Channel Blue

by Jay Martel

  Father Michael smiled, maintaining his calm. ‘I’m happy you want to help each other,’ he said. ‘But there are no aliens. There is only God. Your friend Buddy here—’ Father Michael extended his arm to Perry, ‘does not speak for God.’

  A chorus of jeers rose from the crowd. Perry, mortified, waved his hands and shouted for them to be quiet.

  Father Michael stepped closer to Perry and fixed him with a steely gaze. ‘What’s your game here?’ he said with disconcerting calm.

  ‘My game?’ Perry said.

  ‘Leading these lost souls astray,’ the priest said, advancing on Perry. ‘If you really want to help them do good, why not encourage them to come into church?’

  Emboldened by the support of the crowd, Perry held his ground against the priest. ‘It’s not enough to sit in church. They’ve already watched us sitting in church.’

  Father Michael arched his eyebrows. ‘By “they”, I suppose you mean... the aliens?’

  Perry nodded. ‘They’re not impressed that people think they can go into church and be absolved for anything bad they’ve done. They actually thought it was hilarious for a while, but now they think it’s another example of why we should be destroyed.’

  As Perry spoke, he saw Father Michael quietly give up on having a reasonable conversation. ‘I see,’ the priest said. He turned back to the massing crowd and spoke with his commanding baritone. ‘When any of you become tired of this crazy talk about aliens, the church will be open to you!’

  ‘Crazier than a virgin birth?’ shouted back the toothless man.

  ‘How about raising the dead?’ came other voices.

  ‘What about God talking from a bush?’

  ‘Crazier than a talking snake?’

  The crowd continued heckling Father Michael until he marched back into the church wearing an expression of righteous indignation. Then it turned its attention back to Perry and demanded that he repeat different parts of his story again, answer questions, and give advice. Perry had used up all his adrenaline. As the sun sank below the horizon and the fluorescent lights that bordered the park flickered on, he felt overwhelmed by fatigue. He sat down but still had trouble keeping his eyes open. On his fourth or fifth time reciting the disasters that would end the world, he slumped over onto the grass and slipped into a deep dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  Perry woke to the ringing of church bells. He opened his eyes and saw the words: THIS END UP. It took him a few moments to realise that he was lying inside a refrigerator box that had been propped over him like a tent.

  ‘He’s up!’ a familiar voice said. Perry raised his head from a balled-up down vest and saw that Ralph was gazing down at him, flanked by two homeless men Perry vaguely remembered from the night before. Perry stretched his limbs beneath a makeshift quilt of dirty coats. He felt stiff and sore.

  ‘We’ve got some food for you, Buddy,’ Ralph said, holding a boxed breakfast from the shelter. Perry wiped the sleep from his eyes with one dirty blue sleeve and crawled out from under the box. He emerged into the morning light and was immediately set upon by Ralph and the other ripe-smelling men, who grabbed him and lifted him onto Ralph’s shoulders.

  ‘Let me down!’ Perry shouted.

  ‘No, Buddy,’ Ralph said. ‘They all want to see you.’

  Perry surveyed his surroundings, disoriented and blinking in the bright sun. When his eyes adjusted, he saw that the park was now filled with hundreds of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder, all facing Perry. They weren’t just homeless, either. There were men wearing ties, well-dressed women, schoolkids with backpacks, men and women wearing blue velour tracksuits. Many held crudely made signs that read: ‘We Love You Buddy’, ‘Save Us’ and ‘No one Gets the Cupcake’.

  They saw Perry and a huge cheer went up amongst them.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Perry asked when Ralph had set him back down.

  ‘They’ve all heard about the aliens and what they’re doing,’ Ralph said. ‘They want to hear from you what they should do to save the planet.’

  ‘Speak to us, Buddy!’ one of the crowd shouted.

  ‘No one gets the cupcake!’ another yelled, and the chant was eagerly taken up and repeated over and over.

  Perry waved his hands for them to stop. A sudden silence descended as if he had pressed a mute button. He studied their smiling expectant faces and cleared his throat. ‘Be nice to each other,’ he said. ‘That’s all. Stop thinking about yourselves for a day. Go help someone.’

