"The Viewing" Trivia Quiz

Answer: All have appeared on late night TV

An invitation is sent and Lionel Lassiter invites a small handful of guests to the Sandpiper House, his formal residence, for a viewing. The date of the event is September 22, 1979, and the recipients are told little else; instructions are to follow.

A vehicle is taken up through a parking garage and the driver, astrophysicist Charlotte Xie, stops to meet the other invitees, all there on request. She, psychic Targ Reinhhard, musician Randall Roth, and author Guy Landon all realize they have the common link of having featured as guests on late-night talk shows, but none of that explains what they've been invited to see. It's not long before they're picked up in a van by Lassiter's driver, Hector, who kindly has them sit in the back to share their theories en route.

Answer: Stargazer lilies

At Sandpiper House, Lassiter is approached by Dr. Zahra as she asks for his preference-- harder or cleaner-- before preparing him for his injection and administering the drugs. It's not long after that Hector's car arrives in a wave of synth music on the van radio. The doors to Sandpiper House open and they're led into a massive cement structure, the walls lined with stargazer lilies and the air ringing with music that Roth claims to sound like vibrating crystals.

Eventually, Hector leads the four to a central room and there, in the conversation pit, is Dr. Zahra. All are asked to take a seat next to their favourite drinks before Lassiter's voice comes in over a tinny speaker. He lets them know that he will be in their presence shortly. If they need anything, Hector or Dr. Zahra can provide.

Answer: Japan

As the guests nervously wait for their host, Reinhhard notes that the building they're in is an architectural marvel; it's brutalist with clear Aztec influences. Large stone faces adorn the walls while from the ceiling a tube structure protrudes. It's while admiring the room that the guests are finally greeted, in person, by Lionel Lassiter. Lassiter wishes them all a good evening and Dr. Zahra pours them each a glass of extremely rare Japanese whisky, many of them sipping it with great satisfaction. All the chaos the bottle went through to make it to them, this evening in 1979, was worth it, Lassiter explains.

After all, it made it through the bombings of World War II and earthquakes to reach them.

Answer: Alien life

Lassiter turns to Guy Landon first, congratulating him for being one of the most gifted novelists of their era. He plans, as he asserts, to gift him with a singular experience, a gentle push to inspire the best writer to greatness once again. It piques Landon's interest all the more.

Targ Reinhhard, he says, is getting extraordinary results from lab-controlled experiments into his extrasensory perception. In working with the scientific community, everyone is amazed by the implications of his gifts.

Charlotte Xie, meanwhile, has published equations on the proliferation of alien life that have caused significant controversy. Dead worlds seed new ones time and time again. Lassiter encourages her to follow her hypothesis to the extreme.

And finally, Lassiter asks Randall Roth of the chances they could gain insight into his auditory voyages. He's the whisperer to every great musical talent on the radio. All art can only aspire to music, and Randall Roth is the apex of this.

Answer: Fantasy

Roth expresses his concern that despite Lassiter's admiration of his work, his next album, themed solely around the idea of 'Fantasy', isn't going to strike a chord for listeners. It's a simple concept, but it seems like a flop. Lassiter repeats, however, that he knows it won't be. A simple push from someone like him can move something to greatness.

Dr. Zahra tells Roth to try his whisky; he hasn't touched it. Despite his hesitation, he downs the glass as Lassiter plays a tape of applause through the speakers. Lassiter comments on the music in general as, for such a unique house, he needed music designed exclusively for the building; he reached out to an artist from Venice who made everything with Roth's sensibilities in mind. In fact, Lassiter wants Roth to make the music for his next house being designed in Ecuador.

Lassiter explains that he collects that which is beyond the known. He is an eccentric in his tastes and his fortune is irrelevant. This said, he spent time before World War II stockpiling uranium and building his assets.

The discussion continues. The guests pass a joint around the table, indulging in the comfort of the gathering.

Answer: A golden AK

Lassiter asks Roth what it'll take to be able to hire him to make music, but Roth doesn't want anything...at least nothing that exists. What he wants, he claims, is to quell the void inside of him-- the endless abyss that can't be shrunk down. Everyone has a black hole inside of them.

Roth asks about a gold AK hung from a display on the wall and Lassiter notes that it's Hector's story to tell. Hector, standing to the side of the room, is stopped from telling the story, instead choosing to cry silently. Lassiter says that the gun is on display to render it inert.

