//------------------------------// // Figure A: Video Cassette Recorder // Story: Disco Inferno // by McPoodle //------------------------------// (No circuit diagrams included—if it breaks, throw it away and buy another one!) Figure A: Video Cassette Recorder Presenting a brief interlude, set 4,000 kilometers west-by-southwest and 8 years in the future... Billy Alden drove his gray 1985 BMW E30 with the utmost care through the pampered streets of Beverly Hills. Although he was wearing the gray suit, spotted burgundy tie and striped red shirt that screamed “yuppie” to the world at large, the wide-eyed look of panic on his face made it clear that this man had no idea what he was doing. That, and the fact that the BMW was a rental instead of a lease. The brown-haired, clean-shaven man was 29 years old, although he looked barely old enough to have a license to drive. After several careful consultations of the large Thomas Bros. Guide spread open in the passenger seat, Billy finally managed to make his way to his destination: a large gray office building. Each floor of the five-story building was easily fifteen feet tall, and the tinted windows were each fifteen feet wide, meaning every room inside was an executive suite. At night, when the building was bathed in blue spotlights for big events that shone right through the tinting to illuminate the rooms inside, it looked...well, Billy thought it looked exactly like a gigantic parking garage, to be perfectly honest. The building was in fact the world headquarters of the most exciting movie studio in America—The Cannon Group—Don LaFontaine said so, so it had to be true. The company’s name and its logo, a multi-lined hexagon consisting of a “C” and a right-pointing arrow, were displayed across the top of the building. Standing on its roof was a large billboard proclaiming the company’s latest magnum opus, The Delta Force (1986), starring Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin. Delta Force (1986) had been condemned as a travesty by all of the paid movie reviewers, racist cartoonish wish-fulfilment of the lowest-possible order. Nobody actually admitted to watching a Cannon movie (they waited until it came out on VHS), and yet somehow the company kept making money. Perhaps the building’s location provided a clue: despite the fact that everyone working there swore they were in Beverly Hills, the Cannon Group building was in fact situated across the street in Los Angeles, where the rent was much lower. And besides, not every film Cannon put out was as awful as Delta Force. Next Friday the billboard was slated to be re-worked to advertise something called Highlander. Nobody knew what to make of that one, although it was nice that they got Queen to contribute the title song: Here we are, born to be kings— We're the princes of the universe. Here we belong, fighting to survive In a world with the darkest powers. And here we are, we're the princes of the universe. Here we belong, fighting for survival— We've come to be the rulers of you all! Billy Alden pulled his BMW into the little parking garage located next door to the gigantic parking garage. He steered the car down a floor, to the maintenance level, out of everyone’s sight. After parking, and checking the view through every window and mirror, and checking the time on his (imitation) Rolex, and then checking the windows and mirrors again, he cautiously removed a gold pocket watch from inside his suit. Cradling the centuries-old relic in both hands, he carefully opened it and pressed down on the stem. At that moment, a tiny little purple unicorn (of the same general proportions as Rarity) appeared standing on the watch glass and staring up in his general direction. “If you can see and hear this illusion,” the creature said in a far-off voice, “that means that you must be a member of the Alden family, and located somewhere where non-Aldens cannot see. My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I have enchanted this watch to assist your family with their pledge to rescue my friends through the centuries. The watch is indestructible, and will find a way to return to one of you if it is ever separated by more than a hundred pony-lengths...” At this point the unicorn turned her head to hear the words of someone not included in the recording. “That would be about a tenth of a mile. I figured that having these kinds of features would be necessary to convince members of your family as to the veracity of my—” Billy wasn’t listening to any of this, as he was busy examining the edges of the watch, where several colored lines had appeared at the same time as the unicorn. After carefully making up his mind, he stuck a fingernail into a particular groove and wiggled it slightly. This caused the miniature pony to disappear mid-speech, to be replaced by a pink-colored arrow. The arrow did not simply lie flat on the face of the watch, but in fact stuck out of the watch to point nearly straight