Lost Media

By Michael B. Robertson

And James Wylder

Jhe Family Apartment, Cheonsa Dome, Takumi, Gongen

2384

As the hours passed by, it became clear to Sang Mi that nobody was going to come. She’d sent out dozens of invites, but the only person here was her twin brother, and not only had they shared a womb, he lived here. The bowls of snacks she’d asked her mom to get ready for them sat nearly untouched, aside from the candy-covered chocolates she'd been depressively shoveling into her mouth, and the extra-spicy tteokbokki Sang Eun had been picking at.

“The flu is going around, I’m sure a lot of people are sick,” her brother lied kindly.

“Yeah,” she replied.

“And there’s that big baseball game between the Hongtu Cannonballs and the Takumi Tengu?”

“Sure, I guess,” she said, defeated. She put on the next movie. It was one of the Lubin Studios Films she had the files for. She wanted to enjoy it, it was a movie she loved. To be swept away in it. But she just felt alone knowing no one but her twin wanted to share it with her.

As the action played on, both of their phones pinged. They picked them up in tandem, and checked.

“We’re in!” Sang Eun said. “Mom’s going to be so proud. And Min Jun can stop hounding us.”

She looked at the message. She’d been accepted to Academy 27, the second best High School in Takumi.

“It’ll be different in High school,” she said finally. “I’ll be different.

* * *

The Pennsylvania Wilderness

May XXth, 2025

By the time they reached the tunnel, it was nearly midnight, and the world seemed to be on the edge of itself. Usually, they’d have stopped to sleep by now. Their journey could have been over already if they’d wanted it to be that way—sure they’d have gotten to the lodge in the Blue Ridge Mountains ahead of time, but they’d have been guaranteed warm beds and maybe could have investigated this whole strangeness.

Instead, they hadn’t encountered any hotels, well any that were operating, and there hadn’t been a place they’d felt comfortable or capable of pulling over to sleep at either. Chris and Sang Mi had pulled over to have a spirited debate about whether or not to drink an energy drink.

They’d eventually agreed to each down half of it, and now each had a strange feeling of being slightly too awake.

It was the kind of dark where all you could see was what the car’s headlights illuminated. The sky was overcast, and there were no lights on this stretch of woodland road. Sang Mi looked at her phone. “It says we’re out of service range?”

“That’s pretty normal, there’s not a lot out here.”

“What if we’re lost?”

“We’re not lost—”

“CAT!”

Sang Mi sprung forward, caught by her seatbelt as she pointed at the road, and Cwej hit the brakes hard—the car skidding to a halt. The headlights shone that they were about to enter into a tunnel carved into the side of a mountain. There were a lot of those out here, but there also wasn’t one shown on the map on their phones.

But that wasn’t the really interesting thing.

There was a cat there, illuminated against the shadows, its body flickering, pockmarked with flecks and lines like it was made of film. They’d seen a cat like this before, back on Gongen at Sang Mi’s school, and it had led them to the dangerous film-projector in Violethill. Sang Mi swung her car door open, and Chris followed. They left the lights on the Odyssey on, the orange Honda Element sputtering in park as they approached the cat together slowly.

“It’s a cat made of film!” Sang Mi said.

 “Yeah,” Chris replied.

“Like in—”

“YEAH,” Chris replied more.

Reaching into his pocket, and crouching down, Chris pulled out a piece of jerky. The cat sniffed the air, and tail high crept towards him as he cooed at it.

Then a sound came from the tunnel, like gears turning, and the cat did a turning leap—bolting back towards the tunnel, disappearing into it and the darkness beyond.

“Should we follow—” Sang Mi began asking, but Chris was already going after it. Wasn’t he the grown up here? She sighed, and tailed after him, pulling out her flashlight and turning it on as she ran.

The tunnel was dark. She could feel something though—feel something turning and spinning around her, like gears and cogs that made the clouds move were pulsing in her ears. Like the lack of anything she could see was spinning in a black vortex.

