Waste of Space
Page 15
Chazz: Oh, the million dollars is off the table. That’ll have to go to whoever wins. But if you do everything I say, we’ll still throw something your way. Enough to cover a semester or two of tuition.
Jamarkus: But we had an agreement!
Chazz: Did you not hear anything I just said? You’re going to be a national hero! You displayed calmness and took action in the face of a galactic disaster! What space agency wouldn’t want you?
[pause]
Jamarkus: I—
Chazz: Go on Perky’s show. Sell your story. Or you’re not getting a dime of DV8’s money. I’ll personally drag your name through the mud, and you can kiss any hopes of a career as an astronaut goodbye.
[end of call]
* * *
Item: Transcript of video broadcast
Source: The Perky Paisley Show
Date: February 12, 2016
Perky: Welcome, Jamarkus!
Jamarkus: Hi, Perky. It’s a pleasure to be here. [smiles and winks at camera]
Perky: Wow. You’re even more impressive in person. [Puffing out her chest] So don’t keep us in the dark a second longer. What happened up there?
Jamarkus: You reeeeally want to know?
Perky: Yes! All we saw back here on Earth was Clayton about to be eliminated, and then he pulled something that looked like a gun, and it was cuckoo bananas and—and you have to tell us what happened! Don’t make me beg!
Jamarkus: First off, I’d like to clear one thing up: Clayton did not have a real gun. DV8 never would have allowed something so dangerous onboard the ship. What you saw was a cleverly constructed prop Clayton made from duct tape and the aluminum packets of astronaut ice cream. He was just trying to scare everyone and incite a panic—and unfortunately, it worked.
Perky: Until you stepped in to save the day.
Jamarkus: I knew what I had to do, Perky. Unfortunately, it cost me a shot at the million dollars, but I’d never be able to live with myself if I let a little thing like money stop me from saving my friends.
[The audience “awwws.”]
Jamarkus: And as far as I understand it, the ship is back to normal and everyone is safe.
Perky: I certainly hope you’re being compensated for your valiant efforts.
Jamarkus: Yes, thank you for mentioning that—DV8 has generously offered to pay a portion of my tuition to MIT’s Aerospace Engineering program, into which I’ve already been accepted. With any luck, I’ll be back in outer space before you know it!
Perky: [fanning herself ] That’s so . . . so impressive.
Jamarkus: Thank you, Perky.
Perky: Jamarkus, how old are you?
Jamarkus: I turn eighteen next week.
Perky: I see.
Jamarkus: You know I’m gay, right?
Perky: We’ll see about that. [blows a kiss to the audience] And that’s our show, everyone! Until next time . . . My eyes are up here!
* * *
What really happened after Jamarkus was lugged into the airlock is, of course, never aired by DV8 at all.
Item: Transcript of video recording—RAW, UNAIRED FOOTAGE
Source: Camera #4—Lünar Lounge
Date: February 11, 2016
[Note: Although the three camera angles in the Lünar Lounge cover the majority of the space, a number of blind spots still exist.]
Louise: [pounding on the airlock door] Jamarkuuuus!
Titania: First things first. Is anyone hurt? [No one speaks up.] Good. Nico, grab the duct tape and seal up the hole in the hot tub before everything floods. Did anyone see where the other bullet went?
Matt: Up there.
[He points to the ceiling. Titania climbs onto the pool table and squints up. Nico finishes sealing the leak in the hot-tub window and tosses Titania the roll. She tapes up the other hole, then rounds on Clayton, who is still on the floor, panting.]
Titania: What the hell was that? What is the matter with you?
Clayton: [standing, smirking] Oh, relax. No one got hurt. Nothing happened.
Louise: But a lot of things could have happened! We could have depressurized or exploded or imploded or gotten flung into the outer reaches of the universe or any number of other things that can happen when a hole is punched in a ship!
Matt: I personally would rather not be flung into the outer reaches of the universe, if possible? I’d kind of like to get back to my home planet at the end of all this?
