Book Eight, Chapter 36: Breathing Deeply

Arriving at the docks and tying off may have triggered the storyline, but it didn’t teleport us to our starting locations. Other things changed, though. The river changed so much that I couldn’t see it anymore; all I saw was a lake with a large interior and fingers snaking through the hills.

After tying off, I managed to climb out of the boat, suddenly aware that I had a large digital camera in my right hand. This wasn’t an at-home film-your-kids-unwrapping-Christmas-presents type of camera. It was production quality, and the entire device was encased in a hard, waterproof plastic container.

Luckily, we didn’t start out On-Screen. We had a little bit of time to get our bearings.

A young woman came to collect Camden, calling him Doctor Tran.

“Sounds like I might be doing surgery on one of you guys later,” he said as he forced a snarky smile and followed the NPC.

Before he left, I said, “Everybody loosen up. Get ready to play your characters until the end. We don’t have time to feel our emotions; we have to feel our characters’ emotions.”

I almost said, “like Kimberly always did,” but thought better of it.

Antoine was taking deep breaths, trying to get into character while searching the area for clues about his character’s identity. He checked his pockets, looked for name tags, all the normal stuff.

“I think I figured out your identity,” Cassie said softly.

“How?” he asked.

She pointed to a bass fishing boat that was being backed into the water a few hundred yards from where we were. Antoine’s face had been vinyl-wrapped onto its hull. Text read: Antoine Stone, Outdoorsman.

It didn’t take me long after that to figure out what my role was. I was Antoine’s field cameraman or some kind of producer. Upon examining the truck used to back the boat trailer into the water, I found all kinds of information about Antoine and me. He was a TV fisherman with numerous awards and accolades.

The story was set in the mid-2000s.

While Antoine and I were investigating that, Anna and Cassie had each found their own paths and were learning new things about their characters.

“Jackpot,” I said as I lifted up a clipboard I found in the back seat of the truck.

“What ya got?” Antoine asked.

“Itinerary,” I said. “So the fishing tournament starts at sunrise, which is about thirty minutes from now.”

That was a bit confusing, as the sun was already up, but I knew it was in Carousel’s ability to fix that. The sun in the sky was mere set dressing for a being of Carousel’s power.

“We need to get some interviews then,” I said. “Meet the townsfolk, learn about the tournament, that sort of stuff.”

“Great,” he said. Then he had to get into the truck and back the boat the rest of the way into the water, because the boat had just been hanging there, waiting for us to do it.

“Anna’s at the table over there,” I said, “let’s get some footage of people signing in.”

Antoine nodded. He was still sullen and quiet, but he got rid of that the moment I pressed record, and we went On-Screen. As expected, the sun quickly hid back over the horizon, and all we could see was dawn’s gray light.

“This is Antoine Stone. We got another tournament here. This is the Carousel Basin Lake Bass Tournament. Gonna go catch some fish, y’all.”

In an instant, he had transformed into a magnetic, charismatic country boy, donning a ball cap from one of his several sponsors and leading me over to the sign-up table where Anna was working.

“Good morning, miss,” Antoine said, holding out his hand for her to shake. “How many boats signed on so far?”

She looked up at him, then at the camera, like a deer in the headlights at first, but then she switched on the sweetness.

“Twenty-six,” she said. “It’s more than we ever expected.”

“Did you hear that?” Antoine said, staring into the camera with a smile. “We got some competition. Come on, folks, let’s go meet ‘em.”

And so we went about interrupting fishermen as they prepared for the tournament’s start and asking them inane questions about their strategies and experience.

“Well, I ain’t telling you that,” one of the men said with a not-so-toothy smile. “I ain’t giving away my secrets.”

He laughed, and Antoine laughed with him.

“Smart man,” Antoine said. “I almost got you.”

He looked down into the man’s boat.

“I see you’re using a lot of stink bait. You guys got some strange breed of bass around here or what?” he asked.

“Not going for the bass,” the man said. “Going for the catfish. Total weight tournament. Catfish is legal.”

“Wait, they allow catfish? I thought this was a bass fishing tournament,” Antoine asked, confused.

The fisherman we were talking to just shrugged and climbed into his boat.

“It was a bass fishing tournament,” Camden said from behind us on the docks. He was wearing a fishing vest with many pockets and a bucket hat.

“It’s not a bass fishing tournament anymore?” Antoine asked.

It wouldn’t have been a surprise except that we found a flyer for the tournament, advertised as a largemouth bass event. Largemouth bass was the typical target for tourneys like this, according to a trade magazine I found in the truck. We had gathered the info, but then heard a contradiction On-Screen, suggesting it was our characters who were meant to be surprised.

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“Largemouth bass numbers are low at the moment. Can’t get them up to size no matter what I do,” Camden said. “Catfish are thriving. Carp are thriving. We figured we either make catfish legal for the total weight prize, or we’re going to have a pathetic showing this year.”

“Can you tell us who we’re talking to?” Antoine asked as we moved toward Camden.

“Dr. Camden Tran,” he said. “I work for the city’s Fish and Game program. We worked to rehabilitate the lake after some contamination, restocked it, and got it ready for fishing and swimming. This tournament is our big opening of the lake. But as I said, we haven’t got the largemouth bass numbers where we like them. They’re not at the legal size for fishing.”

So that was what kind of doctor he was.

“So we’re adding catfish to the menu. That’s just fine,” Antoine said with a cheery tone.

We interviewed a few more fishermen as time stood still while we got all the footage we needed.

We talked to some of the people working the event, and I managed to get some footage of Anna as she met her character’s father, who was competing in the tournament. His name was Richard. They seemed to have a close relationship; she hugged him before he went and boarded his boat.

He was an older, sun-beaten guy, built like a linebacker, with a long white ponytail, and, in lieu of a normal hat, he wore a neon-yellow visor. I didn’t get to meet him, but I got several pieces of footage of him smiling and laughing with other NPCs.

I even got some strange footage of Anna as she stared out at the lake with a reserved look of sadness. I worried she must not have realized I was filming her and was still processing her emotions over Kimberly. I must have kept filming her for a while as I waited for any NPCs in the area to make themselves notable.

That’s how it normally worked when I was the cameraman; I didn’t have to seek out opportunities. Carousel would send them to me to choose from. At that moment, the only interesting thing happening was Anna’s dad, Richard Reed, being well-liked and joking around with lots of the locals.