by IGMS
"I have an emo-chip," Pat said. "It's fantastic. You should get one."
"Never. It's like fast food in the 90s. The meat lobbyists had everybody's hands tied, so everybody was eating ten times more meat than they needed."
"Beef, it's what's for dinner," Pat said.
"Exactly. This emo-chip thing is the same. Everybody has their glands jacked into the TV so their desensitized asses can still cry at Old Yeller."
"Dude," Pat said. "I cried like a baby."
Herb slapped the bar. "But the ETTV shows, they make me feel like things are good again."
"Things always sucked," Pat said. "The good ol' days never existed."
"Don't give me that," Herb said. "Mato's characters face real problems. All the Kabuki do. But at least they talk to each other. Face to face. They eat food that they grow in their own rooftop gardens. They walk places. They go fishing. They look at the damn sky from time to time."
"They're closer to the middle of the galaxy," Pat said. "More to look at. I'd look at the sky, too."
"The point is, ETTV feels real in a way that none of this does. The Kabuki put real love and honesty into their TV shows, and then we just twist the whole culture. You know how the Kabuki tie one of their sleeves up to show that they're off work for the day?"
"Sure."
"The kids have turned that into some kind of fad. All it means now is, 'I'm lazy and proud of it. I don't want to do my homework.' It's disgusting."
Pat shook his head. "You can't help how you feel, I guess. But, as your friend, I think you should get off your pedestal and come down here on planet Earth with the rest of us. We're all still trying. 4-D TV didn't take our souls away. If you want a real life, make it."
Herb hit the bar again. "It's not that simple!"
"Why?"
"Because . . ." Herb held up his phone. "Because I'm a coward."
"You're about to get married again. You need to stop making your families miserable."
"I can't. It's built into me."
"That's a cop out," Pat said.
"Go to hell, Pat. You're just my agent."
Pat downed the last of his drink and stood up. "I wonder if TimeWarner knows they just signed the biggest whiner in the universe to play their hero." Pat began to walk away, then turned around and said, "In the morning, when I sober up, I'm going to kick myself for talking to a client like this, but here it is: You need to grow some guts. Rejoin the human race."
Herb stared ahead at the bottles and waved Pat away. An hour later, Herb left the bar and paid a cab to drive him around in the rain. May called him twice to ask how the meeting went. He silenced both her calls.
Herb told the cabby to keep driving, even if Herb fell asleep, just keep moving. After all, he could afford it.
Herb began recording a week later. Sitting in the foam booth, listening to beeps that told him when to come in, Herb did what he always did these days: he dug deep and faked it.
When Mato's character told his son that it was a man's duty to own up to his mistakes with humility and the willingness to set it right, Herb got applause from the directors. When Mato's character hugged his daughter and told her that he was proud of her, that he would always be proud of her, no matter what she did, Herb actually made the sound tech cry. But it was just Herb's vocal chords and experience doing the work, pure instrumentation. Inside, Herb was bitter. He couldn't imagine saying those words to anyone, not to May, not to Triela.
Life would be so much easier if there were a script, and someone on the screen to show him how to deliver the lines.
After the session, Herb ducked into the bathroom and drained his flask in a series of long gulps. He leaned his head on the mirror and tried to imagine Mato, there, behind his eyes.
"You make it look so easy," he told his reflection.
On the second day of recording, Herb's phone went off while he was in the recording booth doing a scene. He quickly silenced it, apologized to the director for leaving it on, and continued. In the early days, he would have gotten reamed, but this director just laughed it off, even made jokes to keep Herb from feeling embarrassed. Herb guessed he could get away with anything these days -- the brink of superstardom had its perks. A moment into the next take, the phone vibrated in his pocket again. When the take was over, Herb pulled the phone out again, turned the vibration off and put it back in his pocket.
Hours later, in the lounge, Herb saw that he had eleven missed calls and one text message. All from Rebecca. Herb's stomach knotted up as he poked the screen to pull up the text. Calls were easy to ignore, you just didn't pick up. But there was something about texts -- short, easy, unassuming texts -- that just beckoned you.
"You shit," the text said. Herb stopped eating his fiber bar. "Your daughter needed a father today. There are no words, Herb. No words."
Herb's whole body felt cold and itchy. He leaned forward onto the little bamboo table, crushing the fiber bar in his hand.
Triela had needed him. Why?
Herb wracked his brain. Was it her graduation? No, it was the wrong time of the year for that. Besides, Triela was still only sixteen. Her birthday? No, her birthday wasn't until June. June -- Was it the twenty-fourth or the twenty-sixth? He knew it was an even number. He couldn't believe he had forgotten it. He tried to picture signing her birth certificate. He could remember the greenish paper clearly, the decorative trim, but the middle numbers of the date kept swirling in his memory, fading from 24 to 26.
Maybe Triela was pregnant. Maybe she was getting married young and needed his consent. That seemed impossible, but was it? A fatherless girl in southern California getting pregnant -- it was almost a cliché it was so common.
