+J.M.J.+
The Truman Show II: Through the Door in the Sky
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's note: I realized a glaring error I've been putting in the mock movie credits, meaning I had to go back and edit the earlier chapters, which also messed up the formatting (which I'll have to fix via another computer). Pretend you haven't seen that glaring error!
Disclaimer:
See Chapter I.
Paramount Pictures presents
A Scott Rudin Production
A Peter Weir Film
The Truman Show II
Featuring
Ed Harris Otto Stuckmeyer
Jude Law Joe Pantoliano
With Jake Jacobi as Montressor
And as Themselves
Sylvia Thomas & Truman Burbank
Written by Andrew Niccol and R.C.H. Mulhare
Directed by Peter Weir
* * * * *
Chapter VII: The Mad Cross Country Drive
"Get out of the car," Truman ordered. He looked Cristoff in the eye even as he fumbled the gun out of the holster under his jacket.
Sylvia tried to put her hand on Truman's shoulder but he pulled away from her. "Truman, you aren't going to do that."
"I am doing this," he retorted, then to Cristoff, "Now get out!" He drew the gun free of the holster.
"Cardinal rule of gun use, number one: Never point a gun at anyone unless you fully intend to use it," Jerry cut in, his accent more London than Toronto.
"And that's exactly what I intend to do," Truman said, leveling the weapon at Cristoff. "Get out of the car!"
Cristoff had frozen in place, but he meekly got out, Truman following him. As they walked away from the car, the older man glanced over his shoulder, his face utterly devoid of expression.
"Truman, you don't want to kill me," Cristoff said.
"Shut *UP*!" Truman snapped, aiming the gun at a point between Cristoff's shoulders as he edged him toward a rusting wire fence by the roadside.
"It's not going to change anything for the better if you kill me. That's just what Montressor would want you to do."
"How do I know if you're not really Montressor? I'm not even sure what's real any more."
"I assure you, Truman, I'm not Azor Montessor."
"That's just what *YOU'RE* saying! Why should I believe that? You made a lie out of my life for thirty years."
They'd backed up to the fence by now. Cristoff turned toward Truman, his back against the wires, and looked up at him, his face slack with resignation.
He raised his eyes to Truman's. "I'm not lying to you now, son."
Truman felt the gun tremble in his hands. He realized his hands were trembling, nearly losing their grip on the gun stock. "What? What kind of excuse is that?"
Their eyes met. A glimmer of regret showed in Cristoff's eyes. "It's true. I know I've been a sick bastard of a father to you, but I was afraid to get too close to you, afraid I'd mess you up. But I did anyway."
"Well, thanks for noticing, but it's too little too late." Truman tried tightening his grip on the gunstock, but his palm had started sweating. "I've had enough lies."
"It's true. I couldn't just throw you into the spotlight the moment you were born, so I found four other women who were giving birth about the same time Alyssa was due, used this as a cover." Cristoff let out a terse chuckle utterly devoid of humor. "I guess I'm the only man who can honestly say he's seen every moment of his son's life."
"If you were so devoted to me, why didn't you ever step in till the very end?" Truman demanded, hardly noticing that the gun had started to sink.
"I was concerned. It was just the wrong kind of concern used the wrong way," Cristoff said.
"Concerned? Then why did you sell me out to Montressor with that button camera?!"
"I honestly don't know how that camera ended up on Jerry's jacket in the first place," Cristoff replied.
Truman let the gun sink. "You better be telling me the truth this time, because if I ever catch you lying to me again, I *will* kill you," Truman warned.
He fumbled the gun back into the holster, half expecting Cristoff would try taking it from him. They headed back to the truck.
"I'm pretty sure that's how it happened," Jerry was saying to Sylvia as they returned.
"How what happened?" Truman asked.
"How that camera got onto Jerry's jacket," Sylvia said.
"A button came off my jacket when Montressor's goons tore it off me after they'd captured me," Jerry said. "They must have sewn it on while they had me drugged."
"Gad, what else did they do?" Truman said. "No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. "They might have bugged something else."
"You telling me it's time we hit the road?" Jerry asked, with a disarming smile.
"Yeah, before those wierdos you spotted at the motel catch up with us," Truman asked.
* * * *
They drove for several miles before they stopped to gas up the Land Rover and have breakfast, which they ate on the road, Jerry juggling his bagel sandwich with the steering wheel.
"Now would Dietrich do that balancing act?" Truman asked, watching him.
"Actually, he stocked up on cans of Slim-Fast. He'd be living off those and, well, whatever else he had stored up. He'd be the first to say he could get by for a while."
"But wouldn't that blow his cover? I mean, didn't he put on the weight to hid from Montressor?"
"I don't think that mattered any more," Jerry said. "Your safety mattered more to him."
"Makes him a better father to me than you did," Trumn said, glowering at Cristoff.
"What?" Sylvia said, baffled.
Truman jabbed one thumb toward Cristoff. "He claims he's my blood father."
Sylvia's brow furrowed. "Is that true?"
Cristoff turned in his seat and looked at them over the back. "It's the truth, that much at least. But I've done a hideous job as a father."
"Well, at least it's working out for the better now," she said, optimistically.
Truman glanced out the back window. Nobody followed them. "So far so good."
They zig-zagged through the mountains that day, making good time. Jerry wanted to get out of the mountains and back to relativen civilization before it got dark so they wouldn't be stuck in the middle of nowhere.
