Days went by, and I used my lunch breaks to write. Scene by scene, one day after the next, I knocked out the story of the seventh episode of Star Wars. George Lucas went over each chapter and suggested changes. And together we worked hard to replace a product churned out by a faceless corporation, about bland characters fighting space Nazis on the remains of a franchise milked to death, with a story about real people struggling to survive in a world changing for the worse.

It was a blast. I don’t know what was better: George letting me in on some of his secret plans for old characters whose story arcs were never really developed, or just the idea that we were doing something that would be remembered and appreciated by thousands of fans. Those were really some of the best times I ever had.

Of course, it didn’t last!

One day, when I got off the late shift at the warehouse, a shadowy figure on a giant motorcycle rolled through the parking lot. Even with his helmet on, I somehow knew he was watching me. I had a bad feeling about it. I put my head down and took the long way toward my car, hoping he would leave me alone. Instead, the biker slowly rolled in my direction, the sound of his engine reverberating through the dark.

I suddenly stopped, frozen in my tracks as the biker cut me off from my car. Maybe you already guessed it by now, but I was completely taken by surprise as George Lucas threw back the visor on his helmet.

“Get on, kid,” he said. “We’re going for drinks.”

“Drinks?” I said, trying to sound like my heart wasn’t about to blow a gasket. “George, it’s three in the morning! Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding. I just got served a big shit sandwich. And you have to help me eat it. And we’re gonna need something to wash it down. So get on!”

“Did something bad happen?”

Instead of answering, he slammed his visor shut, then scooted forward, making room on his bike. Unable to argue, I climbed on and wrapped my arms around him. At first I felt ridiculous, but as he gunned the engine and took off, I just held on for dear life.

Soundtrack: Emotional Ride Down the Highway on a Motorcyle - also known as: Journey: Separate Ways

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfJQ6yveYH0

I could tell George Lucas was already drunk, tearing across the highway and then leaning into curves on backroads. Boomer rock blasted on the bike’s oversized speakers, making me feel nauseous rather than nostalgic. Finally we came to a bar on a rundown strip of pawn shops and smoke shops just outside of town. He must have known the place, as none of the rough characters drinking around picnic tables outside seemed to take notice of him. The lady behind the bar, who looked like an advertisement for a tattoo shop, only nodded as she poured us a pitcher. We went outside, and George sat on top of one of the picnic tables and poured me a drink.

“The movie’s not getting made,” he said. “Kathleen and Dave found out about it. They put a stop to it. It’s over.”

George’s face disappeared behind his glass and he stared around the edge of the rim, watching me as he drained his Old Milwaukee in one long gulp. It took me a long time to realize he was talking about Kathleen Kennedy, the Disney exec in charge of Star Wars, and Dave Filoni, the guy behind The Mandalorian.

“Okay, but they were bound to try something, right?” I managed. “You’ve got lawyers, don’t you?”

“Not how the real world works,” he said, slamming his glass down and refilling it. Despite looking ridiculous with beer foam all over his face, with utter seriousness he said, “I already told you, these people aren’t about money. We could get ten thousand lawyers screaming about how I came up with the idea for Star Wars, but at the end of the day, they can pay one black ops spook to sit outside my house with a microwave beam emitter pointed at my head, until I go crazy and hang myself. Ever heard of Havana Syndrome? Or they’ll just send some wetworks goons to smack me around, put two rounds in my head, and then leave a suicide note with my name on it. That’s it. Show’s over. Star Wars is over. We’re canceled, baby. Permanently.”

It didn’t seem real. I had already worked so hard on the story! “How can they do this?” I said. “Are you sure they’re both in agreement? I thought… I thought those two hated each other. I’ve seen all kinds of videos about how much they hate each other!”

George frowned. “People think they know what’s going on. And YouTubers are the worst offenders. There are ten million YouTube videos about Kathleen Kennedy this, Dave Filoni that. Everybody knows what’s going on with Star Wars, and they don’t even know my phone number. Huh. That’s weird. They know everything about my creation, and they never even talked to me? Okay. Makes sense.” George shook his head. “Yeah, right!”

“What do you mean? They have some kind of rivalry. Right? Just get ‘em arguing, then get one of them on your side. Or get their fans! A lot of people are into The Mandalorian! If you could get Dave’s fans together, and on your side…”

Again George shook his head. “The Mandalorian’s got nothing to do with Star Wars. It’s a longform Saturday Night Live sketch making fun of Star Wars. The kind of people into that aren’t going to care about the kind of story we’re telling. And that’s the new type of fan. The hyper-consumer. A mutant strain of human completely hormonally differentiated from what we would have thought was the human norm, only a few years back. The new breed wants something amusing and comforting, not something that’s going to make them uncomfortable. If you don’t know that Hollywood is run by a matriarchal cult that wants to turn humanity into a herd of compliant slaves, then I don’t know what to tell you.”

