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bloodyrosemccoyIndex and Prologue!
Previous Chapter!
Hooray, an on-time update!
It feels a little weird to add a ✨Paypal link, ✨ but hey, writing is hard, so if you want to tip me, I wouldn't say no!
CW for body horror and self-sacrifice (in a movie)
---
Previous Chapter!
Hooray, an on-time update!
It feels a little weird to add a ✨Paypal link, ✨ but hey, writing is hard, so if you want to tip me, I wouldn't say no!
CW for body horror and self-sacrifice (in a movie)
- I'm not going to expand on the issues Zarla mentioned in the last chapter. She's got superpowers, but they're not really relevant to this particular story. Though she does come up in others!
- Somehow relevant to this chapter is the song "Belle" from Disney's Beauty & the Beast, where Belle really wants to talk about cool books and stories but nobody else cares. Belle's attempted infodumps really resonated with me. DREEDO'S GONNA GET THE TOWNSFOLK DISCUSSING MOVIES IF IT KILLS HIM
- Many thanks to my buddy Fade for consultation on ADHD medication. Giro's brain is a complicated labyrinth.
- The running courgette joke is a running gag for my own dislike of zucchini, which, if you ask me, can go fuck itself, but which I am assured other people enjoy. Those people are weird.
- One time in college I happened across a TV edit of Ridley Scott's Hannibal, and it was the funniest thing ever. I mean, okay, that movie's pretty ridiculous anyway, but Ray Liotta kept his frat-bro hat on all throughout That One Scene, and it was completely unintelligible.
- As a Utahn, I actually had a few friends who swore by CleanFlicks, or would have, if any of them swore. I can totally understand the appeal of getting a movie that won't trigger an upset, but on the other hand I've had some really good mind-blowing feelings when I've gone out of my comfort zone before. The tale of my discovery of horror through Alien is a long saga, and it also includes Ridley Scott, so shoutout to Ridley Scott, I guess.
---
Zevon, we have a problem with PQ896.
What do you mean? The study's over. It was a wild success.
I've been going back over the questionnaires, and have noted a discrepancy.
The two that reported adverse reactions had handwriting that didn't match the signatures of the guardians at the bottom.
So what?
So it appears that in those two cases, the subjects themselves filled out their questionnaires, whereas in the others, the parents filled them out.
This error in our protocol has led to differing reports. It's possible that many more subjects had adverse reactions, but they were not recognized as adverse by the parents.
I would like to do post-study interviews of the other subjects.
Bel, we've closed this. It's over. We're moving on to PQ now.
Yes, but new findings have come to light. It is possible the other patients are experiencing similar problems. E06 reported myoclonic jerks, disrupted sleep patterns, lethargy, drowsiness, mood swings, nightmares, ataxia, vertigo. The implants need further refinement.
The parents are reporting satisfactory results. I'd say we've done our job.
That depends on what our job is.
Look, if you want to refine it, you're always welcome to submit a new proposal. But this is a done deal, Bel.
Sorry.
Let's focus on CN12.
#Giro was watching a video on his rigged A/V system when I returned to his hideout the next evening. A bunch of junk surrounded him among the blankets in his bed; he had some kind of cylinder in his nest hooked up to a retro-looking tablet.
"Why are you watching that?" I asked.
He shrugged. "The only discs around here are Follow the Beacon, but it gets lonely if I don't have background noise."
I looked around. "Where's Dexer?"
"Out scavenging."
"Is that the one about station safety?" I asked, squinting at the TV.
"Yeah, but I'm skeptical," he said. "They say you should always listen to Station Security, but that's what got me to the farms in the first place."
"That's a problem, all right," I agreed.
His nose twitched. "Is that meat loaf?"
"Leftovers," I said. "Our housekeeper's a great cook. Do you like stewed red courgettes?"
"I like anything that isn't ration paste or garbage," he said. He dove into the bowls I'd brought while I arranged the wound care equipment I'd gathered.
"Gosh, Dad," the kid on the screen said. "I guess we really messed up, playing in the evac pods like that. I'm sorry."
