The Malicarn #7
“I’m not a monster, Lilly. The writers have guidelines.
Extras don’t get involved, ever. They’re extras.
They are very boring people, as you know.
You’ve seen their personality profiles. They were boring in real life, too.
It wouldn’t be good drama. I want audiences to feel great escaping into this world, and I want to build the stories they disappear into.
When someone watches The Malicarn, they need to feel like they are inside of it, just like the heroes are.
So no sadism, and no exploitation of boring extras.
Plus, all these people signed reams of legal mumbo jumbo excusing us from liability before they were scanned. They knew the risks.”
Glenn might have had more complex ideas about the morality of manipulating the people they lived and worked among, but if he did, he never spoke up about it.
Lilly noticed during these chats that Glenn was always more concerned about his own role, how much time he would be promised onscreen, how significant his actions would be, if maybe he could get a few more monologues here and there.
Jules and Glenn went on quite long tangents about these things, which Lilly couldn’t care about, generally not desiring to talk about work during her few hours off.
Instead, as the two men debated with each other Lilly flipped through news channels, watching hurricanes in Florida and wildfires in Oregon, viewing which celebrities got divorced or which teenagers went viral on social media.
Glenn and Jules, as far as she knew, never thought about these things.
That was fine with Lilly. The outside world was a mess anyway.
Some nights Lilly called her parents, knowing they only picked up when they recognized the voice on the answering machine (they still had a landline), but when her mother’s prerecorded “Please leave a message” ended and the line beeped, she never said anything, just sat and breathed silently a few times, hoping maybe one of her parents would angrily pick up the phone anyway and then maybe she would say something.
But they never did, so she hung up and sent them an email instead, blaming the time difference for why she hadn’t called.
Lilly finally earned a full weekend off, so she and Glenn decided to go camping on the northern edge of the island.
Glenn borrowed a tent from the props department and spent over an hour assembling it.
Lilly started a fire and cooked their dinner—hot dogs and corn—before Glenn was half finished.
After they ate, Glenn insisted that they should have sex in the tent.
“Maybe that seems fun in your imagination,” Lilly said. “But it will be super uncomfortable.”
It was autumn and the air carried a wet chill.
The winter rains had not yet begun but you could smell them.
Glenn shivered, regretting coming out to the woods instead of just staying in their apartments.
They sat close to the fire, wrapped together in a blanket, and looked up at the stars.
Once in a while a blinking light floated past, and Glenn pulled out his phone to check a radar app that told him which plane it was, where it was going, how fast it traveled.
“Funchal to Lisbon. Tenerife to Belfast. Oh, here’s one coming in from Caracas, headed to Istanbul!”
“Think they can see us?” Lilly asked.
“There’s probably a satellite that can see right here.”
“Check Google Earth.”
He looked up their location, but it only showed old roads and towns from before they built the Malicarn.
“I bet you can’t name any of the stars,” Lilly said.
“Well, I know stories about the constellations.”
“But do you know how to find them?”
“Um, there’s the North Star.”
“That’s not the North Star.”
“What is it then?”
Lilly strained her neck. “Well, there’s the constellation Virgo, so that star there? That’s Spica. It’s a binary star, actually.”
“Like in Star Wars?”
“If that helps you. I minored in astronomy. I wanted to work for NASA. My dream job was to be an exogeologist and study other planets.”
“That’s a real job?”
“Is pretending you’re a medieval wizard a real job?”
Glenn laughed. “Why didn’t you do that?” he asked.
“I felt like doing something with a little more job security, better pay. Federal jobs aren’t what they used to be. Plus, being idealistic is exhausting. But I still like astronomy.”
Glenn downloaded an astronomy app and tried to identify some stars.
“Can we see other galaxies?”
“Most galaxies you need a telescope for.”
“Because they’re all moving away from us?”
“Well, everything is moving away from everything else. It appears like we’re in the middle, but any other point in the universe would also appear to be the middle, if you were there.”
“Whoa, that’s a head-scratcher. But it’ll reverse eventually? I thought the universe was going to collapse on itself?”
“No.”
“That’s what the movie K-PAX said.”
“Is that a real movie? You really have no references for anything outside of pop culture, do you? No, it’s not going to do that. The universe is just going to keep expanding until all energy is used up and there’s nothing left.”
“I feel like I need a cigarette.”
“Burn that cigarette and you’re just pushing us a little bit closer to the heat death of the universe.”
“Well, congratulations. You’ve convinced me not to take up smoking.”
They took the blanket into the tent and fell asleep warm. In the morning Glenn made Lilly coffee and eggs over the fire.