Season Finale - Part II
In Part I, we meet Zach, a writer on The Lost Scallion. When Brian’s baby Morgan is offered up to die in the season finale, Zach is asked to prepare Morgan for the task without telling him what’s coming.
I met Morgan for coffee the next morning. The beard that I had asked him to work on was coming in nicely. It was grayer than I’d expected, but I thought it made him look distinguished. It did remind me that I needed to double check what age the base build Brian had used for him had been. Morgan had one of those faces that seemed wise and strong when you first met him and it had stayed that way through everything we’d thrown at him.
“Do you have the next script?” Morgan asked. He sipped on his latte. It had taken him a while to get used to coffee. It didn’t exist in The Last Scallion universe and Morgan had insisted that we do most of our early one on ones at a pub, but Edina got tired of me coming home wasted and I found that Morgan had trouble retaining the character work through hangovers. We’d been slowly working on caffeine as a substitute.
I told him that I didn’t have the next script yet but that I had something to talk over with him instead.
“Did they work out what the scarab dust was going to be yet?” Morgan asked. “We still doing dipping tobacco? Clyde said that he heard we might be changing it. I don’t like tobacco. It scares me.”
“No, it’s still dip. I think. I’ll talk to props,” I said. Morgan didn’t cut his nails often. I think costuming liked them that way. Added to the whole space pirate vibe. There was a little bit of dirt or something stuck under his ring finger. I wished I could help him scrub it out.
“I actually wanted to talk to you about the end of the season,” I said.
“Oh?” Morgan asked. “Do you know where we’re going for the summer tour? I hope somewhere cold.” The convention circuit was the closest thing babies got to a vacation. Most of the time, travel means shooting and cramped trailers. Convention panels meant hotel rooms and supervised downtime in international cities. Last year, in one of my many attempts to squeeze some life or inspiration out of Morgan, I had joined him through a bar crawl in the Manhattan skywalks. I helped him vomit over the edge of a railing. Morgan was a quiet drunk. And a forgetful one.
“Actually, man, you’re gonna die. So I don’t know if that’s in the cards,” I said. I’m not really sure why I said it. I looked down at my coffee and that stupid leaf art that had gone out of fashion three decades ago.
“Oh,” Morgan said.
I tried my best to explain the arc that we had plotted out. That I had lobbied for it to be a big, dramatic, redemptive moment and that it was going to be the emotional climax of the season. I threw in the bit about The Culling Man because Morgan and The Culling Man were feuding over some drama with the make-up team and I thought he would appreciate getting to take him out.
“So this is happening,” he said, but it was maybe more of a question. He looked past my shoulder, and I was an idiot and turned around and saw nothing but a younger woman holding hands with a smiling older woman wearing an ugly pink cardigan.
“Oh, yeah. It’s where we’re going. Drew put it on the board and everything,” I said.
“It’s on the board?” Morgan asked. I nodded. I changed the subject to the wardrobe changes that costuming had planned out for episode seven. Morgan ordered a cold tea drink with chunks of dragon fruit floating inside. He spun his straw around and watched the fruit bits swirl in a little plastic whirlpool. He would nod after every sip, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t listening.
I tried to talk to Brian about it the next morning, but it didn’t go well. I should have known it would go poorly because he was sitting at the baby maker and Brian hates to be interrupted during baby making, but I also just wanted to talk to him because I felt like I had royally fucked all of this up and Brian still probably knew Morgan better than I did and I always suspected that the two still talked on the reg. I kept trying to describe Morgan’s reaction about dying to Brian to see if he had any insight and Brian kept messing up the feet on the baby he was building for the next episode by adding too many toes or accidentally sculpting one foot bigger than the other because I was distracting him. He eventually groaned and flushed the proto-baby he had been gestating into the bioshredder and had the generator pop out a new basebuild fetus. He waited for me to finish asking my questions before saying a quick, “That’s rough, man. Sounds like you fucked up bad,” and returning to work. I took my cue to leave.
