by Ray Succre
“Good night, honey,” Beth said, tired in both voice and things to talk about.
“Sleep well. I’m on my way to lunch.”
“Enjoy.”
FADE OUT
Pacific Pictures presents... On Order of the President, a new film starring Molly Pearce as war reporter Joan Lacey, and James Vance as Captain Andrew Tilson. As the Second World War spirals into the Pacific, American ground troops are aided by a new team of enhanced soldiers, a squad of supermen who have harnessed the power of the atom. They are silent, fast, strong, and ready to change the tide of the war. Led by Captain Andrew Tilson, these super soldiers aim at nothing short of complete victory in the war. But there is a saboteur in the unit, a traitor that may, himself be a superman. As war rages in the Pacific, so does the deadly game of sabotage and double-spies set into motion On Order of the President.
CUT TO:
A population of three million people, with over half of them under the age of thirty. The Sun was a child in the sky. While the rain was intermittent, this was heavy when it came, which bothered the child in the sky. The city was its playmate. Both were young. The child threw tantrums at times and evaporated the rain, causing an ugly humidity only truly appreciated by those reptiles and insects populous to the region, as well as those lifeforms based in green and wood. According to Mr. Hsiung, his liaison for the weekend, the local government, a curious hodge-podge of eastern and western policy, were building a massive tunnel through the mountains from Sha Tin to the New Territories, a feat of engineering that rivaled any of which Emery had knowledge. In a manner akin to the citizenry of the United States, but more pronounced, the people of Hong Kong were free to worship in the religion of their choice. They seemed to have chosen, with the resources and modernity available, to worship industry. There were so many people and Emery was but one of them.
He hailed a cab to the university and, after paying his fare, walked briskly toward the lecture hall. He now had a small, makeshift map of the university and surrounding neighborhood, due to his having had much trouble the night previous in finding his way around. The stars, when they came, were blurred by the exhaust of industry, but still visible. The sky was carved up by intermittent volleys of planes, an endless run of them taking off and landing in rapid succession. Kai Tak Airport, by which he had arrived and would soon leave Hong Kong, was an incredibly busy enterprise. The night watched the city and tall buildings, the harbor and planes, and pressed all of it forward, shawling Hong Kong in twilight, the moon hovering over a cosmopolitan society wedged against the sea and nestled into the Earth as with a trowel.
The fear was digressive and manageable, usually subdued within moments after it erupted: A loud, angry shout in Chinese from a street-side, from a restaurant, or while strolling across the campus. He had no reason to trouble over the language of another, but to his western ears, trained in English (and of the age they were mostly closed off to the intricacies of other languages), Chinese had some of the sound of Japanese. Both countries protested this synopsis much. Emery was guilty of not knowing the difference in sound, but he could not adjust himself. To an easterner with little experience in English or German, those two sister languages might sound the same, as well. The problem was the spark of memory that encountering a louder Asian tongue caused him.
When Emery heard this language shouted near, his mind spun on a pivot that dipped him into the gulches of Leyte. He heard the enemy soldiers shouting to one another, and he panicked. The nightmares were present in Hong Kong, like they had been in Germany, and even Britain. As awful as they were, having never left him since their material was first gathered, he had accustomed to the occasional horror story in his sleep, enough that these no longer posed disorder in the following day. He would wake in a start, breathe, and then spend a few minutes gathering his character before pushing on with the morning. They were only nightmares now, not haunts, simply dreams that deserved to be forgotten as fast and unexpected as they came. The shouts in Hong Kong, however... there were moments in which these could wake his nerves with the force of a siren.
Emery shook loose his nervous tackle and set it aside, continued into the lecture hall and was promptly given room to prepare. Mr. Hsiung was not present for some reason, but the benefactors were kind, asking him about lighting and some elements of time, offering him food and drink, whatever he needed. They were pleased when he proved quite rudimentary in setting up: So long as the microphone was active, he needed only to walk out before the audience and start talking, as he had practiced and rehearsed his material much over the course of the tour.
The lecture went as planned, and because it was the last of his tour, he chose to show more mirth than the weariness he had exhibited the night before. He chose to play a bit more. Knowing this was his last engagement before returning to his actual life gave him a fusillade of subjects that he found himself able to discuss, back and forth between his various conceits quickly. He had much energy and his mind was being generous with him. He spoke with clarity but let himself ride tangents more than usual, wanting to take advantage of his sudden creativity before the fleet nature of this unpredictable artifact left his pocket.
The questions at the end were common ones, and the writers were every bit as present as in previous countries. Hong Kong was working on its own cinema, and there were plentiful ideas in its writers. In time, the questions and comments made the expected swivel from television and Hong Kong to television and Emery. The usual question surfaced near the end, and Emery announced that he was working on numerous scripts, that ‘what was next for Emery Asher’ was his family, and that he would be working on some side projects until he made a choice on a larger one. Saying so inferred there were such things being offered, however. This was somewhat of a lie. There was yet no major promise of work, not since declining the few offers that had come in at the start. There was still time for personal choice, but not for long. Soon, Darwin's mode would take over and he would adapt or perish. There would be no choice but to take what came.
