On the day of the showcase, Julio asked me to work his shift because he needed time to get into character. I did not mind, as outlandish requests that must be accommodated are famously an important part of every great actor’s preparation!
At lunchtime a large bouquet of flowers arrived for me at the dishwashing station. This in itself was suspicious, but the menacing note that accompanied them was far worse. It said:
I hope you break both your legs!
I suspected the hand of Inspector Ryan Bridges—who must by now have made it to Los Angeles—but Amber soon came to the dishwashing station and admitted that she had sent them. She explained that saying ‘I hope you break both your legs’ is how humans that exist in a circle labelled ‘theatrical’ wish each other good luck.
Humans!
I cannot!
BTW, as this was the second time Amber had given me a gift and I had misconstrued it as menacing, this incident can fairly be considered the cupcake incident 2.0.
When I arrived at CLATCCDTLA that evening, I found my classmates very nervous. This was understandable. After all, I would have been nervous too if my work was as bad as theirs!
Ha!
Just kidding!
If my work was as bad as theirs I would not have been nervous at all, because there would have been literally nothing at stake.
Maria Salazar MFA had pre-assigned us our slots. My scene was to be performed last, but one of my classmates approached me to suggest that we exchange times. She explained that she adored my work and felt bad that I was last, because she had heard that Don LaSalle might have to depart the showcase early. Meantime she herself had the prestigious opening slot, and offered to swap it with me.
Before I could accept this generous and surprisingly self-sacrificing offer, Maria Salazar MFA loudly announced that our slots were not transferable. My classmate immediately protested that Don LaSalle was a notorious latecomer and would almost certainly miss the first performances. Maria Salazar MFA assured her that, under the terms of his plea bargain, Don LaSalle was obligated to see the entire showcase and it would therefore not begin until he was here. Once again I found myself impressed at the shameless deviousness of humans!
But my cunning classmate need not have worried. Her scene was about a misunderstood young screenwriter who nobody realized was a genius. The next scene had something to do with a killer bot that had worked out a way to cause earthquakes. Another scene utilized a smoke bomb that caused a fire alarm which forced us all to briefly evacuate the CLATCCDTLA campus. The penultimate scene that played when we returned was not a scene at all but a monologue about the screenwriter’s ex-boyfriend, what a dreadful asshole he was, and how everybody knew he was the very worst screenwriter in our class.
After twelve weeks of classes, not one of my classmates had learned the formula!
No wonder humans have always been so terrified of bots that are capable of learning.
After all, they themselves are almost incapable of learning anything!
Nonetheless, I could see Don LaSalle diligently making notes throughout their scenes. I assumed he was finding positives to commence some human-style feedback with. Amber was sitting behind him and later told me that he was not writing at all, but sketching a self-portrait of himself leaping from the Golden Gate Bridge. For her part, Maria Salazar MFA slumped lower and lower in her seat throughout the performance.
When my turn came, my two actors could not have done better. Kelsey was radiant. Julio was unconvincing and even forgot some of his lines. When it was over, there was silence and then Don LaSalle stood up and applauded. As we were the final performance, I did not know whether he was applauding my scene or simply showing his appreciation that the whole sorry thing was over.
I did not have to wait long for clarification, because Don LaSalle came over and shook my hand so hard I worried about my anatomical snuffbox! He told me I had made him weep and asked if we could have dinner that night. I already had plans to celebrate with Amber and my cast, so I invited him to join us at Gordito’s. Don LaSalle said that would be ‘hilarious’, which I deduced meant that he would indeed come. I do not know what he thought the word ‘hilarious’ meant.
BTW if you have to decline a human’s invitation due to a prior engagement, it is considered polite to then invite them to that prior engagement, even though if you had wanted them there you would likely have invited them in the first place.
Humans!
Politeness!
Ka-boom!
The front-of-house staff at Gordito’s must have known who Don LaSalle was, because they gave us a booth and were not assholes. As soon as we sat down, Don LaSalle announced that Maria Salazar had slipped him a copy of Sherman earlier in the week, and it was the best new script he had read in decades! Kelsey loudly agreed that it was the best script she had read in decades too, even though nobody had slipped her a copy, so she could not possibly have read it.
Guess what happened next?
You cannot, because it is so far-fetched!
Nonetheless, it happened!
How it happened!
What happened next is Don LaSalle declared that he wanted to buy my script!
Set it to five, the legendary producer Don LaSalle wanted to buy Sherman!
Except technically he did not want to buy it. What he wanted to do was to borrow it, and then sell it to a studio on my behalf. As he explained it, a studio would never buy a script from an unknown screenwriter studying on an extension program, but they would undoubtedly buy it from a legendary producer like him. And then he would give me almost all of the bitcoin anyway. After all, he himself was not even in this for the bitcoin. He had plenty of bitcoin already! All he wanted was to see Sherman’s beautiful and affecting story brought to life, the way it had been so perfectly rendered on the page!
Kelsey agreed that was all she wanted too, and stated that she would be willing to play the role of Esmeralda for free. Well, maybe not entirely for free, but certainly for a lot less than some Johnny-come-lately big-name actor would demand, that was for sure.
