On the inside, Jeff’s backyard shed was not at all how it looked on the outside. Outside was a standard blue-painted wooden Gambrel-style storage, still soaked from the Tacoma rain that was pouring even now. We raced over behind Jeff as he led us over to the partially cracked open shed door. Along with me were our other friends Kelly, Amy, and Miles, the five of us running through the rain as we stepped into random puddles of water hidden beneath the grass, some splashing onto my foot through my sneakers and getting soaked into my socks. This had better be damned worth it, whatever Jeff dragged us over here for.
When we got in, however, my frustration soon transcended into wonder. Inside contained an elaborate setup of two large monitors and a colorfully-lit, full-glass PC tower atop a large table, a loveseat, beanbags, trashcan, and a random fire extinguisher, for whatever reason. As a bonus, the floor was also carpeted (maybe not the best idea now due to the rain plus combined with our muddy sneakers). We scruffed our dirty shoes onto the mat left at the front of the door when we got inside the shed.
“This is a nice setup, bro,” Miles commented.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“It’s only temporary,” Jeff replied. “Not a good idea to keep computers in an enclosed shed for very long.”
“I was about to say,” Amy jumped in. “Doesn’t it get really hot in here? Or really cold in the winter?”
“Sometimes, but you know how Washington is.”
“Humid,” I said.
“Exactly,” Jeff replied. “Which is why my uncle wants this moved by the fall. The humidity’s not great for the PCs. Or the bipolar weather.”
“Every state swears their weather’s bipolar,” Kelly laughed. “Unless it’s dry ass Arizona or Alaska, you know what you’re getting each year.”
“True. I think it’ll be fine. I told him that. I asked if I could get a dehumidifier, but he doesn’t wanna risk it.” Risk what, I wondered? “But anywho, you simpletons ready to have your minds blown?”
The rest of us exchanged looks best described as an amalgam of suspicion and thoughts of ‘might as well’. We didn’t get soaked for nothing. Jeff plopped into the rolling chair in front of the desk, immediately grabbing the wireless mouse by the keyboard and began clicking on an icon on his desktop titled ‘Neptune’. The shape of the icon was a circular blue shape, which contrasted against the family photo of him and his uncle in the background.
It was only the two of them his whole life. I never pried too much into his personal life, but from the conversations we’d had, it was apparent that other immediate family members weren’t present in his life. Never any mention of a mother, father, siblings, nothing. Even after graduation, he stayed behind with his uncle, who was chairman of a rising technology company called Medium Tech. Their slogan, “The future of entertainment.” They specialized in developing services for various forms of media entertainment, including film, television, radio, music services, etc. That being said, I couldn’t tell you at all what it was they specifically made.
“This shit right here is gonna rock your world,” Jeff said ecstatically. He was even grinning.
“Look, if this is some Bitcoin or that cryptocurrency trading shit, I’m not interested,” Kelly remarked.
“I am,” Miles scoffed.
“Hmm?” Kelly looked at him.
“If it makes me rich, then yeah.”
“Oh, it’s not Bitcoin,” Jeff spoke. “Or anything like that. It’s, in my opinion, way cooler than all of those things combined.” I arched my brow, and the others gave similar looks of amusement. “Okay, maybe not better than being rich, but it’s pretty damn close, I’d say.”
“What did you just click on?” Amy asked.
“It’s called Neptune,” Jeff answered. “It’s the name of the software the company my uncle works for is developing. It’s still only a prototype, but it’s a damn good one.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Oh, you’ll see,” he teased. “I mean, really, it’s better for you to see for yourself because words just aren’t enough.”
A loading screen drew over the monitor soon after as the software began to boot itself up. Once it finished, a cute little two-note jingle chimed, and we were brought to a screen with two box-shaped icons and a circular icon alongside them, containing a plus sign in the center of the circle. The text underneath the boxes read ‘Jeff’ in one and ‘Christopher’ (Jeff’s uncle) in the other. Underneath the circular one read ‘Add new profile’.
“They’re making their own Netflix?” Kelly guessed. “Or Hulu, or something?”
