Bring Me To Your Stars

Truth or Date?

"It's kind of a tragic love story," Emily tried again to explain it to James, as they stood there on the sidewalk together. 

Gazing up at the movie poster outside the cinema, with Kate Winslet looking down over Titanic's portside, and Leonardo Dicaprio leaning onto her shoulder. 

"Supposedly, the movie is based on a true story, from a diary written by Rose Calvert, who sailed on the Titanic when she was 17. Kate Winslet plays her as this rich girl, who is engaged to a man she doesn't love, and feels trapped as a woman in upper class society. Until she meets Leo, a guy with literally just '10 bucks in his pocket', and falls in love with him onboard the ship. Mind you, in just 3 days, but you're supposed to overlook that detail, because it's obviously very practical. Anyway, she leaves her life behind as a rich girl and heads out for the horizon because she damn well feels like it. Oh, and at some point in the movie, Titanic sinks...Sorry, on second thought, maybe we shouldn't. I can't exactly promise you a documentary here." 

"You don't reckon it could happen?" James asked her. "A love story like theirs?"

Emily gave a little shrug.

"It's just a movie," she said. "Of course, I want to believe in a story like that, but I can't speak for any woman of 1912. I can only guess that choosing to love him in the end was probably way more complicated for her than that." 

"Perhaps you're right. Quite complicated indeed," James agreed quietly. "How does it end for her then, in this moving picture?"

"She makes it to New York on the Carpathia," Emily answered. "And the rest is history."

"Oh?" James's voice perked optimistically. "Suppose then that the end is still the beginning for her?"

Emily passed him a smile, but left the answering of his question to chance, as she turned to lead their way to the ticket booth. 

It was April 17th. 

A season, James realized, for "fanatics". 

Never would he have imagined that simply being a crew member of the Titanic made him a celebrity in some worldwide fan club of 2022, or suchlike. 

Why did it seem that everyone of the future was so infatuated with his ship, that might've easily become grandly mediocre fast in his day, and which ultimately became a ship that didn't very well 'ship' in the end, as it should have? 

Weren't there other wonders one could make a fuss about? Like the opus debut of the Wright Flyer, or that bloke he'd been reading about in the papers, Mr. Lawrence Oates, who died on his South Pole Expedition by bidding his gents a last farewell, "I am just going outside and may be some time."

And if it had to be any old ship, why not--oh well, the Belgic (for all the gnarly rumors he'd heard secondhand from Officer Lowe about her, one could easily pull a whole epic out of that one), or the Adriatic, or even the Olympic?

Why Titanic?

If being the star attraction of its own private museum was a little overmuch, an entire 3 and a quarter hours of a whole ruddy moving picture was certainly butter on bacon.

Though James would soon enough get his answer. 

As being the season of the 110th anniversary of Titanic's sinking, it so happened that there was lots of hype about the release of James Cameron's 1997 film at Regal Battery Park.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Emily asked James again. "We can always watch something else, you know?"

"Don't fret over me, Miss Millie," James told her lightheartedly. "It's only a moving picture. Not like Titanic can kill me a second time, can she?"