User:Cat the Colourful/The Aristocrats by Christopher Nolan

Øyster Sälmønfiskeren, the leading art director of the Oslo National Theatre steps into a taxi. He hands the driver a note with a shakily hand-written address in it, takes off his over-coat and leans back into his seat. He’s trembling all over. It is not so that the cold December weather would be getting to him – after all, Øyster is a 100% pure-blood modern-day Aryan Viking Norse God descendant, and the sensory nervous systems of Aryan Viking Norse God descendants aren’t wired to register any cold breezes, only the instinctual urge to write really hardcore racist remarks online runs their system – his trembling is rather a physical manifestation of his anxiety over the ensuing taxi ride and it’s terminus.

But the taxi just doesn’t seem to be leaving off. Sure enough, the driver had picked up the note with the address on it, yet he had made zero gestures of moving the car anywhere. The roaring engine of the idling taxi is making Øyster even ever-more nervous, until he finally snaps and slams his fist against the front seat. “What the hell are we waiting for? Hit on the gas you goddamn son-of-a-Höðr,” he screams. But the driver just slowly turns around to face Øyster and pulls a gun from his jacket. “Mr. Nolan sends his regards”, the driver barks, points the gun at Øyster and pulls the trigger.

As Øyster’s consciousness begins to fade the events of the previous night start running through his head. Someone had called him in the middle of the night; a rough voice had been on the receiver, instructing him clearly in British English to write down a certain address, then to arrive there roughly at 8am the following day and to tell absolutely no-one about the phone call. Øyster had at first protested, telling off the caller that he already had plans to just write really mean-spirited derogatory remarks about immigrants all-day online - just like the Vikings did - but he froze half-way his sentence when he heard the sound of her daughter screaming from phone. “We have your family here, Mr. Salmonfisher. And we also have Mr. Matthew David McConaughey with us... You do just as we say and we won’t have to lock your dearest into an isolation chamber together with Mr. McConaughey… it would be a real shame to be a subject to McConaughey mumbling unclearly but menacingly about nothing in particular--- science fiction terminology, perhaps… for long stretches of close to 5 hours… wait, how fucking long was Interstellar again…? Anyway, all this… just because of your unwillingness to co-operate… Are you absolutely sure you want to risk this?” Upon hearing McConaughey’s name Øyster completely broke down in tears and at once promised to do everything that was asked of him.

And… now he was dead. Well, dying, at the very least, with a bullet currently making its way through his skull. It was funny: Øyster’s brain synapses were fast enough to alert him that soon there would really be no more Øyster, no more depressing thoughts to over-analyze and trip over on; yet his actual death scene just kept going on-and-on-and-on, as if in slow-motion. Either Øyster’s brain activity had suddenly been switched to some super secret cheat engine hypermode or else some fuck-wit deity had just slowed the rest of the world around him to a snail-pace - Elli, perhaps? That croaked son-of-a.. - but Øyster realized he now had the ability to register and analyze everything happening at light speed, while his lump body was slowly but surely collapsing against the headrest of his seat. Øyster didn’t particularly mind his fate – soon, after all, he would be rocking in Valhalla with all of his Viking brethren, savagely conquering the third world countries of the Underworld. He just thanked Odin and Thor and Baldr from the bottom of his heart that his death wasn’t accompanied with any shitty melodramatic violin music – and that is when the first notes of dull ambient strings hit his consciousness.

“God… no…. modern soundtrack design truly sucks ass…”

As the violins start getting louder and the droning synth farts enter the mix, Øyster notices someone opening the door on the other side of the taxi - at a pace with no noticeable correlation to the rest of the slowed-down world. Someone is now sitting beside him. It is none other than Christopher Nolan, the acclaimed director of the famous sci-fi blockbusters like Inception and Interstellar.