He read the text message again. Herb didn't know how he felt or even how he should feel. He wanted to call Triela, but he honestly didn't know what he would say to her. He picked up his phone, scrolled through the contacts and stared at the little portrait of Triela. She was about fourteen, wearing a party hat, and looking like she couldn't wait to get the stupid thing off her head. It seemed like only a day ago. Herb knew people said that all the time, but really.
Herb's finger hovered over the call button for a full minute. It felt like there was a wall of steel between his finger and the screen of his phone. How could he offer her support, or help, or advice? He would have to apologize for so many things, wade through a laundry list of grievances before even getting to "hello." And if he did manage to make it through all that, he would just disappoint her again. Sooner or later. Like Old Faithful, it was a matter of time.
With a growl, Herb locked his phone and slammed it down on the table. Something crunched. He looked at the phone, at the spider-web crack in the screen. He sighed, then absently lifted the broken phone to his ear.
"Triela," Herb said. "Whatever you're going through, you don't need me." He took a deep breath and tried to keep the tears in his eyes from falling down his cheeks. If they fell, that meant he was crying, and he couldn't have that. Just couldn't.
"Hang in there, girlie," he told the broken phone.
Herb spent the weekend in his apartment getting drunk, except on Saturday when May came over to make him a recipe she had found on a blog -- smoked gouda cheese straws. They were more or less long Cheez-Its, but Herb ate every last one while he and May watched an old Kurosawa movie and talked about May's job as a personal trainer and traceur. In the gym, she had done a pop-gainer-kong combo that looked fake it was so perfect. Herb watched the video on May's phone at least ten times, and then fell asleep with her on the couch. All Herb could think the whole time was that he didn't deserve her, that he wished he was selfless enough to tell her to run, quick, and marry someone else. Someone like Mato.
Sunday, Herb stayed indoors and played an improvised drinking game called "Think About Triela, Take a Shot." He almost didn't hear Pat's call to his laptop Monday morning -- his replacement phone was due to arrive in the mail this afternoon.
"They need you at the TimeWarner building," Pat's message
said. "I'm not sure what's going on, but from their voices I'd say it's hitting the fan. I don't care what you're doing, get over there. Call me when you get this."
Pat sounded terrified. Herb threw on some clothes and was inside a cab in ten minutes.
Shark-Man was sitting at the head of the table alone when Pat and Herb entered the conference room. His tie was loosened to the point of falling off and he looked like he hadn't shaved. There was no hint of his gleaming white smile.
"Herb," Shark-Man said. "Sit down."
Herb's mind reeled. Had he done something when he was drunk? Made a phone call or something? He honestly couldn't remember.
"Pat, wait outside," Shark-Man continued.
Pat looked startled and nodded to Herb as if to say, "Dear God, fix this."
With Pat gone, the room felt huge and cold. Shark-Man opened his mouth a few times before anything came out, and when it did, the words came in disbelieving clumps.
"We. Are. Facing. The extinction of. The entire ETTV industry."
The words hung in the air.
"What do you mean?" Herb finally asked.
"We got a call from SETI this morning. Said we'd want to take a look at their newest acquisitions. So they streamed the footage over."
Shark-Man pushed play on a remote. The screen on the wall behind him lit up. It was a Kabuki city square. Mato was holding a microphone and standing on a large wooden platform. In front of him, stretching for what seemed like miles, were Kabuki citizens, every last one of them holding a candle. It looked like the ocean at sunset. Mato was speaking into the microphone, his gaze steady, his hair blowing in the wind. The crowd was silent, except for occasional wails and sobs that drifted into Mato's microphone.
Herb had never seen Mato so passionate, so full of emotion and strength.
"What is this?" Herb asked. "What is he saying? Is this part of a show?"
"No," Shark-Man said. "No, it isn't. It's a candlelight vigil. We received this footage last night. The Kabuki are gone, Herb. They're all dead."
The words were like a cold wind. "You're going to have to explain that to me."
"In a way," Shark-Man said, "it shouldn't be any big surprise. It takes light-years for their signals to reach us. We're seeing their past, so the chance that they were still living happily and peacefully on their home planet didn't seem very likely. But we didn't know they would decide to kick the bucket in the middle of a season. It's all our worst fears come true."
Herb was numb. "What happened?"
"Damn star blew up. They had forty-one hours warning before the radiation baked their planet to a cinder."
Herb stood up. All he could think about were rooftop gardens. Squat beautiful trees. The Kabuki sky, so much closer to the center of the galaxy, alive with color as the light of a billion stars spun its way through the clouds. The Kabuki had been Herb's road map, his reference point for the way life should be. And now they were gone. Worse than that, they had been gone for thousands, perhaps millions of years. Like the voices on a laugh track, they were all dead; only their ghosts remained.
"I don't understand," Herb said. "Their technology wasn't that different from ours. Wouldn't they have had some kind of warning?"
"If it was their own star, sure. It wasn't. Not even the next star over. They were --"
"-- closer to the center of the galaxy," Herb said.
"Well, there you go," Shark-Man said. "God decides to take out his golf clubs and smack a world out of existence, and a whole genre goes under. And consequently, your golden contract turns to mud."
