by Joe Mahoney
The Pitch
I found a seat on the GO Train, opened my laptop, and sighed. I needed to finish a spreadsheet detailing all the latest DaletPlus NetXchange issues before a conference call on the matter at nine. There was a crazy amount of work left to do. Unfortunately, before I could isolate myself from the rest of the passengers with an insulating layer of headphones and iTunes, damned if a CBC Radio producer didn’t plunk himself down in the seat opposite me.
“Joe!” the producer said. “Long time no see.”
This did not bode well. It wasn’t that the producer was a bad guy. It was just that he’d been dead for five years and was known to be a talker. I would get little work done this morning.
I forced a smiled. “Hey Runciman, good to see you. Coulda sworn you were dead.”
Runciman had indeed been found dead late one night in an editing suite still clutching a script in his cold, dead hands. The cause of death had never been conclusively determined, but it was commonly believed that his recording engineer had strangled him to death in frustration for demanding one too many edits. Runciman had been a notoriously demanding producer.
“Dead as the proverbial doornail,” Runciman confirmed.
“And you’ve come back to haunt me now because…?”
“I have returned to atone for my many sins.”
“What sins?”
“Sitting on development committees rejecting perfectly good ideas, mostly. It is my intention to atone for these sins by helping you with your radio show pitch.”
“What radio show pitch?”
“The one you’re going to write to help you get back to your true love, radio production.”
“Thanks, but I’m good. I like management.”
“Because you make so much more money?”
“Uh—”
“Cause your benefits plan is so superior?”
“Um—”
“Cause you like ordering people around?”
“I do like that part,” I admitted. “For instance, I order you to leave me alone.”
The ghost of Runciman ignored me. “I have arranged for you to be visited by three spirits during your commute this morning. The Ghost of Radio Archives, the Ghost of Radio Ideas, and the Ghost of Radio Yet to Come.”
“Three spirits? I don’t have time for that—the commute is only so long and I have a lot of work to do!”
“They’re all experienced radio folk, perfectly capable of talking to time.” The train pulled into Ajax station. “Speaking of which, my time’s up.” Runciman stood to get off. “Don’t mess this up, Mahoney!”
Resolving to seek therapy at the earliest opportunity, I shook Runciman’s hand and watched as he got off the train.
A small, elderly gentleman wearing a bowler cap got on and took Runciman’s place. I recognized him right away. “Hey, you’re Allan McFee, former host of the CBC Radio show Eclectic Circus.”
“I was that man once,” McFee intoned in his best announcer’s voice, still smooth and honeyed despite his death over a decade earlier. “Now I am the Ghost of Radio Archives.”
I was impressed. “It’s a great honour to meet you, Mr. McFee. You were a great wit in your time.”
“Whereas you are a great nit wit in yours.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you gave up your dream of creating your own radio show to join the dark side,” McFee explained. “I despised managers when I was alive.”
“I enjoy being a manager,” I said. “But I regret not creating my own radio show.”
“It’s my job to help you get that dream back, son,” McFee said. “Grab on tight to my hat.”
I did as McFee instructed and off we flew, miraculously squeezing through the closed Go Train doors into the archives of radio past. I found myself in the Canadian Broadcasting Centre in Radio Drama Studio 212, where I had spent nine productive years making radio plays. A large cast was assembled on the floor with Ann Jansen directing. A younger version of me sat in the control room operating the Neve Capricorn console.
“I remember this,” I told McFee. “We were adapting Canadian author Jane Urquhart’s novel Away for radio. It aired on Sunday Showcase and Monday Night Playhouse.”
“Since The Rosary first aired out of Moncton’s CNRA in nineteen twenty-five, radio plays of all shapes and sizes have aired regularly in this country,” McFee said, “on CBC Radio series such as Sunday Showcase, Monday Night Playhouse, Vanishing Point, The Mystery Project, Monday Playbill, Nightfall, CBC Wednesday Night and more.”
“Thanks for that almost completely indigestible bit of exposition,” I said. “It is true that radio drama once thrived in this great country of ours.”
McFee touched his hat and whisked us elsewhere. Three gentlemen stood on a stage before three Neumann U-47 microphones. Other gentlemen leaned over various sound effects apparatus, awaiting their cues. The whole lot of them were flanked by an orchestra. An audience was present to witness the shenanigans. I listened as the actors delivered a high-octane sketch at a breakneck pace about an ancient Greek messenger running an impossible distance to deliver a message only to discover when he arrives at his destination that he has forgotten the message. At the punch line, the audience erupted into laughter.
I was ecstatic. I whispered to the ghost of McFee, “It’s Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe back in their Goon Show days—these guys influenced everybody from Monty Python to the Beatles.”
“And now they shall influence you. Note their absurdist, rapid-fire dialogue, their ground-breaking sound effects, and the resulting realism. Observe how the three actors play almost all the parts themselves.”
“Yes, if I were to make a radio show, this is exactly what I’d make,” I said.
