space. Ok, AT&T it would be. They wouldn’t notice for a lot longer.
He started the scripts. Ok, this would be ready in a few hours. Now he had to leave all the channels open in case ReeperG wanted to get in touch. He needed a few hours of sleep before the fun began.
Encoding
With an ugly shock, Andrea woke up. Shit, how the hell wasshegoingtogetthatfuckingmovieuploaded? Ok, slow down. She was resourceful, for sure. She looked at the clock, it said four am.
She rolled over, poorly dismounting from her bed. There’d be someone in that production booth all day and she’d promised the fucking movie at six thirty pm. No way she could get the movie over lunch like she’d planned.
She pulled a pair of freshly pressed jeans and a t-shirt from her closet and raced to the garage, forgetting the brushing of teeth, mouthwash, and a shower. Why didn’t she think this through last night? She must be some kind of idiot.
Flashing her badge to the guard at the studio gate, she snagged her best parking spot ever, right by the offices. She could see a few people in the distance leaving one of the sound stages after a long night of filming. In the building next to hers, feeling like a thief and almost expecting to be stopped and challenged at any moment, she walked through the darkened corridors and slipped into a production booth, closing the massively soundproofed door behind her. It took a few moments, then she had her bearings. In front of her, the wall of the booth was taken up by the production console, a massive computer device bristling with two keyboards, four huge flatscreen monitors, where she could throw up bits of scenes from films, and a large board full of sliders for mixing the soundtrack.
She couldn’t use most of that stuff, but fortunately it didn’t matter. She typed her login into the main console and hunted through the database until she found the Oliver Stone film. She chewed on her thumb. Where would she find the converters? At least she had a few hours, since the guys from production never showed up before ten am, worse than Andrea for working late. First, was this the release version? She snapped the jog dial, and the movie sped past her on the big middle screen, the sound only a high-pitched twitter. She punched in a command that jumped her forward. Now she jumped to the end. Yup, this was definitely the release version of the film. Ok, time to find the converter codecs, that should be the way to get the good pixes.
None of the converters would go straight to avi, the movie download standard, so she clicked the ‘generate DVD’ button. That would be a good first step.
As the computer silently calculated, Andrea, admired the super-computer at her fingertips. She didn’t have long to wait. Twenty minutes later, the DVD encoding finished with a beep, and a flashing indicator on the leftmost monitor. That should have taken three or four hours. Wow, they really upgraded these puppies! The console flagged a few trouble spots, where it thought the transitions weren’t as good as they should be. Andrea zipped to each one, looking carefully for blocks in the film frames at the trouble spot. When she found degraded pixes, she would painstakingly tweak buttons and sliders until the blotches disappeared. Sixty minutes elapsed. Sweet. She definitely rocked. I’m an editor now. Should she mess around with the music during the first car chase? Nope, look at the time; she’d have to move on. Done, she jumped back to the trouble spots, looking closely at fast moving scenes, where the picture tended to break up. These were some seriously good pixes. None of those pimply-faced kids could possibly do better than her. Sure, she had the best of the best equipment, but who cared? She was still the master.
Now she selected avi conversion. For some reason, the DVD media didn’t want to plug into the avi generator, so she hunted for the right settings. Finally the conversion sprung to life.
Suddenly the door to the booth opened with a swoosh. Andrea jumped, a squeal escaping her mouth.
“What are you doing here?” said a deep voice.
She swiveled in the chair to face the door.
“Hi,” she said, a finger pushing her bangs out of her eyes.
“You checking out Ollie’s new film?” It was one of the editors, clean shaven head and a muscle t-shirt.
“I’m upgrading the equipment. I’m from the IT department. Using the film to test out the new codecs.”
“At this time of the morning? You guys really are geeks.”
“Well we don’t exactly expect you night owls to be popping around so early.”
“No joke.”
“You mind coming back in a few hours? Or could you use another booth?”
“Yeah sure. Just surprised to see you here.”
“And wanting to scare the shit out of me.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to.”