  The crowd seemed to nod as one, then broke into a burst of enthusiastic applause. ‘More!’ they shouted in a cacophony.

  ‘Talk to us, Buddy!’

  ‘Talk about the aliens!’

  ‘That’s it!’ Perry yelled. ‘Go somewhere else and be good people! That’s all!’ The crowd cheered and made no move to go anywhere. If anything, they seemed to huddle closer to Perry.

  ‘We love the Buddy!’ an excited Latino man shouted, and this chant was also taken up by the crowd. ‘We love the Buddy!’ they shouted. ‘The Buddy is love!’

  ‘Get out of here!’ Perry shouted, as if haranguing a pack of wild dogs. ‘Go! Shoo!’

  Ralph rested one large hand on Perry’s shoulder. ‘You’ve got to give them more about the aliens,’ he advised. ‘Maybe you could tell them another story about Elvis. Like maybe you two had a jam session on the moon.’

  Perry shook his head. ‘The point is to get people out there doing good things. It’s not to have them listening to me talk.’

  Ralph appeared confused. ‘But you’re the one person here who can save us,’ he said. ‘You’re the one true Buddy.’

  ‘My name isn’t even Buddy!’ Perry shouted. ‘It’s—’

  At this moment, Perry noticed two officers of the Los Angeles Police Department picking a path through the crowd, making their way towards him. One of the officers caught his eye.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said. ‘This crowd is considered a non-permitted assembly and, as a result, is a disturbance of the peace. Until you file for the proper permits, you must disband immediately.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to,’ Perry said. ‘Watch.’ He turned to the crowd. ‘Go away!’ he shouted. ‘This is illegal! You all have to leave the park!’

  ‘No!’ the onlookers shouted back.

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Not without you!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Buddy,’ Ralph said, scowling at the officers. ‘We’ll never leave you.’

  ‘But I want you to!’ Perry yelled. ‘I’m serious! Get out of here!’

  ‘He’s testing us!’ Ralph shouted to the crowd. ‘He’s testing our faith in him! Are we going to let down Buddy?’

  ‘No!’ the crowd roared back.

  The two officers turned to each other to discuss the situation. In the parking lot, Perry could see Father Michael and other members of St Jude’s clergy watching intently. Next to them was a group of shelter volunteers that included Noah. It was hard to read their expressions, except for Noah’s. Noah shook his head sadly.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ one of the officers said to Perry. ‘At this time, we need you to come with us. No charges will be filed, we just need the crowd to disperse.’

  ‘Fine,’ Perry said. He turned and followed the officers, but Ralph lunged and grabbed his arm in a vice-like grip.

  ‘We won’t let you arrest him!’

  ‘They’re not arresting me, Ralph,’ Perry said, but his words were drowned out by an angry roar from the surrounding crowd, which quickly transformed itself into a mob. Cans, rocks and bottles showered down on the two officers, who were jerked and pulled like puppets by the onlookers before tearing themselves free and escaping to the perimeter of the park.

  Ralph beamed ecstatically. ‘We showed them!’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Perry yelled.

  Ralph lowered his great head like a scolded child. ‘You seem angry, my Buddy. Have I done something to upset you?’

  Perry staved off the urge to throttle the lar
ge homeless man. ‘Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve said? We have to be good to each other!’

  ‘Right,’ Ralph said. ‘And we saved you. That’s good, right?’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Perry said. ‘I’m leaving the park now. Don’t try to stop me.’

  Ralph’s eyebrows dipped in consternation. ‘Why would you leave us? We believe you. We love you.’

  ‘That’s nice, Ralph, but it’s not going to help the Earth if the aliens see us fighting over how we’re going to be good.’ Perry stepped around Ralph and began making his way through the crowd to the sidewalk. Incredulous faces watched him go.

  ‘Stop him!’ Ralph roared. ‘He’s giving himself up to save us!’

  The crowd closed in on Perry like a fist, surrounding him on all sides.

  ‘That’s not true,’ Perry told his captors as calmly as possible. ‘Nothing will happen to me. I’m just taking a walk. I need to go to the bathroom.’

  ‘Don’t believe anything he says!’ Ralph yelled. ‘He’ll do anything to help us!’