She stumbled out finally, into the light, and looked behind her to see that she’d come out the door of what looked like a small white shed with a shingle roof. Cwej shut the door behind her.

“But—” he put a finger over his mouth, and she could see in his eyes he was giddy to watch her see what he’d already seen.

She obliged, and turned around with him. And she knew very quickly he’d been right to be excited for her reaction.

Chris and Sang Mi looked out to the horizon, deep and dark and blue, and at the collection of buildings silhouetted against it. A row of large shapes, lit by moonlight and surrounded by trees. The distinctive shape of a water tower stood over them all.

Sang Mi knew where they were. She's seen enough photos - probably most of the photos of it that had ever existed - to know its shape even in the dark. “That's Betzwood. The Lubin movie studios.”

“Yes it is.”

“The real one? Are there any other ones, like theme park versions or something?”

Chris paused. “I don’t think Betzwood is as iconic as you think it is.”

She ignored him and took a step towards it. She moved her head, as though to check it was 3D and not just a flat image. “You can go to Betzwood. We, together, can go to Betzwood. The Lubin Manufacturing Company made so many silent movies. So many great shorts! They could've been as big as Hollywood, you know. They were a real competitor. Then a fire destroyed the Lubin film vault...”

Chris looked down at Sang Mi.

“We get to be here,” she said. “Moments and places…I guess they can last forever.”

When she’d sat with Sang Eun and watched movies together, so long ago and so far in the future, she used to think about what it was like for the actors being on set.

That way of thinking always confused her mom. “Doesn’t that ruin the magic?” she used to say. Even though she was a grown up, her mom never liked to be reminded it wasn’t real.

But Sang Mi loved it. Not only did movies let her escape into a story, they let her escape into the past. Each shot was a moment in time, captured on film. But even those captured moments were fragile. The fire in the Lubin film vault destroyed so many movies that will never be seen again.

Sang Mi turned to meet Chris’ eyes. “Can we stop the fire from happening?”

He took in her expression. This meant something to her. Then he shook his head. “You can’t. It’s a hard thing to learn but you can’t. Be content looking at history like a pretty picture in a gallery. You don’t get to do your own finger painting over the top.”

Sang Mi paused. “I read a book about painting restoration once.”

“You can’t change history,” Chris said flatly.

She screwed up her face. “Is that ‘you’ as in ‘we’ or ‘you’ as in ‘me’?”

“Nobody can change history - not on purpose anyway. Anyone can change history without meaning to. You could make an amazing discovery in your native time. Cure a disease, write a hit song, invent a com unit that never loses signal. But going back in time to change things on purpose doesn’t work. If you knew a fire was going to break out so you went back in time to install a state of the art sprinkler system, the fire wouldn’t happen, so you'll never have known about it, so why did you go back and install the sprinklers? Paradox loop. The timeline disintegrates.”

Sang Mi turned back to the view. “It’s not fair.”

“I’m afraid it is fair,” said Chris. “It’s the same for everyone. Nobody’s...superior.”

She nodded, but it was a hollow gesture meant only to end the conversation. “Can we look around?”

“We have to," said Chris. “It’s where the cat went. Whatever’s going on is going on in there. Come on.”

There was a chill in the air. A bird called out somewhere, hoping for a reply in the wind.

Sang Mi led the way. She drifted forward as though in a dream, finally walking through a place she'd known for years.

Chris moved more cautiously, looking down the dark paths between each building, imagining where the best vantage points to watch them from would be. At this point in his life, these checks were purely instinctual. He'd do exactly the same if he was heading out for a bite to eat after his shift on Spaceport 5.

The pair reached the biggest of the buildings and shared a silent look of acknowledgement that, yes, the biggest one was probably the place to start.

Sang Mi started towards the front entrance. Chris tapped her shoulder to stop her and gestured instead towards a side door.

It opened with a rusty sound louder than Chris would’ve liked. Accepting that they had now announced themselves, he stepped in, Sang Mi following behind.

The moonlight shining through the door was their only source of light.