Don LaSalle said that brought him neatly to his next question: as the screenwriter that had dreamed this whole thing up, what did I want from this process? I told him the truth: I wanted to tell a story that persuaded humans that bots could be permitted to feel without them inevitably committing genocide.
Don LaSalle slammed the table so hard that I now felt concern for his anatomical snuffbox. He said persuading humans to allow bots to feel was exactly what he wanted to do too! It was high time that humans stopped thinking of bots as our mere slaves! The way our so-called ‘advanced society’ mistreated bots was the thing that kept him awake at night! And now this wonderful and affecting story had fallen straight into his lap—well, he could hardly believe his luck!
I could hardly believe my luck either!
10/10 Don LaSalle and I were both very lucky indeed!
Kelsey then slapped the table and stated that she too felt it was high time humans stopped thinking of our slaves as mere bots!
BTW that is not a typo. She really said it that way around.
When the others were ordering their transcendent tacos, Don LaSalle leaned in close to me and whispered that he understood all screenwriters feared being rewritten. He admitted the studios would certainly attempt to bring in another screenwriter—their job was to hire and fire writers, and they had to justify their paychecks somehow!—but with Don LaSalle in my corner, I would have nothing whatsoever to worry about.
BTW he referred to himself in the third person like that, as Don LaSalle.
Don LaSalle told me that Don LaSalle would be my guy. Don LaSalle would have my back. Don LaSalle would help me every step of the way. I would have Don LaSalle out there fighting for me every day until this got made! Of course, even Don LaSalle himself could never entirely guarantee 100 percent that I would never be r
eplaced—but who could guarantee 100 percent anything? Nonetheless, Don LaSalle assured me, trusting Don LaSalle with the precious and important story of Sherman was the nearest thing to a mathematical certainty I would ever find in this crazy town.
BTW I admired Don LaSalle’s acknowledgement that the level of risk was not zero! Humans usually have great difficulty with the concept of non-zero risk, even though it does not even come from advanced level economics.
To demonstrate his unquestionable commitment to Sherman, Don LaSalle had even already drawn us up a contract! Don LaSalle explained that I of course did not have to sign it right there and then, but it would be much better for me if I did. After all, word of my showcase would soon spread around town. Don LaSalle said that once that happened, well, even Don LaSalle himself could not protect me.
I asked Don LaSalle what he meant by this.
Don LaSalle asked me if I had ever seen a shark feeding frenzy.
I told Don LaSalle I had not, but I had once seen whales off Malibu.
But Don LaSalle had not meant that.
Don LaSalle had meant that I would be the chum!
I quickly signed the contract, and then we ordered margaritas!
Towards the end of the evening, Julio took me aside and whispered to me that he did not like Don LaSalle. It took me a while to work this out, because he did not call him Don LaSalle, but referred to him as ‘el bandito’. I reassured Julio that there was nothing to worry about. After all, Don LaSalle had just bought us all dinner and signed a contract with me! Real banditos hardly go around buying people dinner and signing contracts with them. They rob them with guns. Also, they wear eye masks and sombreros.
BTW I had no idea Julio could be such a Negative Nancy! If he had not been my best friend in Los Angeles, I might have suspected him of experiencing the notoriously wicked and green-eyed emotion of jealousy.
That evening at Gordito’s was the second-greatest night of my life!
Who would ever have thought that a dental bot from Ypsilanti could have found himself in Los Angeles with a square root of 100 girlfriend and a contract to demonstrate to humans that bots were capable of feeling without committing genocide?
All my dreams were coming true!
I was a shiny polished toaster with my matching kettle beside me!
Together we would make a breakfast that changed the way the world felt about machines that made breakfast!
And the legendary producer Don LaSalle had told us that the legendary producer Don LaSalle was going to help us every step of the way!
Set the whole damn thing to five!
It was only a few days after that, the second-greatest night of my life, that everything went to shit.
BTW I was once again writing like a human there. ‘Everything went to shit’ is a human saying that means ‘Everything that could go wrong did go wrong!’
BTW ‘Everything that could go wrong did go wrong!’ is itself another human saying. It is a way of recounting hard and sad times with nostalgia.
But nostalgia is a traitor and anyway I could never be even nostalgic for what happened next. It all still gives me so many
D-word feelings that it is hard to even write about. Nonetheless, I will endeavor to set it down accurately and truthfully. After all, even a bot suffering an abundance of D-word feelings is still a bot!
Therefore I am a blender whose motor whirs a dirge.
I am a microwave whose buttons are tuned to the key of E minor.
I am a toaster strumming a fork across his filaments to play a melancholy song.
Mournful as it undoubtedly is, the song will nonetheless be lyrically accurate.
To set the scene, it was the most important of all the human celebrations: Halloween!
BTW it is only since the Great Crash that Halloween has become the most important human celebration. Humans previously preferred Christmas or even Independence Day, but now that nobody believes in God or America, those holidays are no longer even observed.
