Channel Blue

by Jay Martel

  Perry frowned, unconvinced. ‘Leslie Satan said they’ll just come back and do it later. It might even jack up the ratings of the eventual finale – raised stakes and all that. You know—’ He adopted an announcer’s voice: ‘This time, it’s PERSONAL!’

  ‘True,’ Amanda said. ‘But what else can we do?’

  Perry didn’t have any response to this, so they walked back towards Base Station Blue, dischargers in hand. As they navigated the rim of the crater, Amanda took Perry’s gloved hand in hers and he felt an irrational surge of hope. Then he tripped on a rock and fell, accidentally firing off his discharger. A shaky blue beam shot out of the end of the metal tube and vaporised the palace-sized boulder in a puff of white dust.

  Perry lay on his side, watching the silent cloud where the boulder had been. ‘Whoa.’

  Amanda helped him to his feet. ‘Are you OK?’

  He could hear the sound of his breathing in his helmet intercom. ‘Yeah.’ Then, after a moment, he shook his head. ‘No, I’m not.’ Something deep down was bothering him, but he found it almost impossible to articulate. After a few more breaths, he tried. ‘This isn’t how it’s supposed to end.’

  Amanda frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘It just isn’t right.’ Perry regarded the long silver tube that still lay on the ground. He bent down, picked it up and, with a sudden jerk of his arms, flung it into the crater.

  Amanda stared at him in shock. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I told you. This isn’t how it’s supposed to end.’

  ‘You keep saying that. What are you talking about?’

  ‘The show. As far as I can tell, it’s a comedy. Not for me, of course – for me it’s been horrific. But everyone watching thinks it’s funny. Even that old turd Leslie Satan thinks it’s funny.’

  Behind the visor of her helmet, Amanda furrowed her brow with concern. ‘No one’s watching this, Perry. We’re on the moon now. This isn’t part of any show.’

  ‘I know. But you said it yourself – there’s something going on here. It may not be fate or destiny, but it’s definitely some kind of story, right? And I just don’t believe it has this kind of ending. Think of what’s happened since you walked into my classroom. My being mistaken for a prophet and a terrorist. Our thing in the van. You getting pregnant. Noah Overton actually getting a chance to save the world. Would any of that have happened in a drama? No. They’re all plot points in a comedy.’ Perry paced back and forth on the rim of the crater. ‘Now, I don’t write comedies, but I do teach them. And a comedy would not end with us walking into a press conference on the moon and killing everyone.’

  Amanda took this in. ‘OK,’ she said. She considered the discharger in her hands, and, in one economical movement, pitched it off the cliff. They watched it spin slowly as it fell from view. Seconds later, a shaky blue beam shot up from the crater’s floor and struck the cliff.

  Perry and Amanda fell in slow motion, the ground beneath them inextricably tugged by the moon’s weak gravity into the mouth of the crater. Like cartoon coyotes momentarily suspended in mid-air, they flailed their bodies away from the disappearing ground, diving with outstretched arms for solid terrain until they dangled from the new rim of the crater, clinging to moon rocks as their legs swung free.

  Amanda pulled herself up first and helped Perry to his feet. They crouched forward, gloved hands on the knees of their spacesuits, panting for several seconds before they could speak.

  ‘See?’ Perry wheezed. ‘Comedy.’

  ‘So tell me,’ Amanda said. ‘How does it end?’

  CHANNEL 36

  THE WAY IT WAS SUPPOSED TO END

  On the stage between the Stool of Truth and the real-time image of Earth, Perry and Amanda sat facing members of the galactic media. The journalists’ attention was focused on screens around the auditorium, which played a selection of ‘highlights’ from Bunt to the Rescue: Perry getting punched by gang members, chased by a bag lady, tear-gassed by police, pummelled by Del Waddle, drowned by the Gardener. Perry wasn’t sure which annoyed him most: the polite chuckling of the assembled journalists or the roaring guffaws of Marty Firth, who sat next to him, throwing his head back in hysteria, Vermy swinging from his right ear. It was probably his imagination, but Perry thought he saw amusement in the eyes of Marty’s brain parasite as well.