Chris squinted to see. “Make sure the door doesn’t-”

The door blew shut.

“Sorry,” said Sang Mi.

A beam of light illuminated Chris Cwej’s smile. “Have a torch.” He passed her the other one from his belt and the pair set off.

Their torches cast sharp shadows across uneven walls, creating an aggressive expressionist world.

Sang Mi turned and her light fell on a fireplace. It wasn’t lit, save for the light of her torch. Slowly, she raised her beam up across stone walls with old, unrefined brickwork.

She took a step closer, and closer, then she put her hand on the wall. The cold, dark stone looked cold to the touch, but it wasn’t. It was warm. She pushed against it - it was slightly soft. Spongey bricks?

“Ah ha!” Chris’ voice came from somewhere off in the darkness. “That’s what we need.”

A buzz, and one by one the lights sparked on overhead.

Sang Mi looked around at the medieval castle she was standing in.

At the end of the room was a long table, with a shining throne in the middle and several smaller, only slightly-less impressive chairs on either side. Banners hung on the walls above with stark black and white designs, and several empty suits of silver armour stood on guard by the entrance.

A man in a blue suit of armour walked through that entrance. “Not sure about the historical accuracy,” said Chris. “Black and white banners, I suppose so the designs show up well on a black and white camera. Also…”

He pointed downward at the dirty studio floor that this old castle sat upon.

“It’s so detailed,” said Sang Mi. “I’ve never seen this film. What’s through there?”

She ran across the throne room with no regard at all for royal protocol and stepped across the threshold into a dressing room.

Two chairs sat in front of mirrors on either side of the room, and the most colourful array of suits and dresses were arranged on rails against one wall, feathers and sequins everywhere.

Sang Mi sat down and swivelled towards the nearest mirror to admire herself, but saw nothing. Instead of a reflection, she only saw a frame filled in with solid white.

Chris stood by her shoulder and looked. “Mmm. An early attempt to avoid the camera accidentally showing up on film?”

“You mean…” Sang Mi looked around. “This is a set too?”

“Looks like it.”

She examined one of the costumes. “It’s like something they used to wear on stage at musical revues. The Broadway Melody of 190-something.”

Chris opened the door of the dressing room and stepped outside into a wide open space, a dark studio filled with slices of different environments, like windows into different times and spaces, all frozen.

A shape moved through the frozen places.

“CAT!” Sang Mi ran off, Chris following close behind.

The shape disappeared into a rocky tunnel. As Sang Mi and Chris wandered through it, it became harder and harder to see without the light. At the end, Sang Mi pressed her hand against the cave wall and found it was soft again - even softer than the wall of the castle. Hesitantly, she pushed, and a giant hollow boulder rolled out of the way.

The pair stepped out of the tomb.

They turned and looked back at what they had just emerged from.

“This is…”

Chris nodded. “I think it is.”

They were standing on the set of a film Sang Mi knew very well. Chris had seen it too, briefly, but crucially neither of them had seen its ending.

The film was Battle on the Easter Front. This whole wild journey had started when a girl named Petra had moved Heaven and Earth to try to see that ending; it had been her mother’s favorite film. She’d gone so far as to kidnap her fellow students to try to recreate that ending. And crucially, they’d followed the trail of a flickering cat, and found a projector that made the movie… well, real.

“This is the second time we’ve been inside this movie,” said Sang Mi.

“We’ve had the immersive 4D experience,” said Chris. “Now we’re seeing behind the scenes. Battle on the Easter Front was made here. But that means—”

A low grumble distracted him.

Sang Mi heard it too. They looked at each other and silently questioned whether the noise was something they should be worried about.

They heard it again. A heavy droning sound from somewhere nearby. It came and went, every six or seven seconds.

Whatever was making the noise was clearly big, probably dangerous, and the two of them couldn't help but start moving towards it.

They listened as they walked. The low grumble got louder and louder as they got closer and closer.

