Nick fished his ball out of the alligator pond again. “No,” he said with a sigh. “Who’s winning now?”
“Me, still.” She was one under par for the course.
“That means you’re buying the ice cream, right?” He shifted his club to his other
hand and put his arm around her waist, pulling her close.
“You bet.”
He kissed her, long and leisurely, and Cass leaned into him. They let the teenage girls play through.
The first time they slept together, Cass couldn’t get Patton Walsh out of her mind.
Her favorite movie of Nick’s was Dark Waters, the Europa mining action/drama. He played Patton Walsh, an idealistic young mining foreman caught between vicious corporate interests and exploited miners. Something was killing the miners one by one, and it was up to him to discover what: terrible working conditions, or a mysterious alien lifeform? The film managed to transcend the action genre to deal with real-world issues of exploration, the friction as the frontier of the solar system was absorbed into the mainstream economy, the still unresolved question of whether or not life existed on Jupiter’s moon—and at the center of it all was Nick May, boyish and tough at the same time, sensitive and unrelenting. He struck a deep and abiding chord with the 18-35 female demographic.
The film had one intimate scene between Patton Walsh and the company doctor, played by Estelle Reasoner, who hadn’t made a decent movie since. They were trapped in a mining rover, the battery cells were burned out, the temperature was dropping. She’d kept her guard up for the whole story, he’d never trusted her stonewalling, but sparks flew every time they were in the same room, and finally—it was just one kiss. A chaste kiss even, mouths closed, both of them bundled to the gills in survival gear. But it was one scene where the wonders of interactive bluebox entertainment rose to their full potential.
With just a couple clicks of a button, an adjustment to her link, Cass was there in that rover, in Patton Walsh’s arms, and he was unfastening her parka, groping with determination. The interactive link tapped into her senses, and responded to her thoughts. If she wanted to be passive, she could be, thrilling to the sound of ripping fabric. Or she could fight him—and will him to fight back, if that was what she wanted. And she could always shut it off exactly when she wanted to. And turn it back on, whenever she wanted to.
They’d gone to her place because it wasn’t being watched by the tabloid reporters yet. They sat on her hand-me-down sofa in her little one bedroom apartment, and neither of them seemed to know what to do next. Not like being with interactive Patton Walsh at all. But he looked like Patton Walsh, and that made it strange.
Her skin tingled just thinking about him.
She ended up making the first move, which surprised her—she never made the first move. She touched his face and kissed him. Then, everything seemed to work just fine. If a bit unexpectedly a time or two, since her imagination had never told Patton Walsh to do that. And once or twice she had to whisper, “touch there,” and guide his hand.
She woke up the next morning cuddled against him, happy.
Nathan called Cass into his office one morning. He gave her the room’s only chair and perched at the edge of his desk.
“What do you think of Nick?” he said.
She blushed. That was hardly fair. “He’s nice. Why?”
“Can I show you something?”
He swiveled around his computer monitor and touched an on-screen key. The film editing software booted up and a sequence began rolling. The slate read “Nick May Screen Test. Take Twelve.” Nick turned up the volume on the speakers.
The scene was the convenience store down the street, the one they all went to for coffee and chips when they were avoiding work. Nathan had set up his camera looking straight across the counter, so the frame caught the clerk on the left, and Nick on the right. The clerk was laughing, pointing at the camera, pointing at Nick, amused by the whole situation. Nathan’s voice, sounding echoey and distant, said, “Just relax. Be normal.”
Nick, veteran actor, was also staring at the camera. In bluebox, the actors couldn’t see the camera because the box was basically one large camera, with a dozen fiber optic lenses taking in all angles. Nathan’s camera locked down the scene—all mobility and dynamic movement had to come from the actors. Nick was fidgeting.
Bluebox actors were trained to be cyphers, blanks on which digital engineers could paint any setting, costume, or prop necessary. It was still more economical and less time consuming to have actors provide the faces and the nuances of emotional expression—for all their efforts, the animators still could not get human faces and movement exactly right. But everything else? Why fly to Tunisia when you can program it? Who in Podunk, Wisconsin would know the difference?
“Action!” Nathan said.
Nick shrugged, uncomfortable in his own jacket. “Um. Yeah. Lotto ticket, please,” he enunciated unnaturally. The clerk handed over the lottery card. Nick dropped it, looked at the camera and smiled an apology.
A sinking feeling weighed down Cass’s stomach. What happened to his suave? The easy-going elegance that had made him the biggest film hero in the last five years? It couldn’t have all been digitally enhanced. “That was take twelve?”
“Yeah.”
“Um, he’s a little uncomfortable, isn’t he?”
“He can’t act.”
“But—” A half-dozen bluebox blockbusters couldn’t be wrong, could they?
Nathan clicked off the film. “You ever see Singin’ in the Rain? Some of the greatest silent film actors couldn’t make the transition to sound. This may be the same thing. It’s not that Nick isn’t great at bluebox. He maybe just isn’t cut out for film.”