by Jay Martel
He lay on his fold-out couch, staring at the chipped-icing ceiling. His evening masturbation was clearly out of the question. But then he thought, Why not? It’s nothing they haven’t seen before. He shrugged and threw himself into it with gusto. Moments later, he had to admit that it had been one of the best ever.
He supposed that he liked being watched.
For the first time in years, Perry slipped happily into the arms of Morpheus. And in vivid colour he dreamt that he and Amanda were on a magnificent movie set, singing and dancing like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Then it started raining. They ran inside a beautiful mansion, but it was raining in there, too. They danced more desperately as torrents of water cascaded down a marble stairway, bravely strutting against the current until it became too much and washed them away...
He woke to find Amanda, the real Amanda, standing over him holding an empty glass. It was empty, he realised one second later, because its contents were on his face. He sputtered and sat up. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘We picked the lock. I’m sorry, Mr Bunt. I couldn’t get you to wake up.’ Perry blearily scanned the room. It was still dark outside. A young man he recognised as the Galaxy Entertainment receptionist sat on the couch, paging through an old screenwriting magazine.
‘Are you sure about this?’ He eyed Perry sceptically. ‘He seems a little out of it.’
‘This is Dennis,’ Amanda said. Dennis smiled uneasily at Perry. ‘You met yesterday.’
‘You have a funny way of never seeing someone again,’ Perry said.
‘We need your help.’ She sat on the bed next to Perry, who became aware of how foul his breath must be. His mouth was all after-taste, a lethal mixture of noodles, MSG and sleep.
‘Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow?’ he said, covering his mouth.
‘Remember when I told you that our ratings have been slipping a little, and that was why I was taking your class?’
‘Wait,’ Dennis interrupted. ‘Should we do this here?’ He pointed at the ceiling.
‘We don’t have time. If they pick up our feed, they pick it up.’ Amanda leaned even closer into Perry. ‘We received some bad news tonight.’ She paused and licked her lips. ‘Earth is being cancelled.’
Perry, still groggy, stared at her. ‘Cancelled?’
‘The gig is over,’ Dennis said, tossing the magazine onto the coffee table. ‘They’re going to start sending us to other planets next week.’
‘And the executive producers are determined to get every last viewer they can to tune in,’ Amanda continued. ‘They’re planning a big series finale.’
Perry swivelled his head between the two visitors. ‘What’s going to happen?’
‘Well, no one’s getting married,’ Dennis said.
‘You’ve heard of a Viking funeral?’ Amanda asked.
Perry had. A ‘Viking funeral’, in the parlance of TV executives, was when you took a show doomed for cancellation and pushed it to extreme spectacle in order to attract as many viewers as possible to its last few episodes. Perry suddenly felt very awake. ‘What are they doing?’ he asked.
Amanda hesitated. Perry turned to Dennis. ‘What’s happening?’
‘What do you think?’ Dennis said. ‘They’re going to finale it.’
‘What?’
‘They’re going to blow the whole thing up.’
CHANNEL 7
A VIEWERS’ GUIDE TO THE END OF THE WORLD
‘Earthquakes, terrorist attacks, a stock market crash in China,’ Dennis said. Perry stared incredulously at the young man sitting on his couch, blithely ticking off the disasters planned for Earth’s finale. ‘Then it all ends with this... the coup de grâce.’
Dennis reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced a pen, which he held in front of Perry’s face. On one side of it was a photo of a woman wearing a burka. ‘This is going to end the world?’ Perry said. Dennis smiled and nodded. ‘A pen?’
‘Watch,’ Dennis said. He turned the pen upside down and the burka vanished, revealing an attractive naked brunette. ‘And here’s the kicker,’ he said, pointing to three small words printed near the tip of the pen. Perry squinted and read: MADE IN ISRAEL.
‘We have statistics guys who crunch the numbers on all this stuff,’ Dennis continued. ‘They’ve figured out that sending this pen to ten Islamic leaders will cause Earth to destroy itself within three weeks.’
Perry turned the pen right side up, so that the burka slipped back up over the naked woman. ‘Just this pen?’
