Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 128

Chapter 128 - The Show Goes On

The need to recover the spent energy from Xiaoyi's healing session had made the choice of just what to do today rather simple. So instead of wandering around and seeing the sights like yesterday, Eventus was instead getting a front row seat to the production of a fictionalized drama by the name of Trial of the Everlasting Hero.

Watching the actors repeat their lines, the director make small adjustments to better portray his vision, and the clever ways the camera men took advantage of framing to create their cinematographic illusions was an honest treat. Not the least because of just how different it was from the way his people had done things.

The current set of scenes seemed to be taking place near the steps of a recently constructed ‘ancient’ stone temple of some kind that had the same general aesthetic as the artificially built ‘ancient’ city that was the studio.

“Your people's actors never got their lines wrong?” Xiaoyi whispered in surprise.

“Nope.” Eventus confirmed just as quietly. “We have extremely accurate semantic and procedural memory. So when it comes to technical subjects like repeating the lines of a script, we're usually good for at least a couple years after we've read it.”

Their episodic memory was a lot closer to the human norm. But as far as he knew that had been a purposeful design choice since near perfect episodic memory could be an absolute curse.

“Of course, the down side to that was that improvisation was a lot more limited. So if you saw one telling of Clovis and Larana you pretty much saw them all.”

Glancing over to the set where Junyan, the contrite actor man from yesterday, was being strapped into a stunt rig, Xiaoyi gave a bemused shake of her head. “I hope you forgive me for saying this, but that sounds more than a little boring.”

“I certainly thought it was.” Eventus agreed with a nod. “Though Thalia always insisted the subtle emotional differences of each actor's performance created wildly different layers that I just didn't get.”

He'd been almost entirely unsurprised to find her name associated with one of the Roman muses. Though discovering his own name on that particular list of Deities had left him with the odd suspicion that either she, or one of the other maintenance corps members, had set him up to be the punch line of a ten thousand year joke 

“She sounds like an interesting friend.” Xiaoyi put forward in an oddly contemplative tone.

Eventus gave a somewhat melancholy smile. “She was, but she was also the type of friend that would get you involved in utter chaos if you didn’t watch yourself.”

“Ah.” Xiaoyi murmured in seeming understanding. “One of those friends.”

They spent a few minutes silently watching the set crew get things ready for the scene before she spoke again.

“It still surprises me that you find this sort of thing so interesting. I’d have thought your people would have done pretty much everything there is to do media wise.”

“We mostly did live plays and what you’d think of as reality tv.” Eventus confessed, feeling a tad bit guilty for admitting the second. “There were entire buildings full of editors who would take the feeds from various culture observation satellites and make them into a viewable story.”

Those had been a lot of people’s guilty pleasure, and probably one of the things that had driven his people to try and actually protect those lesser civilizations by fighting the Wraith instead of just running away.

“As for the live plays.” He continued, watching as Junyan was ordered to hop in place a few times to test his stunt harness. “Props, locations, and special effects for those were mostly just projected holograms.” He let out an annoyed sigh. “Though every now and then we'd have a method actor who, for realism's sake, would use a nerve blocker and then demand to be stabbed by an actual weapon.”

“Stabbed by an actual weapon?” Xiaoyi repeated with disbelief.

Eventus shrugged. “Artists can get weird when they know the worst that can happen is having to spend a few hours being brought back to life in a healing unit and lecture about restraint from the overseeing healer.”

“Scene set!” The assistant director yelled, causing the low buzz of various conversations to near instantly die out. “Episode twenty-two, scene seven, take one. Action!”

At that last word Junyan was pulled forward, the wires lifting just enough of this weight to make it look like he was taking large bounding leaps instead of a more steady run.

Quickly reaching the end of the fake temple’s steps, he stabbed towards an empty point with his weapon and the assistant director once more yelled out.

“Cut! Reset for angle two!”

People once more began their various hushed conversations as the cameramen starting moving to relocate their equipment.

“Everything else aside.” Eventus started whispering again now that he wasn’t at risk of messing something up for the group. “Thematically we didn’t do media about martial heroes, fantasy epic’s, or the general mashup that is science fiction. We did various types of realistic dramas with the very rare comedic drama thrown in when someone wanted to shake things up.

Xiayoi gave him an odd look. “Why?”

“No idea.” Eventus admitted honestly.

Making a motion towards the production he waited for her to look out at it again before continuing. “A quartet of properly designed drones, an anti gravity harness under the actors clothing, and some hologram projectors and we could have done something like this scene at a level that would look completely real in a quarter of the time it takes you.”

“Scene set!” The assistant director called out once again, waiting a few seconds for everyone to once more go silent before continuing. “Episode twenty-two, scene seven, take two. Action!”

The wires went taunt and Junyan was again pulled forward with loping steps before reaching the stunt’s endpoint.

“Cut!” The assistant director announced as he motioned to one of the women waiting off to the side. “Yun, you’re up.”

Giving the assistant director a thumbs up. The young woman grabbed a sword from a prop table next to her and made her way over to where Junyan was still standing with his own sword out. Positioning her blade in such a way that the tip of Junyan’s was in contact with the flat of hers, she put on a look as if to suggest she had just accomplished some heroic feat of athletics. 

“Scene set! Episode twenty-two, scene eight, take one. And Action!”

With that word Junyan pushed forward slightly only for the wires to jerk him backwards into a forceful spin as Yun gave a grunt and pretended to deflect his blade.

The camera’s panned, following Junyan till he landed back on the ground in a somewhat heroic pose.

“Cut! Reset for angle one!”

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Author’s Notes: There’s not a lot left to cover in the day portions of Eventus’s vacation, but I wanted to at least hit this particular beat. The chapters left now are night, day, night, then departure.