They found a tiny motel in the town of Black Bear, Wyoming just at sundown. The place looked like it was ready to fall down, but it boasted a state of the art satelite dish which stood in the yard alongside a huge homemades sign: "Satelite TV in all rooms.
"Figures, just so they can get the You-Know-What Show," Truman groaned, looking right at the satelite dish as they piled the baggage out of the van into the room for the night.
Later, after a slightly unsatisfying meal of Chinese takeout and while Sylvia washed some clothes and Jerry stood guard, Truman channel-surfed the TV looking for something decent: Jeopardy! with the Senior Tournament; a sort of Robinson Crusoe kind of show with people getting voted off a desert island; Rocky and Bullwinkle; a HUGE snake swallowing a gazelle; a sci-fi movie with with a strangely capitalized title, which appeared to be about the beta-test of some kind of bizarre computer game using even more bizarre-looking units.
Jerry came in at that point, took one look at the screen and his face went pale under the stubble growing on his cheeks.
"You don't want to watch that," he said.
Truman changed the channel. "My thoughts exactly."
"Is it me, or did the male lead look like Jerry?" Sylvia asked innocently, as she hung a shirt over the back of a chair.
Truman ignored this remark. A baseball game; donkey basketball; tropical storm report that went on for fifteen minutes; space shuttle taking off; "I Love Lucy"; another baseball game; "Father Knows Best"; *another* baseball game; a 1930s style gangster movie, but it must have been made recently since it was in color and Tom Hanks was in it.
"What's this doing on the Holiday Channel?" Sylvia asked.
"Father's Day is in a few weeks, and it's about a mob hitman's troubled relationship with his son," Cristoff said.
"Too close to reality," Truman said, changing the channel.
A dog show; a documentary on Pearl Harbor: a World War II movie about the seige of Stalingrad.
"What *is* this about Jude Law movies?" Sylvia asked.
A Thai cooking show; a music video with half-naked African-American girls dancing; "The Twilight Zone": Truman cracked Sylvia up by lipsyncing Rod Serling's opening speech; a movie about a kid android looking for "the Blue Fairy"; a drama about a Mafia family; a slasher horror flick with a clawed hand coming up through a drain while a girl was taking a bath; wrestlers hitting each other with chairs; skateboarding tournament; a British sitcom about a hotel.
"400 channels and there's nothing on," Jerry said.
"Yeah, talk about not being able to get quality with quantity," Truman said.
They found a rerun of Day 5 of "The Truman Show". The adult Truman's finger hovered over the channel up button. Jerry came over and pressed down on the knuckle of that finger, changing it to another channel.
"OW!" Truman said. "What made you do that?!"
"Don't want you having second thoughts about going back," Jerry said.
"Well, there's nothing to go back to, so I'm hardly likely to get tempted," Truman said
Disney version of "Cinderella"; documentary about the World Trade Center Towers; some kind of martial-arts flick with a black-leather cladd woman clobbering five guys; synchronized swimmers; Busby Berkley musical with pretty girls in hoop skirts playing glow in the dark violins; a Robinson Crusoe type family in space; Japanese drummers; Tom and Jerry; Japanese animated film with a girl among odd-looking monsters in a kind of restaurant/spa for monsters; an aerobics class in German; Tom Hanks on a desert island; Ingrid Bergman begging Dooley Wilson to "Play it, Sam"; horror flick with a guy's head exploding; sci-fi film noir with an accordian-toting detective; animated family show about a family making nature movies in the African grasslands; more news about the hunt for Truman Burbank.
"Definately NOT something we wanna watch," Sylvia said.
"Maybe we should watch it, find out where we shouldn't go," Truman said.
The boradcast didn't tell them much, other than police had set up roadblocks all along the Californian border, stopping cars especially with drivers or passengers who matched Truman's description. So far there had been a couple mistaken identities already.
"Well, they don't know we've made it to Wyoming," Truman said.
"Yet." Jerry pointed out. "They just might start hopping up patrols here if they get tipped off or if they strat getting suspicious."
"It's a big country, we can slip through," Sylvia said, hope in her voice, her eyes showing nervousness.
Cristoff shook his head. We haven't reached the Canadian border yet.
"Maybe we should keep moving, take turns driving," Truman said. "One of us can sleep while another one drives. There's four of us, we should be able to divide up the schedule."
"Technically, there's only three of us," Jerry said. "We can hazard exposing you."
"I want to do this," Truman said. "I took the initiative to escape, I'm the one who started it. I should be able to play a part in finishing it."
Cristoff held up one hand as if for quiet. Truman backed down, but he couldn't help thinking, 'Why should I listen to him?!'
"I think Truman is partly right: we should press on as quickly as possible," Cristoff said. "Every time we hole up for the night, that gives us the risk of being seen. If need be, I'll sleep during the day and drive at night when the rest of you are sleeping."
"All right --" Jerry started to say.
Truman glared and cut in. "All right? All right?! Why should we trust him? He's the one who imprisoned me in the first place! How can we trust him not to drive us right back and take me right to Montressor?"
Cristoff leveled his piercing gaze at Truman. "You seem to forget that I'm running from Montressor as well."
"I'll show you, Cris and Sylvia, the maps Dietrich marked for me," Jerry said.
Sylvia smiled a little gauchely, her eyes embarrassed. "Oh dear, maps and I don't mix very well. I once got my family onto the wrong road entirely when we went camping once."
