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“Amazingly done!” Bailey exclaimed as the audience clapped. “Twelve points for Roe in the Hot Seat—you only missed one! We’ll be back soon!”
No retakes so far. I considered that a win.
While the camera crew repositioned themselves for the next shoot, Roe rejoined me in the booth, and for the upcoming bit, we could chill. Ezra and Tyler were up for the same segment, during which Roe and I wouldn’t hear a thing. A static noise flooded the booth as soon as Roe was seated, and our mics were muted.
“I guess we know each other fairly well,” I said.
“Dude, I’m gonna get so much shit when we get home,” he groaned through a chuckle.
“What do you mean?” We had nothing special planned, did we? Just dinner. Grandma wanted Italian from a place in Venice we’d introduced her to last time, and Sandra and Haley were coming over too. But with Grandma going home the day after tomorrow and Roe and me busy with the podcasts, it was gonna be low-key and over pretty quickly.
Roe shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. “Sandra likes this show. She told me if we score high, she might get jealous because she feels she doesn’t know me as well as you do.”
“Oh, come on. We’ve known each other for a few years. She entered your life two seconds ago.”
He shrugged. “It is what it is.”
Maybe it was mutual, then. Maybe Sandra didn’t like me either.
I was cool with that.
“You know what?” He smacked my arm as an idea struck. “We’re not gonna tell her. We’re bound by that nondisclosure thing until the episode airs, right?”
He was reaching, but so be it. If he wanted to stall for time, we could do that. I was pretty sure game show contestants in the past had at least told their spouses how things had turned out.
Reality would bite him in the ass soon enough.
*
Later that summer, Roe and I got bitten by another kind of reality too. Our work wasn’t all sunshine and roses anymore. We had so much to film, so many angles to capture, so many places to visit, that it took a serious toll on us.
Gone was the freedom we had in Nomads, when it was just Roe and me and our equipment—and occasionally an extra cameraman or two.
Travel Back was bigger. In order for the animators and graphic artists to recreate history on-screen, we traveled with a twelve-person crew that included a topography team and four cameramen. I’d obviously picked up on where this was headed in preproduction, but to be here now, I just…I didn’t know, I missed the old days. Roe and I acted more like directors than anything else, and the only people we liked to direct were each other.
“More floodlight, Jensen,” Roe requested.
It was the first time I saw a more introverted side to Roe. He’d never been the kind of man to wanna withdraw from people before. Ever. But we couldn’t do that. We had to lead. It was still our project.
Several miles into the ancient cave system in Slovenia, we huddled in front of a screen as Shane and Martina worked on the wide angles for this part of the cave. We were far away from tourist groups and outside noise. Heat too. It was fucking cold down here. About fifty degrees, while it was a nice seventy-four topside.
“Make sure one camera drops to capture the river and the other lifts to get the ceiling,” I instructed, keeping my gaze fixed on the screen. It was currently showing me Martina’s view. She was goddamn amazing. Both Roe and I hoped to work with her again in the future.
“What do you wanna do about sound?” Roe asked quietly.
“We’ll try to record what we can,” I murmured. “If the original sound isn’t good enough when we get to editing, we’ll Foley it in.”
He nodded.
I pointed at the screen as Martina angled her camera lower toward the river. “We’re gonna need inserts of the stalagmites and stalactites, preferably with the water dripping to showcase how the formations take shape over time.” It was partly why these caves were so famous, because of the rock formations, the sharp spikes and columns along the ceiling and river floor.
Roe nodded again. “We’ll do close-ups tomorrow.”
Good plan. We had to call it a day soon anyway, to make room for the topography crew.
Roe and I didn’t even like our hotel suite. Postojna, this part of Slovenia, was old and had so much history I wished I had time to explore. That was the whole point of my dream—to show what I was experiencing. Instead, I was living life through a screen, and our supermodern hotel was located a couple minutes away from the cave. Meaning, zero time to head into the town itself and stroll the cobblestone streets that’d seen so much.
