Jump to content

Wikipedia:Sandbox: Difference between revisions

Edit links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
No edit summary
Clearing sandbox
Line 5: Line 5:
* Feel free to try your editing skills below *
* Feel free to try your editing skills below *
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■-->
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■-->
“Welcome back to The Rick Maverick Hour!” announced the talk show host beaming with bemused excitement as the bombastic theme died down. Rick Maverick, middle-aged and a little worn from all his years hosting on Mars, stood out against the bronze set in his dark green suit and a yellow tie. Despite his typically outlandish attire, all eyes were on his guest seated opposite him. A bouquet of security cameras was arranged haphazardly across the guest’s head. It proved the main attraction after the rather dull last guest: some astronaut with a purple presidential sash and a rough accent, and hopefully the ratings winner. The cameras atop his head rotated in a limited left-right motion about red coral stalks with a noticeable whirring that did not obscure Maverick’s introduction. As Maverick started, Cosgrove took in the cheesy Martian set with its flashy antiquated light-bulbs and ornamental computers.
“Our next guest is quite an interesting character… He can see all 360 degrees around his head and is the current Guinness Worlds Record holder for Most Cameras on Head. Welcome to the Hour, ‘Camera’ Cosgrove!” Maverick got up from his black armchair to shake Cosgrove’s hand amid a flurry of canned applause. “Thank you, Rick.” Cosgrove flashed a smile at the address. It was pretty much the only facial feature indicative of any expression for Cosgrove as he lacked eyes but made up for with impersonal closed-circuit cameras. “Might I add, I’m glad to be back on your show?” Cosgrove said as he sat back down flattening the wrinkles in his space tux. Ironically the television cameras made him nervous.
While Cosgrove picked up a glass of water to sip, Maverick responded with an uneasy unrehearsed laugh. “Back on? Cosgrove, this is your first time on my show. I mean unless you were our last guest the Astronaut-Elect of Krakozia.” He said with a slight disdain and shrugged off the strangeness in a seriocomic manner with a wry glance at the camera off-stage then proceeded to sift through his notes on the black coffee table. Cosgrove’s smile receded feebly but returned with a force. Cosgrove’s cameras continued whirring and thrashing about like little insect legs.
“But nevertheless: thanks! I’m glad to have you back on my show. [canned laughter] So what I’ve read from my producer’s notes is that your operation was the idea of a bank you worked for?”
A few of the cameras on Cosgrove’s head stopped slightly as he let out an annoyed sigh. He had been on this show for far too many times. Technically, the show wasn’t real but rather a memory of movies too long ago. That all changed a few years back when the dark between the stars shifted from black to ancient Earth movies as if some alien god was finally bored and decided to switch channels. Now from Earth you can watch Casablanca from the night sky with the stars like little dots on old comic books. You can even visit the place too. Visiting “Reel Space” turned up more questions than answers though. If you weren’t a main character in a movie, you were pretty much shrugged off as an extra and treated as such.
The science community across every planet almost had a mental breakdown trying figure out how reality could just fall out like a cardboard cut-out and replaced by fiction so soon. More to the point, why movies? No one knew. There was a theory that someone must be watching the movies outside space and time. Attempts to break the “fourth wall” were made in order to communicate with these aliens or at least prove someone besides humanity was watching but so far nothing.
This was why they were delivering a talk show on a spaceship. The Rick Maverick Hour was simply some show the protagonist in some movie watched and thus Hour fell into Reel Space. It only became important since some scientists thought “infinite regression” was the key where the filmer is filmed filming a film … And thus a reality we could control or control over Reel Space or something. No one really knew.
Cosgrove decided to drop out of that show and back into their spaceship. He wasn’t worried about Maverick losing his guest. The plot should resolve itself on its own and the Hour didn’t actually last an hour in the movie or in real life.