"It's something you'll have to learn, Lonny," the dad said. (They were always named Lonny, but they weren't always the same actor or character. It was confusing.) "The evacuation pods are there for everyone's safety. Why, just think, if a Technocrat asteroid struck our station …"
"The Inspector!" I realized.
"Who?" Giro said.
I pointed to the screen. "That guy. The dad. He played the Inspector."
Giro had peeled off his jumpsuit; he flopped down in front of me so I could get at his dressing. He eyed the man as he continued to lecture his kids on proper evac procedures. "Oh, yeah, that's Kolsey Podsnap. I had a couple classes from him."
"Here?"
"He's a big name in Follow the Beacon." He pointed above our heads at the arts college, where Beacon Studios was based.
That made even less sense. "How was he in a planetside blockbuster like The Golden Hammer, then?"
"Was he?" Giro said. "Haven't seen it. But he's in a lot of Beacon inserts."
"Beacon … what?"
He waved a hand. "You know, the extra scenes Beacon Studios adds to planetside movies to make them palatable to our station's stringent moral sensibilities."
His wound didn't show any of the signs of infection I'd looked up on Dad's tablet last night, so that was good. I very carefully finished the new dressing, dumped the old bandages in his makeshift bio pod, then sat down heavily next to his nest.
"Oh," I said, fighting my way out of the smoking crater his revelation had left. "Right."
I should have realized; it was obvious now. But I hadn't connected the thorough vetting the Department of Civic Hygiene gave all media for questionable content with how … boring the media on Bright Beacon was. I had thought "questionable content" was … well, I only had the haziest idea, but I figured it was hardcore sex and violence, images that could traumatize you into nightmares. None of the stuff they'd taken out of The Golden Hammer had been nightmarish. It had been cool.
"You can usually tell the Beacon inserts," Giro went on, pulling his jumpsuit up again. "They're studio sets, lower budget, and they do some weird editing to make everything fit. It's pretty obvious." He considered. "I think some planetside producers sued them for copyright violation, but they got around it … something about buying each individual copy they re-edit. I'm not sure. I wasn't really paying attention that day."
"So what else is new?" the cylinder in the nest said.
I jumped.
"Oh, yeah," Giro said. "This is Ronf."
"Hi," said Ronf.
I stared at Ronf. "How many robots do you have?"
"Just these two so far," Giro said. "The rest of Ronf is over there." He pointed at the skeletal four-legged body on the workbench. "It's hard work."
"Finding the processors?"
"No, that's easy. All you gotta do is get into the walls. There are AI processing nodes all over this station from the pre-war era. The basic scaffolding is there, but I did some extensive mods I've been wanting to try since I found the library books." He flicked an ear. "They removed those books. I think they'd forgotten to dump them in the tech purge."
"You've been doing this since before you … were sent away?"
"It's sort of why I was, you see. Kept getting me in trouble at school."
"Because tech is inherently bad?"
"And because I was building robots instead of writing essays."
"Oh. Yeah, that would be a problem."
"Seriously, though, nobody else was using it," he said. "I'm pretty resourceful with junk. Though there's a fab lab on the industrial ring I sneak into when I need a specific piece." He patted Ronf's head and gestured to Ronf's body. "Still, I think the junk gives them a down-home charm, don't you?"
"I wanted plasma cannons," Ronf said.
"You're not getting plasma cannons," Giro told zem.
"What about a can opener, then?"
"Plus, the junk makes for good camouflage for when they sneak around stealing stuff," I realized.
"Sure does."
He seemed so unconcerned with the thieving and the tech. "Sounds like you've got some real talent for problem-solving," I said carefully. "Have you ever thought of putting your abilities to use for good?"
"Who says I'm not?"
"Well, the Focals who decided you needed to reform on the farms, for one."
"Yeah, I question their judgment," he said.
"Okay, fair. But this seems like a rough way to live. You've got me giving you first aid, for crying out loud. And you've still got that implant from Dad's experiment, don't you? Wouldn't you like that removed?"
Now he looked genuinely confused. "What are you talking about? This thing is great."