The door shut. Fuck me, she thought, her stomach cramping with nausea. The screen showed another five minutes before the conversion would be complete. Damn, it was already seven am. She flipped off the monitors so that someone else coming in wouldn’t see the movie, and waited for completion. Some more pix adjustments and she had two avi movie files she could burn. She created a data DVD with the movie files, and stuffed the silver disk in her bag.
Now it was time to cover her tracks. She logged into the log files and deleted them one by one, with a few commands. Well, that should erase all traces of her activities, if anything would. She checked quickly, but everything looked perfect on the system, nothing out of place.
She shut down the console, and nearly ran out the door. It better work. No time to test it now.
The day dragged. Her search algorithms caught little Beehive traffic, and Marco commented more than once, “you look tired.”
“Stop telling me I look like shit,” she snapped back.
At five she left, claiming a dentist appointment.
“With those pearly whites?” Marco asked.
“Yep. Even perfection needs a tune-up every once in a while.” She blew him an air kiss.
In London, Dorian, lying sleepless on the couch, looked at his watch, two am. Four or five hours until the dude in Mexico would upload the screener. He hated this time zone shit. And no way was he moving into Tara’s bed this quick, even if this couch was pretty uncomfortable. He rolled over. A few more hours of sleep would be really good before he’d have to pull the all-nighter to get his pixes out.
Andrea’s internet phone rang almost as soon as she booted her laptop.
“What are you doing? Stalking me?”
“Damn, you’re vadering,” squelch said.
“You told me to, didn’t you?”
“But I really like your voice.”
“You got something for me?”
“Not yet, sugar plum. Stuff takes time to set up. I’m calling for the movie, you know, a little early.”
“Movie?”
“You kid luv? The movie. Oliver Stone. Don’t mess with me.”
“Mess with you? You’ve got nothing so I’ve got nothing.”
“You promised.”
“Couldn’t get at the media. People in the facility the whole time.”
“Fuck me. I’m stewed screwed. I was counting on it. You, baby, have fucked me hard.”
“Sorry.”
“You is a bitch.”
Andrea began laughing. This little kid thinks he’s better than me.
“What you laughing at?” squelch said.
“You’re such a child. You want to win some race against those other punks and you’re so worried you’re pissing your panties.”
“I’m not scared. You’re scared.”
Andrea sighed. “Too true. Anyway, I’ve got the movie but you aren’t getting it until six thirty. As promised. And you better deliver good surveillance or I’ll kick your puny ass.”
“You are a total bitch.” He paused. “Phew. Thank god.”
“That’s what you get, sonny.”
“Sorry man, sorry.”
At exactly six-thirty, Andrea loaded the disk into her laptop, and started the upload process.
USER Code BECOMES ACTIVE
70mm:Yo yo all. I
t’s time. First screening began at the fab U lous AMC Loews Boston Common. Bit early but the clock is now ticking. Time is 11:35pm. See y’all in 12-14 hrs
Code:Check
squelch:Got it in the bag baby. It’s there now.
Albu:you’re shit. you can’t get a pix if it bit you in the ass. no bodies buying it.
Ruutor:I’ve got a chance this time
Code:bye
squelch:we’ll see won’t we?
nil8:let me wrap up my shlong and I’ll b gone.
USER Code BECOMES IDLE
Dorian opened a secure link to his source in, was it Mexico? He still wasn’t sure.
Code:Dude. Seriously time to give up the goods. First screening under way.
XXX:I see. Eager beaver. Comin up right away mister. Now it’s loading.
Code:no mocking. we’re on a deadline. move it.
XXX:no mock dear sir. just your servant at your service
Code:where’s the link?
XXX:establishing. u use a slow server?
Code:shut up, no.
A window opened on his screen. Incoming link file. He clicked on the buttons and accepted the file, sitting back while the bits flowed over the internet from his source to the AT&T server.
Code:need to take a conservative bandwidth approach, don’t want get noticed until file is well distributed.
Code:should be done in hour.
He knew the files wouldn’t upload any quicker because he watched, but he’d never been able to shake the habit. I need to work fast, since 70mm is surely getting an upload from the opening in London as per usual. Though how he’ll get good pixes from a showing I don’t know.
The file completed uploading. Instantly, Code
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