  Despite Perry’s protestations, his followers pushed him back towards Ralph while several police department trucks pulled up to the edge of the park. Riot police in helmets, flak jackets and shields took up positions around the crowd’s perimeter. Seeing this, Perry begged and pleaded to be released, but unfortunately the followers who surrounded him were those who had managed to get the closest to him during his twelve hours in the park, and were thus his most loyal acolytes. Their love for him and his fight to save Earth from the aliens was so great and pure that they would entertain no notion of letting him go.

  The police fired tear gas canisters into the crowd and waded in, waving riot batons like beaters flushing game birds from the brush.

  * * *

  Perry sat in a holding cell. He had a black eye, a fat lip, a sprained arm, and was still vomiting every fifteen minutes from the after-effects of tear gas. His cellmates comprised of several large men who viewed him with a mixture of contempt and derision. Every time Perry went to the seatless toilet in the corner to throw up, he saw them shake their heads in disgust.

  Though the police had originally not intended to charge him with any crime, the fierce nature of the ensuing confrontation and the number of policemen injured required some reprisal towards the responsible party. Perry had been charged with disorderly conduct and intent to riot and was told that, due to a large influx of arrests, he wouldn’t even be arraigned for several hours. Allowed one call, he had phoned Noah and had left a rambling message that would no doubt reinforce the belief that he had gone completely insane. And, in truth, he had. He had gone momentarily insane with the hope that he could stop the inevitable. But he couldn’t. As he was being booked, he had overheard two policemen talking about an escalating war in the Middle East.

  War. Perry couldn’t believe what he was hearing. You had to give them credit: Nick Pythagorus and his colleagues knew exactly what they were doing.

  Perry heard a distant buzzing and stood. He quickly surveyed the cell. ‘Has anyone seen any flies?’ he asked his cellmates. They glared at him. Perry sighed and sat down. It doesn’t really matter, he thought. It’s all over. Even if the aliens were still watching, every attempt he’d made to prove the people of Earth worth saving had been a complete disaster. If anything, Galaxy Entertainment would have even more justification for blowing up the planet. This depressing reverie was interrupted by another surge of nausea. He staggered over to the toilet.

  ‘Give it a rest, freak,’ a bald man in a vest growled as Perry discovered, deep within, new frontiers of his stomach that needed emptying.

  ‘I can’t,’ Perry choked out. ‘It’s the tear gas.’

  ‘You stop puking,’ the bald man said, ‘or I will shove my fist down your throat.’

  Perry wiped the corner of his mouth with a tattered blue sleeve. ‘I’m no expert on these things, but if what you really want to do is to stop me from puking, I don’t think putting your fist down my throat will help.’

  The bald man leaped up with puma-like speed and grabbed Perry by the hair. ‘You making fun of me?’ he said. ‘You want me to kill you?’

  ‘Honestly,’ Perry said, ‘it doesn’t matter.’ The bald man grabbed the seat of Perry’s pants to ram him headfirst into the cement-brick wall when a guard appeared on the other side of the bars.

  ‘Let him go,’ he said. The bald man reluctantly dropped Perry to the floor. The guard opened the cell door. ‘Bunt.’

  ‘Yes?’ Perry said.

  ‘Your uncle’s here.’

  Perry blinked. He had only one uncle, a senile octogenarian living in a Midwestern convalescent hospital who hadn’t known his name in years.

  ‘He wants to see you. Let’s go.’

  Perry followed the policeman to what looked like an interrogation room, with mirrored glass along one wall. ‘Wait here,’ he said and exited. After a moment, a distinguished-looking middle-aged man with a trimmed grey moustache entered. He wore an expensive suit and a pair of designer eyeglasses. He seemed to be deeply upset.

  ‘Perry, Perry, Perry,’ he said. ‘What kind of mess have you got yourself into now? Thank God your parents don’t know.’

  Perry was quite sure that he had never seen this man before.

  ‘Do you know the strings I had to pull to get you out?’ the man said. Perry could only gape at him. ‘Well, come on, don’t stand there like some garden gnome waiting for pigeon poop. Let’s go.’

  The man opened the breast pocket of his suit and Perry watched incredulously as three flies flew into it. The man patted the pocket closed, then held out his left arm and pulled up the cuff of his shirt. A tattoo of a blue fly adorned his tanned wrist.