I blinked. "It … it is?" Dad had notes on the experiment. I thought Giro was E06, who reported … "What about the side effects?"
"Oh, those are annoying," he admitted airily. "But most of the time I can actually concentrate on stuff without every little thing hijacking my attention all the time. I could never actually get around to building these guys before."
"Yeah, but you also spend whole days lying in bed watching vids," Ronf told him. "That's probably counterproductive."
"I didn't say it didn't need adjusting," Giro admitted.
I frowned. I had sort of gotten the idea that Ms. Palbert wanted Giro to keep his implant and he didn't. I hadn't considered that it might be more complicated than that.
"Are you just going to keep hiding here?" I asked.
"Well, that's the short-term idea," he said. "I'm trying to figure out how to get off of Bright Beacon. Maybe go planetside, get a job. Open a bistro."
"Ooh, can I be the maitre'd?" Ronf asked.
"Not with plasma cannons, you can't."
"But they'd be great for opening cans! Don't tell Dexer. Zey can be the dishwasher."
There seemed to be a lot of steps missing from that plan. Probably he knew that. "Where would you get passage?" I asked.
"I don't know. I'm still working on that part."
"I guess it's something," I admitted. "I'll think about how to help you."
"So far, the food is helping a lot," Giro said. "Bring more courgettes next time. Those were great."
#
#
I had never been to a slumber party before Jod had one for his circuit day, but the idea was kind of cool, so I was glad to get an invitation.
(Party invitations were another entry in the long list of things that didn't make sense. I'd given up on deciding who to invite to our circuit day parties—never slumber parties, since neither Dad nor Vilda would put up with one—and let Thoren handle it, since he had more friends, anyway. This year I actually did have some friends I would have liked to invite—Zarla, Giro, and even the bots—but that would be a logistical problem, and probably frowned upon.)
(Come to think of it, it was rare for koranos to invite paquos to their parties, regardless of the logistics.)
Jod had five of us plus his little sister up in his attic room. He had an A/V set up, much newer and fancier than the one Giro had pieced together, and that was a relief, because I didn't know what to do at parties. Party games were difficult. Sitting and watching a movie was a lot less effort.
"Got it from the library," he said proudly, holding up the tate. "Mint from planetside. The Bulging Brain!"
A couple of kids gasped. I laughed. "Oh, that one's great!"
Instantly all eyes turned toward me. "You've seen it?" Jod demanded.
"When?" Thoren asked, betrayed. "It wasn't in the cinema!"
A needle of panic stabbed me. "Oh, uh—I got a copy last week. While you were at practice." I shrugged apologetically at my brother. "I didn't think you'd like it." Which was true.
"I thought the library just put these out,"Jod complained. "There's a waitlist."
"Oh, um." My mind raced. I had to lie, but doing it was like having to set my own broken bone; it took bracing myself. "I, uh, maybe there was a clerical error."
"Well," Nielli said, "is it scary?"
"Yeah." I glanced at Jod's sister. "Ghena might want to leave."
"I can watch!" Ghena insisted.
Well, that was more than I could say at her age. The movie had shocked me last week, if I was being honest with myself. Only Zarla's commentary in the other window as we'd streamed it had gotten me through it. These people had no idea what they were in for.
But when the reveal came, I was the one who let out a yelp of surprise.
"What in the—what?" I cried, to general protests. "Is that a hat?"
"Well, obviously," Jod snorted.
"No, I said. "I mean … where's her brain?"
He frowned. "Under her hat?"
"That's my point," I said, indignant. "She … she's not supposed to be wearing a hat! Her brain is growing into weird prehensile neural tentacles. That's why the assistant is freaking out right now!"
"Don't be gross," Thoren said. But he looked uneasy.
"This is wrong." My heart had pounded the first time I had seen this movie, but it had been a surprisingly pleasurable sort of horror. This was … disorientation. The movie was recorded. How—how—could it be different? Had it been different? Was my memory wrong? That was possible. But this scene, with the assistant's protestations of tampering with nature and the scientist's proclamations of progress, made no sense this way.
