The Malicarn #5
Lilly looked over Jasper’s implementation history.
Real name: Aaron Limt. Hometown: Chicago.
Age: 47. Former political activist. Had an arrest when was twenty-five, unusual for an extra.
Usually those got filtered out. But no convictions.
Seems like it was vacated due to police brutality, so the studio probably gave him a pass when he applied.
Under a long-term contract now. Lilly had implemented him originally, though she couldn’t remember that.
Jasper was drugged the night before and carted away from the set by a team from the props department.
They rolled him into the observation room and prepped him.
When the scanner came in, recalibrated with the Supp ready and loaded, Lilly entered the room and placed the green wire onto the nodes.
Whitman came in to observe and supervise.
“I’m only running this for sixty seconds,” Lilly said. “That should allow plenty of time for the Supps to be implemented while not overwhelming his synapses. It’s not clear what will happen to the memories he does have.”
“Nothing will happen,” Whitman said. “Do you forget something every time you learn something new?”
Lilly bit her tongue. She dialed up the Supp on the scanner’s console, checked the settings one last time, and then turned the switch.
The subject jerked violently, which had never happened with new implementations. He started to groan and shift on the gurney.
“Is he really drugged enough?” Whitman asked.
“Call the anesthesiologist down here,” Lilly shouted through the door at an assistant. She switched the scanner back off.
“What are you doing?” Whitman asked.
“I can’t continue if he’s—”
“Turn it back on!”
But Jasper was already awake, sitting up on the gurney. The wire was still strapped to his head, but his eyes were open and he was looking around the room.
“Get security,” Whitman bellowed.
Jasper did not run. He did not even try to stand. Instead, he began to cry. His head fell into his hands as he sobbed.
“She’s dead, oh God she’s dead!” Jasper bellowed. “Why, why, why! I didn’t mean to, I just thought, oh no, oh no!”
He fell off the gurney, started slamming his head onto the ground, and continued to shriek.
“I’m sorry! Oh no, I’m sorry! No, no, no!”
By the time he could be sedated, cuts on his head had covered his shirt in blood.
It took a few days until the casting department discovered that the tanning expert had been convicted of manslaughter for killing his wife.
It was why he had “retired” so early from teaching.
In the haste to hire experts for Supps, a proper background check was never conducted.
Evidently, when asked to concentrate his mind on how to tan hides during the download procedure, the man had focused on the night he murdered his wife instead.
“What will happen to Jasper?” Lilly asked Whitman at the end of the day. Whitman sat at her desk scrolling through emails and trying to finish the day’s reports. Lilly stood in the doorway, and Whitman did not look at her.
“Who knows? The writers will figure something out. Maybe a dragon will eat him.”
“That’s not funny. It’s not fair, what we did to him.”
“What does that mean?”
“These people. We’re messing with their minds.”
“Come on, Lilly, you’re a scientist. Grow up.
He’ll be reimplemented and forget all about it.
We’ll give him a nicer job, make him a blacksmith or something.
You want him to be happier? You do the implementation yourself.
Give him a daughter or something, one of these orphans on set. See, everyone wins.”
Lilly didn’t say anything else. That night, she took an Ativan and fell asleep on her couch. She dreamed about her father, yelling at her in the laboratory observation room, screaming like Jasper, but she couldn’t hear what he was shouting about.
3.
“What strength we have, we carry with us,” Prion boomed. “We fight not for ourselves, but for all the Malicarn. May this be the first day that the Necromancer fears our wrath.”
He stood with the Council on a platform in the Old Village square.
They were all dressed for battle, horses waiting for them at the gate.
The crowd let out a huzzah and cheers erupted.
Buglers blew their trumpets. Prion turned and embraced Kreek, and then the Council began their slow trek out of the village.
It was a circuitous path that looped around the outer square before turning south toward their destination, but it was more cinematic and allowed more time for the editors to add in a rousing score.
Evangeline waited by the gate, and Prion embraced her in an impassioned kiss. Tears streamed down Evangeline’s face as he rode out. Glenn waited at the last turn on the road before it broke south. Prion and the Council slowed their march as they approached him.
“Remember, it is not who you are,” Glenn said to them. “It is what you do that defines you.”
Glenn thought the line was pure cheese, but Jules wanted a big “morality” quote and had spent several days thinking of it himself. Glenn knew he stole it from one of the Batman movies.
The Council marched on. As Kip walked past, he turned his head away from Glenn to look at the ground.
Glenn leaned toward him, reaching out his arm to offer some solace, but he didn’t actually have anything to say.
