This Location of Unknown Possibilities (34 page)

As the student began to read, the scene blurred; a sepia-toned image came into focus, a close up of a hand dipping a quill into a glass inkwell.

“That'll be smoother too,” Chaz whispered.

Marta watched as Lady Swinburne, dressed in a simple white robe, wrote “May
22
,
1825
” in a journal with the quill. Oil lamps cast delicate light over her bed chamber. Without the turban, ceremonial sword, and horse, Lady Swinburne possessed surprising gravitas. At the knock on the door she ceased writing.

“Enter.”

“Will you require any further service before I retire, Lady Swinburne?” Lizzie asked.

“Your service has been adequate.”

“It is beautiful, milady.” Lizzie stood at the desk and stroked the cover of a silver jewelry box.

“Your fascination with trifles is cause for concern, Lizzie.” Evidently weary, Lady Swinburne did not look up from the journal. “Leave me. My writing . . .”

Lizzie cast a hateful stare at the inattentive mistress and left without a word.
Impressive
, Marta thought,
Luna's bad boyfriend turned out to be good news
. For a minor character uttering largely rote lines, Lizzie's black mood and clipped sentences commanded positive attention.

3
.

R
eaching into the pocket of her zipper-front sweater Marta pressed the button beneath the cellphone's impassive glass surface. She'd been resisting the temptation for what seemed like days.
9
:
02
. Eighty nine minutes had passed by, during which she'd fidgeted through logic holes, flat-lining exposition, and risible dialogue jumping between
1825
,
2009
, and
2091
; and all the while she'd strived to project shiny finishings on roughly edited scenes and half-complete imagery courtesy of keyboard technicians. Granted, the crudity of the rough draft instructed her about post-production; and the un-special effects of this early version of
Desert Assault
provided a fresh appreciation for the art of computer rendering.

Even factoring in the unrefined facets, Marta's silent review of the scenes had arrived at the inevitable conclusion that
Alien Advance: Desert Assault
achieved workmanlike heights at best; and when the director reached for epic—so far, she had noticed flagrant thefts from
The Lord of the Rings
and
Saving Private Ryan
—he attained merely passable.
Dregs
, she thought,
ridiculous, immune to parody
. The characters fared slightly better. The era-spanning scribbling women cum action heroes kept her attentive, although befitting the trope the graduate student's role slowly degraded to cliché: moments of weepy sideline farewells began soon after she met a handsome Air Force pilot, a square-jawed lone wolf with a Clint Eastwood squint and black, side-parted hair who said, “Lady, I play by my own rules” to the student's heartfelt entreaties, and, “General, I play by my own rules” when a blinkered, regulations-quoting superior expected his subordinate to “do this by the book.”

Desert Assault
sputtered out with ostensible human victories in
1825
and
2091
. Marta knew that a half century ago a drive-in feature of this sort would have left viewers with winking tantalization: “The End” and a question mark slowly rotating. For the Psy/Fi network, though, the ambiguity presaged slots for a sequel. Marta guessed that if the ratings, advertisers, or critics reacted warmly enough, the writers could find a way to insert the Kreplon matriarch laying a separate cache of eggs in a Middle Eastern cave never discovered by Lady Swinburne; naturally, those reptilian hatchlings would lead to another terrorizing Kreplon force: and voila,
Alien Advance
2
: Another Desert Assault
, pouring from television screens in
2014
.

Detritus, then. Still, when placing
HAP
and
Alien Advance
set on the Scale of Cultural Worth, Marta foresaw them achieving a perfect balance, consumed and forgotten shortly thereafter, and—perhaps—exhumed as a future footnote in a survey article by a Cultural Studies graduate student seeking access to the ivory tower.

Disappointed by the absence of credits, Marta half-listened as Chaz explained the changes.

“And it'll be smoother when they finish it, way better in the CGI department at least.” The light came on in the room. “They're doing a
Lost
kinda set up in different time periods.”

“Pardon me?”

“At some point someone—at the network maybe, but I don't know for sure—thought there was enough material for a ‘television event'”—the rolled-eyes tone unmistakeable—“you know, what used to be called a mini-series. As opposed to a television non-event, I guess.” Chaz followed the film school custodian's progress in stacking chairs. “Wow, they're efficient here. Anyway, then some genius—in marketing maybe, again I don't know how that works, maybe it started with a focus group or something—decided that since they couldn't really stretch out the OK Valley scenes, they could have parallel stories in different time periods instead and shoot them in studio and near the city. Kinda like
Lost
or the
Terminator
movies.”

The audience milled around, watchful of the staff's group dispersal agenda and awaiting directions from higher ups.

Moving whispering distance from Marta's ear, Chaz said, “Hey, by the way, um, Miss Sadie—”

Faintly audible, Marta's sudden breath intake disguised the complexity of its components: resignation, intimacy, regret, vulnerability, affection. For better or worse, the price one pays for honesty is standing at the confidant's mercy, she'd learned. There it materialized, a truism worthy of her mother.

“There's no way I'm going to drive back to Bellevue tonight,” eyebrows raising and lowering suggestively, “so can I stay at the Pits?”—Undre Arms generated nicknames easily—“I'll be out of there at the crack of dawn.”

