Inside the library, a young woman seated at a long wooden table read in an otherwise empty room, low stacks of leather-bound books the objects of her scrutiny. Marta noticed that even though the woman wore an improbable white lab coat, she handled the antique volumes with bare hands, turning the pages without care as though slouched in a salon and impatiently flipping through a ratty copy of People as the technician dabbed at unsightly roots with viscous dye. For the graduate student—a beautiful, flat-ironed blonde—production had hired a strikingly athletic actress recently spotted on campus and watched by a steadily dwindling audience on a short-lived TV series targeting the teen demographic. There, as Cyd—a sexy but curly blonde—she’d played a reluctant Tennessee cheerleader from the wrong side of the tracks.
Running an index finger along a page, the student reacted with mounting excitement and jotted down notes. She slammed one volume shut, and grabbed it, a pair of stuffed accordian folders, and a spiral notebook, and began a purposeful arc toward the study hall’s exit.
A nondescript librarian wearing a cardigan the exact shade of porridge raised a hand, glaring over low-slung reading glasses to explain that rare books must never leave the building. “Rules are rules, young lady.” Suspension of disbelief required, Marta thought. Perhaps a century of warfare had retarded the digitization of books and snuffed out the cycling of fashion. The man’s professional dedication at an hour of global extinction, however, baffled her.
“It’s a matter of life and death, for all of humanity.” The student’s whisper grew hoarse. “Please,” she said, leaning toward the clerk while removing her glasses, the unencumbered eye contact promissory. “Just this once, alright?” Marta smiled as the nameless functionary’s posture stiffened. What bureaucrat could resist a meal of life-and-death urgency served on a platter of raw carnality?
With an editing cut, the student ran down a lengthy dark-paneled hallway, high heeled boots echoing. She approached and knocked on a heavy door decorated with a carved wooden frieze. The opening door revealed a professor’s office furnished with shelves bowed by innumerable volumes. A lean elderly man with sunken cheeks sat behind a colossal oak desk.
All that’s missing is the Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare, Marta thought, our holiest relic. Her eyes settled on the scholar’s herringbone jacket and club tie, the delicate floral pattern tea cup and saucer amongst the clutter of books, and the terminal antiquarian air of the office.
“Professor Highsmith, I need you to contact the military command centre,” the student said.
“Sit, my dear child,” the man said with a magisterial English accent that evoked afternoon Darjeeling, crustless cucumber sandwiches, and triumphant canal rowers. “Please take a deep breath and then explain yourself. This is certainly no time for hysterics. May I pour you tea?” He polished his glasses, as though wearied by student self-importance and impatient to return to studying Samson Agonistes, a daft tweedy Nero fiddling as Rome burns.
“It’s all here, plain as day.”
“Yes?”
“It’s one of the journals of Lady Harriet Swinburne.” The Californian vowels of the accent were pronounced, Marta noticed, evidently a foreshadowing: New World ingenuity would soon make a hash of the professor’s British backwards-glancing unworldliness, the impotent fuddy-duddy snobbery. Hitler woulda kicked your asses if we hadn’t stepped in the implication of her every word.
“Just listen to this, okay?”
“Of course. Please do go on.”
The student began to read:
“‘May 22, 1825. Within the last fortnight, a dark and dreadful cloud has settled over the land. There are whispers of livestock torn asunder. Lizzie, unrepentant gossiping maid that she has become, reports that two entire families in a nearby settlement have vanished overnight. From dawn ’til dusk mothers arrive with infants, both suffering from a malady I do not recognize and for which I can offer no curative. . . .’
“‘May 24, 1825. The troubles grow worse. . . .’” At the professor’s throat clearing, she stopped.
“It is base conjecture, no more. The evidence is circumstantial at best. Someone with my reputation would become a laughingstock if presenting this fantasy of yours as fact.”
“There’s more.”
“Of that I am certain, my dear. Your imagination rivals that of Louis Carroll and C.S. Lewis combined.” The professor’s eyes twinkled.