Jeff chuckled. “Even better. Better than all of those streaming services combined.”
Kelly raised her eyebrows. “Okay,” she muttered under her breath.
Jeff clicked on his user profile, and hilariously, we were met with what seemed to indeed be a streaming service catalog. It appeared so, anyway. I don’t see how it wasn’t. Selections of movies and TV shows we all knew, and then some I’d only heard of or didn’t know at all. They were each lined up in columns where you had to scroll through the lists to take a look. On the side of them were texts indicating what I assumed were categories.
Action/Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Superheroes, Book Adaptations.
Those were just the few that we saw. I could tell that there was more off to the side.
“You sure your uncle and his company didn’t just ripoff Netflix?” Miles said.
Jeff shook his head, laughing again. “My uncle doesn’t develop the actual software, he’s just chairman of the board. The software engineers take care of the fun stuff.”
“And you?”
“Well, interning is… well, interning. You gotta start somewhere. Wish I started earlier when I was in high school, but what can you do? Still learn a whole lot, and it’s a paid internship, so I can’t complain.”
Miles nodded. “No you can’t,” he smiled.
“Seriously, though, what is it?” Amy questioned. “You said we’ll see when we see it but I still don’t know what we’re looking at.”
“It’s a jailbroken Netflix,” Miles kept joking.
“Ha-ha.”
“That sounds kinda dope, actually,” Kelly chimed in.
“Okay, Jeff,” I cut in to quiet everyone, “Show us what it is - or explain, at least.”
“Why thank you, Anthony,” Jeff responded with that same grin. He spun his chair to where he was now facing everyone.
“Folks, what do you notice about all of these movies and TV shows?” he said as he motioned his hand towards the screen behind him.
No one said anything and we simply stood there and shrugged.
“They’re discontinued, right?” Jeff answered for them. “They’ve all ended, there’s no more to the story, yeah? No more sequels, no more new episodes, none of that. Finale, and that’s it. But not anymore…”
Those same curious yet doubtful gazes returned on each one of our faces yet again by Jeff’s eccentric behavior.
“With Neptune, you can make more,” he continued. “More episodes, more seasons, more movies in a series. Hell, wanna make a prequel of your favorite movie just ‘cause? Have at it; you can do that, too. Ever fall in love with a song from your favorite singer or rapper that, for whatever reason, didn’t get a music video? Well, now you can make one. A video game you wanna see turned into a movie? Done. Everything you can imagine, just picture in your head, can all be made possible with only a few - or, I should say, several inputs of information.”
No one said a word still, utterly baffled at what the hell he was speaking to us. It took Kelly’s outburst of laughter to break the silence.
“That was, uh… pretty good,” said Kelly. “It was a great pitch, really.”
“Jeff, c’mon, if you just wanted to invite us over to watch something, just say that,” Amy said.
“Oh sure, take a pick,” Jeff offered. “Wanna watch season 8 of Breaking Bad? Season 7 of The Fresh Prince?”
Miles chimed in. “I’m pretty sure both of those shows ended well before they reached that number of seasons,” he stated. “Breaking Bad only ran for five seasons. I don’t know about The Fresh Prince.”
“Not in Neptune they didn’t,” Jeff proclaimed. “I made more episodes.”
Miles scoffed, not believing a single word out of Jeff’s mouth. To him, and really, to most of us, he sounded out of his mind.
“Wanna see the new Diesel?” Jeff continued. “Diesel 5?”
Diesel (not to be confused with the actor Vin Diesel) was an action film series that ran on for far too damn long. It involved the main action star, Ben Tank (yes, that was his name), who drove in his diesel Ford pickup along the southwestern interstate. He ends up having to protect this pretty young woman’s life from her captors, and so throughout the whole movie, it’s just him and this girl racing down the highway and playing a cat & mouse game of other big trucks chasing them and trying to take out ole badass Ben. The first movie wasn’t terrible, to be honest. Then, as many series do once they start gaining more profit and reputation, the Diesel franchise jumped the shark and started going way overboard and ridiculous. I don’t know how the writers managed to keep coming up with more ideas and ways to have Ben Tank get caught up on the road in the same situations again and again. Just let it die already.
