went back to the editing console and sat side by side in two rolling office chairs. Markov put his hand on an unusually large mouse with several buttons. Clearly relishing the chance to tell someone of his accomplishments, he became more animated than Quinn had yet seen him.

“The process I am about to show you has taken countless thousands of hours, spread out over decades, to develop. Along the way I created this mouse, which can give the computer commands unique to my operation. Here’s the map of the castle I use to place my creations wherever I need them.”

A click of the mouse brought up a stunning, high-definition image of the exterior of castle.

“The master shot, so to speak. I have a separate page for each area of the castle. Each page has a grid dividing it into squares. Standard letter and number coordinates along the sides allow me to pinpoint any square.”

A series of clicks brought up images of the entrance, the stairs, the study, the screening room. He stopped at the one showing the inside of Quinn’s apartment. “You get the idea.”

“Yes.”

“Once a film is digitally remastered, I can pause it at any point. I then very precisely highlight the part of the image I need, pixel by pixel, and extract it from the picture. I can then paste that into my digital editing program and make it larger, make it appear more vicious—the possibilities are endless. Once the enhancement is finished, I can then place the enhanced version wherever I want it in the castle by entering the coordinates of that particular square in the grid. Animating them requires another step, which I will show you in a moment. Before we get to that, you commented upon the excellence of my Bela Lugosi voice. Let me show you how that is achieved.”

A few mouse clicks brought up a freeze-frame of Lugosi standing on the stairs in
Dracula
. Beneath the image was the track of the editing software that would graphically display the peaks and valleys of the sound. “Watch what happens when he speaks.” He clicked the mouse and the movie came to life. Lugosi spoke his famous opening line:

“I am … Dracula.”

The line on the sound track zigzagged as it registered the highs and lows of the soundwave created by Lugosi’s voice.

“I put on earphones and record my version on a new track directly beneath his, watching both of the graphic displays, doing it over and over, continually modulating my voice until the graph of my voice matches the graph of his as closely as possible.”

“Ingenious.”

Markov quoted Morbius again. “Mere child’s play. I can do it with any of the actors if I take the time.”

“You could sell your secrets to Hollywood and be a very rich man.”

“I am already a very rich man. I am only interested in culminating my life’s work. Besides, there are aspects to what I do that are very dangerous.”

“Dangerous? How so?”

“You shall see. Come. Let me show you the rest of the process.”

They went to the far end of the room. An oversized recliner faced a full-sized movie screen. On a small table next to the recliner was an unusual pair of large gloves and large tinted goggles. The goggles were clearly designed for some kind of specialized viewing. The temples that secured them over the ears were much larger than regular temples, to accommodate a series of small lights that continually pulsated along one, and a series of buttons that ran along the other. Beside them was an oversized mouse similar to the one at the remastering console.

“First I bring up the location where I want to insert my digital creature.” He clicked the mouse and the exterior of the castle again came onto the screen. “The master shot.” Another few clicks brought up the grounds that ran along the right wall of the castle. A short distance beyond the access road, the clearing was bordered by thick woods.

“Now I insert whatever digitally-enhanced creature I have extracted from a movie.”

A couple slight finger movements on the mouse made a huge black dog appear at the edge of the woods. “From the 1939 version of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
. I have greatly enhanced him for my purposes. Made him much larger and more fearsome.”

“He’s definitely fearsome,” Quinn said. “Almost as big as a bear.”

“Now we come to the most formidable obstacle: animation. Not animation as we know it, where the character’s movements are done once and remain the same forever. I wanted my creations to be independent entities. Things I could move about at will, while giving them whatever life was needed to suit the situation.”

He donned the gloves and goggles.

“These are essentially integrated computers of my own design, able to process nearly a trillion bits of data per second. Twenty-five years ago you would have needed a central processing unit the size of this room to even approach that capacity. I can use one or both of the gloves, depending on the needs of the scene. The gloves have sensors that can transmit any of my body movements to the creatures. Instead of cells, their millions of digital bits are the receptors. Watch.”

He pressed the fingertips and thumb of one hand against the fingertips and thumb of the other. Markov and the hound slowly swiveled their heads in unison. “Repetitive movements like walking are easy. I simply program them into the creature, then I activate the program here.” He held a finger poised over a button on the goggles. “Each push makes it go faster, from walking to an all-out run.”

He pushed the button and the hound began walking. He pushed another button and the hound stopped. Markov sat. The hound sat. Markov looked around, sniffing. The hound did the exact same.

“You get the idea,” Markov said. He removed the gloves and goggles with the theatrical flair of a lead actor holding for applause at the curtain call. Quinn almost expected him to bow.

“You make a very convincing hound,” Quinn said.

“In acting out the parts for my movie, I have had to learn to move—even think—like a dog, or whatever the part calls for. Which, of course, is something it seems I was born to do. I’ve been mimicking actors my whole life.”

“Impressive,” Quinn said. “Your technology goes far beyond computer animation. Even George Lucas and his team at Skywalker haven’t been able to do this.”

“It took me years to perfect. I spent enough hours studying the neurosciences to have earned a Ph.D., learning everything there is to know about how the brain functions and how it controls what we do.

“In the simplest layman’s terms, all activity in the brain translates into electrical, chemical, and magnetic impulses that course through our nervous system and control all of our bodily functions. In essence, I was the transmitter and my digital creation was the receiver. The missing link was how to connect the two so that I could use the energy from my brain to animate the digital creation. My theory was, that if I could somehow harness those brain waves and conduct them into my digital creations, I could bring them to a close approximation of life.”

“So what did you do?” Quinn asked.

“The theory was sound, but I reached an impasse. No computer was powerful enough—fast enough—to process the billions of bits of data required for such complex operations. Nanotechnology changed everything. Silicon Valley was getting more and more data onto smaller and smaller chips, increasing their processing speed exponentially. It was clear that this was the quantum leap that would propel the computer revolution into unimaginable realms of possibility. One of the reasons I’m so rich is the investments I made in computers and computer technology from the very beginning. Intel and Microsoft paid for this estate many times over.”