postictal | ic inbox; entranceway

[He doesn't wanna get into it. That's fine. Understandable, even. Probably bringing up all sorts of unpleasant and unwanted memories and goddamnit, fuck, this is absolutely his fault for bringing up Alex in the first place. Couldn't think before you stuck your foot in your mouth, could you, Tim?]

[No. God fucking forbid.]

[Jay changes the subject. He lets him.]

not really
why you have a preference

just need to know when to get the movies by
and where to bring them

[Back in familiar territory. They're making plans, keeping the conversation limited to what's concrete. What time. Where. Who's driving. How long before we turn in for the night.]

[Tim doesn't want to hear it. Tim doesn't want to hear it. Tim doesn't want to hear it.]

[But Jay has to make sure, doesn't he?]

did you know the stuff they used to make old nitrate film with was the same stuff they used to make flash paper and guncotton

[He could've just left it, but no. Had to keep going, had to goad Tim further, until he actually says it.]

[They're back on ground Tim knows how to navigate for a fleeting moment, and he figures he should probably shoot Clem a text to let her know that, yes, she is indeed doomed to suffer through what is bound to be the most crushingly awkward movie night of all time. If they're going to put anyone through it, at least it's someone who doesn't necessarily have a metric by which these things usually go - which is kind of a dick thought to have, so he tries to scrub it out.]

[Fortunately, Jay helps by sending him that little fun fact right the hell out of nowhere. Tim blinks a few times to process it, grateful at least for the barrier of text between them. If he takes too long to answer, Jay might - ]

[Oh my god, just answer.]

huh.

[What gripping conversation they're having!!]

does that mean that stuff was really flammable or something?

[What.]

[Tim is just. Responding. Like he actually wants to know, which is a real laugh.]

[(Does he actually want to know?)]

yeah

there's this video they used to show the guys who ran the projectors back in the old days where they dumped burning film in water and it just kept going

now you have to have permits and stuff if you want to screen a movie on that kind of film
so you don't burn down the theater

[He keeps going. That's almost...well, it's new is the thing. He's not used to holding conversations with Jay that last more than a few minutes at a time, and if they do, it's generally because they have something to do with - everything else. With Alex. With the tapes. With names of things that shouldn't be named.]

[He actually knows his stuff, too. Or he's confident enough in acting like he knows it to fool Tim - but he's not likely to go fact-checking anyway.]

must have lost a lot of movies that way.
stuff that just burned down forever?

[Is he just playing along? (Why? Not like he'd have anything to gain from any of this.)]

[Tim's a liar, but he's not nice, not in Jay's experience. He wouldn't be doing this to spare Jay's feelings or to avoid confrontation.]

[Only thing to do is keep writing.]

lot of silent films
they'd be stored in a vault and then the whole vault would catch fire
and if they didn't catch fire they'd just rot

and it's not like dvds are rot proof either
worst case they last less than 30 years

so i'm saying it's easy to lose a movie
especially if people think it's not worth preserving
i guess that's why i know so many godawful movies

[Look, Tim. The cameraman comes with lore.]

is there any actual good way to store movies then?
seems like these are all just disasters waiting to happen

[Kinda like their lives. But honestly, he...really knows a lot about this. And Tim just never asked, either. Never bothered to.]

[Not exactly how friends are supposed to act. Is it?]

[Jay gave him a way out, bringing it back to bad movies, but he just went and asked another question.

Is he...actually interested?]

not really
all we can do is keep migrating everything to new formats
and i don't mean just digitize it once and you're good
the hard drives people use for storing this stuff get out of date
and if the only copy you've got is online you're basically fucked if the website shuts down

[Tim got rid of the original tapes back home. He got rid of them, and if YouTube shuts down--and it will--the entries'll just be gone.

Please, please let it be that some of the viewers downloaded them. Please.]

huh
never really thought about it that way i guess
didn't feel like this stuff was ever temporary

[Maybe because he spent his whole life steeped in it, saturated in it - spending so long with it gathered around his eyes, drowning him, that it never occurred to him that it could be as easy as deleting a file or watching it degrade.]

yeah
when something's recorded it's like
you can always go back and look at it again and it'll always be exactly the same
but that's not

i guess it all degrades somehow eventually
and all we can really do is keep transferring it and make a load of backups and hope we caught everything

kinda funny.
that's sorta what we ended up doing.
transferring stuff from place to place and hoping we didn't lose anything important.

[...]

[Not funny. "Funny" is the wrong word to use.]

maybe not funny.
weird.

[That's...unsettling.]

when he started losing his memory alex used tapes
and then the tapes were easy to lose so i put it online

weird is definitely a word for it

[Great. Nothing is real and their lives are just a metaphor for archiving film.]

i mean
anyone would though
right?

that's why people film home movies and stuff.

[It's just that they were archiving faceless men in suits and bars of distortion instead of soccer games and Stacy's first few baby steps.]

[...right?]

[Alone in his room, Jay snorts.]

makes some sense

regardless of what's actually going on i guess the whole point of a mass market camcorder's so you don't forget things
home movies like you said

we just
needed it more i guess

yeah.

[What else is he meant to say? Waxing poetic about the state of their minds and their digital souls, or whatever the hell, can only last them so long.]

[They've dwelled. They've dwelled for entirely too long, and now it's time to change the subject.]

how's the 12th sound

[Jay's thankful for the change in direction. The camcorder blinking away on the nightstand will still be there, even if they're not talking about it. ~~That faceless thing will still be there, even if they're not talking about it.~~ Talking about what happened is always uncomfortable, simultaneously weakening it by limiting it to words and strengthening it by making it more real.

Yeah, bad movies are easier.]

sounds fine
is there someplace with a good tv

[Jay might still scrounge a movie or two back to his room tonight. He needs a distraction, now.]

there's actually a whole movie theater
might be able to play something on that fancy old film and everything.

[Probably best if they don't. But, hey. The option sure is there.]

[The option sure is, isn't it?]

i'd rather this place not burn down too if it's all the same to you

but if the library really does have books on everything maybe i can get myself certified to handle that stuff

for later

[He'd rather this place not burn down.]

[So would Tim. Jay's seen his place go up in flames - but only through the medium of a television screen, the digitized, burned blue. Maybe he never...did it never occur to him, who must have done it?]

[He never saw the hot roar of a fireball calcify on the front porch, the reek of gasoline singeing his nostrils beneath the weight and heat of Alabama's summer.]

[He, too, would rather this place not burn down.]

why not right?
movie theater might need people to work it.
never know.

[Never know. He might be able to make himself useful here.]

[Jay Merrick: projectionist and part-time "Irwin", if he's got the name right.]

sure
it'd be something to do

maybe this place has some weird old movies we don't have back home

probably
bet there's a bunch in alien languages or something

oh my god
i bet there are

y'know what
no more events
i'm done
let's just watch alien movies for the rest of our lives

i'll file that in the wonderland suggestion box
i'm pretty sure alien movies will be about as confusing as most of the events here
it's a win win

exactly.

[Jay tries to think of something equally clever, but he comes up dry. Nothing more to say. Dammit.]

so, movie theater on the 12th?

yeah ok.
i'll let clem know

unless you want to