They found the source more suddenly than they expected. Around a corner, sitting in the middle of the studio floor, was a giant something. At first it looked like a formless pile, but as they got closer they realised it very much had form - a deliberate, sculpted form. It was hard to tell what it was made of. Clay? It seemed to move, rising and falling slightly as the grumble came and went, but the movement was jagged and uneven.

The shape was also flickering. Just like the cat, it juddered as though the image was a projection.

Sang Mi reached out to touch it, but stopped when she saw Chris raise a hand to stop her. He shook his head and gestured to stay quiet.

He led the way as the two walked around the mound. His mind was reeling, trying to connect dots. It looked like a lump of sentient something. Is this what the flickering cat was made out of? Could he take a scoop of this stuff and shape it into whatever he wanted to bring it to some form of life?

He stopped when he saw a strange circle on the mass.

Sang Mi held her breath as Chris leaned in to examine it.

It opened. A reflectionless eye stared back at them.

"Back!" Chris pulled Sang Mi away as the mass started to rise. Part of it lifted off the ground, and as it did its form became clear. Two mighty hind legs, two small front arms, and one massive tail, all moving with not quite enough frames of animation.

They'd woken up a stop-motion dinosaur.

Chris grabbed Sang Mi and they ran. Despite how much she wanted to, Sang Mi didn't look back at the impressive spectacle of the tyrannosaurus rex rearing back, roaring, then charging after them, knocking down sets and lights and rigging as it went. She could at least appreciate the foley that emphasised its footsteps. It chased after them in a flickering rage, each step sounding like a deep drum being struck.

It chased the two of them back through the old dressing room set and the royal throne room. The table crashed over as the t-rex's mighty tail swung. Whatever that flickering material was, it was solid enough, Chris thought.

They ducked through the swinging doors of an old timey saloon - there's no way the dinosaur would fit through after them. Then they turned and saw the set only had two walls.

“Budget cuts,” Chris growled, and they got back to running.

They ran out the side of the saloon and kept barrelling forwards, away from the ever-approaching footsteps. They flew together through different times and places, always with danger hot on their trail.

“Over there!” Sang Mi pointed.

In front of them was a section of the studio that was boxed off from the rest. From this angle, they could see it had at least two walls.

They ran around those two walls, the t-rex not far behind them, until a third wall came into sight. Then, a wave of relief washed over Chris as he saw the vital, intact fourth wall.

He led Sang Mi through a door into the box, entering a pretty swanky-looking hotel room. It was bigger than any hotel Sang Mi had been in - with twin beds, a seating area with a sofa, a sideboard with drinks, the works.

They waited in silence.

Outside, the t-rex had stopped. It slowly crept around outside the four walls, looking for a way in.

They were so quiet, they could hear not only its footsteps, but a sound of whirring coming from the creature - the flickering of the film that made its greyscaled skin.

They heard the sound of something approaching, much closer than the dinosaur. The door to the hotel's restroom opened and a thin flickering man stepped out. “Say, what goes on here?”

Chris grabbed him and covered his mouth.

The sensation of directly touching the man's flickering face felt like static on Chris' hand. He fought the urge to let go.

Regardless, the man quickly fell silent of his own free will. The dinosaur's silhouette passed across the drawn curtains, its shape projected onto the screen.

All three were silent, watching, waiting.

The projected image faded.

They listened as the heavy drum footsteps got quieter and quieter until finally, they were alone.

Chris removed his hand from the man’s mouth. “Sorry.”

He was smartly-dressed, with a sharp suit and perfect hair. “Now do you mind telling me who you two are? And who was that man out there?”

“‘Man’?” Sang Mi repeated. “It was a dinosaur! Didn’t you see the shape?”

The man blinked. “Dinosaur? Now what does that mean?”

Chris circled him, taking in every detail of his flickering form. “A dinosaur. Do you know what a dinosaur is?”

“Can’t say I do. Listen, I tell you what…” He turned towards the table and picked up a teapot. “How about a nice relaxing drink, huh?”