"I could co-pilot," Truman offered.
Jerry and Cristoff looked at him. "That's the most ill-advised thing you can do right now." To Sylvia, he added," I'll co-pilot for you."
"Thanks," she said, not looking at him as she started clearing take-out boxes from the table. "Shouild we pack up and head out now?"
"Let's get one more night of decent sleep before we start the mad dash to the border," Jerry said.
* * * * * * * *
Sweyk hit the wall and slid down it, landing like a heap of rags on the floor.
Montressor lunged at him and holding him by the throat, snatched him up to his level. "How... could... you... FAIL me like that?!"
"I didn' fail," Sweyk choked. "Signal got lost. Prob'ly th' mountains."
Montressor glowered at him, eyes blazing, his albino eye like a hot coal.
"You were supposed to have them move in at the motel, not let them slip away!"
"But... boss, they been pushing for four days now. The crew hadta rest, an' then the signal scrambled itself. Them things really don't do long distance."
"That isn't good enough," Montressor snapped. He let go so suddenly that Sweyk fell to the floor. The larger man tried to rise, but Montressor lunged at him, kicking and punching him in the face, the chest, the groin.
"Now get up," Montressor ordered.
Sweyk pulled himself onto his knees, one hand pressed to his bruised ribs, the other clutching his groin. "Whatcha do that for?" he groaned, getting to his feet..
Montressor grabbed him by what was left of his hair. "Now have them go out there and find Truman!"
"But how? Where?" Sweyk said as Montressor let him go.
Montressor took a cellphone from his breast pocket. "I have my ways of finding that out," he said.
* * * * * * *
Truman and his companions drove steadily through the Rockies, following winding paths. Thank God they were driving a Land Rover, which handled the mountain paths easily.
Jerry drove in the morning and early afternoon, whilke Sylvia drove in the later afternoon into the evening. From late evening into the night, Cristoff drove. They stopped only for food and fuel and the necessities of hygiene and to let the engine cool off. Truman stayed hunkered down in the back seat, staying out of sigh from passing traffic. This gave him a lot of time to think things through.
"Hey Jerry," Truman asked at length.
"Yeah?" Jerry asked.
"Big question: What am I gonna do about my name once we get to Canada? I mean, I can't exactly go by the name Truman Burbank. Someone's bound to recognize me."
"We have that all taken care of," Jerry said. "We created a new identity for you: once we get to Canada. you're Harris Milton."
"Kinda high-flown sounding," Truman said. "Why not something simple like John Smith?"
Sylvia wrinkled her nose. "That's so simple it might be obvious."
"Milton, that was your mother's maiden name," Cristoff said.
Trumna glanced at Cristoff. "Oh?"
"Yes. Gretchen Milton.... We met at film school. She and I were lovers off and on. Till she became pregnant. She refused to have much to do with me after that, but I promised I'd help her find a home for our child. I just didn't tell her where."
"So... what happened to her?" Truman asked.
Cristoff sighed. "She died in a plane crash about fifteen years later. She'd gone on to be a successful director. I don't think she even suspected what I was doing to raise our son."
"Just as well," Truman said. "If she knew it was me and she was smart enough.she'd have sued you for custody."
"She wasn't interested in having a family: she wanted a career. I had to talk her out of having an abortion. I wasn't prepared to be a father, at least not a real one, but I didn't want here to go through that. A friend of my uncle's did and she was never the same woman after that."
Truman wasn't sure what to say to any of this.
Sylvia put her hand on Truman's. "At least you're alive."
"Except for finding you, what a life it's been. The first thirty years were lies." To Jerry, he said, "Okay, so what am I gonna say to people when they ask me what I've been doing up until now?"
"That's simple: you tell them you've had amnesia and you can't remember the least thing of who you are, so the mental hospital that treated you gave you a completely new identity."
"Sounds like something that oughta be on TV," Truman mused, wryly. "Gad, that's another lie."
"It's only for your protection," Jerry said. "I did some travelling once to get away from a woman who was stalking me, and I went under the name Adrian Branchflower."
That somehow didn't seem convincing to Truman, but he set aside that concern. A lot of things had sounded unconvincing lately, but put that thought aside as well. He had his freedom. He had been reunited with Sylvia. He was starting a new life in a new country. He decided to stop worrying about what lay behind him and look ahead, with hope, to what was before him.
* * * * * * * * *
Back in Los Angeles, Marcus, Bettina, Tenniel and the rest of the TLF had set about the hard task of disbanding. With the main office gone, all they could do was pack up the copies of the records stored in the basement of Tenniel's house and post an announcement on the website that they were no longer accepting donations or applications for volunteers.
Tenniel himself wrote and posted an item on the website, describing how, of his own volition, Truman had escaped from the EcoSphere and his whereabouts were now unknown -- not a lie: he didn't know where Truman was and wouldn't know until Jerry called from over the Canadian border. He concluded the item by urging people that if they saw Truman anywhere that they should leave him alone and let him go about his new life undisturbed.
He'd just published the new webpage when the phone rang. He picked it up.
"Hello, Truman Liberation Front?"
"Hello, this is Chloe Damon of OmniCam. May I please speak to Cole Tenniel?" a woman's oddly deep voice on the other end asked.
"I'm he."
"We're working with NBC to produce an exclusive interview with you any other members of your organization who'd care to appear in it."