“Perhaps you’re right, Professor. I’ve been working so hard on my thesis, it must be getting to me.”
“Don’t give the matter a second thought, young lady. Indeed, I’ve already forgotten the whole unseemly episode. Good day.”
That’s got to be a set, Marta thought, no one has an office that palatial.
Standing at the steps in front of the library, the student said, “Asshole,” and withdrew a clamshell phone from a purse fold. “Military Command, please. It’s urgent.” The creation of future telecom technology was another item not included in Desert Assault’s budget, Marta surmised.
“That’ll get dubbed with ‘ass’ or something when the network broadcasts it,” Chaz whispered. “Psy/Fi’s family entertainment and doesn’t use bleeps.”
“She wasn’t carrying a purse when she left the library,” Marta whispered in reply.
“Yeah, continuity’s a bitch. But no biggie, it’s not like any guy will notice that kind of thing.”
2.
Yellow words appeared, explaining the change of scene to stock footage of a submarine descending into dark choppy water: NATO MILITARY COMMAND VESSEL ANACONDA, NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN. 1130 HOURS.
A second later Desert Assault dissolved to an oval table—cluttered with papers, maps, and coffee mugs—bolted to the metal floor of a cramped room. Not a touch screen could be seen. Marta guessed that the rust-specked walls and World War Two equipment of the vintage submarine’s cabin had been chosen as reminders about the losing side of the war.
At the head of the table, Cambridge’s intrepid graduate student, dressed in a snug black nylon paratrooper’s jumpsuit, paced as she lectured; she’d gathered the abundant locks into a no-nonsense ponytail.
“No, gentlemen, the evidence is not, as General McBride says, ‘a pipe dream.’” The aggrieved student swept off her glasses. “An exceptional gift has fallen onto our laps. In fact, it’s the only real opportunity we’ve been given in nearly a century of warfare to exterminate the Kreplon force.” The camera zoomed back. Arms crossed, she stood in front of a whiteboard filled with the symbols and numbers of an ersatz mathematical equation.
Four men in military uniforms sat opposite, their collective mien adversarial. They began talking at once; the General, gesturing angrily, muttered “wild goose chase” and “preposterous.”
“Gentlemen, please. Let me walk you through this one more time from the start. It’s a matter of life and death.” The student slammed a book on the table.
“Simmer down, missy,” the General said. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch.” The other men laughed.
“I’ll outline it simply. ‘May 22, 1825. A scouting expedition is planned for before the sun sets. Perhaps then we shall uncover the origin of the maladies.’
“Next. ‘May 23, 1825. Words fail me. Following many minutes of vexatious conversation, the Doctor and I have come to share a momentous conclusion. A great machine, a leviathan of its kind and blacker than the pits of Hell, has plummeted from the stars. Cold to the touch and as impenetrable as Mongol fortresses, we cannot fathom its utility. It has caused grave misgivings. . . .’ Okay, you can see where this is heading.”
“Yeah, yeah, we get it,” a younger man seated next to General McBride said. “Some old broad thinks she found something in the desert back in the day.”
“The next entry, a few days later—”
“Right,” the young man continued, “so some whack job blue blood that probably breathed in
too much lead paint in her nursery loses it after years of solitary confinement in the desert eating goat stew. And you expect us to deploy troops?”
“Our resources are already stretched to the limit, young woman.” With a sweeping motion the General surveyed a map. “We can’t go off on a wild goose chase without better evidence.”
“And how are your other strategies working out, gentlemen? So, let’s take this from the top. . . .”
As the student began to read, the scene blurred; a sepia-toned image came into focus, a close up of a hand dipping a quill into a glass inkwell.
“That’ll be smoother too,” Chaz whispered.
Marta watched as Lady Swinburne, dressed in a simple white robe, wrote “May 22, 1825” in a journal with the quill. Oil lamps cast delicate light over her bed chamber. Without the turban, ceremonial sword, and horse, Lady Swinburne possessed surprising gravitas. At the knock on the door she ceased writing.
