The Met’s next Live in HD presentation is Falstaff, Verdi’s last opera, a comedy about the randy Sir John and his botched sexual conquests. We’re at a subterranean rehearsal room three levels below the stage, where former maestro James Levin has returned to lead an early musical rehearsal with some of the principals and the cast. They’re working on the second act where the scheming Falstaff gets his comeuppance by being thrown into the Thames, along with a lot of dirty laundry.
Let’s listen in.
The image shifts from the woman introducing the scene to the background: a small ensemble of singers and musicians, led by the man at the front with wild hair. He waves a baton and a soprano’s voice soars.
Jackie smiled.
She sat on a recliner, consumed with the digital tablet on her lap. Headphones plugged into the gadget’s bottom fed her ears. A drop of drool pooled at the right corner of her mouth, lost in Lantern. This went on for more than an hour. Over and over, she saw the same video footage, her brain consumed by it.
Suddenly, she jolted. A sharp buzzing sound punctured her carefree, dull-witted isolation. The picture on her screen, and in her mind, fractured. It shattered into so many puzzle pieces. She stirred and looked up. She put a hand on the recliner chair and clung, as if steadying herself after a small earthquake or holding the railing of a boat after a swirl at sea. She blinked. Okay, she thought, I’m in the testing room at Lantern.
What am I doing here?
She pulled the headphones out and set down the tablet. Even as she surveyed the familiar scene, her mind’s eye drifted to the wonderful images of the wild-haired symphony director.
Unsteadily, she made her way to the door. So that is what Lantern felt like. More like time had stood still.
She walked out of the side door and then into the observation room—on the other side of the two-way mirror.
At a table sat Denny, facedown.
“Denny?”
Her boss and mentor didn’t move.
“Denny?” Now with more urgency. She hustled closer, shrugging off the disorientation. She leaned over the inert man. He stirred. She froze. “Denny?”
“Why . . .” he said.
“Denny. Are you okay?”
He tried to lift his head, but he only labored against an impossible weight. He dug for breath.
“Denny, I’ll get help. Alex!”
“You . . .”
“Hold on, Denny. I’ll get—”
“No!” His arm shot out and he grabbed her.
“You did this.”
“What, no. I was in the—”
He interrupted her by trying to squeeze her arm and his hand fell away and through one sidelong glance from the table he fought to meet her eye. He had to tell her something.
“You have no idea how powerful it i—” he started.
“Alex!” She interrupted him. Now many thoughts flew through her brain: What happened to Denny? and, simultaneously, It’s a blur, all of it.
“Shut it down, Jackie.” The life seemed to be draining from him by the second.
“Why didn’t you trust me?” she whispered and now she looked hurt.
He raised his head and looked suddenly revived. His eyes teared but remained steadfast on her.
“Denny!”
Jackie hurriedly turned Denny over. She frantically felt for a pulse on his neck. She laid him out on the table and she pumped at his chest.
“Alex!”
She opened the door and screamed again.
The ambulance pulled away with Denny. Not heading to the hospital but the morgue.
Alex, the small woman who helped run Lantern, held her arms crossed around her chest.
“What happened, Jackie?”
Jackie told her: she had been in the testing room and returned and Denny was slumped, laboring for breath. He was conscious but barely. He muttered some things that didn’t make sense.
“Like what?” Alex asked.
“I’m not sure.” That much was true. Then she stared at Alex. Where had Alex been in all of this?
Jackie couldn’t piece it together. She kept seeing these odd images, like dream moments but they were paved over with this YouTube video of this beautiful soprano voice and the thrilling opera rehearsal. Images bubbled to the surface: Alex greeting Denny and Jackie; Denny sipping tea; Jackie climbing into the experiment chamber. That was the one that stuck. Glorious images of the opera.
The machine, the Lantern machine she’d help perfect, had stunned her electrical system, effectively erasing her very short-term memory, the last six hours of her life, give or take, leaving her with the worst hangover of her life, not a headache, but a veritable blackout.
“I loved him,” Jackie said. She wiped her face, removing a tear. “What he stood for.”
“I’m not sure he told you what he stood for,” Alex said.
“He did, Alex. Everything. He was like a fathe—”
“Not now. Okay.” Alex turned to Jackie. “You’re not going to stop this.”
“Wait a second. You . . .” Jackie took a step backward, images spinning in her mind. “Did you . . . did you put me in that chamber? What did you do to me?”
“What did I do to you?”
“What did you do to Denny?” Jackie demanded. “You poisoned him.”
“You’re insane,” Alex said.
“Don’t you dare put this on me!”
“Time to put this project on hold,” Alex muttered.
Jackie looked at the woman’s face and couldn’t tell if she saw sincerity or setup. She felt herself swimming in lost time; images and sounds of the opera. She’d been Lanterned. She had her suspicions of what had happened here today, but only glimpses in a world gone dark, bits of evidence from the hours preceding her date with Google’s latest technology. What had really happened? She felt a gust of wind and ran for her car.