An Egg Hatches
Bill’s neck was out several millions of miles with his latest and most ambitious creation to date, Tier Two. This was the first reality TV show in space (not counting the moon shots, which really could have used a competent producer, not that yutz they had. "One small step for a Man" - who wrote that shit? At least it was very slightly improved by Armstrong flubbing the line) and the ratings were bottoming out. However, in his capacity as the Creator of the little world the cast inhabited, Three Dollar had had the foresight to leave a few miracles lying about. They could only be redeemed by firstly knowing where they were, and secondly knowing the combination to the lock that secured them against accidental discovery. The cast referred to these items as Easter Eggs and they would earn them for the most outrageous reasons from their point of view, but from the point of view of the omniscient Creator they would appear when the ratings needed a boost. When the male lead (Church? That might be his name. Whatever.) did a spectacularly dangerous EVA outside the ferry to untangle a hose or something, who the hell cares, and this caused a momentary spike in viewership, Bill decided to keep the wave going by arranging a romantic dinner as a reward. As it happened, one of the Easter Eggs on board was a bottle of Penfolds Grange Hermitage 1951 that cost almost as much to buy as it did to ship to Mars. It had been Sheyn's idea, not just the bottle of wine itself, but the secret blend of hormones and pheromones it contained that medical had come up with. The ultimate date-rape drug they called it. All of the chemicals that would be in your body after a truly epic orgasm, but without all the mess. Unless it worked, of course. Then there would still be mess. The mixture was totally natural, totally untraceable, and totally guaranteed to make two people fall in love for an hour or two. She also arranged a pointless yet time consuming task for the Grayson character and the privacy and the wine cocktail had the desired result: A date in space, broadcast almost live. In itself, that was worth the expense of the egg, but now, a couple of months later, and it turns out there was another miracle as a result of this gift: apparently the characters had retired together after the date and now there was to be a new cast member. And even better, the Church character didn't know about it and was planning to dump the McCoy character. Miracle upon miracle!
"The tsoyg is pregnant! And that luft kop she fell in love with is going to dump her! Live on TV! My TV Show. What a glorious day! This is what TV is all about!" Bill said to Sheyn, who was walking beside him.
"Take it easy, chief. A lot could go wrong. He may not dump her. There really aren't any more fish in his particular ocean. And anyhow, we may want them to stay together. I say we get a focus group on it, try a few scenarios, that sort of thing, see how we want this to play out."
"I want them to break up. I want it to be nasty. I want them to hate each other but they're forced to work together, live together. Good friction is good TV. What can we do to make this happen? We pulled their strings and they started schtupping - now we need to pull some different strings. What other Easter Eggs do we have hidden up there, or at the landing site?"
"We have lots of little goodies lying about, chief. Some of them may work. But let's give nature a chance first. Maybe that little vizele Art will get hurt sometime and she'll have to nurse him back to health. That'll add some dimension to the characters. Although I think I speak for all women here when I say there's nothing attractive about that barimer. It's not that he's physically unattractive, it's more like he's deep-down ugly, like he has no soul. So he's kind of out of script as far as romance goes. We knew getting into this that with only four of them there just weren't that many plot lines that could develop. And of course with Dave being anti-social and Art going meshugge that leaves only the two viable characters. If they end up hating each other the interactions up there are going to be about zero, somewhere just above the ratings. I say we should be cautious."
"OK - we'll leave alf vayblekh and alf zkhr alone for the moment and concentrate on Dingleberry. What can we do to brighten up his day? He needs some kind of crisis of faith - get the writers on it. Maybe his childhood pastor can come out of the closet or something. But make sure he's on camera when he gets whatever the news is. I want to feel his pain right through the camera. And laugh at it, along with a million viewers."
"More like a half million - we're down a few points. Research shows that people are just fed up with the monotony of a long space flight. They'll probably all tune in for the landing and a week or two after that to see if anyone dies but essentially space is boring. And we better not mess too much with the Worldwide Church of the Lunatic Right. They seem to have an awful lot of money, and an awful lot of bad things happen to anyone who crosses them. You don’t want to end up floating face down in the Volga."
Bill glowered in answer. He knew on some level that he was impulsive and prone to anger and spontaneous decisions that weren't always good in the long run, and depended very much on Sheyn to temper him and reel him in a bit. They were walking along the path leading to the executive tower. Sheyn was briefing him on how the mission was going, as always starting with the most important details, currently the latest romantic developments onboard. This was all highly essential information for Bill to take in, but his mind was revving like his very expensive Volkswagen tended to not as he tried to go over what had brought them to this pass and he was missing most of the briefing.
