The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like angry wasps trapped in rectangular prisons, casting their unforgiving pale glow across a room that smelled distinctly of stale coffee, nervous sweat, and broken dreams. The walls were painted that particular shade of off-white that seemed designed by committee to be as inoffensive and forgettable as possible, yet somehow managed to be aggressively depressing in its aggressive mediocrity.
Marcus—that was his name, wasn't it? Yes, Marcus. Marcus... something. The last name floated just beyond his mental grasp like a particularly elusive butterfly that had decided it had better things to do than be caught—opened his eyes to this fluorescent purgatory with the distinct sensation that something was profoundly, catastrophically, and utterly wrong.
He was sitting in a plastic chair. One of those molded plastic chairs that seemed to exist in every waiting room across the known universe, designed by someone who had clearly never possessed a spine or buttocks of their own. The chair was orange. Not a pleasant orange, mind you, but that burnt, sad orange of traffic cones that had seen better days and given up on their dreams of directing traffic at important construction sites.
Around him sat approximately seventeen other individuals—he counted them three times because his brain seemed to be operating on approximately twelve percent capacity—each wearing expressions ranging from barely concealed terror to the vacant thousand-yard stare of those who had accepted their fate. They clutched headshots to their chests like protective talismans, papers rustling nervously with each collective breath.
Marcus looked down at his own hands.
They were empty.
He also noticed, with growing concern, that he had no idea how he had gotten here, where "here" actually was, why he was here, or frankly, any biographical information about himself beyond the single solitary fact that his name was Marcus.
"What the—"
[DING!]
The sound echoed through his skull like someone had installed a doorbell directly into his frontal lobe. Marcus's hands flew to his temples, eyes squeezing shut as a brilliant blue light exploded across his vision—not painfully, surprisingly, but with the intensity of staring directly into a computer screen at three in the morning after a seventeen-hour gaming session.
[ACTING SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]
[WELCOME, HOST: MARCUS CHEN]
[LOADING PARAMETERS...]
[DATE: MARCH 15, 2003]
[LOCATION: DISNEY STUDIOS, BURBANK, CALIFORNIA]
[CURRENT SCENARIO: AUDITION - "PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL"]
[ROLE AVAILABLE: CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW]
Marcus's jaw dropped so far it nearly dislocated.
[ACTING SYSTEM FULLY OPERATIONAL]
[SKILL PANELS LOADING...]
And then, with the dramatic timing of a computer that had decided it had done quite enough for one day, the blue interface flickered once, twice, and went completely dark.
"Wait, what?!" Marcus hissed under his breath, earning a sharp look from the nervous young man sitting beside him—a fellow who appeared to be attempting to grow a goatee through sheer force of will and was losing that particular battle rather spectacularly. "Come back! What do you mean acting system? What skills? HELLO?!"
The system, apparently, had entered the digital equivalent of a coffee break.
Marcus's mind raced through the information like a hamster on an espresso-powered wheel. 2003. Pirates of the Caribbean. An audition. For Jack Sparrow. The role that would become—
Wait.
How did he know what that role would become?
The knowledge sat in his brain like a foreign object, clear and certain: this movie would be massive. This character would become iconic. This role would make whoever played it into a superstar. And yet he couldn't remember his own mother's face, his childhood home, or whether he preferred coffee or tea in the morning.
The cosmic absurdity of his situation was not lost on Marcus. Here he was, apparently in the year 2003—twenty years before... before what? He couldn't quite grasp what year he thought it should be—sitting in an audition for one of the most beloved film franchises in cinematic history, with no acting experience that he could remember (which, granted, could mean anything given his comprehensive amnesia), no preparation, no headshot, and a mysterious "system" that had shown up, dropped an information bomb, and promptly ghosted him like a bad Tinder date.
"Perfect," he muttered. "Absolutely perfect."
"Hey, man, you okay?" The attempted-goatee fellow leaned over, his voice carrying that particular tone of someone who was too nervous about their own situation to genuinely care but felt socially obligated to ask. "You look like you're about to throw up."
"I'm fine," Marcus lied through teeth that were definitely clenched too tight for someone who was "fine." "Just, you know. Nerves."
"Tell me about it, brother." Attempted-Goatee nodded sagely, as if they had just shared a profound moment of human connection. "I've been waiting three hours. THREE HOURS. And they keep calling people in, and nobody comes back out, and I'm starting to think they're just, like, executing people in there or something."
