Quaranteam Book Two Ch 21

Chapter Twenty-One

April 19

th

, 2021

He hadn't expected to be waking up just a short hop, skip and a jump away from Pinewood Studios, but sometimes the machinery that surrounded his life was just that much bigger and meaner than he was, and he had no choice but to acquiesce to its demands.

Hollywood being what it was, the amount of shooting time needed in London had been expanded, and the key members of Team Rook had shown up a week or two later than originally planned, but Andy didn't mind, as the news of the delay in shooting had come in during the middle of their honeymoon, which had involved a week in Hawaii, a week in Mexico, a week in Jamaica and a week in Cuba, with regular stops back at the manor in between.

He felt Melody's hand on his shoulder, a smile on her lips, which meant she'd already sent her text message a while ago. "You need to get up, boss," she said to him. "They need you on set in case they need any revisions done on the fly."

"What time is it?"

"Just a little after ten. Em and Sarah have been on set since five, but neither of them wanted to wake you, since they got to sleep earlier than you did last night. Em also has that interview with that UK journalist today, Farah Hassan, so she wanted to have a little bit of extra time to give her while she was in costume and make up. Em felt it was good to give the home press a bone, and liked what she'd seen of Hassan when she'd been back home visiting. The two took Ash, Piper and Niko with them, and Mo and Fi are in New York having their meeting with Fi's publisher. They're probably still asleep, since I don't even think it's daybreak over there yet, so I wouldn't call them for a bit. You were really out of it, so everyone thought it best if you get caught up on sleep."

"Yeah, well, I had to have that video call with the Senator, and so I needed to function on D.C. time, not London time, for at least a few hours," Andy sighed as he sat up. He curled a finger at Melody and she leaned down. He tilted his head up and gave her a soft kiss, partially because he wanted to but mostly because it made the tough-as-nails woman blush each and every time, and he enjoyed that. "Thanks for letting me sleep in, Mel."

"I think you'd have ignored me if I'd tried to get you up any earlier, boss," Melody chuckled. "But if you want to say thanks to your girl, maybe she could suck you off during the morning shower? I feel a little self-conscious shouting about how I love you fucking me when we're in such a high-end hotel on the movie studio's dime."

"This kind of hotel?" Andy laughed. "I'm sure they've heard much much worse, but sure, I don't mind."

Maybe they took a little bit longer in the shower than he needed, but Melody looked extremely satisfied when they were both drying off, licking the remaining jism from her lips, her skin a little tingly in the post-glow of the serum-induced orgasm. "I'm sure you already probably know this, Andy, but it really is much better with you than it was with Covington. Not just the way you treat me, but the sex itself. He made me feel more like an object than a person, but you go out of your way to make sure I'm having a good time, even when you know you don't have to. I'm just an employee and yet, you're still taking time to cuddle me post orgasm, like that long hug you gave me in the shower. I want you to know that means a lot to me."

"You're not just an employee, Melody," Andy said to her. "I get that you

think

you are, but every employee is still family on one level or another. And you made a mistake throwing in your lot with Covington. You can't let that color the rest of your life. What's that quote from the movie? 'Life's simple. You make choices and you don't look back.' You were given a second chance, and you're making the most of it. Anyone who doesn't respect that is out of their mind."

"I think Piper might still be a little overly cautious around me."

"Well, that's to be expected," Andy chuckled. It still felt strange not having to put on his glasses after he got up or got out of the shower. Twenty years of constantly putting them on meant he felt like he was forgetting something every time he didn't, but the regeneration had left him with better eyesight than he'd had even when he was younger. "She still wishes Covington would've gotten something more retribution oriented instead of just life in prison, but they need men alive, one way or another, so they weren't going to kill him off. Shit, they aren't even killing off Brian Morrison and he killed someone directly."

"Well, he did do that on Covington's orders."

"So he claimed," Andy sighed, "but it's his word against Covington's, and the jury didn't know who to believe, no matter what any of us said in testimony. Either way, both him and Covington get to spend the rest of their lives in jail, working as human sperm banks. That's just the way it is. The death penalty's a thing of the past, at least for the time being, at least for men. We can't afford any more lives to be lost."