Bacardi: Or lessssgotothemoon! The moon has moonshine.
Clayton: [raking his hands down his face] Oh my God. Wake up. Can’t you morons see what’s going on here?
Bacardi: No. What?
Clayton: I really need to say it out loud, don’t I. Fine. And I’ll speak real slow so my words can softly and safely squish into those brains of yours without causing irreparable damage. You ready?
Titania: Clayton, don’t—
Clayton: NONE . . . OF . . . THIS . . . IS . . . REAL.
[pause]
Louise: What do you mean?
Clayton: It’s fake! All of it! This isn’t a real spaceship. It’s Styrofoam and particleboard all staple-gunned and hot-glued together in a veritable bacchanalia of bad crafting. Think about it—don’t you find it strange that there is a specific button to solve each of the problems we’ve come up against? Just like in a video game?
Snout: Yeah, but—
Clayton: Asteroid attack—bam, there’s a joystick-trigger weapon to blast them out of the sky. Loss of equilibrium? Bam—lever to restabilize the ship. Enemy sighting? Bam—shoot a flare at them.
Snout: But Jamarkus was the one who did all that stuff. How could he have known about all that?
Clayton: Yes, how could he have known? Let’s all think critically for a moment and see if we can come up with an answer.
[Their shoulders all slump at once in a collective epiphany.]
Nico: Could Jamarkus have been a plant?
Titania: If he was, that means all those emergencies were scripted, and he knew they’d happen ahead of time.
Louise: [lip trembling] But he pushed the buttons.
Clayton: Yeah. But DV8 or NASAW or whoever’s controlling what happens on this ship—they’re the ones who execute the effects whenever a button is pushed.
Snout: Huh?
Clayton: Don’t you know how movie sets work? When you see an actor push an elevator button, that elevator isn’t functional. Crew members open the doors manually. Same thing is going on here. Someone out there is watching everything we do and pulling the strings as we do it. Lord knows where we really are, but I’ll bet you dollars to cronuts it’s somewhere on Earth, not hundreds of miles above it.
[Titania pulls Clayton aside, out of earshot.]
Titania: [whispering] Why are you doing this?
Clayton: [whispering back] I was perfectly willing to go along with this charade while I still had a chance of sticking around until the end, but what’s the point now? If my uncle’s going to eliminate me, why should I keep playing by his rules? Why keep pretending? For their sake? [He makes a disgusted gesture toward the others.]
Titania: Yes, for their sake. We should be keeping things as calm as possible. We don’t know for sure if there are medics standing by, so if someone has a panic attack—
Clayton: You want to keep your head in the sand, go for it. But I think it’s time to stir things up. Time for a wake-up call. For Christ’s sake, I shot a hole in the ship! [He points to the duct-taped spot on the ceiling.] Ever heard of instantaneous decompression? If we were really in space, we would have been turned into freeze-dried space husks in a billionth of a second—
Snout: [interrupting them] But how can it be fake? We put on spacesuits! We blasted into the sky!
Clayton: [turning back to face the others] Then we should be in zero gravity. Why aren’t we floating?
Louise: It’s artificial gravity, dumb-dumb. Weren’t you listening to the scientists?
Clayton: Oh yes, let’s talk about these [air-quoting] “scient
ists.” From NASAW, which is not the same as NASA. Who were those people? They sure as hell didn’t shoot us into space, so what was their deal? Were they actors? Or are they still watching us, experimenting on us?
Louise: [close to tears] They were not actors! They were scientists! And of course we’re in space—how else do you explain the stars? And what about the fully functional airlock? What about the asteroid attack, and the dark and sinister enemy?
Clayton: [laughs] You want a dark and sinister enemy? That’s the one thing out of all of this that’s real. And his name is Chazz Young. When I get back home, I’m going to destroy him.
Louise: You’re lying. You’re just doing this to piss everyone off, and even though it’s working, I still know what I know. We’re in space.
Clayton: We’re on Earth!
[Titania puts her fingers in her mouth and blows a whistle.]
Titania: Everyone. Calm. Down.