Marcus blinked. "Executing people?"
"I mean, not LITERALLY. Probably. But you know how these casting directors are." Attempted-Goatee made a vague gesture that could have meant anything from "they're very thorough" to "they're harvesting organs for the black market." "I'm Trevor, by the way. Trevor Malkowski. You?"
"Marcus. Marcus Chen, apparently."
"Apparently?"
"Long story."
Before Trevor could probe further into Marcus's extremely suspicious phrasing, the door at the far end of the waiting room swung open with the ominous creak of a portal to another dimension—or possibly just a door that needed oiling; it was hard to tell in his current state of existential crisis.
A woman emerged, clipboard clutched to her chest like a shield against the desperate hopes of the assembled actors. She was perhaps forty, with the kind of aggressively professional haircut that suggested she had no time for nonsense, foolishness, or any other synonym for shenanigans. Her pantsuit was gray. Her expression was grayer.
"Marcus Chen?"
Every head in the room swiveled toward him with the synchronized precision of meerkats sensing a predator. Marcus felt seventeen pairs of eyes boring into him with varying degrees of envy, curiosity, and the particular desperation of actors who had been waiting three hours and were watching someone who had apparently just arrived get called before them.
"That's... me?" Marcus stood on legs that had apparently been replaced with gelatin at some point during his memory loss. "I'm Marcus Chen?"
The woman's eyebrow rose approximately two millimeters, which in clipboard-woman body language probably translated to extreme skepticism. "You don't know your own name?"
"No, I do! I definitely do. I am Marcus Chen. That is my name, which I definitely remember. Because it's mine. My name, I mean."
Nailed it.
Trevor was staring at him with the expression of someone who had just realized they'd been making small talk with a crazy person. Marcus couldn't entirely blame him.
"Right." The woman made a note on her clipboard—probably something along the lines of 'possible escaped mental patient, proceed with caution.' "Follow me, please, Mr. Chen."
Marcus followed.
The hallway beyond the waiting room was somehow even more aggressively beige than the room he'd left behind. It stretched before him like a tunnel through bureaucratic purgatory, lined with doors that all looked identical and plaques that bore names he didn't recognize. The carpet was the kind of industrial gray that existed specifically to hide stains and crush souls.
"So," Marcus attempted, his voice echoing slightly in the empty corridor, "I don't suppose you could tell me a bit about what to expect in there? Just, you know, to refresh my memory. Because I definitely prepared extensively. Very extensively. I just want to make sure I'm remembering the preparation correctly."
The woman didn't break stride. "You'll be reading for the role of Jack Sparrow. A pirate captain. The script pages were sent to your agent three weeks ago."
"Right, right. My agent. Who is...?"
This time the eyebrow raised a full five millimeters. "Are you feeling alright, Mr. Chen?"
"Never better! Just, you know, actor nerves. We actors are very... nervy. Lots of nerves. In our nervous systems. Which we use. For acting."
Shut up shut up SHUT UP, Marcus's internal monologue screamed at himself. Every word out of his mouth was making things worse.
The woman stopped in front of a door that looked exactly like every other door they'd passed. "The director and producers are waiting inside. You'll have approximately five minutes to present your interpretation of the character. Do you have any questions?"
Marcus had approximately seven thousand questions, starting with "who am I," progressing through "why is there a mysterious system in my head," and culminating in "what the actual cosmic horror is happening to my life." Instead, he heard himself say: "Nope! All good here. Clear as crystal. Crystal clear. Let's do this."
The woman gave him one last look—the kind of look that suggested she was already writing the amusing anecdote about the crazy actor she'd had to deal with today that she'd share with her coworkers during their lunch break—and opened the door.
The room beyond was larger than Marcus had expected. It had the feel of a converted conference room, with a long table at one end where four people sat like judges at a particularly life-altering talent show. The opposite end of the room was empty except for a single mark on the floor—a piece of tape that Marcus was apparently meant to stand on, like a sacrifice positioning themselves at the altar.
The walls were covered with concept art. Ships with black sails. Skeletal pirates illuminated by moonlight. A compass that didn't point north. And there, in the center of the largest piece of art, a figure that made Marcus's heart simultaneously leap and sink—a pirate with dreadlocks, kohl-rimmed eyes, and a swagger that somehow came through even in a static image.