"Can I ask what you and the Senator were talking about last night?" Melody asked him, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. She'd found out that Andy preferred longer hair on women not long after she'd joined the family and had started growing it out without so much as a suggestion from him, according to what Niko had told him a few days ago.

"Sure," Andy said, grinning as he waited for the joke to sink in.

A few seconds later, Melody rolled her eyes and flashed him her most embarrassed grin. "What were you and the Senator talking about last night, oh keeper of the dad jokes?"

"Some last-minute tweaks they're trying to jam into the Male Protection Act," Andy grumbled. "The Senators sort of like to use me as a testing ground, to see just how much of a shitstorm I'll throw up if they try and chip away at our freedoms just a little bit more."

"How bad is it?"

He tossed his hands up. "I think it might just be the most damned piece of legislation since the original Prohibition, but that's also just me speaking from my point of view, and men aren't exactly the largest of voting blocs anymore."

"What are they trying to add?"

"A clause that will let them regulate a man's diet if he weighs too much during any checkup," he sighed. "I told them trying anything diet related would cause the whole thing to be unconstitutional no matter how they try and portray it, and that they'd just end up having to jail most men, which isn't the intended point."

"I can't understand why they're worried about it anyway," Melody told him. "Most of the men I've seen, what with all the sex you're having to have, all of you are probably in the best shape of your lives. Not getting fit wasn't really an option. You're all doing the equivalent of a two-mile jog each day in the equivalent calories burned fucking. Maybe more."

"They seem to feel like there may be some exceptions down at the lower end of the scale, those with a small number of partners," Andy said. "But I keep pointing out that those men are getting saddled with more and more partners as the desire to start ramping up human production increases."

"You have a weird way of saying 'making babies,' boss."

Andy chuckled, rubbing his eyes. "Yeah, that's fair. After looking at numbers and spreadsheets for so long, you start thinking of them

just

as numbers and forget they're people. The folks in Congress are doing everything they can to get America pregnant, even if that includes women who weren't American just a few months ago."

"How's the acceptance rate for Operation: Funnel Cake anyway?" Melody asked as she moved to strap her weapon's holster back into place, pulling on her jacket over it to keep it concealed. Andy had gotten quite appreciative of how well she, Niko and Alexis kept their weapons out of sight, so that he knew they were there, but he wasn't constantly thinking about them.

"I haven't been able to get acceptance and satisfaction rates for outbound, but inbound, it seems like we've made a lot of women very happy at least in the short term," Andy said with relief, pulling on his clothes. He grabbed a Buckethead t-shirt from his suitcase, tugging it on last. "It's the Friends & Family benefit that's really helped, I think, because everyone brings a slice of home with them, and nobody's run aground in a new country without some of their support system with them. It's definitely going to change the makeup of this country, though, let me tell you. The melting pot just turned into a blender set to puree. I understand why they're making all the new women wait a year before giving them voting rights, though, just so that the fall election isn't affected by them too much."

"How soon is Congress going to vote on the MPA?"

"Within the next day or two, I think," Andy grumbled. "There's still a whole bunch in there that I think is going to go over like a lead balloon, but hey, why would anyone listen to me, right? I'm just one of the men who'd be affected by the whole damn thing, and there aren't a whole lot of those left in Congress anymore."

"What part of it do you think is going to go over the worst?" she asked him as they headed out of their hotel room towards the elevator. Lexi was downstairs, waiting for them outside of the car with the driver the studio had hired for them. It felt a little odd, moving around with so few people with him, but there was something refreshing about it, like he wasn't quite as constricted as he normally was.

"The phasing out of all men from combat/line-of-fire positions in the military across the board. They're still wrestling with whether they can apply that to law enforcement, but I kept telling them if they did it for all police, the bill would be

completely

DOA, because I can't imagine all the cops agreeing to follow it. You'd have thousands of men refusing to turn in their badges and their weapons. Shit, I think trying to do it for the military alone is going to be hard enough, but you can understand where they're coming from there," Andy said, stopping to give Lexi a kiss on the cheek as she scowled at him before quietly laughing. "Even if it's just military and doesn't include cops, I think that's going to be the biggest bone of contention in the bill." Andy climbed in the back of the car and Melody scooted in next to him as Lexi moved to sit in the front passenger seat, next to the driver, whose name was Tulip.