"Who is it?" Marcus asked.
Tenniel covered the mouthpiece. "It's OmniCam; they want us to do an interview with NBC."
"Tell 'em we're not interested," Marcus said.
Tenniel ignored this and turned back to the phone. "I can't vouch for any of the other members, but I be glad to do it."
"Good, good, then we'll send a car at about seven o'clock this evening. The interview will air tonight on Dateline, at 10. Sorry for the short notice, but we had a difficult time contacting you."
"Yes, I'm afraid things have been rather unsettled since our main office burned. But I'll be ready at seven."
* * *
At seven that evening, a black Cadillac pulled up before Tenniel's house. With Bettina at his side, Tenniel went out as it approached.
A stocky, rat-faced guy with a bandage above one eye climbed out of the front. "You Cole Tenniel? I'm Joel Sweyk from OmniCam," he said in a nasally, slightly sneery voice.
"Yes, I'm he," Tenniel said, introducing Bettina.
"Musta been rough, all that work an' he nipped out by himself," Sweyk said as he helped Bettina into the rear seat. Tenniel climbed in after her.
"Yeah, but it's better that he left on his own," Tenniel said, as Sweyk got in beside the driver. "You look like you got a knock on your head."
Sweyk touched the bandage on his left temple. "Oh, this? Just a scratch. Got in the way when the crew was haulin' set pieces outta th' EcoSphere. Wasn't paying enough attention."
They pulled away, heading into the city.
Tenniel had been interviewed by NBC once before, so it seemed very odd that they weren't heading for the NBC studio. He said as much to Sweyk.
"Oh, we're doin' the interview at the EcoSphere. Dateline wants to get everyone's side of the story at once, yours, Mose Meyers's, even Azor Montressor's."
"What?!" Bettina squealed. "I don't wann hear his side on dryer lint, let alone Truman!"
Sweyk peered over the seatback, shrugging, a smile intended to be disarming on his face. "It's what the stiffs at NBC want: I had no say in it, I'm afraid."
Once they reached the EcoSphere and Sweyk lead them in, Tenniel started to suspect what was really going on. In the offset, trucks trundled loads of dismantled set pieces: buildings, planters, everything imaginable, from the set.
"The crew 's workin' night an' day clearing that shi-- that stuff out," Sweyk called over the din of equipment. "They're almost done clearing out: work on the new sets starts as soon as they clear everything out."
They boarded an elevator which swept them up to what had been Cristoff's apartment, high atop the dome.
They entered to find the room dark except for a few eerie reddish lights set near the walls, clearly not part of the decor, but added later on. The window onto the set had been covered over with a large tapestry.
"Uh, isn't it a little dark in here?" Tenniel asked, starting to turn to Sweyk.
Bettina shrieked. Tenniel found himself looking down the barrel of a gun which Sweyk aimed at his head.
"The lighting's just right if you happen to be me," said a gruff but oily voice. "But enough pleasantaries: I suggest you start the interview by telling us just *where* is Truman Burbank?"
Sweyk nudged Tenniel with the gun. "Look behind you," Sweyk ordered.
Behind him stood a short man in a damask robe, the albinist blotches of his skin livid in the reddish light.
"Azor... Montressor," Tenniel faltered.
"The one and only," Montressor replied. "Thought you could snatch my prize boy away. You forget that I legally *own* Truman. I'm only claiming what's mine by law."
"You can't have him!" Bettina cried. But another goon grabbed her by the throat, choking back all protests.
Montressor regarded Tenniel with his head on one side, a mock sweet smile curling his lips. "And just why may I not?"
"You'd force him to live another lie," Tenniel said.
Montressor's smile turned acid. "At least this time the lie will be a little closer to what reality is really like. But I can't show him this unless you give me a few directions to find him."
"Never!" Tenniel cried.
The gun in Sweyk's hand dug into the side of Tenniel's head. "I'd listen to the metal thing at yer noggin if I were in yer place, fella."
"I only saw the maps briefly," Tenniel dodged.
"Your face says otherwise," Montressor growled. He turned to the goon holding Bettina. "Vlad, the woman."
Vlad threw Bettina onto a couch and held her down by the throat, his other fist ready to crush her head. A third guy mounted the arm of the couch, holding her thighs open. The two looked toward Montressor, ready for the next order.
"Either you tell us what you know about Truman's whereabouts," Montressor drawled. "Or Vlad will beat your beautiful assistant's face to a bloody pulp while Pollar performs an act of indecent assault on her."
Bettina hissed some objection and tried to writh free.
"Leave her alone! Let her go." Tenniel cried. "I'll tell you."
Montressor perched himself in what had been Cristoff's chair. "Finally you come to your senses." He signalled to the henchmen holding Bettina down. They released her and slunk away.
"They're heading to the Canadian border, to Bear Claw, Alberta," Tenniel said, inwardly praying that Truman made it there before Montressor's goons caught up with him.
Montressor nodded. "That's all we needed to know. You've served your purpose."
"But your path to him will run over my dead body," Tenniel said.
Montressor gave Sweyk an odd look.
"Anyt'ing you say," Sweyk said, and pulled the trigger....
* * * * * * * * *
Concluded in the next chapter.....
Afterword: Whoever can correctly identify the unidentified movies and TV shows and channels in the channel-surfing scene will get an honorable mention in the author's notes of the final chapter. I'll give you a hint: there are several Jude Law movies among them.
