Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2007-10-14 12:25 am
ptahrrific) wrote2007-10-14 12:25 am
Entry tags:
Fake News: The Thing With Feathers, Chapter 14
Title: The Thing With Feathers, Chapter 14
Fandom: The Daily Show/The Colbert Report
Rating: PG-13 (pain, suffering)
Words: ~2300
Disclaimer: Two.
For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. Sue me not, please.
And for the real people, the poem:
Please, make no mistake:
these people aren't fake,
but what's said here is no more than fiction.
It only was writ
because we like their wit
and wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.
We don't mean to quibble,
but this can't be libel;
it's never implied to be real.
No disrespect's meant;
if you disapprove, then,
the back button's right up there. Deal.
Notes: Seriously, this gets painful. Consider yourselves warned.
For the full table of contents, click here.
The Thing With Feathers
Chapter 14
(here.)
They ended up in an informal circle on the floor of the real Stephen's office, Jon and Stephen leaning against the couch while Eric and Allison had their backs to the desk. Most of the bedding was piled just inside the door; nobody felt like sleeping yet. A couple of pillows had been poached to soften the seats of the writers, and the thickest blanket was wrapped around Stephen.
He was shivering anyway, and jumping at shadows -- or, sometimes, at nothing at all. Eric had grabbed a six-pack of water bottles from the break room fridge, and every once in a while Jon would make sure Stephen was drinking.
In theory, they were brainstorming ways in which this Stephen could have arrived, and their Stephen vanished at the same time.
In practice, they were sitting in silence.
"It's like we're in an episode of The Twilight Zone," said Eric after a while.
"Maybe you are," murmured Stephen.
The others laughed a little; Stephen pushed irritably at Jon. "I'm serious. Maybe you -- maybe all of us -- are characters in an episode of The Twilight Zone."
Jon's smile faded as he thought about this. "But we're not characters," he said at last. "We're real."
"That's what I've been telling you."
Jon had the disconcerting feeling of everything he knew and understood about the world shifting into a new pattern altogether. It was like staring at the optical illusion that appears to be a portrait of a young woman and suddenly having the old hag not only appear, but demand to know why he didn't cut his hair and get a real job.
"Okay," said Allison. "Working hypothesis: we're in The Twilight Zone."
"New Twilight Zone or old Twilight Zone?" asked Eric.
"Old," said Stephen. "Definitely old."
"Why?" asked Jon. "We're not in black and white, and I haven't heard Rod Serling yet."
"But the new ones are just horror shows," explained Stephen. "They aren't clever. They aren't creepy in a subtle way. This is."
"He's right," said Eric. "You're right! You're a geek after all!"
"I am not!" snapped Stephen. "I just watch The Twilight Zone, and Star Wars and Doctor Who, and I play D&D, and I liked The Lord of the Rings before the movies came out, and I'm not stupid. That's all. I'm normal."
Eric held up his hands in defeat. "Fine, fine, have it your way."
"I haven't actually seen much of The Twilight Zone," confessed Jon. "If we're in it, how do we get out of it?"
"You know," mused Allison, "I don't think most people did get out of it. They just get into a weird premise and it builds up and builds up until there's the sudden twist ending, bam, closing narration. The premises don't necessarily get explained, either."
"They almost never do," agreed Eric. "Do you remember the one where the guy got mind-reading powers?"
"Was that the one where the guy overheard someone thinking he was going to rob a bank?"
"That's the one! Didn't they have an explanation for the mind-reading?"
"No, it was random again. They just spent a lot of time explaining that it was random."
"So what can we do, then? Besides wait for the twist ending?"
"Try to anticipate the twist, and spoil it for the viewers?"
"If we were fictional," put in Jon, "I think it would be enough of a twist for us to work it out, don't you?"
"That's a good point," said Eric. "If I were writing the episode, I'd end it here."
"If it's over," said Stephen in a small voice, "I want to go home."
---------------------
---------------------
(there.)