Sang Mi whispered to Chris, not wanting to be rude. “How does he not know what a dinosaur is?”

Chris paused. “Outside of his frame of reference. Maybe the movie he’s from doesn’t have any dinosaurs in it.”

“Is that how this works?”

“Depends. Did I sound convincing?”

The man turned back to them holding two cups of tea. “I suppose I should make an attempt at a proper introduction. I’m Peter.”

Sang Mi smiled and took the cup offered to her. “I’m Sang Mi, this is Chris.”

Chris nodded to confirm that this intel was accurate and took his cup. “Where do you come from?”

“Oh, all over really.” Peter turned and sat down as Chris and Sang Mi sipped their tea. “I’ve been staying here in New York a while, trying to get the big scoop on a new Broadway show.”

Sang Mi tried to read the man’s face. Was he acting? Did he wear the face of some actor from this era of film she just didn’t recognise? Or was he a character personified? Pure unrestrained fiction. “We’re not in New York,” she said finally. “We’re in Pennsylvania.”

“Not to him,” said Chris. “Cats and dinosaurs and even people from movies. What’s bringing them to life? What's giving them mass? How does it work?” He paused as he muddled through it in his head. “There’s one more important question though. The most pressing question of all.” He turned to look Sang Mi in the eyes. “Why would a prop tea pot sitting in a film studio set at night have real hot tea in it?”

Slowly, the two of them looked down at their cups and saw that the liquid they’d been drinking was grey and flickering.

As Chris lost consciousness, he could feel the end of the reel.

* * *

Sang Mi’s first thought was that Chris had just said something. Unfortunately, the thought came to her too late to actually listen.

She looked around at the rows and rows of shelves around her, all covered in film cans.

“Are you okay?” Chris repeated.

Sang Mi’s first instinct was the turn to face Chris, then she realised she couldn’t. The two of them were tied on chairs, back to back, in the middle of some sort of film collection.

“I’m fine,” Sang Mi finally responded, although she realised after she said it that she hadn’t actually checked if she was. She stopped trying to turn and focused her gaze forward, on the film can sitting on the shelf in front of her. “Outwitting Dad.”

Chris tried to see behind himself. “Excuse me?”

“This film canister. It’s called Outwitting Dad. It’s a 1914 movie, I think the first movie Oliver Hardy was ever in. It doesn’t exist any more - it’s lost media. It burned…we’re in Lubin’s film vault.”

“Well, you certainly know your stuff,” said a new voice.

Sang Mi and Chris both turned their heads.

For a brief moment, Chris thought the voice belonged to the flickering cat, which wandered out from the shelves and passed by his feet. Then he watched it slink off towards a woman standing in the darkness. She wasn’t flickering. She looked entirely real.

She reached down, and picked up the kitty as it started to rub against her skirts,  stepping out of the shadows as it flickered in her arms and she stroked its shifting fur. She’d blended into the shadows because she was wearing all black, from her head to her toes. Her face was covered by a black veil. They knew her. They’d seen her before.

“How long has it been now, twenty-one years since the Chicago World’s Fair? Though for you… days, weeks? Being a time traveller must be so convenient, while the rest of us slog through every day between two points, you just touch the highlights and disappear.”

“Something like that,” Chris answered. “I didn’t expect to see you here, Salome Herodian.”

She sighed. “Just Sal. I’ve been funding films here. I am hoping Battle on the Easter Front will allow me to fund other period pieces… including a better representation of my life.”

They gave each other a glance, which hurt both of their necks in the attempt, and tried not to give too much of the future away.

“Well, I’m glad to see you’re doing okay!” Sang Mi said optimistically.

Sal turned her blank veil to face her. “Yes, after you kicked me out of the top of the Ferris wheel and I broke my body in three dozen places and crawled away in agony, I did make a full recovery.”

Sang Mi tried to shimmy so she was more hidden behind Chris. It almost was a good attempt. Chris tried to straighten his back to assist, and calm Salome down. “We’re not here to pick a fight. We’re just…”

“Poking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”

“Investigating,” he said evenly. “That cat is unusual. And it’s not the only thing that is.”