“There’s a Diesel 5?” I said.
“Not officially,” Jeff smiled. “Not anywhere else on anyone’s drive or stowed away in some big studio - at least, I don’t know if they do or at least are working on one. But they don’t have this one”
“They’re definitely working on one,” Miles rolled his eyes. “You know they are.” He, too, was over the drawn-out series.
“Sure, I’ll watch your bootleg, fan-made, B-rated Diesel ripoff,” Kelly snarkily agreed. “From whomever you got this. It might be so bad it’s good.”
Jeff just laughed again then exchanged looks of approval to the rest of us.
“It’s up to you guys,” he offered. “I got beers, drinks, popcorn, whatever you want to get comfortable.”
The rest of us then looked at each other.
“What do you guys think?” Kelly asked.
“I mean, you invited us over to hang out anyways, I figured,” Miles said to Jeff. “If we wanna do a movie marathon, then that’s all right with me.”
“Yeah, why not?” Amy agreed.
They then looked at me, the last one standing. Deep down, I really didn’t feel like watching it now. At least, not Diesel, in particular, and especially not whatever low-budget ripoff we were about to see. Anything else would’ve been fine.
“Sure,” I shrugged, sounding as neutral as I possibly could.
“All right, all right,” Jeff said in his best Matthew McConaughey impression. “Let’s do this.”
He then spun his chair back to the computer screen, where Jeff then scrolled a bit further down the list until he found it. The thumbnail was there. Diesel: Overdrive was the title displayed in a sleek, steel, slanted lettering like many other action movies I’d seen over the years. The poster had Ben Tank sitting in the driver’s seat of his pickup, tightly gripping the wheel with a sturdy mean face. It looked almost like one of the movie posters for Drive, the one with Ryan Gosling, except more intense. Bet it was photoshopped to look legit.
Jeff clicked on the thumbnail, followed by the list of brief movie details and plot breakdown, same as with any streaming service. Same actor, Timothy Johnson, as the star, except the director was different - bizarrely different. The same director had done all the previous films in the series, but oddly, this time it was someone else entirely. Someone so famous and in a league of his own that it was stupefying.
“Griffin Daniels did this one?” I skeptically asked.
“In my version, he did,” Jeff replied. “Remember, you can choose whatever director’s style of filmmaking you want. I figured why not choose the best and turn a cheesy blockbuster into a work of art?”
Miles shook his head, laughing. Griffin Daniels was one of the more prominent film directors out there, with his movies grossing more than a billion combined. He was up there with Spielberg, Nolan, Lucas, Cameron, and many of the other industry giants. That’s why seeing his name tied to a project of a lesser caliber to his standards was pretty hilarious. Now we knew it had to be a joke. It’s like if Martin Scorsese directed The Room. I’d actually pay to see that, now that I think about it. Probably be much better.
Jeff moused over the thumbnail and clicked ‘play.’ A black screen followed, and in the center of the screen appeared a blue loading icon, sort of like the swirling red circle on Netflix.
We watched as the opening logos commenced, accompanied by a mysterious yet exciting cinematic score in the background. On the bottom right-hand corner, a watermark of Neptune’s name and logo remained on-screen the entire time. The movie hadn’t even started yet, but I could already sense that this film was far different from the others in the series - if it were even real, that is.
“Zach Henderson did the soundtrack, too,” Jeff added. He was another major motion picture composer and producer.
“Okay,” Miles dismissively replied.
