CHAPTER 07 YEAR 37, MONTH 01 NARRATOR: JOHN Mohawk A**hole had me in a chokehold. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I lurched up out of bed. My heart was pounding. I thought I was having a heart attack. I couldn't tell which timeline I was in. I was sure Mohawk A**hole was there in the dark somewhere. I grabbed my phone. The presence of the phone should have reassured me I was home in Tomorrowland, but my sleep-addled brain didn't believe it. I took the phone outside, started to dial 911, and held my thumb over the send button. I sat on the sidewalk for an hour like that before I finally felt normal again. I'd had some fun trading places with Firebird, but I'd had some terrifying moments as well. I didn't want to spend a lot of time in Epoxyclypse. I both loved it and hated it. It wasn't just the nightmares. I was having panic attacks, too. The ability to hop between worlds scared the bejeepers out of me. To ensure that we would cross over, we had to agree to meet at very specific places and times. If we were off a bit, we wouldn't swap. Other times, we'd inadvertently cross paths, and find ourselves thrown into unfamiliar situations. I don't even want to imagine what would happen if I ended up stranded in his timeline. Visiting Epoxyclypse had been an adventure. But adventures involve facing things you're not prepared for and taking risks. I generally preferred to be prepared and reduce risk as much as possible. Some of my fears were justified. In Epoxyclypse the risk of being attacked, or killed, was much greater. But the risk of our business ventures failing was much lower. The ideas had already been proven to work. I could have just stopped visiting Epoxyclypse. But the idea of saving the world, and getting rich doing it, was intoxicating. It was quite possible that Firebird and I were the first people in history to discover, and gain control over, this ability to move between timelines. How could we let that go to waste? The Mad Max fortieth anniversary celebration in Australia was coming up. This would be my great pilgrimage. My trip to where it all began. And where it all ended. Several people started an online discussion about the possibility of making a short film while we were out there. We'd be visiting Mad Max filming locations in Melbourne, Clunes, and Silverton. We'd have our outfits and cars. All we needed was a script and a director. My hands were shaking with excitement as I typed. "I'll write the script and direct it." Firebird had a pile of stories about all the zany stuff that had happened to him in Epoxyclypse. I decided to use the story about running the roadblock, and meeting Mad Skelli, as inspiration for the script. I'd been shooting footage and writing all my life, but this would be my first scripted narrative. My excitement turned to fear when I realized who I had to cast. I would love to have cast Mad Skelli's counterpart in Tomorrowland. But Firebird and I had never asked her real name. And she was a postwar, which meant she was born after the timelines split. It's quite possible that she didn't even exist in Tomorrowland. It's probably for the best. It would have been a tough pickup line. "Have we met before, in another timeline?" No, not Skelli. Mohawk A**hole. Bruce Barbagallo. I found him online. He was a tattoo artist living in South Australia. It wouldn't be too long of a trek for him to come out to Silverton. And everyone wants to be a movie star. He'd probably grown up watching the Mad Max films, like I had. I could only imagine what it must have been like to have grown up with them as an Australian kid. It was quite possible Bruce really was the psychopath Firebird believed him to be. But he wasn't in prison, he hadn't killed anyone, and he hadn't blown up any airports. In Tomorrowland, he seemed like a regular guy. I went back and forth over it in my head. I was scared, but I didn't want to pass up this incredible opportunity to see firsthand what a different person he would be in this timeline. A front-row seat in a battle of nature vs. nurture. I really wanted to meet him. But I also knew, for a fact, that some part of him was quite capable of killing me and my family in cold blood. Oh, wait. I'm going to meet him either way. It says so right on his profile. He's already planning to attend the fortieth anniversary. I got my visa online. As long as I had my Arizona driver's license, I'd be able to drive in Australia, on the left side of the road. It seemed a little crazy that they would let me do that. I looked forward to the challenge. I reserved flights, hotels, and a rental car. Or should I say, "hire car." I hate flying, but I found a way to tolerate it. I pretended that I lived on that airplane. I accepted that I would never get off of that airplane. Then it came as a pleasant surprise when the airplane finally landed. At the airport, I was met by a couple of friends I'd met online who'd be helping me make my film. Driving on the left side wasn't too hard, but the first clockwise roundabout I encountered caused my brain to shut down. I had to pull over and ask my friends what to do. And I kept turning on the wipers when I wanted to activate the turn signals. Or should I say, "indicators." We visited the Mad Max filming locations at the Melbourne University car park and the pumping station. Then we went to Clunes, where we visited the train station and Fraser Street. We stayed in Clunes that night. The celebration would begin the next day. When morning came, replicas of Mad Max motorcycles and cars started filling the streets. It was my first time seeing a Ford Falcon XB in person. Then I saw Bruce. He wasn't just in attendance. He was a part of the event. He was riding on the back of a tow truck, looking and acting like Wez from Road Warrior. Including the red mohawk. I was afraid that, when he saw me, he would experience some sort of interdimensional flash of recognition and fly into a murderous rage. As the truck passed by he looked at me and snarled. Then he looked away. The next stop on our journey was Silverton, where we'd be shooting the film. Everyone's outfits looked tip-top. They even did up the hostel we stayed at to look like Exotic Travels. I introduced myself to everyone who'd volunteered to help with my little movie. I introduced myself to Bruce last. Bruce had brought his tattooing equipment with him. He was setting it up. "Here for a tattoo?" he asked. "Uh, yeah!" It was not like me to be so spontaneous about such a permanent commitment, but lately, I'd been starting to accept the fact that my body and