Unnamed Actor Must Be Preserved

Dean Rourke is not Earth's most beloved action star. He has fallen down stairs for him. Crashed motorcycles near him. Once ate lunch three tables away from him. Then the world ends, aliens harvest what's left, and something polite installs itself in the back of Dean's neck. It has one piece of advice when they ask him who he is. Lie. So he does. The aliens note that his answer does not correlate with the incomplete Earth media metadata they purchased before the planet burned. They are not mad. They file it anyway, and their system returns a classification: TIER-PRIME CULTURAL TREASURE COMBAT SAINT SOFT-EYED VIOLENCE PROPHET Dean punches a man he didn't mean to punch. They log it as a trial passed. Dean tries to confess. They log it as humility. The thing in his neck keeps the score, and the score keeps going up. All he has to do is keep playing the most beloved man on Earth. Forever. For profit. For them. Which is fine. Probably. The trouble is going to be the other ones.