Waste of Space
Page 17
Matt: No. Definitely not stellar.
[A graphic accompanied by the words “Brought to you by Stellar Acne Cream!” flashes across the bottom of the screen.]
Chazz: [voiceover] Well, I’ve got another surprise for you this evening—
[Suddenly the Laika’s power goes out. Emergency lighting comes on, illuminating the cast members in a sickly, faint glow. Some look panicked, while others look annoyed. They murmur cranky questions—“Again?” and “What now?”—for a few seconds until the lights come back on. They shoot irritable looks at the camera, waiting for Chazz’s explanation.]
[CUT TO: Chazz in the studio, talking to an offscreen producer]
Chazz: What did you do?
DV8 Producer: Nothing! We were waiting for your cue!
Chazz: Then what happened with the power?
DV8 Producer: I don’t know! Quick, say something to them.
[CUT TO: Lünar Lounge]
Chazz: [voiceover, in a cartoonish voice that he’s clearly making up as he goes along] WhoooOOOooa! Guys, hang on a sec, we’re getting some craaaAAAzy readings over here in mission control. Looks like . . . uh . . . those SOLAR FLARES you experienced the other day were only the beginning! There’s now a humongous SOLAR WIND headed your way, and you need to outrun it! In order to do that, you’ll have to jettison some extra weight, so I’m sorry to inform you that TWO intrepit explorers will be leaving us tonight!
Matt: Wait. Two?
Chazz: [voiceover] This week’s biggest wastes of space are . . .
[MUSIC CUE: “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen]
Matt and Kaoru!
The airlock door opens. The Enormous Robotic Arm unfolds itself from the wall (you can almost hear the collective cries of adoration from across the country) and snatches up both Matt and Kaoru in its grasp. Even with twice as many flailing limbs, it drags them off into the airlock, same as before.
But this time, just before the airlock seals shut, Colonel Bacon makes a run for it.
And the door closes behind him.
Snout: Colonel Bacon! [turning to camera] Chazz! Do something!
[CUT TO: Chazz, not bothering to hide his surprised, delighted smile]
Chazz: Sorry, kid! Nothing we can do!
[CUT TO: Lünar Lounge]
Snout: Nothing . . . ?
Nico: I’m sorry, Snout.
Clayton: Me too. I was so looking forward to Pork Chop Night.
Titania: Hey, asshole. Give it a rest.
[Clayton glares at her but says nothing more.]
Snout: [sniffling] Poor little piggy.
Bacardi: Issokay, Snout. I bet he’s going wee, wee, wee all the way home.
Snout: Yeah. [brightening a little] Yeah, I bet he is!
Titania: So is no one concerned about the two human beings who were just discarded, or . . .
Louise: They’ll be all right. I’m more worried about—
BOOM
Except it’s not really a boom. It’s more of a SSHHWUUMMP or a FLLLLRRRX or a WWWWHHHHHSSSSK. The difficulty in defining it lies with the fact that it’s not a noise anyone has ever heard before, and therefore the onomatopoeia doesn’t exist to describe it.
Regardless, it sounds.
The noise is evidently deafening to the cast members; they clap their hands over their ears, squeeze their eyes shut, and scream. Two seconds later, the ship gives a violent lurch, sending them across the floor in a tangle of bodies and shrieks. For the next five seconds, the camera shakes so forcefully it is impossible to see what is happening through the blurred motion.
[CUT TO: Chazz, in the studio]
Chazz: What in the [beeping] [beep] is going on?
[Furious, his attention veers offscreen, most likely aimed at a hapless producer who is expected to know what’s happening. Then, remembering that he is live on national television:]
Chazz: I mean—surprise! Hey Spacetronauts, what do you think of this?
[CUT TO: Lünar Lounge]
Bacardi: I donnlike it!
Nico: I’m bleeding!
Louise: Is this the work of the dark and sinister enemy?
