Healing in Community & Chapter 40

Hello, alien lovers!

A couple of weeks ago, my co-op, The Peer to Peer Community Co-op, organized our annual event in collaboration with the City of Vancouver: Healing In Community.

It's an outdoor event, taking place in Blood Alley, where survivors of gender-based violence come together to do some yoga and baduanjin. It's always a fun day, although it's a LOT of work for us.

Healing In Community is one of the many ways we foster community in the Downtown Eastside. I'm really proud of our team and the work we've accomplished since 2022. Hopefully, we'll get to organize a new iteration of the event next year!

Welcome to Chapter 40!

There's nothing like some clarity post sex-on-the-floor-of-a-submarine-libary to solve a mystery, am I right?

Enjoy!
lunus 🩷

If you're new to the story, start with Chapter 1.

If you missed the last chapter, Previously on Perilous Love Stars.

Hours later, Maple woke up dazed from a nap in Salvatore’s arms. Her sleep hadn’t been restful. She’d dreamed about The Professor, Charles, Pietrich, Adele, and Salvatore. All of them had wanted to talk to her as she was running on an endless sound stage, late to a meeting she was never meant to reach. The dream had ended with Maple discovering Salvatore’s lies, dismissing him seconds before a klieg light fell on her. This time, the light had crushed her to death.

“Bad dreams?” Salvatore whispered in her ear, his voice still groggy with sleep.

The memories of what they’d done a couple of hours ago washed over Maple. She’d craved the comfort of Salvatore’s body, enjoying their shared attraction to take the edge off one last time. Her subconscious seemed to hint at her inability to survive without Salvatore’s love, if her dream was any indication, but Maple refused it. Her feelings for the actor were a liability. His lies had put them in mortal danger, and her infatuation with him had blurred her best judgment. Her mission was to save the show, not to solve her lacklustre love life. How would it work anyway? He was a superstar, she was a showrunner. She hated public attention, which was the very foundation of his entire career. Salvatore needed a partner of his calibre, a superstar like him. He needed someone like Marsha, not a tired showrunner who was one lie away from losing her show for good.

Made uncomfortable by her ruminations, Maple pushed herself out of Salvatore’s embrace. They’d formed a cozy cocoon on the library’s floor amidst blankets and strewn clothes.

“Maybe we should try doing it in bed next time,” the actor said, amused. 

“I don’t think there should be a next time.”

He frowned. “Why? Do you still doubt me?”

She didn’t, not really. But the scars left from Salvatore’s previous betrayals were still raw. Beyond that, Maple was convincing herself this was for the best. The show had to come first.

“We have more urgent things to focus on,” she said, hoping Salvatore would abandon the topic and follow her into brainstorming mode. “I still have to convince Daphne to come back. I talked to her, and she said she’d think about it. But who knows with her?” She paused. It was the first time she’d admitted out loud the possibility of failure. “If Daphne isn’t coming back, then I need to start thinking of a plan B. You still have to find Charles’ research. You’re still dying, and we still need to find a cure.”

“What if there’s no cure? No Plan B?”

“There’s always a Plan B,” she said. “We came all this way, we’re not going to give up now.”

She slid into her overalls, finding the hair tie she’d left in the pocket. As she worked on her ponytail, her eyes glided over the note left by Charles on the desk. The numbers could be anything. Coordinates to a location, a date, a serial number or…

“Pen,” she muttered, “I need a pen.” 

It took her a while to find one in the mess. She grabbed it, drawing small separation lines between the numbers.

“What are you doing?” Salvatore asked behind her, looking over her shoulder. The familiar scent of cinnamon accompanied him.

“How do you still smell like cinnamon?” 

“My dad had a sweet tooth, too. There is a lot of cinnamon stuff in the kitchen.”

Charles had passed ten years ago. Why was Daphne replenishing the rations in his submarine lab?

Maple shook her head, enticing her mind to stay focused on her task instead of poking holes everywhere else. “You and your dad loved to watch Betteraves & Betrayals together,” she summarized out loud as she worked the number, trying different splits. “The file is under the name of your favourite character. So, maybe…”

When her last attempt didn’t produce anything that triggered acknowledgement for her or Salvatore, she wrote the numbers down again. 361352030. 

“I thought it could be the date of a particular event in the show or something that happened around the show, like the arrival or departure of a main character or actor. But that leaves us with too many unknown numbers. Now, what I’m thinking is… what if it’s a time stamp?”

Salvatore frowned, staring at the numbers. “A time stamp? What do you mean?”

“36 could be the season number. Pietrich was a prominent character in season 36 of Betteraves & Betrayals because Daphne was sick most of that year. So, the writers made Pietrich, the newly arrived love interest, the centre of the show. It’s the season in which he becomes involved in a ring of car thieves to find who almost killed Adele during her pottery class. Daphne was on bed rest, so they wrote Adele into a coma.”

“It couldn’t be the 3^rd season because Pietrich wasn’t introduced until the 20^th season,” Salvatore said, fascination twirling in his eyes. He grinned at her.

A warm, fuzzy feeling took over Maple. It was rare to find people who matched her freak to nerd out about the show.

