Year Zero

by Rob Reid

“Wait—you have dream sequences in your reality shows?” I’d heard that scripts and writers were routinely used in producing that crap. But dream sequences should strain the gullibility of even reality show fans. I mean, right?

  Carly shrugged and nodded.

  I didn’t know what to say. After all the high-handedness that I’d put up with because she was trying to save my species, it turned out that her own boneheaded family business was directly imperiling us! Offended and infuriated, I felt a sudden urge to call her an arrogant, duplicitous dolt.

  “You arrogant, duplicitous dolt,” I said.

  Carly looked like she was about to cry. “You … you’re right. I am arrogant. And I’m a dolt. And I didn’t used to be either! I swear, I used to be really, really humble. So humble. And smart! And then this … fame thing happened to me. All this wealth and fame was thrust on me, and I became a tool to these managers, producers, and agents! And this show is the worst part of it. Before it came out, we at least had our privacy when we weren’t onstage. But now we’re always onstage! And we’re just tools to these—these scriptwriters. It’s like no word that comes out of my mouth is really my own!”

  Deeply touched that Carly could let herself be this vulnerable with me, I was overwhelmed by affection and pity. I was about to reach out to hug her, when a voice erupted right behind me. “Aaaaaaaaaaand SCENE!”

  I turned around and saw a truly terrifying creature. I can handle orange pus-oozing lizards with stalk-mounted eyes, like Mllsh-mllsh. I can handle acid-drooling praying mantises. And I can handle junkies, muggers, meter maids, and any other human flotsam. But this … thing was an almost-human. And something about that was viscerally horrifying. He was about my height and size, had a full head of blond hair, and looked to be about thirty. Only instead of eyes he had—whites. No pupils, no irises. Just the whites of the eyes. He also had perfectly smooth flesh where his mouth should have been, and a vertically oriented mouth embedded in his right cheek.

  Other than that, he was your basic dude in Dockers. He was holding a perfectly normal finger up to his perfectly normal left ear, and seemed to be listening to some small device. After a few moments, he bellowed again. “Ya know, gosh darn the luck, Carly, but it sounds like there was a teeeeeny little audio boo-boo right toward the end. Could you take it from … I dunno, maybe from ‘now we’re always onstage’?”

  Carly sighed irritably, composed herself, then took on a forlorn air and said, “But now we’re always onstage! And we’re just tools to these—these scriptwriters. It’s like no word that comes out of my mouth is really my own!”

  “Thaaaaat’s perfect,” Sidemouth said. “Great work, Carly. Okay, all of you—take five.”

  I looked around, and saw that we were suddenly surrounded by a dozen other near-human freaks. They were toting around lights and microphones, fussing over a table full of snacks, and manhandling three gigantic TV cameras that slid around soundlessly on these squat, rolling platforms. All of them could pass for human from a middling distance (including Sidemouth, if you saw him from the right angle). But a second look showed that this one’s feet were oriented backward. Or that one had three elbows, which gave him a series of … links for arms. Or that one had four nostrils on an upturned nose.

  Before I could process any of this, I heard a commotion coming from behind one of the false walls. Moments later, Sonny himself zipped around it, surrounded by three near-human lackeys. One was carrying a tiny platter of caviar, another held out a dish filled with blue M&M’s, while the third bore a black ashtray that held a smoldering stogie. They maneuvered with ingenious dexterity, always keeping their little offerings within reach of Sonny’s hallowed hands as he strode forward. The production crew meanwhile surged into action. Within moments they had a boom mike hovering over our little group, with lights and cameras positioned to capture our every movement and expression.

  Sonny strode up to his son.

  “Frampton, Frampton, Frampton,” he scolded, waving a finger foppishly. “I left you in charge of your baby sister for half a day. And now Asteroid Command tells me you spent the entire time zooming around … in outer space!”

  Frampton leapt to his feet. “You’ll never guess where we went, Father.”

  Sonny grimaced and waved a hand in front of his nose. “To the monkey house, by the smell of it,” he said. Gales of laughter came from every direction at once. It sounded like a besotted audience of hundreds of people. At this, Carly buried her face in an open palm and started shaking her head. A camera zoomed in for a close-up of this.

  “No jive, Dad—try to guess where we went!” Frampton was hopping from one foot to the other.