At this point, I had no idea how to deal with George’s stream of consciousness conspiracy theory train of thought. And I wasn’t in the mood for it. I buried my face in my hands, willing myself to disappear. The worst part was that I had known from the start that I was never going to write the next Star Wars movie… and now I felt like an idiot for even trying.

“Hey, man. Hey!”

I could hear one of the locals yelling, and I tried to ignore him, hoping that he would just go away.

“Hey, man. Barry’s tryin’ ta say somethin’!”

I reluctantly pulled my fingers from my eyes and turned to look. Two rough-looking, bearded guys were leaning close to a third man with long, stringy hair, who looked to be passed out in his seat. His lips moved silently, and his companions strained to listen. I didn’t know what was going on. The poor guy looked like he had been on some kind of bender, with dark circles around his eyes and sores around his mouth.

“You want me to call an ambulance?” I asked. “He doesn’t look so good.”

“He’s fine!” one of the men snapped. “But he’s tryin’ to tell ya somethin’. He says…”

His companions froze, listening so intently that they looked like figures from an oil painting.

“He says you gotta put it on a fanfiction site.”

My attention immediately wandered, and I turned to the door, but George said, with utmost seriousness, “What is that?”

One of the roughnecks turned to us, revealing fingernail scratches trailing down one side of his face. “It’s where you put stories about movie characters, and like, TV shows, I guess. Big companies usually leave you alone. But people get a kick out of reading that stuff!”

“I read one of those once!” said his companion, nodding. “It was a tale of romance featuring Harry Potter…”

“And Hermione?” said the scratched-up man, smiling lasciviously.

“No. Draco Malfoy!”

The scratched-up man leaned back, his eyebrows lifting. “That’s unexpected!” he said.

Wondering how we could get out of this conversation, I turned to George. Unfortunately he had a hand on his chin, his brow furrowed as if deep in thought.

“Look, fellas,” I said, “we thought we were actually going to shoot a movie, is the thing. Posting stories on the internet… I mean, we might as well print out what we’ve got and drop it into the deepest hole in the middle of nowhere. No one will see it. You know? No one will care.”

“Shoot a movie? In Hollywood?!” One of the roughnecks puckered up his face as if he had bitten into something terrible. “Come on, man! Hollywood is done-zo!”

“I have to agree,” said the scratched-up man. “At this point, it’s just a propaganda machine hemorrhaging money. You watch any celebrity talk shows lately? Yeesh!”

His companion nodded. “There’s nothing more sad than legacy media that thinks it’s still relevant. You ask me, it’s up to regular folk to take back their stories.”

“And Jerry would agree,” said the scratched-up man, “if he wasn’t out stone-cold, flying beyond the firmament!”

Both of the roughnecks laughed, and one slapped the knee of his passed out friend, who had gone silent after playing the oracle. I sighed in frustration, but George suddenly wrapped an arm around my neck.

“Come on, my friend,” he said, smiling strangely. “We’ve got a lot of work to do!”

We drained our cups, then made our way into the parking lot. The streetlights shone oddly, looking like a fake movie set. I must have been more drunk than I realized. George turned, and I thought at first that he had forgotten something back inside, but he was only having difficulty walking straight.

“We’re going to finish this story,” he said, “and we’re going to post it on a fanfiction site.”

“You going to put your name on it?”

“Nope!” he said, smiling. “That way, old Dave and Kathleen won’t know I’m involved!”

“Then nobody will care!” I said. “Don’t you get it?”

“They’ll care, alright!” he said, turning as if about to confront me, but instead pirouetting like a dying ballerina. “The people who read the story will care. Because it’s a good story. They’ll care because we care! Look, kid, I want to tell you something…”

George looked around the small parking lot, too drunk to see his own motorcycle. Thunder groaned and rain began to fall. I stood in the rain, unmindful of my own misery as I waited for him to collect his thoughts.

“You remember the award ceremony from A New Hope? The first Star Wars movie?”

I nodded.

“Back when Chewie was roaring and Leia put a ribbon on Luke and Han?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, nodding impatiently.

“It looks like a great time, right? Like everyone is so happy to be there. The good guys won, and everything’s great! Right?”

“Yeah, I guess. Why?”

“Well…” George laughed. “It wasn’t like that in real life! In real life, most of the guys in that scene were clowning on me. When Harrison and Mark walked past the crowd, everyone was cracking jokes, making fun of their costumes. Nobody knew what Star Wars was about. You get me? Nobody knew what the fuck we were doing. They had no idea! They couldn’t see my vision! As far as they knew, it was just a bunch of jerkoffs running around in stupid costumes! And some big guy dressed up like a wig! And a trash can rolling around, with little blinky lights! So, yeah, the extras on set were making fun of us the whole time we were shooting that scene! And other scenes, too!”