Tier Two was the top rated reality TV show hands down and hugely profitable when it figuratively launched four seasons ago. And how could it miss? Four brave astronauts starting the most arduous training of their lives, preparing to be the first people to head off into the vast void separating Earth from Mars, three of them never to return. Of course, it was a little fercockt right from the start because those beheyme sons-of-bitches at Tier Two had only given Bill creative control over two of the characters, not all four like he was expecting for the pot of money he had given them.
Even so, the show was a resounding hit. The plotlines were seemingly infinite; every week the cast had to solve some new problem or other and their personalities were really starting to shine and work together, which meant of course that the cracks were becoming apparent and they were all starting to really hate each other. And whenever they needed a new wrinkle, well, they were still on Earth and it was easy to swap out a trainer for a new pretty one to catch Jim's eye, or a Black Hindu one to get Art going, or they could get a puppy on set under some thin pretense - some kind of research into future canine something-or-other, at any rate it made the female lead gush and then cry.
Then when the show literally launched two seasons ago it was again the most watched show ever as the four astronauts went to the staging platform in Low Earth Orbit to help build and train in the ferry that was to take them to Mars. Week by week the viewers were pasted to their screens watching the mighty ship take shape, and the inspiring and sometimes funny adventures of the intrepid astronauts and assorted platform crew as they made the dream become a reality.
Then came the fateful day at the beginning of this season when the ferry was ready, the platform crew left, and the four astronauts finally boosted out of LEO and began their perilous journey to Mars. Ratings could not possibly be higher. One estimate had it that there were more people watching the show than actually existed on Earth, but that was later found to be an error. In any event there was not a single person you could talk to anywhere that hadn't watched the show all along and knew everything about the four characters in the cast. Where they grew up, what their favourite meals were, who they had crushes on as teenagers, everything. The burn to get them going onto a Hohmann transfer to Mars took 5 minutes, after which they would coast. And coast. And coast. And then, they would coast some more.
It turns out it takes around nine months to get to Mars, or roughly 30 prime-time half hour shows and two one hour specials. The trouble is, after the first month of shows you've pretty much used up all of the plot there is onboard a metal tube adrift in the sky. And it wasn't just the viewers that were getting a little bored - the characters were getting bored too. This affected their personalities and brought into sharp relief flaws that were previously considered virtues.
Jim, the leader, was always on the aggressive side. This was what the other men respected in him and what the one woman felt an attraction towards. But when there is no outlet for aggression it smolders away and Jim was becoming quite moody, shunning interaction with the others.
Art, however, was in his element. He was presently employed as an astronaut, but he was previously employed as a fire and brimstone TV preacher. Now that there wasn't much to do, he found himself in a confined space with three heathens. Heathens didn't believe in God. The Christian God. The Christian God of mostly white people who chose to reveal Himself pretty much exclusively at Art's church, the Worldwide Church of Reaffirmed Apostolic Principles. Since heathens were by definition not human, Art was in a very real sense creating people every time he found a convert. The power of that thought made him feel giddy. And so he delighted in spreading the word to everyone who would listen. But especially people who weren't listening. So much so that everyone avoided him, as much as was physically possible, like he was the very embodiment of all of the biblical plagues.
Bonnie was at a loss. She could feel everyone's pain and frustration, but didn't know what to do about it. She was, after all, just a country doctor, not a psychiatrist. No matter what she tried to do to make things better it usually backfired, but she kept trying.
Dave. Well, Dave was Dave. He had his own rotating arm at One G because he would be returning to Earth, whereas everyone else was in a rotating arm at Mars G, or .38 of a G, to get ready for Mars. Dave had a good excuse for keeping to himself most of the time. What he did in his own arm was his own business as long as he avoided the cameras. Which he did.
And so nothing much happened onboard for the longest stretches of time. Sometimes the characters would simply stop talking to the camera in the middle of a sentence and then start again a moment later, and not realize they had checked out for a while. Ratings plummeted.
“So what do you want to have happen?” asked Sheyn.
“About what?” said Bill, struggling out of his reverie.
“Do we interfere with this pregnancy/dumping thing, or leave things to sort themselves out?”
“What would Jesus do?”
“I’ve got a five o’clock with him. I’ll ask. But we better get the Asian viewpoint too - I’ll reach out to Dong.”
“Do it. I guess until we get a sense of how this thing is viewed on the street we’d better hang back and let it proceed on its own.”
“Okay. Hands off for the moment. Who knows? Maybe something totally unexpected will happen up there all by itself.”