That was who he was supposed to become. In the next five minutes. With no memory, no preparation, and a system that had apparently decided to take the day off.
Perfect.
"Mr. Chen!" The man at the center of the table rose slightly, gesturing toward the tape mark with an enthusiasm that seemed somewhat forced. He was perhaps sixty, with wild gray hair that suggested either creative genius or a long-standing dispute with hairbrushes. "Please, come in, come in. I'm Gore Verbinski. I'll be directing this picture."
Marcus walked to the mark on legs that had somehow graduated from gelatin to full-on liquefied terror. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Verbinski."
"Gore, please." The director smiled, but his eyes were already assessing, calculating, measuring Marcus against some internal standard. "We've seen a lot of actors today, Mr. Chen. A LOT of actors. Everyone wants to be a pirate, it seems." He chuckled at his own observation. "But we're looking for something specific. Something... unusual. Something that will make audiences fall in love with a character who is, frankly, not very heroic in the traditional sense."
"A scoundrel with a heart of gold?" Marcus offered, drawing on knowledge he couldn't remember acquiring.
Gore's eyebrows rose with genuine interest. "Something like that. But more... slippery. This character should be impossible to pin down. You should never quite know if he's brilliant or just lucky. Brave or simply too drunk to be afraid. Do you understand?"
Marcus understood. He understood with a clarity that frightened him, because he didn't know HOW he understood. The character was there in his mind, fully formed—the walk, the talk, the constant slight sway as if the world itself was a ship's deck and he was the only one who knew how to navigate it.
But knowing what the character should be and actually BECOMING that character were two very different things. And Marcus was painfully aware that he had no idea if he could act at all.
"Whenever you're ready, Mr. Chen," said one of the producers—a woman with sharp features and sharper eyes who had been scribbling notes since Marcus entered the room. "We'd like to see your take on the character. The scene where he first arrives in Port Royal."
Marcus's blood ran cold. He didn't have sides. He didn't have lines. He didn't have anything except—
[DING!]
The system was back.
[SKILL ACTIVATION AVAILABLE]
[DETECTED: HIGH-STRESS PERFORMANCE SCENARIO]
[ACTIVATING EMERGENCY PROTOCOL...]
[SKILL UNLOCKED: METHOD EMBODIMENT - JACK SPARROW (TEMPORARY)]
[WARNING: FIRST-TIME ACTIVATION MAY CAUSE DISORIENTATION]
[ACTIVATING IN 3... 2... 1...]
The world tilted.
No—the world didn't tilt. MARCUS tilted. His entire perception of reality seemed to shift approximately fifteen degrees to the left, and suddenly standing still felt fundamentally wrong. The room was too stable. The floor was too solid. Everything was too... landish.
His hands, he noticed, wanted to move. Not nervously, not randomly, but with purpose—tracing invisible trajectories through the air, emphasizing points that hadn't been made yet, reaching for a hat that wasn't there.
And his FACE. His face wanted to do things. Expressions that he had never made before were bubbling up from somewhere deep inside his consciousness—a particular way of widening his eyes that conveyed both surprise and calculation, a specific angle to his smirk that suggested he knew something you didn't.
"Right then," said a voice that came from Marcus's mouth but didn't quite feel like his own. It was different—slightly slurred, as if the words were too much effort to pronounce properly, but rhythmic, almost musical. "Port Royal, you say?"
Gore Verbinski leaned forward slightly, his expression shifting from polite professionalism to genuine interest.
Marcus—or whatever Marcus was becoming—began to MOVE. Not walk, MOVE. His entire body became an instrument of expression, every gesture a statement. He didn't so much cross the room as SAUNTER through it, his hips swaying with the memory of ten thousand ocean voyages, his arms moving in counterbalance like a man perpetually adjusting to invisible waves.
"The thing about Port Royal," he heard himself saying, improvising with confidence he absolutely did not possess, "is that it's not really a port at all. It's a DOOR, mate. A door to the Caribbean, which is a door to everywhere else, which means—" dramatic pause, one ringed finger raised to the heavens, "—if you can get INTO Port Royal, you can get anywhere in the world. Savvy?"
The producers were exchanging looks. Gore was grinning.
"And the thing about doors," Marcus continued, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper that somehow still carried perfectly across the room, "is that they're MEANT to be opened. Locks are merely suggestions. Guards are merely obstacles. And rules—" He spread his hands wide, gold teeth (wait, when had his teeth become gold in his imagination?) glinting in an invisible Caribbean sun. "Rules are merely guidelines that haven't met Captain Jack Sparrow yet."
