okay so. imagine a show runner. we'll call him tom. tom is running a popular first responders show. and one day, tom sees this guy and thinks "I need him on my show". so he makes a character just for him. and this guy, let's call him bryan, he sees a lot of himself in the character. because the character was made for him! and there's just this... overlap. between the two of them. and at some point, a couple seasons in, tom notices that the character he made for bryan (let's call him teddie) is in a hole. curious! thinks tom. and tom goes to his superiors and says, "hey you guys, it seems one of my characters is in a hole. would it be okay if I got him out of there?" and his superiors tell him that they don't believe he's in a hole, and even if he is, who would care about it, people who are in holes are not part of the target audience, and there's no budget for ladders anyway. and this frustrates tom, so instead of building a ladder, he builds signs, to point to the hole and go "hey! there's a guy still in here!" and slowly but surely there's a crowd of people amassing who's reading the signs, and looking for the guy, and trying to raise awareness about the fact that he's in a hole. they can't build him a ladder, because it's not their hole and they don't have any proper wood, but they discuss plans for ladders, and stairs, and pulley systems. tom, meanwhile, grows frustrated and leaves to run a different show, with guys who are everything but in a hole, and for a while, he's happy.
but eventually, his old show is picked up by a new company – a company that time and time again has shown it has the will and resources to build ladders. and he's ecstatic, he returns to his show and tests the waters, he asks whether they'll let him build a stepstool for a guy on his show that's been sitting in a ditch for a while, and they tell him sure, go ahead, and tom takes some wood from a previous set design and builds a stepstool that's a little square and a little ugly but it gets the job done wonderfully, and voilà, the guy is out of his ditch! success! and the people love it, they're cheering and whooping, chanting to do teddie next, let teddie out of his hole, free teddie, and they're excited and happy and waiting for what happens next (there's a subset of people who fall in love with the stepstool but they're not important to this story), and tom runs back to his superiors, asking for the resources to build a proper ladder for teddie who's still in his hole, and they go yeah, sure, it worked out great the first time around, and tom builds a beautiful ladder, a wonderful ladder, sturdy and proper and everything nice, and he has his team guide the ladder into the hole and then, they wait. they wait, because the hole is by now so deep, they cannot see the ground anymore. it's dark down there, and cold, and they're all sure that teddie would grasp at the first chance to get out of there, will climb up the ladder without hesitation. and so they wait. but nothing happens. and slowly, they grow concerned. the crowd of onlookers gets restless as well, isn't there ladder, they say, doesn't it reach to the ground? and tom doesn't know what to do, and he knows he needs to manage these people's expectations, so he tells them the ladder isn't there at all, he was never planning on building it in the first place, and this isn't a hole, there's nothing here, teddie is above ground, he's just somewhere else right now, he's taking a vacation in texas, we don't know yet when (or even if!) he'll return. and the people riot, demand answers, and a proper ladder, a nice ladder, and they discuss amongst another, is he joking, we can see the ladder from a mile away, the hole from ten, they have to let him out, they have to let him climb, it would be wrong not to! and soon, the skeptics raise their voices, what if he's gone for good, what if he's left us behind for texas, what if he'll never return to us, what if, maybe, there was never a ladder and never a hole to begin with? what if it begins and ends with the ditch and the stepstool and all else is solid ground? and the believers yell out in anger, there's a hole, there's a hole, he's still down there, we can't leave our man behind, he won't forsake us, he'll return to us, and he'll climb, and he'll walk proud and tall, here in the daylight, and he'll be a happy man once more, but the skeptics laugh, accuse the believers of naivety, and soon, the crowd tumbles into a fight that seems like it'll end no more.
and amidst all this commotion and confusion, there's a muffled scream that goes unheard, a shout for help that no ear catches. it comes from down, deep down in the earth, where it's cold, and wet, and the sturdy feet of a long wooden ladder are slowly rotting. it comes from the hole. a desperate voice, a muted voice, a helpless cry that's stifled by a frantic hand. because deep down in that cold, dark hole, there's teddie, still alive and screaming, begging for help. but his efforts go unnoticed. they're sabotaged by no one else but his own reflection, the one in whose image he was made and that brought him to life; it's bryan, down in the dark with him, limbs locked around teddie's and holding his mouth shut. and even as the garbled sound of turmoil drifts downward from the hole's opening, all that reaches teddie's ears are bryan's desperate, anxious whispers.
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