up. “Right,” Billy said quietly to himself as he closed and pocketed the watch. “Now I just have to convince my boss that any of this is real.” & & & After grabbing his gray Gucci briefcase from the trunk of his car—a briefcase that contained nothing except for his sack lunch, Billy Alden crossed over from the parking garage to the office building, checked in with the Uzi-armed security guard, and boarded the elevator to the fifth floor. (In Hollywood, they take bad movie making very seriously.) Instead of elevator music, the young man was besieged by the motivational speeches of professional announcer Don La Fontaine—in other words, movie trailers for Cannon Group films. “A new age of terror requires a new breed of warrior.” “The adventure of a lifetime is coming to a theater near you.” “Charles Bronson is the one man who cannot be stopped.” The visual accompaniment to this aural assault came in the form of twin movie posters. The poster on Billy’s left depicted a grassy hill near Boston harbor in the era of the Revolutionary War, British redcoats armed with muskets climbing into the smoke of battle. Through a hole in that smoke was visible a squinting Italian man in a trench coat and a burly mustache, armed with a laser-bazooka. At his feet was the body of a woman in Colonial period costume with curly pink hair. “In 1776, the British owned the greatest empire the world had ever known. But then they took Pr. Chonoton’s woman, and now he’s going to take everything from them.” (Never try to get your history from Cannon Group movie posters.) The other poster showed a snowy rugged landscape, with German Panzer tanks converging on a lone shirtless mustachioed Italian man standing over the body of the same pink-haired dead woman in the exact same pose, with only her costume changed into something worn by an Andrews Sister. The man was armed only with a single-button remote control...and the fifty-foot tall mustachioed robot with enormous biceps looming behind him. “Pr. Chonoton only wanted to pick a good year to settle down in. Too bad the year he picked...was 1941.” The movie being advertised on the right was Live Free, or Die Trying (1981). Its sequel on the left was Live Free, or Die Some More (1983). They were the first and second movies written by Billy’s boss, Cannon’s number one screenwriter and money-maker, Matthew P. Black. Mr. Black had the entire fifth floor to himself. Even Menahem Golan, the president of the company, took his office on a lower floor—and not the fourth floor either, as that was reserved for Cannon Group’s prop department. Billy Alden exited the elevator and made his way over to Room 530, Matthew Black’s corner office. As he walked, he passed poster after poster for Mr. Black’s films after his Live Free films: A Good Man’s Grave (1982), Dance with the Reaper (1984), The Graveyards Are All Full (1985). The posters followed the usual pattern for Cannon Group action films: Two partially-undressed men would be leaping towards the camera while shooting off some manner of firearm, propelled by the power of several explosions behind them. One man would be scowling more than the other, thereby designating him as the villain. The tasteful placement of a vehicle or two in the corner would be the only means of identifying the film’s setting. Oh, and somewhere, harder and harder to see as the years went by, would be that same dead woman with pink hair. Billy checked Room 530, but Matthew Black was nowhere to be found. He stopped for a moment to stare at the extra-large poster mounted behind Mr. Black’s executive chair. It was called American Tidal Force (1986), and it somehow managed to use the exact same layout as the other posters, despite the fact that the antagonist in this movie was a hundred-foot tall tsunami possessed by the spirit of an evil ninja. If you looked really closely, you could even see that the wall of water was somehow firing a sub machine gun. During Billy’s interview for the job as Mr. Black’s assistant, the writer had bragged that he had been “this close to talking Chuck Norris into playing the killer tidal wave.” “Matt?” Billy called out as he left the office. “Matt, are you here?” As his assistant, Billy was the only one allowed to call him Matt—in fact, his boss insisted upon it. Hearing nothing in reply, Billy hesitantly pulled out his pocket watch once again and activated it. The pink arrow was pointed towards the Television Room. The fifth floor of Cannon Group HQ had its own film screening room, but the Television Room was more useful for when Mr. Black just wanted a quick check of a videotape in Cannon’s library. Matthew P. Black was a thirty-something man of average height and exquisite taste (in clothes), favoring Armani suits and Givenchy shoes. He truly was the yuppie that Billy Alden only pretended to be. He had slicked back black hair, piercing blue eyes, angular features...and abnormally large nostrils. At least, they looked abnormally large from Billy’s