The rest of us pretty much held onto the same skepticism and doubt as we did from Jeff’s first attempt at selling us on the whole concept. But after seeing the opening sequence, and then several more scenes had passed, before we knew it, we each had our eyes glued and huddled around the limited space we had around the bright computer screen long enough to make it past the halfway mark. So much time went by, and I'd been so invested in the movie, I’d forgotten about questioning the absurdity of it all. I couldn’t believe it. Jeff didn’t lie. He couldn’t have. This was real. The actors, the scenes, soundtrack, editing. The way Timothy Johnson’s facial movements, voice, expressions, and the way his stunts were executed felt genuine, as though he himself signed and agreed to this. No, it wasn’t really him, as Jeff claims. But how was it not? It was a legit film - an actual worthy addition to the worn out Diesel franchise. I’ll be goddamned, but Jeff stayed true to his word, it was a solid work of art! It was nothing like any of the others before it. Surprisingly, it had depth to it, substance, a good plotline with stakes at hand, a good villain, character development - everything you’d want in any film regardless of its genre and general audience. It’s like whoever made this (or whatever made this) truly cared and put their heart into it.
“This is crazy,” I muttered out of nowhere, as everyone else was still lost in the story.
Amy then let out a delighted guffaw. “Honestly, though,” she agreed. “Jeff, seriously, how did you get this? And why is it so good? Like, who made this?”
“I told you,” Jeff shrugged. “Griffin Daniels.”
Amy smacked her mouth. “Seriously, c’mon. You can’t hold out on us like that.”
Jeff turned to face her. “Thank my uncle. And whoever coded the Neptune program.”
“You’re serious?” Amy exclaimed, now more enthralled. “This is really just all AI-generated?”
“Yep.”
“Like a CPU or something?” Miles asked.
“Well, the CPU is just the processor,” Jeff said. “It controls a lot of things like hardware in the computer and the execution of each individual-”
“In English, Jeff.”
“Basically, it’s the type of AI that’s based on limited memory and self-awareness, on top of reinforced learning.”
“That was… broken English, but I think I get it.”
“He basically means that it learns and makes better future decisions based on what it’s given, right?” I elaborated and asked for confirmation.
“You got it,” Jeff confirmed.
“‘Self-aware’?” Kelly said. “What do you mean by that? Like the Terminator or Ultron?”
“No, no, that’s an over-exaggerated Hollywood trope. The self-awareness of the Neptune software is only limited to what it’s programmed to do: make different types of mediums. It can’t go beyond that. The self-awareness component only adds to the authenticity of the movies or TV shows it creates. You ever try those AI-generated story creators? Ones where you put in a sample of text from either a book or whatever, and then the algorithm takes that and continues to make it up for you?”
“I’ve seen those before,” I commented. “Tried it for fun, too.”
“So you know how flawed it is? Adding random words that don’t fit the context at all?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, Neptune, as you can see, feels like a real person directed the project and put their heart and soul into it. Everything’s been properly edited and thoroughly reviewed before final cut.”
“But this is all still just AI?” Amy spoke. “A constantly-learning AI?”
“Exactly,” Jeff answered.
We were speechless and dumbfounded. Amy, like the rest of us, had to take a second to really register it all before asking the next big, exciting question that we were all thinking.
“Do you have more?” she asked with suspense.
Jeff, eyes glued onto the film, held that same ecstatic grin.
“My dear,” he said, “You can have your own profile and library of personal mediums tailored to your liking if you want. All of you.”
And now, a small grin of my own was starting to form over my face.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
After taking a couple of days of having Jeff help install the Neptune software onto each of our hard drives, including helping some of us build and setup our own PC towers along with GPUs (it takes a lot of processing power, as I’d imagine) I was overjoyed to begin creating my profile. The steps were pretty straightforward and simple enough. During the initial setup, I was given the option of two different user experiences: Confined Reality (CR) mode or Chaos mode.
CR mode sounded extremely complicated the first time Jeff explained it to us, and it took me a couple of times hearing it again before it clicked. Essentially, whatever medium (movie, TV show, music video, commercial, etc.) I choose to have Neptune generate for me will always be taken into consideration and used as a ‘learned memory’ for the AI. An example would be if I made a series of my own or sequel to a pre-existing movie, and the AI generates a script that calls for a major character death. Obviously, depending on the rules and elements of the story, of course, that character can’t then show up in the next film of that series. That would be a continuity error. In layman’s terms, if I decide to generate my own new episodes of The Walking Dead, for instance, instead of waiting for the new season, I can’t simply bring back characters who’ve already died earlier in the show. That would be breaking the rules of the confined reality established in the storyworld. Now, if I was creating a more fantasy-based story in a Marvel or some other franchise film, there’s more than enough ways to pull that off in that particular universe (they do it all the time, in fact).