  Finally, the clips ended. Before the lights rose, Amanda squeezed Perry’s hand, stood and slipped out. Moments earlier, while sitting in their dressing room, they had agreed this would be the perfect moment for her to leave so as not to draw undue attention to herself or delay the start of the press conference. This was just after Perry had told her the inspiration that had come to him as he was going to the bathroom.

  Entering the bathroom, Perry had been in a state of panic. The press conference was five minutes away and he had no idea how to stop the destruction of Earth scheduled for its end. He walked across the tiled room to a metal vessel affixed to the wall that he decided must be the urinal.

  He peered into the mirror on the wall and saw a terrified man, the terror made oddly comic by the make-up on his face. Marty Firth had insisted that Perry, in addition to shaving, wear make-up to counteract his genetically unaltered complexion. ‘We received complaints from the viewers about your pasty appearance on my show,’ Marty had told him. ‘I don’t mind your whole crazy-eyed “What the hell am I doing here?” look. There’s nothing we can do about that. But we can make you look less anaemic. This press conference is going out live to billions of viewers, so we need you to look your very best.’ Perry, distracted as he was by the fate of Earth and his inability to come up with a plan to save it, was unable to mount an argument. Now, looking into the mirror, he wished that he had: he looked utterly ridiculous, a grim, balding drag queen in a white suit.

  At least no one he knew would be among the billions watching.

  With shaking hands, Perry unzipped his fly. Why was his mind such a terrible blank? It wasn’t as if he was sitting in his crappy apartment by himself, unable to come up with a satisfying end to a script that no one would read, much less produce. The world was counting on him! Amanda was counting on him! His unborn child was counting on him! It’s no wonder that when he reached into his fly he couldn’t find anything, his genitals having attempted escape by nearly shrivelling up inside themselves. Whatever the opposite of an erection was, Perry had one.

  He yanked down his pants, grabbed the reluctant discharger and pointed it into the vessel. As he did so, he noticed that his pubic hair was growing back after being vaporised on his first trip to the moon. Interesting, he thought, that they hadn’t seen fit to burn it off this time.

  And then he had it. The ending.

  ‘Why are you urinating in the sink?’ Amanda said, standing in the doorway.

  ‘Never mind.’ Perry pulled up his pants. ‘I need the razor and the make-up kit.’

  Sitting in the press conference, Perry fidgeted in his chair as the sparse applause subsided. He had never succeeded in going to the bathroom, and there would be no relief for a while. The lights rose and Elvis stepped behind a podium next to the stage. He said a few words about how happy everyone was with the new show and how Mr Perry Bunt was poised to become one of the galaxy’s biggest stars ‘whether he’s trying to save Earth or anything else’. Perry noted the telling choice of words, but maintained his nervous smile. ‘He’s such an exciting performer,’ Elvis continued, ‘it seems that he’s fooled some of you into thinking he’s something more than a product of fornication. Well, we’re going to put that issue to rest right off. Mr Bunt, would you take a seat on the Stool of Truth?’

  Perry remained in his chair, as if he hadn’t heard. ‘Mr Bunt?’ Elvis prompted. Perry nodded at Elvis. He took a deep breath, stood and stepped over to the stool. He began to lower himself down onto it, then hesitated. Marty reached over and rested his hand on Perry’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s quite all right, Mr Bunt,’ he said. ‘Go on ahead.’ When Perry continued standing over the
stool, Marty pushed down on his shoulder. Perry deftly twisted away, shrugging off Marty’s hand, reached out and plucked Vermy from the host’s ear. The parasite was longer than Perry had expected. While he tugged at its head, its tail snapped out of Marty’s right ear and wound around Perry’s wrist like a bullwhip.

  As Amanda had predicted, Marty was completely paralysed by this action. What she hadn’t planned on, however, was what happened next: Vermy blinked once, lunged forward, and burrowed its head into Perry’s ear. Before Perry could react, Vermy was deep inside his head, doing what every parasite does: changing its environment to better suit its needs. When confronted with the environment known as Perry Bunt’s brain, Vermy immediately began altering it by giving it a vision of the future Vermy now wanted for Perry. In this vision, Perry sat on the Stool of Truth, was confirmed as a product of fornication and, after the Earth was destroyed, was whisked with Amanda to a different planetainment for another triumphant season of Bunt to the Rescue. Perry and Amanda quickly became so famous and rich they no longer needed to entertain. Instead, they gallivanted from one solar system to another in their luxury spacecraft when they weren’t relaxing on their own planet, a stunning ecosystem of jungles and oceans where they could lie on an untouched beach in each other’s arms for days on end while being served drinks and snacks by telepathic dolphin-like creatures.