“Enter.”
“Will you require any further service before I retire, Lady Swinburne?” Lizzie asked.
“Your service has been adequate.”
“It is beautiful, milady.” Lizzie stood at the desk and stroked the cover of a silver jewelry box.
“Your fascination with trifles is cause for concern, Lizzie.” Evidently weary, Lady Swinburne did not look up from the journal. “Leave me. My writing . . .”
Lizzie cast a hateful stare at the inattentive mistress and left without a word. Impressive, Marta thought, Luna’s bad boyfriend turned out to be good news. For a minor character uttering largely rote lines, Lizzie’s black mood and clipped sentences commanded positive attention.
3.
Reaching into the pocket of her zipper-front sweater Marta pressed the button beneath the cellphone’s impassive glass surface. She’d been resisting the temptation for what seemed like days. 9:02. Eighty nine minutes had passed by, during which she’d fidgeted through logic holes, flat-lining exposition, and risible dialogue jumping between 1825, 2009, and 2091; and all the while she’d strived to project shiny finishings on roughly edited scenes and half-complete imagery courtesy of keyboard technicians. Granted, the crudity of the rough draft instructed her about post-production; and the un-special effects of this early version of Desert Assault provided a fresh appreciation for the art of computer rendering.
Even factoring in the unrefined facets, Marta’s silent review of the scenes had arrived at the inevitable conclusion that Alien Advance: Desert Assault achieved workmanlike heights at best; and when the director reached for epic—so far, she had noticed flagrant thefts from The Lord of the Rings and Saving Private Ryan—he attained merely passable. Dregs, she thought, ridiculous, immune to parody. The characters fared slightly better. The era-spanning scribbling women cum action heroes kept her attentive, although befitting the trope the graduate student’s role slowly degraded to cliché: moments of weepy sideline farewells began soon after she met a handsome Air Force pilot, a square-jawed lone wolf with a Clint Eastwood squint and black, side-parted hair who said, “Lady, I play by my own rules” to the student’s heartfelt entreaties, and, “General, I play by my own rules” when a blinkered, regulations-quoting superior expected his subordinate to “do this by the book.”
Desert Assault sputtered out with ostensible human victories in 1825 and 2091. Marta knew that a half century ago a drive-in feature of this sort would have left viewers with winking tantalization: “The End” and a question mark slowly rotating. For the Psy/Fi network, though, the ambiguity presaged slots for a sequel. Marta guessed that if the ratings, advertisers, or critics reacted warmly enough, the writers could find a way to insert the Kreplon matriarch laying a separate cache of eggs in a Middle Eastern cave never discovered by Lady Swinburne; naturally, those reptilian hatchlings would lead to another terrorizing Kreplon force: and voila, Alien Advance 2: Another Desert Assault, pouring from television screens in 2014.
Detritus, then. Still, when placing HAP and Alien Advance set on the Scale of Cultural Worth, Marta foresaw them achieving a perfect balance, consumed and forgotten shortly thereafter, and—perhaps—exhumed as a future footnote in a survey article by a Cultural Studies graduate student seeking access to the ivory tower.
Disappointed by the absence of credits, Marta half-listened as Chaz explained the changes.
“And it’ll be smoother when they finish it, way better in the CGI department at least.” The light came on in the room. “They’re doing a Lost kinda set up in different time periods.”
“Pardon me?”
“At some point someone—at the network maybe, but I don’t know for sure—thought there was enough material for a ‘television event’”—the rolled-eyes tone unmistakeable—“you know, what used to be called a mini-series. As opposed to a television non-event, I guess.” Chaz followed the film school custodian’s progress in stacking chairs. “Wow, they’re efficient here. Anyway, then some genius—in marketing maybe, again I don’t know how that works, maybe it started with a focus group or something—decided that since they couldn’t really stretch out the OK Valley scenes, they could have parallel stories in different time periods instead and shoot them in studio and near the city. Kinda like Lost or the Terminator movies.”