  Sonny suddenly took on a stern air. “I hope you weren’t running around with those Peterson boys again.” He grabbed the cigar from his lackey’s ashtray and gave a concerned puff.

  Carly looked up. “Dad, we need to stop production and clear the set for a minute,” she said flatly.

  Sonny gave one of the cameras a puzzled look. “These kids have the strangest expressions these days.” His lips weren’t moving, but his voice was booming in from somewhere overhead. “Just last week she said some boy was taking her to the ‘submarine races.’ ” He shrugged, and gave the camera a look of zany confusion, to adoring laughter.

  Now he stroked his chin and gazed at the ceiling. “But, hmm—I don’t want to look like a square to my kids,” his disembodied voice mused. “So I’ll just pretend that I know what she’s talking about, and figure it all out later.” He smiled, nodded smugly, and winked at the camera.

  Carly leapt to her feet. “Dad, we honestly need to cut the slapstick crap for like five minutes.”

  “Oooooooo,” the invisible audience goaded.

  Carly waved her hands like a ref declaring an incomplete pass. “No, I’m dead serious. Cut. Stop. Shut down the set. We seriously need to talk in private.”

  Sonny gave her a pensive look. “Something’s … really wrong, isn’t it?”

  Carly sighed. “Yes. I have an omnicab here—it can give us some privacy.” With that, the outlines of our pod appeared, glowing faintly with a violet light. After we had exited it and walked over to the set, it had apparently parked itself about thirty feet away.

  Sonny turned to Sidemouth. “Okay, shut it down for a few minutes. And put the writing team on standby. It looks like we’re gonna have to come up with a new final scene for today’s episode.” Sidemouth nodded, gave a hand signal, and the crew shut off the lights and climbed down from the cameras.

  Carly gave her father a grateful look. “Thanks, Dad. This … this really means a lot to me.”

  “Oh, Carly,” he said gently, then started talking like a retarded child. “Daddies need to be dere for deir wittle girls, don’t dey?” I followed the three of them to the omnicab. Right at the threshold, Sonny jerked a thumb at me. “By the way—who’s this palooka?”

  “This is Nick,” Carly said. “I’ll explain what—”

  “No, no, no,” Sidemouth hollered from the set area. “Sorry boss, but ‘palooka’ is way too sitcommy. Remember, you’re supposedly off-camera now.”

  “Oh. Then how about ‘dude’?”

  Sidemouth shook his head. “Sorry boss, that’s a bit … well, don’t take this the wrong way, but ‘dude’ is a bit young for you. I’d go with ‘guy.’ ”

  Sonny shrugged, nodded, carefully repositioned himself at the pod’s threshold, and jerked a thumb at me again. “By the way—who’s this guy?”

  Now I was completely baffled. Hadn’t they stopped recording the show?

  “This is Nick,” Carly said. “I’ll explain what he’s doing here as soon as we’re in the omnicab. It’s all good. Trust me.”

  I looked around for a live camera with a zoom lens, but the gear was all shut down, and the crew was clearly on break.

  Once we were in the pod, its faintly violet door shut and we shot up about a hundred feet. As soon as our altitude stabilized, the walls turned opaque, resembling brushed steel.
>
  Carly looked like she’d just stepped into a sauna after a long, stressful day. “Thank God. The omnicab can’t be bugged. And with the walls blotted out, no one can peek in and read our lips.” She pointed at me. “This is Nick Carter, Dad. He’s a human. From Earth.”

  Sonny gave her the exact look that my own dad would give me if I introduced a new friend as Xzjerthåan from the planet Mwrgørrr. “Carly, you’ve just suspended production on the most profitable show in the universe. Every minute we spend up here is costing us tons of moolah, and we don’t have time for one of your harebrained schemes.”

  “Dad, I’m totally serious. Nick is from New York City.”

