So which girl did he sleep with?

Yeah he saw on teh replay several times Donna... that was kinda crazy... but the girl took the substance D, and Donna(knowing the effects) wouldnt take them...

Why didn't Donna want to sleep with him?

I think I know the reason why the image shifts between Connie and Donna;

The button he presses on the machine has 'rate' written on it; there is more than that, but 'rate' suggests to me some sort of refresh rate, that is, how many times a second the display is updating the picture.

Now, a lower rate means less images in a set span of time for the brain to process the image in front of it; a higher rate makes a more 'solid' picture because of a higher refresh rate.

At a lower rate, if the image at all becomes less defined, even very very slightly, then his brain has more liberty to suggest what is there based on its own bias, rather than submitting strictly to the energy signals received by his eyes.

So, at a high rate, he sees Connie; reality. There is too much 'evidence' for his brain to say otherwise.

But, at a low rate, his brain more easily slips in his own conciousness into what he is seeing - he madly wants to sleep with Donna, so it is Donna who he sees.

If you think of the 'rate' as meaning the gap inbetween 1 picture being displayed, and the next picture, and also assume that the technology in question works by firing the same image again and again (like a CRT monitor or TV screen), then a lower rate means -more empty space- inbetween image refreshes. That empty space is where his brain goes, hey, what's there? It must be Donna.

At a high rate, the empty spaces are shorter, and the real images more evident.


Following from there, perhaps the reason he saw Donna when he woke up was because he was still half-asleep, and his brain was not correctly registering the images presented to it. Once he woke up and became more alert, the brain caught up and saw what was really there.


That's my theory, anyway; I'm almost certain my scanner explanation is correct, as I cannot think of another explanation for the phenomenom.

I think you're on the wrong path if you try to figure this out logically. That scene is a question, not an answer. It is an open paradoxon, like those Zen riddles, a question without an answer that is supposed to get you thinking. And that question is: "What does a scanner see?" Think about this question - it's impossible to answer. We can't know what a technical application would see, because everything WE see as recorded by that application will again be perceived through our subjective apparatus of perception. So in the end we can always only know what we see, but will never be able to make a definite statement about what the scanner might REALLY see.

Of course you can interpret this as an effect of Arctor's disturbed vision, and that's one of the aspects hinted on in the narration, but if you analyze this scene closer you can see a deeper subtext to it. By fowarding and rewinding the 3D graphic of Connie transforming into Donna, the film makes a clear dependence of the transformation to the technical apparatus of the scanner. Arctor is REWINDING his vision. So there is a connection that's beyond Arctor's disturbed perception, because the mechanics of the scanner should be objective.

As mentioned before, if the scanner had shown the recording without the vision, it would be clear that it was Arctor's error in seeing Donna instead of Connie, thus emphasizing that the scanner was right and Arctor wrong. But that is not the case. The scanner seems to be as wrong (or as right?) as Arctor. Any interpretation blaming only Arctor on the perceived transformation thus acknowlidges that the scanner is an objective representant of our reality and couldn't be wrong, because it's a machine, and machines don't make mistakes. But that is clearly not the point of the movie, if you think back at the impossible question: What does a scanner see?

People always make the mistake to think this film is just about drugs, but it's also about modern (and future?) surveillance technology and the paranoia rising from it, the loss of identity from watching, being watched and THINKING of being watched, and that's what that question is aimed at. Watch the film again to see how omnipresent that theme is, even in the seemingly senseless and humourous drug talk.

By the way, the idea of questioning the objectivity of recording technology is another reason this film was done rotoscoping. Because it questions the old assumption that photography and photographic film give us an objective, realist representation of whatever has been filmed/photographed. As it is impossible to answer the question "What does a scanner see?", or cleary answer with whom Arctor slept in that scene, it is also impossible to state what kind of images we have in a rotoscoped film, when we paint over actors' performances. When we draw over the actor's performance, do we still have the actor performing? When the eye of a movie camera is a scanner, what does that scanner see?

And to emphasize the most important point again: It'd not important to answer, it's important to question.