perspective. Maybe it was just because Billy was currently looking down upon a Matthew Black that was spread-eagled on his back in the middle of the Television Room, not the best possible perspective to be seen from. Mr. Black’s Armani suit was rumpled and stained, one of his Givenchy shoes was missing, and he had a five o’clock shadow, which for a yuppie was completely unacceptable. An empty cognac bottle lay next to his hand—this on the other hand was completely acceptable. Three of the room’s five television sets were on and showing static, with videotapes sticking out of their attached VHS players. The pink arrow was pointed directly at Mr. Black’s head. Billy quickly put the watch away as Mr. Black began stirring. He knelt down to help the elder man up. “Are...are you OK, Matt?” Mr. Black gave Billy a look of complete desperation. “Am I haunted?” he asked his assistant with complete earnestness. “Because if I’m not haunted, I must be insane.” Billy Alden helped Mr. Black into a rolling chair that was wedged into a corner of the room. “I don’t think you’re insane, Matt. You’re not looking that good, though.” He glanced around him, and took in the rancid smell of the room. “Have you been in here all night?” Mr. Black mumbled an affirmative. “You need to get yourself cleaned up,” Billy suddenly decided. He tried to rouse Mr. Black from the chair, but failing that, he rolled it out of the room and down a hallway to the restroom. He pushed the chair into the restroom, allowed the door to close behind it, and walked back to his boss’ office to await his return. “Yes, get you back to yourself, and whatever is troubling you will suddenly clear itself up, I just know it!” he yelled over his shoulder. & & & Billy spent his time waiting in Room 530 looking at Mr. Black’s things. Besides the desk, three chairs and the movie poster, there was also a “word processor”—not the software, but a digital typewriter with an 80 character by four line screen that people in the 80’s used before computers completely took over the world. Something that hadn’t been modernized, though, was Mr. Black’s rolodex. Billy decided to see if Mr. Black’s doctor was in the rolodex...just in case. What he found instead was a photograph that had been trimmed and inserted into the deck just like another contact card. A younger Matthew Black was sitting on a bench with a checkered jacket and a genuine 1970’s mustache. His arm was around the shoulders of a petite woman in a white dress. Sitting in each of their laps was a little boy, aged around three. The woman looked like she was living exactly the life she had always dreamed of. Matthew Black had the look of a cornered and desperate animal. Billy pulled out the photograph and looked at the back. Written in a fine cursive were the words “Matt, May and the boys, 1976.” Billy quietly put the photograph back in the Rolodex. With that one exception, there was no evidence anywhere in the office that Matthew P. Black belonged to any family at all. It took another five minutes for Mr. Black to finally return to his office. “It didn’t clear itself up, in case you were wondering,” he grumbled, as he sat down in his chair. “I still don’t know if I’m crazy or possessed.” Billy, sitting in his expected chair off to the side of where a client would sit, picked up a notepad and pen for a moment, but then decided that discretion was probably for the best and put them back down. “Perhaps you should begin at the beginning, Matt,” he said quietly, “so I can reach some sort of judgment, if that’s what you want.” Mr. Black leaned back in his chair. “Yes, I suppose that would be best. “It started right after I hired you yesterday. No sooner had you left the building, but I was summoned down to Menahem’s office. ‘Matthew,’ he told me, ‘I’ve got a favor to ask of you, and I know you’re not going to like it, but you’re better off not knowing the reason.’” Billy pictured Menahem Golan in his office, a man literally larger than life, with his frizzy gray hair and speaking in his thick Israeli accent, sitting in his low office chair looking up at the standing Matthew Black on the other side of his desk, and yet still managing to make clear from his look who was the boss of the company. “Then he told me he wanted me to change up the formula for my next picture, to let the girl live for once. I thought it was an odd request, and I let Menahem know it. ‘You’ve got other pictures in production,’ I reminded him, ‘pictures like America 3000 (1986) where women are the main characters. Art pictures like Duet for One (1986) where practically nobody dies. If you’ve grown a conscience all of a sudden, why do you have to inflict it on me?’ “We had a good laugh over that one. And then he said, ‘Matthew, my boy, there’s some promises that you just have to keep, and this is one of them. I need a script with your name on it, where the female love interest makes it to the closing credits.’ “‘It’ll bomb,’ I warned him. ‘Or at the very least break even.’” Matthew Black spread out his arms and shrugged broadly in imitation of his very physically expressive boss. “And Menahem sighed and agreed with me. ‘But it’s got to be done.’ “I decided I’d like to see his ‘reason’. He warned me against it, and God knows he was right—I wouldn’t be in this mess if I didn’t insist. But he eventually broke and handed over a letter that he had laminated and kept in a drawer in his desk. I wasn’t allowed to take that letter out of his office, but I remember its general contents well enough. “It was written by somebody named Radiance, or Reliance, or Rare—” “Rarity?” Billy asked suddenly. “Yeah, that sounds right. You heard of him?” “Her,” Billy corrected. “She was a fashion designer from nearly a decade ago.” He hoped he wouldn’t be asked anything else about her. Mr. Black shook his head. “Well that just makes things stranger. Anyway, the letter was from 1978, and addressed to both Meneham and Yoram [Yoram Globus, Menahem’s cousin and the other owner of the Cannon Group]. This Rarity lady congratulated the two of them on their Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination for the movie Operation Thunderbolt (1977) and then went on to reveal that the current owners of Cannon were on the verge of bankruptcy, and looking for trustworthy buyers.” Billy leaned forward in his chair. “So you’re saying that Rarity was responsible for Golan and Globus buying the Cannon Group? What did she get out of it?” “Nothing, unless she bought a lot of stock beforehand. But there’s more—the letter specifically named me, and insisted that giving me free reign to write movies my way would make the company incredibly wealthy. She, um, managed to word that as regretfully as possible.” “Huh,” Billy said as he thought this over. “So she was some kind of psychic?” Mr. Black shrugged. “Probably. Anyway, for these two revelations, she had one price: ‘that Matt Black was to stop killing Pinkie Pie, even if for only one picture.’” Billy Alden got very still all of a sudden. Mr. Black failed to notice. Instead, he rolled his eyes in recreation of his reaction to his boss’ order. “‘I haven’t been killing anyone!’ I insisted. Menehem told me that the phrase was referring to all of the characters that this ‘Pinkie Pie’ has been playing through the years. The name meant absolutely nothing to me.” Black punctuated this statement by slamming a fist on his table, before sighing and continuing his tale. “‘But surely you know the members of your own repertory company,’ Menahem insisted. ‘Although come to think of it, the girl’s the only one who keeps showing up.’” At this point in the story, Mr. Black got up and led Billy Alden back to the Television Room, which had been thoroughly sprayed with Lysol to make it inhabitable again. “Menahem’s story was ridiculous,” Black continued, “or so I thought at the time.” He picked up a tape, stuck it in one of the videotape players, and started fast-forwarding it to a specific point. He continued his story as he was doing this. “As he was getting yet another call from Frank Langella pleading to increase the makeup budget for Masters of the Universe (1987), I excused myself to the records room downstairs, where I found that there was indeed an actress named Pinkie Pie credited to every single one of the ‘motivational death’ parts I put in all of my scripts. But paperwork is easy to mess with. I came back up to this room to see the truth for myself. I started with Live Free, or Die Trying (1981), because I distinctly remember sitting in on the casting sessions with Kathy Lorza for the part of Betsy Ross, Pr. Chonoton’s love interest. I remember that I wanted to get a respectable character actress that was both older looking, but also believable that my star could fall head over heels in love with her. I was positive that Patty Duke had ended up getting the part, because she had good chemistry with Franco Nero. But I got to her big scene, and I didn’t see Patty Duke, I saw this woman.” The scene on the television showed a pink-haired young woman in colonial garb trying to cheer up a grumpy man in a lab coat, reading jokes from the Joe Miller Joke Book (1739) she held in one hand. The nearly complete Betsy Ross flag was draped over a nearby chair. “There was this poet who was born without a nose,” the lady recited, “and as he was walking along the riverside, a beggar-woman came up to him and began saying ‘God preserve your eyesight! The Lord preserve your eyesight!’ And the poet asked, ‘Why do you pray so much for my eyesight?’ So the woman replies, ‘Well, if it should please God that you grow dim-sighted, where would you hang your spectacles on?’ Or, how about this: A lady was asked her opinion of a gentleman’s singing, who suffered from halitosis. ‘The words are good,’ she said, ‘but the air is intolerable!’” She flipped a few more pages, and got excited. “Oh-oh-oh! There being a very great disturbance one evening at the Drury-Lane playhouse, Mr. Wilkes, coming upon the stage to say something to pacify the audience, had an orange thrown full at him! Mr. Wilkes took up the fruit and made a low bow, saying, ‘This is no civil orange, I think.’ That’s a good one, right?” And then a Redcoat burst through the door and bayonetted her to death in slow motion. Which Billy thought to be a bit of an overreaction. Black froze the video on Franco Nero’s anguished reaction. “After seeing this other woman playing the part, I hunted down Kathy, who’s currently in Marketing, and asked her who she remembered hiring to play Betsy Ross. “‘Pinkie Pie,’ she replied, ‘the same person you got to play Mata Hari in the sequel. Stroke of genius there, hiring an actress whose checks always bounce. We just keep paying her the same $500 for every picture!’” Mr. Black walked down the line of VHS players, rewinding and playing tapes to show scene after scene after scene of the pink-haired woman. The last tape he prepared instead showed the closing credits—he paused the tape to show the credit of “Jane” played by “Pinkie Pie”. “This is where it really starts to go crazy,” he told Billy. “You see, there is no Pinkie Pie. Nobody exists with that name—I pulled quite a few favors last night to be absolutely sure, but it’s true. It’s like she only exists in my movies.” Mr. Black laughed a little too loud at this point. “But you can see already that that’s impossible. Somebody had to film her, somebody had to costume her. In short, this Pinkie Pie character had to have her own unit.” Black un-paused the movie that was playing credits and fast-forwarded it a bit, to bring up some more credits. “And that’s what turned out to be true: she did have her own unit. I had a second unit all this time that I knew nothing about, because they weren’t being paid. But they sure were getting credited: D. Chord, Director. D. Chord, Editor. D. Chord, Cinematographer. D. Chord, Sound Effects! D. Chord, in short, was anything and everything. “I tried to find him. No good—he disappeared without a trace three months ago. But somehow Pinkie Pie’s scene in American Tidal Force (1986) managed to film itself, because sure enough, the print of it I checked in the projection room has her in it!” Billy Alden took in all the scenes playing around him of Pinkie Pie doing her stuff, and picked up various scattered remote controls to replay them over and over. Her scenes were all incredibly short, usually less than a minute to establish that the main character loved her, and then she would be blown to smithereens. Or shoved off a cliff into the jaws of a waiting alligator. Or the hero would suddenly find her head in his refrigerator. As R-rated films became more and more violent over the course of the 1980’s, so went the dignity delivered to Pinkie Pie’s characters. Pinkie Pie did the best she could in these brief scenes to bring her various characters to life. She knitted, or she recited random lines of Shakespeare. Mostly, she worked the typewriter like it was a piano. Her characters were variously failed novelists, college professors reviewing papers, homebodies expressing themselves through poetry or cook books, or merely a frustrated wife with no better way to express herself. Billy also noticed that Pinkie Pie would occasionally be able to get him to laugh at her antics before her inevitable demise—a little dance, or a pie to the face of the man with the Uzi. It was the only time that Billy ever remembered laughing at a Cannon Group film...even the (sex) comedies. Mr. Black sat down on the arm rest of his rolling chair. “So eventually I was forced to admit that there was some bizarre sort of conspiracy, with the goal of forcing some obscure actress to play the same role over and over, as...what, some sort of feminist protest? I dunno. I’m still mad that I’m being manipulated like this, but I was at least willing to entertain the idea of letting her inevitable character in my next script live. But what would I write? “The easiest answer would have been to write something that doesn’t follow my usual—and very successful—formula. I had Marie Marvingt’s translated autobiography that I won in the divorce—the only damn thing that May liked that I managed to take from her in the settlement after she took everything of mine, the greedy little b....” The screenwriter suddenly cut himself off to take a labored breath before continuing. “Anyway, I figured a biopic of her would be perfect. You remember Marvingt, right? The world-famous stunt pilot from the 20’s?” Matthew Black picked up the battered old hardcover book from the seat of the chair it had been resting on, and flipped through the pages for a few seconds before handing it over to Billy. “Read that part out loud,” he instructed. “I really need to know that those words are actually there.” “‘I suppose someday somebody might want to make a movie about me,’” the passage began. “‘But I hope it isn’t anytime soon. Most of the silent movies I try to watch