The conversation turns to Dr. Zahra instead. She reveals that she's in the field of hematology, but at one time she was the personal physician for Colonel Gaddafi. She saw a candid side of him that she could not believe, but she also knew he was an awful and brutal man. Lassiter says that Dr. Zahra keeps him alive; everything he has belongs to her. He serves her.

With that, Dr. Zahra takes a case from the table and asks that she serve all of the guests.

Answer: True

When Dr. Zahra reveals the case on the table she produces hand-milled Peruvian cocaine, the highest purity in the world. Reinhhard complains that the substance could dull his psychic abilities, but Lassiter tells him to let loose a bit. As Dr. Zahra pours a blue powder on the cocaine, a substance she made in her lab and refers to as 'fairy dust', she explains that it will give the guests a feeling of confidence without the sharp edges of anxiety, depression, or paranoia they would get from the drug.

Lassiter inhales the drug and tells the others to indulge...which they do. Landon wastes no time; Reinhhard proceeds with hesitation but ultimately commits; Roth sees the possibility of filling the void; Charlotte trusts in her fellow scientist. The item they will be witnessing will be worth it.

With this, Lassiter has all of his guests at the peak of their capability, each of them in sync and prepared for what he has in store for them.

Answer: Smoking

With the guests now as prepared as they can be for the viewing, Lassiter reveals his motives. He brought them to Sandpiper House because from each of their own distinctive worlds and with their own individual talents, they are uniquely suited to provide their takes and appreciation for the item he has in his possession-- an item procured at great expense and difficulty. It is time to see it.

As the group proceeds through a doorway and down a narrow, warmly-illuminated hall, they emerge into a low-ceilinged room empty save for a single plinth topped by an otherworldly rock. As the guests encircle it, the door closes behind them.

Reinhhard comments that the item is an ancient power totem, but its true nature is completely unknown to the group, Lassiter included. Charlotte comments that it shares striations with fragmented meteorites, but a sample so large has likely never been seen. There's no sign of damage to it. It's also proven impervious to x-ray; mass spectrometer analysis has shown absolutely nothing. It has no magnetic field. Carbon dating was useless. It is composed of no item on the periodic table.

As Roth lights cigarette after cigarette, Lassiter tells him there is no smoking in the obelisk chamber. It doesn't stop him, however, and as he blows smoke into the object, it's drawn inside...and something unnerving begins to occur. Lassiter places his hands on it...and so begins the horror.

Answer: It cracks open

As Lassiter pulls back from the item in the obelisk chamber an awful piercing noise rings through the room. All in the chamber watch in pain as the item cracks into pieces and a living, alien being emerges from within, its unearthly horns extending from an oozing, formless body. As the guests are drawn into its trance, their orifices begin to bleed. It begins to undulate as Reinhhard, the most susceptible to its energies, screams in pain; his face begins to slough off through no discernible cause.

Outside the room, Hector waits for the guests to return and experiences an unnatural power surge.

As the horror continues to mount in the obelisk chamber, Landon screams that the item is probing him from its obelisk before his head explodes. This snaps Charlotte and Roth from their trance and the two scramble for the doorway, clamoring to get out.

Dr. Zahra nears the being on the obelisk and comes into direct contact with it, feeling its inhuman form and running her hand through. It causes her, too, to melt into a formless mass.

Charlotte and Roth are finally able to escape the room when Hector comes to check on the party. He presses the button for the door, urging them to leave while they still can, and he grabs the golden AK off the wall in the sitting room.

Answer: Yes

As the being spawned from inside the unknown item dematerializes into a pile of ooze, Lassiter can only watch on, sitting nervously on the floor as it pools around him and forms around his body, using Lassiter as a vessel to recreate itself. As Hector strides into the room with his golden AK in hand, he takes an unflinching look at the horror before him and fires on the pained hybrid beast. The being, in retaliation, fires on Hector with a blast of electricity, vaporizing him before leaving.

Charlotte and Roth race out to the front of Sandpiper House, load into the nearest vehicle, and speed off down the road, driving out into the foggy night. As they skid out on the empty road, they ask each other if what they saw was even real.

Elsewhere, the alien being makes its way into the sewers, emerging in the middle of a city on the other side. Its presence causes electrical objects to start flickering.