  Sonny squinted at me suspiciously. “Oh, really? Then tell me, City Boy. Which Yankee plays for the World Series?” He grinned triumphantly at my baffled look. “All right. Open wide.” Before I could ask what he meant by this, he grasped both of my inner shoulder blades with his left hand, which somehow activated a painless but powerful muscle spasm that completely immobilized me. His right hand then brushed my cheek while making an odd squiggly gesture, and my mouth flopped open. He gazed down my windpipe. “Nope, nope.” He squinted and pulled in for a closer look. “Noooooo. Uh-uh. I’m not seeing any icky red blobs back there.” He touched my cheek again and my mouth snapped shut.4

  I wanted to say something, but I was like a marionette in the hands of a master puppeteer, and had no control over my own larynx. So I just stood there and puzzled over all of this. Then it hit me—Frampton had said that one of the three differences between Perfuffinites and humans was a lack of tonsils. So Sonny had just established that I … wasn’t human.

  “Dad, he had a wetware upgrade,” Carly said. “So don’t bother pulling his shoes off. You just have to take my word for it.”

  “Oh, sure. Suuuuure. Daddies need to twust their wittle pwincesses, don’t dey? So I’m sure he’s as human as rayon slacks. Where’d you pick him up?”

  “On Earth. Seriously. Please just pretend to believe me for two minutes.”

  Sonny suddenly got very stern. “Okay. In that case, remind me what we promised our daddy? Something about never leaving the galaxy without having our big brother along to look after us?”

  “Frampton was with me,” Carly said through gritted teeth.

  “Great—then what did you have to go zipping off to Earth for? Big sale at Claire’s Boutique? Recipe swap at the nail salon? Pony day at the knitting store?” Sonny finally released my shoulder blades to give his son a laddish nudge.

  “Dad, I’m sick of being typecast like that. I’m an adult. And it’s time for my role to reflect that!”

  Suddenly not at all playful, Sonny gave her an indignant look. “Oh d’you think? So what did you do, then? Stomp off to Earth to get some footage of yourself acting all adult and heroic, so you could sabotage the character we’ve been carefully developing for years?”

  Carly looked awkwardly at her feet.

  Sonny glared at her. “Carly, we’ve been over this. Our show already has a bright young hero. His name is Frampton. And if we were making some fantasy garbage like Super Friends, I guess we’d all get to be heroes. But we’re not. We’re making a reality show. And in reality, what does every hero actually have?”

  Carly said nothing.

  Sonny grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eye. “A dizzy little sidekick who’s always causing problems. And you’re the most famous one in the universe. So why are you suddenly going rogue on me?”

  Carly shook her head. “I … I’m not. Not at all. I decided to go to Earth strictly because of the episode that reveals that the Townshend Line is just a rickety piece of garbage.”

  “Oh, that? Well, what about it?”

  “It was obvious that once it aired, the Guild—or somebody—would start scheming to destroy humanity. And I just couldn’t sit by and let that happen. So I went to Earth to negotiate an end to the debt before it was too late.”

  “But the Earth is perfectly safe,” Sonny said. “The Townshend Line is the most masterful piece of engineering crafted by any civilization since the dawning moment of the Big Bang. Bar none!”

  Carly gave him an incredulous look.

  “And by the way, that’s how I know City Boy here is just another Perfuffinite, no matter what you say about hooking up with him in the Big Apple,” Sonny continued, jerking a contemptuous thumb my way. “I’ll bet the Guardian Council’s Inner Republican Guards couldn’t even get past the Townshend Line. So how could you pull it off?”

  “Because it doesn’t work,” Carly said. “Just like our research team discovered by spying on the Guardians!”

  “That wasn’t a discovery,” Sonny snapped. “That was a subplot.”

  Carly looked completely aghast. “A what?”

  “A subplot, duh.” Sonny took a couple deep breaths, then softened his tone. “Carly, you know our ratings have stunk since the news of the debt broke. And it makes no sense. I mean, I dig that people want to talk about the universe’s complete financial collapse. But after ten days …” He shrugged, shaking his head theatrically. “Anyway, the show needs a debt angle to stay relevant. So me and the writers cooked up the idea that the Townshend Line is caca, and we’re afraid that some unspecified bad guys will find out. Over the next few episodes we’re gonna have Frampton fix everything, using Science. And then you’ll almost mess it all up by seducing a rugby team. You know—the usual stuff. Only with a debt angle. See?”

  Carly looked like she was on the verge of tears. “But … I didn’t have any idea.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Sonny said gently. “Nobody tells you anything. We told your big brother, though. Didn’t we, Frampton?”

  Frampton furrowed his brow. “I think so.”