"You think most of the bill is fine?"

"I think most of it is common

sense

at this point," Andy said as the driver started up the e-tron car and drove out from the underground parking area. "Not letting men smoke? Not letting them be firefighters or engage in high-end, risky behavior? That's all just sensible from a practical point of view. But there's limits to what you can dictate that people can and can't do. They struck the 'no foreign travel' clause, thank God, because otherwise we'd be the most isolationist country ever, with women being unable to go abroad for longer than a week or so. I'm not real keen on the 'required kids' clause, but that number seems to keep changing, and if it settles at just 1-2 kids a year, then

maybe

I can understand that, but at one point they were talking 3-5 kids a year per Team, regardless of size, and that's just insane. Nobody's ready for that kind of sudden pressure in their lives yet. Nor do we as a species need that much to recover."

"The system needs shaking up, boss," Lexi said from the front seat. "We're going to need to repopulate the planet, and right now, with the small enough percentage of men we have, we're still far closer to extinction than anybody would like."

Andy scoffed a little bit. "I know the casualties are hard for any of us to wrap our minds around, but let's do it in cold hard numbers. According to our estimates, we lost about a billion people in the Kill Zone. That leaves around 7 billion people on the planet before we start clipping off casualties. About another billion of that are people aged ten and younger, who are immune to the effects of DuoHalo. That leaves us with a starting point of 6 billion. Half of that 6 billion, give or take, were men. The ballpark estimate is that 80% of the planet's men have been killed, give or take 7%. That means there are somewhere in the range of three to seven hundred million men left alive on the planet. Compared to the 2.4 to 2.8 billion women left alive. Yeah, it's a cataclysmic event, but life will carry on. It's not like there's only ten thousand men left in the world. If we were looking at those kinds of numbers, then yeah, I get it, every man is basically a semen bank you keep locked away. But the planet was looking at overpopulation before all of this, so there's some benefits to it all as well. Trying to lock a generation of men in an ivory tower ain't the way to go about solving this problem, though."

"I'd sleep sounder knowing you weren't constantly in harm's way, boss," Lexi told him. "But I get that you don't want to be kept under glass either. I'm glad they took some of my feedback and incorporated that as well, otherwise we would've been intentionally in violation of a lot of those rules on day one. No way in hell I'm letting anyone lo-jack you."

"What's on my schedule today?" Andy asked. "Anyone know?"

"First few hours they're going to show you some of the footage shot spliced together. It's too early to call it a rough cut, but they want to make sure you think it's falling in line with how you see it translating from page to screen, and then you'll meet with the producer to give any of your notes," Melody told him. "After that, it's dinner with the director and the producer together, then a few hours on set, letting you have the chance to tweak any of the dialogue that actors are having trouble with. You'll ride back with Em and Sarah tonight after they're done shooting."

"Right, right," Andy nodded. "So, a week here, then everybody's back to the Bay so the movie can do its two weeks of on-location shooting for stuff they can't or won't fake with CG, although I imagine they won't need Sarah for much, if any of that, and even Em's stuff shouldn't be too long. And then the Oversight meeting in mid-May."

Melody laughed a little bit. "Plus, y'know, Niko probably giving birth first week of May, and Ash probably giving birth late May."

Andy chuckled, nodding. "Y'know, the little things." He looked out the window and muttered a single word beneath his breath. "T'oel. Maybe that'll work."

"What's that, boss?" Melody asked him.

"Nothing, don't worry about it," he said as the car pulled up to the gate at Pinewood Studios. The guard checked their ID, did a quick sweep of the car and then passed them through, letting them head towards the buildings. "Where are they filming today?"

"Some second unit stuff is being done on the main stage, and the main shooting is over at the Underwater Stage, so you don't have to worry about onset dialogue fixing today."

