Work Text:
i. An Hour After Leaving
You descend the stairs.
With each step you take, the faux sunlight fades behind you.
With each step you take, the gravity of the situation pushes in upon you.
With each step you take, you realise there is no turning back. The stairs are coming to an end now, and at the end of the stairs lies a door, adorned with the words coated in bold, flashy, red. "EXIT". You pull on the handle, and step out into the world.
Is reality out there?
ii. A Day After Leaving
When Sylvia sees Truman leave on TV, she is in New York, watching the broadcast fade to black from her tiny studio, and the dome, from which Truman gingerly exits, is in Los Angeles. And yet, she flies the 3 hours to see him. When she arrives to the studio's parking lot; a giant space with nearly 5,000 spaces for workers who no longer have jobs, she sees the crowd, and then she sees Truman, overwhelmed by the sheer number of cameras, microphones, and people who want every opinion he has jotted down, listed, and printed on the front page of the LA Times. Sylvia gets out of the rented car and he sees her; from over a hundred feet, he sees her, and for a moment, the world is still. The birds freeze in the sky. The wind settles down. The leaves stop rustling. And the world listens.
'Truman!'
No steel door, no sheer force, could keep Truman from her. He could be burning in a lake of fire and he would still wade through it to find her. But the crowd parts, like Moses and the Red Sea, and Sylvia is the promised land, and Truman is running and leaps into her arms, and they are driving off, a trail of paparazzi like a line of ants chasing after them. And Truman is free.
Passing through downtown, every sight is unfamiliar. When you've never seen anything taller than a five-story office complex, the central business district of Los Angeles is one of the most overwhelming experiences that a person could ever go through. The homeless are planted right next to looming glass mega-structures that stretch high into the sky. And the beating sun that punches down on SoCal during the hot summer months is impossible to look up at. Truman tries and burns his eyes. And everything is so loud, everything makes a sound. But soon they are out of the city and at the airport, where Sylvia buys two tickets to New York (somehow producing a fake ID for him) and passes him a mask, a pair of sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat, as well as a change of clothes. He changes in the airport bathroom.
They board the plane and it is another new experience. The engines scream and his ears pop as they climb higher and higher into the sky. Thankfully, no one recognises him - they all think he's somewhere in Hollywood shaking hands with executives, not on a shoddy, budget economy flight in the middle of the day across America. The disguise also helps. They land in New York around sunset, and Truman's first real sunset is over the skyline. Sylvia moves over to give him the window seat, and he stares - childlike and reborn - at the setting sun, and the bright city lights, and the highways and the skyscrapers. How could they have kept this from him? How could they have kept him away when all of this was just a few hours away all this time?
iii. A Week After Leaving
Truman Burbank is the world's first person adopted by a corporation. Truman Burbank is the world's first person to exclusively use vitamin D supplements to substitute for a lack of sunlight. Truman Burbank is the world's first person to live a simulated reality. Truman Burbank has many world firsts. But of all the world firsts, there is one he thinks of most: he must be the world's first person - at least for a time until Sylvia came into his life - to have never had a real conversation. Every word that came out of another person's mouth directed at him was scripted, written down somewhere before spoken into an earpiece, and spat out.
A week after he leaves, he starts going on walks and notices people staring. Then, a few days later, on his usual route, he notices cameras begin raining down, on the rooftops of the buildings in the best vantage points, in the windows, in the bushes. Some even dare to come close, shoving the lenses right into his face, and so he begins running instead. He tries to outrun all the cameras, but then they get smart and intercept him. When they finally stop him, he does not push them away, and they ask questions - many questions, all about Meryl and Sylvia and Christof and Louis. He knows their real names now. He just tells them the line the PR person Sylvia hired for him tells him to say, 'no comment', and paces away until the next question is shouted out.
When night falls, Truman sees the cameras everywhere. He sees them in the walls. In the television set, in between the cracks and crannies, in every circle and square. He cannot go to sleep without seeing a camera in the lamp next to him. And Sylvia assures him she'd never do to him what Christof did, and he believes her, or maybe he wants to.
