Chapter 8
Interior. Zalian Palace. KISMET and SURA stand over a holo-display of the HYPERIOSPHERE, the ancient device capable of channeling the power of a star.
KISMET
We need to get to the Hyperiosphere before the Prox decipher its activation code. If we don’t, they could use its laser to cut through this planet like a bagel.
SURA
I will not allow my world to become a bagel.
KISMET swipes at the holo-display, which now shows the tallest mountain on Zalia.
KISMET
Looks like they’re keeping the sphere at Prophet’s Peak. I’ll fly up there, disarm the Hyperiosphere, or die trying.
SURA
Listen, flyboy, I don’t know about that Earth place of yours, but around here the women call the shots. This is my planet, and if anybody is going to die to save it, it’ll be me.
KISMET
You’re too important. This world will need you once the war is over. To rebuild.
SURA
There won’t be anything to rebuild if we don’t get to the Hypersphere on time.
KISMET
Hyperiosphere.
SURA
That’s what I said.
KISMET
You said “Hypersphere.” It’s Hyperiosphere.
SURA
Hyperiodsphere.
KISMET
Hyperiosphere.
SURA
Fuck’s sake!
Audra threw down her script and grabbed a bottle of water from the coffee table in Patrick’s suite.
“Hardly Chekhov, is it?” she said, taking a sip. “Red leather, yellow leather. Red leather, yellow leather. Hyperiosphere. There! God. Why is this so hard?”
“Maybe if it were Dua Lipa you’d get the hang of it,” said Patrick.
“And if I don’t, I will never live it down,” she said. “I swear to god, the only thing worse than comic book movies are comic book movie fans.”
“They’re not so bad.”
“Really?” She gave him a particularly withering look and pointed to her phone. “Why don’t you take a scroll through my DMs.”
Audra didn’t quite connect with the source material in the same way Patrick did. She had come to the first Kismet movie fresh from a messy breakup and a DUI, eager to clean up her image. A big studio project was needed to get her career back on track—it almost didn’t matter which one. Her management had settled on this franchise for two reasons. Firstly, Wonder Studios’ morality clause would keep her out of trouble, which meant once she could prove she wasn’t an insurance liability, she’d have her pick of roles. And secondly, what embodied “America’s sweetheart” more than playing a superhero who was also a princess?
“Do you ever find yourself wondering,” Audra said, fanning the script pages out in front of her, “if this movie might be…you know.” She leaned forward and whispered: “Bad?”
“What?” Patrick frowned. “No. It’s…meta.”
“Meta.”
“Sure. Like, we’re going back to the pulpy origins of these stories, these characters, and looking at them through twenty-first-century eyes.”
“That would certainly explain why my character, the ruler of a technologically and philosophically advanced matriarchal civilization”—Audra checked her pages—“has one scene where she talks to another woman. This script fails the Bechdel test so hard it should be sent to summer school.”
“Well, yeah, but this is all just setting up the universe. Your character will probably get her own movie at some point.”
Audra scowled. “I die at the end.”
“This is comics!” Patrick spread his hands like a showman. “Anything is possible!”
“Your pep is disgusting,” she informed him.
“I just got really into the lore when I was researching the first movie.”
“This conversation makes me miss Percocet.” Audra stood up and headed for the door, then remarked over her shoulder, “Please get a hobby.”
“Your script,” said Patrick, pointing to her discarded pages.
“I’ll learn it on the day,” she said. “I don’t trust them not to rewrite it in the time it takes for me to get into makeup.” She left the door to swing slowly closed behind her.
She had a point. At this rate their elongated shoot would just keep going and going. It was one of the mantras of show business: Hurry up and wait.
Except Patrick had never been good at waiting. To stand still was to let things catch up with you. Better, he thought, to keep moving. He passed a lot of time exercising with Hector and Corey, punishing his body (despite already having shot the movie’s single prerequisite shirtless scene) so that the exhaustion would help him sleep. But that solution, like a slain hydra, spawned new problems.
It was impossible to work out with guys like Corey Drummer and Hector Ramirez without noticing how, well, hot they were. Patrick could expend as much time and effort as he liked trying to ignore it, but the truth was, he loved men. Their stubble, their body hair, the way they smelled, the fluid ripple of muscle in their backs as they lifted and stretched.
Patrick usually succeeded in keeping these thoughts at a comfortable distance, burying himself in work and going on long, long runs. He was unsure why it felt more difficult now. Nothing had changed, after all. The gay bar had been a blip—that was all.
It was safer to retreat into the comics, he decided. To commit to the role that thousands of fans and millions of dollars were counting on him to get right. To understand Captain Kismet as well as he knew himself, so that in spite of the chaos of this production, he might be able to deliver a performance that he could be proud of. Patrick had faith, at least, in his ability to do that. He’d been acting his whole life.