Xeno walked out of Holly's front door, and walked across the front lawn, until he arrived at the young girl in the reverse polarity suit, conked out under the stars. He bent down and checked her wrist for a pulse.

“She still alive?” Gary said over the transceiver.

“Her wrist is, so I guess all the other parts are.” Xeno let her wrist drop in the grass. He slid his fingers beneath his black box. “My chest feels warm.”

“Do you think you're having a heart attack?”

“No, it's more like oven heat.” Xeno backed away from the girl, to an open clearing on the front lawn, and removed the Polaroids from his breast pocket. “It's the Polaroids. They're hot.” He held out one in each hand. “But one's hotter than the other.”

“Which one, Xeno?”

“The one with Trianne, standing in front of Klownburger.” He put the Polaroid of Holly and Lew back in his breast pocket, still holding out the Polaroid of Trianne.

“It could be a premonition.”

“Now what?”

“Stay with it. I want you to concentrate on the Polaroid of Trianne.”

“Concentrating now.”

“Now, turn the knob on the black box to two. I'll be capturing the pineal footage on the Pineal Feed Monitor.”

“Roger that.” Xeno slowly turned the main dial of the black box to “2." "What do you see Gary? Anything?” Xeno asked over the transceiver.

“Hold your position, Xeno. The Polaroid is coming into view through your retinal link.” The Polaroid image of Trianne appeared on the Pineal Feed Monitor, filling the entire telepane for Gary to see. From the console, Gary toggled the Pineal Joystick to the left. In turn, the image panned left on the psychic x-axis of the Pineal Feed Monitor, beyond the left border of the Polaroid, revealing the occult landscape outside the boundaries of the photograph.

On the front lawn, Xeno gazed into the Polaroid, watching the image pan left on the psychic x-axis, like a camera panning inside a small television screen, past Trianne, past the storefront of Klownburger, past the parking lot, onto a road in a desert community, in the glare of high noon, with small adobe-style shops receding into the vanishing point down a barren desert boulevard.

“Hold it. I see a sign on the corner across the street. I'll try to zoom in.” Xeno focused his gaze on the street sign in the occult landscape of the Polaroid.

From the studio, Gary watched the sign in the Pineal Feed Monitor get closer, and closer, and closer onscreen, until the words came into really, really, well focused, illegible white squares, looking like primitive video game imagery.

“Damn, the DPI resolution is too low.” Gary tried to sharpen the psychic focus on the letters from his control panel, to no avail. “Damn, I'll have to run the lettering through the Pineal Hi-Def Enhancer in order to read that street sign. I'll follow up with you when I get the results. Gary panned further left on the psychic x-axis with the Pineal Joystick, but the image just blurred, dropping off into blackness. “Maybe if I pull back far enough we can see who took the photo.” Gary panned right with the Pineal Joystick, back to the image of Trianne, then pulled back on the psychic z-axis, until the image on the telepane became blurry and concave, as if looking at Trianne from inside a fish bowl.

“Looks like we're inside the camera itself, behind the lens.” Xeno said over the transceiver. “Can you pull back any further, so we can see the photographer?”

“That's as far back as I can go, Xeno.”

“Let me try.”

Gary watched the Pineal Feed Monitor, as Xeno pulled back on the psychic z-axis with his retinal link, back through the camera lens, past the mechanical innards of the Polaroid camera, past the viewfinder, past the photographer's iris, getting stuck in the jellylike tissue of the vitreous humor, seeing nothing but blood vessels. “Damn! I got stuck in the eyeball . . . Say, what about the charred part of the Polaroid? Maybe we can see what's behind it.”

“Zooming in on the charred part.” Gary toggled the Pineal Joystick forward on the psychic z-axis, back through the Polaroid camera, coming out the lens, zooming into the charred portion of the Polaroid, pushing through the burnt and bubbled emulsion, until the telepane was filled with the glowing butt of a chemorette burning its way in. “I'm stuck.”

“Hold on.” Xeno tried to steer farther into the occult environment, panning to the left, to the right, trying to see the smoker's identity, only able to see a portion of someone's face, completely out of focus. “That's the best I can do. Try zooming into Trianne. Maybe there's something there, behind the emulsion.”

“Zooming into Trianne.” Gary pulled out of the burned emulsion of the Polaroid and toggled left on the psychic x-axis, then forward on the psychic z-axis, into Trianne's face, getting stuck on her forehead.

