A/N: A short that pushes past the end of the 2015 film "Zoom" - not to be confused with the superhero movie of the same name. Serious spoilers for the film.

Zoom Out

Summary: "Zoom" starts with the character of Emma, who is an artist at Love Doll, Inc. But her passion is her drawing, and she is creating a graphic novel centered around the character of Edward Deacon, a Spanish filmmaker. Deacon is, in turn, directing a film about a Brazillian model named Michelle who is struggling to break out of her life as a model and become a novelist. The novel she is in the process of writing is about an artist named Emma who is creating a graphic novel about a filmmaker. Got it? At the end of the movie, each comes to understand that in some strange way they all have been created by another in a symbiotic relationship - an être à trois as their worlds become even more entangled, with the three story lines eventually becoming one. This short starts with Michelle's last scene.

Michelle Linda Escritora desperately reached out for her journal while plummeting to earth. Following the directions of a voice that came out of nowhere, she had jumped out of the helicopter she was riding in to retrieve her novel in progress that had been thrown out the door by her boyfriend Dale. With no parachute, she now only had a few precious seconds to think of a way out - to fail to do so would end the lives of all three people entwined in their own creative worlds.

As her falling body accelerated, the wind in her ears changed from a whistle to a howl as the Earth grew closer. Below, she could see the village of Trindade, Brazil, where she had been born. The sleepy former fishing vila had no idea that one of its own was hurtling toward it approaching terminal velocity. Fingers grasped, failed, and grasped again until she finally managed to snag the journal, whose blank and filled pages were rapidly turned by wind that seemed intent on reading the whole work instantaneously. Fumbling for the cover, she extracted the pen there and fought the force of the air as she wedged the pages apart until once again she was at the point where she had left off earlier.

There wasn't much time left. What should she write? Emma was aware that she was a character that was being written now; Michelle had to trust that her character's free will would take over. WAKE UP, she wrote in large letters, her normal handwriting distorted by the near wind tunnel she found herself in. Satisfied, she released the book and pen - it was in Emma's hands now. If Norman found the book and published it, it would have to be a posthumous credit.

...

Emma woke up after passing out. It hurt where she had been shot by a stray bullet; ironically, the ballistics worked out perfectly so that she was shot straight through the very breast implants she had lamented having gotten. The only reason she had agreed to try to sell the drugs she had obtained accidentally was to make enough money to have them removed - she had spent all she had to boost her figure only to discover that her life had fallen apart after getting them, instead of it making her life better. In a fit of desperation, she had restored the generous portion of manhood she had initially given her director character Deacon before rashly taking it away in frustration at her own unhappiness. That restoration had saved Deacon a lot of trouble, and with renewed confidence he was able to change his movie to empower Michelle's character. Emma had smeared the panels of the drawings on her last page as she attempted to wipe globs of silicone from the paper; the distortion of the characters caused them to react in confusion and horror.

That just wasn't going to work.

She tore out the last page and redrew them correctly. Deacon regained control of his movie from the back-stabbing Horowitz and the studio head Marissa, who idolized his physical gifts; he moved past the unwanted action scenes that had been inserted without his consent, to material that was more transcendental in nature. But now Michelle needed to be saved. Hurriedly, Emma turned to a blank page and continued to draw.

...

Edward watched the rough cut of his film scene as Michelle jumped out of the helicopter. It was perfect - a much bigger metaphor of jumping into the unknown and risking it all for life than simply jumping from a cliff into the ocean, as the character had done earlier. It was heart-stopping, it was cinematic, and it was simply beautiful. The blue sky, the even deeper-blue water, the thin white shore and the green hills beyond were almost to weep for.

But what good was life if you threw it away the first chance you got?

Looking around in his trailer, Edward found some writing material and got to work. He quickly roughed out a few pages of script, wadded them up and threw them away, and started again. Maybe it was the words of Horowitz, or Marissa's plea, or even just a little of the influence of his earlier work - whatever cause or combination of influences, he knew he had to save Michelle to save himself. To not save her would be to throw his life away too. It would have to work. Even that damned Horowitz would be impressed...

...

Her eyes were filling with tears as Michelle watched the book sail away in a blur, while the pen went off in its own direction. She wasn't quite sure if the tears were caused by the wind or her emotions letting go, but no matter - things got blurry and the details didn't matter any more whether the blue was sky or sea. If this was the end, at least it would be quick. Her watery eyes failed to register the dark blur of something falling past her; however, she did notice when something came up from below her and securely grabbed her around the waist. She barely managed to blink away enough of her tears to make out that it was Dale.

"Dale?" she yelled over the wind, confused.

"Hold on!" he responded and the next thing she knew she was almost ripped in two from deceleration as his parachute deployed.

She almost passed out, but a sudden thought rallied her senses. "My book!" she screamed.

"You don't have to shout now," Dale told her. It was true; now they were floating through the air under the chute's canopy and dropping at a much safer rate, eliminating the howl of the wind. "I got your book." He held up the journal - the pages looked crinkled, but it appeared intact. When her eyes asked him how, he went on to explain. "I realized that you're the most important thing in the world to me. I've got an engagement ring in my pocket that I'd really like to give you now, but my hands are a little busy at the moment." Without her being in a harness, Dale's hold was the only thing keeping Michelle from falling. "But I should have been more supportive - if your book is that important to you, then it's important to me too or I'm not worthy to be with you." He looked down at the water below. "Out of curiosity, how good are you at swimming?"

Michelle noted in the back of her mind that this whole fall from the helicopter was taking a lot longer than it should have - thank you Edward, she thought to herself. "I'm an excellent swimmer," she answered Dale.

"I'm really glad to hear that - how good are you at lifesaving?" he asked just as they hit the water.

...

Emma lay in her Toronto hospital bed, thinking about the events in her life. She no longer needed the drugs to sell, so she left them to be found by the police when they arrived at the shop. She told the truth, as far as it went - she had come down to her work to get her sketchbook that she had been working on, and found a three-way standoff with her co-worker Bob holding a .38, a disgruntled customer with a shotgun and a drug-dealing neighbor named Carl Stromway screaming something about his shipment while pointing a .45; who aimed at who changed as the conversation went on. They had ended up shooting each other simultaneously, with one of the ricochets hitting her. She told the police she guessed it had been a drug deal gone wrong, and she recognized the customer as one that had just picked up a custom order days before and taken it to Toledo - the sales receipt would have the address.

As a medical necessity, her holed implants had been removed and she quickly declined to have them replaced at a later date - she was who she was, and anyone that couldn't accept that would just miss out. She picked up the sketchbook lying by her feet and looked over the final panels. Edward's film was finished and a big winner at the Cannes Film Festival - hailed by critics for its originality and surreal take on life. The greater public loved the ending where the couple struggled ashore to find themselves at a beach wedding where they became a second ceremony on the spot – a spot that quickly formed a puddle to the delight of the crowd.

She laid her sketchbook back down. Would she be able to get it published when she got out in a few days? The publicity from the shootout alone had caused her to get noticed; there were already a few email invitations that looked promising. At this point, it looked a lot easier than trying to win the lottery. With the right publisher, it could happen.

And that's all she ever wanted.

The End

A/N: Okay, yes, I went for the happy ending instead of the ambiguous ending that was argued for in the movie. But this was truly an odd movie - the setup of having each world being created by another in a circle of three artists was a little confusing at first until I went over it in my head a few times. THEN I able to watch the movie and make sense of it. It helped that a portion of it was animated (the world of Edward Deacon), so that helped differentiate his portion of the story.

An interesting movie, but not for all tastes.