Far-out Show (9781465735829)

by Hanna, Thomas

  Gopgop got the unspoken signal that it was his job to distract Parbam for a moment so he asked, “Have you been working as a special representative of the governors for long? It must be an interesting job.”

  One of the two hovering zerpies behind Parbam’s back slowly revolved halfway. Then it disintegrated there in midair, raining down a pile of powder as all that was left.

  Without looking behind her Parbam said, “That’s was your second violation. There will be consequences for both of you.” She marched to the door - that opened for her and closed behind her.

  “Flinflup, she could even control the door without seeming to pay it any heed. That Sproingy thing’s a must,” Uldene said. “We have to learn all about it and get one at almost any cost.”

  “While we worry about when and in what form our punishment will come. The governors aren’t known for making idle threats or promises,” Gopgop said. He looked unhappy and unwell.

  Chapter 22

  Delmus and Ackack sat back in their chairs in the A.D.U. office looking at the view-screens where several poor quality images of various early stages of human pornographic film actions were displayed.

  Ackack said, “It's taken the techs a long time to decipher enough of the weak signals to put this much video together.”

  “Why are they covered like that? What are they doing?”

  “The chief tech thinks they're actually un-covered and this is their porno,” Ackack replied.

  “That's what they look like under their coverings? Ugh. That'd take a lot of getting used to. But what are they doing? Where did that part come from? I didn't see it at first.”

  “Apparently they do it, well, in a very different way. It's hard for us to even imagine it since they're bodies are so weird that they can do things we simply don’t because we can't.”

  “Which one has the egg come out?”

  “We haven't figured that out. The point right now is that this means the challenge to get physical with a creature on the other planet simply isn't possible.”

  “When do they rub their bellies together to make it happen?” Delmus asked.

  “They don't. At least not in these.”

  “Then how does it work?”

  “We haven't figured that out,” Ackack admitted. “The thing to decide is whether to let the contestants know about this so they won't try to do anything with one of the aliens.”

  “Of course not. It obviously can't happen but it might be gross and diverting but still amusing, to watch them try. If it gets the contestant in trouble with the locals that means even more thrills for our audience.”

  “I hoped you'd agree. I'll tell the techs to keep the Bang-Boom Shows Certificated guys in the dark about this too.”

  Delmus pushed some buttons on the control panel and brought up the image of The Far-Out Show hostess winking at the camera. He freeze-framed that.

  Ackack looked up and noted, “Yeah, the show launched well. Maybe too well. We made a huge profit on the first airing and its now many repeats.”

  Delmus muttered to himself louder than he realized, “You know, I really find this hostess interesting. She’s kinda cute and she works for us so maybe...”

  “Focus, Delmus. Our success with the first episode means we'll be reduced to bitter tears if we can't keep that money train rolling along. We need follow-up. And soon.”

  “How much material do we have and how far can we stretch it?

  “Not enough however much it is. The audience appetite is vast even if it is frustratingly demanding and fickle. But there's money to be made and influence to be had so we'll do anything we can to keep them numbed into compliance. The techs have a new segment spiced up and ready to show. Let's see what they did.”

  Ackack tapped a button on the console and Nerber appeared on a screen section talking with street-walker Ipanema on the park bench. It was obvious that they were not speaking the words that were being broadcast and that this has been cut together by less-than-seamless editing. Edited, Altered, and Augmented by A.D.U. appeared at the bottom of the screen.

  “You looking for to maybe lay an egg, Bub?” Ipanema asked in the Ormelexian version of a sultry tone.

  “What an odd and strange thing to ask,” Nerber replied. “Of course. What purple-blooded male of our kind is not ready to do that any time it can be done?”

  “It's all just words until you make me want to do it with you. Can you do that? You have to tell me if you do if I ask or you cannot take me. I know the rules.”

  “What was the question again?”

  Ipanema rolled her eyes but shrugged and thrust out her bosom saying, “Are you playing games with me, Bub?”

  With a shrug, Nerber thrust out his own chest.

  “This is a lead up to it game among my kind. What do your kind like? You are looking to get physical yes?” she asked.

  Nerber threw up his hands in delight. “Yes, be pleasing to have us get physical together.” He stepped up and wiggled as if rubbing bellies with her. To his confusion she stepped back.

  “First you must make it worth my while.”

  “What will make it worth this while of yours?”

  “Cold hard cash of course. This is not a charity event.”

  “Ah, cash is your money. I get your money and give it to you and you give what to me?”

  “I give you relief from the pressure for all the audience to watch and have their fantasies about,” she said, again in that Ormelexian version of a sultry tone of voice.

  “Sadly is a problem. I am a stranger with none of your money.”

  “No money, no belly rubbing together.” She waddled off down the street in her too high heels calling back, “Weirdo aliens need to learn how things work here before they try to come here and pass. We should run them all out of town or hunt them down in violent bloody fights.”

  The screen image freeze-framed in a tight shot of Ipanema's rump. Ackack tapped a button and the screen went blank.