“Let me try pushing through.” Xeno forced his point of view through Trianne's forehead, past the milky calcium layer of her skull, only to see the shadowy mauve-colored innards of her brain matter, the digitized membranes tearing apart as the psychic probe bored its way through the three dimensional construct. “Dammit, I'm stuck in her brain. Try panning to the right. Maybe there's something of interest outside the other border.”

“Panning to the right.” Gary pulled out of Trianne's head, toggled right on the psychic x-axis, panning past the charred section, beyond the right border of the Polaroid, the Klownburger storefront transforming to a luxurious bedroom, with a view of Metropa at night, a pink ultra-king bed, postered walls in shadow, a closet entry with the double doors slid apart, exposing the track lit interior inside. “What the hell is this? Are we inside a hotel?”

“That's Trianne's walk-in closet.”

“Where is her walk-in closet?”

“Boutique. Her penthouse.”

“Can't seem to toggle you into the closet any further.”

“Allow me.”

Gary watched the Pineal Feed Monitor as Xeno forced his point of view forward, along the psychic “z” axis, entering the synthetic Polaroid premonition construct of the walk-in closet, moving through the racks of designer clothes, cosplay costumes, custom wigs, pricey pumps, leggy boots . . .

“Xeno.” Gary rose from his seat, peering into the Pineal Feed Monitor. “The clothes in the back of the closet—something moved. Can you reach into the construct with your fingers and pull them apart?”

“I'll give it a shot.” From Holly's front lawn, Xeno tried to stick his fingers into the Polaroid surface, but his fingertips wouldn't penetrate the emulsion. So, he tried reaching under the Polaroid. A scaled down version of his hand and forearm appeared in the bottom of the Polaroid frame, as if he were steering the appendage through a miniature video game.

Gary followed Xeno's point of view on the Pineal Feed Monitor, as he walked further into the closet, to the rack at the end, where the clothes kept bulging from someone, or something, in hiding . . . just a little closer. Xeno reached into the clothes with his miniature Polaroid hand and shoved the bulging garments aside. A little man with pale-green skin jumped out into the open, his almond head large and smooth, with the body of a young child, shuddering in silence with black almond eyes.

“It's okay,” Xeno said to the alien. “I mean you no harm.”

The alien seemed to understand Xeno's words of peace and smiled faintly. He uncoiled his long index finger, and reached towards Xeno's nose, until the pad of his fingertip filled the entire screen of The Pineal Feed monitor, then snow . . .

Xeno stood on Holly's front lawn in bewildered silence, watching the alien in the Polaroid, reaching through the surface the emulsion, trying to touch the tip of Xeno's nose in three dimensional space with his miniature index finger . . .

“Xeno? You still with us?” Gary heard nothing but crickets over the transceiver. “Dammit, you froze up again.” He glanced at the two-way Dashboard Monitor rack, to see Number Three sound asleep in his Cadillac. “Number Three, wake up. Wake up, damn you!” Instead of waking, Number Three began snoring. He glanced back at Xeno's POV Monitor. He could see a full view of Holly's front lawn, and the girl in the reverse polarity suit, stirring in the grass, rolling over, raising her head with hair in her face.

The girl in the reverse polarity suit giggled at the sight of Xeno, standing in tableaux on the front lawn. She rotated the dial on the breast of her suit, floating inches above Holly's reverse polarity lawn, then gyrated her limbs like a frog swimming through space, getting closer and closer to Xeno's legs, trailing faint streams of smoke in her wake.

“Xeno, if you can hear me, that girl is going to spontaneously combust!” Gary barked over the transceiver. “Get out of the way!”

Xeno remained motionless on the front lawn, adrift in the suspended animation of deep occult space, still gazing at the Polaroid, without blinking. The miniature alien withdrew into the Polaroid emulsion, returning to his hiding spot behind the rack of clothes in Trianne's walk-in closet. The image then panned back to its original composition of Trianne leaning in front of the Klownburger storefront, with the charred emulsion to one side.

Back in the studio, Gary zoomed in with the Intellegella Spycam Satellite, from its orbit above the Earth's atmosphere, getting a clear view of Xeno on the Spycam Monitor, standing motionless on Holly's front lawn, with the girl trailing smoke closing in.

“All right, that does it. I'm flicking The Switch!” On the main console, Gary flicked a big red emergency switch, also known as:

THE SWITCH

He flicked The Switch back and forth, faster and faster, harder and harder, attempting to give The Switch more switching power, or imagined switching power, or temporary relief from his immediate anxiety of The Switch not switching the way it was supposed to switch when he switched it back and forth. “Dammit! Damn! C'mon switch! Make Xeno move!”