[Clayton studies her.]
Clayton: Oh, okay. I see what’s happening here. Now that Captain America’s gone, you think you can be the new leader of this ship. Well, I’ve got news for you, sweetheart. [He reaches behind his back again—then frowns. He does a quick scan of the floor.] Where’d it go?
Matt: Where’d what go?
Clayton: The gun!
Snout: [pointing at a spot offscreen] You dropped it right there on the floor. Made a real loud clang, I coulda sworn.
Louise: I heard it.
Bacardi: Metoo.
Titania: [to Clayton] Wait. You don’t have it?
Clayton: No! [looking around the room] Which one of you fuckers has it?
[silence]
Clayton: [with a bitter laugh] That’s the way you want to play it? Fine by me. Let the goddamn games begin.
[He storms out of the lounge, leaving everyone floored.]
Nico: Guys, seriously, who took the gun?
[silence]
Nico: Someone must have taken it.
[silence]
* * *
Later that night, Titania and Nico meet up in the Confessional Closet again.
Item: Transcript of video recording—RAW, UNAIRED FOOTAGE
Source: Camera #7—Confessional Closet
Date: February 11, 2016
[Titania is already inside and sitting on the floor, wide-awake, when Nico opens the door.]
Titania: Hi. Here to endlessly speculate about who now has the power to shoot us as we sleep?
Nico: Hell no. If I don’t think about something else, I’m gonna lose it.
[Alarmed, Titania beckons him into the room. Nico sits down across from her and folds his hands over his knees. They are shaking.]
Nico: I couldn’t sleep. I mean, I can never sleep. But especially not now. All of us crammed into that room, trapped, and any one of them could . . .
Titania: Shh. Nico, look at me. Are you having trouble breathing?
[Nico nods. Titania leans forward and puts her steady hands over his.]
Titania: Then just listen to me. Close your eyes.
[He does.]
Titania: I’m going to tell you something that’s going to help, but it’s a dumb story. Don’t laugh.
Nico: Okay.
Titania: When I was nine, our family dog died. My brothers and sister and I were absolutely wrecked. Cried for days. Totally inconsolable. Finally, after a week, my parents sat us all down and told us the truth: that Snuffy had gone on a magical journey to Planet Tailwag.
[Even in his panic, Nico snickers.]
Titania: I told you not to laugh!
Nico: [flattening his smile] Sorry.
Titania: At that age I must have known that what they were saying was a load of crap, but still—it was comforting to me. I just loved the idea of a planet full of dogs. Where there are streams to swim in and grass to roll around in and dirt to dig. Where they can do whatever they want, all the time.
[She bites her lip.]
For a long time after that, I became obsessed with the idea that when animals and people die, they don’t go to heaven, or hell, or into a hole in the ground—they go to a real place somewhere else in the universe. Whenever I was afraid—like on our camping trips when we heard something rustling in the woods at night—I’d think about my afterplanet, and then things never seemed so bad or so scary. It was the only thing that comforted me after . . . what happened.
[Nico opens his eyes. He is breathing more evenly. His hands have stopped shaking. But now Titania is lost in thought herself, her voice getting raspier as she continues.]
It’s not like I didn’t know what I was doing. I knew I was deliberately disobeying my parents. We’d had such a nice time until then—one of the best camping trips ever. I didn’t want to get into a fight about it, but they just made me so mad. I hated being told no. And to forbid me from going out and hiking on my own, when I’d done it so many times before? It didn’t make any sense to me. I thought they were being unreasonable. I mean—I’d never hiked a trail as dangerous as the Notch before. But I thought I could do it. I was sure of it.
So I disobeyed them.
And maybe if it had just been me, that would have been excusable. Risking my own safety is bad, but it’s—
[She presses her fingers to her forehead.]
I was angry. I wasn’t thinking straight. I grabbed my pack and hers too, and told her she was coming with me. She didn’t want to. But I made her. I told her we had to prove a point, that we were old enough to make our own decisions, that we didn’t need Mommy and Daddy to tell us what to do anymore.