my life were only temporary things. No commitment is truly permanent, because nothing is permanent. And taking risks, breaking rules, and getting out of my comfort zone was occasionally leading to great rewards. I decided to get a Firebird symbol on the back of my neck. As Bruce worked on my tattoo, we got to know each other. I told him about my experiences at Wasteland Weekend. Well, most of my experiences. I don't usually tell people that I sometimes cross into another timeline. But I did tell him how much going to Wasteland Weekend really was like entering a different world. He was fascinated. "I might never want to leave," he said. "Would you visit another world, if you could? Even if there were a chance you'd get stuck there? Even if there were a chance you'd die there?" "Life's an adventure mate," he said. "F*** yeah I would." It was clear he wasn't a violent person but he'd had a rough life. Bruce and Firebird had something surprising in common. Bruce's parents had also been killed when he was a child. It wasn't too surprising that Firebird's parents were killed. It was the apocalypse, after all. But Bruce's parents had been killed long before the apocalypse. They were militant socialists, killed by fascists. Firebird is right. The seventies were crazy. Bruce was a socialist, too. I understood where he was coming from, to an extent. I wouldn't go so far as to have the proletariat seize the means of production. Like Firebird, I believed in the power of markets, at least when it came to providing luxury goods. Bruce and I agreed that the government should provide necessities like health care and education. When my tattoo was complete, I asked him to be in my film. He said yes. He was downright giddy about it. Then I had to ask him something else. "Did you ever own a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am?" "How did you know? Yeah. There was a CEO of an oil company who lived in my town. He was always driving this gorgeous car around. I talked to him about it a few times. He'd imported it from the states. I never knew for sure if the car was here legally or not. I saved up for years, hoping to one day get one just like it. One day the bloke put it up for sale. The sign wasn't on that car five minutes. I had it for a few years, then lost my job and had to sell it. It was a '75. Dark blue, with a light blue bird on the hood. Two-tone red and white interior." "Special ordered in red, white, and blue for the American Bicentennial, so the guy could drive it in parades." "Yeah! How'd you know?" "You told that story to whomever you sold it to, and they passed that story down to me. I'm the current owner of that car." "What a crazy coincidence!" "Yeah... kind of." There were some crazy coincidences involved, but not as many as he thought. The February heat was almost unbearable, but we managed to shoot our film. We got several takes, from several cameras, for every scene. I didn't have a storyboard. We just acted out the script, and I let the camera operators use their own creativity in choosing their shots. This let us be more spontaneous with how we used the filming locations. When I wasn't acting, or attempting to act, I was operating one of the cameras, too. We did our best to stay out of each others' shots. There was an intense amount of improvisation, distributed intelligence, and synergy. I couldn't believe people were following my instructions and letting me drive their cars. I didn't understand why everyone was being so kind, especially considering no one was getting paid for any of this. Everyone remembered their lines except me. Yes, I forgot the lines that I had written. And I was by far the worst actor. When shooting was complete, I felt like I had contributed nothing. I threw away all the paper copies of the script. Bruce rescued one from the trash and asked me to autograph it for him. That felt good. It was suddenly clear what it was that I had contributed. I was the writer and director, darnit. That night, when the sun went down at Mundi Mundi Lookout, I saw more stars than I'd ever seen before, and new stars that I'd never seen before. There wasn't a single airplane in the sky. Orion was upside down, doing cartwheels. So was I. When I returned home, I spent the next few weeks editing. I planned to release my film at the Wasteland Film Festival, which is held on-site during Wasteland Weekend. Writing and directing had been so much fun that I didn't want it to end. I decided to begin a crowdfunding campaign to make Firebird's life story into a movie. I'd promote it as an old-school film with real stunts, real storytelling, and no CGI. I asked myself how much money I'd need to take a sabbatical from my job and work on my movie full-time. It would take a lot. I was happy at my job. I never took risks like that. But if we got enough buy-in from the wastelander community, I'd do it. Most people never get a chance to do something great. Of those who get a chance, most people turn it down. I promised myself that if I got this chance, I wouldn't turn it down. But how much money would it take? I gave it some thought. I decided. It would take $500,000. I'd quit my job for a budget of half a million dollars. It sounds like a lot, but it wasn't like I'd be keeping that money. I'd use some of it for food, rent, lodging, and health insurance. But the rest would go toward paying everyone else and making the film awesome. To hit a fundraising goal of that size, I'd have to go viral. To go viral, I'd need a gimmick. Like Firebird, I would put my car on the line. But I was going to raise the stakes. I bought the domain name youareawaited.com to use for my crowdfunding campaign. Then I added some text to the credits at the end of the film: THERE'S MORE TO THIS STORY THIS SCENE WAS SHOT ON A $0 BUDGET YOU DECIDE THE BUDGET OF OUR NEXT SCENE $5,000 - EVERYONE GETS PAID $50,000 - WE MAKE THE WHOLE MOVIE $500,000 - I DESTROY MY TRANS AM ON CAMERA REAL STUNTS REAL STORYTELLING JUST LIKE THE GOOD OLD DAYS NO CGI NOT NOW NOT EVER GIVE US YOUR MONEY LET'S DO THS YOUAREAWAITED.COM I had no idea yet how or why Firebird's car would be destroyed at the end of the movie, but I figured it would make for a great ending. I keep my promises. If we hit that number, I'd quit my job. If we hit that number, I'd smash my car on camera. Submitting this film to the Wasteland Film Festival might be the most significant button click of my life. I hovered over the button for a moment. Click. This would not help with my panic attacks. But screw it. If I got that money, I'd make my movie, or die trying.