The Truman Show II: Through the Door in the Sky
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's note: I realized a glaring error I've been putting in the mock movie credits, meaning I had to go back and edit the earlier chapters, which also messed up the formatting (which I'll have to fix via another computer). Pretend you haven't seen that glaring error!
Disclaimer:
See Chapter I.
Paramount Pictures presents
A Scott Rudin Production
A Peter Weir Film
The Truman Show II
Featuring
Ed Harris Otto Stuckmeyer
Jude Law Joe Pantoliano
With Jake Jacobi as Montressor
And as Themselves
Sylvia Thomas & Truman Burbank
Written by Andrew Niccol and R.C.H. Mulhare
Directed by Peter Weir
* * * * *
Chapter VII: The Mad Cross Country Drive
"Get out of the car," Truman ordered. He looked Cristoff in the eye even as he fumbled the gun out of the holster under his jacket.
Sylvia tried to put her hand on Truman's shoulder but he pulled away from her. "Truman, you aren't going to do that."
"I am doing this," he retorted, then to Cristoff, "Now get out!" He drew the gun free of the holster.
"Cardinal rule of gun use, number one: Never point a gun at anyone unless you fully intend to use it," Jerry cut in, his accent more London than Toronto.
"And that's exactly what I intend to do," Truman said, leveling the weapon at Cristoff. "Get out of the car!"
Cristoff had frozen in place, but he meekly got out, Truman following him. As they walked away from the car, the older man glanced over his shoulder, his face utterly devoid of expression.
"Truman, you don't want to kill me," Cristoff said.
"Shut *UP*!" Truman snapped, aiming the gun at a point between Cristoff's shoulders as he edged him toward a rusting wire fence by the roadside.
"It's not going to change anything for the better if you kill me. That's just what Montressor would want you to do."
"How do I know if you're not really Montressor? I'm not even sure what's real any more."
"I assure you, Truman, I'm not Azor Montessor."
"That's just what *YOU'RE* saying! Why should I believe that? You made a lie out of my life for thirty years."
They'd backed up to the fence by now. Cristoff turned toward Truman, his back against the wires, and looked up at him, his face slack with resignation.
He raised his eyes to Truman's. "I'm not lying to you now, son."
Truman felt the gun tremble in his hands. He realized his hands were trembling, nearly losing their grip on the gun stock. "What? What kind of excuse is that?"
Their eyes met. A glimmer of regret showed in Cristoff's eyes. "It's true. I know I've been a sick bastard of a father to you, but I was afraid to get too close to you, afraid I'd mess you up. But I did anyway."
"Well, thanks for noticing, but it's too little too late." Truman tried tightening his grip on the gunstock, but his palm had started sweating. "I've had enough lies."
"It's true. I couldn't just throw you into the spotlight the moment you were born, so I found four other women who were giving birth about the same time Alyssa was due, used this as a cover." Cristoff let out a terse chuckle utterly devoid of humor. "I guess I'm the only man who can honestly say he's seen every moment of his son's life."
"If you were so devoted to me, why didn't you ever step in till the very end?" Truman demanded, hardly noticing that the gun had started to sink.
"I was concerned. It was just the wrong kind of concern used the wrong way," Cristoff said.
"Concerned? Then why did you sell me out to Montressor with that button camera?!"
"I honestly don't know how that camera ended up on Jerry's jacket in the first place," Cristoff replied.
Truman let the gun sink. "You better be telling me the truth this time, because if I ever catch you lying to me again, I *will* kill you," Truman warned.
He fumbled the gun back into the holster, half expecting Cristoff would try taking it from him. They headed back to the truck.
"I'm pretty sure that's how it happened," Jerry was saying to Sylvia as they returned.
"How what happened?" Truman asked.
"How that camera got onto Jerry's jacket," Sylvia said.
"A button came off my jacket when Montressor's goons tore it off me after they'd captured me," Jerry said. "They must have sewn it on while they had me drugged."
"Gad, what else did they do?" Truman said. "No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. "They might have bugged something else."
"You telling me it's time we hit the road?" Jerry asked, with a disarming smile.
"Yeah, before those wierdos you spotted at the motel catch up with us," Truman asked.
* * * *
They drove for several miles before they stopped to gas up the Land Rover and have breakfast, which they ate on the road, Jerry juggling his bagel sandwich with the steering wheel.
"Now would Dietrich do that balancing act?" Truman asked, watching him.
"Actually, he stocked up on cans of Slim-Fast. He'd be living off those and, well, whatever else he had stored up. He'd be the first to say he could get by for a while."
"But wouldn't that blow his cover? I mean, didn't he put on the weight to hid from Montressor?"
"I don't think that mattered any more," Jerry said. "Your safety mattered more to him."
"Makes him a better father to me than you did," Trumn said, glowering at Cristoff.
"What?" Sylvia said, baffled.
Truman jabbed one thumb toward Cristoff. "He claims he's my blood father."
Sylvia's brow furrowed. "Is that true?"
Cristoff turned in his seat and looked at them over the back. "It's the truth, that much at least. But I've done a hideous job as a father."
"Well, at least it's working out for the better now," she said, optimistically.
Truman glanced out the back window. Nobody followed them. "So far so good."
They zig-zagged through the mountains that day, making good time. Jerry wanted to get out of the mountains and back to relativen civilization before it got dark so they wouldn't be stuck in the middle of nowhere.