"Good," Andy said. "It'll be nice to see what they've shot so far and get a handle on how the movie's coming together before I have to sit down and talk with anybody about it."

The film's choice of director had been something of a controversial one - the man's name was Alex Proyas, an Australian director with a very uneven track record. His most recent film, 2016's "Gods Of Egypt," had tanked at the box office, but Andy was a

big

fan of one of the director's earlier movies, a film called "Dark City," which he felt showed a good understanding of the sort of vibe and atmosphere the Druid Gunslinger books had always fallen under. Andy had been willing to accept Proyas as director on the movie, as long as there was an understanding that he would strongly stick to the script, and not try to add or remove too much from screenplay draft that Andy had okayed shortly after Christmas. The studio had insisted that Proyas had plenty of green screen experience, and that he could bring the production in under budget, even if he took a little bit of extra time shooting it.

For Andy, the quality of the thing was all that mattered.

The director's lead assistant brought them into the screening room and sat them down before turning on the footage, which was definitely still far too early to be called a 'rough cut' but was far enough along to let Andy see how the film was developing.

Andy had his laptop out to let him take notes, but for the most part, Proyas was on the right track. The pacing felt right, Chris Kane was

perfect

in his interpretation of Dale Sexton and the director had always chosen angles to heighten the mood of the shot, not to detract from it. In fact, he only really had three major notes they would need to talk about. It was the most relaxed Andy had felt in months, as if a giant weight had been lifted off his head.

From there, the producer's assistant brought the three of them out of the viewing room to meet in a private lounge, and this was the meeting Andy was most nervous about. "So, Andy, what do you think?" Dana Goldberg asked him as he came to sit down at the table with her for lunch.

Goldberg was the Chief Creative Officer of Skydance and had the sort of powerful track record of success that made him a little nervous, from giant mega-hits like the Mission: Impossible movies to highly successful TV like Altered Carbon or Condor. Skydance and Working Title Productions were the two production houses behind the movie.

"Well, all the key points are in place, so I think you're most of the way there," Andy said, shaking hands as he got comfortable. "In fact, I've really only got three major notes to talk about. Most of the rest of it is minor quibble stuff."

"You're the father of this whole story, so let me hear your concerns," she said. "I had them prepare lunch for us in advance, so I hope a chicken cheesesteak's okay."

"I certainly won't say no to that," Andy laughed, as a waiter brought out a can of Mezzo Mix, setting it down for him. "Wow, you've really done your homework on me."

"We didn't want you to be disappointed. Now, concerns. You have them; I want to fix them."

"Sure, the first one's just sort of a tonal question - I noticed you haven't done any of the sort of flashback stuff that's peppered through the story. And I understand most of them, but I feel like if you don't include the scene of young Dale and Charlotte being told who's going to be the Gunslinger, it's going to muddy up the relationship they have to the audience who isn't familiar with the books," Andy said. "And I realize, the more into the books you get, the more complicated that relationship gets, but the last thing you want to do is start them off on a semi-adversarial relationship. They antagonize each other, but that's brothers and sisters for you."

"You're absolutely right, and I agree with you, it's a scene we

will

be shooting - we just need to find the right cast for the younger version of the Sexton kids, and the right actor to play their father. Any thoughts? Who'd you see in the role?"

"He's too big for this sort of thing, but Colin Farrell."

"Are you kidding? This is the sort of thing Colin

loves

to do - come in for a small cameo that he can really sink his teeth into. And, even more importantly, he's still alive. I'll make some calls. What else? What's next?"

"The second is that I notice you haven't shot either of the scenes with Seymour in them, and they don't seem to be on the shooting schedule for on location shooting."

"Alex doesn't seem to think we need them."

Andy frowned a little bit, shaking his head. "Okay, this hill I'll die on. Seymour's only in two scenes in the first book, but those two scenes are pivotal, because the first one starts Dale down the path, and the second one leads into the resolution of the whole damn story! You can't cut them out of the script, otherwise it's going to feel like the audience is missing steps to make the mystery work."