Page 63 of The Dazzling Heights
The sky overhead was cluttered with an incredibly complicated, tangled system of monorails. They were all colored bright neon, like a glowing nest of snakes. Far above them she saw the blue arc of the sky.
A cartoon clown face appeared against the azure blue, projected with the wordsMCBURGER KING!2 FOR 1 BURGERS ON MONDAYS!Rylin gasped.
“Oh, have the morning ads already started?” Xiayne peered up and shrugged. “They project those on the Bubble.”
Rylin had heard about the Bubble. Back before rain was controllable by hydropods, when global warming was still a concern, Los Angeles had worried about their city growing too hot. So they’d “bubble-wrapped” it—built an enormous supercarbon dome that surrounded the entire city. Years later, once the dome was no longer needed, they refused to take it down. Maybe they’d become too addicted to the ad money, Rylin thought. She pictured the strong clean lines of the Tower, so unlike this cluttered, flashing, chaotic city, and found herself oddly missing it.
“Here we are,” Xiayne said when their hover pulled up to a series of squat interlocking buildings that could only be the studios.
The cavernous soundstage was silent, and empty of people. Rylin stole a quick glance at the set: an enormous throne room with marble pillars and a heavy gold dais. Of course:Salve Reginawas a historical film, about England’s final monarch before Britain voted to abolish the whole institution. The lights dimmed, then brightened, then dimmed again as someone, probably the head of photography, tried to perfect the way the light fell on some specific detail. Rylin tried to drink it all in again before Xiayne turned left and walked through a wall—
Her eyes widened, and then she realized that it wasn’t a wall at all but an opaque light-divider, to keep all the messiness out of sight of the cameras. She quickly followed into the backstage world of cheerful, disordered chaos.
Carts whirled past, laden with sleek metal stylers and brightly colored makeup tubes, funny-looking sketches of noses and eyes and mouths scattered like abandoned limbs. Cameras of various sizes and shapes floated, forgotten, in corners. And into every tiny slice of space were crammed an assortment of people—stage managers and assistants talking frantically into their contacts, a full team of costumers checking every detail of the historic attire, and, of course, the actors and actresses in their full makeuped glory.
“Seagren.” Xiayne grabbed the arm of a passing young woman, who had ebony skin and a wispy bun. “This is Rylin, your new assistant. Rylin, Seagren is your boss for the week. Good luck, you two.”
“Okay, thanks. How will I—”find you later?, Rylin started to ask, but Xiayne was already gone, vanished into the horde of clamoring, demanding people.Right, he’s in charge of this whole production,she reminded herself. She didn’t have first claim on his attention—didn’t have any claim at all, really. But she suddenly found herself longing for the last few hours, when it had been only the two of them on the Hyperloop and they’d chatted so easily.
“You’remy new filming assistant? How old are you?” Seagren wrinkled her nose dubiously.
Rylin decided to skirt the truth. “I’m one of Xiayne’s students. He asked me to come help out,” she said, deliberately leaving out the part where she was seventeen. “It’s really nice to meet you,” she added, and held out a hand. She’d hoped that calling him by his first name would help her sound more professional, but Seagren just rolled her eyes, exasperated.
“One of the high schoolers. Great.”
The whole crew actually looked quite young to Rylin; barely anyone here seemed older than thirty. Maybe that was an organic result of Xiayne’s own youth, or maybe he thought having a young crew was crucial to producing a film that was edgy and cool. “What should I get started on?” she asked Seagren, ignoring the dig.
The assistant director rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you organize this?” she said curtly, and flung open the door to a massive closet along one wall.
It was crammed with what looked like generations of accumulated film paraphernalia: old pieces of cameras, lightboxes, discarded props. Rylin was pretty sure she saw an old box of soda pods in there, with one of the dispenser machines. A fine layer of dust covered every surface.
This wasn’t at all what she’d had in mind when she’d agreed to come work as a filming assistant. She’d thought she would at least be on set—holding lights in place, maybe; or fetching coffee, but standing there, watching the action. Rylin looked up at Seagren’s face and saw that she was smirking a little, daring Rylin to challenge her.
I worked my way up from the bottom, Xiayne had said. Well, Rylin could do it too. She’d been the maid for the Andertons, after all; she wasn’t afraid of rolling up her sleeves.
“Sounds perfect,” she said, and walked into the dim closet to get started.
Hours later, Rylin was neck-deep in that impossible closet when she realized with a start that the set had grown quiet. It was later than she’d realized; when had everyone else gone home? She grabbed her suitcase, which was still tucked into a corner, and started toward the doorway, thinking she would head back to her assigned room at the crew hotel.
It had been a long day, filled with grunt work for Seagren: organizing that damn closet and picking up lunch from the craft cart and hunting down missing actors in the various break rooms. But Rylin hadn’t minded it all, especially not hanging out with the actors. She loved watching them, helping them go over their lines, asking them questions about the filming. She’d realized quickly that the actors were the most talkative of anyone, at least once you got them talking about themselves.
A light was still on in one of the edit bays. Rylin hesitated, curious, then walked over to knock boldly at the door.
“What do youwant?” came Xiayne’s irritated voice.
“Never mind,” Rylin said quickly, stepping back. “I’ll just—”
“Rylin? Is that you?” The door swung open and Xiayne stood there, looking more agitated than Rylin had ever seen him. He was barefoot, and his hair was sticking out wildly every which way. There was a ketchup stain on his T-shirt, which had frozen on the wordyesterday.
“I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else. I didn’t mean to snap like that.” He kept reaching up to push back his hair, which fell forward over his eyes.
“Is everything okay?” Rylin asked, and Xiayne sighed.
“Not really. I’m just reviewing the dailies, and to be honest …” He gave an embarrassed shrug. “They suck.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Xiayne seemed surprised by her offer. “Sure. Come check them out. You’ll see what I mean,” he warned. When she’d pulled up the chair next to him, he flicked his wrist, and the footage resumed playing.