‘Well, the pen can’t do it completely by itself. You need the proper mixture of general chaos to get everyone on edge. Then just add angry mullahs and stir. Before you know it, everyone’s being invaded or invading, then the nukes get dusted off, boom, boom, boom, it’s World War III capped by a post-Armageddon duel-to-the-death in the desert over the last gallon of gas.’ Dennis shrugged. ‘I know. All very derivative. To tell you the truth, the whole thing sounds like every movie I’ve seen, but you already know how original our producers are.’ He shot a look at Amanda.
‘I had nothing to do with this,’ Amanda said. ‘It’s a terrible idea.’
‘Wait.’ Perry stood, trying to shake off this nightmare. ‘Are you saying that all of us are about to be killed... for ratings?’
‘Not all of us,’ clarified Dennis. ‘All of you. Hey, it was going to happen anyway. The way you guys have been hitting those fossil fuels and warming things up, it’s basically over. They just got sick of waiting for it.’
‘Unless we can show them that the planet can still attract an audience,’ Amanda said. ‘That’s why we’re here. I told Dennis all about your class, about all the shows you’ve worked on and the scripts you’ve written. If anyone can come up with a good idea, it’s you.’
Perry’s heart fluttered again, but this time his brain ignored it. ‘Me? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not doing that well. Why don’t you get someone who’s more successful? Steven Spielberg, for example. He saves the Earth all the time.’
‘He’s right,’ Dennis said. ‘Didn’t I tell you? Spielberg or Lucas.’
Amanda shook her head. ‘Famous Earthles are jaded and sceptical by necessity,’ she told him. ‘No one who’s that successful is going to believe we’re anything other than kooks.’ She turned back to Perry. ‘Will you help us or not?’
Perry had terrible doubts. One of the keys to being a professional writer was knowing what you were good at and sticking to it. For this reason, Perry had never written science fiction (he had no idea how people in spacesuits talked), period pieces (or people in tights) or family comedies (he’d actually tried one of these during his long career descent, but for the life of him couldn’t come up with anything adorable for a nine-year-old to say while chasing his escaped pet frog).
He’d also never written anything that saved anyone, much less the world. Which is why he knew he wasn’t the best person on Earth – or even close to the best person – for the job Amanda had in mind for him.
Amanda must have seen the fear in his eyes. ‘Listen to me, Mr Bunt,’ she said. ‘There must be some reason you’re the one. That you came to my job yesterday. That you remembered everything you saw. That you’re the only Earthle who knows about what we’re doing. This must be your moment, right? The end of the first act, when the story turns and the protagonist sets off on his fateful journey.’ She smiled. ‘Of course it is. You told me about it after class one day.’
‘I did?’
‘Yes. You said that despite everything that had happened, you still believed in the power of your imagination, of its power to change your life. If there was ever a need for imagination, this is it. You told me that you keep looking for the Big Idea. Well, they don’t get much bigger than this. This is it, Mr Bunt.’ She looked him squarely in the eye. ‘This is where you get the chance to be the person you always thought you should be.’
After Perry had agreed to save the Earth, Dennis and Amanda waited outside his front door until he pu
t on some clothes, then drove him in a service van to the Galaxy Entertainment building.
‘When is this finale supposed to begin?’ Perry asked from the back seat.
‘It’s already started,’ Dennis said, steering the van down dark, empty streets at an annoyingly relaxed speed. ‘You hear about the earthquake in Russia?’
It sounded familiar, but Perry had grown desensitised to disasters outside of his own life.
‘I’m just mad that I didn’t see it all coming sooner,’ Amanda said. ‘Usually, executives don’t want us overtly messing around with Earth’s activities – viewers get turned off if they sense we’re manipulating events. That all changed in the last few years.’ She ticked off the plot developments that the Galaxy Entertainment execs had forced on the producers of Earth, including the instigation of various meaningless wars and the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup. ‘It all reeks of desperation,’ she said. ‘I mean, we knew our ratings were low, but we didn’t think it was time to finale the entire planet.’