After swallowing the urge to point out the difference between can and may—Chaz having stated during their only real quarrel that in his estimation pedants deserved their destiny of the ninth circle of hell, right next to pederasts—Marta said, “I don't see why not.” She'd welcome the distraction.
Gestation
's unfolding had grown obstinate, sincere creative writing a greater task than she'd imagined. A screenplay about abject femininity came freighted with a peculiar set of challenges; and despite attentive viewings of Bong Joon-ho, splicing that theme into horror genre tropes had so far proven a Herculean obstacle.

Seeing Lora break away from Jake and some other crew she didn't recognize, Marta waved.

“So, what did you think?”

“I'm not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn't it.”

“I told you'd there'd been some changes when I emailed you, honey.”

“Yes, and about that you didn't exaggerate.”

“See, the network liked the basics, but then some ambitious executive type thought they'd pull a mini-series out of the hat. It'll stand alone as a movie, but can morph into a series if there's interest.
Aliens are a hot topic again these days since TV's exhausting vampires and everyone's getting sick to death of hobbits and pubescent wizards.”

“I see.”

“It'll be in the vein of that '
80
s alien show, you know the one they made in TO.”

“
V
?” Chaz said, “No, that was here. Oh I know,
War of the Worlds
.”

“That's it. With the creepy alien tentacle grabbing onto Earth in the opening credits.”

“Bingo,” Chaz said. “Guess what? Somnia and Hibertrin X.”

“Okay, I'll bite,” Lora said. “What's that?”

“They're the names Marketing came up with for the DIDIs, launch date pending but the rumour mill says late next year. Somnia is for cats and Hibertin X for dogs, but both are getting ‘Deep Sleep, Within Reach' for their ad campaigns. Turns out the species have big enough genetic differences that they're required to market them as completely different products even though they're almost the same. Well, basically. It's like how a dog will die if it chows down on coffee or grapes or something but we can eat it, or cats can't have aspirin but dogs can or maybe the other way 'round. Weird, eh?”

“How about a pill for birds?” Lora said. “I could use a few of those.”

“Nothing doing. There's not enough money in it for Vedmedica to have a ‘whole family of products,' as they say. Yet, anyway, right? I guess birds and gerbils and so on just aren't that popular, and God knows it's not like Big Pharmacy is in it for the wellbeing of pets.”

“We'll be expecting caviar and champagne when the big bonus comes through,” Lora said, and waved Jake over. “Hello, boys. Marta, you remember Jake of course.
This fine specimen next to him is Antony.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Marta held out a hand to Antony.

“How goes it, guys,” Chaz said.

“Sequel anyone?” Jake said. “I'm taking bets.”

“I'll vote for no.”

“That makes two of us,” Lora added.

“It wasn't so bad,” Antony said. “I liked the scenes in the desert.”

“Would they shoot the sequel in BC?” Marta asked.

“Probably, but Bulgaria is grabbing some of our action these days, bigger tax breaks, so it—or we, I guess—could end up there.”

“Jake, do you want to say it?” Lora surveyed the room.

“Oh right, sure. Alright folks, that's the latest cut. I hope you enjoyed the show. We'll send out info once the world broadcast date is set.”

“And . . .”

“And thank you all for work well done.” Jake's mechanical tone undermined the sentiment, a sentence read from a cue card.

A round of claps closed the evening.

4
.

“C
atch you on set for the sequel, Professor?” Jake asked. Marta was buttoning her coat.

“Yes, certainly.”

“We'll be in touch if the deal goes down.”

“Thanks again. It was a valuable opportunity.” She sensed the ridiculousness of the words and their stiff, empty formality, but even at this late date Jake's reserve made her tense.

5
.

“Y
ou ready to head out?” Jake had MC'd countless screenings, attendance a cemented line in the job description. “I need to check with the guy locking this place up, so five minutes.”

“Sure,” Antony said. “Where's the men's? My bladder's about ready to burst.”

“Out the door, down the hall, and hang a left.” He watched Antony wind through the talkative stragglers of the audience; at the sure tug of lust, he felt glad about reading body language correctly that first night. The moment had been wrong, that's all.

Timing's everything, he'd learned.

At the location shoot in the valley, Jake had tumbled off the chastity express wagon less than twenty-four hours after he'd climbed aboard—a sequestered failing and remaining so. Sharing had grown into a plague of the times, anyhow; silence helped stamp it out.

Jake frowned with puzzlement when he later burped up pieces of the scene at unpredictable intervals as though expelling a build-up of guilt, like the murderer in that Edgar Allan Poe story he'd worked on for
Masters of Horror
. He'd question the eruption each time a chunk surfaced. Eventually, he dismissed the possibility of guilt, and decided the process reflected his brain's processing of disgust, as though he'd been forced—or, far worse, chosen of free will—to eat a bowl of vomit, or swim in a sewer.

Like those woeful self-loathing drunks confessing the exhaustive details of their latest disaster to empathetic peers at the rebound AA meeting, Jake suffered as much disdain for the failure of resolve as machine gun pangs of humiliation about the seedy choice of venue. After all, the failure wasn't just a sleeve of lager that he'd ordered with lunch, but a trashy bender in which any liquid containing alcohol served his needs.

The episode right after the casino wrap party represented a serious misstep, the sexual version of a Lysol and hairspray cocktail chugged while sprawled under an overpass. And while the bush geezers no doubt congratulated themselves afterwards for talking him into lowering his pants and letting them go to town, Jake alone comprehended the reality: he'd gone there with resigned conviction about the eventual outcome. Slumming had never been part of his repertoire; and after trying it on for size, he wanted only to have the memory dead and buried. With that, he suspected, the remorse would scatter too.