  Delmus said, “It must be better than the raw feed but I don't know if it'll be okay.”

  “This is a new idea. An ambitious and clever tech's suggestion but something I’ve agreed to think through thoroughly.”

  “Explain.”

  “We edit bits of the same visuals together over and over but in different sequences and combinations, add whatever talk-talk we want to each, and have different sequences. The audience won't care that it’s the same visuals repeated as long as we keep the talk-talk sexy - and new.”

  “I like that idea up to a point. We need to avoid the mistake other companies made of overdoing it though and especially of ever repeating exactly the same video sequences. We get them used to reedited stuff, then switch over to new material made right here and they'll accept it as if it were new material from far away. If we don't mark it as from far away it's not a false claim. So from now on to obey the law we don't label its source when we air any of it, then we don't have to change that label, which some would notice and question.”

  “This is why it's so exciting working with you, Delmus! We stretch the product to maximize our benefits but do it without sharing those. The Bang-Boom guys' contract requires them to supply footage and a first edit. Anything after that’s our call. They can't change it, stop it, or claim any further profit from it.”

  “Beyond the fact that if they produce a hot show we toss them a few bonuses to stay in business with them until they join the long list of has-beens.”

  “This is why we're bosses. We know how to handle all the sides.”

  “We use the producers, we use the governors, and we also use the audience - all in the name of serving them all.”

  “We're such good guys,” Ackack said with a smirk. “The bill for damage to the space ship won't leave the Bang-Boom Shows guys much but we'll reduce that - in return for the rights to their next shows at bargain prices. That seems generous to me.”

  “How could anyone not love us?” Delmus asked with a shrug of mock confusion.

 
; “Or not trust us completely?”

  Both laughed.

  A musical tone sounded. Ackack checked a small panel on the control panel and said, “How convenient. We’re getting a page from Whizybeam right now. Are you ready?”

  Delmus straightened in his chair and put on his most serious and concerned expression, then nodded. Ackack touched a button and Hasley appeared on a central section of the view-screen. The background showed that he was in the producers’ office.

  “Good, we have some things to say to you, Hasley,” Ackack said in his most in-charge tone.

  “Me first,” Hasley said. “I have bad news.”

  “Always with the whining. Get over it,” Delmus said.

  Hasley went on as if he didn’t hear that. “Now that we’ve had a chance to get over our shock and also get the first episode and the other material to you, let me catch you up on some things that happened because of your ship’s faulty, untested equipment.”

  “Spare us the unfounded complaints. Everything on Whizybeam was expertly tested and in full working order when she was turned over to you,” Ackack said.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Hasley said. “Then there are records about the testing so when we raise objections with the governors they can verify your statements. And yes, we know it’s their ship, only on loan to you so you could supply it to us for the real testing.”

  “It got you there to be heroes as the first to do what you’re doing so be glad and stop wasting our time,” Ackack insisted. “If nobody died things are working okay.”

  “But one of us did die,” Hasley said.

  “Bring back his or her body!” Delmus shouted.

  “No. Not going to happen.”

  “That wasn’t a polite suggestion, that was an order, Hasley.” Delmus couldn’t believe he was hearing this.

  “Talk to those who supplied the defective transport system. Oh wait, that would be you. Then listen up, responsible ones. Contestant Zipper was disassembled for transport by your system but it didn’t reassemble him either at the planet surface or back in the transport room. Based on his scream, he died fully aware that he was lost and maybe in terrible agony.”

  “Did you record the scream?” Ackack asked quickly. “Is there visual of him disassembling?”

  “Yes to the audio; no to the video. At least the disastrous part. That happened after he was out of view of the operator and somewhere in the void,” Hasley said calmly.

  “Is the scream good quality stuff?” Delmus asked eagerly.

  “Yes, in both senses. It recorded cleanly and it’s either stomach churning or delightful, depending on your point of view about gore and horrendous endings.”

  “He was the only one lost though, right?” Ackack asked.

  “So far. We still have to bring back every contestant and zerpy that transported down and it’s the same equipment with no obvious flaw that we can detect and correct since, distressingly, we can’t find the details of its programs and function specs in the stored information,” Hasley said.

  Delmus went into take-charge mode. “Okay, we’ll deal with the paperwork. That includes notifying the governors. Don’t you try to tell anyone, that’s our job. It was Zipper, right?”

  “Correct,” Hasley replied.

  “Now to the important matter of why you’ve sent us so little show material. You’ve had plenty of time. What we’ve received so far is only about one contestant. What’s wrong?”

  “Things aren’t what we were told they would be like here.”

  “Sib sog, our hearts are breaking for you,” Ackack said.

  Hasley went on as if there had been no interruption, “So we have to make adjustments and those take time. From the early moment when it was clear that the information and the equipment supplied by you is unreliable we’ve been proceeding with great caution. Rashness leads to disaster. We should declare that an official adage for survivors.”

  “We’re under pressure here. There are official questions about why we haven’t aired more episodes,” Delmus said.