He had no idea where these words were coming from. They weren't scripted—he was fairly certain of that, given that he had no script. But they FELT right. They felt like the character speaking through him, using his mouth and body as a vessel for something that existed independently of the actor portraying it.
"Mr. Chen," Gore interrupted, holding up a hand. "That was... not what I expected."
Marcus felt his heart plummet into his stomach. The character-feeling began to recede, reality seeping back in around the edges of his consciousness like cold water.
"But," Gore continued, and the word hung in the air like a lifeline thrown to a drowning man, "it might be exactly what we need. I want to try something. This scene—" he held up a script page, "—the scene on the docks. Have you seen this?"
Marcus had absolutely not seen that. But something in his head—the system, the character, some unholy combination of the two—surged forward eagerly.
"Of course," his mouth said without permission from his brain. "Lovely scene. Very... docky."
Gore laughed. Actually laughed—a real, surprised, delighted laugh that transformed his face from intimidating director to enthusiastic collaborator. "I like you, Mr. Chen. You've got something. I don't know what it is yet, but you've got something. Read this page, please. Out loud. As the character."
The assistant who had led Marcus into the room materialized at his elbow with the script page. He took it with hands that he carefully controlled to prevent them from shaking, and looked down at the words.
The scene described Jack Sparrow making his grand entrance, standing on the mast of a tiny, sinking ship, saluting the harbor in a gesture of absurd dignity before stepping casually onto the dock as his vessel slipped beneath the waves. Below the description were lines of dialogue—an exchange with a harbormaster demanding a shilling for docking and three shillings for the name.
Marcus read the lines once. Twice. And on the third time, the system surged again, and the words became less like things he was reading and more like things he was REMEMBERING. As if he had lived this moment a thousand times. As if he WAS the ridiculous pirate captain who would sink his own ship rather than pay a dock fee.
He let the page fall to his side. He didn't need it anymore.
"Picture it," he said, not breaking character, addressing the room as if they were passengers on his invisible sinking vessel. "The grandest entrance in the history of Caribbean piracy. A ship—and I use the term 'ship' loosely, more of a... enthusiastic dinghy with ambitions—approaching the dock. And atop the mast, a legend. A captain. A—" he stumbled slightly, as if the deck had shifted, and caught himself with the casual grace of long practice, "—reasonably sober sailor of fortune."
He mimed stepping from ship to dock, his entire body committing to the fiction of solid ground appearing beneath his feet at exactly the right moment. Then he froze, one hand raised, as if interrupted by someone offscreen.
"What do you mean, 'one shilling'?" His voice dripped with offended incredulity. "For the dock? For THAT dock? Have you SEEN that dock? It's barely a plank. Three planks, maybe, if we're being generous, and I'm not." He leaned in, eyes narrowing with the particular cunning of a man who had negotiated with customs officials across seven seas. "Tell you what, mate. I'll give you one shilling. For the dock. And your silence regarding the... previous condition of my vessel."
He gestured vaguely behind him, where the imaginary ship was presumably completing its journey to Davy Jones's locker.
"No? Not interested in silence?" A shrug, elaborate and unconcerned. "Fair enough. Then shall we discuss names? Names are currency, in a way. Very valuable. Very powerful. A man's name is his reputation, his history, his—" dramatic pause, "—criminal record. So when you ask me for 'three shillings' for a name—" he laughed, a rich, slightly unhinged sound, "—you're really asking for my SOUL. And I've already promised that to at least four different people, so you can see how that's a problem."
The room was silent.
Marcus let the character recede slightly, enough to nervously assess his audience. The producers were writing furiously. Gore Verbinski was sitting back in his chair with an expression that Marcus couldn't quite read. And in the corner of the room—
Wait. There was someone in the corner of the room.
Marcus hadn't noticed him before, but there was definitely a man standing in the shadows by the door. Tall, broad-shouldered, with the kind of physique that suggested either personal training or a career as a professional intimidator. His face was obscured by the dim lighting, but his posture radiated hostility.
"Interesting," Gore said slowly. "Very interesting. Mr. Chen, I have to ask—what training have you had? Your physical characterization is unlike anything we've seen today."