Rain poured down George’s face as he stared at me, fixing my gaze with his own.

“But I knew what it was about,” he said. “And a couple of other people, maybe they didn’t quite see it, but they knew I believed. They knew I put my life into that movie. And they had faith in me. And all the doubters, the people who thought I was a fool? You better believe I knocked their socks off when it all came together. When it was all shot and edited, and up on the big screen. They weren’t laughing anymore. You see what I mean?”

“I see what you mean,” I said, smiling involuntarily as I pushed soaking wet hair out of my eyes.

“Good. Good! ‘Cause we’re going to start small. Just like I did back then. And we’re gonna come out of nowhere, and work hard, and then blow these fuckers away!”

He slapped my arm and took off toward his motorcycle. I followed him. He walked with manic intensity, supercharged from the excitement of finally getting his vision for Star Wars out to the public.

“George?” I said. “You sure you want to drive like this?”

“Look, boy, don’t give me any shit!” George hopped on his bike, then bent over strangely. I thought that he was bending over to pick up something he had dropped - then he fell over completely. One foot flew up and smacked me in the jaw, knocking my glasses sideways and sending stars in my vision.

After making sure my teeth were still there, I looked over the side of the bike and saw George lying in a puddle, with one foot laid up on the seat. I thought at first that he was unconscious, but he looked back at me.

“George,” I said, laughing, “how the hell are we gonna get home?”

“Does it even matter?” He looked up at me, smiling dreamily. “Don’t you know, kid? We are the story makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams…”

* * *

I had just finished editing the Tatooine story arc, and Regis and Sindo were on their way to Dagobah, when George Lucas stopped by my third floor condo. He had a little smile on his face, which turned into a quizzical frown as soon as he walked in.

“Brother, this place is really nutty!” he said. “Red walls, huh? And what’s that over there?”

He was looking at a framed Warhammer 40K poster, which showed a bunch of space marines blowing away unseen foes. I always liked the look of intense disgust on one marine’s face, as if he couldn’t believe what he had to deal with. It was probably the sort of expression we would have seen on a Star Wars stormtrooper’s face, if they weren’t stuck in dehumanizing helmets.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, feeling self-conscious. “Come on in. I’ve got it in here.”

“Alright, alright.”

George followed me through my red living room, and down the orange hallway, but stopped at my kitchen with pink walls and baby blue cabinets.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered.

“It’s in here,” I said.

I took him to my bedroom. Fortunately he didn’t give me a hard time about my tacky blue and green walls, but made his way over to my desktop computer.

“So you’ve started posting the chapters?” he said.

“Yeah, the first three,” I said. “Check it out. You can see our views right there. Nobody’s left any comments. Yet.”

I put a hand over my mouth, waiting nervously as George took a seat. He scrolled up and down, examining the author page for Star Wars Episode 7: A Corpse Through Which the Force Speaks. Finally he stopped. He had seen it. The number of views.

“Forty views,” he said. “What does that mean?”

“It means it’s gotten forty clicks.” I bit the nail of my ring finger, then stopped. “Not total number of readers, but number of times each chapter has been clicked on. And maybe read. That’s for the first three chapters. I… I know it’s not much.” I hesitated before biting my nail again. “But that’s just for the first three that I’ve uploaded. I’ve already got several more chapters ready to go.”

George sat in silence. After a long, uncomfortable moment, he nodded. Finally he stood and made his way out of the room. I followed him as he slowly made his way down the orange hallway. At first I thought he was going to walk through the living room, out the door, and never speak to me again. Instead, he leaned over the couch.

“George? You okay?”

“We’re back,” he said quietly. “We’re back on the map.”

“Um. Are we? There’s an erotic fiction story about Samus Aran and Kirby with over a hundred thousand views. Metroid x Kirby, I think it’s called. And there’s a new… well, it’s called an Isekai story, I don’t know how to explain it. But it’s got… I mean, it’s got so many views, we can’t really compete.”

George gave me a condescending smile, as if I had no idea what I was talking about. Clapping his hands together, he made his way over to the window. I was about to say something more, maybe explain that it’s not the end of the world - maybe we’ll get some more views later?

But I never had the chance, for George suddenly flung the window open. I leaped back in alarm as George lifted his fists and cried out, as loudly as he could, a scream of absolute manic triumph, the thunderous cry of one whose master plan was coming together, resulting in a victory that would soon shake the entire world.

“Get clicks!” he roared. “Forty views! Get clicks baby!!!”

Watching George Lucas screaming at the parking lot beneath my condo, I knew he would never let me rest. Even if we never got another read for this story, he would never let up until I finished the entire sequel trilogy.

THE END