The shaking continues for a few more seconds, then stops—
As every one of the Spacetronauts lifts off the floor.
Their faces are ashen, dumbfounded, awestruck as they eerily drift several inches up into the air, each captivated by the same invisible force. It’s clear that this, whatever it is, is different from anything they’ve experienced onboard the ship up to this point. This is not some cheap trick. This is not a special effect. This is not make-believe.
[CUT TO: Chazz in the studio, a frosted-tip deer in headlights]
[CUT TO: the Lünar Lounge]
One more second of footage flashes onto the screen, that of the remaining six cast members levitating. Then another—
BOOM
SSSHHHWWUUUUMMMP
FLLLLRRRRRRRRRRX
WWWWHHHHHHSSSSSSK
The power goes out.
And the signal is lost.
For good.
Damage Control
WHEN THE FOURTH EPISODE OF WASTE OF SPACE inauspiciously cuts short, viewers are treated to about thirty seconds of dead air, followed by a hastily cued-up rerun of DV8’s sign language competition show, Top Deaf. Meanwhile, the crew back in the studio at DV8 are caught so off guard that the camera is left rolling, though the footage is—luckily for them—unaired.
Item: Transcript of video recording—RAW, UNAIRED FOOTAGE
Source: In-studio camera, DV8
Date: February 18, 2016
Chazz: What do you mean, gone?
DV8 Producer: I mean there’s no more signal! NASAW cut us off!
Chazz: What are you talking about?
DV8 Producer: The power went out, and the signal was lost. We can’t see anything. The screens are blank.
Chazz: I STILL DON’T GET IT!
DV8 Producer: The scientists did . . . something. That double shwumpy noise—it knocked out the power, along with our communications. That may not have been intentional, but their failure to answer our attempts at communication is.
Chazz: What are you saying?
DV8 Producer: I’m saying the scientists have locked the doors, pulled the curtains, given us the finger, and claimed those six kids as their personal lab rats.
Chazz: [raking his fingers through the sail of his hair ] Oh my God.
DV8 Producer: We still don’t know how they did it—
Chazz: [storming off the set] I don’t give a hot goddamn how they did it! I want it fixed! NOW!
* * *
Regrettably, there is no footage of the havoc Chazz then wreaks in the DV8 control room. Eyewitnesses claim that he burst in like something out of a slasher movie, screaming and stomping and pushing stacks of papers to the floor, demanding that the situation be fixed.
This is more or less what the DV8 crew tells Chazz at that point:
The feed is gone. If the cameras are still recording, DV8 has no way of knowing it. They can no longer log on to the main server to see if files are being regularly uploaded. They have no way of knowing whether the ship or the people within it have come to any harm. All they are able to conclude is that the soundstage has not been reduced to a smoking crater, because they are still able to make contact with the satellite phone hidden in the Confessional Closet—though no one is answering, presumably because Jamarkus kept the ringer turned off.
All communication with the NASAW scientists has been severed. The phone line is no longer operational. Emails are being returned with the message “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently, domain name not found.”
NASAW’s social media accounts have been deleted. Their website is still up, but the contact link produces an “Error 404: Page not found” notification.
The sudden dematerialization of NASAW strongly suggests some form of sabotage, but DV8 is more concerned with how to fix it than why it happened. They work feverishly through the night to ree
stablish contact—to no avail. Finally, desperate, a team of staff members hops in a car and begins the eleven-hour drive directly to the soundstage.
DV8 has one advantage, though: they’re the only ones who know that they’ve been shut out. The viewing public remains under the impression that only the live satellite feed has been cut; they know nothing of the total radio silence, the unnervingly blank screens of the DV8 control room.
Luckily for DV8, they think that they have until the next episode airs (a full week later) to figure it out.
Unluckily for DV8, they haven’t the first clue how to do so.