  “You’re welcome,” Hasley said with a little nod.

  “What?” Delmus mentally reviewed what he remembered being said to see if he had missed something.

  “I’ve provided you with the correct response to all questions so of course you’re thankful,” Hasley said. “In two words, technical difficulties. Slightly longer version, the conditions of making and transmitting the material in a far place with conditions unlike any our kind have previous experience with slows things up but we’re doing the best we can.”

  “That doesn’t convince us so it’s not very good, is it?” Ackack said with a sneer.

  “But what practical difference does your demand for some other answer make when all I do is repeat that, Ackack? Are you going to come here and take over the production yourself? Are you going to send up your tough guys to smack us around? Oh wait, we’re far away in the only vessel built to get here so we’re out of reach.” Hasley leaned forward and said, “And now out of touch.” The screen went blank.

  “We’ll get him back and make it clear who’s in charge,” Delmus said as he reached for his keyboard.

  “Don’t bother. We can hail them but we can’t force our message onto their view-screen if they don’t allow it,” Ackack said. “There’s also the problem that he’s right. There’s not much we can do directly to affect them. It’s a new situation and we’re all feeling our way through it.”

  “Every person and zerpy out there has an implanted self-destruct unit. We have the codes to activate any or all of those whenever we want to from the comfort of our chairs.”

  “A final solution but not much good unless we have to back away from the whole complicated but profitable show. They shouldn’t even know about those units so you can’t threaten to use them without giving away a real bottom-most lineage secret – and focusing their techs on ways to neutralize them.”

  “Why does everything have to be complicated?” Delmus asked.

  “Because if it were simple, guys like us wouldn’t get paid to find ways to work around the knots. The simple life is boring and not very profitable. Hardly worth living.”

  “You always see through the annoyances to what’s important. What do you make of what we’re expecting but not receiving? Starting with the zerpies that are on the planet. Each should be sending the records of everything it detects with each upload to the producers but bypassing Whizybeam’s systems and coming directly to us. We had a topnotch tech sneak in the programs to allow those zerpies to do that without their own awareness systems detecting what they are doing. We’re only received material from the zerpy Wilburps, not from any of the others that should be on the planet with the two other contestants. And hardly anything at all from Wilburps. What’s the problem and can we fix it?”

  “Too bad they’re all too far away so we can’t pull them over and do a thorough inspection. It seems to me that there are at least five possible answers, plus those that include two or more of the factors.”

  Delmus counted them off on his fingers as Ackack listed them.

  “Nerber, the contestant that we’ve been hearing from, could be doing something, deliberately or not, that’s interfering. Our hired expert may have made critical mistakes in the program or messed things up in some way when he secretly put it into the zerpy. The zerpy itself isn’t functioning as it should for some reason. The producers have detected that happening and messed with it. Or the ninxy equipment on Whizybeam is messing us up while it’s also doing that to them. Oh, or the conditions in that area of space are, as they’ve been whining, so different that things don’t work the way we expected and designed our equipment for.”

  “That’s a mess of reasons. I ran out of fingers on my hand trying to keep count,” Delmus said.

  “There are other questions too. This long-long distance business is full of holes. Like, we’re paying a crew member on Whizybeam to spy for us but there hasn’t been a single coded message from him so far.”r />
  “I’ve checked for those but nothing. Also we should be secretly hearing all the talk-talk between everybody on the ship but that’s being scrambled by some unauthorized onboard system. Our techs here can tell me what’s being done but they say it’s a system that works on the sensors right there on the ship that’s responsible. It’s garbaged even before it’s preserved so what gets recorded can’t be unscrambled later. But we can’t protest them using that system without admitting we had the secret sensors installed to spy on their every word. We swore we didn’t and wouldn’t do that so admitting we lied won’t help in dealing with them.”

  “Which adds up to or boils down to the fact that we don’t know how much of what we want to believe we’re keeping secret from those on the other side of the snaggiewarp they actually know all about and have taken steps to interfere with.”

  “It’s enough to tempt one to do things on the strict up and up. No secrets, no lies, no tricks,” Delmus said. Then he gave a snorting laugh. “What would be the challenge in that?”

  “The challenge is to keep the tricks and lies secret. Like having a zerpy on Whizybeam that they don’t know is onboard.”

  “Ah, the secret that we’ve code named Zink. A zerpy that will stay undetected and inactive until we decide we need it to inform us about the conditions on the ship or maybe even to take control of its systems,” Delmus said.

  “We paid Foxpat a pile of money to prepare that so it could monitor the systems and feed in override commands if we order it to. This had to be a one-of-a-kind, matched to the details of Whizybeam’s systems since she’s the only ship like that they’ve built until now. Only a guy with insider information on the ship’s design could program such a zerpy. In a pinch it may be our best investment though.”

  “A solution to some problems but one that introduces a whole list of potential new ones by its very actions though.”

  Ackack sighed, “My head aches from trying to keep track of all the things of the ship and in the various zerpies that might have any unintended effects on one another.”