"I've gotta say ... I didn't get it," said the young film student. They were wearing some truly eye-burning tie-die, and their voice tended to echo from their need to take this call in a tiny dorm room.
"What'd it feel like you missed?" asked the dragon they were talking to. He'd crammed himself into an AVEC room sys-side that hadn't been designed for dragons. Despite his non-human features, the frown was obvious.
"Like, I can feel the structure here. Questions of Memory's obviously a dramatic irony and misunderstandings comedy. And most of the pieces land — I got most of the jokes, and and those little bits of context you added in the captions helped a ton — but the plot lost me."
The dragon paused.
"The first half mostly makes sense: You've got Coleen and Feanor trying to work out if Priscilla remembers where they're planning to hold her birthday party, but ... why ask about what the music was at dinner earlier? What's that got to do with anything?"
"They're trying to work out if she did a really selective merge —" the dragon started explaining, but his phys-side counterpart missed the words as they kept going.
"And then the second half, after Priscilla said she hadn't merged down yet, they're trying to ... convince her to not remember the party she was at somehow without telling her what she's supposed to forget? Is that supposed to be some weird System surrealism thing?"
"Well, no, Priscilla'd sent a fork to that evening, and since she's not done processing the merge, she doesn't have the memories yet."
"Sorry, what?" The student stared at the dragon like he'd grown an extra head (which he hadn't, but only because there wasn't room). "Isn't forking that thing where you make copies of yourself? Or, like, alternate versions of yourself? It's hard to tell. What's that got to do with this?"
"Priscilla at the party's a fork, and then, right at the beginning, she starts merging with her down-tree, who's asleep, so, y'know, the merge gets queued up." The dragon's tone made it sound like this should've been obvious.
"Wait ... sleeping? Isn't the only time that happened the dream sequence right at the start with the two Priscillas?"
"Dream sequence?" the dragon asked. "There wasn't a dream sequence, just someone merging down. I put a note in since I figured people phys-side wouldn't know the shorthand for merging and teleports and such on film, but ... a dream sequence? How'd you get that?"
The student shrugged. "I'm getting really lost with all this forking and merging stuff. What's it got to do with the movie?"
"When you merge, your down-tree gets to decide how to integrate all the memories together?" the dragon said, confused. "That's tutorial stuff, everyone —"
The dragon facepalmed, and only knocked over two lamps in the process.
"... Oh. Right. That's why it's tutorial stuff. Y'all don't usually come up here knowing how forks and merges work."
The dragon sighed, momentarily obscuring the camera with smoke. "I went through all sorts of trouble to smooth out all the little details that make this movie a classic but that won't make sense phys-side, but I ... completely forgot to explain the one thing you absolutely have to get for the plot to work because it was. Just. That. Obvious." He rumbled, disappointed in himself. "I'm doing the most fantastic job ever with this project."
"Ok, wait, so, let me get this straight. Right at the beginning, we've got Priscilla ... B ... at the party, where she might've heard about the surprise. Then, she goes home, and," the student made a vague stirring gesture, "recombines? with Priscilla A, who we're following for the rest of the film."
The dragon nodded. "Yep."
"But since Priscilla A slept through that, she's just got memories from the party ... sitting on unread, kinda? ... when she wakes up. And then she doesn't have time to go through them because of," they waved a hand around the room, taking care not to smack into their bed, "everything that starts happening."
"Exactly."
"Then, Coleen and Feanor find out Priscilla hasn't looked through her memories — wow, that sounds trippy —"
" — you get used to it, or you just don't fork much — "
" — so they're dropping all these subtle hints that completely miss the mark and then ..."
The student burst out laughing. "I get the ending now! That's ... if that's what everyone's goal was, it's one heck of a twist, and ... one second." They fiddled with their rig to replay the very start of the film.
"The thing with the glass wasn't an audio glitch, was it?" they asked.
"Nah, super deliberate. Real clever stuff. It's easy to miss, but then you go back and —"
"I'm starting to get why this thing's a classic," the student said. "But ... so, question, how common's all this forking and merging stuff sys-side? Is this an everybody thing?"
"Not exactly," the dragon replied. "Like, everyone knows about forks, and it's a bit weird to not consider sending out a second you if you can't decide which invite to accept, but getting really into playing around with forking yourself is its own thing."
"Darn. Makes it harder for our project —"
"Sorry, our project?"
"— yeah, I want to help you get this out down here."
"I," the dragon paused, fumbling for what to say next. "I'd be happy to work with you, if you've got time."
"Yeah, and I'm realizing I could get an honors project out of doing a few of these. We'd just need to work out how to communicate forks and merges and all that without just chucking translator's notes around ..."
The dragon smiled. "Yeah, I've been thinking about that. There's some other films I've been wanting to do where you really need to keep track of forks, but those might be easier, since at some point the director just has everyone stick their character's tag over their head ... maybe extend that convention? Or edit a bit to make merges and forks more dramatic?" He shook his head. "Sure isn't easy."
The student shrugged. "Yeah, but what's art without a bit of brain grease?"
The dragon's laugh rumbled across the student's room. "I know I'd like working with you."
"I —" the student was interrupted by their alarm "— gotta get ready for class. Catch you later?"
"Definitely! And I'll spam you with notes and questions."
"Same," the student agreed. "Anyway, bye!" They hung up.
The dragon, once he'd processed the sudden disconnect, carefully uncoiled himself from the furniture before popping back home. There, he merged down and forked back out again: this whole cinema internationalization project was, it seemed, going somewhere ... and would need a lot more of his time.
He hoped he didn't generate an entire comedy plot in the process, though. That'd be way too meta for his tastes.