Even more unluckily, they are wrong about having a full week. DV8 couldn’t have known it at the time, but Waste of Space proceeds to collapse in on itself far sooner than anyone could have predicted, coming to its wholly unpredictable conclusion nine full weeks earlier than its anticipated run—
And less than twenty-four hours after the signal goes dead.
The remainder of this report will provide a breakdown, hour by hour, of that final, harrowing day. This is where the evidence provided by Chazz Young ends and where my own evidence, obtained without permission, begins. Paradoxically, you’ll find that my narrative interjections will be fewer and farther between, as I believe it’s imperative for the content to speak for itself.
Because what DV8 doesn’t know is this: the cameras on the ship are still recording. Still recording, and still uploading files to the main server.
After the Shwump, as the double-pseudo sound explosion comes to be called, all nine cameras spark back to life.
From here on out, nothing is aired. Nothing is edited.
But everything is recorded. And everything is evidence.
* * *
Ten seconds after the signal is cut, power is restored. Cameras blink on, one by one.
Item: Transcript of video recording—RAW, UNAIRED FOOTAGE
Source: Camera #1—Airlock
Date: February 18, 2016
Time: 10:23 p.m.
[Both the outer and inner doors of the airlock are closed. The Enormous Robotic Arm is still clutching Matt and Kaoru, who continue to flail and fight to be released from its grip, while Colonel Bacon trots around the small space, squealing.
After about five more seconds, the outer door of the airlock—the one that theoretically leads to the vacuum of space but in actuality leads to the soundstage—opens.
Colonel Bacon makes a run for it.
Two seconds later, a collective cry of surprise goes up among the scientists. The camera in the airlock is situated above the outer door and aimed inward, so nothing outside it can be seen—but it’s clear that whatever’s happening in the soundstage is nothing short of earthshattering. The NASAW scientists are shouting, screaming, and hurling so many instructions at one another—“It worked!” “Shut it down!” “It went through!"—that it’s impossible to make out what the clamor is about.
Meanwhile, in walks Boris, unfazed, with a stun gun in his hand.]
Boris: [yelling over his shoulder at someone on the outside] I don’t care how many world-changing discoveries you’re making with your science crap, I got a job to do and I intend to do it! [turning to the captives] Hold still, kids.
[He calmly electrocutes Matt and Kaoru. They go limp. The Enormous Robotic Arm lowers their lifeless bodies to the floor, and Boris drags them out one by one.
Amid the scientists’ persistent shouting, the outer airlock door closes.]
Source: Camera #7—Confessional Closet
Time: 10:23 p.m.
[Titania is keyed up, talking faster than usual and fighting an unfightable smile.]
Titania: Something happened.
Something . . . warped. We floated. And I felt, for the first time in a long time . . .
Hope?
[Tears are welling up in her eyes. She brushes them away, awestruck as she makes a stammered attempt to describe what she’s experiencing.]
I don’t know how to—it’s like—okay, when I was maybe five years old or so—Lily was three, and the boys weren’t born yet—we all took a trip to Dad’s office one Saturday. There were some papers he forgot to grab before he left on Friday, and the plan was for all of us to go out to dinner in the city after he picked them up. So we went downtown, took the elevator up to his firm’s office, and oohed and aahed over all the blueprints and scale models while Dad grabbed his stuff.
When it was time to leave, I made the executive decision that Lily and I were going to race my parents to the elevator—but I didn’t tell them that. Instead, I grabbed Lily’s hand and ran, pulling her toward the elevator bank, and when it got there, I shoved her in, pushed a button . . . and then watched as the doors closed. A five-year-old and a three-year-old, all alone inside.
The elevator whisked us off.
[She pauses to catch her breath, brushing a clump of sweaty hair off her forehead.]
The thrill wore away real fast. After a few seconds we were huddled together in the corner, clinging to each other for dear life. Like we’d blasted off in a rocket ship, and all we had left was each other. Lily said “I’m scared” and I said “Me too.” Then I said “I’ll protect you,” and she said—
[Titania breaks off, then swallows and continues.]