After the questions, Emery devised a few of his own. Personal questions regarding his career. He ran these through his mind, trying to internally lecture on them while sitting in the cab, being driven back to his hotel.
***
After glancing at the sequence of numbers he had earlier written down, Emery reached for the room’s telephone. He gave the sequence to the desk clerk and then waited. After some time, the sound of connection occurred, and the odd, warbling tone of having reached another phone stuttered against his eardrum. He rubbed his eyes, blinking and exhaling, still awake, still upright, but only so because he was leaning on the mental wall of business. Exhaustion, a rather worthy nemesis, had been working on taking down this particular wall, and was laboring with expedience. He did not expect to feel warm upon hearing the voice. There were surprises everywhere, it seemed. Some from Los Angeles that were unearthed half the world away.
“Hello?” the voice muttered, not seeming to be fully awake. Emery lowered his voice to a gruff tone.
“Good morning, Lord Dozier. It is time to get up and experience the excellence of being.”
“What in- who the hell is this?”
“This is your conscience, Lord Dozier, and I’m calling to tell you I quit.”
“You’re real fuzzy; I can barely hear you. This Asher?”
“The same,” he said in his normal voice.
“Okay, good,” Dozier said before erupting into a fit of noise that seemed one part hack to two parts clearing of the throat, “oh… god what time is it?”
“I think it’s about seven-”
“Christ, Emery, it’s five in the damn morning.”
“Uh, it may be, then. Sorry. My math must have been off.”
“Hold on. It’s Emery Asher. Go back to sleep. No, he didn’t know. He’s in Hong Kong and didn’t know the time difference right. Yeah, sorry; I’ll be quiet. Go back to your bed. All right, I’m here. Listen, I’m glad you called, Em. It’s good to hear
from you. How the hell is China, anyway? I’ve never been to a red country before.”
“Well, it’s Hong Kong, which is run by the British. It’s in China, yes, but the city itself isn’t communist. It’s a real melting pot. Inspiring. Very industrious but quite pretty, too. The air tastes like enterprise out here.”
“Wouldn’t want to live there though, huh?”
“Well, maybe if it weren’t for the rain. Tonight was a prolonged, warm shower.”
“It’s weird to hear you say ‘tonight’ in the past tense.”
“It’s stranger for me, because I know that outside your house right now is a beautiful, bright, sunny morning trying to come up, and that promises to be ideally warm. I’d wager twenty on it.”
“You’d win that wager if I took it.” The oddity of being pals with Bernie Dozier began to strike Emery as being an unnecessary silliness. He would prefer to talk about whatever business Dozier had professed as urgent.
“You don’t say.”
“I do say. How’s the food over there?”
“Best food I’ve ever eaten,” Emery responded, getting more tired by the second.
“The lecture circuit workin’ out?”
“Yeah, it’s good, but busy. Uh, as a result, I’m somewhat short on time, Bernie. What can I do for you?”
“No problem. Listen, I just took over Fairway Productions. You remember them?”
“No, I don’t recall.”
“It’s a fledgling company that couldn’t hold water, was run by a fat-head named Jack Molson. You’ll remember him.”
“Oh, I remember that prick. He’s the son of a bitch I popped in the mouth outside Sol’s funeral.”
“Yeah, that’s him. Well, he’s out, couldn’t do anything without screwing it up. But they were fishing around and I took a chance, and well, the job’s mine. In fact, I can say the whole damn company is mine. I’m the big man, for now, so long as I can keep it on oxygen. They’re giving me a complete run of things, minus some changes to the founding staff I’m not allowed to make. Most of ‘em are fine, though. Bottom line, I run this thing for ‘em, and we all get paid if I can keep it from goin’ under. They mostly gave it to me because of The Other Side.”
“Congratulations, Bernie. It sounds like you’ve found a place for yourself. That’s a job.”
“Oh, it’s a job, all right. I haven’t stopped moving in nearly a month. This call is the most relaxing thing to happen to me in weeks.”
“I see.”
It was good to hear things were working out for Bernie. Despite his fallbacks as a producer, Dozier was the sort of man that learned his lessons quick, and Emery doubted the man would make the same mistakes again. He knew more about the tooth and nail now, when to go it alone, when to involve others, and what network weather called for which sort of clothes. A producer never stopped learning lessons, Emery supposed.
“We’ve got a few things lined up, but I want a show, is the thing. The little stuff is fine, but I want a serial. One big one,” the producer said.
“From me,” Emery replied, smiling.
“Sorry, I can’t hear you. Can you hear me?”
“Yes. You want a show from me, I said.”
“That’s it. You. And I know the story, too.”
“Oh? All right, you snake. Out with it. What are you up to?”
“Remember after the first season got shut down, you wrote a couple of pilots and ran ‘em by me?”
“All too well.”
“There was one I read that I loved, and I’ve got it in my briefcase as we speak.”
“The Deserter,” Emery said.
“That’s the script! How’d you know it was that one?”
“I’m a writer. When someone compliments a piece I wrote, it rattles in my head for eternity.”