  Perry jolted out of the narcotic fog of this parasite-induced vision and found himself back on the stage in the press conference, a stunned Marty Firth in front of him, the tail of the Vermis solium entwined around his wrist. The future had taken less than a second. Summoning his will, he yanked his arm away from his body, jerking Vermy out of his head, then hurled the brain parasite over the heads of the journalists to the back of the conference room. Marty Firth screamed like a Sicilian widow and launched himself into the audience.

  Now alone on the stage, Perry turned to Elvis. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t go through with it. You did it, but I can’t. I’m sick of the lies.’

  Elvis gaped at Perry from behind the podium, completely baffled. Perry took advantage of his bewilderment to address the galaxy’s media. ‘I’m not a POF. I’m a producer for Channel Blue.’ He slid up the cuff of his jacket, revealing a blue fly tattoo on his wrist. Even though she’d been under considerable time pressure, Amanda had done an excellent job drawing the insect with nothing more than mascara and blue eye shadow. After it had dried, she’d even smeared a little foundation over it, giving the appearance that Perry was wearing make-up to conceal the tattoo.

  The journalists seemed to catch their breaths simultaneously. The King smiled and shook his great head. ‘I’m not sure what the Earthle’s up to, but he’s lying. I mean, this is exactly what POFs do, right? They lie their fool heads off. Perry Bunt is the biggest damn POF I ever met. You couldn’t get a more mixed-up set of DNA if you had your genes pro-grammed by a blind monkey.’

  ‘He knows the truth, he just doesn’t want you to know it!’ Perry shouted. ‘I’m an Edenite! If you don’t believe it, look for yourselves.’ In a single, dramatic gesture, Perry yanked down the waistband of his pants, revealing, in addition to every bit of Perry, a complete absence of body hair. The pièce de résistance, however, was just north of this area, where Amanda, with an eyebrow pencil, had drawn a quite credible shunt.

  Up to this point, the collected journalists had watched dumbstruck. But when Perry pulled down his pants, it was as if a bomb had gone off. The journalists howled and roared; Perry thought he even heard the gnashing of teeth. He yanked up his pants, suddenly concerned about the sudden near-riot he’d created. The next part of the plan was the most crucial. He and Amanda had concluded that the only way to save Earth was to make not destroying the planet more cost-effective than destroying it. The only way to do this, they had agreed, was to get viewers to turn off Channel Blue before the finale began. They knew that Gerald O. Davidoff was ultimately a businessman. If there were no ratings to be gained from blowing up Earth, there’d be no reason to spend any additional money doing so. Perry took a deep breath and shouted over the crowd.

  ‘Listen to me!’

  The members of the media fell silent, their sweaty, incredulous faces turned up to Perry. ‘You call yourselves journalists. You don’t know anything about what’s going on down there! Earth is nothing but a giant fake. Everything you’ve seen on Channel Blue has been scripted and produced. Everyone down there is an actor. We’ve been hired to act like idiots and entertain you. But we’re sick of it, and sick of the lies!’

  By now, Elvis had lost any semblance of his usual easy-going demeanour. ‘Don’t listen to him!’ he shouted. ‘We’ll get him to sit down on the damn stool, then you’ll see what the truth is!’

  ‘Did you really think human beings could be that selfish and insane?’ Perry continued, edging away from Elvis and the two copbots who had stepped onto the stage. ‘All these years you thought you were watching fools, but the only fools have been you!’ The copbots charged towards Perry, who dived from the stage into the sea of journalists. He hurdled over them, sprinted up an aisle, and out of the nearest door, the copbots in close pursuit. Before the members of the media could stand, the copbots carried Perry back into the room. He seemed to have lost his taste for struggle and lay limply in their arms.