  Sonny turned back to Carly, and pinched her cheek fondly. “You’re so precious. Always believing everything you see on reality shows—even your own. It’s a good thing you’re surrounded by smart, brave men who protect you.” He gazed proudly at his son and clapped an arm around his shoulder.

  “Well, with all due respect, sir, I think your subplot might have inadvertently gotten things right, because the Townshend Line has been awfully porous this week,” I finally said. “And I really am from Earth. I know you have cached copies of our Internet handy. So if you don’t believe me, just Google the entertainment law firm Carter, Geller & Marks, click the ‘Our Team’ link, and then click on ‘Associates.’ You’ll see me listed under ‘C.’ ”

  Within moments, the relevant webpage had replaced one of the omnicab’s metallic interior walls. Sonny stared hard at my head shot, then looked at me with something verging on reverence. “Hold the phone … It’s you!”

  It took five minutes and several Google searches to convince him that I had nothing to do with the Backstreet Boys. Once he was over his crushing disappointment (almost a half hour), I gave him all the details about Paulie and Özzÿ. As I told the story, he got increasingly excited and agitated. By the time I finished, he was pacing the length and breadth of the pod—a giddy, kinetic bundle.

  “So, Dad,” Frampton said in a relieved tone. “It looks like you’ve figured this one out.”

  “Right on. Land the flying saucer.”

  I felt us descend and settle gently on the ground.

  I turned to Sonny. “So what do we do?”

  “First, we plug the leak on our team.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that somebody told the Guild all about the Townshend Line episode that we just shot. Only whoever it was didn’t realize that it was all phony baloney.”

  I nodded. “Which is how the Guild got the idea that they could cross the Townshend Line.”

  “Exactly,” Sonny said. “Why any of you actually could cross the Townshend Line is beyond me. But the Guild clearly got the idea that they could cross it from someone who spied on the taping of our episode. Along with a bunch of other cockamamie ideas, I’m sure. So the culprit was on our set when we shot it, but doesn’t know
doodly squat about what’s really going down.”

  Carly’s eyes widened. “Catering?” she guessed.

  Sonny nodded. “Obviously. They’re unionized, so they have ties to the Guild. And they’re the most clueless people with the show.” He patted his daughter gently on the shoulder. “Present company excepted.”

  Carly gave her father a murderous look. “So then what do we do now?” she managed.

  Sonny smiled ecstatically. “We’ll push the broadcast of our Townshend Line episode up. Way up. In fact, we’ll broadcast it tomorrow. Only we’ll add some footage of Earth Boy here walking onto our set, because that proves that the Line is really down.”

  “But … why do that?” Carly asked.

  He smiled even more rapturously. “Because the Earth is doomed. However impossible it is, you got through the Townshend Line. And now the Guild’s Enforcement Brigade is down there! For some reason they think Palooka Face here is a Guardian. But as soon as our episode tells them that he isn’t …” He paused, then flung his arms back triumphantly and bellowed, “KA-BOOOOOOM!”

  “Right, right,” I said. “And that makes us happy because?”

  “Because? Because? Because it turns out I was right about the Townshend Line, meathead. And it’s the biggest scoop in the history of the universe—ever! So tomorrow’s episode won’t be reality programming, will it? No. It’ll be journalism, dig? And people will finally know how seriously they should take me.”

  “Daddy, don’t you dare,” Carly whispered.

  “Don’t I dare what? Finally prove that I’m more than just another gorgeous face?”

  She nodded, stepping between me and her father like a mama bear shielding her cub from a pushy time-share salesman. “It would be the end of humanity.”

  Sonny shook his head. “Carly, even if I wanted to hide the truth—and as a journalist, I don’t—but even if I wanted to, Gotham here walked onto our set today. He’s all over our footage, and our production people have all seen it by now. One way or another, they’re gonna figure out that he came from Earth. And when they do, they’re not gonna keep their yaps shut. Sure, I can keep a lid on this for a day or two. And I’ll definitely keep Catering in the dark so the Guild doesn’t go and blow up the Earth before we can get our episode out there. But if I don’t run the story, the truth will come out anyway. And that would put humanity up the exact same creek they’ll be up tomorrow. Only we wouldn’t get the credit. Or the ratings.”