“Glad you could make it, Mr. Salmonfisher. My name is Christopher Nolan, and I am the acclaimed world-famous director that will be directing the film based on your life – the one that will flash before your eyes just before your death, that is. Pleasant to make your acquaintance. You can call me Chrissy.”

Øyster is completely speechless and can merely just stare back at Nolan. He does register Nolan offering his hand for shake, but a dead body slowly slumping backwards really can’t do much else but stare. “Oh, right,” Nolan giggles and pulls his hand back. “We’re still in the early stages of this experiment, even I have some trouble understanding the unconventional time-fucky narrative we have here. But we’ll get there, my dear Oyster, we’ll get there.”

Øyster was perplexed by the sudden introduction of the Nolan element. Here he was, sitting face-to-face with the unmatched genius of sci-fi blockbusters, and he could do nothing but just slowly rot away. “What the fuck have you done to me? Were you the one who called me last night? Were you the one who ordered this assassination?”

“Please don’t call it an assassination. God, you’re making me sound like a murderer here. Although, well - in absolutely technical terms - yes, we shot you, true. But, like, we laced the bullet with ketamine, you know? What we are doing here is birthing a totally new art form... We are breaking the boundaries between movies and imagination and quantum physics or something… And… here is where it gets really cool. Get this... reverse entropy.”

“H-huh?”

“It gets even better… ever heard of Einstein's general relativity equations?”

“What are you even on about?”

“Also... you know of autofellatio...?”

“Well that one I do know, but what-“

“I know, it all sounds like really cool and mystic… but like, it’s actually all really scientific… you wouldn’t get it however… but in other words, I have invaded your headspace at the very last moments of your withering life to direct a true once-in-a-lifetime movie-going experience, personally dictated just for you alone.”

“Mr. Nolan... That is genuinely really fucked up. What could possibly motivate you to do something like this?”

“You see, ever since I accidentally killed the entire movie business and got balls-deep into huge financial debts over my insistence of premiering a huge blockbuster movie exclusively at IMAX movie theaters during a global pandemic all the Hollywood executives and producers have cut off their ties with me… and, well, after some soul-searching I realized that movies are, ultimately, an ineffective, ridiculously constricted medium and I will never be able to express my brilliant masterpiece ideas through conventional routes anymore.“

“So you mean to say that all your investor contacts have ultimately gotten sick and tired of your bullshit and now you’re branching out into a totally different business – that is, the profession of murder. And all this just to cope with your sick arrogant over-blown sci-fi fantasies?”

“What we are doing here is going to be really epic... It will rock, man. It’s like, Inception meets Interstellar meets Memento... meets the Blade Runner 2047... or wait, was that someone else? Anyway, yeah, imagine a fourth Batman movie. A one where you yourself could star as the main antagonist, and you’d have some really campy and cringey lines about justice or society or whatever and these would eventually turn into decade-lasting viral memes, merging into the public consciousness. I can already picture it… you could be… a perfect Doctor No, for example, and you could go all like… ‘East, West - just points of the compass, each as stupid as the other‘. And that is just one of the realities I could project into your consc-”

“I think that’s a Bond villain.”

“Huh?”

“I’m sorry, but Doctor No isn’t a Batman villain. It’s from very first James Bond movie.”

“What, are you saying you want to be a Bond villain instead? You’re saying you want me to do a James Bond movie, is that it?”

“No that’s not-“

“I can already picture it… it will be a revolutionary entry in the franchise… something considerably moodier… a grim-dark, gothic reboot of the series that will focus on the damaged psyche of a 007 agent.. I’ll have… Christian Bale act the titular role of this deeply traumatized British agent, and he’ll sometimes have these PTSD flashback sequences of growing up at an orphanage in some shithole town, and he would be all like ‘I will now look for the murderers of my parents and commit morally questionable acts fuck yeah’ and we’d have some explosions and-“

“But they already did that in Skyfall?”

“Sky-what now?”

“Skyfall, the 2012 entry in the James Bond franchise.”