“Not exactly,” McFee said. “You would incorporate elements of it, but you were more ambitious than that in the past.”
McFee touched his bowler hat yet again and transported us to a studio where a younger version of me was arguing amicably with a friend with whom I’d once made a radio show pilot. Although one of the pilots had aired to a fair bit of acclaim, the show had not been picked up by the network.
My friend was saying, “The network’s not going for it because you want it to be both light and dark. You can’t do that. It has to be one or the other. I challenge you to name one other show in the history of entertainment that’s both funny and serious at the same time.”
“La Vie est Belle,” the younger version of me said, naming one of my favourite movies. “M. A. S. H. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Rome.”
My friend was clearly not convinced, but the conversation reminded me of my earlier ambitions and I felt a pang of regret at not having pursued them more aggressively.
“Man was made for joy and woe,” the spirit of McFee quoted. “And when this we rightly know, through the world we safely go.”
“That’s it exactly,” I said. “That’s what I was trying to tell him. Sting, right?”
“William Blake. Shortly after this conversation you gave up your dream of making your own radio show and fled into management’s squalid embrace.”
“Somebody’s gotta run the place,” I said defensively.
“I’m dead,” McFee said. “I can have no more dreams. You’re still alive. You have no excuse.” McFee touched the tip of his bowler hat yet again.
I jerked awake on board the GO Train. Just a dream, I thought with mixed emotions: a little disappointed to discover that I was not actually supernaturally obligated to propose another radio show, but at the same time relieved that I would not have to risk failing at it a second time.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I spun to find a snowy haired gentleman with large glasses smiling at me from the adjacent seat. “A is for Aardvark,” he said with enviable enunciation.
I gaped at the spectre of Lister Sincl
air, former host of CBC Radio’s Ideas. “Let me guess. The Ghost of Radio Ideas?”
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures,” Sinclair said.
“Are you suggesting that if we only broadcast facts we’re not conveying the whole truth to the Canadian public?” I asked, gamely trying to keep up with the polymath that was Lister Sinclair.
“Ein blindes huhn findet auch mal ein korn,” Sinclair observed.
I gave up trying to keep up with the brilliant polymath that was Lister Sinclair.
“I wrote a great deal of radio fiction in my time,” Sinclair said. “I must say I find its current absence from our airwaves deplorable.”
“It’s not all gone,” I said. “There’s a bit of satire. Some sketch-based comedy. That’s about it, though.”
“What do you propose to do about it?” Sinclair asked.
“Me? What can I do about it? I don’t do production anymore. I manage a broadcast maintenance department, for crying out loud. Even if I were still in production nobody would listen to me. They probably get dozens of proposals every day. Radio drama costs too much anyway, and more cutbacks are coming.”
The train pulled up at Pickering. Lister Sinclair stood. “I tried management once. Didn’t quite work out. Perhaps you have a stronger stomach for it than I did.”
He got off, his manner leaving me with the distinct impression that he was disappointed by my outburst but not particularly surprised. I shrugged the Spirit’s reaction off. I was under no obligation to propose any radio shows just because a couple of ghosts said I ought to.
The lights switched off abruptly. When they came back on I found that I was standing outside radio drama studio 212. Someone concealed within a black cowl stood alongside me, his or her face completely obscured by the garment. I tried unsuccessfully to peer into the hood, but it was impossible to tell who or what dwelled within.
The black-cowled figure that I presumed to be the Ghost of Radio Yet to Come raised a skeletal finger toward studio 212. Or at least, at what had once been studio 212, for both control room and studio lay torn asunder. A slightly older version of me clad in an ill-fitting suit stood in the ravaged control room instructing members of my staff which equipment to keep and which to throw out.
I regarded this future version of myself with horror. Never in a million years would I decide to destroy my beloved radio drama studio. But I knew that if my boss ordered my future self to shut down the studio because the Powers That Be had dictated that it must be so, I would have no choice but to carry out the repugnant order, lest I lose my job.
“Answer me one question, Spirit,” I said. “Is this the shadow of the thing that will be, or is it the shadow of something that may be, only? Make that two questions. Why am I suddenly talking like a character in a Dicken’s novel?”
Still the Ghost pointed his bony finger toward the studio.
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “If someone doesn’t start making more shows with dramatic elements real soon the Powers That Be will decide to shut down studio 212 because future utilization reports will show that it’s under utilized? So I have no choice but to pitch a radio show that will use the studio so that they won’t shut it down. Right?”
The Spirit remained infuriatingly mute.
“I’m not the manager I was,” I said. “And I will not be the manager I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope! . . . I will honour radio drama in my heart, and pitch another project as soon as possible. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the destruction of radio drama within the CBC!”
I awoke writhing uncomfortably in my seat on the Go Train, disturbed not only by the vision of seeing myself preside over the destruction of drama studio 212, but also by having so shamelessly plagiarized Dickens in the previous paragraph. To my enormous relief no spirits sat next to me on the train.