  ‘Put him on the stool!’ Elvis shouted. The copbots complied, dragging Perry back onto the stage and hoisting him onto the Stool of Truth.

  ‘Product of fornication,’ the soothing woman’s voice declared.

  Elvis turned to the members of the media with a wide smile of relief. ‘You see that? All that ruckus for nothing—’

  ‘Normal,’ the soothing woman’s voice interrupted. Elvis gaped at Perry and the stool. ‘Product of fornication,’ the voice said. ‘Normal.’ ‘Product of fornication.’ The voice seemed to speed up, growing flustered. ‘Product of fornication. Normal. Product of fornication. Unable to read. Unable to read. Unable to read.’ The voice subsided and the device gave off a pronounced hum, followed by a few clicking noises, then silence. It had shut itself off.

  Elvis stepped up to Perry, who seemed to be enjoying all of this, and grabbed him by the front of his jacket. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘Where—’ But before he could utter another syllable, Perry transformed himself into a winged monkey and took flight from the stage, squawking loudly and flapping around the room while flinging its excrement at the journalists below, inciting havoc among them.

  Elvis turned to the copbots. ‘That’s a facsimilon,’ he growled. ‘Where’s the real Perry Bunt?’

  At that moment, he was travelling rapidly in a hovercar away from the conference room, speeding down a hallway to the bank of thirty elevators that serviced Earth. He saw Amanda waiting in front of the last elevator, but had forgotten how to stop the hovercar and, in a panic, flung himself from the vehicle, rolling to a stop at her feet.

  ‘Get in,’ she said.

  Perry threw himself into the elevator, the doors closed, and Amanda pushed the button numbered 1. The elevator sprang to life and silently slid into dark space, quickly leaving behind the lunar surface. As it slipped around the moon, Perry, pulling himself up to his feet, saw other elevators in orbit ahead of them. ‘You hit them all?’

  Amanda nodded. Since leaving the press conference, she had managed to call all the elevators and dispatch them towards Los Angeles. This, as she explained earlier to Perry, would force Galaxy’s security to follow every car to the surface and buy them more time to escape undetected. While Galaxy Entertainment had filled Earth with cameras, they hadn’t bothered putting any in their own elevators.

  ‘How’d the press conference go?’

  Perry struggled to catch his breath. ‘I think they believed me.’

  ‘Jeff make it?’

  Perry nodded. ‘It was weird running into the hallway and seeing myself.’

  ‘He told me he’d buy us a few minutes. Hopefully that’ll be enough.’

  ‘How’d you get him to do it?’
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  Amanda smiled. ‘Are you kidding? He loves playing Earthles. He always says, “The funnier looking, the better.”’ Perry frowned. ‘He also loved the idea of making executives look bad,’ she added quickly.

  ‘Will he be OK?’

  ‘They won’t be able to catch him. And even if they did, facsimilons are rarely held accountable for their actions. Pretending to be someone else is just what they do.’

  They watched as the Earth grew before them, afraid to speak as if it would jinx their luck. As the blue planet filled the dark space all around them, Perry felt a sudden awe for it. I’m going home, he thought. And for the first time in his life, he felt a kinship with the people with whom he shared his home. It was true that they were terribly flawed, that they were all fated to want things they could never have, which made them crazy and in some instances dangerous. But most of them were dreaming of something better, and for this reason alone they were more alive than the Edenites, with the secrets of the universe at their fingertips, would ever be.

  When swirls of clouds surrounded them, Amanda exhaled. ‘We’re going to make it,’ she said. ‘Now comes the tricky part.’

  ‘What?’ Perry said. ‘None of that back there was tricky?’

  Amanda didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the California coastline surging towards them. Perry could now make out the cancer-like sprawl of buildings and roadways that was Los Angeles, as well as the Santa Monica Mountains to the west and a thin yellow strip of beach bordering the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean. Without warning, Amanda reached over to the elevator’s control panel and flipped the red switch marked Emergency Shut-Off. The elevator, which had been travelling through the Earth’s upper atmosphere at a slight angle, shuddered, lurched and began dropping straight down at an even greater speed. Perry felt the skin on his face tugged towards the floor as he grabbed onto the metal railing.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he managed to yell.