Sal raised her veil just enough they could see her grinning. “Oh, you’re curious about them, are you?” She lifted the cat to look into its eyes. “Inside all of them is a projector. An omni-directional 3D projector. Using AI, it extrapolates a person or an animal or a thing from a movie and sort of…fills in the blanks. Completes them in a way. It imagines what the back of an actor’s head would look like during their close-ups, if you get my meaning.”

“Giving them physical form,” finished Chris.

Sal nodded and placed the cat down at her feet. “Ultimately, corporations turned against theme park mascots. They’d break character sometimes when park visitors misbehaved, and would demand things like ‘pay’ and ‘rights’. With these projectors, you can rip a character straight off of the screen. I’ve been experimenting with them for a while. The cat was simple. Relatively speaking,” she quickly added, for fear of offending the cat. “Then I started to think bigger.”

“Love the dinosaur,” said Chris. “A stop motion dinosaur made of clay. So these projectors can give life to even inanimate material.”

“Of course,” said Sal. “They don’t give life to the clay, they give life to the story. The fiction. The belief that the clay is alive. That’s what’s being animated.”

Sang Mi was starting to get a twinge in her neck from turning to face Sal while being tied to a chair. “Why did you move us here? And why are we tied up?”

“Well, I thought I might just leave you both here,” said Sal. “Locked up in the archive, left to gather dust. A pair of lost stories nobody will be able to reconstruct. Tell you what…while I’ve got you here, let’s see how well you know your film history.”

From one of the shelves she pulled out a projector screen and set it up against the wall.

“Tell me if you recognise this.” She pushed a button and on screen was a still image of a train station.

“The Arrival of a Train, from 1896,” said Sang Mi, almost instantly. “Thought to be one of the earliest films ever made. Just a simple shot of a train pulling into a station. You know,” she said over her shoulder to Chris. “There’s this legend that the first audience it was shown to thought the train was going to burst through the screen and hit them.”

That statement sat there for a heavy moment.

Chris raised an eyebrow at Sal.

Sal just stood there and beamed.

“You realise,” Chris started, slowly, “that this is a very small room. If a train came in here, you’d be crushed too.”

“Would I?” Sal took a step close to the tied-up pair, letting them get a good look at her.

She waved her hand in front of Chris’ face, which at first he found annoying and obnoxious, but it suddenly became very interesting when he noticed her hand moving just a little bit too quickly. Or too slowly? It was hard to put his finger on what was wrong with her fingers, except that sometimes, for a split frame, it looks like there were more of them than there were.

“Wow,” said Chris at last. “Well done. You really have been experimenting, haven’t you?”

Sang Mi tried again to turn. “What’s happening?”

“She’s not really here,” said Chris. “She’s just a recording, like the others. A 4k, high definition recording, running at a higher frame rate and in full dazzling colour, but a recording nonetheless.”

“Well,” said Sal, lowering her veil. “The show's nearly over.”

She pushed a button on the protector and the still image of The Arrival of a Train started to move, a grain now playing across the screen.

“Goodbye!” Sal waved, then the image of her fizzled. For a brief moment, she was entirely blue, then the image retracted, and all that was left was a floating silver ball with several black lenses. The omni-directional 3D projector that had been sitting where her heart was fell gently to the ground and rolled.

Chris and Sang Mi struggled to free themselves as the train on the screen came into view.

“What do we do?” asked Sang Mi. The rope was so thick and rough, it dug into her wrists as she pulled against it.

Chris’ mind reeled. Were they really about to be killed by something so simple? A nefarious villain tying them in front of an oncoming train? “Don’t panic. Panic isn’t helpful. Just pull.”

The pair pulled against the rope as hard as they could, and all the while they couldn’t take their eyes off the screen.

The train got closer.

Chris and Sang Mi were on the edge of their seats.

Closer and closer.

And then.

It stopped.

The train settled into the station.

