The Seat of Creation
Sheyn Froy was a pretty woman, no doubt about it. Even while sleeping. Especially while sleeping. Hers was not the vacuous beauty of a home-coming queen; it was more the hard-edged beauty of a swan carved out of ice, and given place of honour at a table full of expensive canapés. The kind of beauty made poignant by the knowledge that soon its icy exterior would thaw and it would just melt away and be gone forever. But Sheyn's icy exterior had the durability of an ice age. She would be keeping her beauty for a very long time.
Sheyn’s day dawned as it always did, by way of the most unnerving alarm clock she could find, one of those old fashioned ones with hands and a buzzer that sounded like the last thing you would hear on ol' sparky. The kind you can only find in a run-down second hand store. The coffee pot had been doing its thing for a few minutes at this point, and after a quick shower and today's power suit Sheyn and the last drip of coffee arrived at the kitchen counter at exactly the same time. Breakfast was a cup of black coffee to go with her vitamin pill and then off to the Creation Studio by 6:00 AM to make sure everything and everyone was immaculate. That would be a stretch because Bill had just decided to use Creation late last night as Sheyn was readying for bed; which process involved doing all of the paperwork that couldn't be done during the day. And then Bill called and she had to suddenly phone many others who were themselves readying for bed and tell them that they were going back to work to prep an old dusty studio. Bill's entrance would be at 8:00 AM sharp, and everything would be perfect or heads would roll. There were a lot of headless people working somewhere else who had previously held important jobs at Fun Fact, but they had crossed Sheyn. And you only did that once. Because she was the enforcer for Bill.
Bill Macher (“Three Dollar Bill” to those who knew him, but only behind his back) was punctual. And he demanded punctuality from all those in a subordinate position to him. That was everyone. He was the head of Fun Fact TV, the largest producers of reality TV on the planet. Or any other planet, so far as anyone knew. The only one he was in any way civil to was Sheyn; he was sort of afraid of her. She seemed to know where all the bodies were buried, and there were a lot of those. So when Sheyn pulled her Toyota Prius into her parking spot beside Bill's, and discovered that Bill's Volkswagen XL1 was already there, and that Bill was in fact waiting for her on the sidewalk with the patience of a rutting bull, he didn't say any of the stock greetings he normally hurled at subordinates. Instead, he said, "Tell me about Tier Two."
This set Sheyn back a bit. She had learned long ago to be amply prepared for the day's encounter with Bill - today (ever since late last night) was supposed to be the Creation Studio to flesh out a new show about overweight chefs living off-grid in the Louisiana swamps. She knew a great deal about obesity; the culinary arts; back-to-nature living; the geography and history of the delta. She could also talk knowledgeably about any of the other shows they had on the go - shows about people with too much, too little, too many or too few of any number of ailments, items, skills, mental abilities, libido, finances or body parts - but she only knew what everyone else knew from the news about the crazies at Tier Two. She would have to improvise.
"Um... they have a ton of money that they want to shoot into space for some reason. The first part of the project is ready to roll - all robots and stuff getting things in place on the ground on Mars - "
"BORING. Robots don't make good TV - "
"so that when phase two gets there with people - "
"I'm listening - "
"they'll have whatever it is that people on Mars need - "
"like cameras and such - "
"but the problem is that Tier Two is in a bit of a cash flow situation right at the moment. Overextended you might say. They can get the robots to Mars but they can't send any people."
"And I have a text on my phone to get in touch with them because...?"
"Because we can make it into a reality TV show. We split the profits with the consortium. We get rich. They get people to Mars." Said Sheyn, and then made a show of retrieving something from her car as an excuse to let this simmer for a bit in Bill’s mind. She was something between a psychiatrist and a psychic when it came to Bill’s mind. While Bill was simmering, Sheyn herself had a moment to go through everything she just surmised from one little text message to see if it held water. It seemed like pretty good deductive reasoning she had to admit.
Meanwhile, Bill was uncharacteristically quiet and contemplative for a moment. This could be a big deal. A very big deal. The Tier Two shot to Mars was already enough in the news that even Bill had a passing knowledge of what it was about, so likely the rest of the world did too. What Bill knew about it was that a bunch of people and a lot of money were going to be shot at Mars, never to come back. Popular opinion had it that the whole project had a one in ten chance of ending in anything other than disaster, and to Bill, that meant the project had a nine in ten chance of being the biggest thing since the invention of the wheel or maybe even fire. This was a burning wheel. It was a tire fire. He had to have a piece of it. But he was wasting a resource, which was Sheyn's time.
