Free Dracula Lives by Robert Ryan Page A

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