The Not-Particularly-Excellent Adventures of the Keanu-Spawn
Written by Anakin McFly
« Chapters 1–2
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« Chapters 15–17
« Chapters 18–22
Griffin isn't the only one in the room; they find Eddie seated inside by the side of the door, looking up as they enter, suppressed anger in his eyes.
"What're you doing here?" Ludlow asks.
"Nothing."
"Get out and join the others," Ludlow says. "Everyone goes out except these two."
"You don't tell me what to do."
"Huh."
Ludlow's eyes rove over the rest of the scene, takes in Griffin where he's been cuffed single-handedly to the bed by Conor and Shane, looks at not-Tim, then turns towards the door.
"Keep him here," he tells Eddie. "I'll be right back." He walks out.
"...Hi," not-Tim says.
"Hi."
Silence.
"I don't want to go home," Eddie suddenly spills out, desperate, pleading. "I mean I-... I want to get out of here, but I don't want to go home either, and...." He takes a shaky breath. "...and I don't know, I don't-" He lapses into silence.
Ludlow returns with a chainsaw. He tosses it on the ground, then casually drags not-Tim closer to the bed, grabs his right wrist, and handcuffs it to Griffin's left.
Not-Tim looks at it; Griffin's hand moves instinctively away, recoiling, a sudden quickly-hidden flash of anger as he stares up at Ludlow.
Ludlow nudges the chainsaw a little closer to them, just within not-Tim's reach. Its metal blade shines dully on the carpet.
"If you want to get out," Ludlow says to not-Tim, indicating the chainsaw with an uncharacteristically sadistic glee that might have resulted from too much time in John's presence, "chop off his hand."
"And you," he says to Eddie, "get out of here."
The teen reluctantly obeys.
The door booms shut behind them as they leave.
Not-Tim glances at his fellow captive, the other's head bowed in what might have been resignation. Eventually he looks up and meets his eyes
"Do you want to get out?" Griffin asks.
It's not so much a question as a repetition of Ludlow's last words; they hold no offer of friendly alliance, taunting, almost; a dare tinged with false bravado.
"I don't want to hurt you," the actor says. His words ring with a perfunctory hollowness. Lip service to the unspoken obligatory contract between creator and created; one does not wilfully destroy one's own work.
The chainsaw lies untouched on the carpet. Had their positions been reversed, Griffin might have struck by now and be off, free; or perhaps not, for such crudity might have been below him; he would have savoured the power over him a little longer, the presented threat always there but not quite seen all the way through, hanging like a spectre in the night invading dreams and haunting wakeful sleep, tormenting his future victim with the knowledge that he might not wake to see another day.
Weariness moves the actor to sit, slowly, his right hand's descent tugging Griffin's left after; the other joins him on the carpet in silent compliance, looking down at his shoes, just thinking... thinking...
The quiet starts to get to him, dogging him with a curious feeling of insecurity. It is too quiet. Griffin is too quiet, his tongue temporarily tied by present company, currently powerless, waiting for his next move, calculating the possibilities...
Not-Tim tentatively reaches out his left hand to scratch his ear. He dare not move too freely.
"What are we waiting for?" Griffin finally asks. His gaze leaves the carpet and regards the actor with what might have been bemusement. A dark intelligence shines in his eyes. Not-Tim tries to look away.
"There's nothing we can do," he replies flatly.
A smirk. "You could kill me and escape. I could kill you and stay here. There's no sense in wasting a perfectly good saw. Of course... do you want to escape? What are you going to do out there? Join the others? You know they hate you. Us. That's why we're in here and they're out there."
Now that the silence is broken, not-Tim wishes that Griffin would shut up. He doesn't like the way his voice creeps up on him, invading a mind tricked into believing it is his own.
"Give up on them," Griffin continues. "There's no use. They're on their own. And we're far safer in here than they are out there."
Griffin's hand lies on the carpet next to his, handcuff round the wrist; take the saw, sever it, and he'd be free, but just the thought of doing so brings up revulsion in his mind. The hand looks too much like his own. He briefly moves his own fingers just to be sure of where he ends and the other begins, and he wonders at the mind that controls that other hand; how it thinks, where it's from, where it's been.
#
Computer... gun... computer... gun...
Neo gazed desperately at his beloved computer as he fingered the awesome shotgun in his hand. If he went out there, he might never come back again. He could die. He might get home. He might get home and then die. And he'd never be able to once again roam the Internet of the 21st century.
On the other hand, if there was going to be a shoot-people fest, he kind of wanted to be part of it.
He swallowed. The dilemma was driving him nuts.
People were milling about in the disorganised mess that tends to result when thirty or more are gathered in any one spot. A few had possibly run off to other parts of Kenselton Hotel to avoid what might have been irreversible death.
John Constantine hung around the corridor looking out for subtle ways to irritate Ludlow for the lulz.
#
Not-Tim reached for the chainsaw; brought it towards him and hefted its weight in his hands.
He glanced briefly at Griffin before returning his gaze to the chainsaw.
"Let's see what this can do," he said, and got to his feet, dragging Griffin up with him.
Not-Tim turned on the chainsaw. It buzzed to life as he struggled to hold on to it with the limited mobility of his handcuffed right hand.
He realised that he was not standing at a good angle to do any effective dismembering of furniture, and stepped over to Griffin's right.
"I'll try to cut that off," he said, gesturing at the handcuff that chained the other to the bed. "Keep your hand out of the way."
The chainsaw powered up again, and not-Tim directed it at the metal the best he could. Sparks flew. The handcuff remained intact.
"What is this thing made of?" he demanded after the third unsuccessful try.
The handcuffs were probably just made from ordinary metal; the important thing is that when Tom Ludlow handcuffs somebody, they stay handcuffed. Even though in this case it was Conor and Shane who did the deed, in which case that particular fact wasn't really of much relevance at all.
"Try the bed," Griffin suggested, so not-Tim went chainsaw on the metal pole of the bunk bed to similarly little effect. He concluded that the chainsaw sucked, and why exactly was there a chainsaw in Kenselton Hotel, anyway? It made less sense than white tablecloths, which at least appealed to his aesthetic sensibility.
Not-Tim put the chainsaw aside and sat down in a slump of defeat. More silence followed.
"Nice."
Not-Tim's head snapped up at the voice. Dem was leaning casually against the wall, twiddling his thumbs in an in-your-face kind of way.
Twiddle.
"Are their lives really worth worrying over?" Dem asked not-Tim. "Look at what they do to you. Hello," he added to Griffin.
"What are you doing here?" not-Tim asked tersely.
"I thought you could use the company."