"Phone whoever the hell left me that message and get details. Lots of details. Then get back to the office and talk."
"Sure thing, chief."
Sheyn set off at a quick walk to somewhere where communication happened. Communication was a detail that Bill had mentally filed under "D" along with all the other trivia he had no time for. His was a mind for ideas, and it was always full to the brim. He slowly sauntered past his car with the ironic bumper sticker Honk if you love Jesus; Jesus Santiago being the head of the Latin America division which was showing huge promise, and Bill loved him. Wait - was that ironic or merely sarcastic? Bill would have to ask Sheyn. Of course it was neither ironic nor sarcastic, it was in fact cunningly offensive. What the bumper sticker actually said was Honk aoyb ir libe Yoshke which could offend both eydish and the more knowledgeable goyim from twenty paces. Bill had a camera pointed in such a way as to catch peoples' reactions à la Allen Funt (a god in his own right). He called this trolling, and it was a profitable use of otherwise wasted time driving. Anyway, he sauntered past his car and slowly wound his way to the glass tower the top floor of which was his office, all the while generating ideas.
When he got to his office, Bill was positively verklempt. He actually sat down, instead of his natural state which was pacing. This could be the biggest thing ever - bigger than all of the Alaska shows, the Medical shows, the Freak shows, the Wilderness shows, the Home Improvement shows, and the Cooking shows, all rolled up into one. They'd have to get Legal on it right away. The consortium guys would probably need some cash up front or they wouldn't be calling this late in the game, but the vampires and other assorted monsters in Legal would bamboozle the consortium so that they took most of the risk with minimal cash up front and pretty much all of the profits swinging Bill's way. Yes, this could work. But what sort of cast would be needed? Bill's mind revved quietly while Sheyn was on the phone somewhere. After a while she came back.
"Well, it's a fact, chief. They want to turn their Mars shot into a reality TV show to get it off the ground, in a manner of speaking, and they want to fly in for a meeting this week."
"Sheyn. Work with me on this."
"Always do, chief."
"What kind of people are needed on a mission to Mars?"
"They're already picked and have actually started some training - all top of the class astronauts with various PHD backgrounds, some multiple PHDs. All Dutch, curiously."
"No good. Nobody likes a PHD. They never smile. And nobody likes Dutch people. Name me one Dutch comedian. And real astronauts are unlikely to fuck up. Any word with a hard K sound is funny, like Fuck Up. So we need lots of Fuck Ups. Those guys are all fired. We need professionals, we'll mock up some personalities and get Casting on it. How big is the boat? And by boat I mean cast?
"Four astronauts leave Earth. Three stay on Mars and one returns the very expensive boat back home where it shuttles back and forth at 52 month intervals, interspersed with another one doing the same thing, so every 26 months one of them is bringing more people or stuff to the red planet - "
"Red Planet. I like that - "
"But the three 'Martians' will live in an arm of the ship that will swing around to give them one third of a normal gravity so they can get used to what Mars will be like. The returning guy will stay at one gravity in a different arm thing most of the time so as not to get seriously messed up for his return to Earth eventually. That means a cast of three with a guest cast member from time to time."
"That's a workable formula."
"And there's always the chance to link in experts or some such from home. So a cast of three, one recurring guest and the occasional remote walk-on. And then of course there's the entirely parallel robot mission in between times ferrying supplies and the buildings to be used on the planet. It's going by a much cheaper route called a - "
"Details. When does the robot mission leave?"
"In a year's time. The consortium put all of their energy into that one and it's solid, just the manned one - "
"I want cameras in it. The actual buildings they'll be using? We need schematics, or blueprints, or whatever you call it for a space building. There's likely to be some mods - "
"They won't like it. Changes at this point will make their engineers scream - "
"Then they can get new engineers. Ones that smile. You can't scream if you're smiling. Unless you're really crazy. I like that. Look into it. Smiling, screaming, crazy engineers. That can be the opening shot for the two hour special we'll use to get this thing off the ground - "
"We'll need a production team and some really top-notch writers, and a studio before we can even look into this. Are we into this thing to level one before we even meet the consortium?"
"Get it happening. I want a full team at the Creation Studio this morning. Level one. The swamp chefs just got cancelled. See if you can use any of those dingleberries for this. When we meet with these schlubs from the consortium I want to have everything fleshed out and ready to roll. And get Legal on the phone. I want Vlad himself working on this one."
"Right-o chief."
"And work up some initial thoughts about character profiles for four spots. They're going to be together for a long time, so these characters have to be as caustic as possible - "
"And qualifications?"