But what if I wanted to say screw it and just have Neptune do whatever I tell it, without considering the principles of realistic possibilities and let loose? Well, that’s where Chaos mode comes into play. In Chaos mode, it doesn’t matter who died before or how the story has progressed thus far. Neptune makes it work. Now, that’s not to say that that decision doesn’t come with its own consequences; there’s still no guarantee that whatever it comes up with won’t make any sense at all or could’ve been better executed with previously taught knowledge taken into account. But, as we all observed with Diesel: Overdrive, the program gives its 100-percent into making the best possible medium it can. There’s no half-assing anything. If I want a Quentin Tarantino-style film to be generated based on whatever story I want, it’s not going to merely ‘imitate’ his artistic style. It’s going to make sure it creates the most authentic production with so much passion and heart that you’d believe Tarantino did it himself.
As downright phenomenal and exciting as this technology was, I, like the rest of us, also knew how creepy it sounded. The way it could easily replicate any single person’s style, based on the few or many loaded reels of information it’s given. That was the real doozy of it all. How easy it was. It was like sorcery. And the way it could simulate and create cinematic shots, locations, set designs, lighting, color grading, sound mixing - shit, even a whole damn soundtrack! It could do all of those things in a relatively short amount of time. Generating a standard 90-minute film takes only 30 minutes, even 45 at the most, depending on the budget and style of the production. Anything much longer like two-and-a-half hours takes about an hour at a time, sometimes a little longer. TV shows typically always take much longer to generate per season, especially hour-long episode formats. But it’s crazy that I can take a year’s worth - or sometimes more than that - of man-hours that it takes to make a film and have it all put together and condensed onto the Neptune program for me to watch in the comfort of my room in a short amount of time.
I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. I was shaking from uncontrollable excitement. I didn’t even know where to start. All of the shows that I wish didn’t get canceled or movies I wish weren’t stuck in development hell… there were just so many. I could make more seasons of Parks & Recreation, A Different World, Spectacular Spider-Man, Firefly, Black Mirror, Mad Men. I was listing things off in my mind in no particular order. For now, I took those specific examples and loaded them into the Cloud. The Cloud was where the user stores various mediums into Neptune, that way the program can start learning and taking from those exact styles for when I want to have more mediums generated from them.
That was one of the biggest downsides to it all. Waiting. The initiation process was the most time-consuming because the software still needed to learn. I couldn’t just tell it to replace all the prior James Bond films with only Daniel Craig as the lead character because, well, ‘technically’, it doesn’t know who James Bond even is yet, or Daniel Craig for that matter. That information has to be uploaded into the Cloud first by inputting the film’s ISAN number. In essence, it’s like a unique identifier for movies and similar forms of audiovisual media, like an ISBN for books. IMDB numbers worked as well and were much easier to find. I’d have my list of compiled mediums stored in the Cloud database where the AI uses them to learn and adapt and considers using them in reference to making future creations. So if I uploaded all of the James Bond films, or even just half of them, that’s more than enough for Neptune to go off of and create an authentic 007 storyline. Or, if I don’t want to change anything in the story, and only have Daniel Craig replace whichever actor is portraying Bond in a particular film, it can do that as well. It’s essentially a more advanced version of deepfake technology, which is no less uncanny, but mesmerizing nevertheless.
Other things that could be uploaded into the Cloud for AI-learning were pictures, video clips, GIFs, audio samples such as voice clips or readings, personally-made scripts or bodies of texts, and many more. However, with all of these things being readily available, the utmost important rule that Jeff even stressed to me was to not, by any means, upload personal information. That includes real people I knew in my everyday life that weren’t professional actors in the industry. In other words, I couldn’t have myself star in a medium or have my friends or family as an ensemble cast. That was the other big setback to the program. I thought it was pretty dumb, as a matter of fact.