*****
We shot on location the following week in the floodplains outside of Baltimore. I sat next to Angela on the plane and we shared ear buds and caught up on the current season of LawyerGuy together. We both liked to hate-watch it. There was a brief moment a few seasons back when it looked like we both might get an offer from the showrunner, Ezekiel Mann, to jump ship off Scallion, but Zeke ghosted us one week after our portfolios were submitted and then never got back in touch. We both secretly blamed Drew, who we had seen shout down agents from other studios in the past. Watching the show in dumb protest was the only thing that Angela and I had to bond over, and I tend to take friendships where I can get them. I asked Angela after our third episode of LawyerGuy was over what she thought the babies were watching in the lower decks. She reminded me that they didn’t have screens down there for shows, but there was a foosball table so they would be fine.
The location scout insisted that Maryland shores were a good pick for our marsh planet, but it really didn’t look much different from the other coastal states these days: muddy, hot as fuck, and filled with trash. Edina went to college outside of DC and she always spoke highly of riding boats through the canals. “Everything is old there,” she would say. I didn’t see it. I just felt like the world was sticking to me.
I could tell Morgan wasn’t enjoying it either, but he was a trooper. I’d seen him soldier through blizzards, hurricanes, and getting bits of Cynthia’s brain matter in his teeth. Despite the nickname, babies weren’t built to complain like the union actors did back in the day. Morgan stood in a wide-brimmed costume hat and stretched on a dry patch amid the muck. I’d seen him do this before. He claimed it helped him slip between “Scallion Morgan” and “off duty Morgan.” I joined him once and hurt my ankle doing this twisting thing he did with his hips.
Morgan saw me and stopped his stretching. I waved and he nodded. His stained brown shirt clung to his chest, and I saw for a moment just how easily he could kick my ass if he wanted to.
“How you doing?” I asked.
“I’m unhappy,” he said.
I blabbed something out of my mouth that probably didn’t sound like words because I’m pretty sure my tongue disappeared down my throat.
“It’s too hot here,” Morgan said. “I didn’t think it would look like this. You said we were looking for a muddy desert. There’s too much trash.”
“I’m sorry, man,” I replied. “I didn’t pick the spot. You’ll be fine, right?”
Morgan shrugged and went back to stretching. He placed his hands down in the mud and lowered his body. His eyes were closed, but I could see the strain on his face.
Drew directed that episode. As showrunner, he normally got three or four every season, usually the big ones or potential awards fodder. That episode had a lot going on. The Culling Man had damaged The Scallion, and it was marooned on this barren marsh planet. The crew was separated and hunted down one by one. The Culling Man was really living for it. Laughing all evil and biting into the extra babies we’d churned out with real ferocity. Drew couldn’t help but laugh when one’s throat was torn out and blood shot all over the camera. Brian was ecstatic. He excelled in making fucked up babies.
The Culling Man was a method baby. He gave up having a nonshow self a while back. He was self-aware enough to know to keep his slaughter to production time, but he didn’t sip coffee or socialize. As far as I could tell, he spent his off time sitting and waiting for his metallic fangs and bone claws to be attached by makeup. Angela said that some of the babies really liked him. Found him inspirational. I couldn’t see it. Guy was a self-important jackass.
Like most shoots, I spent most of my time tailing Morgan. He was the only baby I was in charge of writing at the time and so it fell on me to make sure he didn’t hurt himself and was able to switch between modes without difficulty. I thought the revelation that he would eventually get to take down The Culling Man would make him want to be around set more, but he kept wandering off. I lost sight of him once and found him sharing a joint with a woman in costuming. The crew aren’t supposed to interact regularly with the babies, but I didn’t want to get her in trouble. Edina was always afraid of us switching to home grown crew to shirk the unions like we had when it came to on-screen talent. I don’t think the tech is there yet, artistic operations of camera drones or coordinating shoots required significantly more cognitive capacity than what was available from even the most cutting edge babies. But I know Edina and her coworkers were are all anxious anyways. I know I would be too if I thought babies could write worth a damn. When I saw Morgan and the woman, I just motioned for her to pass me the weed and she did, slipping back towards set.
My dad used to say the stuff in his day was stronger, but I guess I don’t really have any way of gauging that. Weed is sort of an old person thing anyways. I took a long drag and passed it to Morgan. He muttered a thanks and finished the rest.
“Have you ever seen a whale?” Morgan asked. You could see the ocean from there if you squinted real hard or maybe that was just more smog, which I always thought kinda looked like simmering water.