She said, “I know.”
[She swallows again.]
When the doors opened, we found ourselves on the roof. It was dusk on a cloudy day, it had snowed the night before, and in the fading light, everything was blue. Electric, beautiful blue, washing over us, wrapping us in its glow. We instantly felt calm. The roof was so peaceful. And quiet. Incredibly quiet.
I reached out past the elevator door, scooped up a bit of snow, and dabbed it on the end of Lily’s nose. She laughed.
Then the elevator door closed and we were on our way again. I don’t remember how my parents found us—either we went back down to Dad’s office or we met on another floor—but when they did, all remaining fear washed away. We were safe again. But—
[She cocks her head.]
But here’s the weird thing. As we were walking to the car, when I told my parents that the elevator had taken us to the roof, they gave me the strangest look. And my dad said, and I’ll never forget it:
“Sweetie, that elevator doesn’t go to the roof.”
To this day I don’t know what happened. Maybe I blacked out. Maybe I got so scared, my imagination took over. Or maybe the only way I could protect the both of us was for me to make up a new reality.
Whatever it was, it worked. I don’t know what was really on the other side of that elevator, but I know it wasn’t a dead end. It was a way to keep moving. Forward.
That’s how I’m feeling now. Like a way forward has been opened.
Emily Dickinson says that hope is the thing with feathers.
But I think hope is the thing with a doorway.
* * *
When the cameras in the Lünar Lounge snap back on, the remaining cast members (minus Titania) are in one of those shellshocked holding patterns that people fall into after a catastrophe, as if they’re waiting for someone to tell them what to do—or for something worse to happen. Nico is consoling Snout on the couch, Louise is nervously looking out the Windows Window, and Clayton is woozily getting up off the floor.
Source: Camera #3—Lünar Lounge
Time: 10:24 p.m.
Louise: Hey, look—the little red camera lights turned back on. I think they’re filming again.
Bacardi: [popping up from the floor to wave] Welcome back, America!
Clayton: Hate to break it to you, but America’s stopped watching. [He points to the control panel.] Flatline. Has been since the second blast.
Note: Clayton is referring here to the DV8 network indicator, the one that signifies that the folks in the DV8 control room are at the helm; since they no longer are, the indicator is not on.
Snout: [sniffling] So . . . we’re on our own? That’s not good.
Louise: [brightening] Yes, it is! It’s a go
lden opportunity! Now we can do whatever we want! We can explore the outer limits of the universe! We can go farther than any manned spacecraft ever has before, with no mission control to control us! We can track down Lord Balway Galway and assimilate into his alien civilization and maybe take a stab at the mysterious mating rituals of his home planet!
Nico: I think—
[They all turn to him, as if surprised that he is speaking. Nico seems surprised, too, but also resigned—as if realizing that now that there are only six remaining people on the ship, there’s no more room for him to hide.]
Nico: I think we might be getting ahead of ourselves here. Shouldn’t we talk about how we, um, floated?
Bacardi: Ohshit, that really happened?
Snout: Shoot, I thought I imagined it too!
Louise: I don’t know what you’re all so surprised about. Of course we were bound to experience weightlessness sooner or later.
Clayton: Seriously? Seriously?
Louise: What?
Clayton: I cannot believe you’re falling for this again.
Louise: Hey, you were the one who said that not floating meant we weren’t in space. But now we are floating. So there.
Clayton: We’re not floating anymore.
Bacardi: But we’re still movingandbobbingandswaying—
Louise: Yeah. How do you explain that, Mr. Jerkface Know-It-All?
Clayton: [steaming mad] Because we are in a motion simulator, same as every ride at every theme park in America! All they did was switch it off, drop us into free fall for a few seconds, then switch the damn thing back on again!
[pause]
Snout: I don’t know, buddy. That sounds pretty far-fetched.
[Clayton closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and leaves the room.]