Page 361 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 1

“We’re in between scenes,” Morgan repeated.

“What the hell does that mean?” she snapped.

“It means that between scene two and scene three, in the script there was a little line that said, ‘Cops drive Peter and Beth to Beth’s house.’ The camera didn’t cover that in the movie, but it was in the script so we have to reenact it. This reality doesn’t jump from scene to scene, it has gray periods when the ‘camera’ isn’t on us and we can do pretty much anything we like without affecting the movie.”

“Can you write the script out for me?” Audrey asked. “That way at least I’ll know what to say and do.”

“I could,” Morgan said. “But the second the scene changed, whatever I give you will disappear. Reading from a script isn’t in the script. Don’t worry. It’s an easy enough movie to pick up. We probably won’t have to do many scenes over more than two or three times. You strike me as a pretty smart woman. I’m sure you’ll pick this up in no time.” He smiled at her. “How about you?”

“How about me, what? Do you think I’m going to argue with you for calling me smart?”

“Oo, we are a defensive one, aren’t we?” Morgan said. “No. I meant; how did you get in here?”

“Lightning,” Audrey said. “It got me as I was putting the tape in the DVD player.”

Morgan brightened. “Hey, have they built flying cars yet?”

Audrey blinked twice. “Um…no.”

“How many moon colonies do we have?”

“Um… As far as I know, NASA isn’t even sending explorers to the moon anymore. We’ve pretty much found out everything we need to know about it.”

Morgan’s smile faded away. “Oh. That’s too bad. I was kind of looking forward to living on the moon.”

He turned his head to gaze out the window at the passing black and white landscape and was quiet.

After a moment, Audrey broke the silence with a tentative, “I hear Mars colonies might not be entirely out of the question.”

He turned back to her. “Mars? Really?”

“NASA’s sent some probes and supposedly they’ve found evidence that there was once an atmosphere and running water. Some folks are talking terra forming, though it probably won’t happen in our lifetime.”

Morgan’s face brightened with another big grin. “Oh well, that’s okay. Gives us something to look forward to, doesn’t it?”

The police car pulled up to the sidewalk in front of a small, but nice two-story house. Neither policeman made any acknowledgment of the stop. They didn’t look back in the rear-view mirror, say ‘get out’ or even ‘goodbye.’

“Are they just going to sit there?” Audrey whispered as Morgan opened the door and got out.

“It’s not in the script that they do anything but drive us home.” He held the door open for her and offered her his hand to help steady her as she gingerly climbed out of the backseat. “I once stripped them down to their underwear just to see if I’d get a reaction, but there was nothing. If it’s not in the script, during these gray periods, the movie generated characters don’t do anything.”

“This whole thing is just not right,” Audrey said, holding her head in her hands.

“Yeah, I know,” Morgan said, almost cheerfully. “I’ve been thinking that for the last fifty years.”

She blinked as the police car drove away and left them standing in front of the strange house. “When did you come in?”

“August twelfth, nineteen-eighty-one.”

“Remember, time is relative,” Morgan said again. “Not constant. If I had to guess, I’d say this dimension is probably independent of our own. So, unless you’d like to stand out here all night.” He gestured to Beth’s dark house. “I’m not entirely sure, but I think you’ve got the house to yourself. I don’t think Beth had a mother written into the script.”

Audrey stared down the neat cement walkway at the nice suburban home, lit as it was only by the soft grey glow of the front porch light. She made absolutely no move towards it though, and instead asked, “How did you get here?”

“I was a security guard, working night shifts at MGM studios. Boring job, but it paid the bills and I got to see all the movies I wanted, so the perks were good. One night, I put a reel on the projector and reached to turn it on, the lights suddenly flickered, and the next thing I knew, I was standing outside of Beth’s crashed truck.”

“I wish I’d been watching something nice,” she said. “Little Women or Anne of Green Gables. Or a comedy maybe. Ghostbusters. I could do Ghostbusters. I wouldn’t mind seeing a ten-story-tall, Stay-Puffed marshmallow man right about now. Anything is better than huge, disgusting spiders.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Morgan said. “I can think of something worse.”

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