There was a prompt that asked me which setting I wanted to choose before continuing. CR or Chaos. It was pre-selected for CR mode, which was the recommended setting. There was additional text that rambled on and on about something else I didn’t much care to read right now. I just wanted to jump in and get started. CR was fine with me for now.
I was patient, however. I let the program take its time to learn whatever I gave it. I listed off literally hundreds of mediums to store in the Cloud. Overall, this took just about the rest of the day to process. By the next day, it was good to use. Now the real fun could begin.
Over the next several days, I didn’t leave my apartment and hardly left my room, and if I did it was only to use the bathroom or to go eat something. I watched everything I could come up with. Marlon Brando as Rocky Balboa, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as The Terminator, simulated new episodes of Spongebob Squarepants in its old-fashioned season one artistic format, a movie adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series (done right this time, might I add), Jurassic Park 3 directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Kathleen Kennedy again, the Star Wars prequels redone in the quality of the original trilogy, Nicholas Cage as Mrs. Doubtfire, Wesley Snipes as Black Panther, Emily Blunt if she originally got the role as Black Widow, Will Smith if he originally got the role of Neo in The Matrix, the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child directed by Chris Columbus.
Mixing up different combinations of genres and mediums, and pairing certain actors and celebs with one another to see how much chemistry they had and playing with the character dynamics was far better than any RPG or sandbox game I’d ever played. It was comparable to being like God himself. I didn’t even notice the watermark after a while and got used to it being there as a permanent stamp on the screen. Everything generated from Neptune’s software is already pre-coded to contain the watermark in the bottom right, which is basically to protect from copyright strikes and prevents from the reselling or distribution of Neptune-produced mediums. Neptune is only for personal use, and anything beyond that could result in legal consequences from major studio executives and estates.
Though, like with any new and entertaining piece of technology someone uses from the time they first use it, it’s bound to get old after a while unless additional content or features gets added to it. Of course, I still had hundreds upon thousands of possibilities to create, and I hadn’t even used a fraction of my profile’s allowable memory (things had to either be moved or deleted to save up space). But using the same actors and forms of media that were already made was starting to get slightly dull. Not exactly boring, just repetitive as a process. I wanted something more.
I remembered what Jeff said and the prompt text that popped up when I was creating my profile. Do not upload personal information by any means.
But why? What difference did it make? All of those people were real, the actors, directors, writers, producers, film crew; they were all real people, too, albeit more famous and richer than I could ever hope to be.
So I decided to say screw it and create my own sitcom, sort of like Friends and iCarly, starring me as the main character, of course, and the rest of the gang. I came up with potential titles, such as ‘The Anthony Show’, ‘Everybody Loves Anthony’, ‘I Love Anthony’, and many other cheap knockoff titles. But eventually, this one title stood out to me, as ridiculous as it sounded, and I eventually settled upon Chaos TV! Jeff, Miles, Amy, Kelly, and I would all be playing ourselves in various episodes of different sorts of misadventures and hilarious situations like any other American sitcom. The show even had its own opening and catchy theme song. The format was multicam and with the style of being shot in front of a live audience. And my God, the jokes were funny as hell. If this were anyone else’s show, I’d pay to see this. Which is funny, because it was just ourselves, except we had lines and an exact storyline to follow. My parents even guest-starred a couple of times, and Kelly smacking Miles in the back of the head at least once per episode became a running gag. It was quality television.
There was just one weird thing that didn’t exactly take away from the show, but was clearly the elephant in the room. It wasn’t just the five of us as the leading cast - me, Miles, Jeff, Kelly, and Amy - but a sixth person as well. Frank. That was his name. Residing in a comfy Seattle condo, six friends, Anthony, Jeff, Miles, Kelly, Amy, and Frank, get themselves into all sorts of trouble and wacky adventures while dealing with their own personal struggles of young adulthood and chasing their dreams. That was synopsis in a nutshell. But who the hell was Frank? I didn’t know a Frank...