"What do you mean, 'too'?" asked Stephen, baffled. "That makes it sound like your Stephen was actually asked to pick the most beautiful goddess."
"Exactly," said Bobby.
"But..." There had to be something he was missing here. "But they're not real. They're myths."
"Are you trying to say," said Jon slowly, "that in your world, 'myth' means 'not real'?"
"Are you telling me," replied Stephen, "that in this world, they are real?"
"We are," pointed out Bobby. "Me and Tad. And the Stephen we know. Even though, for you, we aren't."
Stephen had the disconcerting feeling of everything he knew and understood about this world shifting into a new pattern altogether.
"But how could they be real?" he protested. "This world would be completely different from mine if there were jealous gods fighting over bits of it all the time."
"Oh, they don't do that," said Jon. "Not any more, at least. It's been hundreds of years since any of them picked a mortal to go champion their cause. They mostly just lounge about in their divine gated communities on Olympus or wherever. We don't pay a lot of attention to them."
"Then how on Earth did Stephen get three of them to come down and argue over him?"
"He summoned them while messing with the God Machine."
Stephen was dimly aware that his mouth was hanging open.
"The God Machine," he repeated.
"Do you have that?" asked Bobby. "It's a holdover from this segment you did on The Daily Show..."
"Yes, yes, we have it, but it's just a prop -- it doesn't do anything -- it doesn't even trigger the sound effect -- you're telling me that this one summons gods?!"
"Not usually, no. But every once in a while--"
"And where is it now?" demanded Stephen.
"Uh, your office, I think--"
"We're going there."
"I'm not so sure this is a good idea," began Tad.
Stephen raised his voice -- and his eyebrows -- to become, for a moment, every inch his character. "Tad? Shut up and drive."
---------------------
---------------------
(here.)
"We could try to talk to the writers," mused Jon. "If we assume we're being written by someone..."
Allison shook her head. "I don't think that'll work."
"Why not?"
"We're writers." Her sweeping gesture included Jon and Eric. "And there's nothing we can do for him." She nodded at Stephen, who pulled his blanket around him more tightly. "Maybe we could have changed things before this happened, when we were writing about him; but we wouldn't have bothered, because we didn't think of him as real. A writer wouldn't have sympathy for us. We can't count on writers to do anything but what's funny, or at least good for the story."
"That would be a good twist ending, though," put in Eric. "In the last scene, one of us ends up in the universe where we're just characters, being controlled by some other group of writers and actors. Call into question the very nature of reality."
"Typical arrogant, East coast, Ivy League educated, liberal thinking," grumbled Stephen, shivering.
"Whoa, whoa, hang on," protested Eric. "How does that have anything to do with--"
"You think your universe controls mine -- of all the obnoxious, paternalistic -- just because you write things that happen to me! Where do you get your ideas?"
"Ah," began Allison, "the question that every writer gets, and there's never a good answer..."
"Well, maybe you get them from me. Maybe you write about things because I do them, not the other way around. Did you ever think of that?"
His voice was shaky but fierce, and the writers all opened their mouths to answer, but none of them knew what to say.
It was Jon who finally answered. "No," he said. "I guess we didn't."
---------------------
---------------------
(there.)
The Report studio was deserted when they returned; someone else -- Stephen wasn't sure who, in this universe's chain of command, it would be -- had taken over and made sure everything was cleaned up and everyone got out. The doors were even locked and the lights off. Fortunately, Tad had a key.
Once inside Stephen bolted for his office, powered by a sudden surge of adrenaline that left the others far behind. He threw open the door to find the room still in disarray from his earlier search for his keys.
Had he seen the God Machine during that search? He couldn't remember. Where had he put it? Where would his character have put it?
How did it always appear on the show?
It was a crazy idea, but not the craziest he'd had that night, and it couldn't hurt to try. He took a deep breath, stood up straight, faced forward with his most determined expression, held out his left hand, and raised it gently, motioning as though pulling something upward.
And when he looked down, there it was.
