San Diego 2014 Read Free Page A

wanted to go since I was twelve. Did I tell you that?”
    “Yes, you did,” said Matthew, unpacking his duffel bag into the top drawer of the room’s small dresser. “Five times during the ride from the airport alone. Also, you need to stop using so many exclamation points when you speak. That can’t be healthy.”
    “You just say that because you’re British,” said Patty.
    Matthew paused in the process of tucking a shirt into the drawer, squinting at her. “What does that even mean ?”
    “I don’t know. I just figured it would make you stop ragging on me about the way I talk.” Patty sat up and stuck her tongue out at him. “We’re at Comic-Con. We’re newlyweds. This is a time for geek love and geekier lust. Now stop putting your clothes away and come take some of my clothing off of me.”
    “I wish I could do that, you poorly punctuated enchantress, but all it will do is make you angry.” Matthew continued unpacking.
    “What? Why would you ravishing me make me angry? I’m pretty sure that being ravished is in my newlywed contract.”
    “Because the doors will open for Preview Night in a little over an hour, and you wanted to be on the show floor first thing. I assure you, while I’m able to resist your allure by staying over here and dealing with my trousers, if I begin the ravishing process, I won’t be finished after a mere hour .”
    Patty folded her arms. “I hate it when you make sense.”
    “If you hate it when I make sense, you should have married a politician, not a scientist. Scientists make sense because we can’t imagine a world where there would be any point to doing anything else.”
    “I think you enjoy it.”
    “That, too.” Matthew gestured toward Patty’s suitcase. “Why don’t you unpack? You’ll feel better if you’re doing something, and as soon as you’re done, we can head for the convention center and queue up to get our badges.”
    “Comic-Con.” Patty heaved a happy sigh, her sulk already forgotten. “Can you believe we’re really here?”
    This was a familiar loop: They’d been around it dozens of times since the plane that carried them from London to San Diego began its initial descent. Matthew smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I rather do believe I can.”
     
    * * *
    5:30 P.M.
    Elle Riley, star of the moderately well-rated science fiction drama Space Crime Continuum , waited not-so-patiently for the man who was supposed to be escorting her around the convention to get his goddamn act together already. He’d been arguing with the convention center security for the better part of twenty minutes—no, twenty-five minutes, according to her phone—about whether they could use the service tunnels. If he didn’t work things out soon, she was going to be late for her first panel. Not that SCC was that big of a deal, or it wouldn’t have been one of the first shows presenting at the convention. Still, they had two panels this weekend, one on Preview Night and one on Sunday afternoon, and she didn’t want to mess things up for the rest of her cast. She was already going to make the panel a living hell. She could at least be on time.
    Some actors were chosen because of raw talent, or because of the kind of drive that could be used to power the time ships her franchise was built around. Elle was smart enough to know that she hadn’t been cast for either of those reasons. She could read a script, she could give a reasonably nuanced performance, and she could deliver technobabble explanations of hackneyed plot twists with the best of them. But none of those things were responsible for her continued employment. No matter what the blogs sometimes implied about her, Elle Riley was too smart to think that she got work when better actresses didn’t because she was somehow more deserving.
    She got work when better actresses didn’t because she was pretty, and because she had big green eyes that she could widen with the right degree of confusion and awe when someone told