Of course, Neptune could still make up and cast whatever it wanted to make for good storytelling, and I certainly trusted its process. However, I just found it unusual that given its premise, it would add a sixth person to our close friend group. It felt so out of place. I wanted to ask around and see if anyone knew who Frank was or if it was a mutual friend of ours, but then I’d be admitting to breaking the rule of using our real selves to be cast for my own entertainment. Jeff wouldn’t be too happy about that.
I opened my search engine in another tab and tried searching ‘chaos tv’ and ‘frank’ as the main keywords, but then stopped myself. I was an idiot. The show’s not real, I was reminded. Chaos TV! only existed because of Neptune.
I decided to continue watching, as Neptune already had five seasons of Chaos TV! lined up. Frank’s character stood out like a sore thumb, and that was not to say he was the true star of the show. On the contrary, he felt distant from the rest of us and didn’t have much charisma or chemistry to the rest of the cast. Sometimes his line delivery felt awkward or slightly uncomfortable. For example, if he were to be exchanging dialogue with one of us, especially Amy or Kelly, his words just sounded off, almost creepy, I dare say. I would also notice that at times when he wasn’t speaking a line, he would either heavily stare at the person currently speaking or simply stare off into space. Everyone else would at least be somewhat engaging with the other person or doing something to still feel like part of the scene… but not Frank. The infliction of his tone on certain lines didn’t land right all the time and made him seem a bit socially awkward. Even the side stories that involved him fell flat. I didn’t get his deal. What purpose did he serve? The subplots involving him weren’t even about him, really. He was always a supporting character to someone else’s predicament in a given episode, so I still didn’t know who he was even on-screen. Yet, he went everywhere we did in the show. I guess not every ensemble cast carries their own weight in a series. There’s always that one. There are some exceptions, yes, but it’s not unusual for it to happen.
Fortunately, after season one, Frank left the show, and it was just us five, as it should’ve been from the start. Thank goodness. Every other episode in the show after that started to feel much more relaxed and vibrant. Not that it wasn’t before, but Frank’s presence in the earlier episodes could really be distracting at times. Now the show was really starting to find its footing and it became even more hilarious. I’d give it a hundred Emmys if I could. Not to myself, though. Turns out I was a terrible actor. At least, I thought so. Though I was the lead, I certainly didn’t steal the show. That went to Kelly and Miles, and even Jeff and Amy had their moments where they held all the attention. I was just sort of there. Maybe it was awkward for me to watch and hearself myself on camera. But I quickly got over it and continued to enjoy watching everyone else carry out their roles throughout the show.
Then something else strange changed after season three. With no warning at all, Amy and Kelly were cut from the show, and were replaced with three other actresses, one of which looked familiar to me. They were different characters entirely named Jenna and Beatrice. Jeff, Miles, and I remained on the show, and again, it was just the five of us.
That was strange, I thought. What the hell happened to Amy and Kelly? I went ahead and tried seeing if I could re-generate the current episodes after season three to try adding them back to the show as permanent leads. When I prompted Neptune to start generating, however, an error occurred with the text prompt reading, “Continuity Error. Please try generating another medium.”
What the hell did that even mean? At no point in the show did Amy or Kelly’s characters need to get written off nor was it ever implied that they wouldn’t return. I skimmed through the rest of season four, not watching every episode in its entirety. I wanted to see if at any point they would show up again, whether they made a guest star appearance or something.
But there was nothing. Season four was over and when I moved on to season five and searched through all of its 22 episodes, I was met with the same outcome. Kelly and Amy were no longer in the show. In fact, there was never any other mention of them again. The way Jenna and Beatrice were introduced in season four was due to us three guys needing two extra roommates, essentially to replace the previous two girls. Oddly, when I went to rewatch the season four premiere episode, their names were still never mentioned. It was only implied that we had two roommates originally, but never their names or that we were all good friends. That was so strange. So strange, in fact, the show drastically declined in quality for me. None of it made sense at all. Why would the script severely change like that?