Set in a little black stand, it looked just as he always remembered it: black with accents of yellow, the top large and red and plasticky, cheap, straightforward, instantly recognizable. On television, it looked iconic. In person, it looked like a simplistic prop.
But on television it didn't rise by itself.
He raised his right hand and smacked it.
---------------------
---------------------
(here.)
"And maybe," continued Stephen, on a roll now, "maybe this isn't about your writing at all. Maybe this happened because of something in my universe, because it's just as real as yours. Maybe..."
He gasped. "Oh. Oh no. I know."
"What is it?" pressed Jon, watching him intently, knowing the writers were doing the same.
"It's me," breathed Stephen, eyes wide. "It's me. I did something wrong, and this is my punishment."
"No!" exclaimed Jon. "Stephen, don't think like that. The world doesn't work that way."
Stephen's breath was coming faster now. Panic and paranoia, thought Jon. Withdrawal.
"Maybe your world doesn't," he said shakily. "Mine does. Mine does."
---------------------
---------------------
(there.)
Jon wanted to run after Stephen, but he had done so much running and had so much general stress that evening that every nerve was whispering no, slow down, you're going to give yourself an attack if you keep this up.
"Go on, hurry," he said to Tad and Bobby, shooing them ahead; and he walked steadily after them. When he reached the office, the two employees were standing off to the side, watching Stephen in respectful, frightened silence.
Stephen himself was hitting the God Machine, over and over, at different angles and with different intensities, repeating all the phrases Jon remembered from various These Weeks In God. "Smack it -- bless this mess -- and away we God -- you know you want it -- I smite thee -- let 'er rip -- go, God Machine, go -- come on -- come on -- something -- anything -- anyone -- someone who can help -- someone who knows what's going on -- Lord -- Jesus -- Allah -- Hera -- please, I'd take Loki at this point -- please -- please!"
His voice grew higher and higher with every exclamation; in the doorway Jon wavered, desperately wanting to help but not knowing how, as the last plea became a shriek, nearly hysterical.
---------------------
---------------------
(here.)
Jon (Not-Jon) was telling him it couldn't be, but it had to, it had to.
Didn't they see? It made so much sense! The way every piece of this world was perfectly pitched to hurt him -- the idea that he wasn't real, the Jon who didn't even care about him, the other him with the perfect life and the perfect family, the nightly show where his pain was just a colossal joke, the sudden lack of pills just when he needed them so badly -- it was too exquisitely perfect to be anything but a punishment, tailored especially for him.
"And it isn't enough," he quavered, staring at nothing, clutching his blanket against the chill. "It still isn't enough, because this isn't over yet. It won't end until I've had enough pain to balance out what I did."
Jon was saying something, but Stephen didn't listen; his mind was racing. His wrist hurt and his stomach hurt and his brain hurt and his heart hurt, and all that wasn't enough, but what he wanted most now was not to stop it, but to get it over with.
He shrugged the blanket from his left arm; the material fell slowly, as if it were underwater, until the cast was bared.
Balance it out.
Don't think about it. Don't think, or you'll be too scared. Just do it.
He lifted his arm and slammed it against the ground.
---------------------
---------------------
(there.)
He was shaking, dimly aware that he was crying, each slap getting harder and harder but just as useless as the first. He had pretended he was adjusting to this, done it so well that he had started to fool himself, but the pretense had come crashing down.
Hope. He'd had it, just for a little while, this hope that something magical would happen, something divine -- deus ex machina, God from the Machine -- and when he had drawn forth the Machine with his hand that hope had surged forth, taken wing, this will work, it can take me home, God is not only present but I have a hotline to Him in my office, and then it had fallen apart, he'd been running on a wing and a prayer and suddenly the wing had gone the way of Icarus' and the prayer was clearly going unanswered.
He smacked the God Machine one more time with his right hand, and then, forgetting, not thinking, desperate, he smacked it with his left.
---------------------
---------------------
(here.)
