Night Sky Blinds

Marvin guided his snow crawler to the edge of a wet glacier. He stopped the engine so that his headlights would not be visible from the lodge below. He hated being a fugitive. Often, he wished he could abandon his night’s work and go down to the mess hall to join the hunters who would be telling stories around the woodstove. Instead, he removed a cold wrench from his toolbox and climbed to the roof of his vehicle to adjust the satellite dish which was mounted there.

As he worked, he thought about his brother in London, who wrote articles for newspapers and magazines. Marvin wanted to send him a letter or call him from the pay phone in the village, but he knew that contact with anyone was too dangerous. For the past six months, the only person he had spoken with was Ben, the proprietor of the lodge, who had been a friend of his father’s.

Marvin knew that to some people on the mountain he was the mysterious rich kid who had inherited his father’s cabin. Most of them knew that it resided illegally on Crown land, but there was nothing unusual about that. Some of them knew that Marvin’s father had taken his own life, but even that was of less interest than the transport trucks which had delivered both the kid, and his equipment into the anonymity of the Canadian Rockies.

He hadn’t come down for supplies, or to introduce himself to any of the local merchants. To the people of the valley, he was an obscure hermit who had come from Vancouver and disappeared into their midst.

To the people of urban Canada, however, Marvin was well known by his newspaper nickname. He was Adman, the notorious techno-folk villain who was famous for writing graffiti on the night sky.

Marvin started his engine. He had aligned the dish so that the movements of the snow crawler would be synchronized with an antenna at his base camp. As he drove across the snow, he imagined the shapes of the letters he would crush into his moonlit canvas. He knew what the message would look like when transmitted to the stars.

But before he could begin his careful design, his concentration was aborted by a harsh burst of static over the receiver in his cab. Marvin checked his instruments and was amazed by the strength of the signal which had swept his path. His father would have been inspired by the length of its bandwidth.

Marvin knew they were looking for him. He had picked up their signal two weeks earlier and had been scrambling his broadcasts ever since. He also knew that his hunters were not the police. They were more powerful, and more frightening than the law. CSIS was searching for Adman.

The Canadian Security Information Service had arranged a satellite link with their American counterparts. The hookup enabled them to establish visual contact with any location in the country. Funded in part by corporate sponsors, their network was designed exclusively for Adman’s capture.

Major Malcolm was in charge of the investigation. He stood at ease behind a battery of technicians. Before them stretched a row of television monitors. Above the monitors was a wall sized screen which flashed live pictures of all the major cities in Canada. In the background sat a small audience of senior bureaucrats, who talked quietly with business executives. No representatives of the press were present.

“Test complete, we’re ready for broadcast, sir.”

Major Malcolm’s stomach muscles tightened as he drew a breath. They had been testing the capabilities of their system for two weeks and were at last able to initiate live transmission.

“Screen one.” He ordered.

A woman’s soft voice came from the central console, identifying the location of the picture as “Guelph, Ontario.”

The group marveled at the clarity of the scene. The satellite was looking at a quiet street in a residential neighborhood. They could see sprinklers watering lawns, and a fat man walking his cocker spaniel.

Major Malcolm gave the “Zoom” command.

The screen filled with a sunroom, in which Harold Kartusko was reading an American history text.

He read about a president who had put together a space program that was supposed to destroy enemy missiles from the stars. All that resulted from the research was humanity’s ability to light up the night sky with high speed, high intensity transmissions which could be seen from earth.

Apparently, the only people who benefited from the Strategic Space Defense Initiative were those in the advertising business. Advertisers managed to harness the new technology to present their products from space.

Harold read “A small, but aggressive laxative company in Iowa was the first to produce a colour advertisement which incorporated flashing light. It’s advertisement for chewable capsules dominated the night sky over Chicago and heralded the beginning of presentation graphics. Refinements of the original techniques are now commonplace and can be seen on stellar billboards over many cities today.”

Harold could remember his little brother complaining about not being able to sleep because of a bright, repetitive shampoo advertisement outside their bedroom window. Harold used to stay up late to admire its colours on the snow-covered yard. That was before their parents installed night sky blinds.

Major Malcolm was quickly bored by their view of Harold, and at his command, the scene shifted to “Screen Two.”

“Fisher Branch, Manitoba,” said the console’s soft voice.