They found a tiny motel in the town of Black Bear, Wyoming just at sundown. The place looked like it was ready to fall down, but it boasted a state of the art satelite dish which stood in the yard alongside a huge homemades sign: "Satelite TV in all rooms.
"Figures, just so they can get the You-Know-What Show," Truman groaned, looking right at the satelite dish as they piled the baggage out of the van into the room for the night.
Later, after a slightly unsatisfying meal of Chinese takeout and while Sylvia washed some clothes and Jerry stood guard, Truman channel-surfed the TV looking for something decent: Jeopardy! with the Senior Tournament; a sort of Robinson Crusoe kind of show with people getting voted off a desert island; Rocky and Bullwinkle; a HUGE snake swallowing a gazelle; a sci-fi movie with with a strangely capitalized title, which appeared to be about the beta-test of some kind of bizarre computer game using even more bizarre-looking units.
Jerry came in at that point, took one look at the screen and his face went pale under the stubble growing on his cheeks.
"You don't want to watch that," he said.
Truman changed the channel. "My thoughts exactly."
"Is it me, or did the male lead look like Jerry?" Sylvia asked innocently, as she hung a shirt over the back of a chair.
Truman ignored this remark. A baseball game; donkey basketball; tropical storm report that went on for fifteen minutes; space shuttle taking off; "I Love Lucy"; another baseball game; "Father Knows Best"; *another* baseball game; a 1930s style gangster movie, but it must have been made recently since it was in color and Tom Hanks was in it.
"What's this doing on the Holiday Channel?" Sylvia asked.
"Father's Day is in a few weeks, and it's about a mob hitman's troubled relationship with his son," Cristoff said.
"Too close to reality," Truman said, changing the channel.
A dog show; a documentary on Pearl Harbor: a World War II movie about the seige of Stalingrad.
"What *is* this about Jude Law movies?" Sylvia asked.
A Thai cooking show; a music video with half-naked African-American girls dancing; "The Twilight Zone": Truman cracked Sylvia up by lipsyncing Rod Serling's opening speech; a movie about a kid android looking for "the Blue Fairy"; a drama about a Mafia family; a slasher horror flick with a clawed hand coming up through a drain while a girl was taking a bath; wrestlers hitting each other with chairs; skateboarding tournament; a British sitcom about a hotel.
"400 channels and there's nothing on," Jerry said.
"Yeah, talk about not being able to get quality with quantity," Truman said.
They found a rerun of Day 5 of "The Truman Show". The adult Truman's finger hovered over the channel up button. Jerry came over and pressed down on the knuckle of that finger, changing it to another channel.
"OW!" Truman said. "What made you do that?!"
"Don't want you having second thoughts about going back," Jerry said.
"Well, there's nothing to go back to, so I'm hardly likely to get tempted," Truman said
Disney version of "Cinderella"; documentary about the World Trade Center Towers; some kind of martial-arts flick with a black-leather cladd woman clobbering five guys; synchronized swimmers; Busby Berkley musical with pretty girls in hoop skirts playing glow in the dark violins; a Robinson Crusoe type family in space; Japanese drummers; Tom and Jerry; Japanese animated film with a girl among odd-looking monsters in a kind of restaurant/spa for monsters; an aerobics class in German; Tom Hanks on a desert island; Ingrid Bergman begging Dooley Wilson to "Play it, Sam"; horror flick with a guy's head exploding; sci-fi film noir with an accordian-toting detective; animated family show about a family making nature movies in the African grasslands; more news about the hunt for Truman Burbank.
"Definately NOT something we wanna watch," Sylvia said.
"Maybe we should watch it, find out where we shouldn't go," Truman said.
The boradcast didn't tell them much, other than police had set up roadblocks all along the Californian border, stopping cars especially with drivers or passengers who matched Truman's description. So far there had been a couple mistaken identities already.
"Well, they don't know we've made it to Wyoming," Truman said.
"Yet." Jerry pointed out. "They just might start hopping up patrols here if they get tipped off or if they strat getting suspicious."
"It's a big country, we can slip through," Sylvia said, hope in her voice, her eyes showing nervousness.
Cristoff shook his head. We haven't reached the Canadian border yet.
"Maybe we should keep moving, take turns driving," Truman said. "One of us can sleep while another one drives. There's four of us, we should be able to divide up the schedule."
"Technically, there's only three of us," Jerry said. "We can hazard exposing you."
"I want to do this," Truman said. "I took the initiative to escape, I'm the one who started it. I should be able to play a part in finishing it."
Cristoff held up one hand as if for quiet. Truman backed down, but he couldn't help thinking, 'Why should I listen to him?!'
"I think Truman is partly right: we should press on as quickly as possible," Cristoff said. "Every time we hole up for the night, that gives us the risk of being seen. If need be, I'll sleep during the day and drive at night when the rest of you are sleeping."
"All right --" Jerry started to say.
Truman glared and cut in. "All right? All right?! Why should we trust him? He's the one who imprisoned me in the first place! How can we trust him not to drive us right back and take me right to Montressor?"
Cristoff leveled his piercing gaze at Truman. "You seem to forget that I'm running from Montressor as well."
"I'll show you, Cris and Sylvia, the maps Dietrich marked for me," Jerry said.
Sylvia smiled a little gauchely, her eyes embarrassed. "Oh dear, maps and I don't mix very well. I once got my family onto the wrong road entirely when we went camping once."
