Exquisite Corpse: Our Last Hope, Finale (part 4)

Welcome to the thrilling conclusion to this story.

Part one is https://steemit.com/exquisitecorpse/@felt.buzz/our-last-hope-part-one-of-the-new-exquisite-corpse-qbegfwwc by @felt.buzz, part 2 is https://steemit.com/fiction/@blockurator/exquisite-corpse-our-last-hope-part-2-fiction-at-its-best-worst by @blockurator, and part 3 is https://steemit.com/fiction/@foxyspirit/exquisite-corpse-our-last-hope-part-3 by @foxtspirit!

Long story short: We've been stuck in a tiny spaceship with some frankly insane people and Arya Stark after the world ends.

Here we go!

"Cut! Cut!!! Stop the tape. It's not working. Get the kid over here."

Maisie cursed silently and narrowed her eyes as she slunk toward the director. I'm 22 for Chrissakes. I ain't your little sister, mate. "What is it Marty?"

Marty took a long drag off his vape pen and blew a disgusting peppermint cloud everywhere. "Maisie, kid. I need more from you on this. You are trapped on this cobbled together monstrosity and you aren't going to let the others get you killed. Got it? Can you take it at least a bit seriously!?" An aide leaned in to whisper something in his ear and he laughed loudly. "Yeah man, or animals. Look, I even let you use your real name here. The least you could do is inject some real feelings kid."

Masie grimaced. "I didn't ask you to do that, and stop calling me kid. I swear to Christ Marty I'm this close to walking on this one."

Marty started to laugh but choked it back when he actually caught how she was looking at him. "Come on kid, err...Maisie, look, we all love your work with the Thrones, but this is your chance to break outta that and be a real actress!"

Maisie sighed and rubbed her temples. "Look, I'm sorry, I'm just having a hard time with this. I...actually no, I'm not just having a hard time, I'm not sorry, it's this show. It's...damn it...I just...when I signed up there were two trans characters and a sort of weird dilemma about repopulating the human race but now there's all these rewrites and it's like it's just playing as a joke to you people. All that about showing women how it is done or strawmanning leftists is new! I mean, honestly who the fuck is dumb enough to try to bribe people with money when you're only one of five people left? No one. Much less be dumb enough to accept it! I blame that bearded asshole you brought in to write episode two." She shook her head and laughed bitterly. "This is the worst show I've ever been in and I say that after season six and seven of Game of Thrones."

Marty paled and held up his hands, "Whoa now, ok, now I know that look. We have a contract missy. You have an obligation here. Of course, uhm, yeah, we can make some changes ok? You don't like the crossdresser, boom, he's gone. We gotta get this made, Maisie. All these people, the actors, the crew, they're depending on you!"

Maisie turned and began to walk away. "You can talk to my lawyer then, Marty. I'm out."

As she passed the set James Woods ran over, his blond wig in his hands. "Look, Maisie, I just wanna say, if you ever wanna stop by my trailer sometime I could really do some great things for your career." He laughed as he saw the look on her face. "Come on! It was just a joke! Get a sense of humor you stupid c..." A strangled yelp cut off his sentence as Maisie landed a kick in his crotch. He went sprawling to the ground. "I'm gonna sue you. This is assault!"

Does he ever shut up? Maisie smiled and waved as she walked away, "See Marty for my lawyer's info, they're gonna be in contact soon anyway!"

---

Slowly the screen went dark and the credits began to roll. Juniper reached up and turned off the tv. I'm out of my ration anyway. Damn that was a weird show. She'd really liked Mary Steenbergen as the Professor, but she hadn't been able to place any of the other actors. It probably didn't help that the only other piece of old-time entertainment they still had was Back to The Future III. Everything else had been lost. Amazing that they accurately guessed so much about what would happen The aliens, the end, the last starship out being crewed by five people, the bickering. Of course, they fought about rations of food and air and electricity, not money. They had stopped fighting the culture war as soon as actual starvation was on the table.

It was cold. Juniper strapped herself into the wall mounted bed and stared through the porthole, out into deep space. The plan had been to wait out the dead that the aliens had brought back to life to kill all mankind here, in space. The only problem was they had been up here eight months and all the feeds from Earth still showed the dead walking. They didn't have the supplies to last more than another month. They would have to return to Earth or die. Return to Earth and die, actually. Wait...3...2...1... A faint blue glow outside grew until the full view of the Earth rolled into view. It's so beautiful... She breathed a deep sigh. Maybe it's better off without us. It was so cold. Her breath caught on the window, ice crystals forming fractals.

The loudspeaker crackled to life, "Attention crew. This is the final communication. I'm so sorry. We didn't know what to tell everyone, but power consumption...it..." The voice of the captain caught, a soft cough covering a sob. "We only had enough for a few more days in any case. Batteries have been failing on a steady schedule. The O2 scrubbers are shutting down, but the real problem is the temperature. This old bird just wasn't designed to be up here this long. I want to thank you all for your service."

Juniper sighed, the warm vapor of her breath slowly diffusing into the room. This is really it.

The lights flickered and dimmed once, then twice, then all was dark.

Maisie ejected the DVD and turned to Moira "See that's the original British version. That was what I thought we were making here. You bring me another of these two-bit American knock-off scripts and I'm gonna go back to my old agent, I swear to God."

Moira tilted her head to the side, confused. "Sorry, but was that character in that show watching the show that you're taping now?"

Maisie nodded. "Well, was taping. Oh, hey it's Mary!"

Mary Steembergen waved as she walked out the stage door. "Thanks for shutting this shit show down, they had me for three more episodes before I got replaced by a CGI octopus-alien. Fucking multi-media contracts, am I right?"

Maisie went on to big success playing Squirrel Girl in the MCU

James Woods was never seen in another movie or TV show ever again and was only occasionally spotted making an ass of himself on twitter

Mary Steenbergen went on to be a professional author of EULAs for EA.

Marty was eaten by an Alpaca while on a spiritual retreat in Peru.

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So there we go! I hope you all enjoyed another Exquisite Corpse! Looking forward to the next one (if they still let me pariticipate, heh).