“Nah, man. They’re extinct. Edina says she saw one when she was like four, but I don’t believe her,” I said. Edina had an eye for attaching meaning to images. She probably saw a boat and made it something beautiful. I loved that about her.
“I wish I could have seen one,” Morgan said. “I think I would have liked being big and swimming around and singing songs that only other whales could understand.”
“You ready for today’s scene?” I asked, changing the subject. Morgan nodded and said he needed to stretch.
Drew liked to cram tons of content into one episode, so in addition to The Culling Man getting to murder a lot of babies, this was also going to be the episode where Chloe found out that Morgan was tripping on scarab dust. It was supposed to be what would set off his whole fall from grace before we keyed up his redemption arc. Drew and I spent over a month plotting it out. Morgan would sneak off to snort the dust then Chloe was going to accidentally step into a sink pit and Morgan would realize almost too late that Chloe was sinking and dying and then we would play it up that maybe Chloe had died and that Morgan really messed up and then Morgan would pull Chloe out of the pit at the last second and Chloe would be thankful at first but then she would see his dilated eyes which would set Morgan off and make him leave Chloe alone in the marsh again.
I had run over the whole scene multiple times with Morgan, and he seemed to get it. I knew he had been replaying the script over and over, and besides, he had made it through much worse shit.
Drew demanded that I sit next to him for this bit. That was the one thing I liked about working with him. He got that it wasn’t just the babies that were our babies. Drew called action, the camera drones spiraled out, and Morgan and Chloe began their fateful walk. Drew had one of the drones move in real close on Morgan’s face during the scarab high. It had occurred to me then that this was probably the first time in a long time we had really shown his face. Looking at him through the camera, I realized how the tragedies in his race across the Forever Galaxy had aged him. Drew zoomed in on Morgan’s eyes while another drone caught Chloe’s fall. Morgan’s irises filled the frame. There’s nothing more impressive than a baby who knows how to jump fully into their fiction. There’s a magic there and I get to be a part of it. I swear I got hard.
Morgan pulled Chloe out of the mud and Drew milked the drama out of all of it. He had the drones zooming in and out and I was worried that it was maybe too much, but I didn’t really get a say at that point. Chloe touched Morgan’s face and turned him to look at her. I always regretted not getting to work with Chloe. She had a way of looking right through you, which was super rare for a baby. Angela had to have been on some beautiful shit the night she made Chloe.
Chloe yelled and cried. They both knew how bad the scarab dust was. They both saw what it did to the gibbons on New Venus. She was scared and betrayed because they all needed Morgan. Morgan stood there and looked past her as she shouted and cried. He glanced down at his hands. Then he decked her across the face and ran off.
“What the fucking Jesus,” Drew shouted. He ran towards set with about half a dozen other crew members. Chloe clutched her jaw. She was bleeding out of her mouth. There was a bit of blobby pink on the ground near her that may have been her tongue. The drones kept filming and circling overhead.
The baby doctor arrived to check on Chloe. She didn’t cry. Just held her jaw and sat there. Drew squatted in the corner and covered his eyes. I kept looking at him, hoping he would give me some kind of direction or tell me what to do. Angela stood next to Chloe. She may have been crying. I could tell she wanted to touch Chloe and grasp her shoulder to see if she was okay, but the doctor kept blocking her. I wanted to call Edina. I left to find Morgan instead.
Security had stopped him out by the container homes we used for the babies. Morgan was sitting on an old air conditioner and the two guards standing beside him didn’t seem to know what to do. I waved to tell them it was okay and that they could leave me alone with Morgan. They stayed anyways and I felt stupid and small.
“Chloe okay?” Morgan asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“Oh,” Morgan said. He rolled his head back onto his shoulders and looked at the sky. I was worried he was going to start asking me about eagles or stretching again.
“What the fuck, man?” I asked.
The larger of the two guards got a call on her walkie. She tapped Morgan on his shoulder and helped him to his feet.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Locking him up for now, that’s all I know,” she said.
Morgan vomited. The guard cursed and let him go. It was all over his shirt and his knees. I crouched down to look at him. His eyes were still dilated.