“Well, good. Anyway, I love it. I’ve been re-reading this thing, and the way you put it all together fits what I envision for Fairway perfectly. Matches the times even more now than it would have four years ago.”
“Well, thank you. I’ll give it-”
“For a cowboy thing.”
“-some… right, for a western. I can give it some revision when I get back. But yes, I’m in, Bernie.”
Returning home was now more than the stretched rubber band of his tour being snapped back into its original shape, more than finally drawing his family into his arms and simply feeling the days of this particular life. This was now a pivot point to the next stage of his career, if Dozier could be trusted to oversee this project in the manner Emery thought he could. Even with the incessant cancellations for The Other Side, Dozier had managed to keep the coals stoked enough for Emery to get the show back on the air on two separate occasions. That was a bit unheard of in network history. Between the two of them, certain problems could be overcome with ease, especially now that the two of them had learned the hundreds of small lessons the previous show had taught them, often harshly.
“You’re in? Just like that?”
“Well, I’m not ‘out’. Yet.”
“Good enough for me. We’ll talk out the details and contracts when you’re back in the states, Em. I just needed to know if I should start pushing this thing. A western is a hard sell anymore, but not the way you wrote this one. It’s a thinking man’s western. It’s… eh, it’s surreal and has a lot of heart. Western fans would love it, right? And Other Side fans would love it, too. And most importantly, I love it.”
“Okay, we’re throwing around a lot of love. I get it. Start pushing. Do what you do. I’m fond of the idea, for now. There have been a couple of changes to the script since that draft I gave you, what with four years having passed. It’s been a year since I last went over it, but I figure he didn’t desert the union side now, I’ve made him a southern confederate deserter. They were harsher on their men. And the soldiers had to work with worse gear, less equipment. That’s why he’s so good with a rifle and why he’s a bit battle-torn. Deplores violence. A moral man, but an able protector that can take action if he’s pushed to it, you see? A capable guy stuck in his own sort of tragedy.”
“That’s the Emery Asher I know. Work it in.”
“And I have a better opening story, too. For a pilot. We start with a town dying of thirst because someone has been throwing dead animals down into the well. It’s sabotage, with the intent on poisoning the town. Anyway, the deserter does everything he can to get these people water from far off towns, riding like crazy with some young boys from the town, all of them hurrying to get more and more water back before more people die. And they’re dying, all right. And the water is heavy so they can’t carry much of it at a time. It’s desperation. That would show his good nature, his need to help people that are bad off, or stuck with something they don’t deserve; sets the show off on the note that he isn’t a coward, or a bad person, he’s alone in the world. He’s troubled, and he escaped the war to avoid being hung by his own for the treason he didn’t commit. He’s innocent and trying to be a good man.”
“Who’s the bad guy poisoning the well?”
“Turns out it’s the preacher. A real Old Testament sort. Hallucinating from the heat and dehydration. Thinks he’s purifying the town. In the end, our guy, with half the town on his side, tries to keep the other half from killing the preacher, but it does no good. There’s a tragic hanging and everyone is real quiet. Our guy leaves and drifts onward.”
“Huh. Well, I get what you’re saying, but the Confederates did lose, Em. That part doesn’t make much sense to me. If you want to make him the South, okay, but I think people would identify more with the Union side, because it’s why we’re all here.”
“No, no, that’s the thing. His side lost right after he deserted it. And even though the war is over, because he deserted, he has no one, and nowhere to go. The North doesn’t want him because he was a Confederate, and the South doesn’t want him because of his desertion and treason. The times are slowly changing but he can’t change himself. He’s unwanted and alone. He’s
lost. Nothing left for him but the cruel and wayward west.”
“All right, I’m sure it’ll make more sense to me when you show me the script. Get it to me when you get back.”
“Consider it done.”
“Oh ho, it’s settled. You and me. We’re makin’ a show, Asher.”
“Wait, before we go any further, or make any moves on this, there are a few things I need to make absolutely clear; my requirements to do this.”
“You got demands already? All right, let’s hear ‘em.”
“I’ll want the same deal I had when starting The Other Side. That’s straight and simple. It’s what I have to have. We produce together, and it’s the same deal, but with more writers. I think five total, including me. I don’t want to negotiate on that. And I have to keep creative control and, for the love of god, I want a no-videotape clause.” This was stone. If Emery wasn’t granted these particular resolutions, he would not take part. This moment was a tense one, because a potential future hinged upon it.
“That’s all fine with me,” Dozier said after a moment of thought. Emery’s blood warmed, more awake than it had been in months. Sleep would be out after this. He was going out for a drink. The world was on track again, for now. The possibility of a “large project” had come.
“Really? Then that’s perfect,” Emery said, feeling this to be the most apt term in describing his situation.
“The setup works, Em. It worked before, it’ll work again. Hell, I don’t want creative control; what would I do with it? I think five writers is a few too many, but we can hash that out once we get the pilot made. I’m open to the idea if we discover it’s necessary. And screw videotape; I definitely get it. Look, uh, the money won’t be as good, though. We both know that, right?”