Reader, I can tell you now - Truman Burbank's life will never be normal. Inside or Outside. He will always be voted the Most Recognisable Face of whatever year it is now. He cannot walk into a grocery store or a movie theatre or a shopping mall without being mobbed, so he doesn't anymore. He stays inside Sylvia's cramped apartment on the Upper East Side and lives off shitty television and romance books. He left the Inside to be free, and yet with freedom he cannot go outside. This is the central contradiction of Truman Burbank. He will choose freedom and still end up more jailed than before. He will never have a happy ending.
iv. A Month After Leaving
Within a month, Sylvia and Truman have gone through every single civil rights lawyer in New York City. The hotshots told them with bluffing confidence that this would be a slam dunk case, a hallmark in civil rights legislature. The experts told them there was no chance, that the corporation that legally owned Truman had too much money, too many lawyers, too many connections, that the case should just be titled David v. Goliath. Even the biggest law firms refuse to take on their case, because they represented the corporation too.
Truman wasn't that interested in the money - obsessed, guilt-ridden fans sent him care packages and cash, more than enough to keep them afloat whilst both of them tried to find jobs. The first job offer Truman received was from the same corporation who made the Truman Show, to act in a new reality TV show - this time he'd be aware and be able to pull out at any time. They'd call it Truman on Life, and it would make him ludicrously rich. All he would have to do is return to Seahaven and live out the rest of his days knowing his reality was fake. He didn't bother to send a response. Sylvia already had a job, as one of the directors of the Free Truman Fund. Unfortunately, the FTF was a non-profit, and all of the money was dedicated to activism to freeing Truman. Truman was free now, and so all the assets were liquidated, the FTF dissolved, all of it going to Truman.
Truman Evanson visits Fiji not long after, with Sylvia of course. The cameras, however, are still everywhere. That was the thing - everyone expected them to visit Fiji. So, from the moment they touched down to the moment their plane's wheels retracted into the sleek, modern aircraft, Truman and Sylvia had cameras constantly trained on them. They couldn't have a romantic walk on the beach, or a stroll through the city. All they could do was dodge the numerous paparazzi who flooded the city hoping to catch a glimpse of the couple's budding romance so they could publish it on the front page of every gossip magazine. Needless to say, they leave early.
When Truman is bored, he'll search up his own name, and then The Truman Show. Two major results come up for 'Truman'. Harry S. Truman, and then Truman Burbank. Harry S. being the lower page, of course. On the Wikipedia page for The Truman Show, it says that Disney, the company, bought the streaming rights for The Truman Show before Truman was even born. They would go on to stream the first stretch of Truman's life, from the ages of 0 to 12, on Disney Junior - for kids - and then would proceed to stream the rest of the show on the Disney Channel. This was due to the burgeoning popularity of The Truman Show, especially with adult audiences.
Finally, on a nice, sunny Sunday in August, one month free, Truman gets an email, a strange one.
Dear Mr. Burbank,
I would like to preface this by saying I had watched the Truman Show since I was a child. I practically grew up with it. All of us did. And I knew something was wrong with it. While all my classmates had jostled over which girl you should date I would barge in saying he should be free instead. Obviously, times and public opinion has changed, but my values have not. And as one of the premier civil rights and media lawyers in Los Angeles, I believe I would be the perfect fit to represent you in a lawsuit against The Truman Corporation.
Yours sincerely,
Margaret Taylor
v. A Year After Leaving
The lawsuit goes surprisingly smoothly. Within a few months, the case is filed, and almost immediately is pushed all the way to the Supreme Court. Of the nine judges, four are Republican appointees, and the rest are Democratic appointees. This means, as Margaret explains to Truman, that they have a better chance of winning the case, due to the political alignment of the judges. He does not understand.
On the first day of Truman Burbank v. The Truman Corporation and The Disney Company, Margaret is invited to give her opening statements to the court. The following is a direct transcript of her speech.
