Chapter 10 #2
“I heard about it,” said Kelli. It sounded barbaric.
In the old days, actors had been mercilessly exploited, forced to do everything on camera from death-defying stunts to ugly emotional breakdowns to sex—in those days, there had still been sex in movies.
All of it recorded and distributed so that fans could pore over a real person’s on-camera actions and point out every imperfection.
All the actors had ended up with substance addictions and eating disorders, and even post-traumatic stress.
AI animation models were more humane; and with today’s technology, appropriately supervised, nobody could even tell the difference.
“It’s a dying art,” said Rowan, “but it’s not dead. Let me show you one.”
Kelli stared at him in disbelief. She was literally a professional who worked for Inspiration’s media division. He was literally playing illegal media for her, on purpose. What was going on here? He’d said all of it conspiratorially, as if he was about to give her a really good present.
When she was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, Kelli would have given almost anything to see the stories Inspiration didn’t want her to see. But Rowan hadn’t put that version of Kelli into a position like this, where her career was at risk just from seeing.
She tried to think what Orlando would do, but it was hard to translate Rowan’s actions into things that the mermaid in her head could do, and she took too long trying to picture it.
Rowan kept moving. He disconnected that data chip and switched it for another one, full of video files—fewer files than the other chip, since video took up so much more room.
There was one at the top, only a few minutes long, that said, *** SHOW TO KELLI—WE’RE OKAY NOW.
He clicked that one, and a video player app started up.
“They made this on Enceladus,” he said, “just last year.”
The screen went black and then the video showed its title cards: the names of directors, producers, and actors, superimposed over a picture of flowers in some kind of office.
“We’re Okay Now” was the name of the movie, apparently.
The lights in the study dimmed, and Rowan sat back on the sleeping bag—a little too close to Kelli, actually, like they were schoolgirls on a sleepover. She pointedly scooted a foot away.
In the movie, a shy-looking young woman slumped into the frame.
She moved differently—that was the first thing Kelli noticed, along with the fact that the colors looked muted and strange.
In movies, people always walked heavily, with a quick, firm gait that pressed them to the ground; it was because the AdventureVerse was supposed to be a high-grav world, like Earth, with a big biosphere and a breathable atmosphere.
The woman in the movie looked sad, but she walked the way Kelli and Rowan and anyone else on Callisto would have walked.
Lightly and bouncingly, with her strides far apart.
It was weird, seeing someone in a movie walk that way—like a breach of one of the essential barriers between reality and fiction.
Like she might really have been there in the next room.
The woman sat down at the desk and shuffled a few papers. She looked despondent, like she couldn’t focus on what she was seeing. After half a minute of this, another woman walked in, taller and with big glasses on. She leaned on the desk, opposite the first woman, and cleared her throat.
It was bizarre, looking at a movie filmed with real people.
Compared to the crisp motion and flawless color of AdventureVerse shows, it looked flat and strange.
Every once in a while a shadow flicked over the frame.
Kelli stared at the two actors, distracted by what this must be like for them.
She imagined a director, just out of frame, steering them around the way she’d used to steer Rowan on the playground.
You’re the evil fairy princess now. No, the evil fairy princess doesn’t have a laser gun!
That’s not how fairies work! Pay attention!
Only on the playground, it had really just been them, and not a lot of people with cameras and microphones and lights hovering just outside the frame.
AdventureVerse shows never lingered so long on a mundane scene like this, without anybody talking or fighting or explaining what was going on.
That was one of Baz’s rules: things had to keep happening, or viewers would get bored.
Kelli did not feel bored, but she did feel uncomfortable.
Like peeping in through a crack in the wall at someone who didn’t know she was there.
She imagined pushing a button, in one of those old versions of StoryGen they’d used as children, that said Make more things happen! But the button wasn’t there.
The two women carried on a conversation that Kelli didn’t completely follow.
It was indirect, elliptical, half mumbled, and the movie did not have closed captions; plus the taller woman had a strong Saturnian accent.
The woman with the papers was flustered, sad, kept apologizing.
The taller, bespectacled woman was earnestly trying to explain something.
She looked at the shorter woman like she was explaining the most important thing in the world.
From the scraps of dialogue that Kelli did understand, it seemed to be an interpersonal problem.
The short woman thought she had offended the taller one.
The taller one wasn’t actually offended, just hurt and confused because the shorter one had stopped talking to her.
It all seemed like a lot of emotion just for a disagreement between two people at work.
The penny didn’t drop until the crucial moment, six minutes in, when the shorter woman finally realized that she hadn’t done anything wrong, that the taller one still wanted her in her life.
She put her hands over her face—not in the picturesque way an AdventureVerse character would, but the way Kelli sometimes did in real life, flustered and faltering and imperfect.
“I can’t believe I—” she said.
“It’s okay,” said the taller one. “It’s okay.”
There was something about the way she leaned in as she said it. Something about the tenderness on her face.
No, they couldn’t be. Rowan wouldn’t have—
Yes, actually, Rowan would.
The two women clasped hands. They leaned over the desk simultaneously. They kissed.
It was awkward and fumbling and impassioned and some of the papers fell by accident off of the desk.
It wasn’t anything like the picturesque, posed way that people kissed in the AdventureVerse.