Herb knew, rationally, that he should be upset about his contract. It's not like he could do anything for the Kabuki. And a career doing Mato's roles wasn't worth much if there were no more shows coming in. But when Herb could just look up and see the ocean of candles on the screen behind Shark-Man, each light representing a being with a mind and a soul who desperately did not want to die -- Herb's contract was like a far-off dream, without substance or relevance.
"We've got half of the first season of 'We Family,'" Shark-Man said. "And we've been tossing around ideas about how to market it. And this is where you can help us: We want to dub and distribute the candlelight vigil."
Herb looked at the screen behind Shark-Man. Mato was leaning on the podium. His face was resolute, but his eyes were full of tears. The crowd had erupted into a chorus of sobs. Children clung to their mothers. Husbands held their wives against them, petting their hair.
"Think about it," Shark-Man said. "ETTV is coming to an end. This is Earth's last chance to tune in. We'll break every record in the damn book. But we can't do it without you."
Mato. Son of the World. Trusted enough by the Kabuki to be the last public voice they would ever hear. And now Herb -- cowardly Herb who couldn't even call his teenage daughter -- was supposed to stand in a booth and tell all of Earth that the creatures they looked at with fascination and affection were gone, that Earth itself might one day meet a similar fate.
For television ratings.
Herb turned and took a few steps toward the exit.
"The recording is tomorrow," Shark-Man said. "We've pushed the rest of the show back a few weeks. No rush on that. But we want to start running the ad as soon as possible."
Herb turned around. He felt like fire ants were crawling around in his veins. "I'll do it," Herb said. "I'll do it, because Mato did it. And when people hear the news, I want it to be a familiar voice breaking it to them."
"That's admirable," Shark-Man said. "Glad to have you on board."
Shark-Man put his hand out to shake. Herb gritted his teeth and shook it.
Herb spent the evening alone, playing with his new phone and staring at the unopened script on his coffee table. He thought about Triela. He thought about the Kabuki. He searched for a reason for what had happened -- to the Kabuki, to his family, to himself -- that would make it all okay and allow the knot in his stomach to untie itself long enough for him to sleep. He came up empty-handed.
Herb stood in the recording booth and read through his lines again. His hands were sweating so badly they had soaked through the pages. Paused on the screen in front of Herb was Mato, frozen at the podium while a sea of candles stretched out to the horizon. Herb tried hard not to look at Mato's face. There was too much reality there.
"Okay, Herb," the director said. "Just another day in the studio, right?"
Herb nodded and tried to smile politely.
"Let's all try to focus and hit these cues, one by one."
After a moment, the video unpaused. Herb heard a series of beeps, his cue, and opened his mouth to read his lines. Nothing came out.
The director looked nervous and reset the cue. "It's alright, Herb. We'll hit it this time."
Three more beeps. Herb still couldn't speak. He clamped his eyes shut and reopened them.
"Herb, let's try jumping in in the middle," the director said. "Page 4, cue 18."
Herb nodded. He tried to keep his mind perfectly blank, but that didn't keep the surge of emotion from bubbling up inside him. He felt that if he just gave himself permission, he could cry forever. He hadn't felt like this since --
Since Triela was born. But that had been for a very different reason.
"All right, let's roll," the director said.
Herb found his voice this time.
"And when our end did not come in the war," Herb read, "We thought ourselves fortunate. And we were right. Even in the face of this new threat, we were right. Because our effort in the war was rewarded with another twelve years in which to be ourselves. To walk the face of our planet, to till its soil, to fish its streams, to look up at its skies."
The video paused, and Herb took a drink of water.
"Nice, Herb," the director said. "Very nice. Let's keep going and get a feel for this thing. What do you say?"
Herb nodded, but didn't look up from his script. He tried to squint, to dissociate himself from the words on the page, from what they meant. They were just words af
ter all, not even in the language they were originally spoken in.
The video unpaused.
"And do not let yourselves be filled with bitterness because those skies have decided that our time is at an end. Let your remaining hours be a time of dignity, and of reflection, as you look back on the many blessings our race has been given."
Herb's voice wavered on the word "blessings."
The director gave him a "go ahead" gesture. Three more beeps followed.
"Do not let the time you have left be spoiled by what lingers in your past, or what looms in your future. Embrace these final hours, side by side with your loved ones, with your family."
And Herb broke. His voice cracked as tears spattered the script in his hands. But Herb didn't stop reading. He couldn't.
And as he read, Herb's mind exploded with a thousand memories. First bike rides. Playing in the sprinkler. Birthday parties. Candles.
"And while our physical legacy ends here, while the matter that makes our bodies is spread out among the stars, someone will pass by here one day, either man or god, by craft or wing. And my prayer is this: That they will know we were here. Because they will feel a stirring in their hearts, and by feeling alone, they will know that a great race of people once filled this corner of the galaxy with the light of their love for one another."
Herb paused and looked down at his script. He could barely read it. There was only one line left, the last line that Mato had spoken to his dying people.
"Go home," Herb read, "and be with your families. Nothing matters more."
The world was spinning, but it was somehow clear. Herb swallowed hard and said, "Triela."
The video paused.
"What did you say?" the director asked.
"I'm sorry," Herb said. "Can we pick this up tomorrow? I have something I have to do."