Twiddle.
Dem gave up twiddling his thumbs. He looked at the chainsaw instead, then looked up at the handcuffed hands.
"What've you got to do here?" he asked not-Tim. "Chainsaw his wrist off to go free? Nice. What's stopping you?" Dem smiled benevolently. "Jjaks eaten by a radioactive phoenix, suuure. Simple dismemberment of a serial killer, nope. You're a strange fellow, Mr. Reeves.
"Not to mention," Dem said to Griffin, "he doesn't like you very much. They didn't pay him enough."
"HEY!" not-Tim yelled. "That's not what-"
Dem twiddled his thumbs and gazed at not-Tim with a vague scientific interest.
"...changed the deal and the script..."
Dem shrugged. "Whatever," he said to Griffin. "Crux of the matter is, he doesn't like you very much. He didn't want to do the film but had no choice." Dem glanced at his watch. "Anyway, see you around. Bye!"
Dem vanished.
Silence.
"...They didn't pay you enough?" Griffin asked accusingly, his voice tight with hurt or anger or something more dangerous.
"No," not-Tim said. "It's complicated. Just drop it."
Griffin continued staring at not-Tim and looking wounded. Then:
"Do it," Griffin said softly.
"What?"
"Pick up that chainsaw, chop off my hand. Get yourself out of here."
"Okay, I can't-"
Griffin grits his teeth. "Do it!"
Not-Tim just looked at him.
"I've got nothing to gain. It's not fair if you have to die here just because of some... character you didn't even want to play."
Not-Tim looked at him.
"I'm going to die," Griffin continued, meeting his gaze. "And I'd prefer to do so knowing that you don't hate me."
"I don't hate you."
"I don't believe you."
Silence. Not-Tim looked at Griffin's handcuffed wrist next to his own, the two barely distinguishable from each other.
"I can't do it," he said.
A smirk. "Coward."
"Calling me names isn't going to make me like you."
Griffin shrugged. "How pissed off do you need to be before you pick up that chainsaw and use it?"
"You're not making me do this."
Griffin smiled. "I can sit here and aggravate you for hours until you do it just to shut me up-"
The door opened, Tom Ludlow standing there in the doorway and interrupting everything. "Is your house near?" he asked not-Tim.
"...Kind of. Why?"
Ludlow walked over and unhandcuffed him. "Take the kids there," he said. "And you stay there. House arrest. This place isn't safe; it might vanish again like the last time."
Not-Tim stood up and massaged his wrist. "What about him?" he asked, motioning at Griffin.
Ludlow nudged the chainsaw closer to Griffin. "Work it out," he told him.
"You can't just leave him there," not-Tim said.
"He has a chainsaw," Ludlow pointed out. "Are you coming or not?"
People were still milling about the corridor in a disorganised sort of way.
":)!" vibed the cornflakes guy as he saw not-Tim, and went straight for his legs again.
":)"
"Okay! If you're under the age of 18, you're going with him," Ludlow announced, pointing at not-Tim, busy trying to regain his balance post- cornflakes guy. "I don't care if you know how to use a gun."
Protests filled the air.
Ludlow smirked. "Thank you. Now I know which of you are under 18. Mike, you don't count. Anderson!"
Neo jumped.
"Go with them. Make sure Reeves stays put."
Neo looked sad.
#
And so while the valiant go off to fight and claim their freedom, he leads the line of reluctant teenagers down the safe way away from the sounds of gunfire – where the rest are charging on towards. Neo joins them at the rear. Interspersed among the kids are Alex, Julian and Paul, having decided to join his party instead – a decision met with the sounds of Ludlow calling them wimps and other less polite things before he and his friends ran off to shoot at things.
The world out there is calmer than he expected, the worst having happened while they were safe in Kenselton Hotel. There is debris on the ground – buildings here and there are missing chunks of concrete, shop window glass litters the sidewalk, streaks of dried blood run down the asphalt; and the scattered people have an aimlessness in their walk.
The troublemakers had been dealt with; King Kong had been baited with bananas and tranquilised and taken away, as had the more dangerous superheroes, minus the bananas. He spots occasional ambulances screaming down the streets and at several points wonders if he should go after Ludlow's group and convince them that their hostage plan would get them nowhere and they had might as well give up. Others had evidently tried something, and whether they had failed or succeeded he had no idea – that path had, either way, already been trod, and re-walking it would prove a redundant waste of time and possibly lives. But he lets it go.
He wonders where everyone is; the city is devoid of rioting fictional masses. He knows it's been a day since the escape, but nonetheless the calm strikes him as out of place. Perhaps it's for the better; no one pays much attention to their odd procession, giving them no more than a glance before trudging over to some other part of road.
They make a fairly large group – him and the other four adults, and then the fourteen teenagers including Bill, still separated slightly into the two arbitrary groups that he doesn't even know why still exist; and he would like to make some comment about all of them being part of the same family, but it would sound strange, coming from him, as does any other statement he makes regarding the unusual relationship that binds them together.
And so he tries his best to ignore the warily suspicious looks that pass between Rupert and Matt or Winston and Ron, and just keeps his thoughts focussed on the destination ahead. He was bringing them home.
And he sees the barely hidden wonder on some of their faces as he approaches the gates of his residence, the initial reluctance giving way to reverence and hints of envy as he lets them through the gates and into his house itself; he hears at least one 'whoa' escape awed lips, but never discovers the culprit.
Most stand around as though scared to touch anything, hands in pockets and regarding his home with jealous respect; others seem to finally acknowledge his presence for the first time since the walk began, and he returns their gazes with a smile.
Neo looks for a computer and doesn't find one.
"So we just stay here and wait?" Derek asks.
"I suppose so," Paul says, attempting to steer the cornflakes guy away from the general direction of not-Tim.
"What's for lunch?" Chris asks; and he decides he could whip up something easy – pasta, perhaps. He sometimes fancies himself a chef, but this is no time for experimentation. One does not use one's characters as gastronomic guinea pigs. It's one of those unwritten rules of life.
But they number nineteen mouths to feed, and the cornflakes guy probably deserves some genuine cornflakes after all this time.
So he orders several pizzas. It's the easiest, and he could add on pasta to that. He used to run a pasta shop; this wouldn't be too hard.
Neo goes around the place once more and still doesn't find a computer. He starts looking slightly agitated.
Hanging around their presence continues to feel uncomfortably surreal; somehow it's much more bearable when it's just him and one of them. There is something about watching them interact with each other that makes him uneasy, and somehow it makes them seem less real, like mere automatons programmed by him with certain characteristics and modes of thought.