"Yeah," I said. "The injection of the symbiont is mutating her brain. It's growing out of her skull."
(The tentacles had also made me curious. How would that work? Neural linking was certainly possible in nature; some aliens had developed them. But the exact mechanism here seemed … improbable. Maybe that's why the assistant was freaking out? Horror was weird.)
"You're full of it," Jod said. "Movies wouldn't do something like that. It's too disgusting."
It was. It was disgusting. But it was thrilling and disgusting. Had I made it up? Was I the disgusting one?
Was thinking of disgusting things bad?
Giro's explanation came back to me. Had Beacon Studios edited out the tentacles? The scientist's hat did have a familiar logo on it. Censorship.
It was almost funny. The rest of the movie was like that: hats, scarves, and other increasingly implausible accessories covering all the interesting bits. Some shots were left out entirely. Everyone else seemed suitably shocked by the tense moments, but for me they gradually took on a comical aspect. At the end, the mad scientist was supposed to stand up as a fully subsumed symbiont, who in her last moment of clarity blew herself up in a nuclear rocket rather than allow the symbiont to reach her planet. There had been significant dialogue between her and the assistant, a beautiful musical score underlying her regret and sacrifice. I remembered. I remembered the assistant's commentary on the hubris of sapients.
But here there was none of that. The assistant opened the rocket hatch, screamed, ran for the lifeboat, and then there was an explosion and some credits.
I didn't notice the awed silence around me as the credits rolled and I said, "Well, that sucked."
A number of eyes turned to me.
"Let me see the case,"I said.
Jod handed it to me. I rolled my eyes. "Beacon Studios strikes again."
"What?" Nielli asked.
It was nice to be the guy who knew things for a change. "Oh, you know," I said airily. "Beacon Studios edits the movies we get to make them palatable to our station's stringent moral sensibilities."
"They do?" Thoren demanded.
"Yeah. If you want to see some real art, you've got to get the pre-Beaconized vids. Like The Golden Hammer. Way better than the censored copy."
"Wait, you've seen multiple un-Beaconized things?" Thoren asked.
The feeling of having the upper hand evaporated as my inhibitions crowded in again. I couldn't tell everyone how I was pirating movies with Dad's tablet! But they already knew I had access to uncensored media. I flailed for an explanation.
"Yeah, you can get them if you know where to look," I said, trying for evasive.
"And you know!" Thoren said, excited. "You gotta show us!"
"I wanna see the gross version of this movie!" Jod agreed.
They all gazed at me hopefully.
My heart pounded. If I whipped out Dad's tablet now, I didn't know how it would stay a secret. Nielli would probably call me a hypocrite (which I kind of was, I supposed, but maybe I had changed my mind about tech?).
I couldn't lose my source of information. I couldn't lose Zarla.
Half an idea popped into my head, and I ran wih it.
"Yeah, there's a secret library of un-Beaconized movies that's available," I said. "I just happened across it once. But I don't know anything about where it comes from."
"Show us," Jod demanded.
"Not tonight," I said, mind racing frantically. "It's time-dependent."
"Fine," he pouted. "But I wanna see these movies."
"Okay," I said. "Fine. I'll show you. Just … give me a little while to find out the, um, hookup."
And I lay down in my sleeping bag, laying out plans and possibilities. It was all I could do to resist pulling out Dad's tablet right then and hitting up Zarla.
#
#
Next Chapter!"Why are you watching that?" I asked.
He shrugged. "The only discs around here are Follow the Beacon, but it gets lonely if I don't have background noise."
I looked around. "Where's Dexer?"
"Out scavenging."
"Is that the one about station safety?" I asked, squinting at the TV.
"Yeah, but I'm skeptical," he said. "They say you should always listen to Station Security, but that's what got me to the farms in the first place."
"That's a problem, all right," I agreed.
His nose twitched. "Is that meat loaf?"
"Leftovers," I said. "Our housekeeper's a great cook. Do you like stewed red courgettes?"
"I like anything that isn't ration paste or garbage," he said. He dove into the bowls I'd brought while I arranged the wound care equipment I'd gathered.
