called it. Roasting the weenies. Almost six feet tall, she played like a gladiator, six-packing the ball into the faces of husky trash talkers. She bloodied noses, made kills, tooled them mercilesslyâ¦and they loved her for it.
Not unnaturally, so far from home, they began to court her. It was nothing personal. After she sliced herself on a piece of the wreckage, the special forces medic who stitched her thigh proposed marriage. Another Romeo braved the mosquitoes and recited Shakespeare to the wall of her tent at night. One morning, Kleat caught her shooting him. He rose up from his washbasin, the water dripping from his salt-and-pepper chest hair, and opened his arms to her.
She felt like a hypocrite, keeping them at bay. After all, day after day, she stalked them intimately. But that was the way it was. Molly didnât tell them about one bad night in Oklahoma long ago. She just gave them her policy: no hookups on a shoot. And went on seducing them for her camera.
Each night, she downloaded her dayâs harvest into a digital wallet, a portable hard drive, and cataloged her shots and watched her story grow. While the soldiers listened to Dr. Dre or Beethoven, read paperbacks, or played Game Boys, she lay on her back in the dark of her tent and the images lit her face. The wallet became her dream box. Some nights she couldnât tell if she was awake or dreaming with the crickets going wild outside under the Cambodian stars.
Among professionals, the purists argued that digital wasnât pure. The geeks argued that there were still bugs in the machine, and there were, in hers at any rate, some serious gremlins in some of the shots. She became aware of them gradually.
Within a week of arriving, Molly had gotten their labyrinth memorized, and made a habit of waking first each morning, before dawn, to visit the dig site. Every day the site grew longer. There was nothing much to do at this hour. Night still pooled in the holes. It was too early for the teams to work and too dark for her to shoot. But it was cooler then, and she had her best privacy. She wandered along the cut-open earth, alone with her thoughts in the gray mist. But not quite alone, she began to realize.
Ghostly figures ambled across the fields, distant and only half visible above the ground fog. She supposed they were villagers. Some wore kromas over their heads or around their necks. Some carried mute babies.
By five the sky would start to gain color. Roosters crowed far away. She could practically taste the wood smoke of breakfast fires in invisible villages. Then, just as the sun broke the horizon, a faraway temple bell would ring once, just once. Each dawn broke that way, with the bellâs single gong. The early morning wanderers would fade off and she would return to make her breakfast.
On a whim one morning, Molly lugged along her tripod and snapped a shot of the villagers in the dim light. She didnât expect much, and when she downloaded the camera into her wallet at the end of the day, there was next to nothing. The camera had captured the fields and haze, though none of the wanderers.
But a few days later, in scrolling through the JPEG files, she discovered that her morning shot was populated. The wanderers had been buried in the pixels somehow, and the camera was finally letting them rise to the surface. Not only that, every time she turned the display on again, the image changed. Like spirits, the villagers came and went. There might be five people when she turned the device off, and ten or dozens when she turned it on again.
The photo became something of a freak show, attracting a small audience of soldiers who would drop by to see if the digital figures had moved around or vanished back into the mist. Duncan joked that her camera was possessed.
A navy explosives specialist diagnosed the ghosts as faulty software. Digital noise, he called it. In getting compressed and decompressed, the image apparently altered itself, as
Not unnaturally, so far from home, they began to court her. It was nothing personal. After she sliced herself on a piece of the wreckage, the special forces medic who stitched her thigh proposed marriage. Another Romeo braved the mosquitoes and recited Shakespeare to the wall of her tent at night. One morning, Kleat caught her shooting him. He rose up from his washbasin, the water dripping from his salt-and-pepper chest hair, and opened his arms to her.
She felt like a hypocrite, keeping them at bay. After all, day after day, she stalked them intimately. But that was the way it was. Molly didnât tell them about one bad night in Oklahoma long ago. She just gave them her policy: no hookups on a shoot. And went on seducing them for her camera.
Each night, she downloaded her dayâs harvest into a digital wallet, a portable hard drive, and cataloged her shots and watched her story grow. While the soldiers listened to Dr. Dre or Beethoven, read paperbacks, or played Game Boys, she lay on her back in the dark of her tent and the images lit her face. The wallet became her dream box. Some nights she couldnât tell if she was awake or dreaming with the crickets going wild outside under the Cambodian stars.
Among professionals, the purists argued that digital wasnât pure. The geeks argued that there were still bugs in the machine, and there were, in hers at any rate, some serious gremlins in some of the shots. She became aware of them gradually.
Within a week of arriving, Molly had gotten their labyrinth memorized, and made a habit of waking first each morning, before dawn, to visit the dig site. Every day the site grew longer. There was nothing much to do at this hour. Night still pooled in the holes. It was too early for the teams to work and too dark for her to shoot. But it was cooler then, and she had her best privacy. She wandered along the cut-open earth, alone with her thoughts in the gray mist. But not quite alone, she began to realize.
Ghostly figures ambled across the fields, distant and only half visible above the ground fog. She supposed they were villagers. Some wore kromas over their heads or around their necks. Some carried mute babies.
By five the sky would start to gain color. Roosters crowed far away. She could practically taste the wood smoke of breakfast fires in invisible villages. Then, just as the sun broke the horizon, a faraway temple bell would ring once, just once. Each dawn broke that way, with the bellâs single gong. The early morning wanderers would fade off and she would return to make her breakfast.
On a whim one morning, Molly lugged along her tripod and snapped a shot of the villagers in the dim light. She didnât expect much, and when she downloaded the camera into her wallet at the end of the day, there was next to nothing. The camera had captured the fields and haze, though none of the wanderers.
But a few days later, in scrolling through the JPEG files, she discovered that her morning shot was populated. The wanderers had been buried in the pixels somehow, and the camera was finally letting them rise to the surface. Not only that, every time she turned the display on again, the image changed. Like spirits, the villagers came and went. There might be five people when she turned the device off, and ten or dozens when she turned it on again.
The photo became something of a freak show, attracting a small audience of soldiers who would drop by to see if the digital figures had moved around or vanished back into the mist. Duncan joked that her camera was possessed.
A navy explosives specialist diagnosed the ghosts as faulty software. Digital noise, he called it. In getting compressed and decompressed, the image apparently altered itself, as
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