Much thanks to Jim for these lines and for putting up with how much I torture myself in these inane ways.
He died. At least his brain did. Over the course of a month, they'd been monitoring its slow decay and so that morning, rather unsurprisingly, the little green screen plugged into his temples flashed red. There was very little that anyone could honestly do. Even now that all other aging and disease has been brought to a near halt, neural degeneration was still a big killer.
His body, however, was far too valuable to the movie industry to give up. They had spent millions of dollars on building the fine skin and perfect musculature and absolutely symmetric features; it would cost simply too much to have another Phillip Monroe bred. Even the vocal chords were developed for the perfect deep resonant timbre of the swaggering male lead. His famous smile and signature jokes made millions at the cineplexes. Yes, undoubtedly, Phillip Monroe was quite the investment.
The solution was obvious. For years the scientists have been working on mental replacement implants. All they had to do was review the lot of his movies, study the steady elegance of the way he moved, examine shot after shot of that smile. In a short two months, Mr. Monroe was good as new. The scientists had even included a single hairline slot at the base of the cranium where his future directors could just insert a disk with lines and staging and he'd perform flawlessly. It was the way of the future.
Phillip Monroe was reintroduced to society at an exclusive evening gala. All of high society was there, from former co-stars to top name executives. He had a single thirty minute speech prepared and, of course, he delivered flawlessly. He winked at the stunning lady in the front row as he mentioned his excitement for working with his future co-stars, right on cue. He flashed his smile more than enough times and some of his best jokes rolled right off his tongue, just like when he'd first said them.
As his thirty minutes were ticking over, almost right to the second, he made an elegant conclusion and turned the podium over to the various directors and producers that were slated to speak after him, to thunderous applause. The next few speakers were far from memorable. There was the joke of how he'd never forget his lines again, to polite titters from the audience. Mostly talk was on how a great actor had literally been resurrected from the dead, how what had once been a man was now a star.
At the cocktail party afterwards, everyone wanted to be seen with the man of the hour. More than a few times, Phillip would smile that perfect smile, and reel of one of those jokes. Including a slightly off-color but terribly funny one about a woman he once loved. In the ensuing laughter, a tall slender and slightly tipsy blonde touched his arm, remarking, "Ah, but what do you really know of love, now?"
An awkward silence froze conversations throughout the room. As the truth slowly dawned on various partygoers, a silicon chip decided that the silence was waiting for another prepackaged piece of wit. The handsome face broke into that mathematically precise grin and the resonant timbre began in measured cadence.
"I knew a man, once…"
Currently grooving to: Papa Roach - Last Resort