‘High-fructose corn syrup?’ Perry asked. ‘What could possibly be entertaining about high-fructose corn syrup?’
‘Fat is funny,’ Amanda said. ‘Some genius back at headquarters thought that ratings would climb if there were more fat people on Earth. Instead, it worked too well. Viewers became disgusted.’
‘There are now some crazily large people down here,’ Dennis said, chuckling. ‘I’m sure we’re going to see some of those fatties exploding when this place gets finale-ed. That’s going to be hilarious.’
Perry listened to this, amazed. ‘We’re not lab rats! We’re human beings!’
‘Duh,’ Amanda said. ‘Rats are boring.’
Perry glared at her. ‘You don’t even see us as people. We’re just little playthings to you.’
‘Very important playthings,’ Amanda said. ‘Galaxy Entertainment has spent around twenty quadrillion dollars on this planet. They stand to lose almost half of that.’
‘That’s all you can think about?’ Perry seethed. ‘You lost some money? You’re all homicidal sociopaths!’
Dennis shook his head. ‘You guys are the killers. We never kill anyone – we just watch you.’
Amanda gave Perry a sympathetic smile, as if she were touched by his anger. ‘You just don’t understand how important entertainment is to us,’ she said with a trace of pity in her voice. This response was so unlike anything Perry had expected that his righteous fury quickly dissipated. At a loss, he sat back in his seat and stared out the window.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Manda,’ Dennis said. ‘I sure would miss my popcorn.’
Perry thought he’d misheard him. ‘Your what?’
‘Popcorn,’ Dennis repeated. ‘That’s the reason I want to save Earth. It’s just so damn good here. All that darn nitrogen in the soil – hard to beat.’
Perry shook his head in disbelief and turned to Amanda. ‘What’s your reason?’
‘I think you know.’ She gazed meaningfully at Perry and his heart raced. Then she said: ‘Professional pride.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve waited all my life to work here, and I know I can put a hit show on this planet if they’d just give me some more time. But they want to pull the plug on the whole thing. I can’t let that happen. For one thing, it would look terrible on my resumé.’
Perry felt his fury rekindle. ‘A planet of seven billion people is about to destroyed, and the only reason you’re against it is because of your career?’
‘Hey, there’re a lot of planets with seven billion people,’ Dennis said. ‘She only has one career.’ He pulled the van in front of the Galaxy Entertainment building and turned off the ignition. From the outside, the building appeared dark and silent, except for the short, squat security guard sitting at the receptionist’s desk. ‘So what’s the planda, Manda?’
‘We need to get him into a screening room,’ she said.
The receptionist gasped. ‘No way.’
‘I need to show him Steve at least,’ Amanda said.
‘Steve?’ Perry asked. ‘Who’s Steve?’
Amanda and the receptionist ignored him.
‘You can’t do it,’ Dennis said. ‘First of all, it’s a clear violation of the Producers’ Code.’
‘We don’t have a choice,’ Amanda responded. ‘How’s he supposed to come up with something to save the channel if he doesn’t know what’s on it?’
Dennis remained unconvinced. ‘Do you know what they’ll do if they catch us? Fire us both on the spot and take writer-boy here straight to the Green Room.’
Something about the urgency of Dennis’s argument hit home with Perry. ‘Maybe he’s right,’ he said.
‘We’re wasting time. We have to go in.’ Amanda stepped out of the van, leaving Perry and Dennis no choice but to follow.
CHANNEL 8
LIGHTS! ACTION! ARMAGEDDON!
Amanda Mundo loved Earth. Ever since she was a little girl, all her favourite programmes were on Channel Blue. It was a fixture on her first telescreen and the first channel she watched when she arrived home from school. Like most viewers, she had initially been attracted to the nearly constant stupidity and violence. But she’d seen something more in the Earthles, something that, as a young Edenite growing up in a culture that emphasised rationality, moved her deeply. She loved how Earthles would literally kill themselves climbing tall mountains and diving deep into oceans and walking on wires strung impossibly high. And why would they do these things? Were they being chased by predators? Was there something they needed for their survival on top of the mountain or on the bottom of the ocean? No – there was no reason. They did these things only because they wanted to prove that they could do them.