Ear Raychuk lay with his girlfriend in the long, wet grass of a field behind the high school greenhouse. She was straightening her rumpled skirt. Earl was obviously nervous, and he pointed to the sky beyond his pickup truck were a bright arc of light was beginning to take shape.

“That’s the tail end of Lasso can they got over Arborg. Me and Danny went down there one night to check it out. They say Monsanto sent them lights up when my dad was a kid to get that picture seen in space.”

Earl’s girlfriend was thankful for the diversion.

“Did you hear about that guy who wrote the message over Montreal?” she said.

“Nah, who’s that?”

“Some guy my mother was talking about this morning. They got an ad over Montreal for some vacation resort, with girls in bathing suits and everything and some guy wrote “It’s Mainly Because of the Meat” right across the stars in the ad. No kidding. That’s what my mom said. She says she remembers that slogan from a real advertisement on TV.”

Earl looked at her in embarrassed disbelief.

Major Malcolm was unimpressed. Their satellites were supposed to look for observatories and dishes that would be powerful enough to transmit disruptive signals. Instead, they appeared to be drawn to sunrooms, and green houses and anything made of glass. “Screen three,” he barked.

Screen three was bright with the reflection of Lake Ontario. The technicians, bureaucrats and sponsors of the project savoured their view of a doomed living room which rested on a harbour front penthouse.

“Zoom right in.”

The screen blurred for an instant before focusing on a bathrobe clad figure holding a tall glass of beer. On the couch lay a woman. The beer drinker motioned skyward. In the sky over the harbour, stellar messages blinked and pulsed and gyrated. The night above the suite was so cluttered with promotions, it was difficult to discern one product from another.

At a control panel beside the door, the man threw several switches and slowly turned a knob. From the centre of the dome appeared a giant night sky blind, which edged it away from the radius to the floor. One entire side of the suite became draped with stars on a pitch black backing. The blind was a self-contained cinema of night, partially blocking the satellite’s view.

Major Malcolm demanded to see screen four.

“Kitsilano, British Columbia,” said the console’s voice.

In the night sky over Kitsilano, a giant green planet spun on its axis. A bottle of shampoo orbited it, leaving a comet’s tail of words like “Clean,” and “Manageable.”

On one of the television monitors was the University of British Columbia observatory tower.

“Zoom,” said Malcolm with interest.

The observatory’s sliding door was ajar. The CSIS voyeurs could barely see the tip of its giant telescope.

“Zoom again.”

The lens was a black puddle through which a tiny light could be seen.

“Again,” said the Major impatiently, hoping to see some student quack using the school’s equipment for mischievous design.

The monitor was filled with a giant, bloodshot eye that was straining to stay open. Each time it blinked the screen went dark. Suddenly it retreated from view and was replaced by the searching eye of a woman. Everyone could see clumps of sloppy mascara on her eyelashes.

Malcolm was annoyed. For months he had been pressured by advertising executives, whose billion-dollar campaigns were being ruined by Adman’s tricks. The Solicitor General, who had considerable holdings in a prophylactic firm, which was advertising over Vancouver’s West End, had even sent a threatening attaché to Malcolm’s office.

Malcolm knew that he had to capture Adman to preserve his job with CSIS. But what angered him most, as he stood with crossed arms and his back to the important audience, was that he earned less each year than anyone else in the room.

Malcom could not afford genuine night sky blinds. When he lowered his blinds each night, he could not watch videotapes of twinkling constellations which emulated pre-commercial darkness. He certainly could not afford those models which allowed for the altering of scenes with the changing of the seasons. Malcolm had received his blinds from a beer company promotion, and in the corner of each was a small advertisement for his once favourite brand. The videotape which embellished his set of blinds, had a frosted mug of beer tattooed in the corner, which was emptied and refilled by a replica of the Big Dipper.

There were no advertisements, and no video blinds in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. There was just Marvin, and his equipment, and a handful of trappers who wondered why he had installed so many aerials on the slope in front of his place. Instead of driving home after intercepting the signal from CSIS, Marvin caved into his desire for companionship.

He powered down his snow machine and headed for the mess hall for food. Nervous with the prospect of human contact, he began to run through the white pines, slipping on icy rocks and tearing his gloves on sharp stumps. He cautioned himself to stay silent once he reached the group. He knew that at Ben’s hunting lodge, wealthy sportsmen would know Adman’s graffiti well.

