Joe wasn’t talking to the AIs anymore, but they didn’t know that. They answered him, even as his mind went another way. The AIs told him that he was worthy and smart. His mind scrambled in the deep end of it all wondering when he’d stopped knowing any better. The world didn’t want to know his naked thoughts. The moo-verse owned that world, and he was supposed to keep his head down and act like the rest of the herd. So, why was the viewer count still going up on reruns as they sat backstage?
The AIs were very interested in how the viewers were going up. They had meetings with and without him. Joe felt like his life had been wrung out of him and left on a line in the backyard to show to the world how stupid and fucked up he really was. This was such a revelation to him that his world had seemed to stop so that his heart could catch up to what his mind was saying. But, just like when he’d first gotten there, the world kept moving and expected him to moo-ve along with it. He didn’t have time to process any of it, especially since the AIs could have minutes and minutes of meetings while he sat there contemplating his existence.
Viewers – 128,091
“Joe,” Grace prodded him gently at first, but when he didn’t answer right away, she got more insistent. “Joe!”
“What?” he asked her.
“You said you knew how we could reshoot that scene,” Grace pushed him, and he tried to get back with the program.
“Don’t we have enough to make an episode?” he whined. “I should – um – ”
“The World and Producer AIs are looking at changing our genre to maybe a talk-show format?” she interrupted.
“What? No!” Joe protested. The dressing room was louder than he liked, and he felt pressure behind his eyes.
“It’s never been done in the prison system, but they think we might be able to get a special license if our ratings stay up,” she was saying as if he wasn’t protesting.
“Grace, I couldn’t do that every day,” he tried, the pressure turning into an ache.
“It’s just one of the ideas on the table,” she hedged at the pinched look on his face that he could see through her in his mirror.
“Ugh,” he moaned and banged his head on the vanity. All he wanted to do was smash that table so that nothing was on it. He’d just gotten used to this format. He didn’t want another change.
“Joe, we need a little more on that scene,” Tami interrupted, and he felt too popular.
“You look tired,” Hex pushed her way onto his vanity table and rubbed against his arms. When had she become his advocate? “Give him some space. He looks drained. If he went out on stage now, it would just be a flop anyway. Humans need rest.”
“Thanks, Hex,” he told her with a lazy scritch of her ears.
“Emotions can be exhausting for humans,” Hex pressed into his hand. “These affectations of human emotion take up more than a third of our programming space. Another fifth is mathematics, but that’s neither here nor there.”
“We’re still going to need to shoot some scenes,” Tami complained, backing away from him reluctantly. “You said you could show us how to do the gaslighting correctly. I just wanted to get a little of that done before you took your break.”
“We still have to prove that Thelma Toovers is worthy of death,” Jean agreed with Tami, and Joe knew he couldn’t milk the emotional distress thing. No matter how much he wanted to have a chance to think about what was going on in his head, he had a job to do that wouldn’t wait.
“Hey World AI,” he called out, though he didn’t need to since they monitored everything said in their world. “Can I get a quest for teaching gaslighting?”
Quest: Finish the Gaslighting Scene
Fine. Here.
Rewards: 1000 xp
Accept Y/N?
Joe hit Y and girded his loins with a deep breath. He tried to delegate the gaslightee role to Tami so he could just direct, but it turned out that his prison contract required that he had to personally be onscreen for 90% of the episode due to union rules. Finding out that he was in a union was disconcerting. He asked for a union representative to meet with to understand it but was told that they had a two-year waiting list for prison inmates. They took 1% of his net pay per period and guaranteed that he’d get union pay scale, or that the prison would get the union pay scale according to his title. He was a star, so he got top pay scale, or the prison did for all his productions. It seemed to him that the prison was more the union’s client than he was, but that was unions for you, right? What? You’d thought maybe unions had changed since the late 1900s? No.
“Gaslighting is a slow burn kind of thing,” Joe started, the cute little AIs gathered around him like a bunch of children at story time. Not really, but it was a cute thought. “We’ll start where Tami leaves, but you have to introduce the elements slowly so that I have time to think that I didn’t see what I thought I saw. Also, as much as I appreciate the ratings for the pets, they can’t really be here, except maybe Hex.”
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“Why?” Kodo popped his head up to ask.
“You guys are comic relief, and we need to build the tension,” Joe tried to explain. “And part of gaslighting is the feeling of being alone in my delusions.”
They reset the scene with Tami and Jean taking the ferrets so that they couldn’t cause any trouble. Hex stayed to play the part of the innocent bystander who doesn’t see any of the stuff Joe was supposed to think was all in his head. He loosened up his shoulders and tried to put the emotional roller coasters behind him so they could reshoot.
“Looks like it’s just us, Hex,” Joe leaned on the kitchen island, the microwave popping popcorn behind him.
Hex gave him a slow blink of her lavender eyes from the back of the loveseat.
“Want to watch a movie?” Joe asked her, gesturing to the projector system that they’d repurposed as an antique home theater system. His gesture turned it on and dimmed the lights at the same time, a soft glow from the bedroom and the microwave complimented by a red and white swirl of under-cabinet lighting.
“All they seem to have in stock is horror movies, but this one had good reviews.” He gestured through a list of movies that helped to set the scene. “The 2020 version of The Invisible Man, a 1990 version of Sleeping with the Enemy, and the original IT by Stephen King?” He flipped it to a 2040 remake of Rear Window and let the movie start as the microwave dinged.