How could you not love that?
As an adolescent, Amanda learned all about her civilisation, the Edenite Empire, and the Three Rs that had rescued it from its barbaric past: Reason, Rationality and Respect. She learned how her people had managed to transcend millennia of destructive animal-based behaviours to evolve into a society devoid of hunger, killing and ignorance. While she couldn’t help but feel proud of her history, Channel Blue remained her guilty pleasure. When not studying the lessons of her elders, she would return home and watch fascinated as the hapless Earthles searched jungles for gold that never existed, went blind writing immense books no one ever read, and starved alone in caves searching for enlightenment that never came. Though Amanda never said this out loud, she found the irrational Earthle instinct for the endless quest, the impossible dream and the unreachable goal heartbreakingly beautiful.
She also loved their sense of duty and honour, the misguided way they would sacrifice themselves for meaningless causes. She even loved their bizarre need to divide themselves up into tribes – ‘countries’, they called them – and celebrate their tribe as the best of all, even if it meant flinging themselves into terrible battles and certain death to prove it. And most of all, she loved their faith in a higher power to rescue them from those terrible battles and certain death, a power that never manifested itself in any tangible form whatsoever, much less rescued them. They always ended up dying – but incredibly enough (and this, in her mind, was the best part) this fact didn’t shake the faith of the surviving Earthles. On the contrary, it strengthened their faith because the higher power must have wanted it that way.
Seriously: How could you not love that?
Channel Blue was actually thousands of channels bundled together, but Amanda’s favourite channels all originated from the tribe that called itself the United States of America. Because of its relative prosperity, strident religious beliefs, and relaxed restrictions on the use of firearms, the USA was the source of most of Channel Blue’s hit shows. This, after all, was where the government murdered people for murdering people and started wars to prevent them. It was a country that took all the madness of the Earthles and distilled it into just a few time zones. And though the citizens of this nation had no way of knowing their amazing exploit
s were being beamed to billions of viewers on the other side of the galaxy, they seemed to have some innate sense of their primacy.
‘America’s Number One!’ they would chant at patriotic rallies and international sporting events.
‘This is the greatest country in the world,’ their leaders would often say, and as far as entertainment value went, they were absolutely right.
When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Amanda dared to dream big: ‘I want to produce Earth.’ Adults humoured her, though they knew the chances of this actually happening were remote. In Edenite society, there was no calling higher than the production of entertainment, and producers were revered more than the greatest politicians, businessmen, doctors or scholars. And Channel Blue was one of the most sought-after assignments in all of interplanetary production. But Amanda, according to her genetic profile, was blessed with greater tenacity than her peers. This, more than anything else, drove her to become valedictorian of her graduating class and gain enrolment in the highly selective Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
She graduated from this hallowed institution in the top percentile and could have had her pick of domestic production jobs. But she kept her eyes on the prize. There were no openings on Earth, so she took the toughest jobs she could find around the galaxy to hone her skills, producing celebrity asteroids and CrazyWorlds. When the opportunity came, she wanted to be ready.
One day, while setting up shots for a mutant fight on Altair 3, she read on her screen that a producer on the USA desk of Channel Blue was retiring. She felt a surge of excitement. It was not just a job on her favourite planet, but a job producing her favourite tribe on her favourite planet. She knew it was hers even before she interviewed for it.
Unfortunately, dream jobs rarely live up to their hype. It seemed as if Amanda had barely moved into her new office before she started overhearing worried conversations in the elevators. Ratings hadn’t been an issue for Channel Blue for years. The channel had made executives rich and shareholders wealthy; it had employed hundreds of thousands of producers, editors and technicians, and was such a reliable fixture of the Edenite culture that ‘Earthle’ had become an affectionate nickname for someone slow on the uptake. But as the numbers on even its more reliable shows dwindled, the channel seemed vulnerable. Producers forced out of their comfort zones scrambled to come up with new programming, and executives looked the other way while production crews flagrantly manipulated events on Earth in an attempt to increase ratings.