Erika closed the store early. “Well, why not,” she thought, “it wasn’t as if I got any work done what with the hoards of people stopping in to comment about Era: Tropospheric and, more particularly, ‘my’ role in the show.”
Amazed at how quickly she became adept at ignoring the well wishers and dodging the ogling fans of the bane-of-her-existence, she smirked as she considered what the people would say when they found out that she was not the new starlet should she agree to their request for an autograph as she shook her head in denial once more.
At last, with relief, she closed the door to her apartment behind her. Pushing the play button on her answering machine, she paused for a moment to boot up her computer before heading to the kitchen to get a fortifying glass of wine. Glad for that distance as she listened to the breathless excitement of a distant friend, the confusion of her father, the squeaky adoration of a neighborhood boy, she finally returned to take hearty swigs of the calming alcohol while fast forwarding and deleting each message.
And then, both she, her refreshed glass, and the computer were ready. A quick search and the archived video of the show came up.
Surprisingly, Erika found herself enjoying the show about Earth after the devastation of glacial melting leaving virtually all land covered by the oceans once more. Small scraps of terra firma alone remained, the very highest mountain tops only, preciously guarded by the caelum-nations which formed in the air. The wealthiest people lived at the heights of the soaring buildings, avoiding the massive rain falls as a result of the huge amounts of water below, while the poor were forced to work on the earth from which they all had come to provide the precious vegetable matter that was vital yet so rare.
When a group of terrorists organized the continental workers of one such caelum and threatened to collapse the entire system high above their heads, Erika’s nemesis appeared.
Seeming to float upon the air itself, she daringly leapt from the heights to land gracefully upon the solid ground thousands of meters below. When threatened, she jumped nimbly as a cat and seemed as able as an amphibian at clinging effortlessly to any surface she found. She appeared to have an incredible arsenal of defenses in her delicate fingertips, for she was able to burn and freeze at will. And her ability with the myriad of lasers and Higgs-B blasters was incredibly lethal. All of this with a body to drool over which she successfully revealed with every luxurious curve molded by what could only have been the costume designer’s wettest dream.
And if all of that wasn’t enough, the last few moments revealed her incredible ability to change colors at will, to blend with her surroundings thereby ensuring that the exoticness of her character would become a star of this new series.
Erika sat motionless before her now quiet computer. As impossible as it seemed, save for a few mannerisms and expressions, the actress was her precise double. How wasn’t the question any longer, what she was going to do was more important. It was going to be difficult to convince even her closest friends that she wasn’t the actress, impossible to deny what seemed so apparent to others. Particularly since, for no apparent reason, the actress’s name had been omitted from the credits and the website.
Muttering a soft prayer, Erika began searching the show’s website for a way to contact the studio, fervently hoping she could elicit their help.
No comments:
Post a Comment