And so hours were spent crafting the perfect promo. It had
everything. Severely outdated graphics, poorly synchronized midi music in the
background, nonsensical transitions from one topic to the next...and Gary
Busey. He only appeared in individual frames in between clips as some sort of
subliminal nightmare of Buddy Holly story past.
Brick finished his final edit (after dozens of critiques by
the far less talented but much more opinionated and pony-tailed, John Slate)
and exported the media.
The rest of the crew had long gone for their hourly
pilgrimage to the sidewalk in front of the building in order to fill their
systems full of nicotine. As it was processing, Brick saw Amethyst walk slowly
towards his desk, lost in thought.
"Hey..." she said in an unusual monotone, trying
to suppress her inner turmoil.
"Yo. I'm pretty much done with the promo... I'll send
it to ingest as soon as..."
"Yeah... it's only going to air once, I don't see the
point."
"That' what I was saying, but Slate was making a big
deal about us grabbing as many viewers as possible, at all times."
"That guy is crazy," Amethyst stated bluntly,
leaning against the table, staring at the swirling chaos of the floor tiles
beneath her feet.
"I knew it! I thought I was the only one. That ignoramus
acts as if he's the second coming of... of... I don't know any famous people who
made commercials. I'm sorry, I just don't. That information is not in my repertoire."
Amethyst ignored his stupidity. An email was sent to Brick
almost immediately after he delivered the promo via FTP.
"Promo has been received and put on the air? What? I
didn't even have a chance to turn the TV on... there goes the last few hours of
my life."
'Do you ever feel like this isn't even real?" Amethyst
asked, struggling not to relive her earlier ordeal.
Brick, still reeling from his visions of G Mod, who was
haunting him like a sunglass adorned devil, concealed his true feelings behind
a façade of simpleminded naiveté, "you know, it's hard to say."
"Thanks for the chat, " Amethyst sneered in
disappointment, "no wonder you're called Brick. It's like talking to a
wall. you can be so dense..."
"I'm sorry... yeah, sometimes it does feel a bit
unreal."
Amethyst looked at him for a moment. Her eyes were dulled
and lacked their usual spark of life. She searched his expression for a bit
before disappearing into her office again, just as the trio of misfits returned
from their umpteenth smoking break. In the moments that followed the stink of
tobacco in the room, Brick wondered about Amethyst and about the delicate
illusion of reality that kept everything around him from imploding.
No comments:
Post a Comment