  ‘I’m a producer,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s go.’

  Perry followed the man out of the interrogation room into a hallway. They walked until they came to an elevator. Inside the elevator, below the button for the lowest floor of the parking garage, was a key slot. The man pressed the inside of his left wrist against it, the doors closed and the elevator descended sharply, whirring as it gained speed. Perry’s stomach dropped. The man stared ahead impassively while Perry felt tension pulling his shoulders up around his ears – the last time he’d gone down this fast was to join the passengers of a doomed airliner. His nervousness wasn’t alleviated when the elevator doors opened to reveal a long corridor with green walls and an instrumental version of ‘Teddy Bear’ playing softly in the background.

  ‘This way,’ the man said officiously, having dropped all pretence of knowing Perry. He opened one of several doors along the corridor and held it for him. Perry swallowed and stepped into what appeared to be a large dressing room. At one end, Amanda Mundo stood before a floor-length mirror in a sleeveless white evening dress that clung to every curve of her body. She fastened the stud of a diamond earring in one ear and noticed Perry.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’re going to a party.’

  CHANNEL 18

  THE STAR

  For the first time in his life, Perry Bunt was a writer on a hit show. Not only that, he was also the star.

  True, Amanda had experienced some difficulty working around Nick Pythagorus to get the show on the air in the first place, but once she did, viewers tuned in immediately. According to the detailed ratings recorded every millisecond, Perry’s audience grew across all demographics with lightning speed. By the time he was kicked out of the homeless shelter, nearly every satellite camera over North America was focused on his plight. And when he became the prophet of St Jude’s Park, Channel Blue received its highest rating in ten years. Viewers across the galaxy could not get enough of the guy being abused while trying to save Earth.

  Amanda’s hunch had been right – in the vernacular of her profession, Perry Bunt was a POF with relateability, a product of fornication for one and all. In short, Perry was POFFO.

  ‘So the execs didn’t have a choice,’ Amanda said. ‘They had to postpone it.’ She brushed an eyelash with masca
ra. ‘I have to admit – I enjoy dressing up like an Earthle.’

  Perry stood by the doorway mesmerised, afraid to move because it might wake him from this dream. ‘Postpone it?’ he repeated in a daze.

  ‘The finale.’ Amanda popped open a tube of dark red lipstick. ‘They’re postponing it.’

  Perry couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. When Nick found out, he went into a full-on tantrum. People always forget he’s just nine years old. He kept pounding his fists and accusing me of sabotaging him, but I could honestly say it was all you.’ Amanda glanced at Perry and gave him a half-lipsticked smile that compounded his state of stupefaction. She was so beautiful his teeth ached.

  ‘You did it, Mr Bunt. You saved Earth.’

  The words met Perry’s ears but didn’t immediately enter them – they rolled around in circles like a ball on a roulette wheel until they clicked into place. Then he jumped into the air, whooped, and without thinking, lunged forward, wrapped Amanda in his arms and kissed her full on the lips.

  Amanda wriggled free and stared at him in amazement. ‘You did it again.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Perry said. He stepped backwards and clumsily ran one arm across his mouth, painting the dirty blue sleeve with a streak of red lipstick. ‘I’m sorry. I guess I got caught up in the moment.’

  The sound of a throat being cleared made Perry turn to the middle-aged man who had helped him escape from prison. In all the excitement, Perry had forgotten he was still in the room. The man had removed his jacket, tie and glasses, and appeared considerably less distinguished. With his deep tan and serene expression, he looked like someone who’d spent every day of his life lying on the deck of a yacht sipping Bloody Marys.

  ‘This is great stuff,’ the man said. He grinned widely, revealing luminescent teeth of a colour not found in nature, and peeled off his grey moustache. ‘Seriously. Really, really great stuff. But I’m afraid that, as great as it is, it’s not the show that captured the imaginations of our audience.’

  ‘This is Marty Firth,’ Amanda said. Without showing a hint of embarrassment, she smoothed down her dress, picked up her lipstick and turned back to the mirror. ‘He’s Channel Blue’s Executive Executive Executive Producer.’