"I could co-pilot," Truman offered.
Jerry and Cristoff looked at him. "That's the most ill-advised thing you can do right now." To Sylvia, he added," I'll co-pilot for you."
"Thanks," she said, not looking at him as she started clearing take-out boxes from the table. "Shouild we pack up and head out now?"
"Let's get one more night of decent sleep before we start the mad dash to the border," Jerry said.
* * * * * * * *
Sweyk hit the wall and slid down it, landing like a heap of rags on the floor.
Montressor lunged at him and holding him by the throat, snatched him up to his level. "How... could... you... FAIL me like that?!"
"I didn' fail," Sweyk choked. "Signal got lost. Prob'ly th' mountains."
Montressor glowered at him, eyes blazing, his albino eye like a hot coal.
"You were supposed to have them move in at the motel, not let them slip away!"
"But... boss, they been pushing for four days now. The crew hadta rest, an' then the signal scrambled itself. Them things really don't do long distance."
"That isn't good enough," Montressor snapped. He let go so suddenly that Sweyk fell to the floor. The larger man tried to rise, but Montressor lunged at him, kicking and punching him in the face, the chest, the groin.
"Now get up," Montressor ordered.
Sweyk pulled himself onto his knees, one hand pressed to his bruised ribs, the other clutching his groin. "Whatcha do that for?" he groaned, getting to his feet..
Montressor grabbed him by what was left of his hair. "Now have them go out there and find Truman!"
"But how? Where?" Sweyk said as Montressor let him go.
Montressor took a cellphone from his breast pocket. "I have my ways of finding that out," he said.
* * * * * * *
Truman and his companions drove steadily through the Rockies, following winding paths. Thank God they were driving a Land Rover, which handled the mountain paths easily.
Jerry drove in the morning and early afternoon, whilke Sylvia drove in the later afternoon into the evening. From late evening into the night, Cristoff drove. They stopped only for food and fuel and the necessities of hygiene and to let the engine cool off. Truman stayed hunkered down in the back seat, staying out of sigh from passing traffic. This gave him a lot of time to think things through.
"Hey Jerry," Truman asked at length.
"Yeah?" Jerry asked.
"Big question: What am I gonna do about my name once we get to Canada? I mean, I can't exactly go by the name Truman Burbank. Someone's bound to recognize me."
"We have that all taken care of," Jerry said. "We created a new identity for you: once we get to Canada. you're Harris Milton."
"Kinda high-flown sounding," Truman said. "Why not something simple like John Smith?"
Sylvia wrinkled her nose. "That's so simple it might be obvious."
"Milton, that was your mother's maiden name," Cristoff said.
Trumna glanced at Cristoff. "Oh?"
"Yes. Gretchen Milton.... We met at film school. She and I were lovers off and on. Till she became pregnant. She refused to have much to do with me after that, but I promised I'd help her find a home for our child. I just didn't tell her where."
"So... what happened to her?" Truman asked.
Cristoff sighed. "She died in a plane crash about fifteen years later. She'd gone on to be a successful director. I don't think she even suspected what I was doing to raise our son."
"Just as well," Truman said. "If she knew it was me and she was smart enough.she'd have sued you for custody."
"She wasn't interested in having a family: she wanted a career. I had to talk her out of having an abortion. I wasn't prepared to be a father, at least not a real one, but I didn't want here to go through that. A friend of my uncle's did and she was never the same woman after that."
Truman wasn't sure what to say to any of this.
Sylvia put her hand on Truman's. "At least you're alive."
"Except for finding you, what a life it's been. The first thirty years were lies." To Jerry, he said, "Okay, so what am I gonna say to people when they ask me what I've been doing up until now?"
"That's simple: you tell them you've had amnesia and you can't remember the least thing of who you are, so the mental hospital that treated you gave you a completely new identity."
"Sounds like something that oughta be on TV," Truman mused, wryly. "Gad, that's another lie."
"It's only for your protection," Jerry said. "I did some travelling once to get away from a woman who was stalking me, and I went under the name Adrian Branchflower."
That somehow didn't seem convincing to Truman, but he set aside that concern. A lot of things had sounded unconvincing lately, but put that thought aside as well. He had his freedom. He had been reunited with Sylvia. He was starting a new life in a new country. He decided to stop worrying about what lay behind him and look ahead, with hope, to what was before him.
* * * * * * * * *
Back in Los Angeles, Marcus, Bettina, Tenniel and the rest of the TLF had set about the hard task of disbanding. With the main office gone, all they could do was pack up the copies of the records stored in the basement of Tenniel's house and post an announcement on the website that they were no longer accepting donations or applications for volunteers.
Tenniel himself wrote and posted an item on the website, describing how, of his own volition, Truman had escaped from the EcoSphere and his whereabouts were now unknown -- not a lie: he didn't know where Truman was and wouldn't know until Jerry called from over the Canadian border. He concluded the item by urging people that if they saw Truman anywhere that they should leave him alone and let him go about his new life undisturbed.
He'd just published the new webpage when the phone rang. He picked it up.
"Hello, Truman Liberation Front?"
"Hello, this is Chloe Damon of OmniCam. May I please speak to Cole Tenniel?" a woman's oddly deep voice on the other end asked.
"I'm he."
"We're working with NBC to produce an exclusive interview with you any other members of your organization who'd care to appear in it."