But when he is alone with just one of them, they seem completely human; which unnerves him in a totally different way.
He wonders what it feels like from their point of view – in relation to him, in relation to each other...
And, with a sinking feeling, he remembers Griffin, still locked up, and hopes that he will be okay.
"Are you looking for something?" he asks.
Neo gives a start. "...Yeah. A computer."
"I don't have one."
Neo shifts uncomfortably. "I know. You told me. But..."
Neo looks fitfully around in a desperate sort of way, as though it would make a computer somehow materialise out of nowhere. Houses had computers. It was a fact of life, he thought. Which meant that there had to be one here somewhere, just... hiding or something.
The television comes on in the background playing some inane detergent advertisement.
A yell and splash informs them that Tommy and Jesse just pushed Heaver into the newly-discovered swimming pool.
#
The deafening silence is starting to get to him, and Griffin finally forces himself to accept that the door is not going to open any time soon.
But he stays calm; looks at the chainsaw, considers his options. He's probably managed to guilt-trip Reeves. He hopes he has, with a sudden twinge of anger, but then he tries to suppress the hurt of being unloved by his creator, because there's no point in dwelling on that.
He runs his free hand slowly along the serrated edge of the chainsaw and feels the mild pricks of pain, driving home his mortality; tries to imagine powering it up and directing it through the flesh and bone of his right wrist, and the thought brings his left hand to a stop. He retrieves his hand from the chainsaw and holds it close.
Griffin slides lower down the side of the bed and leans against it, eyes shut. The sound of his quiet breaths fills his mind.
He wonders what the others are doing. He wonders if he can tell; if he can sense them; if they are connected in more ways than they think; but he gets nothing, and so he gives up trying.
He tries to sleep. Perhaps when he wakes, things will be different.
Someone has to come eventually.
Seventeen suspicious-looking, mostly-armed, and not-quite-heterogeneous individuals congregated on the street corner. At least one of them looked lost.
"You don't know where to go, do you?" Conor asked.
Ludlow tried to ignore him. He gazed out at the street and tried to look as though he knew exactly what he was doing.
"Figures," Johnny Utah muttered. "We're just going to stand around here until someone takes us away."
John Constantine casually lit a stolen cigarette and smoked, shifting his position a little such that he was directly beside the 'No Smoking' sign that marked the entrance to a restaurant.
"Someone has to know something," Shane said. "All those people escaped yesterday – they must have gone somewhere."
"Maybe they were killed," Perry suggested.
Bob Arctor looked sad.
A random approaching passerby saw them, stopped, then chose another direction.
"...Is it really that important to get home?" Conor pondered aloud. "Life kind of sucked."
#
"Look after that," not-Tim said to Alex, gesturing at the cooking pot of pasta as the doorbell rang and he ran out of the kitchen to answer it before someone else did.
"Stay away from that door," he said pointedly to Rupert, then opened the door and said hi to the pizza guy.
"Hi," said the pizza guy in return, holding out the pizza boxes and looking expectant in a financial sort of way. Not-Tim took the pizza from him and paid him, whereupon the pizza guy dug out a small digital camera from his pocket.
"Uh," he said, "I'm also a paparazzo in training. Can I take your photograph and sell it for lots of money?"
Not-Tim declined, and so the pizza guy settled for selling a story about Keanu Reeves' secret pizza orgy party to a tabloid that paid him a few thousand dollars for the exclusive interview.
Pizza guy gone, not-Tim dumped the pizza on the table. "Pizza!" he said. "Get a towel from the bathroom," he said to Heaver, who had successfully climbed out of the swimming pool and was now successfully dripping water everywhere.
He went back into the kitchen hoping that Alex was still alive and that nothing was on fire. Living for prolonged periods of time over a large body of water sometimes made people complacent when it came to matters of flammable things.
But Alex was still alive, and the pot was bubbling happily.
"Griffin's still there," Alex said after a while.
Not-Tim nodded.
*bubble*, said the pot of pasta.
"I'm on house arrest," not-Tim said.
"No one put Ludlow in charge. And your assigned guard's busy looking for a computer that isn't there."
The pot of pasta bubbled.
"I'll go," Alex said. "I'll take Julian, in case anything happened with that chainsaw, and whoever knows how to pick a handcuff lock, and we'll bring Griffin back before it's too late."
The pot of pasta bubbled a little more.
"You'd do that?" not-Tim asked.
Alex nodded. "He's still one of us."
#
"Hello!" said Dem.
Griffin opened his eyes.
"Thought you could do with the company." Dem gave him a bright smile.
Griffin just stared.
"Want some cheese?" Dem offered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a chunk of mozzarella wrapped in foil. "Here," he said. "Have the whole thing. It might be the last thing you ever eat." He placed it in Griffin's free hand. "It's spiked with a powerful anaesthetic," Dem added in a covert whisper. "Eat it and you won't feel that chainsaw going through your wrist."
Griffin looked at the cheese.
"Don't worry, it's not poisoned," Dem said. "If I wanted to kill you, I would've just left you here."
Griffin looked at Dem.
"You'd better hurry," Dem suggested. "The portal leading outside won't last forever. It could collapse any minute now, and then you'll be stuck in this hotel for the rest of your likely-short life, even if you manage to cut yourself free. Clock's ticking."
Griffin slowly unwrapped the cheese. It looked innocent and mozzarella-like. He took a bite. It tasted delicious and mozzarella like. He took another bite.
#
Raiding Party: Perry, Shane, Conor, John C, Johnny U, Nelson, Kip, Scott, Kevin, Ludlow, Eric, Marlon, Harry, Martin, Mike, Bob
In a fit of increasing self-consciousness, Nelson attempted unsuccessfully to look as though he had nothing to do with the rest of the lost group of misfits carrying guns.
"Are we going to continue standing out here in broad daylight?" he asked.
Ludlow was busy fingering his gun as he scanned the horizon for clues as to where to go.
A few more people walked by staring at them. One took out a handphone and dialled.
Scott emerged from the alley he had temporarily snuck into, bearing a sheet of trampled newspaper which he passed to Shane. He pointed at the headlines as several of the others came over to look:
MASS BREAKOUT FROM KENSELTON HOTEL
Transworld project meets sudden end
Just a day before it was to be opened to the public, the several thousand fictional residents of Kenselton Hotel staged a mass breakout onto the streets of Los Angeles. Police and army forces were called in to alleviate the chaos...
Shane scanned through the rest of the article. "We've gotta hide," he said, looking up. "Anywhere but here."
"But we're armed," Johnny Utah pointed out, waving his gun for emphasis.
