THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: RUMMAGE SALE

It didn't come to me first, of course, and I have no idea how old it is really. I have some ideas though, you can kind of work it out from what's in it. I mean, I'm pretty sure a portion of it is from a Buick Skylark dash, there's a ZX Spectrum computer, and a 1966 Zenith black and white TV. Inside, from what I could see, was a mish-mash of some older remote control models, a board from a PONG machine, and a bunch of strange bronze rods and wires.

Mullen found it at the rummage sale, and after I saw it at the fourth of July picnic, I just had to have it. Of course, he couldn't get it to turn on, so he let it go for a song...eventually. I mean, I was persistent. That's just how I am. I'd walk by his desk every day for a month and ask him. I collect this stuff. Props. Weird electronics. I have a theremin too, you know. All restored and I got it from... And a-- Ah. Yeah. Sorry. What I'm saying is this is my hobby. Kind of.   

Finally, Mullen folded. The next day he brought it in. Big and bulky, an old cloth-corded power cord dragging behind, and I lugged it to the car and took it home at lunch. That night I opened it up, and tried to mess with it, but what I saw inside the box was just as strange as what was outside. It was just bizarre. I really didn't know what to make of it. But it looked good. Put everything back where it was, screwed the box shut, and put it back on the shelf in the basement. And well I guess I forgot about it. Because of the thing... yeah. Well, everyone was confused for a bit. And then, bam, I'm home. Everyone's home.

After a few days I broke it back open. I rang up Mullen, and asked him where he bought it, and he gave me the address. I knew the house on Foxhurst road. Google is an amazing invention. Two days later I pulled myself away from all the stuff I learned. The people in the house, the Reneteur's had a son who died in 1984. This son, Manny, was struck by a car in the summer of 1974 at the age of 12, and when he woke up twenty-two days later, he wasn't...right. I mean, he could walk and all that, and learned to get along in the world, but he had changed. The accident changed him.

And he started to make things.

This was a version of his "machine" — from what articles I could find on it, Manny was always working on a version of the same machine — and this, the one I had, was the last he built in 1983. Right before the fire. I remember the fire; I was maybe 10 or 11 when the Reneteur's house went up, and I can still remember standing on the street near my aunt's house on an October night and watching it go up. I remember the kid died, but I don't recall Manny, or his machines and fame as the wonder-kid. I don't know why. Anyway, most of the house survived and they rebuilt.

But the machine didn't run. You couldn't plug it in; it was three-prong with a flat and curved ground prong like I'd not seen before. So, after going stir-crazy in the house, I walked over to the house. It looked run-down, but I knocked on the door and kept my distance. No one was home. The garage door was opened, and I walked back there...I guess to see if anyone was around. They weren't. Inside was a pile of junk. Botched together machines. An old vacuum cleaner with a spray of foreign wires sticking from a removed plate. A half broken down pneumatic pump with shoes on the swing-lines. Other stuff.

And then I saw the converter. I guess I shouldn't have taken it. But heck. I...you understand why? It was an old train transformer that ended in a regular plug (the label said Lionel) and on the front, a plug plate had been installed. Junk. But a three-pronged flat-plate. I took it home, excited, and plugged the machine into the transformer, and the transformer into the wall, and...it came on.

Pixelated numbered lines in black and white, with static:

768 REVISE REVISE REVISE unknown element 21184 REVISE REPORT

799 ELEMENT contact contact 60884 REVISE look report

801 CONTACT WITH motion. CONTACT with 8213. CONTACT with YTECH

815 UNKNOWN CONTACT element known unknown PNAKOTUS

Other stuff. Computer commands in BASIC mixed it. Bizarre. That's all it would show. That one "page" of stuff. Gibberish.

999 REMOVE element lost lost agent return PNAKOTUS 102384

That was the last line. I do paperwork for a living. 10/23/84. October 23, 1984 — the day the Reneteur's house burned down.

Anyway. Like I said, interesting stuff, right. So uh, what does the FBI want with this thing, anyway?