"Who is it?" Marcus asked.
Tenniel covered the mouthpiece. "It's OmniCam; they want us to do an interview with NBC."
"Tell 'em we're not interested," Marcus said.
Tenniel ignored this and turned back to the phone. "I can't vouch for any of the other members, but I be glad to do it."
"Good, good, then we'll send a car at about seven o'clock this evening. The interview will air tonight on Dateline, at 10. Sorry for the short notice, but we had a difficult time contacting you."
"Yes, I'm afraid things have been rather unsettled since our main office burned. But I'll be ready at seven."
* * *
At seven that evening, a black Cadillac pulled up before Tenniel's house. With Bettina at his side, Tenniel went out as it approached.
A stocky, rat-faced guy with a bandage above one eye climbed out of the front. "You Cole Tenniel? I'm Joel Sweyk from OmniCam," he said in a nasally, slightly sneery voice.
"Yes, I'm he," Tenniel said, introducing Bettina.
"Musta been rough, all that work an' he nipped out by himself," Sweyk said as he helped Bettina into the rear seat. Tenniel climbed in after her.
"Yeah, but it's better that he left on his own," Tenniel said, as Sweyk got in beside the driver. "You look like you got a knock on your head."
Sweyk touched the bandage on his left temple. "Oh, this? Just a scratch. Got in the way when the crew was haulin' set pieces outta th' EcoSphere. Wasn't paying enough attention."
They pulled away, heading into the city.
Tenniel had been interviewed by NBC once before, so it seemed very odd that they weren't heading for the NBC studio. He said as much to Sweyk.
"Oh, we're doin' the interview at the EcoSphere. Dateline wants to get everyone's side of the story at once, yours, Mose Meyers's, even Azor Montressor's."
"What?!" Bettina squealed. "I don't wann hear his side on dryer lint, let alone Truman!"
Sweyk peered over the seatback, shrugging, a smile intended to be disarming on his face. "It's what the stiffs at NBC want: I had no say in it, I'm afraid."
Once they reached the EcoSphere and Sweyk lead them in, Tenniel started to suspect what was really going on. In the offset, trucks trundled loads of dismantled set pieces: buildings, planters, everything imaginable, from the set.
"The crew 's workin' night an' day clearing that shi-- that stuff out," Sweyk called over the din of equipment. "They're almost done clearing out: work on the new sets starts as soon as they clear everything out."
They boarded an elevator which swept them up to what had been Cristoff's apartment, high atop the dome.
They entered to find the room dark except for a few eerie reddish lights set near the walls, clearly not part of the decor, but added later on. The window onto the set had been covered over with a large tapestry.
"Uh, isn't it a little dark in here?" Tenniel asked, starting to turn to Sweyk.
Bettina shrieked. Tenniel found himself looking down the barrel of a gun which Sweyk aimed at his head.
"The lighting's just right if you happen to be me," said a gruff but oily voice. "But enough pleasantaries: I suggest you start the interview by telling us just *where* is Truman Burbank?"
Sweyk nudged Tenniel with the gun. "Look behind you," Sweyk ordered.
Behind him stood a short man in a damask robe, the albinist blotches of his skin livid in the reddish light.
"Azor... Montressor," Tenniel faltered.
"The one and only," Montressor replied. "Thought you could snatch my prize boy away. You forget that I legally *own* Truman. I'm only claiming what's mine by law."
"You can't have him!" Bettina cried. But another goon grabbed her by the throat, choking back all protests.
Montressor regarded Tenniel with his head on one side, a mock sweet smile curling his lips. "And just why may I not?"
"You'd force him to live another lie," Tenniel said.
Montressor's smile turned acid. "At least this time the lie will be a little closer to what reality is really like. But I can't show him this unless you give me a few directions to find him."
"Never!" Tenniel cried.
The gun in Sweyk's hand dug into the side of Tenniel's head. "I'd listen to the metal thing at yer noggin if I were in yer place, fella."
"I only saw the maps briefly," Tenniel dodged.
"Your face says otherwise," Montressor growled. He turned to the goon holding Bettina. "Vlad, the woman."
Vlad threw Bettina onto a couch and held her down by the throat, his other fist ready to crush her head. A third guy mounted the arm of the couch, holding her thighs open. The two looked toward Montressor, ready for the next order.
"Either you tell us what you know about Truman's whereabouts," Montressor drawled. "Or Vlad will beat your beautiful assistant's face to a bloody pulp while Pollar performs an act of indecent assault on her."
Bettina hissed some objection and tried to writh free.
"Leave her alone! Let her go." Tenniel cried. "I'll tell you."
Montressor perched himself in what had been Cristoff's chair. "Finally you come to your senses." He signalled to the henchmen holding Bettina down. They released her and slunk away.
"They're heading to the Canadian border, to Bear Claw, Alberta," Tenniel said, inwardly praying that Truman made it there before Montressor's goons caught up with him.
Montressor nodded. "That's all we needed to know. You've served your purpose."
"But your path to him will run over my dead body," Tenniel said.
Montressor gave Sweyk an odd look.
"Anyt'ing you say," Sweyk said, and pulled the trigger....
* * * * * * * * *
Concluded in the next chapter.....
Afterword: Whoever can correctly identify the unidentified movies and TV shows and channels in the channel-surfing scene will get an honorable mention in the author's notes of the final chapter. I'll give you a hint: there are several Jude Law movies among them.