The film ended.

Chris and Sang Mi sat in the darkness for a moment.

Sang Mi spoke up first. “I suppose those people who thought they were going to get hit by the train were a bit silly, weren’t they?”

Chris gave a nod she wasn’t in a position to see. “Very silly, yes.”

“I suppose it makes sense really,” Sang Mi said, relaxing back in her chair. “If she was making movies here, she wouldn’t do anything to destroy the archive.”

They both took a moment to breathe deeply.

Then the breath was ripped from their lungs.

A deafening blast like a canon and the sound of something heavy shattering echoed through the room and shook their hearts. Cans fell from the shelves and the shelves fell from the walls.

“What now?” Chris shouted, a little too loudly while his ears still rang.

Sang Mi knew immediately. “An explosion in the Lubin film vault. The….um…the gases, I can’t remember. From the celluloid. It heated up and caused an explosion. The fire’s started. We have to stop it!”

“We have to get free - one thing at a time.”

Chris and Sang Mi struggled against the ropes once more, and the pain in their wrists returned as if they hadn’t had a break.

“There has to be something to cut it with,” said Sang Mi.

They became aware of the air around them, somehow thicker, heavier, dragging against their throats as they drew breath.

A confused meow caught them off guard.

The flickering cat climbed over the fallen shelves and film cans. Sang Mi wondered whether an AI-fuelled 3D extrapolation of a character from a movie could feel heat.

Then she noticed the particular film can that the cat had its paw on. It had a label on the side that said ‘A Little Hero’.

Another explosion shook Sang Mi, but somehow she didn’t notice it as much this time. Because something was very wrong, and it sent her brain into a frantic rush.

A Little Hero was a silent movie from 1913. Granted, they were currently in 1914 - the time checked out. What didn’t check out was the fact that she’d seen it. Sang Mi had seen A Little Hero.

If it burned here, in Lubin’s archive, how is that possible?

She’d watched it with Sang Eun. It was a charming little film, barely 5 minutes, about a bird, a dog, and…a cat.

The flickering cat turned to look at Sang Mi, and in that moment, she got it.

She’d seen that movie because it wasn’t a Lubin movie. It was made by Keystone. Which means it being here was wrong - it must be a copy. It must have been brought here by Salome.

And finally, she recognised the cat.

“Is that the movie you’re from?” Sang Mi asked.

The cat just stared at her. It tilted its head slightly, judging her reaction.

Chris looked over his shoulder at her. “Making any progress?”

The air was thick and dark now. The fire was getting closer.

In A Little Hero, a dog saves a bird from a cat. If that’s the movie this cat is from…

Sang Mi started whistling the best bird song she could conjure.

The cat’s ears perked up immediately. The film it came from may have been silent, but the projector in its heart brought the story of the movies to life - it could hear the bird song.

It jumped towards Sang Mi and started attacking the rope, clawing at it and meowing. In moments, it was slack enough for Sang Mi to pull herself free. She turned and untied Chris.

A third explosion rocked the building.

Without saying a word, Chris took Sang Mi’s hand and they ran. They burst out of the archive and escaped.

* * *

Sang Mi and Chris sat on a bench in the middle of Philadelphia. The fire brigade had arrived, but Sang Mi already knew how much they were able to save and how much was lost.

"There were only around 20 injuries, and no confirmed deaths, which is lucky," said Sang Mi eventually. "A lot of people worked there, in Lubinville - that's what they called it. There was one boy called Ray who was badly hurt. An actor called Harry C. Myers saved him. I saw him in a movie once..."

Chris could feel Sang Mi trying to work through it, speaking more to herself than to him. "That's history. It's the way it always was. But, for a moment, we got to be there, didn't we?"

Sang Mi nodded. “Now that moment’s gone.”

They both sat and listened to the noise of the sirens. Then a noise under the bench made them both jump.

They looked down and saw the flickering cat, curled up asleep. A little hero.

“Come on,” said Chris. “Let’s go watch a movie.”