"Gosh, Dad," the kid on the screen said. "I guess we really messed up, playing in the evac pods like that. I'm sorry."
"It's something you'll have to learn, Lonny," the dad said. (They were always named Lonny, but they weren't always the same actor or character. It was confusing.) "The evacuation pods are there for everyone's safety. Why, just think, if a Technocrat asteroid struck our station …"
"The Inspector!" I realized.
"Who?" Giro said.
I pointed to the screen. "That guy. The dad. He played the Inspector."
Giro had peeled off his jumpsuit; he flopped down in front of me so I could get at his dressing. He eyed the man as he continued to lecture his kids on proper evac procedures. "Oh, yeah, that's Kolsey Podsnap. I had a couple classes from him."
"Here?"
"He's a big name in Follow the Beacon." He pointed above our heads at the arts college, where Beacon Studios was based.
That made even less sense. "How was he in a planetside blockbuster like The Golden Hammer, then?"
"Was he?" Giro said. "Haven't seen it. But he's in a lot of Beacon inserts."
"Beacon … what?"
He waved a hand. "You know, the extra scenes Beacon Studios adds to planetside movies to make them palatable to our station's stringent moral sensibilities."
His wound didn't show any of the signs of infection I'd looked up on Dad's tablet last night, so that was good. I very carefully finished the new dressing, dumped the old bandages in his makeshift bio pod, then sat down heavily next to his nest.
"Oh," I said, fighting my way out of the smoking crater his revelation had left. "Right."
I should have realized; it was obvious now. But I hadn't connected the thorough vetting the Department of Civic Hygiene gave all media for questionable content with how … boring the media on Bright Beacon was. I had thought "questionable content" was … well, I only had the haziest idea, but I figured it was hardcore sex and violence, images that could traumatize you into nightmares. None of the stuff they'd taken out of The Golden Hammer had been nightmarish. It had been cool.
"You can usually tell the Beacon inserts," Giro went on, pulling his jumpsuit up again. "They're studio sets, lower budget, and they do some weird editing to make everything fit. It's pretty obvious." He considered. "I think some planetside producers sued them for copyright violation, but they got around it … something about buying each individual copy they re-edit. I'm not sure. I wasn't really paying attention that day."
"So what else is new?" the cylinder in the nest said.
I jumped.
"Oh, yeah," Giro said. "This is Ronf."
"Hi," said Ronf.
I stared at Ronf. "How many robots do you have?"
"Just these two so far," Giro said. "The rest of Ronf is over there." He pointed at the skeletal four-legged body on the workbench. "It's hard work."
"Finding the processors?"
"No, that's easy. All you gotta do is get into the walls. There are AI processing nodes all over this station from the pre-war era. The basic scaffolding is there, but I did some extensive mods I've been wanting to try since I found the library books." He flicked an ear. "They removed those books. I think they'd forgotten to dump them in the tech purge."
"You've been doing this since before you … were sent away?"
"It's sort of why I was, you see. Kept getting me in trouble at school."
"Because tech is inherently bad?"
"And because I was building robots instead of writing essays."
"Oh. Yeah, that would be a problem."
"Seriously, though, nobody else was using it," he said. "I'm pretty resourceful with junk. Though there's a fab lab on the industrial ring I sneak into when I need a specific piece." He patted Ronf's head and gestured to Ronf's body. "Still, I think the junk gives them a down-home charm, don't you?"
"I wanted plasma cannons," Ronf said.
"You're not getting plasma cannons," Giro told zem.
"What about a can opener, then?"
"Plus, the junk makes for good camouflage for when they sneak around stealing stuff," I realized.
"Sure does."
He seemed so unconcerned with the thieving and the tech. "Sounds like you've got some real talent for problem-solving," I said carefully. "Have you ever thought of putting your abilities to use for good?"
"Who says I'm not?"
"Well, the Focals who decided you needed to reform on the farms, for one."
"Yeah, I question their judgment," he said.
"Okay, fair. But this seems like a rough way to live. You've got me giving you first aid, for crying out loud. And you've still got that implant from Dad's experiment, don't you? Wouldn't you like that removed?"