just bore me—somebody needs to hurry up and invent sound already. And the flying stunts in movies...well, they’re good, but nowhere near the level of my good. But let’s say it’s the future, and the movie people know how to make an awesome movie, so they’re finally ready to do my story justice. And whoever writes the script for this story, let’s call him Matt...” Billy paused for a bit in discomfort before continuing. “Matt Black. If Matt is trying to condense my life down to nine reels or less, let him take this advice: no sidekicks. It might be tempting, you know, so you’ve got somebody to bounce the exposition off of. But you shouldn’t do it. You know why? Because I know if you give me a sidekick, Matt, you’re going to cast Pinkie Pie for the part and kill her off, again. And I’m getting really tired of that.’ That’s...quite a wild coincidence,” Billy said lamely as he handed the book back. “So you don’t know why she wrote that.” “Why would I know?” asked Billy. Black flipped the book back to the front page. “Because this book was translated from French to English by Roger Alden in 1928...your grandfather?” Billy squirmed. “Ah, he did a lot of translation work—did you know that he did the first translation of Gide’s The Counterfeiters (1925)? I always thought that it would make for a great movie.” Black let the book fall back into the chair with a groan. “Whatever. I got myself well and truly drunk at that point, and eventually, I passed out. Then came the absolute lowest point of my experience. I had a dream—a nightmare! These gigantic green eyes emerged from the darkness and began boring into my soul! ‘Matt Black!’ a woman’s voice cried out to me with a Southern accent. ‘Stop killing Pinkie Pie!’” Matt laughed at that point at the ludicrousness of his dream, running one hand over his hair. “I...I think the dream got lucid at that point, because I got right up into those eyes and yelled back, ‘She ain’t real!’ And the eyes sort of pulled back and were part of some alien horse-dog like creature, with blonde hair like a lady, and a cowboy hat on her head. I swear I’m not making this up! ‘Well, could you stop killing her anyway?’ the alien said, all flustered. ‘Using Hopi magic to haunt you from 1881 isn’t exactly easy you know. Couldn’t you just, you know, not kill her for variety’s sake? I promise I won’t haunt you again if you do it.’ “‘How are you haunting me from 1881?’ I asked. Yeah, I know, there are like a million better questions I could have asked, but that is what I went with. “The horse alien rolls her way-too-big eyes and says, ‘Time isn’t really a barrier when it comes to dream magic,’ like that was common knowledge or something. “‘Well, I know one way I can do what you ask,’ I said. ‘Why don’t I write a screenplay about your life story? I’ll be sure not to kill Pinkie-Whoever that way.’” It was at this point that Billy Alden began to mentally apply the word “overkill” to this entire scenario. Matt Black on the other hand was really getting into the story. “And she started going on about how she wasn’t that important, and I countered that time-traveling aliens using Hopi magic to haunt people from 1881 are plenty interesting, and then Pinkie countered that nobody was going to believe any of this, and I said that if Cannon was willing to pay Tobe Hooper to make a film about naked vampire aliens hiding in Halley’s Comet trying to start a zombie apocalypse in the heart of London [Lifeforce (1985)] that surely they’d go hog wild for cowboys and aliens, but May still had to be the doubter, so I told her to kindly shut the f—” “Hold on, hold on!” Billy interrupted, suddenly excited. “Was it Pinkie Pie in this dream, or May your ex-wife?” “Who said May had anything to do with this?” Matt protested. “But...yeah, the phantom actress was in my dream, right out of nowhere, and I didn’t even notice.” Billy stood up and grabbed Matt’s hand. “Come with me,” he ordered. & & & Matt Black allowed himself to be led back to his office without resistance. Billy pulled the photo out of the rolodex and showed it to Matt, pointing to the woman with curly red hair. “That’s your ex-wife, right?” “Yeah, so?” “And if you were casting the story of your life, who would you pick to play her?” Matt shrugged. “I dunno...Lucille Ball in her prime?” “Or Pinkie Pie?” “I guess. They’ve got the same general body type. So what?” Billy took Matt’s hand. “Why’d the marriage fail, Matt?” Matt yanked his hand back. “It just did, OK? She was the homecoming queen at the senior dance, I was the quarterback for the football team. Everybody expected us to get married, so we got married, and had kids. And...” He started messing with the carpet with the toe of his shoe. “And...?” “And I realized one day that I didn’t love her, or the kids. That I probably never loved them. That there was something wrong with me. That, or...she did something to kill the love. So we got divorced, and it got really, really nasty.” Matt nervously started