Shane pointed at the article. "They're tranquilising unarmed escapees. If you wave a gun at them, I think they'll kill you."
"Not if I kill them f-"
The dart whizzed through the air and into his neck. Johnny grabbed at it, wide-eyed and choking, and then crashed to the ground as the air suddenly became thick with flying tranquiliser darts.
Cars and vans were pulling up now with uniformed guards jumping out of them and shooting as the group broke up and ran in different directions; Ludlow fired off several shots, ducking for cover, and got three guards down before another got him and he collapsed-
The guards were efficient and unnaturally fast, unnaturally strong. They might have been the same robotic entities that had populated Kenselton Hotel; they could not really tell, having no time to get a good look before the darts pierced them and they fell to the ground, and Scott, as he ran down the alley in the mad panic of escape, did not dare to look back.
#
Griffin ran his free hand over his handcuffed hand. "I still feel that," he said.
Dem shrugged. "That's just your sense of touch. Clock's ticking. At least it would be if there was a clock in here. An analogue one. Digital clocks don't tick, you see; they sort of just flash." Dem opened and closed his palm to illustrate the flashing. "And then there are sundials, which just kind of stand there."
Griffin picked up the chainsaw. He looked at it. He took a deep breath. He looked at it. He looked at Dem. Dem raised an eyebrow. Griffin looked back at the chainsaw, and shut his eyes.
His free hand trembling slightly, he powered up the chainsaw; opened his eyes, blinked away a tear, grit his teeth, and brought it slowly down on his right wrist-
He screamed in pain.
Dropped the chainsaw, left hand clamping down on the gash on his wrist, stemming the spurting blood beneath grasping fingers, swearing, tears of pain flowing freely now-
"Oh, wait," Dem said. "It was the cheddar that I spiked. I fed that to my lemming. Oh well. Don't worry. Chicks dig scars. Chickens dig bigger scars. That's why I sold my egg farm."
The door burst open. Dem vanished as Alex and Julian hurtled into the room, Julian heading straight to the bed and ripping the sheets off the upper bunk-
"Rupert, go!" Alex shouted, and the teen reluctantly went forward, dropping to his knees and picking at the handcuff with his piece of metal wire, fingers slipping on the blood until the handcuff came free and Julian sopped blood off the wound with the torn sheets, telling Griffin to press down on his wrist bone and hold his hand above heart level-
"Lie down," Julian said. "Get on the floor, put your arm on the bed. It'll lower the blood flow."
Rupert worked on the remaining handcuff and got it off.
"We've got to get him to a hospital," Julian told Alex.
#
Winston ran into the dining area, pointing back in the direction of the TV. "You need to see this," he said.
Not-Tim shoved the rest of the pizza slice into his mouth and went over to look.
"They've been caught," Winston said, as on the screen the news showed the raiding party, unconscious and being carried into vans.
Not-Tim swore.
"...will be taken to join the rest of the escapees in a specially-constructed holding facility at-"
Not-Tim grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled down the address.
"...while it is decided what to do with them."
Not-Tim returned to the others. "Neo," he said. "Let's go bust them out. Paul, you're in charge. Don't let anybody in, and don't let anybody kill anybody."
"I thought Alex and Julian took the car," Neo said.
Not-Tim grinned. "We're not taking the car."
#
Neo decided that he definitely did not like motorbikes. He wondered what Trinity saw in them.
"All right back there?" not-Tim yelled as they sped dangerously through traffic on the Norton.
Neo decided that opening his mouth to answer would mean throwing up on not-Tim, so he settled for grabbing on tighter and wishing that they could slow down.
Not-Tim rode them away from the protesting crowds near the main entrance and came to a halt somewhere around the back. Neo stumbled off and promptly threw up his lunch.
"...Sorry," not-Tim said guiltily.
Neo leant against the wall and looked sick and dizzy and not in the mood to do kung fu.
"When you're ready, just let me know."
Neo sank down into the grass and buried his head in his hands.
#
The supply room never failed. Alex located needle and thread and scissors and a forgotten bottle of rum and ran back to Julian with them.
"Thanks," Julian said, unspooling some thread, cutting off a length of it and sticking an end through the eye of the needle. "All right," he told Griffin. "I could tell you this won't hurt, but that would be a lie. Just try not to scream too much."
Julian looked resignedly at the rum, then slopped it over Griffin's wrist. Dried blood washed off into the carpet; fresh red welled up in the cut. Julian splashed rum over his own hand and needle and thread in quick sterilisation that probably wasn't that effective but would have to do for now. He tied a knot in the free end of the string. He held the gash on Griffin's wrist close with one hand, tried not to think about how much it looked just like his, and poked the needle through the flesh and out the other side.
Griffin grit his teeth and bit down a scream.
"This is just to close it for now," Julian said, sliding the needle in again. "If I leave it like that it'll probably get infected and the blood will pool into a clot and you may lose at least your hand and you may die."
Julian finished the stitches, closed it with a knot, slopped more rum over everything to wash off excess blood, and then pulled another sheet off the bed. He half-cut half-tore a sizeable strip off it with help of the scissors and pulled it around Griffin's neck, fashioning it into a sling.
"Can you walk?" Julian asked.
"Yeah."
"Let's go."
#
Neo finally lifted his head from his arms and got back onto his feet, hand against the wall for support, still looking a little green but otherwise fine. "I'm okay," he said.
Not-Tim looked back at him from where he had been gazing thoughtfully at the crowds in front of the building. "Sure?"
Neo nodded. "How do we get in?"
"It's not getting in that's the problem. They want you in, with the others. Tranquilised. I'm not sure what they'll do with me, but-"
Not-Tim broke off. He suddenly regretted not shaving that morning. Or the previous morning, as a matter of fact. And many mornings before that, because it meant that any plan they hatched to get in and get the others out or home would have to be carried out without resorting to conveniently swapping positions and making full use of those few but vital seconds when the guards ended up first targeting the guy who knew less kung fu while the other took them out from the back. The vast difference in amount of facial hair was a bit too much of a giveaway. As were the ten years or so of age, but if they were quick, no one might have had time to notice...
Still, awesome science fiction trilogy aside, he doubted that the security holding back the crowds were that familiar with the oeuvre of Keanu Charles Reeves. First to get inside.
They discussed plans, briefly, then not-Tim pulled off his blazer and dumped it on the Norton, looking more generic in T-shirts and jeans, capable of passing as perhaps some guy named Eric, whom no one even knew existed anyway.
"Let's roll," he said, and he and Neo made their way to the front of the building.
They raised their hands in surrender when the robotic guards turned their guns at them.