“Well fuck Denis Villeneuve then.. or whoever the little fuck was who extracted the idea from my sub-consciousness while I was sleeping or whatever. Have you ever seen Arrival? Yeah, I actually thought of that movie first. That little French-Canadian thief fucker. That’s precisely what Inception is all about, you know? About people winning awards at award shows with movies that I could have done a lot better if I had thought of them first – if they just hadn’t stolen the ideas that I could have potentially thought of at first, that is. I mean, who knows, right? Anyway, my point here is that I can make anything and everything out of the contents of your psyche as your final movie theater experience. The fully realized ideal of a dream movie, consisting of your hopes and desires that will send you off to the Underworld with your soul finally at relief, directed by a world-class director on top of everything. Really, anything you’ve ever wanted to experience. There’s no point arguing about what is and what isn’t a human rights violation now that you’re dead anyway. So - what’s it gonna be, oysterboy?"

Øyster thought for a moment before replying.

“You know what… I want to see a joke about a talent agent and a travelling family troupe. It will have some incredibly obscene and twisted acts and it will be all disgusting and stuff but it will also have a killer punch-line. That is my dying wish. That’s what I want to see.”

“Alright. You’ll get what you wish for.”

At once the scene turned black, and out of the void came a lengthy office space. It was decorated with lots of Oriental furniture and lanterns, and for some reason it was also snowing inside, but Øyster assumed that to be just a directorial aesthetic quirk of Nolan’s.

A talent agent, played by Leonardo Dicaprio, sits at his desk drinking scotch absent-mindedly, when a loud knock is heard at the door. “Come in,” DiCaprio says, or at least presumably says, but due to sound mix being just utterly terribly optimized for home theater experiences Øyster can’t quite make out what the mumbling Dicaprio says. He asks for a slight increase in volume, and immediately regrets it. The door opens and he is immediately hit with terror over the slow creaking sound that starts building up into a rumble. “Oh no,” he thinks to himself. “He still can’t mix his audio for shit”. But it is too late. The room begins to violently shake all over from the sheer impact of the sound that the creak of the rusty hinges of the door causes. DiCaprio tries get on with the act, trying his best to get up to greet the incoming family troupe, but he tumbles over to the floor as the noise and the shaking gets more and more powerful. DiCaprio falls head first into one of those fancy red Chinese lanterns that run an actual burning flame inside.

And then the reverb hits. As the unbearably loud sound effect just keeps on building the walls begin to crumble from the sheer amount of decibels. Øyster tries to reach for the remote, but it was hopeless from the beginning. The floor starts to tear apart. A white void starts rotting away the office space, and DiCaprio’s burning body is no longer a concern of his as his cells begin to disintegrate. “I didn’t even get to say anything snarky for the trailers-“ and then he is gone. But hell isn’t over yet for Øyster. Hans Zimmer, standing at the last surviving corner of the office space, quickly pulls his laptop that's connected to a huge aether sound system, hits a few random AI-generated robot sex sounds off his soundboard of generic sound presets and then quickly farts into a microphone before disappearing as well into the void. A typical, drony Zimmer soundtrack begins a desperate fight for prominence against the ever-louder creaky sound effect. Øyster can now hear the violins bleeding through.

“AHH, GOD. I CAN’T DO IT. NOLAN, TURN IT OFF! NOLAN, TURN IT THE FUCK OFF!!!” Øyster can feel his ears bleeding already– and not only in the fictional headspace, but in the real world too, the one where he’s supposed to be already dead. The outer world starts to literally melt as the shitty sound mixing crawls out from Øyster’s consciousness through the bullet hole in his head. Earthquakes are felt all over. The past, present and the future all collide into a non-descript mass of sheer brutal noise. Space warps and does some sick loops and then finally sucks itself off because space always wanted to try that once. Finally everything contracts unto itself. All is quiet.

And that’s how the world ends - not with “The Aristocrats”, but a tinnitus.