to rub a thumb alongside his chin. “All of our friends picked one side or the other. Mine told me I couldn’t really come out of it with my manhood intact if I didn’t hurt her, hard. But everything I tried just bounced back in my face. I used to be in real estate, Billy. I picked up a pretty good job in my father-in-law’s company. But all that was taken away. Both houses—even though she never spent any time in the cabin. She got the kids, the alimony, the car, any hope of my ever getting a job in academia thanks to her connections...she even got my typewriter! And all I got was a second-hand book and the need to get her back for what did to my pride.” Matt sat down in the client seat and sighed. “So I cast Pinkie Pie as her doppelganger and I killed her. Again and again and again. In some dark corner of my subconscious so I’d never have to feel guilty. Maybe I thought it was therapy.” Billy put his hand on Matt’s shoulder and smiled. “And now?” “And now I need to purge her from my head. Maringvt’s life story is off limits, apparently, but how about Andy Warhol? He was in the news recently. Pinkie can play Edie Sedgwick. That’s a happy ending, right?” Billy looked down at him incredulously. “Sedgwick died of a drug overdose.” Matt looked up in confusion. “She did? When?” Billy groaned. “Look, I think the whole problem here is that we’re taking Pinkie Pie’s free agency away from her. What kind of movie would she want to be in?” Matt pointed at his head. “You’re treating her like she’s a real person, instead of a magical...construct or whatever. She hasn’t got a free agency to...to...wait.” He got up and walked out of the office, Billy trailing behind him. Back in the Television Room, Matt rewound four of the films in the VHS players to show Pinkie Pie’s scenes again. He paused one of the tapes. “There,” he said, pointing at the piece of paper visible in the typewriter Pinkie was working on. “The script I wrote for this scene says that that’s supposed to be a letter to the newspaper. Does that look like a letter to you?” Billy leaned in close to look. “It looks more like a screenplay to me.” “And these four movies are in chronological order. See how the pile of paper is taller in each scene? It’s almost like she’s—” “Like she’s writing her own movie!” Billy exclaimed. “I can’t believe I’m saying this but...to the prop department!” Susan, the woman in charge of the prop department on the fourth floor, looked at the two men like they were insane. But she worked for Menahem Golan, so this was an everyday sort of thing for her. She came back ten minutes later shaking her head in wonder, holding the complete script for Flying Dogs (1987), by Pinkie Pie. “Well this is ridiculous,” Matt said after a few minutes of flipping through the manuscript, Billy looking over his shoulder. “Comedy and action pictures simply don’t mix. Didn’t she watch King Solomon’s Mines (1985)?” “Well, this one seems to be working, Matt,” Billy offered. “It’s funny, it’s action-packed, and the lead role that Pinkie Pie obviously wrote for herself lives to the end of the picture. Add to that the fact that Cannon’s never made a movie about either computer networks or Cold War spying before. I think this could actually work.” “One problem, though,” Matt said, flipping back to the front of the manuscript. “It’s written by Pinkie Pie. Not me.” “She doesn’t exist, remember?” Billy replied. “So that means there’s no legal objection why you can’t just replace this front page with one that gives you the credit and hand it over to Menahem. Problem solved!” “You think she will mind?” Matt asked. “JUST DO IT!” Matt looked wildly around him. “Did you hear that?” “Hear what?” asked Billy. “It sounded...never mind,” Matt said, shaking his head violently. “Come on back to my office so we can finish looking this over. Looks like we might be working overtime tonight.” Billy grabbed the script from his boss. “I’ll do the editing and filing work—it’s what you hired me for, after all. I suggest you call your ex.” “And why would I do that?” challenged Matt. “You told me that your so-called friends made your divorce as awful as it became. Have you considered that the same thing might have happened with her as well? At the very least, you have a quite considerable debt to pay back to your now teenage sons. I mean, do you even remember their names?” “Sure,” said Matt flippantly. “One’s named Chuck, and the other’s Charles, although we call him Chuck as well.” Billy rolled his eyes. “That’s our lead actors.” “I know that.” Matt looked fondly at the rolodex photo. “Anything I can arrange for you before I go?” “Just order me the usual Cannon dinner.” “Fried chicken in Styrofoam containers?” “That’s the one.” Matt Black laughed out loud as left his assistant in control of his own office. “Oh Billy,” he said, “thank God that you at least weren’t part of this insane conspiracy.” Billy Alden could do little more than roll his eyes ironically behind Matt Black’s back.