“Are you fucked up?” I asked. Part of me hoped that all of this was props and effects’ fault. That somehow they had messed up Morgan’s dosage and now whatever substitute we were using for scarab dust was making him strung out and act like an asshole.
“I’m sorry,” Morgan said. I pulled him in and rested his head against my shoulder. I felt the vomit stick to my shirt. I felt like my kindergarten teacher, holding me when I had a meltdown in class after she read us a sad story about the world’s last orangutan.
I helped the guards carry him over to his container. Morgan wrapped one arm around my shoulder and one around the guard’s. She did most of the work. We placed him on the little couch by the mini fridge like he was our drunk little brother. I asked Morgan if needed anything before we locked him in. He told me he missed Brian. I left.
Drew called a meeting later that day inside his trailer jet. I sat on a futon by myself while Brian and Angela lay perpendicular to each other on different areas of a sectional.
“So what the hell do we do here?” Drew asked. He had pulled up the board. It looked like a preschool art project with dozens of blocky letters and colored lines and blobs all running into each other over and over again. His forehead had smudged ink all over it.
“Is Chloe okay?” Angela asked.
“Yeah, did she bite off her tongue?” Brian asked.
“We’re growing her a new one. She’ll be fine. It may even be ready by tomorrow. Besides we got all of her scenes for this episode done anyways,” Drew said.
“So we just reshoot the scene tomorrow? I bet I can get Morgan talked down by then. He’s game to do it again,” I lied. I had no idea what was going on in that baby’s head.
“No, we’re keeping it. I love it. That’s like, the best shit we’ve gotten all season,” Drew said. He was right. It was great. We all knew it. This was the benefit to using babies in the first place. For the weird on-set moments you couldn’t predict but could always fix later. The days of staged punches and irritable stuntworkers seemed so quaint. You can’t fake authentic baby pain.
Cynthia used to think differently. She used to love hearing about how camera angles and creative staging could fake injuries. She would practice original slapstick routines in her downtime, fake tripping and squealing imagined sprains and stubbed toes. I used to think it was her creative side coming through. I wondered if any of it was there in her last moments. If in the final seconds her body was still in one piece, Chloe was prepping herself for a pratfall.
“I mean, yeah, it looks great, but it messes up the narrative,” Angela said.
“Yeah, Morgan’s a main stay, but there’s no way we’re gonna be able to sell the audience on a redemption narrative after this,” Brian said. He looked shaken. His demon babies had done worse. Much worse. But he had written them that way.
“We’ve gotten away with worse,” I said. “The Culling Man is our highest polling character right now and he tore out three throats today.”
“No, they’re right,” Drew said. He began scribbling again. “Morgan just drugged himself out and punched a woman in one scene. We can’t bring him back from that in time for the finale.”
“I say The Culling Man just guts him,” Brian said. “He needs one more big kill before we take him out. Then Chloe or someone can kill him. Empowerment, right?”
I’m pretty sure my jaw unhinged and fell off. I turned to Brian, but he looked away from me. Morgan’s death was a given at this point, but I never pictured Brian would turn into a sadist writer. Making Morgan a Culling Man victim made sense though. Maybe it would make the villain’s defeat all the more enticing.
“I just think we need to give Chloe her moment,” Angela said. She had been working with Chloe for three seasons now. We all knew both she and Angela deserved a scene to prove themselves.
“Sure, awesome, great,” Drew said, clapping. “Angela, take point on that. Zach, you work on keeping Morgan under control and work him through the new arc.”
“I don’t know where his head’s at right now,” I said. “He’s been really weird since I told him he was going to die three weeks ago.” Sometimes, I’m a real idiot, and this moment was one of the worst.
Angela’s mouth fell open. Brian closed his eyes and looked like he wanted me shot on the spot. Drew breathed out a long, heavy breath and sat down on the floor beneath the board. I waited a minute for someone to talk or yell at me, but it never came. I left and went back to my motel room.
To be continued…
Nic Anstett, a writer from Baltimore, MD, loves the bizarre, spectacular, and queer. She is a graduate from the University of Oregon’s MFA program and has attended workshops through the Clarion Foundation, Lambda Literary, and Tin House, where she was a 2021 scholar. Her published and forthcoming fiction can be found in publications such as One Story, Witness Magazine, Passages North, Lightspeed Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories and a novel.
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