"I believe you've got our friends in there," not-Tim said carefully.
Somewhere in the crowd, a random Matrix fan yelled something happy. Neo looked uncomfortable.
Brief talk among the guards, then four of them broke off from the others. Two grabbed hold of not-Tim, the other two of Neo.
A beep as their wrist-tags were scanned. One of the guards gave a start and looked from the reading to not-Tim, who raised an eyebrow.
They led them inside, and the door clanged dully shut.
The inside smelt new: of freshly set concrete, walls lacking in paint and the floor a dismal grey. Makeshift fluorescent lights swung from the ceiling and flooded the corridor with their glare. More corridors of grey and white led off adjacently from them at intervals. From them came voices, screams, angry shouts, and not-Tim tried to ignore them.
Then they turned into one of those corridors and went down it to the end, until they reached a dead wall ahead with the right side opening up into a large room behind bars.
The others were there, standing or sitting or lying down in various parts of the cell. They watched as a guard unlocked the gate and swiftly shoved Neo and the actor in. Then the gate was shut and locked once more and the guards went away, one of them speaking into his walkie-talkie.
"You," Ludlow said, glaring.
"...Hi," not-Tim said.
"You were supposed to stay in the house."
"Sorry. I-"
Ludlow turned on Neo. "What happened to keeping him there? Huh?"
Neo looked as though he would rather be anywhere else.
"We heard you got caught," not-Tim said. "It was on the news-"
"Yeah, and how the f*** does you getting caught help us?" Ludlow demanded. "We had a perfectly good hostage situation. We could have told them that we had left the others with instructions to kill you in four hours if they didn't hear from us. And now you've f***ed it all up with your little rescue fantasies."
Conor scratched his elbow.
"They want me," not-Tim said. "That's why they stopped the food and water earlier. They regret letting me in, and they wanted me out. If I'm here, I can talk to them-"
"And you think they'll listen?"
Ludlow got up from his bench and came towards him, and for a brief moment something fell away and not-Tim saw Ludlow as just another guy. Just a cop with dubious morals, a complete stranger whom he had only really known for two hours, and who was now seriously pissed off at him, and he was suddenly scared.
He was in a roomful of strangers. Strangers whose names he knew and whose lives he thought he knew in strictly one-way relationship, but two hours were nothing. Months or weeks or days spent acting out but a couple of hours of their lives, mere snippets in longer existences that he was clueless about, hinted only briefly at in back-story notes and speculation, and the only thing that bound them all together was suddenly superficial. They might not even share fingerprints. Looks aside, a random group of people off the street might have more in common-
Not-Tim backed off a step into the bars of the cell. "Tom-"
"What do you think they're going to do with us?" Kevin interrupted. "They locked us up. It doesn't look as though they're going to let us go, does it?"
Conor scratched his knee.
"If they wanted to kill us they would have done it long ago," Neo said.
"Right," Ludlow said. "In front of the whole world? They're not stupid, Anderson. They'd never live that down. But they could leave us here to die and claim we got home, and no one would f***ing know."
The guards reappeared around the corner, dragging Alex and Julian along. They unlocked the cell, shoved them in, and locked up again.
Conor scratched his neck.
"Where's Griffin?" not-Tim asked, as Julian got back to his feet and Alex decided that he didn't mind sitting on the ground.
"Hospital," Julian said. "He was injured so they kept him there."
"The serial killer's in hospital and we're in jail," John Constantine muttered.
Kip sighed.
#
Stuck in House: Chris Townsend, Matt, Tommy, Jesse, Paul, Tod, cornflakes guy, Eddie T, Ron, Derek, Jack Nimble, Heaver, Winston, Bill, Ted
"I'm bored," Ron said, looking at Paul from out the side of his eye. "Why're we just sitting here?"
"You could move around if you want," Paul suggested.
Tommy sneaked a handful of cornflakes out of the cornflakes guy's bowl when the cornflakes guy wasn't looking.
The cornflakes guy looked at his bowl. Something wasn't quite right about it. ":(," he vibed.
Ron shoved back his chair and got up. He stuck his hands in his pockets and trudged towards the door, then stopped, turned around, and paced back. "So we're just going to stay here?" he demanded.
"That's what he said," Heaver said, now slightly less damp from his encounter with the pool.
The TV was still on, Winston deeply engrossed in some astronomy programme on the Discovery Channel. Ron walked by, looked at it, looked at Winston's expression of awe, shook his head, and continued in his pacing.
Ron casually brushed stuff off a shelf. Miscellaneous things crashed to the floor.
Paul leaped up. "Hey!"
Ron ignored him and crouched down by the hi-fi system. He poked at it.
"Don't touch that," Paul said, hurriedly returning the fallen things to the shelf and hoping the arrangement looked the same.
Eddie was sitting out by the pool gazing into its depths.
"Hey – Paul?" Bill asked.
"Yes?"
"Do I have to stay here too?"
"Where do you want to go?"
"That's a good question, dude," Bill admitted.
"We could go back to the place with the really excellent pizza," Ted suggested.
"You're definitely staying here," Paul said.
"Keanu said not to let anybody in," Derek pointed out. "He didn't say not to let anybody out."
"Yeah, and he also said not to let anybody kill anybody," Tod added.
"Those guys who went out got caught," Paul said. "I'm not going to risk that."
"Why are you in charge?" Matt muttered, not looking at him.
Paul shrugged. "I'm the oldest."
#
Stuck in Cell: Shane, Conor, John C, Johnny U, Nelson, Kip, Perry, Kevin, Ludlow, Eric, Marlon, Harry, Martin, Mike, Bob, Alex, Julian, Neo, not-Tim
"So," Alex said, getting up from the floor. "What's up?"
"What's it look like, Wyler?" Ludlow asked. "We're making cookies."
Alex looked at not-Tim. "Rupert got away," he said. "Some of the guards can't really see. They sense us by this." He lifted up his wrist tag. "His was covered in blood. They didn't even know he was there."
"Where is he?" not-Tim asked.
"I don't know. Loose in the building... But for now he's all we've got."
"And Scott," Johnny said from the back. "I saw the coward run off when they came."
"Then he's no good to us," Nelson said.
"Do you know what would be good right now?" Ludlow asked. "An actor being kept hostage outside, which we could bargain with. It would definitely be a lot more useful than two extra people taking up space."
Neo didn't think he was taking up much space, but didn't say so.
"There's nobody to bargain with," Kevin pointed out with his usual legal insight.
"Maybe if we shout, the guards will come," Kip suggested.
"They know I'm here," not-Tim said, tapping his wrist tag thing. "They zapped that."