The girl in the reverse polarity suit closed in on Xeno, extended her arms, reached out with her hands, and clamped her fingers around his ankles, yanking her way up his pant legs, the smoke seeping through her hair, her face covered with a wild smile, as if her pain receptors were no longer alerting her that something was wrong.

The rancid smell of burnt hair rose and entered Xeno's nostrils. He came to his senses and yanked himself from her clutches, shooting back across the lawn and falling on his ass. He looked over the black box. The auto reset button had returned the main dial to “0.”

The girl in the reverse polarity suit burst from the inside out in a flurry of violent flame, never screaming, her weird static smile obscured by a billow of smoke, the polarity suit burning through, dropping her carcass to the lawn like the flickering remains of a bonfire.

“Xeno?” Gary called out from the transceiver. “You still with us?”

“Yes. I'm still with us.” Xeno stood in the flicker of the girl's remains. “She never screamed. Do these Flamers feel anything when they spontaneously combust?”

“Apparently not. We think it's an accelerated version of the frog that dies in a pan of water, if it's gradually boiled. We still don't know how it works.”

“I wonder if there's any point in finding Trianne.”

“Don't give up on the technology, Xeno. Maybe we should decrease the emergency reset time to sixty seconds.”

“No. Leave it as is. I think I'm getting the hang of this black box.” Xeno went back to the station wagon. He swung open the driver side door and slumped down behind the wheel. Andrea's lips were silent and flat on the dashboard telepane. He glanced over to see the passenger door slightly ajar. He leaned over and pulled it shut.

“Niiiine!” Blouse hissed on the dashboard telepane, the pallor of her face a ghostly green, her eyes bulging. “Niiiine!”

“Blouse?”

“Niiiine!”

“What is nine? Nine what?”

Blouse scowled at Xeno for a long while, then faded into darkness on the dashboard telepane.

“Did you capture that, Gary?”

“Yes,” Gary appeared on the dashboard telepane, “I captured that.”

“What the hell is 'nine'? What did Blouse mean by 'nine'?”

“Haven't a clue. Nine lives? Ninth place? The ninth hole? Maybe she's challenging you to game of psychic golf?”

“This is the second time I've been visited by Blouse in this form, and she always looks like a ghost.”

“She may be channeling you from the world of the dead. I'm told it glows in the dark.”

“Hello, Ramen,” Xeno said politely. “Is there something I can do for you?”

Ramen crawled across the backrest and reached out with one hand, trying to peel Xeno's black node off his forehead with her razor sharp nails. Xeno waved her hand away from his face. She snarled and swiped her claws at him. Xeno held out his forearm—her nails sliced his coat fabric. She raised her arm to strike again, but was stopped short by voltage striking the back of her neck. She dropped with a thud onto the passenger seat.

Xeno looked towards the passenger door to see Number Three standing outside the station wagon, pointing the tip of a cattle prod through the open window. His expression remained flat and gray as he turned off the voltage and reseated the prod back in his hip holster. He then opened the passenger door and grabbed Ramen by the scruff of her synthetic neck, carried her across the driveway and dropped her on the front lawn.

“Ah, there she is!” Holly brought her reverse polarity bed to a soft landing in the grass. “I've been looking all over for her.” She motioned to Number Three to pick up Ramen. “Be a dear and put Ramen to bed.”

Number Three lifted Ramen by the scruff of the neck, walked over to Holly's bed and dumped her on the mattress.

“What happened to her?” Holly inquired.

Number Three said nothing, just looked at her through his dark glasses in silence.

“And your name is?”

Number Three twitched a little.

“Oh. Not much of a talker.”

“She'll be okay,” Xeno said. “Just a stun from a cattle prod.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“How does that bed fly?”

“Same as everything in Velvet Rope Estates. Magic magnetism. I don't suppose you'd like to hop aboard and spend the night above the elms, beneath the moon and the stars. It will just be the three of us!”

“Sorry, Holly. On duty.”

“Ohhh, duty smooty!” She sulked.

“And what about the girl on your front lawn? The one that's still burning.”

“Oh . . . Her . . . Yes . . . Well? What happened?”

“Spontaneous human combustion.”

“Oh, yes. The Black Magic thingy. Well, I haven't taken any tonight, so I won't worry about it. Should I call an ambulance or—”

“Number Three will take care of it.”

“Oh yes . . . You're charming gray friend . . . Well, I'm off. Ta ta!” Holly lifted off in the reverse polarity bed. “You won't find what you're looking for in Trianne's walk-in closet!”

“How did you know about that?!” Xeno yelled up at her.

“Stray transmissions in my surgical implants! Come see me in Arcade!”