Ben was surprised to see Marvin push his way through the back kitchen door. The two stared at one another cautiously.

“You got trouble at your place?” Ben said.

Marvin shook his head. “Just came down for a beer, Ben, you got any in the fridge?”

Ben’s face filled with delight. “It’s not like you to come barging in when there’s guests about. Cabin fever finally get you?”

“Nah. Just thirsty tonight,” said Marvin as he shook clumps of snow and pine needles from his parka. The voices of the hunters in the next room scared him. “You go ahead and take care of them. I’m just gonna find a dark corner and think awhile.” Neither one of them had ever mentioned the suicide. Ben had even asked why Marvin had come to the family’s camp. To him, Marvin’s father was an eccentric scientist who had never spent quite enough time on the mountain. He’s known there were marital problems all along, but he knew nothing about the collapse of the family’s enterprise.

Marvin hadn’t told him about the discovery his father had made. Both he and his brother had unofficially assisted their father in the creation of instantaneous night sky writing.

None of them had meant for their process to be used in advertising. In fact, his father’s original motivation was to reproduce night sky scenes. In essence they had invented blinds that could be used by entire cities. Marvin loved the idea. He was young, and altruistic, and a lover of the stories his father told about meteor showers on the clear summer nights of his childhood.

The problem was that their research required more money than the family could muster. Marvin’s brother sold their idea to a consortium of venture capitalists in California, which intended to sell the concept to corporations, which in turn would be able to donate synthetic sections of night sky to areas where their rivals owned the stars. The idea was to allow companies to blot out competitive messages, and at the same time win considerable favour amongst consumers who were annoyed by the clutter of their skies in the first place.

Several weeks before their first true test, the consortium was taken over by a gigantic producer of night sky blinds, who sold the first run North American rights to an advertising subsidiary in New York. Instead of broadcasting a false night sky on the eve of the test, they sent up a disposable likeness of a rock star, who was scheduled to appear at the Pacific National Exhibition.

Shortly thereafter Marvin’s father killed himself. His brother moved to Ontario to become a journalist and a drunk, and Marvin moved what was left of the family estate into the darkness of the mountains.

No one in advertising cared very much. It turned out that the image of the rock star all but dissolved three days before the show, leaving only his lips and chin twinkling over English Bay.

Since then, Marvin had adapted their technology to successfully deface several prominent advertisements. Although he longed for his brother’s collusion in the project, he had become Adman, and was wanted by the RCMP, the FCC, the FBI, the CRTC and worst of all, CSIS.

Sitting at a table at the far end of the hall, Marvin listened to the hunters talk. The sound of people speaking awakened an energy within him, but when he heard the name “Adman,” he froze.

“You guys are complaining about that fella. Let me tell you what he did to us.

“Our stock fell twenty-five points after that SOB destroyed our ad. We were trying to make an entry into the weight reduction market. Our agency had it all set up. We bid on the constellation Orion, and we got the rights. Everyone knows Orion. That’s the one with three stars for a waist and a sword hanging off his hip. You can’t miss it. We were announcing the Orion Reduction Plan, and we filled in Orion’s stars with animation. It was perfect. We gave Orion a huge pot belly which hung over his belt, and after each month on the plan, he would slim right down so that you could see his stars again.

“We got the rights to that chunk of sky, and we got shareholder approval for the campaign, but when we found we didn’t have quite enough money to pull it off, we made a deal with the firm that did the graphics. You guys know Stellar Light International? That’s the agency that put it all together. We allowed them to run their slogan, ‘Be Known by Your Stellar Light’ across the bottom of our ad.

“It was great campaign, but that vandal, that Adman, overwrote the bottom line so that it read, ‘Be Known by Your Cellulite.’”

“Can you believe that? Tell me anyone is going to buy the Orion Plan with a message like that spread across the stars. And you know what’s worse? It made the evening news. The worst thing about it was that no one cared about us. Everyone started talking about how incredible it was that anyone could pull off a stunt like that and wondering how he did it.”

Marvin stared into his beer. Ben had come out of the kitchen and was drying a tray of glasses at the table. Marvin wanted to tell him that he was Adman, and that he was the one who was filled the advertising industry with fear. He wanted Ben to know that his snowmobile was his pencil, and that the glacier was a bathroom wall.

