FACADE — the Field Agency for the Control of Aberrations and Divergent Energies — is the outfit that came through our doors the morning after. They've been around since '53, quietly, with roots in the old flying-saucer files and a few programs nobody was supposed to talk about. What they got interested in over the decades wasn't lights in the sky so much as people: what happens when thousands of us feel the same thing at the same moment. The moon landing on every television. A field at Woodstock. A packed house at the climax of a picture. They call that a Unified Consciousness Field, and they'd been waiting a very long time for something to prove it mattered.

The HOLOMAX gave them their proof. Their instruments caught the spike within minutes on the night of June the thirtieth, and by the next day the theater was sealed inside a containment structure with VERA parked outside, humming its dampening field over the whole block — Splice Bros. next door included. They built a Field Lab in here under their chief scientist, Dr. Jameson Kim, a physicist who knows a great deal more than he says out loud. Everything you've heard about Cinemorphic Energy, about flux, about this in-between place we're standing in — those are their words for it. They named the weather after they'd already been caught in it.

And they're still here, though they're subtle about it. Helpful facility staff, research stations that look an awful lot like amusements. Your TCK-IT band, the FAZRs on the walls, the INTERFAZE terminals — part show, part safety, all of it feeding their record. Officially, public access is authorized for cultural programming and ongoing study, and the ticket money keeps the containment running. Unofficially? People ask me why a secret agency would open the doors at all. I'd say keep your eyes open while you're in here. FACADE's motto is that they're all about transparency — which is the funniest thing anyone has ever said in this building.