[By this point she is punching each word out of her mouth and through her welling tears with a great deal of effort, as if it physically hurts to speak.]
I slipped. The trail snaked alongside the edge of a tall bluff, and I lost my balance. I reached out for something to grab onto—and that something was Lily.
We fell.
The scar from the branch that I was impaled on—it looks worse than it was. I was out of the hospital in a few days. But Lily hit her head. Hard. And drifted into a coma.
It was her room, in the ICU, that I remember the most. All that staring down at the floor that I did—avoiding eye contact with my parents, the doctors, the nurses. That was the calming blue. That’s where the beeping was, the machines that were keeping her body alive.
The beeping didn’t stop, not on its own. It had to be stopped. I wasn’t there when they did it, wasn’t asked to be part of the decision.
So in my head, it’s still beeping.
[There is a long pause. Nico is staring at her, almost in tears himself. He swallows several times before whispering:]
Nico: I’m so sorry, Titania.
[She sniffs]
Titania: Not as sorry as I am.
* * *
The Clayton/gun issue remains very much unresolved, but Chazz seems to be of the opinion that time heals all wounds, judging by the way he imperviously and obliviously charges ahead with the next challenge without bothering to fix the previous one.
Item: Transcript of audio recording
Source: Chazz’s cell phone
Date: February 15, 2016
Chazz: Hey, nerd! Got time for a brainstorming sesh?
NASAW: About the gun? Good, I’m glad you’re willing to discuss—
Chazz: Nah, don’t worry about that.
NASAW: I beg your pardon?
Chazz: It’ll all work itself out in the end.
NASAW: That seems unlikely.
Chazz: And yet it’s the plan I’m going with.
NASAW: I see. [somewhat gleefully] Then—are you scared that the kids have figured out they’re not in space? Worried they’re going to ruin the show?
Chazz: Nah, that’s no big deal. We can hide all their skepticism with editing. As far as America is concerned, our beloved Spacetronauts still 100 percent believe they’re 100 percent galactic.
NASAW: Oh. Then why are you calling?
Chazz: Got a fun little challenge for you. The Enormous Robotic
Arm is still super popular, but we’re running the risk of it growing stale. We need to punch it up next week. Any thoughts?
NASAW: No! We didn’t want to use the damned thing in the first place!
Chazz: I’m thinking we could play a song while it grabs the screaming children. “Another One Bites the Dust,” maybe?
NASAW: You can hear yourself, right? Or are you merely spouting words as fast as your mutated brain can form them?
Chazz: Then again, musical accompaniment doesn’t quite carry with it enough of a sense of danger. There needs to be something more. Something hazardous.
NASAW: You already pelted them with asteroids, flung them around the ship, permitted a loaded gun onboard—
Chazz: Exactly, so we can’t repeat ourselves. It needs to be something new. Something worse.
NASAW: It can’t get much worse.
Chazz: [gasps] I just thought of something! Something that’ll work both with our Instigating Plot Points this week and as a bonus for the elimination!
NASAW: What?
Chazz: A solar storm!
NASAW: How in the name of Copernicus do you know what a solar storm is?
Chazz: I saw it in a movie once. So how about this: a solar flare is ejected from the sun and travels toward the spaceplane. First we crank up the heat real high. Then we set a bunch of shit on fire—
NASAW: [overlapping] A solar flare would obliterate the ship altogether—
Chazz: Then, when they realize they have to outrun the solar wind—
NASAW: [overlapping] Solar winds travel at one million miles per hour. They’re not something you can simply outrun—
Chazz:—they’ll be told they have to get rid of some extra weight in order to escape, and we’ll do a surprise double elimination! Like liposuction, but with human beings instead of fat! It’s brilliant!
NASAW: It’s ludicrous. None of that makes any sense, scientifically speaking.
Chazz: You don’t make any sense, scientifically speaking.
NASAW: Yes I do!
Chazz: Besides, no one’s gonna check up on whether or not it can really happen.