They kept breaking the kiss to laugh bittersweetly at the absurdity of themselves.
Eventually they managed to stop kissing long enough to maneuver around the desk and embrace each other properly, full body to full body.
Kelli tensed, there on the sleeping bag—how far was this going to go?
Was there going to be sex? If Rowan had brought her a porn movie to watch, here of all places, with him of all people, then she was going to literally murder him.
They just kissed, though, and held each other as tightly as life rafts.
The short woman nestled her face in the crook of the tall woman’s shoulder.
She promised inarticulately never to be this stupid again.
The tall woman smiled and said something—Kelli could tell it was supposed to be pithy and human and wise, summing up the whole thing, but with the heavy Saturnian accent and still no closed captions, she couldn’t make out all the words.
As the credits rolled, Kelli sat frozen with her hands over her face.
She’d known for a long time that there were planets where people still made movies with real actors, and that some of the movies were queer.
She’d even read about some of those movies—reviews and criticism that Rowan had snuck to her, back when they were kids.
She’d never seen the movies themselves. She’d never watched a thing like this, real or animated.
She’d been a girl, kissing another girl.
But she’d never watched it happen, in a video in broad daylight, like it was something anyone could watch.
It seemed obscene, in more ways than just that one.
It wasn’t styled or posed or full of catchphrases like the television Kelli was used to.
It wasn’t brightly colored and smoothed out and polished.
It didn’t have a clear hero or villain. It didn’t pause to explain itself to the children in the room.
All the things Kelli been trained to do, or technically, to make sure that the language model did them—and this movie did none of them.
It felt like a badly made movie, but it also felt like something else.
It was fiction, but it felt like watching something real. Was fiction allowed to feel real?
Were people like Kelli allowed to feel real?
As the lights in the room came up, she felt heavy with a heap of feelings, good and bad. She couldn’t move.
“I can read you, you know,” Rowan said quietly. “I know you’ve been judging the hell out of me. So that’s why I wanted to show this to you. Sure, I live a life of crime; this is the crime. Not so bad, is it?”
Kelli dragged both hands down her face.
She understood what Rowan was doing. He was playing for sympathy.
Maybe he just wanted the meeting with his client go well; or maybe this was the beginning of a recruitment pitch.
If they were in a movie, it would have been a recruitment pitch.
The mermaid who worked for the Salt Sacristy, letting the slanting underwater light glint off the false healing crystal, speaking sweetly of all the people Orlando could help with a crystal like this, if he only came and worked for the Sacristy, which had as many of them as he could dream of.
Either way, Kelli wasn’t completely stupid.
Rowan had shown her one ten-minute video.
He’d chosen it specifically to play at her particular heartstrings.
There was no telling what was in all the other files—or what other crimes he did, what else he smuggled.
He was hoping that, if she liked this one video enough, she wouldn’t ask.
“If you work for the people who distribute these,” she said, “why do they want to talk to me? I write Ship of Fools. That’s, like, the opposite of all this.”
“Not as much as you’d think. For every person who only watches bootlegs because they’re so profoundly ideologically opposed to Inspiration, there’s like three to five who don’t care.
They like both. They’re fans of AdventureVerse and they’re fans of other stuff too; they’ll pay for the other stuff when it fills a niche Inspiration doesn’t fill. Which is a lot of niches.”
“What do they want?” Kelli demanded. “This client of yours. Are they going to kidnap me and hold me hostage and—and make me write lesbian porn instead of Ship of Fools? Is that what they want me for?”
Rowan raised an eyebrow. “I’m getting the sense you couldn’t write porn even if someone held you hostage. Calm down.”
Kelli took a shaky breath. Her face was red.
“Okay, I’m being silly,” she said. Whether she was right or wrong, she was going about it in a silly way.
Orlando wouldn’t have flustered like this.
He’d have kept his cool and tried to find out why this mermaid was so intent on hiring him.
He’d play along, knowing his pirate crew was secretly not far behind. “You said they just want to talk.”
“That’s right.”
Her nostrils flared. She could still tell him no, even now.
She could tell him that she was a good professional who didn’t want to endanger her job.
She could go home and shut the door and let him get taken apart limb from limb by the criminals he owed money to, or whatever it was that they did to people who didn’t do the right favors.
She would never have to think about him again.
Yeah. That was a likely story.
“Okay, I’m coming along,” she said. “On a few conditions.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t get to touch me,” she said, pointing at him. “That’s not what this is.”
Rowan raised his hands, palms out. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You don’t get to . . . make me do anything illegal. Just the talk with whoever this is.”
“That’s what I already said.”
“And after I talk to them, you drop me right back here, in time so I can go to work again on Monday. I’m giving you just my weekend, not anything more.”
Rowan was expressionless. “Just the weekend. Got it.”
Kelli dropped her hands. Her heart was in her throat. She could barely believe she’d agreed. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay.” Rowan inclined his head. “How about you stop by your apartment and grab some zero-grav–appropriate clothes, your hairbrush, your toothbrush, whatever else you’ll need for a weekend away. I’ll talk to ground control. Come back here in two hours and we’ll get this show on the road.”
“Okay,” said Kelli, turning to the weird, square doorway.
She was honestly amazed that he let her go.