His confession was cut off by a high-pitched scream from the television over the bar. The picture of two men in bright jackets analyzing a hockey game collapsed into bright, white fuzz and the sound silenced the room. While others cursed and Ben tried to slap the set back into performance, Marvin became transfixed by the signal. It appeared to have descended near the lodge and was not simply passing through.

The soft voice from Major Malcolm’s console enlivened the group of unauthorized voyeurs. It announced that a powerful transmission was being scrambled from a remote point in the Rocky Mountains.

The message jarred Malcolm and his audience into action. A descrambler was immediately employed, and a picture of Adman’s camp began to materialize on their large screen. Everyone leaned forward in amazement as the satellite displayed the makeshift tangle of transmitters and receivers which filled the clearing in front of Marvin’s shack. Parked at the edge of a nearby glacier, was Adman’s snow crawler, with its satellite dish stationed on its roof.

“Get me those co-ordinates,” shouted the excited Malcolm. “We got him!”

Everyone was on their feet. Some crowded around the monitor to examine the details of Adman’s bizarre hideout. Others rushed to telephones in the hall outside the auditorium. Malcolm slipped through a fire exit to a locker room, where a plotter was diligently penning in the contours of the mountain’s terrain.

Marvin was still sweating from his run to the lodge, and Ben sensed his nervousness. He had turned the television off.

“You got a problem tonight, kid?” he said, wiping the spots from a beveled mug.

“Can I use your phone, Ben?”

“Sure,” he said as he headed for the kitchen, “if you’re gonna be calling Tahiti, make it collect, will ya?”

Marvin dialed directory assistance to get his brother’s number. While he waited for an answer, he felt warm with anticipation. He listened to his call speed through interchange after interchange, faintly beeping with each passing area code. When his brother came on the line, Marvin spoke as if there were no distance at all.

“Big guy, how you doin’?”

“Marvin?”

“Yeah, it’s me, listen, I’m in trouble.”

There was silence on the line. Slowly, his brother spoke, “I’ll come and get you. Where are you, Marv?”

“I’m at Dad’s camp. You’ll never make it in time. They’re probably already on their way.”

“Dad’s camp? Where? You mean that place on the mountain? Who’s after you? What kind of trouble are you in?”

“I’m Adman. The secret’s out. I think they know where I am.”

Again, there was silence on the line. “How’d you find out where the cabin was? Never mind. I won’t even ask how they found out. I was always suspicious of that guy, and I wanted to write an article on how he managed it, but since you disappeared and everything, I thought I’d stay out of it until I heard from you. That’s fantastic, in a way, I mean, it’s not fantastic that they know, listen, why don’t I come and get you anyway?”

Marvin spoke in rushed hush tones, and the two agreed to meet in the bar of the Calgary Relax Inn. Marvin figured he could drive it overnight, if he didn’t stop, and his brother was confident he could expense the trip, if he combined it with a story on the upcoming Stampede.

“But Marv,” he said, “you have to get out of there tonight. By morning they’ll be all over you like a bad smell.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Marvin, “have you ever known CSIS to get their man?” They both laughed hesitantly. “Besides, I have one more message to send up before I’m out of here.”

Major Malcolm paced the aisle of the 727 Air Canada jet which was transporting him and his crew to Calgary. The seats were lined with a mixture of technicians, (still dressed in white labcoats) and quasi-military personnel who were eager for the hunt. Vigilant advertising executives filled the forefront of the plane, and were busy fitting holsters around their overgrown bellies, and filling their breast pockets with ammunition.

After three hours in the air, Malcolm grew tired of his preparatory march, and collapsed in a window seat at the rear of the cabin. Laying his head against the glass, he watched for the lights of the Calgary in the distance.

To his dismay, a line of bright light became visible in the sky over. Lethbridge was not supposed to have any ads at all. Malcolm squeezed his face against the plastic oval window and strained to make out letters in the night sky. There was no mistaking it. An advertisement hung low over the dark prairie. Malcolm squinted to perfect his vision. He read:

ADMAN COMING SOON

WATCH THIS SPACE

### I wrote this story in 1981 when I was an English major at the University of Western Ontario. I borrowed the photo from a film I made in 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5ivnTJXkT0