Now he looked genuinely confused. "What are you talking about? This thing is great."
I blinked. "It … it is?" Dad had notes on the experiment. I thought Giro was E06, who reported … "What about the side effects?"
"Oh, those are annoying," he admitted airily. "But most of the time I can actually concentrate on stuff without every little thing hijacking my attention all the time. I could never actually get around to building these guys before."
"Yeah, but you also spend whole days lying in bed watching vids," Ronf told him. "That's probably counterproductive."
"I didn't say it didn't need adjusting," Giro admitted.
I frowned. I had sort of gotten the idea that Ms. Palbert wanted Giro to keep his implant and he didn't. I hadn't considered that it might be more complicated than that.
"Are you just going to keep hiding here?" I asked.
"Well, that's the short-term idea," he said. "I'm trying to figure out how to get off of Bright Beacon. Maybe go planetside, get a job. Open a bistro."
"Ooh, can I be the maitre'd?" Ronf asked.
"Not with plasma cannons, you can't."
"But they'd be great for opening cans! Don't tell Dexer. Zey can be the dishwasher."
There seemed to be a lot of steps missing from that plan. Probably he knew that. "Where would you get passage?" I asked.
"I don't know. I'm still working on that part."
"I guess it's something," I admitted. "I'll think about how to help you."
"So far, the food is helping a lot," Giro said. "Bring more courgettes next time. Those were great."
#
EXP: PQ8?96
DATE 01.08.90
Adjustments to implants have led to positive development in affects of E3, E4, E6, and E10. Subjects also report improved mood.
PLAN: Continue to monitor.
#
I had never been to a slumber party before Jod had one for his circuit day, but the idea was kind of cool, so I was glad to get an invitation.
(Party invitations were another entry in the long list of things that didn't make sense. I'd given up on deciding who to invite to our circuit day parties—never slumber parties, since neither Dad nor Vilda would put up with one—and let Thoren handle it, since he had more friends, anyway. This year I actually did have some friends I would have liked to invite—Zarla, Giro, and even the bots—but that would be a logistical problem, and probably frowned upon.)
(Come to think of it, it was rare for koranos to invite paquos to their parties, regardless of the logistics.)
Jod had five of us plus his little sister up in his attic room. He had an A/V set up, much newer and fancier than the one Giro had pieced together, and that was a relief, because I didn't know what to do at parties. Party games were difficult. Sitting and watching a movie was a lot less effort.
"Got it from the library," he said proudly, holding up the tate. "Mint from planetside. The Bulging Brain!"
A couple of kids gasped. I laughed. "Oh, that one's great!"
Instantly all eyes turned toward me. "You've seen it?" Jod demanded.
"When?" Thoren asked, betrayed. "It wasn't in the cinema!"
A needle of panic stabbed me. "Oh, uh—I got a copy last week. While you were at practice." I shrugged apologetically at my brother. "I didn't think you'd like it." Which was true.
"I thought the library just put these out,"Jod complained. "There's a waitlist."
"Oh, um." My mind raced. I had to lie, but doing it was like having to set my own broken bone; it took bracing myself. "I, uh, maybe there was a clerical error."
"Well," Nielli said, "is it scary?"
"Yeah." I glanced at Jod's sister. "Ghena might want to leave."
"I can watch!" Ghena insisted.
Well, that was more than I could say at her age. The movie had shocked me last week, if I was being honest with myself. Only Zarla's commentary in the other window as we'd streamed it had gotten me through it. These people had no idea what they were in for.
But when the reveal came, I was the one who let out a yelp of surprise.
"What in the—what?" I cried, to general protests. "Is that a hat?"
"Well, obviously," Jod snorted.
"No, I said. "I mean … where's her brain?"
He frowned. "Under her hat?"
"That's my point," I said, indignant. "She … she's not supposed to be wearing a hat! Her brain is growing into weird prehensile neural tentacles. That's why the assistant is freaking out right now!"
"Don't be gross," Thoren said. But he looked uneasy.