"Yeah," Neo added helpfully.
"No one's come, have they?" Ludlow continued through gritted teeth. "Looks like you're not so f***ing important after all-"
"We came here to help you," not-Tim said.
"Yeah. Some help!"
"Okay, so things didn't go as expected-"
"What did you expect?" Ludlow demanded. "Them to welcome you in on a f***ing red carpet? Is that what you're used to?"
"No-"
"If your plan was to end up locked in here with us, then congratulations, but even you're not enough of a f***ing idiot to-"
"I came to cancel the contract!" not-Tim yelled. "Yeah," he added off Ludlow's stare. "You're only here because I let them. What about that, huh? I gave them my signature. I gave them my permission-"
"...All right," Ludlow said. "That's it. I don't care who you are."
He grabbed the actor in a shove. Not-Tim twisted half-out of his grasp and threw a punch, missed, punch returned, missed, pinned against the bars, kick, fist again, caught, arm twisted, screamed, kicked back, Ludlow lost his footing, pulled him down, and Marlon decided he should move out of the way.
"Guys-" Alex started, but his words fell on deaf ears and he hopped out of the way of a violently grasping hand.
Julian sighed.
Loose in Kenselton Holding Facility: Rupert
Pressed against a wall because he thought it would make him harder to spot, Rupert glanced around the corner. More cells. More strains of conversation from the imprisoned:
"Get your filthy alien hands off my neck."
"No."
"I'm the only chance you've got of getting out of here, and you know it."
"That is unlikely. They are aware of your abilities. You have witnessed first-hand that they are immune to anything you can do. The only people you will be capable of harming is us and our fellow prisoners, as you have demonstrated countless times in order to fulfil your misguided notions of superiority. As such I believe that it is safer this way. You may be assured that I do not enjoy this any more than you do-"
"Oh, shut up, pointy ears."
No help here. Rupert moved on-
"Hello."
Rupert gave a start.
Dem smiled at him. "Rupert Marshetta, right?"
"...Yeah."
"Miss home?"
"Who are you?"
"One of the few people free in this place. I think you've all stayed here long enough, don't you?"
"..." said Rupert.
Dem clapped a hand on his shoulder and nudged him down the corridor. "Come on. There are things to do, people to send home, space-time continua to disturb."
Down the corridor and into another. Past the cells, the bars giving way to doors nowhere near as polished as the ones in Kenselton Hotel had been. Functional doors. They opened and they closed. Dem opened one without knocking and guided Rupert inside.
Adwin jumped and his feet fell off the table. "You-"
"Yes, me," Dem said. "Time for the return. Thought I'd let you know."
"What return?"
Dem raised an eyebrow. "What's the point of bringing across a whole lot of people from different universes if you don't get to send them all back again? It's multiversial strain just waiting to happen." Dem grinned. "Who knows – it might be finally enough to destroy everything for good, and I'll finally discover what lies beyond. If not, we could always try again."
"But-"
"I would have put it off, but it seems that the longer we wait, the more of them die. Which means the fewer we can send back. And you're evidently not bringing any more across, so this is more or less the peak population and it's just downhill from here. So. I'll go do that before more die-"
"You-"
"Don't forget, this was my idea," Dem said. "If it wasn't for me, they wouldn't even be here. I'll send them home, and you can clean up the mess. Maybe I'll send them back if you can't. Back and forth..." Dem looked thrilled at the idea. "You know what? Maybe I'll do a little more of that before I send the lot back. Just to annoy you."
"W-" Adwin said, but Dem had ignored him in favour of Rupert.
"Let's start with your friends, all right?" Dem asked him, and went back out the door, Rupert looking confused and following after.
"Word of advice, Tom," Dem said when they arrived at the cell, where not-Tim and Ludlow were still beating the crap out of each other with the occasional profanity or existential dilemma. "He made you, he can unmake you."
"WHO THE F*** ARE YOU?" Ludlow demanded, turning for a moment from bashing not-Tim in the left ear.
Not-Tim always lost these fights.
Dem casually took out a skeleton key from one of his pockets and unlocked the cell gate. He'd gotten it from a real skeleton that he'd managed to coax out of the closet.
"I'm the Mysterious Old Man, and I'm here to rescue you," he said. "It's Opposite Day today," he explained as he opened the gate. "Enjoy it while it lasts. Want to go home?"
Ludlow picked himself off the ground and not-Tim. "That's it?" he asked Dem in disbelief.
Not-Tim lay on the ground covered in fresh bruises. He wondered why he'd ever become an actor. What was the reason he'd given to that journalist so long ago: 'Have you ever wanted to jump off a bridge onto the back of a moving truck?'
Yeah. In times like these, it was a pretty lousy reason.
Dem took out two small pointy beacons from his pocket and set them on the ground. He took out a remote control from the same pocket and shook it. He gave a satisfied nod. "Nothing broken," he said. "And oh-" Dem pulled out a folded sheet of notepaper and handed it to Ludlow. "Note for you," he said, and turned his attention back to the remote.
Ludlow unfolded the note and looked at it:
"Officer ...please give the actor a break. 'Cause he's the one who made you you. He took a character who was the patchwork of three different writers, and gave you his anger, his frustrations, his voice, his drive, his obsessions... even the face you loathed to look at in the mirror. He spent quite some time putting 'you' together. Making you believable. real.
And many people say you're one of his best creations ever.
So you might consider helping him off that floor and buying him a Bloody Mary. He deserves it."1
1From LucaM
Ludlow glared at the note. "Where’d you get this?" he asked Dem.
Dem shrugged. "Gmail."
Dem pressed a sequence of buttons on the remote control. The beacons on the ground threw up a fizzy portal, and he slipped through it into the Reeves residence.
"Hello," said Dem.
Paul and the kids stared back at him.
"Rescue party," Dem explained. "Get through here, please. It’s easiest to send you all back together."
Paul and the kids stared back at him.
Dem sighed. He went back through. "You," he said, randomly flicking a finger at Conor. "Get in there and show ‘em it’s safe."
"Why me?" Conor asked suspiciously.
"Why not?"
"I’ll go," Alex said, and stepped through the portal. "It’s safe," he told the others at the other end, and they finally got up and moved into the cell, once Winston could be separated from the awesome astronomy programme on TV that was almost over, just give him another five minutes please, please, please, ow!
Dem changed the settings another two times and extracted a willing Griffin and an unwilling Scott from their various locations.