Stephen screamed.
---------------------
---------------------
(there.)
Stephen screamed.
---------------------
---------------------
(everywhere.)
The world cracked like an egg and split open.
Fandom: The Daily Show/The Colbert Report
Rating: PG-13 (pain, suffering)
Words: ~2300
Disclaimer: Two.
For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. Sue me not, please.
And for the real people, the poem:
Please, make no mistake:
these people aren't fake,
but what's said here is no more than fiction.
It only was writ
because we like their wit
and wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.
We don't mean to quibble,
but this can't be libel;
it's never implied to be real.
No disrespect's meant;
if you disapprove, then,
the back button's right up there. Deal.
Notes: Seriously, this gets painful. Consider yourselves warned.
For the full table of contents, click here.
The Thing With Feathers
Chapter 14
(here.)
They ended up in an informal circle on the floor of the real Stephen's office, Jon and Stephen leaning against the couch while Eric and Allison had their backs to the desk. Most of the bedding was piled just inside the door; nobody felt like sleeping yet. A couple of pillows had been poached to soften the seats of the writers, and the thickest blanket was wrapped around Stephen.
He was shivering anyway, and jumping at shadows -- or, sometimes, at nothing at all. Eric had grabbed a six-pack of water bottles from the break room fridge, and every once in a while Jon would make sure Stephen was drinking.
In theory, they were brainstorming ways in which this Stephen could have arrived, and their Stephen vanished at the same time.
In practice, they were sitting in silence.
"It's like we're in an episode of The Twilight Zone," said Eric after a while.
"Maybe you are," murmured Stephen.
The others laughed a little; Stephen pushed irritably at Jon. "I'm serious. Maybe you -- maybe all of us -- are characters in an episode of The Twilight Zone."
Jon's smile faded as he thought about this. "But we're not characters," he said at last. "We're real."
"That's what I've been telling you."
Jon had the disconcerting feeling of everything he knew and understood about the world shifting into a new pattern altogether. It was like staring at the optical illusion that appears to be a portrait of a young woman and suddenly having the old hag not only appear, but demand to know why he didn't cut his hair and get a real job.
"Okay," said Allison. "Working hypothesis: we're in The Twilight Zone."
"New Twilight Zone or old Twilight Zone?" asked Eric.
"Old," said Stephen. "Definitely old."
"Why?" asked Jon. "We're not in black and white, and I haven't heard Rod Serling yet."
"But the new ones are just horror shows," explained Stephen. "They aren't clever. They aren't creepy in a subtle way. This is."
"He's right," said Eric. "You're right! You're a geek after all!"
"I am not!" snapped Stephen. "I just watch The Twilight Zone, and Star Wars and Doctor Who, and I play D&D, and I liked The Lord of the Rings before the movies came out, and I'm not stupid. That's all. I'm normal."
Eric held up his hands in defeat. "Fine, fine, have it your way."
"I haven't actually seen much of The Twilight Zone," confessed Jon. "If we're in it, how do we get out of it?"
"You know," mused Allison, "I don't think most people did get out of it. They just get into a weird premise and it builds up and builds up until there's the sudden twist ending, bam, closing narration. The premises don't necessarily get explained, either."
"They almost never do," agreed Eric. "Do you remember the one where the guy got mind-reading powers?"
"Was that the one where the guy overheard someone thinking he was going to rob a bank?"
"That's the one! Didn't they have an explanation for the mind-reading?"
"No, it was random again. They just spent a lot of time explaining that it was random."
"So what can we do, then? Besides wait for the twist ending?"
"Try to anticipate the twist, and spoil it for the viewers?"
"If we were fictional," put in Jon, "I think it would be enough of a twist for us to work it out, don't you?"
"That's a good point," said Eric. "If I were writing the episode, I'd end it here."
"If it's over," said Stephen in a small voice, "I want to go home."
---------------------
(there.)
"What do you mean, 'too'?" asked Stephen, baffled. "That makes it sound like your Stephen was actually asked to pick the most beautiful goddess."