"This is wrong." My heart had pounded the first time I had seen this movie, but it had been a surprisingly pleasurable sort of horror. This was … disorientation. The movie was recorded. How—how—could it be different? Had it been different? Was my memory wrong? That was possible. But this scene, with the assistant's protestations of tampering with nature and the scientist's proclamations of progress, made no sense this way.
"Yeah," I said. "The injection of the symbiont is mutating her brain. It's growing out of her skull."
(The tentacles had also made me curious. How would that work? Neural linking was certainly possible in nature; some aliens had developed them. But the exact mechanism here seemed … improbable. Maybe that's why the assistant was freaking out? Horror was weird.)
"You're full of it," Jod said. "Movies wouldn't do something like that. It's too disgusting."
It was. It was disgusting. But it was thrilling and disgusting. Had I made it up? Was I the disgusting one?
Was thinking of disgusting things bad?
Giro's explanation came back to me. Had Beacon Studios edited out the tentacles? The scientist's hat did have a familiar logo on it. Censorship.
It was almost funny. The rest of the movie was like that: hats, scarves, and other increasingly implausible accessories covering all the interesting bits. Some shots were left out entirely. Everyone else seemed suitably shocked by the tense moments, but for me they gradually took on a comical aspect. At the end, the mad scientist was supposed to stand up as a fully subsumed symbiont, who in her last moment of clarity blew herself up in a nuclear rocket rather than allow the symbiont to reach her planet. There had been significant dialogue between her and the assistant, a beautiful musical score underlying her regret and sacrifice. I remembered. I remembered the assistant's commentary on the hubris of sapients.
But here there was none of that. The assistant opened the rocket hatch, screamed, ran for the lifeboat, and then there was an explosion and some credits.
I didn't notice the awed silence around me as the credits rolled and I said, "Well, that sucked."
A number of eyes turned to me.
"Let me see the case,"I said.
Jod handed it to me. I rolled my eyes. "Beacon Studios strikes again."
"What?" Nielli asked.
It was nice to be the guy who knew things for a change. "Oh, you know," I said airily. "Beacon Studios edits the movies we get to make them palatable to our station's stringent moral sensibilities."
"They do?" Thoren demanded.
"Yeah. If you want to see some real art, you've got to get the pre-Beaconized vids. Like The Golden Hammer. Way better than the censored copy."
"Wait, you've seen multiple un-Beaconized things?" Thoren asked.
The feeling of having the upper hand evaporated as my inhibitions crowded in again. I couldn't tell everyone how I was pirating movies with Dad's tablet! But they already knew I had access to uncensored media. I flailed for an explanation.
"Yeah, you can get them if you know where to look," I said, trying for evasive.
"And you know!" Thoren said, excited. "You gotta show us!"
"I wanna see the gross version of this movie!" Jod agreed.
They all gazed at me hopefully.
My heart pounded. If I whipped out Dad's tablet now, I didn't know how it would stay a secret. Nielli would probably call me a hypocrite (which I kind of was, I supposed, but maybe I had changed my mind about tech?).
I couldn't lose my source of information. I couldn't lose Zarla.
Half an idea popped into my head, and I ran wih it.
"Yeah, there's a secret library of un-Beaconized movies that's available," I said. "I just happened across it once. But I don't know anything about where it comes from."
"Show us," Jod demanded.
"Not tonight," I said, mind racing frantically. "It's time-dependent."
"Fine," he pouted. "But I wanna see these movies."
"Okay," I said. "Fine. I'll show you. Just … give me a little while to find out the, um, hookup."
And I lay down in my sleeping bag, laying out plans and possibilities. It was all I could do to resist pulling out Dad's tablet right then and hitting up Zarla.
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ZARLA, I NEED YOUR HELP
o krag
u ok
Yeah, I'm fine. I just need to know if the sites we're using to stream have the movies available to put on discs?
o wat u want to dwonload the movies?
Yeah. I told my brother I'd show him the director's cut of The Golden Hammer
haha ur in toruble dude
Please?
yah yah ok ill find a site
congalutations ur a pirate!
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