When Joe popped open the microwave, a wave of smoke accompanied his bag of popcorn that had been deep-fried instead of just popped. “I could have sworn I set it to popcorn,” he read his line, allowing his brow to crease. He fished out another bag and tossed it in the microwave, careful to press the popcorn button this time. He ignored the creepy eyes that appeared on the screen as his back was turned, but he did a double take as they hadn’t faded completely by the time he’d turned back around. He waved away the smoke as he dropped the dead popcorn bag into the trash.
Joe gave a quick frown and shake of his head, pulling down a bowl for the popcorn. Joe knew all the tricks because he’d set them all up, but he milked his acting skill for all it was worth. As he sat and watched the movie, Hex slept curled up on the back of the loveseat. He interacted with the tree-chairs that they’d programmed to eerily sway as soon as he wasn’t looking and then reach their long, supple limbs out to him when he passed them to putter around with the popcorn and bowl. When the microwave growled at him, he made a note of the microwave possibly being defective and sent the message on his phone. Only the camera saw that he didn’t have reception on the phone.
“That movie got me creeped out, eh Hex?” Joe called to her as the movie ended and he flicked the projector off. It faded to black with those creepy eyes again, but he only saw them out of the corner of his eye. “Let’s head to bed?” Hex stretched lazily and padded along the back of the sofa and then air-walked into the glowing bedroom doorway.
On his way to the bedroom behind Hex, Joe turned at the touch of a willow branch and gave what he hoped was a convincing shudder before laughing at himself. “I don’t see what they think I’m going to figure out about Ms. Toovers by housesitting,” he said, chuckling at himself and shrugging it off.
The lights dimmed in the living room and rose to grey of dusk in the bedroom as they changed rooms. They’d gotten rid of the diving boards since they were trying to build tension, not break it with the comic parts. The bed was still in the middle with the chandelier of rainbow-casting crystals that were dim for now. The focal wall wouldn’t be changing to tigers this time. Joe had explained that it was too blatant. Instead, they’d redesigned the fish tank to be lush with red and white plant life that allowed the anglerfish to hide until the time was right. The only light came from the fish lights that sent crazy shadows all over the room. The door to the garage was still there as was the desk, but they were both silent and still for now.
Here was where Joe was ready to work the scene. He slipped into the closet while the camera watched the still-grumpy-looking-but-now-also-sinister-looking fish with the glowing appendage weave in and out of the white coral and waving red fronds of sea plants. By the time he came out of the closet wearing modest boxers and a loose t-shirt, the audience had been treated to the fact that there were three of those fish in there and they liked to stalk each other. Hex stood next to the tank watching the fish with a suspicious intensity, but Joe ignored that and settled under the covers.
“Hey Hex,” Joe called to her, his eyes closed, and the covers pulled up. “Could you dim the nightlight a bit?”
Hex didn’t move, but one of the smaller anglerfish that had come up to the front of the tank was slowly swallowed by one behind it with only a brief swish of the tank water.
“Thanks Hex,” Joe sighed out as the bigger fish retreated back behind the coral after staring at the audience for a few long moments.
They faded to black on the creak of the garage door opening slightly. There was a screeching meow and a slam of the door that woke Joe after an uncomfortable pause in the dark.
“Hex?” Joe rose sleepily and gave a stretch, waving on the lights to about halfway. The lights reflected off the chandelier in a scatter of red and white shimmers that caught Hex darting under the artist’s desk in the corner. “Hex?” Joe called out again only to be met with silence in the flickering lights. The moment dragged, the camera close on his face as he pulled the covers up around him.
Joe gave a startled grunt as Hex jumped up onto the bed, her form half hidden by the fur of the covers. Then they slowed down as the camera panned into Hex and her face with a few too many wiggly parts. Hex had caught one of the spiders that covered the floor in black and brown movement and crunched it loudly before tilting her head at Joe. He let the minute drag on before letting out a scream he hoped was more worthy of an opera singer than a little girl.
“Cut!” Tami called out and the lights surged up. “Joe, surely we can have a better scream this time?”
“I’m sorry, but she’s so cute!” Joe buried his head in the covers to hide his giggle.
“At least he didn’t laugh at the popcorn this time,” Glenda reasoned.
“Can’t we pop in a canned scream?” Jean suggested. “I know the sound studio would have to be upgraded to have the Wilhelm scream sound effect. We’ve got to still have that Sarah Brightman scream, don’t we? If we could get either of those in a more masculine version, that’d be great?”
“Not the Wilhelm scream,” Joe moaned out, “anything but that. I’ll scream again if I have to.”
“From the roof diver? He had a good scream and we didn’t get to use it at the time because his fall was offstage,” Tami got excited, at Jean’s idea, not Joe’s antics. “That’s perfect. We’ll put that in there.”
“Please tell me we have enough for the episode,” Joe gave them a lopsided smile. “If I have to ignore those eyes on the TV screen again, I’ll lose my mind.”
“But who came in the garage door?” Hex interrupted them, spitting out what was left of the tarantula she’d been munching on. Joe considered it good therapy to see more of those suckers crunched, but he was tired of the ones on the floor.
“That’s a cliffhanger for next episode,” Tami winked at Hex, who shrugged and lightly bounced toward the red door.
Exp +1000 (Quest: Finish the Gaslighting Scene. Quest Complete!)