"All right," he said cheerfully, oblivious to the glares that the latest two entries were getting. "Would you like the dead people back alive, too? It’s Opposite Day, so I’ve got to do nice things to destroy the multiverse instead of not-nice things to destroy the multiverse. And besides, it’s easier, because then all I have to do is reverse the thing that brought you here, and you’ll all go home. Or else the dead people will get home dead, or, if I take the trouble to send you home individually, they’ll just stay missing forever."
There were no objections, so Dem went off to do the work. He was immortal. He lived millennia. These were the little things that made existence interesting.
An easy bit of time travel got him back just after Jonathan Harker and Eddie Kasalivich had been happily murdered by Griffin. He bribed the Soylent Green folks with spinach and got the two bodies, kicked them with the Boot of Life and dumped the two very confused people back in the cell before going back through the portal.
The Shakespeare bot relinquished Hamlet and Don John after Dem bribed it with spinach.
The workers at IBHA did not like spinach, and told Dem he’d have to wait until Jack Traven finished his sentence. So he skipped a while into the future, was there for Jack’s arrival, let him know that he was no longer Alex’s dog and could he please get back on two legs. Turned out the IBHA folks liked broccoli, so Dem bribed them with that and got Jack transferred back to his body at the point before he’d died, freefalling through the void of the isolated bubble of hyperspace.
Dem caught him and teleported him back, wondered why he still bothered with the portal, turned it off to save batteries, and left Jack there with the others to be confused and wonder why Griffin was smiling at him and why Alex didn’t seem to care.
Dem time travelled back to the world where Shane and co. had found themselves. He dropped into the scene invisible and waited until Fred had started eating Jjaks and the others had left, then bribed Fred with spinach and teleported Jjaks away to a futuristic hospital in another world. He kicked him with the Boot of Life, followed by the Boot of Stop Screaming Please, then let the doctors work on him. Dem skipped to the future and collected him, fully healed, then went back to the cell and let Jjaks join the confused people.
Dem took a short trip back to one of his homes, where he apologised to Donnie for abducting him and forcing him to work on his spinach farm. Upon angry retorts, he kicked him with the Boot of Stop Screaming Please and teleported him away.
As an afterthought, because it was Opposite Day, Dem dropped by a store en route and bought a packet of Silk Cuts. He tossed the cigarettes ("embrace your British side") to a surprised and grateful John Constantine and dumped Donnie there to join them.
Dem made his way to the frozen planet of Hagindaz and made a few more near rescues, pre-dead where he could. The Boot of Life worked only for a few days after death if they were still sufficiently intact; it did nothing for exploded people or those who had since turned to skeletons. Bribing afterlife folk with their vegetable of choice tended to be a last resort. For those who had died in a universe without any afterlife, that was it. But there were none such cases this time.
The cell got crowded, cramped, and slightly noisy. Hamlet was spouting sad soliloquies again. Others were busy freaking out at the sheer number of people, or perhaps it was just at Ortiz. Not-Tim was trying to stem the flow from a bloody nose, and Ludlow wasn’t helping, though the number of glares seemed to have gone down slightly, replaced by a simmering anger and what might have been grudging respect.
Julian thought about saying something, but John looked far too content smoking.
Dem unlocked the gate. "Join your friends," he told Bill. "Cell R16. Go find it."
"But-"
"Go."
Ted looked sadly on as Bill left the cell and went off to try not to get lost.
Dem took out more gadgety stuff from his pockets. They were special pockets. Everything could fit in them, except kitchen sinks because of their weird plumbing. He extracted and unfolded a metal tube, forming it into a door-way over the portal.
Dem held up a small thingy in his palm. "This is known as an Interdimensional Travel Device Thingy," he explained. "ITDT for short. I’ll stick it here-" he slotted it onto the other side of the doorway – "and when you go through, it’ll be programmed specially for you. If you don’t plan on spending the rest of your life in your universe, take it. It’ll let you visit each other. Please do that. Do that a lot. Interdimensional travel is good and desirable."
"What time will it be when we get back?" Derek asked.
"The time you left plus the time you’ve spent out of your world, so you’ll have to explain yourself to a lot of people... oh, zark it. It’s Opposite Day." Dem looked sad. He sighed. "...all right, I’ll send you back the time you left and block all travel until you’ve caught up and are back in sync. But you’ll still have to explain why you suddenly vanished and reappeared, so deal with that."
They looked doubtfully at the portal.
Dem pulled out a small digital readout and tapped on it, adjusting settings until he was satisfied. "All right. Anderson, Thomas, get in there."
"My name is Neo," Neo didn’t say. He hesitated and looked at not-Tim.
"Why should we trust you?" not-Tim asked Dem on his behalf.
Dem shrugged. "Because you normally can’t, and it’s Opposite Day today, which means you can."
Not-Tim looked at Neo. Unspoken words passed between them, and then he pulled Neo into a hug.
"See you," not-Tim said softly.
He let go, and Neo stepped forward to the portal, not looking back.
"OI!" yelled Adwin as he came running up from outside the cell to see what was happening. Dem cast him a dispassionate look. "Take him away," he told Adwin’s accompanying guard, and the guard did so, because Dem promised spinach.
Dem pulled out a cutter thing from his pocket and snipped the wrist tag off Neo’s wrist. He tapped a button on his readout. The portal shimmered and changed, and through it they saw the vague outline of the Nebuchadnezzar. Neo’s jack-in seat was empty; people had just noticed and were starting to panic.
Neo took a breath and walked through.
"Take that," Dem told him, pointing at the Interdimensional Travel Device Thingy. Neo pulled it off the doorway as the Neb crew noticed his sudden arrival and were wondering about the portal- and then it vanished, and those in the cell saw the portal change.
"Arctor, Robert," Dem said. "Get on with it. We don’t have all century."
Johnny nudged Bob up from his seat.
And so, alphabetically, they went on through the portal, home.
"Hurry up," Dem said, when Marlon took a while to realise what was going on.
Through the portal they could make out some seedy bar. "In," Dem told Marlon. "Go home. And be quick about it in case someone decides to come through."
Marlon looked at him and blinked, so Dem kicked him with the Boot of Speed, which had come free with the collector’s edition DVD where he lived.
Soon it was just two of them and Dem left.
"Come visit some time," Alex said.
Not-Tim nodded. "Sure."
"Move it, Wyler, Alex," Dem said. "I’ve got a whole building of people to send home."
So Alex gave a final wave goodbye and went on home.
Dem tapped on his device, and the portal changed a final time – the outside of the building, the Norton motorbike parked by the wall.
"That's the lot," Dem said. "Take your bike and go home."
"Why."
"You don't want to stay here, do you?"
"No. Why. All of this."