'Justices, Truman Burbank is not a person. Truman Burbank is a cash cow of which The Truman Corporation, and Disney, have milked for 30 years at the expense of his mental and physical well-being. Truman is the man who sits behind the bench wearing a suit and tie and a haircut given to him while in confinement. This case pertains 5 key aspects: One, the lack of a right of a corporation to legally adopt a human being in reference to corporate personhood. Two, the right of man to freedom of movement. Three, the right of man to self-determination. Four, the right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And five, the lack of a right of a corporation to detain or imprison. Justices, I am assured all of you have at least knowledge of who Truman Burbank is. And the younger ones amongst your ranks may have even watched The Truman Show, or heard of the Free Truman Movement. And I plead of you to understand just how much The Truman Corporation and Disney have permanently altered the path of Truman Burbank's life.'
The counter-arguments by Truman Corp and Disney's legal team consist of mostly constitutional drivel, but with public opinion turning against them, there wasn't much Truman Corp or Disney could do except watch as Margaret and her legal team tore their case to shreds. A measly four months later, and the case was over, with the ruling being 5-4 in favour of Truman Burbank, finding Truman Corp liable for damages in the millions.
And in case you were wondering, readers, all of this was televised. Every excruciating moment. Ratings were through the roof. Higher than they ever were with the Truman Show.
And yet, it wasn't over. Because there were still the criminal trials to go ahead with. One for child pornography, given that Truman had cameras trained on him in the shower before he was even 18. One for rape, as every single time Meryl had sex with him, he was unable to give consent. Another for child endangerment, another for criminal negligence of a child, another for unlawful imprisonment, and the list went on and on. For a few years outside, his day job was sitting in courtrooms giving testimonies or simply watching prosecutors do their thing. At night, he'd return to Sylvia, and fall asleep in her arms.
His annulment/divorce from Meryl was easy too, the marriage wasn't certified legally, it wasn't even officiated by a pastor or preacher. His name change was a little harder. Since Truman liked his first name, his last name was the only thing he wanted to change - he never got to meet his birth mother as she disappeared a few years after the Truman Show started, never to be seen again. The only thing she left him with was her last name - Evanson. So that was what he took, he became Truman Evanson.
Eventually, the cases died down. Some ended with settlements and prosecutions, others with nothing at all, just fizzling out.
vi. A Decade After Leaving
Just after Truman Burbank v. The Truman Corporation and The Disney Company ends, he proposes to Sylvia, on the fire escape facing the park, the one that was hard to see from the sidewalk. The wedding was gauche, after all, Truman couldn't really invite anyone. He hadn't really had contact with anyone from the show but Meryl (for the divorce), and Louis, who wrote him a single letter a short time after he began living with Sylvia which he hadn't the guts to rip open yet. Sylvia's family was nice, if a little weird, which was a pleasant departure from the constantly plasticity of strangers on the street who would approach him to ask questions about his personal life even he had forgotten.
After the wedding, they take a quick honeymoon in Japan, up in the mountains in Hokkaido where paparazzi would have a hard time following them. After that, they buy a townhouse in one of the newer apartment buildings in New York near the Brooklyn Bridge, and Truman makes a habit out of dressing up in a disguise (a fake beard and glasses still do work after all these years) and walking down the bridge with the wind in his hair, feeling the fresh sea breeze, and thinks of the future. He thinks of names for boys and names for girls, he thinks of ways to hyphenate his and Sylvia's names, he thinks of places to go next. He rarely thinks of Christof or Louis or anyone else.
Truman Evanson will never lead a normal life. He's a billionaire (though much of that has been donated to charity), and the most recognisable man on planet Earth. He has a child, who will never know fearing a camera lens or the public eye. He has a wife who loves him dearly, and an extended family too. Truman Evanson is not the man who grew up in Seahaven. Truman Evanson was born the moment he left that dome and felt the gentle wind on his face, real and authentic. The real sun, unprompted, shines an orange glow across the skyline, making the surface of the water shimmer, and Truman, for the first time in years, cannot remember what his "mother" looked like.