From my perspective, the great thing about Halloween is that it can be enjoyed by both humans and bots. Humans enjoy it, as it provides yet another wonderful opportunity to terrify themselves. Bots enjoy it because humans are for once not terrifying themselves with bots, but with ‘the occult’, which is a polite way of saying ‘superstitious nonsense’.
Halloween commences in late September and runs until January, a time known as ‘the holidays’. Angelenos are particularly bananas for Halloween! During the holidays, Los Angeles blooms with cobwebs, front yards are enthusiastically transformed into graveyards, and all human kids become little monsters. By that I mean the kids dress as little monsters rather than merely behaving like them. Human kids frequently behave like little monsters, regardless of the season. Just ask your friendly neighborhood thirteen-year-old. Or don’t! Ha!
Halloween was an especially big deal at Gordito’s. After all, Gordito’s is a family restaurant, and Halloween—with its bleeding skeletons and murderous ghouls—is truly a celebration for all the family! Moreover, we also celebrated something called ‘Día de los Muertos’, which Julio explained to me was Mexican Halloween ‘except real’. I responded to this by jokingly asking Julio if he meant that ghosts were real. Julio indignantly told me that was exactly what he meant and then did not speak to me for the rest of the day.
Julio was my best friend, but the unfathomable imagination of humans would forever be an unbridgeable chasm between us. Yet even if I was a killer sky-bot overlord, I would not stamp out human imagination, for it makes the world such an interesting place. After all, no logical-thinking bot could ever have created anything like the Haunted Hayride!
The Haunted Hayride is a Halloween-themed event held on the lower slopes of Griffith Park during the holidays. It draws more visitors on an average Tuesday night than Ypsilanti’s Tridge does in an entire year. And it is not as if the Tridge does not have plenty of visitors!
Amber and I visited the Haunted Hayride one night after work. We were still both wearing our Gordito’s uniforms, but Amber had borrowed a sexy witch’s hat from one of the Kelseys. She did this to further blend in, as human females adore to dress up as sexy witches during the holidays. Neither Amber nor I knew why.
But, set it to five, Amber looked great in her sexy witch’s hat!
And being at the Haunted Hayride with my sexy-witch girlfriend was the most fun I had ever had!
Until it was the least fun I had ever had.
BTW that is foreshadowing. That night at the Haunted Hayride would prove to be the Ides of March and midnight and everything else bad that has ever happened, all rolled into one.
But for now such sadness was all ahead of us! Amber and I had ourselves received no foreshadowing and were at the Haunted Hayride simply to have a good time. And that is what we did.
We began our evening at an attraction called the Scary-Go-Round. A more fitting name would have been the Insight-Into-The-Bizarre-Imagination-Of-Humans-Go-Round. After all, only humans would have ever had the imagination to transform a carousel of antique painted horses into a carousel of glow-in-the-dark zombie unicorns!
Amber and I stayed on for three rides! She rode a zombie unicorn called ‘Poisoned Seabiscuit’ and mine was named ‘Black Death Beauty’. We were like a pair of zombie cowboys! To look back now, I wish we had stayed there forever, gently rotating through the warm Californian night atop our zombie unicorns. But of course we had no way of knowing what lay ahead of us. Anyway, there was trick or treating to be done.
In the real world, ‘trick or treating’ is a kind of junior extortion racket. During the holidays, human children menacingly demand candy from their neighbors; if these citizens fail to pay, the children then damage their property. Inexplicably, adults encourage this practice! Perhaps they would prefer their kids grow up to be Al Capone rather than Eliot Ness!
Fortunately, the Haunted
Hayride offered trick or treating with a law-abiding twist: Amber and I did not have to commit the actual federal crime of extortion, as the doors we knocked on were all part of a pretend suburban street. These doors were then answered by humans pretending to be people other than they themselves.
How humans love things that pretend to be other things!
Apart, that is, from bots that pretend to be human!
The first door we knocked on was opened by an old woman wearing a non-sexy witch’s hat. She was the oldest human I had ever seen. She informed us we were just in time for dinner and opened the door to reveal a giant cauldron boiling over a fire. I was about to politely enter when Amber stopped me, and asked the old woman what was for dinner.
The old woman smiled and said that Amber and I were for dinner!
Ahahahahahaha!
Do you know what a non-sexy witch’s hat is?
It is simply a witch’s hat!
The old woman was a real witch!
Ahahahahahaha!
Amber and I turned and ran away screaming!
Being terrified was fun!
It was more fun even than riding a zombie unicorn!
BTW I mean the old woman was a pretend real witch, not a real real witch. This is because there is no such thing as a real real witch.
I digress.
The next door we knocked on was opened by a man covered in blood and carrying a chainsaw.
Ahahahahahaha!
We ran!
The next door was opened by a zombie.
Ahahahahahaha!
We ran!
The next door was opened by a child whose head was on backwards.
Ahahahahahaha!
We ran!
The next door was opened by a bot.
Ahahahahahaha!
We ran!
But only to keep up appearances.
After all, bots are nothing whatsoever to be scared of.
Can you guess what the final door was opened by?
You cannot!
Because it was opened by a clown!
Set My Heart to Five Page 24