The audience milled around, watchful of the staff’s group dispersal agenda and awaiting directions from higher ups.
Moving whispering distance from Marta’s ear, Chaz said, “Hey, by the way, um, Miss Sadie—”
Faintly audible, Marta’s sudden breath intake disguised the complexity of its components: resignation, intimacy, regret, vulnerability, affection. For better or worse, the price one pays for honesty is standing at the confidant’s mercy, she’d learned. There it materialized, a truism worthy of her mother.
“There’s no way I’m going to drive back to Bellevue tonight,” eyebrows raising and lowering suggestively, “so can I stay at the Pits?”—Undre Arms generated nicknames easily—“I’ll be out of there at the crack of dawn.”
After swallowing the urge to point out the difference between can and may—Chaz having stated during their only real quarrel that in his estimation pedants deserved their destiny of the ninth circle of hell, right next to pederasts—Marta said, “I don’t see why not.” She’d welcome the distraction. Gestation’s unfolding had grown obstinate, sincere creative writing a greater task than she’d imagined. A screenplay about abject femininity came freighted with a peculiar set of challenges; and despite attentive viewings of Bong Joon-ho, splicing that theme into horror genre tropes had so far proven a Herculean obstacle.
Seeing Lora break away from Jake and some other crew she didn’t recognize, Marta waved.
“So, what did you think?”
“I’m not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it.”
“I told you’d there’d been some changes when I emailed you, honey.”
“Yes, and about that you didn’t exaggerate.”
“See, the network liked the basics, but then some ambitious executive type thought they’d pull a mini-series out of the hat. It’ll stand alone as a movie, but can morph into a series if there’s interest. Aliens are a hot topic again these days since TV’s exhausting vampires and everyone’s getting sick to death of hobbits and pubescent wizards.”
“I see.”
“It’ll be in the vein of that ’80s alien show, you know the one they made in TO.”
“V?” Chaz said, “No, that was here. Oh I know, War of the Worlds.”
“That’s it. With the creepy alien tentacle grabbing onto Earth in the opening credits.”
“Bingo,” Chaz said. “Guess what? Somnia and Hibertrin X.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Lora said. “What’s that?”
“They’re the names Marketing came up with for the DIDIs, launch date pending but the rumour mill says late next year. Somnia is for cats and Hibertin X for dogs, but both are getting
‘Deep Sleep, Within Reach’ for their ad campaigns. Turns out the species have big enough genetic differences that they’re required to market them as completely different products even though they’re almost the same. Well, basically. It’s like how a dog will die if it chows down on coffee or grapes or something but we can eat it, or cats can’t have aspirin but dogs can or maybe the other way ’round. Weird, eh?”
“How about a pill for birds?” Lora said. “I could use a few of those.”
“Nothing doing. There’s not enough money in it for Vedmedica to have a ‘whole family of products,’ as they say. Yet, anyway, right? I guess birds and gerbils and so on just aren’t that popular, and God knows it’s not like Big Pharmacy is in it for the wellbeing of pets.”
“We’ll be expecting caviar and champagne when the big bonus comes through,” Lora said, and waved Jake over. “Hello, boys. Marta, you remember Jake of course. This fine specimen next to him is Antony.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Marta held out a hand to Antony.
“How goes it, guys,” Chaz said.
“Sequel anyone?” Jake said. “I’m taking bets.”
“I’ll vote for no.”
“That makes two of us,” Lora added.
“It wasn’t so bad,” Antony said. “I liked the scenes in the desert.”
“Would they shoot the sequel in BC?” Marta asked.
“Probably, but Bulgaria is grabbing some of our action these days, bigger tax breaks, so it—or we, I guess—could end up there.”
“Jake, do you want to say it?” Lora surveyed the room.
“Oh right, sure. Alright folks, that’s the latest cut. I hope you enjoyed the show. We’ll send out info once the world broadcast date is set.”
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