"Exactly," said Bobby.
"But..." There had to be something he was missing here. "But they're not real. They're myths."
"Are you trying to say," said Jon slowly, "that in your world, 'myth' means 'not real'?"
"Are you telling me," replied Stephen, "that in this world, they are real?"
"We are," pointed out Bobby. "Me and Tad. And the Stephen we know. Even though, for you, we aren't."
Stephen had the disconcerting feeling of everything he knew and understood about this world shifting into a new pattern altogether.
"But how could they be real?" he protested. "This world would be completely different from mine if there were jealous gods fighting over bits of it all the time."
"Oh, they don't do that," said Jon. "Not any more, at least. It's been hundreds of years since any of them picked a mortal to go champion their cause. They mostly just lounge about in their divine gated communities on Olympus or wherever. We don't pay a lot of attention to them."
"Then how on Earth did Stephen get three of them to come down and argue over him?"
"He summoned them while messing with the God Machine."
Stephen was dimly aware that his mouth was hanging open.
"The God Machine," he repeated.
"Do you have that?" asked Bobby. "It's a holdover from this segment you did on The Daily Show..."
"Yes, yes, we have it, but it's just a prop -- it doesn't do anything -- it doesn't even trigger the sound effect -- you're telling me that this one summons gods?!"
"Not usually, no. But every once in a while--"
"And where is it now?" demanded Stephen.
"Uh, your office, I think--"
"We're going there."
"I'm not so sure this is a good idea," began Tad.
Stephen raised his voice -- and his eyebrows -- to become, for a moment, every inch his character. "Tad? Shut up and drive."
---------------------
(here.)
"We could try to talk to the writers," mused Jon. "If we assume we're being written by someone..."
Allison shook her head. "I don't think that'll work."
"Why not?"
"We're writers." Her sweeping gesture included Jon and Eric. "And there's nothing we can do for him." She nodded at Stephen, who pulled his blanket around him more tightly. "Maybe we could have changed things before this happened, when we were writing about him; but we wouldn't have bothered, because we didn't think of him as real. A writer wouldn't have sympathy for us. We can't count on writers to do anything but what's funny, or at least good for the story."
"That would be a good twist ending, though," put in Eric. "In the last scene, one of us ends up in the universe where we're just characters, being controlled by some other group of writers and actors. Call into question the very nature of reality."
"Typical arrogant, East coast, Ivy League educated, liberal thinking," grumbled Stephen, shivering.
"Whoa, whoa, hang on," protested Eric. "How does that have anything to do with--"
"You think your universe controls mine -- of all the obnoxious, paternalistic -- just because you write things that happen to me! Where do you get your ideas?"
"Ah," began Allison, "the question that every writer gets, and there's never a good answer..."
"Well, maybe you get them from me. Maybe you write about things because I do them, not the other way around. Did you ever think of that?"
His voice was shaky but fierce, and the writers all opened their mouths to answer, but none of them knew what to say.
It was Jon who finally answered. "No," he said. "I guess we didn't."
---------------------
(there.)
The Report studio was deserted when they returned; someone else -- Stephen wasn't sure who, in this universe's chain of command, it would be -- had taken over and made sure everything was cleaned up and everyone got out. The doors were even locked and the lights off. Fortunately, Tad had a key.
Once inside Stephen bolted for his office, powered by a sudden surge of adrenaline that left the others far behind. He threw open the door to find the room still in disarray from his earlier search for his keys.
Had he seen the God Machine during that search? He couldn't remember. Where had he put it? Where would his character have put it?
How did it always appear on the show?
It was a crazy idea, but not the craziest he'd had that night, and it couldn't hurt to try. He took a deep breath, stood up straight, faced forward with his most determined expression, held out his left hand, and raised it gently, motioning as though pulling something upward.
And when he looked down, there it was.
