milliways_bar | (no subject)

Guppy scoops up his soggy paperwork, spreads it out on the table and sits down next to him.

"Guess what?" he says cheerfully, then ploughs on without waiting for an answer. "Helen's back, and she's going to be around more, and we had dinner and I brought her some flowers and a candle but it melted in my pocket so it burned at a funny angle but she thought it was funny so that was okay."

"That is wonderful!" Asar-Suti exclaims, genuinely pleased. "I was hoping that something like that would happen and make you worry less."

"Oh I still have things to worry about, but this is sort of keeping the balance. I found out somebody might be watching me on TV so I've been checking out my room for cameras and bugging devices. I think Abs thinks I've lost the plot. But it's really lovely to see her again, so that we can snuggle and talk and just spend time together."

Asar-Suti staaaares.

"What??? Watching you? And what is a TV?"

Was Guppy going paranoid?

"It's a box you watch films and stuff on. Like what you watch DVDs on."
Deaths make good TV. It's oh so quiet...
"I hope they're not watching me, and I don't think they are because I checked the room all over and there was nothing there. I even took several things apart and then couldn't put them back together again. But apparently it happens to people that they find out that they're being watched somewhere else and I was wondering if that was what all the deaths were about but Ray smacked me on the head and told me that it was just them watching not actually controlling. But even that freaks me out beyond all belief."

"What are you talking about? Why Ray? What watchers?"

This sounds utterly demented.

"I don't know what watchers but apparently people can be in films in other places which means that if I'm in one people must be watching and I don't want them to because I want my privacy and don't want to be killed off because I'm not very interesting. And Ray was the one who told me about it and I don't know what I'm talking about because it doesn't make any sense and I had a dream about being killed by cartoon characters and Abs thinks I'm going totally insane but I assure you I am not."

He did at some point breathe during this. It's just one of those occasions where he needs to vent.

"Oh, that," Asar-Suti says. "Erm, Ray should probably not have told you..."

"He didn't as such. We were just talking about Naraht, who's sick, and I was wondering about things seen on films, because I thought it might help try and find a cure. It was only then that I sort of had a horrible thought which sort of escalated."

He takes a deep breath.

"Death makes good TV. Whenever it gets quiet in Holby, one of our staff dies or there is a major disaster. It's quiet now."

"Guppy," Asar-Suti says. "Your world is completely real for you. There are no cameras about. Don't worry about the reality where you're teevee."

He thinks a bit, and then quietly adds. "We're books, Ray said after I asked enough."

"I know I'm real and Holby's real. Ray kept telling me that. But I don't understand how people can know what I'm doing and see what I'm doing without cameras or bugging devices or anything like that. I don't understand. Writing a book about someone isn't the same. There's no pictures so they don't have to have seen you, they've just heard about you."

"How do people make movies?" Asar-Suti asks.

"Well first they have ideas, and then they film pictures with a camera. Normally they would use actors but there's this thing called reality TV where they film people doing things in real life. It's like I'm in a giant Big Brother house spreading over the whole of Holby and further. I can't search for cameras everywhere. Abs already thinks I've gone mad because I started taking everything apart in my room and putting newspaper over mirrors and the lights built into the ceiling."

"Guppy, you're so paranoid," Asar-Suti says, almost growling. "In some other world, they have these actors and cameras and things, with an actor that looks exactly like you and plays you for that camera, like theatre? In your own world, everything is real, and there are no cameras. Stop looking for them, or Abs, whoever she is, will deliver you to the, what do they call it, they have one in St. Mungo's as well? Mental department?"

"Abs is a he and it's a psychiatric ward and you wouldn't be so sure about these things if you had to keep watching your friends die!" Guppy shouts, losing his temper.
"I can't help it if I'm not an expert on this alternate universe stuff. What am I supposed to think when I find out people are watching my life? I don't know what you're trying to do, whether you're trying to make me feel stupid, which I do, or what, but I and the people I care about are not immortal, and if there's something going on which significantly increases our chance of dying do you not think we might get the tiniest bit upset about it? I don't understand this Sooty. I have to make assumptions somewhere because I don't understand. Do you have any idea how scared I am?"

Guppy has to stop for breath. The anger has turned to fear in the course of a paragraph, leaving a freaked, frightened and vulnerable Guppy exposed to the world.

"That is how everybody would feel if they realised how fragile and ephemeral life is, and how thin the barriers of reality," Asar-Suti says, darkly. "Only most people never get there. Reality doesn't care whether you can deal with it. It deals with you. Tough luck. My strong Tynstar, my lovely Strahan, my dear clever Lochiel - they were all killed because some writing woman needed her Cheysuli heros to kill the occasional evil Ihlini. Your friends are killed because some teevee writers on another world decide to, or because the actors are given the sack for being drunk too often, or something like that. Don't try to wrap your mind round that. Keep to your own world. It is real. That is better for your brain."

"Wait a minute, you're saying we are being killed off by the writers? But Ray told me that I'd got it the wrong way around and that the writers have no influence, because otherwise I'd be abdicating responsibility for my own existance or something like that."

His mind flicks beyond words to masses of painful emotions; fear, anger, guilt and variations of them. He wants to express them, shout them out, tell Asar-Suti things that he can't possibly discuss with Abs or anyone on his world. He wants say that nothing allows him to believe this is possible; his faith, his life experience, for all that is now worth. He puts his head in his hands.
All that comes out is a tiny squeak.

'I think my brain broke.'

"In the world where you are fiction you are being killed off by the writers, yes," Asar-Suti says. "The writers write that because of intrinsic reasons. Like that bloody writer of ours probably wanted to show off bloody Keely as a strong woman when she let her kill my Strahan. But on your own world, it all happens because of intrinsic reasons to your own world - Keely killed Strahan because she could, and because he had raped her, entirely logical and real. Don't think about those worlds where you are fiction, I had people turn up here whom I knew as fiction, like Boromir or Sherlock Holmes! They are just as real, and they have no bloody cameras anywhere. It doesn't work like that, Guppy. Come out of it!"

He grips Guppy's shoulder and shakes him.

"Please don't hurt me!"

It's his natural reaction to being shaken, and it lasts just a second, but for a moment there is fear. Then he goes quiet.

"I think I understand now. Sorry Sooty."

The kitten is hiding under a cushion.

"Good!"

Asar-Suti digs out the kitten and sits down again.

Guppy feels distinctly silly. He scoops up the paperwork and fiddles with his hair.

"I best be getting back. It's quiet in Holby but we're a doctor down. The one who was stabbed is... not that good. Not dying, but still not good."

He holds his hand out for the kitten.

"Sorry for being silly. I'll stop looking for cameras. See you later."

Asar-Suti hands over the kitten, smiles, and watches Guppy go.

One less problem, eh?