Kip walked on. Glenn raised his staff and pressed the small button to set off the static sparkling—another request from Jules, thinking the Council would appreciate a small magical token from the wizard—and then watched the heroes march until they were out of sight.
It took a long time, as the road was flat for nearly half a mile before turning down and behind a small hill.
Once they were gone, Glenn walked back into the town square. He saw Evangeline standing by her flower booth, and he knew that the kiss she had shared with Prion was going to make Jules very angry. There would be no way to edit around it without losing a large chunk of the scene.
“Good morning, sir,” Evangeline said to Glenn as he approached. Her voice shook. “What an honor to meet the wizard Gregorian. A … a bouquet for your trouble?” She held out a clutch of flowers.
Glenn smiled. “No need. I do not believe we have been properly introduced.”
“I am Evangeline. But oh, I know who you are, of course. I have heard so much about you.”
“From who?”
She looked at him and didn’t speak.
“Do not be scared,” Glenn said. “You have nothing to fear. I know that you and Prion have formed … a, well, a friendship, yes?”
“He has been quite kind to me.”
“What is your story?” Glenn asked.
“Well, my mother and father were murdered by the Necromancer. His armies burned down our whole village. I fled with my brother, but he went off to fight in the wars. I haven’t seen him since. So now I live alone in the Old Village.”
Glenn knew half the extras in the square had almost identical backstories, but as Evangeline described hers it sounded very sad.
“I am a friend of Prion,” Glenn said. “If you need anything, come to me, all right?”
Evangeline nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
“Do not call me ‘sir.’ Just Gregorian is fine. Good day.”
Brian Doyle was still standing on the podium as Glenn left Evangeline, staring off in the direction of the Council.
“Hi Brian,” Glenn said.
Doyle continued to stare. “If only I could have accompanied them,” he said. “I could have helped shield them from harm.”
“I mean, I don’t think the animatronics are going to be that hard to defeat.”
“You do not have faith in our king, Gregorian. That is why he does not truly trust you and never will.”
“All right, Brian, nice to talk to you, too. I hope you can take a break. I’m going to nap.”
Glenn returned to his apartment but didn’t sleep, instead spending the afternoon filling out paperwork and reviewing notes.
Lilly showed up after dinner, tired but talkative.
Glenn couldn’t predict her anymore—when she would come over, what mood she would be in.
But he still liked his apartment more when she was there.
She was the only person who didn’t really care about the story or character arcs or how the movie was turning out. It was refreshing.
In bed that night, Lilly lay on her back staring, oddly intently, at the ceiling when Glenn suddenly rolled over.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” he said. “The premiere is going to be in LA. The first week of June, most likely. Postproduction won’t take that long but they want a summer release. I’m getting an invite, and they’re letting me have a week off to go. You should come with me. Visit your parents?”
Lilly remained silent.
“I’ll have to do some press,” he said, “but maybe we could get away for a few days? That would be nice?”
“Sure,” Lilly said. “Sure, that would be nice.”
The next morning the sun was rising over the village when a shout went up from a group of children sitting in the church tower. “The Council has returned!”
There was a rush as the villagers made their way toward the southern gate to meet the arriving heroes. A minstrel band struck up a tune, and decorative candles were lit and hoisted on strings above the town square.
Lilly stayed in bed but Glenn dressed, barely making it to the square in time.
He pushed his way ahead to stand near the front of the crowd at the gate as Prion approached—covered in mud and blood but beaming—and the two embraced in an actual hug.
Jules had explicitly allowed an embrace on just this occasion.
“The demons are defeated!” Prion cried out.
“Victory!” went up as a shout from the crowd.
Evangeline emerged from the crowd and fell into Prion’s arms. The other Council members hugged the villagers in turn, hooting and hollering and breaking out casks of ale.
The party moved inward toward the town square, where the producers could get good footage for a final scene.
Someone handed Glenn a pint. He smiled and took a large gulp. Bariol and Ravela danced with a child.
Only one person stayed outside the village. It was Jip, and Glenn could see him through the gate as he slowly climbed off his horse, then pulled down a large wrapped package. A body. The crowd parted as he approached. Glenn turned toward him.
“What happened?” Glenn asked.
“He could not outrun the monsters,” Jip said through tears. “But, oh, Gregorian! Oh, how he tried!”
Glenn leaned over and pulled back the cloth covering.
He covered his mouth to stifle a cry. Kip’s faced was smashed in on the left side, dried blood all over his hair and cheeks, his eye missing.
His right eye lay open, and his jaw was agape, as if he saw something terrible and didn’t know what to do.