Inspired, I abandoned the spreadsheet I’d been working on, completed my radio show pitch, and submitted it to the Program Development Department that very day.
Unfortunately, the Program Development Department rejected my pitch. Not only that, they shut down the entire radio drama department for good, calling upon my own maintenance department to dismantle Radio Drama Studio 212. I myself turned off the studio lights for the very last time, though it pained me grievously to do so.
For it is sad, but the fact is you can’t reliably glean the future from a mute spirit in a cowl, and even the most well-intentioned of ghosts cannot always successfully influence the affairs of men—they are, after all, ghosts. Their time is past.
And not all endings are happy.
The Scapegoat
The nothingness moved impatiently along in what has been called the Void by some, the Great Neutrality by others, and the Space Between by yet others. It was waiting for the arrival of its nemesis—not a pleasant prospect—and as a result it had become quite irritable. The norm for this unique creature was such an extreme level of irritability that an ordinary mortal would have been hard pressed to discern a difference, but as the creature’s minions would no doubt detect when it returned to its lair, it was decidedly more irritated than usual.
Subtly yet perceptibly a change began to occur in the form of the nothingness. Initially the change consisted of no more than the sudden appearance of two or three electrons, followed by a neutron. After a brief respite, six more neutrons appeared along with four electrons and a proton, and this so enraged the creature that it accidentally produced within itself an entire atom.
The creature was enraged because, apart from the one atom it had accidentally created, its form of nothingness was being altered into another form by an external force. The only force in existence capable of doing this was its nemesis, and this meant that the nemesis was now somewhere nearby.
The altering of form occurred swiftly and resulted in the creation of something with humanoid features. With a certainty buried deep within a rising pit in what was fast becoming a stomach, the creature knew that the form it was beginning to attain was that of the Original. It did not resign itself to this fate as it had never and never in the future intended to resign itself to any fate. It fought with every fibre of its essence against the transformation, mustering every ounce of its will and energy. It applied every trick it had ever learned about shape changing, and every trick relating to the mastering of another’s will, and when neither of these worked, it tried just as hard to apply the tricks learned of a multitude of other vaguely related disciplines. Although master of a much larger repertoire of tricks than in previous meetings with its nemesis, the creature discovered with despair that the outcome of this encounter would be the same as those of the past: the nemesis prevailed, and hovered before the creature, who now bore the Original Form.
“Lucifer,” the nemesis said.
Sullenly, the creature Lucifer faced its nemesis, and with an effort of will so dextrous it could only have been made so with many millennium of practice, it increased its level of sullenness to equal that of its irritation and envy. But as potent as this sullenness became, it did nothing to mar the beauty Lucifer now possessed. No words of description employed by any of the peoples of the universe could even begin to convey to anyone the faintest impression of how beautiful Lucifer now was.
When Lucifer finally saw fit to respond to the nemesis, he said, “You call me Lucifer. I do not like the name, but I suppose there’s nothing I can do about it. You will call me what you will. The question is what shall I call you?”
The nemesis did not reply.
“I shall not call you my God, or simply God, because you are neither of those things to me. I shall not call you my creator because even though that is what you are, I refuse to honour you as such.”
“Why is it important for you to decide what to call me?” the nemesis asked.
Lucifer did not ask his nemesis why he asked a question when the nemesis was sup
posed to know everything. For one thing, he suspected that the nemesis did not know everything, and just pretended to, to feed the conceit that Lucifer felt the nemesis harboured somewhere not so deep inside himself.
Also, Lucifer had asked that question many times before and the response had always been most unsatisfactory: “Now and then it serves my purpose to ask questions,” was a typically frustrating response. So this time Lucifer refrained from asking and said instead, “It is important for me to decide what to call you because I have decided that it is so.”
The nemesis had expected this response, but this did not prevent him from chuckling at it. It is said by some that the nemesis cannot laugh, because, the reasoning goes, laughter is a response mechanism to being surprised in a particular fashion, and if the nemesis does indeed know everything, then he cannot be surprised, and therefore cannot laugh. This is not entirely true, however, because laughter can sometimes be used as a demonstrative device, and in this case the nemesis used it to demonstrate to Lucifer that he was, above all else, good-natured.
As always, Lucifer chose to believe that his nemesis was laughing derisively at him, but he refused to let this deter him from pursuing his subject. “Henceforth I will call you my nemesis, as that is what I have always considered you. It is both what you have chosen to be and all that I will ever honour you as.”
“Fine,” the nemesis said.
Lucifer was offended at what he perceived to be the great underlying condescension inherent in this remark, but he resolved not to show his nemesis how offended he was.
“Why did you summon me?” he asked politely.
There was a considerable pause before the nemesis responded, and even Lucifer was not so insensitive as to be totally unaware of the gravity of concern that now enveloped his nemesis. Fully a year and a half passed in some parts of the universe before the nemesis felt fit to reply.
“There has been a lot of suffering recently,” he said finally.