A/N: Look, I'm sorry.

My Name is Teleprompter

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My name is Teleprompter. That's my first name, obviously. I can't tell you my last name. Mostly because I don't know it. But I'm pretty sure it's Samsung. But if I really knew my full name…well. It's too horrible to think about. What they do to teleprompters that have had their screens fall off and can see their logo is too terrible to imagine.

I can't tell you where I live, but I can tell you where I work. I'm in the storeroom of Nickelodeon studios. And I'm putting this all on my screen so that I can warn you. So that people can learn the truth. Maybe then, somehow, the human race can survive until the Nielsen Ratings get in and this show gets cancelled.

Maybe.

My life used to be pretty normal. Normal, that is, until one month in 1998. I was in the storeroom with Boris Cabrera's Orange Hoodie, my best friend. We were sitting in storage and talking about cute props and just hanging out. The usual.

Hoodie and I had just run out of auditions to recount. I get used for a lot of auditions, so I have a lot of experience, but Hoodie has this amazing ability to not feel any shame mugging for screen time, so we get about an equal amount of attention from the techies and stylists.

Maybe I just wasn't in the mood to talk about auditions. I'd had kind of a bad day. I was missing a cable, so I'd missed a chance to get transferred to Paramount and work on actual quality stuff.

It was like no big deal, really, except that Cue Cards – he's my big brother – was this total legend at Paramount. Now he's used in pretty much every big production. So naturally everyone was expecting me to follow in his line-steps.

Like I said, no big thing. But Cue Cards and I hadn't been spending all that much time together lately, mostly because he was being used in movies and I was stuck with Saturday Morning live action TV shows. So I figured if I got transferred over…

Well, anyway, we were out of things to say and about to go back to our hanger and trolley when Christopher Ralph's Leather Jacket came up. Jacket is…well I guess Jacket was kind of a strange accessory. He was new in the store-room, and he had this poetic feel, like he never really belonged here.

I actually met Jacket when he was stalking Brooke Nevin's Hair. She was doing the usual "flip! flip! flip!" thing, and I told him to stop staring because eventually Brooke Nevin would stop taking about gymnastics and her hair would notice. Ever since that, Jacket figured I was his friend.

"'Sup?" Jacket asked suavely.

NOT MUCH, I read, WE'RE GETTING BACK INTO POSITION.

"Out of auditions," Hoodie said, "certain electronics keep forgetting his cables, so certain electronics keep getting left out of auditions and replaced with dry readings." Hoodie kept flipping his sleeve at me, just in case Jacket didn't get who he was talking about with "certain electronics".

"So, like, maybe I'll hang out with you guys," Jacket said.

SURE, WHY NOT?

We were lounging around when the actors got on set and we saw Brooke Nevin's Hair and Nadia Nascimento's O-Face. Hair is one of those styles that always looks like a spotlight is shining right on her (usually because it is, since the lighting director has a thing for cheap floodlights). She does gymnastics, so she's very flippy.

Nadia Nascimento's O-Face is the complete opposite. You're not supposed to notice she's there, and the director usually tries to cut away because this is a kids' series. O-Face always seems like she's feeling something on a deeper, more visceral level.

I guess you could say I like O-Face. Sometimes I forget my next line when I watch her. Once I did that for five minutes and no one noticed Shawn Ashmore staring vacantly at my screen until he told them about it.

YOU READY TO FILM?

That was a mistake. Apparently Brooke Nevin's Hair interpreted that as me saying they needed me. Hair isn't very smart.

"Are you coming to give us our lines, you big ma-a-a-achine? You think we're hopeless just because-"

"I'd appreciate if he did give us our lines, Hair," O-Face said, "I know you have all yours memorized but I guess I don't."

Hair couldn't say anything to that, mostly because she knew O-Face had so few lines she'd probably forgotten she even had them by now.

So, there we were. The five of us – Boris Cabrera's Hoodie, Christopher Ralph's Jacket, Brooke Nevin's Hair, Nadia Nascimento's O-Face and me, Shawn Ashmore's Teleprompter.

Sometimes, I think back to that moment. Back when we were just normal props who dreamed of someday being in a show with an actual budget. You know what I was afraid of then? That Shawn Ashmore would actually memorize his lines and I would have to spend time in storage while Hoodie had all the fun, waiting for another actor to need me. That was as scary as life got back then.

Life got a lot scarier about five minutes later.

"Cast and crew, pay attention! We just got renewed for a second season!"