As Cosgrove walked off the set, the familiar shades of gray filled his lenses. While the shoved-in dashboard of their spaceship was a cavalcade of colorful lights, music, and instrumentation, the rest was the set of a 1930s Flash Gordon rocket strewn with wires, levers, buttons and so on all on the budget of Depression-era dollars. The dashboard actually costed more to make than the spaceship itself. Cheap truths, Cosgrove thought ironically to himself. Cosgrove waved a hand over an amber light checking to make sure the computer kept the course to Centauri when a voice came from overcamera. “Hey Cosgrove! Check this out!”
Climbing the ladder to the open hatch on top, he noticed his colleague Gerald Xardin smoking a cigarette leaned up against one of the wires that held the ship in the sky. He also noticed other rockets in the sky all of the same retro style. They were flying parallel to theirs like whales migrating through ersatz clouds. “This is what I’m talking about. This is why I love Reel Space.” Cosgrove’s cameras whirred quizzically. Xardin was pretty much the only one of a few who understood security camera expressions. “It’s an old film effect. Used to make armies look bigger if there were only a few soldiers or spaceships have fleets when there’s just one model. This is like the Aurora Cineramas for space. Except in black and white.” Cosgrove wondered if they were far away or just smaller models. Physics worked differently out here. They both knew it only too well.
Xardin took another puff of his cigarette while the firecracker at the end of the rocketship did its best to pass for propulsion. “You done playing talk show guest? I don’t blame you. I always thought the actor who played him was a jerk. He probably made a joke about your eyes. He’s not very funny.” He took in one last drag of smoke and breathed “Neither was his character.” He flicked the cigarette off into the distance hoping it would hit one of the rival rockets or set the film reel aflame. It fell through the space between and disappeared.
Xardin was a grizzled scientist who wore a lab coat over his 1940s attire he bought on an on-world market. He actually loved the cheap effects which Cosgrove tolerated. Movies weren’t really made for 360 degree vision, and he was nostalgic for the night skies not filled with cinema. Not many of the space films turned up in Reel space, except for Flash Gordon serials which were far removed from the real thing. He could remember times planetside being far from civilization where he could take in the cosmos with all his cameras just standing there. Now it’s Three Stooges in grayscale.
“Did Earth Central ever figure out what happens if you actually fall off these things? You’d think the 1930s would know more about space otherwise this could never happen.” Cosgrove said with a few of his cameras staring down at needle that was on the nose of ship. The sky revealed even less. “We know even less about space than we did ten years ago thanks to the Reel Effect,” replied Xardin. “I kind of wish that didn’t happen, but hopefully we’ll get this mystery solved. I swear I’ve scraped my skull down to the rind trying to wrap my mind around all this. And no, but we’ve never tried it. You know you can’t die in Reel Space unless something from outside Reel Space intervenes.” Xardin said with a matter-of-fact rote. “But then nothing from Reel Space has ever tried killing anyone real. Just redshirts in films, main characters, and villains.” He was about to reach in his jacket under his lab coat to pick out another cigarette when both him and Cosgrove started noticing the phantom rockets left-and-right started turning towards them. “That’s… never happened before… Has it, Xardin?” asked Cosgrove anxiously. Xardin looked fearful. “No. Never. Come on, let’s get back inside before — The hatch started to close quickly under its own volition. Cosgrove hurriedly swooped in to stop the process getting gray paint on his black-and-white space tux and pounded the hollow metal when he failed. “It’s sealed shut. What the hell do we do now?”
The other ships were closing in fast. It looked as though they were about to fire all weapons. There didn’t seem to be any options left until Xardin yelled “Cut the wires! Cut all of them! Just do it.”
From afar, the circumstances looked downright dire. From afar, the panicked image of Xardin and Cosgrove cutting wires amid the backdrop brimming with uncertain clouds and rockets with their needles poised for the kill was froze. Frozen. The camera pans out smoothly with the image of imminent danger on a television held in a tacky orange wall with Rick Maverick standing at its side wearing an ever present green and yellow suit. “It looks like our heroes are in a bit of a jam. Will they cut all the wires in time to fall into some undiscovered country or be killed mercilessly by the phantom rockets? Tune in next week! Same Cosgrove Hour! Same Cosgrove Channel! Don’t touch that remote just yet though! There’s more to—”

Revision as of 15:50, 16 May 2014

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&oldid=608847302"