"I—" Marcus hesitated. He genuinely had no idea what to say. His training? He couldn't remember eating breakfast, let alone years of acting classes. "I've studied... various techniques. Movement-based approaches. Character-first methodology." He was making up words now, stringing together actor-sounding phrases in the hope that they would mean something to someone.
"It shows." Gore nodded, making a note. "There's a physicality to your work that—"
"This is ridiculous."
The voice came from the corner. The tall man stepped forward, and suddenly the overhead lights illuminated features that were handsome in a cruel sort of way—sharp cheekbones, a strong jaw, eyes that glittered with something between contempt and fury.
"Gregory," one of the producers said warningly. "We discussed this."
"No, YOU discussed this." The man—Gregory—stalked toward Marcus with the deliberate pace of a predator. "You discussed bringing in NOBODIES to read for MY role. You discussed wasting everyone's time with these cattle-call auditions. You discussed making me wait—" his voice rose, "—FIVE HOURS while you paraded every wannabe pirate in Los Angeles through this room."
Marcus held his ground, though every instinct screamed at him to back away. There was something genuinely dangerous about this man, a violence barely contained beneath the surface.
"I don't know what's happening," Marcus said carefully, "but I don't want any trouble—"
"Trouble?" Gregory laughed, harsh and humorless. "You're the trouble, friend. You're the nobody who walked in here and did some clever improvisation that made the director smile. And now you think you're going to walk out of here with MY role? With the role I've been campaigning for months to get?"
"Gregory, that's enough." Gore stood, his earlier warmth replaced by steel. "Your audition was yesterday. The callback is tomorrow. This is inappropriate and unprofessional."
"Unprofessional?" Gregory wheeled on the director, and for a moment Marcus thought he might actually swing. "You want to talk about unprofessional? Let's talk about the fact that you PROMISED this role to me. Let's talk about the 'verbal commitment' I received from your producer. Let's talk about—"
"Let's talk about how you broke character seventeen times and threw a water bottle at my cameraman!" Gore's voice cracked like a whip. "You're talented, Gregory. No one denies that. But you're also a liability. And this role requires someone who can be present, consistent, and SANE."
The word hung in the air like a challenge.
Gregory's face twisted. Marcus saw it happening before it occurred—the shift in weight, the tension in the shoulders, the slight drawing back of the right arm. His body moved before his conscious mind could catch up, years of... something... kicking in automatically.
The punch came fast and hard, aimed at Marcus's face.
Marcus was faster.
He caught Gregory's wrist in a grip that surprised both of them, twisting slightly to redirect the larger man's momentum. Gregory stumbled forward, thrown off balance by the unexpected resistance, and Marcus used that moment to step inside his guard.
"Now, that wasn't very friendly," Marcus heard himself say, and with a shock he realized he was still in character—or rather, the character had taken over during the moment of crisis. Jack Sparrow's voice came out of his mouth, Jack Sparrow's movements guided his body. "Here I am, trying to have a civilized conversation about the performing arts, and you go and throw punches. Very uncivilized. Very... land-person."
Gregory snarled and swung again, a wild haymaker that spoke more of rage than training.
Marcus ducked, letting the fist whistle over his head, and came up inside Gregory's reach. He didn't hit back—some part of him knew that would only escalate things—but instead used his position to throw off the larger man's balance again, a quick hip check that sent Gregory staggering sideways.
"I've fought navies, mate," the Jack Sparrow voice continued, almost conversationally. "I've fought pirates and privateers and the occasional extremely aggressive seabird. Do you really think you're going to—"
Gregory tackled him.
The two men went down in a tangle of limbs, and suddenly the elegant character-work became something much more desperate and primal. Marcus felt the air driven from his lungs as Gregory's weight crashed onto him, saw the other man's fist raised—
[COMBAT SKILL UNLOCKING...]
[ANALYZING THREAT LEVEL...]
[ACTIVATING: PIRATE BRAWLING TECHNIQUES]
[WARNING: THESE SKILLS ARE ADAPTED FOR PERFORMANCE. REAL-WORLD EFFECTIVENESS MAY VARY]
The system's notification flashed across his vision, and suddenly Marcus KNEW things. He knew how to roll with a punch to minimize damage. He knew how to create space in a ground fight. He knew seventeen different ways to use a bottle as a weapon, which wasn't immediately helpful but was interesting.