Set in a little black stand, it looked just as he always remembered it: black with accents of yellow, the top large and red and plasticky, cheap, straightforward, instantly recognizable. On television, it looked iconic. In person, it looked like a simplistic prop.
But on television it didn't rise by itself.
He raised his right hand and smacked it.
---------------------
(here.)
"And maybe," continued Stephen, on a roll now, "maybe this isn't about your writing at all. Maybe this happened because of something in my universe, because it's just as real as yours. Maybe..."
He gasped. "Oh. Oh no. I know."
"What is it?" pressed Jon, watching him intently, knowing the writers were doing the same.
"It's me," breathed Stephen, eyes wide. "It's me. I did something wrong, and this is my punishment."
"No!" exclaimed Jon. "Stephen, don't think like that. The world doesn't work that way."
Stephen's breath was coming faster now. Panic and paranoia, thought Jon. Withdrawal.
"Maybe your world doesn't," he said shakily. "Mine does. Mine does."
---------------------
(there.)
Jon wanted to run after Stephen, but he had done so much running and had so much general stress that evening that every nerve was whispering no, slow down, you're going to give yourself an attack if you keep this up.
"Go on, hurry," he said to Tad and Bobby, shooing them ahead; and he walked steadily after them. When he reached the office, the two employees were standing off to the side, watching Stephen in respectful, frightened silence.
Stephen himself was hitting the God Machine, over and over, at different angles and with different intensities, repeating all the phrases Jon remembered from various These Weeks In God. "Smack it -- bless this mess -- and away we God -- you know you want it -- I smite thee -- let 'er rip -- go, God Machine, go -- come on -- come on -- something -- anything -- anyone -- someone who can help -- someone who knows what's going on -- Lord -- Jesus -- Allah -- Hera -- please, I'd take Loki at this point -- please -- please!"
His voice grew higher and higher with every exclamation; in the doorway Jon wavered, desperately wanting to help but not knowing how, as the last plea became a shriek, nearly hysterical.
---------------------
(here.)
Jon (Not-Jon) was telling him it couldn't be, but it had to, it had to.
Didn't they see? It made so much sense! The way every piece of this world was perfectly pitched to hurt him -- the idea that he wasn't real, the Jon who didn't even care about him, the other him with the perfect life and the perfect family, the nightly show where his pain was just a colossal joke, the sudden lack of pills just when he needed them so badly -- it was too exquisitely perfect to be anything but a punishment, tailored especially for him.
"And it isn't enough," he quavered, staring at nothing, clutching his blanket against the chill. "It still isn't enough, because this isn't over yet. It won't end until I've had enough pain to balance out what I did."
Jon was saying something, but Stephen didn't listen; his mind was racing. His wrist hurt and his stomach hurt and his brain hurt and his heart hurt, and all that wasn't enough, but what he wanted most now was not to stop it, but to get it over with.
He shrugged the blanket from his left arm; the material fell slowly, as if it were underwater, until the cast was bared.
Balance it out.
Don't think about it. Don't think, or you'll be too scared. Just do it.
He lifted his arm and slammed it against the ground.
---------------------
(there.)
He was shaking, dimly aware that he was crying, each slap getting harder and harder but just as useless as the first. He had pretended he was adjusting to this, done it so well that he had started to fool himself, but the pretense had come crashing down.
Hope. He'd had it, just for a little while, this hope that something magical would happen, something divine -- deus ex machina, God from the Machine -- and when he had drawn forth the Machine with his hand that hope had surged forth, taken wing, this will work, it can take me home, God is not only present but I have a hotline to Him in my office, and then it had fallen apart, he'd been running on a wing and a prayer and suddenly the wing had gone the way of Icarus' and the prayer was clearly going unanswered.
He smacked the God Machine one more time with his right hand, and then, forgetting, not thinking, desperate, he smacked it with his left.
---------------------
(here.)
Stephen screamed.
---------------------
(there.)
Stephen screamed.
---------------------
(everywhere.)
The world cracked like an egg and split open.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Page 1 of 2