“Yes,” Maple said, trying not to show how excited she was to be problem-solving with Salvatore. “Now, it’s about finding the right episode. It could be episode 13 or 135. I think the last digits are the actual time stamp, a particular moment in the episode Charles wanted you to watch again.”

Salvatore leaned it, taking over the pen Maple had left on the paper she’d scribbled on. “If you’re right, then 2030 should mean 20:30. The 5 doesn’t work for the timestamp. Which leaves—”

“135 as the episode number,” she concluded. Salvatore nodded. “Season 36, episode 135, 20:30. That’s where the next clue is to find your dad’s research.” 

He grinned again, looking at her with pride and wonder. “All we need is access to the internet to check if we’re right.”

The door burst open. Daphne strode in. “Well, good and bad news, my sweethearts!”

The actress always found ways to make her nicknames sound like veiled insults. 

“What’s going on?” Maple tensed, ready to fight another mercenary army.

Daphne waved the bottle of liquor in her hand. “Good news is I found alcohol and how to get the emergency surveillance circuit back on.”

“What’s the bad news?” Salvatore’s tone was cautious. Maple felt him tense behind her. 

“I heard you two fuck like animals earlier, which was truly disturbing.” Daphne shook her head, disgusted. “And you did it on the floor? Your generation is out of control! I’m never inviting any of you to stay over. This isn’t a bathhouse, show some respect!”

“Any signs of The Professor’s body?” Salvatore asked, unfazed by her tirade.

Daphne took a generous swig of whisky. “Nope, you were right, Alien Boy. We did not defeat him. I counted eight bodies on the feed, all of them from his little army. I thought an alien rocket would do it, but I was mistaken. I noticed a detached arm in the rubble of my beautiful greenhouse, so there’s that.”

Salvatore’s face turned sinister. The Professor was still alive and out there, minus one arm. 

“This isn’t good,” he said. “He knows who I am now. He’ll get better soon and will find a way to get to me.” 

Maple was terrified of the threat posed by The Professor. (The man had survived a rocket—was he invincible?) But she sensed Salvatore needed reassurance more, so she touched his arm, hoping to calm his nerves. 

“We know he’s out there, we can prepare,” she said gently. 

“Other good news,” Daphne continued, unaware or uninterested in their emotional turmoil. “I’ve decided to grant your request to come back to the show.” Seeing Maple’s face brighten, she raised her voice and added, “I’ll commit to the finale only. Then, we’ll see and talk again. If we’re successful in saving the show and getting another season, I want my co-executive producer credit back and to have full veto over any storylines moving forward, no matter what the studios want. I’m not getting stuck in a two-month storyline about poisonous broccolini like in season 47 again. I’ve learned my lesson.”

Maple clapped her hands, ecstatic. “Yes! Anything you want! This is wonderful news, Daphne! I’m so glad you decided—”

“Yeah, yeah.” She cut Maple off with a dismissive gesture. “Don’t rejoice too quickly. With all great news comes disastrous ones.” 

Maple tilted her head, confused. She’d lost count of how much news Daphne had in stock for them. 

The actress bore her eyes into Maple’s. She gulped a few more sips from the flask before she burped, unbothered. “With the surveillance feed back on, I was able to access satellite internet. I just received news from James.”

“Your agent?” Maple asked, a knot in her stomach. Daphne had said it was bad news, and James was their only lead to a cure for Salvatore.

“Yes, the same homosexual who told me to hide my queerness for years because he didn’t want his golden racehorse to stop making millions.” She burped again and wiped the corner of her mouth with her wrist. “Anyway, that bastard sent me some articles about you.”

Maple placed a hand on her chest. Her heartbeat was deafening. “Me?”

“Yes. You’ve been fired.”

Bōøbol to introduce new AI to write the last episode of Betteraves & Betrayals

By Intern 23

After firing Maple Defleuvier, the show’s showrunner for the past three years, Bōøbol has announced that the series finale of the beloved show Betteraves & Betrayals will be written by new artificial intelligence Ōgust. “We are excited to close a wonderful chapter of Canadian storytelling with our new, advanced technology Ōgust,” says a statement released by Bōøbol earlier today. “Our team has been working on Ōgust for years, and he’s finally ready to take on his first challenge.”

The statement goes on to explain that over 18,000 scripts of B&B episodes have been fed into the AI’s server to ensure the final episode reflects the decades-long adventures of the Betteraves family. The last episode of Betteraves & Betrayals will be the first episode of a television soap written exclusively by AI. Ōgust will be supported in his endeavour by Bōøbol executives, as well as the show’s producer, Ermet Ersweld, who’s recently been on the news for his alleged kidnapping, which turned out to be a hoax to hide another bender gone wrong.

When reached for comment, Bōøbol and Ersweld declined to provide any. Memphis Marshweld’s, Marsha Marshweld’s mother and her new PR specialist, provided a statement to Forever Soapy from the show’s central star stating that her client/daughter “is excited to return to Betterave Town for one last hoorah. We hope Ōgust will find ways to honour my client/daughter's commitment to the show and provide all of her fans with a satisfying ending.”

Forever Soapy, Article, June 20XX