He got his legs up between himself and Gregory, kicking out hard, and felt a grim satisfaction as the larger man was launched backward. Marcus scrambled to his feet, and for a moment the two men faced each other across the conference room like gunslingers at high noon.
"SECURITY!" one of the producers was screaming into a phone. "We need security in Conference Room C, NOW!"
Gregory charged again, but this time Marcus was ready. He sidestepped like a matador, using Gregory's momentum against him, and the enraged actor crashed into the table with a satisfying thud. Before he could recover, Marcus grabbed a nearby chair—not to hit him with, but to place between them, a barrier.
"Here's the thing about violence, mate." Marcus was breathing hard, but the character held steady, the words coming from somewhere beyond his own conscious mind. "It's terribly inefficient. Lots of effort, lots of risk, and usually the outcome is just... broken furniture and hurt feelings. Now, if you'd like to settle this like CIVILIZED scoundrels—"
Gregory grabbed the concept art off the wall and threw it at him.
Marcus caught the canvas on reflex, and found himself holding a full-sized painting of the Black Pearl. For a moment, he was transfixed by the image—the dark sails, the ominous hull, the sense of something beautiful and terrible and FREE.
Then Gregory was coming at him again, and there was no more time for admiration.
What followed was perhaps the strangest fight in the history of auditions. Marcus, channeling a character who solved problems through misdirection rather than direct confrontation, found himself turning the conference room into an obstacle course. He ducked behind chairs, slid across the table, used a potted plant as an improvised shield. Every move was theatrical, exaggerated, as if he were performing for an invisible camera.
Gregory, for his part, became increasingly frustrated with each failed attempt to connect. His attacks grew wilder, less controlled, and Marcus used that against him—letting the man's own rage tire him out, staying just out of reach, occasionally offering unhelpful commentary in Jack Sparrow's distinctive drawl.
"Left a bit—no, YOUR left—oh, that's not going to—careful of the—yep, there goes the fern. Lovely plant. Very innocent. What did it ever do to you?"
By the time security burst through the door—two burly men who looked like they ate angry actors for breakfast—Gregory was red-faced and exhausted, and Marcus had somehow ended up standing on top of the conference table, holding a stapler like a pistol.
"Gentlemen!" he announced, addressing the new arrivals with a theatrical bow. "Your timing, while somewhat later than ideal, is nonetheless appreciated. This man—" he pointed the stapler at the panting Gregory, "—has shown a distressing disregard for the sanctity of the audition process. Also, he murdered a fern."
Gregory made one last lunge, but the security guards grabbed him before he could reach the table.
"Get OFF me!" he screamed, struggling against their grip. "Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea who I AM?"
"You're someone who's leaving," Gore Verbinski said, his voice cold and final. "And who will never work with this studio again. Get him out of here."
As Gregory was dragged, still screaming threats and obscenities, from the room, Marcus slowly climbed down from the table. The Jack Sparrow presence was receding now, leaving him feeling hollow and slightly dizzy. His hands, he noticed, were shaking.
"Mr. Chen."
Marcus turned to find Gore Verbinski standing directly in front of him. The director's expression was unreadable.
"Sir, I am so sorry about all that," Marcus began, his own voice sounding strange after spending so long speaking in someone else's. "I didn't mean to cause any trouble, I just—he swung at me, and I reacted—"
"Mr. Chen." Gore held up a hand. "Please stop apologizing."
"But the table, and the plant, and the painting—"
"Can all be replaced." The director's face slowly broke into a wide, almost manic grin. "Do you have any idea what I just witnessed?"
Marcus did not, in fact, have any idea what anyone had just witnessed, including himself.
"I just watched a man walk into an audition with no preparation—don't argue, I could tell—and completely embody a character that we've been struggling to define for months. I watched that same man get attacked by a three-hundred-pound former football player and turn it into a PERFORMANCE. You weren't just fighting, Mr. Chen. You were fighting AS THE CHARACTER."
"I... was?"
"You used DIALOGUE during a fistfight. Improvised dialogue that stayed in character while you were dodging punches." Gore laughed, shaking his head. "I've been making movies for twenty years, and I have never seen anything like that."
The producers had gathered behind the director, and Marcus was alarmed to see that they were all nodding along with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
"We were supposed to spend another week on auditions," one of them said—the sharp-featured woman from before. "We had callbacks scheduled, chemistry reads, screen tests..."
"Cancel them," Gore said.