Then, as I skimmed over the timeline with my mouse, able to preview the scene and exact shot before jumping to it, I noticed at the very end of the episode, unlike the rest, after the credits was a line of text, perhaps a message, accompanied with what I could make out as two pictures of what I assumed were young women. I wasn’t sure if I was crazy or not, but it looked like Amy and Kelly.
I went ahead and clicked over to the closing credits, just as they were about to finish. I knew what would follow next was the very last message. Once the credits were done rolling, the screen went to black. I curiously waited to see what would show next, and I really wish I didn’t.
“Oh my God,” I muttered under my breath.
Across the screen were the words, “In loving memory of Amy Nguyen and Kelly Watkins,” with their pictures displayed underneath. The same pictures I uploaded of them when sending everyone’s personal information through the Cloud.
“Oh my God,” I repeated.
Panicked, I immediately called Amy first, then I’d call Kelly as well. Amy’s phone rang for much longer than I’d hoped, and I grew more and more anxious.
“Hello?” her voice finally answered from the other line.
I was so thrown off, though, relieved, I almost forgot to say anything. “Amy?” I said.
“Yeah, Anthony?”
“... Sorry, I must’ve butt-dialed you,” I improvised.
“Oh. No worries… you good?”
I was about to tell her, but then quickly hung up instead. I didn’t have to make that as awkward as I did, but I had to check on Kelly next. Her phone rang for far too long as well, except this time no one answered. Now I was very worried.
I called Miles, to which he shortly picked up the phone after only a couple of rings.
“Yes, Anthony?” Kelly answered on the other end, to my surprise.
I stammered, confused as hell. “Kelly?” I responded. “Uh…”
“Miles had to do ‘number two’, as disgusting as that sounds.”
“... Why are you with-”
“Did you need something?” she quickly cut me off.
I hesitated for a moment. “Never mind,” I said, then hung up the phone.
As weirded out as I was by what just happened, as I’m sure Amy and Kelly were nonetheless, I was at least glad they were both fine. But then I kept looking at the still image of them on the screen, their faces underneath those haunting words.
“In loving memory…”
The show may not have been real, but still… what could’ve prompted it to even say that? For my entertainment? What kind of sick form of entertainment was that? I didn’t ask for this. I would never. But now I knew that the only way I could even hope to maybe get to the bottom of this thing was to tell someone - that ‘someone’ being Jeff. He would know the answers, or at least enough to try troubleshooting the issue or come up with an explanation. Then he’d know I broke the rules. Shit. What else was I gonna do?
I could keep watching, I thought. It’d be sick, though. That’s what I felt. It would feel wrong to keep watching, even after the fact. Maybe if I kept telling myself that it wasn’t real, maybe that would take me out of it. At the very least, I could keep the show running in the background with me periodically checking here and there to see what else changed.
I ran the program to generate two more seasons. Season six took about three hours to generate. Once it was ready by the evening, I sat down and watched. The season premiere had barely begun, but I already watched in utter shock and terror at what I was now present on the screen. Jeff and Miles were now cut from the show, and I was the only remaining lead from the original cast. I couldn’t be sure, but considering the events that followed with Amy and Kelly’s departure from the show, whatever that cause might’ve been, I inevitably, instinctually knew Jeff and Miles followed the same fate as their co-stars…
My God, what the fuck was happening? Why was it doing this? Why was it making these bold decisions? I didn’t even watch all of the episodes, but just from skimming through the first few, Jeff and Miles didn’t return not once. Though it wasn’t real, I was truly starting to get scared now. My friends, my actual friends in the Neptune medium were dying off and I didn’t understand why.
When I tried to skip ahead to season seven, something went wrong. I got that same damn error as before. ‘Continuity error.’ How was that even possible? I didn’t change anything else that the AI didn’t already do itself. It didn’t let me make any more seasons past season six. I couldn’t believe it…
I couldn’t make more episodes of my own series - my own goddamn show - due to two simple words.
Continuity error.
I had to tell Jeff...
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