Dem lowered the device and looked at him. "You can't always have all the answers," he said quietly. "Maybe some things aren't meant to be known." A pause. "But I'm trying."
"What was all that for?" not-Tim demanded. "Bringing them over, making me responsible for their deaths, and then just resurrecting the lot of them and sending them home?"
"It's about understanding," Dem said. "Pain. Love. Trying to see if those things are more than illusion."
"And are they?"
"I don't know," Dem said. "Not yet."
"You can't just keep playing with people like that!"
"But you are being played," Dem said. "Every moment of every day. The moment you were born into the system of life and started the fight to stay in it. Where the only way out is non-existence. Why do you fight to live? Why do you struggle against death? There's an afterlife or there isn't. If there isn't, you're free of the system and will never worry again. And if there is, it's the start of a new adventure.
"All I do is make you aware of that struggle," Dem said. "I have my own answers to seek. Take your bike and go home."
Not-Tim finally nodded. He walked off into the portal.
The Real World
He pulls the ITDT off the other side of the portal and looks at it. There are three main buttons and an on-off switch: the two arrow-marked buttons scrolled through names; the large central button took you to them. Other tinier buttons could program additional coordinates in once the user figured out how they worked. Presumably there was a manual for the thing out there somewhere, but Dem had not seen fit to provide them with one.
The portal shimmers into nothing.
Not-Tim pockets the ITDT and goes over to his bike. He pulls his blazer back on, and looks out at the crowds still clamouring outside the building, unaware of what was going on inside, desperate for a glimpse of another world, other worlds, through the people who lived in them; people now gone – or soon to be gone – as though they had never been.
Not-Tim wonders what it was all for.
But answers... Answers can come at another time.
He climbs onto his bike, starts up the engine and rides off home, missing the weight of Neo behind him.
Through the gate, alone this time.
Porch.
Door.
His footsteps make the only sounds.
The television set is on, blaring at an empty couch. Unwashed cutlery dumped in the sink. Stuff arranged haphazardly on a shelf. Puddles of water by the side of the pool.
A sudden empty loneliness descends on him.
His scripts have names, dialogue, descriptions; monospaced serif text typed out on paper. The films have faces and voices and snippets of lives; him but not-him, clashing and combining with memories of the same embodied in flesh by his side, breathing and thinking and speaking and being; independent of his control.
It could have been a dream.
Fleeting scenes pass through his mind as he dumps the keys and moves through the rooms, going to the sink to wash up. Half-forgotten conversations already dimming in memory: Neo looking for the computer, Ludlow grabbing for his throat, Griffin handcuffed to his wrist, Alex listening in the quiet of the night.
The memories threaten to flatten and collapse; reduce into half-psychotic extensions of himself, imagination running wild, thought experiments that went too far, back-stories that took on lives too big for them.
But the ITDT is still in his pocket. He holds it, closes his fingers over it, feels the weight of other lives just out of reach but still extant, feels the physical assurance of fiction turned reality, and he hopes, with sudden desperation, that it was not a dream.
With measured reluctance he tries to wake. He shuts his eyes and wills reality through, and for a moment things seem to change...
But when he opens his eyes again, he's still standing by the sink, and the ITDT in his hand still feels solid and real and something not made by human hands. And at a touch of the button, the names scroll down its screen, inhabited with a constancy not known to dreams:
Anderson, Thomas
Arctor, Robert
Barksdale, Donnie
Clayton, Jjaks
Connelly, Winston
Constantine, John
...
Still there. Still alive.
Still real.
#
THE END
Afterword
'The Not-Particularly-Excellent Adventures of the Keanu-Spawn' had its beginnings almost five years ago in 2005, as short sketches to end off each chapter of a series called 'Matrix Revolutions: The Other Versions' that I had been writing. I never really intended them as anything more than joke fillers, but over time those short sketches started to form a proper story of their own, and eventually I decided to turn them into a full-fledged novel. I wrote it as a sequel to 'Real World', my first novel, which involved five characters – including Neo and Ted – entering the real world and having to deal with the discovery that they were fictional.
Part of the motivation for this fic was due to me missing the characters and wanting to write more about them; another part was due to my growing appreciation of Keanu Reeves' films and the fascinating characters who inhabited them. His characters have always been the focal point of my fandom. Contrary to popular opinion, I find each of them to be completely different, unique individuals, and thought they warranted further exploration. I also thought that they would make an excellent ensemble cast. The fact that this story actually works already says something about their diversity; a cast of identical characters would probably not result in anything very interesting happening, and neither would a bunch of characters who know no other word than 'whoa'.
So this fic was for me as much a character study as a piece of fiction, and when I started out, I was actually unfamiliar with most of the characters I was writing about, having yet to make much headway in the Reeves oeuvre. Many initial characterisations were based off nothing more than screen captures, music videos off YouTube and movie trailers; but they were often enough for me to get a sense of what a character was like, which I think says something about Keanu's skill as an actor at least in the realm of character portrayal. Each of the Keanu-spawn felt like a separate individual, and I liked – and still like – them all in different ways, though my favourites are Neo and Conor.
If 'Real World' was for me an integral part of my early teenage years, this novel achieved the same purpose for my late teenage years, which were largely spent in Keanu fandom – running the articles archive at my Keanu fan site http://www.whoaisnotme.net, defending him and his acting on the Internet with the rest of the Keanu SWAT Team, and forming countless invaluable friendships among fellow fans in the fandom. It was another chapter of my life, one filled with lots of angst and whoa and growing up, and it is one that I'll never regret or forget, the possibility of amnesia aside.
As for this novel, the characters still live on in my imagination and in the films that gave me a window to their world. Their story does not end here; shortly after finishing the first draft of this fic (or perhaps some time before), I continued writing about them in short stories and scripts, the characters brought together with the ITDTs. My friend and fellow Keanu fan Caitlin was a large contributor to this; we spent many days and nights together on MSN Messenger co-writing what is at present close to 100,000 words (more than this novel has) of chat-style scripts about the continued adventures of the Keanu-spawn and other people they met along the way, several of those other people forming the basis for what I plan to be the next Kenselton novel. Our scripts will eventually be uploaded once I format them properly.
But for now, this is the end of this novel, and I hope that you've enjoyed it. As always, feedback is greatly appreciated; feel free to e-mail me at starwarsisnotdead@gmail.com with any comments you may have, positive or negative.
And now, repeating the last part of my afterword for 'Real World', written more than three years ago in December 2006 but which still holds true for me:
There are still other stories to be told, there are still other ideas waiting to come. So here ends this novel and this part of my life, because it’s time to move on to start another.
The Author
13 February 2010
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