"Gore—"
"Cancel them all." The director turned back to Marcus, and his eyes were shining with the particular light of someone who had just discovered buried treasure. "Mr. Chen—may I call you Marcus?"
"I... yes?"
"Marcus. I would like you to play Jack Sparrow."
The world stopped.
Or possibly Marcus's heart stopped. One of those things definitely stopped, because he found himself unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to do anything except stare at the director who had just offered him a role that—according to knowledge he couldn't remember acquiring—would change the entire landscape of Hollywood.
[QUEST COMPLETED: SURVIVE AUDITION]
[REWARDS CALCULATING...]
[SKILL PERMANENTLY UNLOCKED: METHOD EMBODIMENT - JACK SPARROW]
[NEW SKILL TREE AVAILABLE: PIRATE PERFORMANCE]
[CHARISMA +5]
[IMPROVISATION +10]
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: CONGRATULATIONS, HOST! YOU HAVE OBTAINED YOUR FIRST MAJOR ROLE! REMEMBER: THE GOAL IS NOT JUST TO ACT AS CHARACTERS, BUT TO BECOME THEM. THE GREATEST ACTORS DO NOT PLAY HEROES AND VILLAINS—THEY ARE HEROES AND VILLAINS. YOUR JOURNEY HAS JUST BEGUN...]
"Marcus?" Gore was looking at him with concern. "Are you alright? You've gone rather pale."
"I'm fine," Marcus managed, though his voice came out as barely a whisper. "I'm just... did you just offer me the lead role in a major Disney production?"
"I did."
"Based on one audition? And a fight?"
"Based on the fact that I have been looking for Jack Sparrow for six months, and you are the first person to walk into a room and make me believe he actually exists." Gore reached out and put a hand on Marcus's shoulder. "There will be contracts and negotiations and all the boring stuff that my people handle. But right now, in this moment, I want you to know: you've got the part. If you want it."
If he wanted it.
If he WANTED it.
Marcus thought about waking up in that orange plastic chair with no memories. He thought about the system that had appeared in his head like a visitor from another dimension. He thought about a future he somehow knew existed but couldn't remember living, and a past that had been erased as thoroughly as data from a reformatted hard drive.
He didn't know who he was. He didn't know how he'd gotten here. He didn't know what the "Acting System" really was or what it wanted from him.
But he knew—with a certainty that went beyond memory, beyond logic, beyond anything he could explain—that this was where he was supposed to be. That this role was his. That whatever strange cosmic force had dropped him into this waiting room in 2003 had done so for a reason.
"Yes," he said, and his voice was stronger now, more confident. "Yes, I want it."
Gore Verbinski grinned, and reached out to shake his hand. "Welcome aboard, Captain Sparrow."
The rest of that day passed in a blur of paperwork, handshakes, and increasingly surreal conversations. Marcus met the producers properly, was introduced to someone from Disney's legal department who spoke entirely in contract clauses, and had his picture taken approximately forty-seven times.
Through it all, the system remained silent, present only as a faint blue glow at the edge of his vision—watching, waiting, perhaps amused by the chaos it had helped create.
It was nearly midnight by the time Marcus stumbled out of the studio building and into the cool California night. The stars were invisible behind LA's perpetual layer of smog and light pollution, but he tilted his head back anyway, staring up at the orange-tinged sky.
"Okay," he said to himself—or to the system, or to the universe in general. "What now?"
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: NOW, HOST, YOU PREPARE. FILMING BEGINS IN SIX WEEKS. YOU HAVE A CHARACTER TO EMBODY, A SKILL TREE TO DEVELOP, AND A MYSTERY TO SOLVE.]
"What mystery?"
[THE MYSTERY OF WHO YOU WERE. THE MYSTERY OF HOW YOU ARRIVED IN THIS TIME AND PLACE. AND THE GREATEST MYSTERY OF ALL...]
"Which is?"
[WHY THE SYSTEM CHOSE YOU.]
Marcus stared at the sky for a long moment. Then, despite everything—despite the amnesia, despite the fight, despite the sheer overwhelming impossibility of his situation—he began to laugh.
"Pirates," he said, shaking his head. "I'm going to be a pirate."
And somewhere in the depths of his mind, in a voice that was becoming increasingly familiar, Captain Jack Sparrow whispered: Welcome to the Caribbean, love.
[END OF CHAPTER ONE]