Metafiction: A Superhero Story Gone Wrong

        “Uh, Boss? The Hollywood guys said that they just finished the video.”

           “Great. Tell them to send it over. Let me see it.”

           “Uh, sure Boss. But, uh, are you sure you wrote this? I mean, uh, is this the right story?”

           “Yeah, yeah, of course it is. Hand it over already.”

           As a comic book writer, Robert Gream had been creating all sorts of stories for quite a few years now. His main specialty was superhero comics, and the video that his assistant was talking about was a live-action film titled Particlo: Origins; it was a movie that showed the introduction—or, as Robert liked to say, “Call to Adventure,”—of Particlo, one of his superhero characters. Particlo, whose real identity is a man called William Irving, had the ability to dissolve himself into tiny particles and move them by his free will; he, as well as being pretty popular in general, was one of Robert’s favorites so he had great expectations for this movie.

           Unfortunately, not long after handing over the script to the director, Robert was involved in a traffic accident that hospitalized him for a very long time, so he wasn’t able to directly oversee the production of the movie. Nevertheless, Robert instructed the production team to take any suggestions from anyone in my workshop so he wasn’t too worried.

           “Well, here it is, Boss.”

           Robert, a smile on his face, leaned back and watched the video as the assistant left. The opening credits rolled and the actor who played the protagonist appeared.

           William Irving lived in the suburbs of Belmont Massachusetts. Apparently born without the ability to laugh, cry, or show emotion in any other way, the only time William had ever left his town was when a friend convinced him to watch a parade downtown 3 years ago. He had not enjoyed that experience very much.

           “So far so good,” Robert remarked out loud. The introductory part was slightly long, but the convincing acting of the actors, a great soundtrack, and the lack of a clichéd narrator made it enjoyable to watch.

           After one of his friends' suggestion, William decided to travel all over the world to find emotion and to learn how to show emotion. He first went to Japan.

           Robert hit the pause button. Japan? There was no mention of Japan in his original comic or the slightly changed scenario version that he sent to the production team. Robert raised an eyebrow, but, thinking that this might be a development that the movie makers made, pressed the play button to watch Irving board his plane.

           He saw some monkey shows but they were not fun at all. He then went to North Korea. He met a fat but small monster there. The monster was wearing sunglasses.  The monster, named Kim Jong-il…

           Robert abruptly spewed out the Pepsi he was drinking and hit the pause button a second time. He, completely dumbfounded, stared blankly for a few minutes at the short Asian actor apparently playing the part of the North Korean dictator. Thinking that this was beyond creative expansion, Robert rose from his seat with intensions to call the movie studio and demand an explanation. As he stood up, a note that he hadn’t noticed before slid out from the DVD case. Robert picked up and read it out loud.

“Dear, Mr. Gream, we received the message that one Mr. Marvin Gream sent, from your studio. As instructed, we picked up the new script from your desk and reflected it into the movie.”

           Robert slowly sat back down. Marvin was his 11 year old son, a rambunctious child with a wild imagination. In Robert’s absence, Marvin apparently had pulled a prank by somehow altering his script.

           Upon realizing this, a sense of deep dread creeping into him, Robert looked at the screen. Dictator Kim stared back, a sinister grin on his face. Robert pressed the play button again.

    ….started to make the cheapest jokes that William had ever heard in his life. But somehow, the other people around the monster seemed to be enjoying its strange sense of humor. Bravely, William said to the monster. "Excuse me, but your jokes are not funny." The next moment he woke up, and he found himself in a dark, confined cell.

           Robert, practically plastered into his seat, watched in stone cold silence as William somehow defeated the entire North Korean military armed with a teaspoon over the next 20 minutes. Suddenly…

                It was his home.

           “What?”

           It was just all a wild dream! He just dosed off while going to watch the parade.

           Robert sank deeper into his chair. The first 40 minutes or so of the movie had just instantly amounted to nothing.

           The parade in front of him was just spectacular! Giant dinosaurs walked by, the dinosaurs played with an even more giant set of Jenga, and nuclear missiles flew everywhere.

           Robert watched this catastrophic compilation of random things. Already half immune to such insanity, he was actually wondering how much money it would have taken to film the entire thing.

           It was just awesome, but William couldn't laugh or make an expression about it. So he made a very, very bold move to overcome his inability, a move which he would regret for the rest of his life!
           William, prior to that moment, had convinced himself that his situation was due to some trait in his genes; he thought that he needed a drastic genetic alteration in order to gain access to the human emotions that everyone else could summon so easily. Now, as he saw himself fail yet again to crack a simple smile, William decided to expose himself completely to the nuclear missiles flying overhead. Surely those missiles would contain enough energy and nuclear influence to affect his genes. He rapidly climbed up one of the oversized Jenga sets that the dinosaurs were enjoying and jumped straight into the path of one near-flying missile.
           In a miraculous coincidence of the quantum orbital of the atoms that constituted William and the missile, the impact did not cause William to explode into an infinite number of micro-particles. Instead, it gave William the uncanny ability of being able to control each and every one of those particles individually while maintaining a unified consciousness. That meant he could freely alter the shape or position of his body parts with a simple thought or even detach parts and have them move on their own.

           Robert felt a slimmer of hope. While it was altered out of proportion, this was somewhat similar to the way Particlo gained his powers in Robert’s original script. Perhaps now the story would return to normal.

           What the nuclear impact did not do was grant William human expressions.
           Feeling the closest he could manage to the emotion of disappointment, William was too preoccupied to notice his new ability. He walked back to his town and never left it again.

           With this abrupt conclusion, the DVD stopped.

                Robert remained seated for a very long time.