"No, they're only getting scale. No brand names. Just cheap faces - "
"I meant should they know how to fly around in rockets and stuff - "
"Details. They're getting training, right?”
"Right-o. And as far as scale, I think they'll all be volunteers, so essentially free - "
A contortion of muscles creased Bill's face into something that might have been meant to be a smile.
"I love it. So work up some initial profiles for these volunteer actors and meet me in Creation at 8:00 AM with a full team."
Sheyn didn't bother looking at her watch. She had a pretty good idea it was maybe seven thirty.
"See you then, boss."
She sighed and walked out to her somewhat smaller, though adjoined, office. It was going to be a busy half hour, pulling together a diverse team of people who hadn't even arrived at work yet. The Louisiana team would be gutted and repurposed of course, and they should already be in the studio, but who else would she need for an outer space thing? Some kind of engineers and other assorted eggheads. Ex airforce? While part of her mind was flashing through a number of resource possibilities and sorting them into columns based on skill sets and proximity to the creation studio for an eight o'clock thing, another part of her mind was working on character profiles while still another part of her mind was realizing that it was all a complete waste of time. Bill was going to show up in Creation in a little under a half hour with everything straight in his head and wouldn't listen to anyone else. Sigh. Was it worth it? Sheyn wondered, for perhaps the millionth time. And the answer was still: Of course it was. She and Bill were making Reality.
A little less than a half hour later, Sheyn was on her way at a brisk pace to the Creation Studio. This was the studio where magic happened. It had seen its heyday years before shooting extra scenes in post for early attempts at reality TV shows - shows about entitled families living in Santa Barbara, that sort of thing. Production lot lore had it that the Apollo moon landings had been filmed here, but that was before anyone's time and who could really say. But in the more recent past it was taken over by Fun Fact and Bill, who used it to determine peoples' lives. Long before hillbillies lived off the land in Alaska, long before rednecks terrorized the wildlife in Louisiana; long before housewives competed against chefs making their grandmother’s meatloaf; long before over privileged people debated the relative merits of this or that McMansion as the best place to raise their dogs, long before fat people became thin and thin people became hoarders with large growths on their bodies, their characters and really their entire lives were fleshed out by Bill, Sheyn and the team in a special studio repurposed for the job. It had seen only intermittent use in the last little while, though. Reality TV had long ago morphed into un-reality but even at that most of the conceivable stories had already been flogged to death. There simply weren’t any new outrageous variations on reality that you could put on TV. And so the place where magic happened hadn’t seen any magic lately. I mean thank goodness that Cajun freak show came up or the whole place would be full of dust and spiders. Because when the Tier Two people left that text message, it was suddenly show time.
The main feature of the Creation Studio was, of course, a nice large stage and then audience seating for about twenty, usually producers and writers. It was here that the broad outlines of sets, actors and plots could be worked out quickly before assigning and modifying another studio to the project on a more permanent basis. The real magic of the studio was off stage and out of site from the audience so as not to distract them - that was an area where a team of very quick carpenters and grips could whip up cardboard sets on the spur of the moment, and also an area where several generic actors could be waiting until called upon to suddenly improv whatever the audience needed. That it hadn't been used for a bit was apparent, as it had that closed-up building feeling to it, but it seemed functional. The team that Sheyn had called back into work from their homes had seemingly done a good job blowing the dust off of the place overnight. She would see to it that a commendation was placed in all of their files in HR - basically a get-out-of-one-minor-fuck-up-free card. She would also see that a note was placed in the files of everyone who had some reason why they could not come back into work. Kind of a one-more-fuck-up-and-you’re-outathere card. Tough but fair was Sheyn’s motto. She first verified that the big chair smack in the middle of the audience - the "Seat of Creation" was clean and ready to go. Check. Next the stage - clean and empty, like a vast void. Check. Offstage: carpenters, grips and assorted cardboard things and paints that could turn into the most elaborate props in seconds - check. The green room, replete with a half dozen or so actors who would all be hard to describe but who could turn into just about anybody with a costume change - check. All seemed ready and waiting for The Creator who should be arriving… just about...
Thunk went a large noise somewhere overhead and then everything was suddenly very, very dark. Apparently some electric gizmo somewhere in the studio had not seen attention since the days of Apollo and was now very much in need of attention. There was a flurry of activity backstage and overhead, as was visible by the flashlight beams that came and went, but still no main light. And then the awfullest thing that could possibly happen in Sheyn's well-ordered life happened - Three Dollar Bill arrived at exactly 8:00 AM to an imperfect studio.
"What the Fuck?" he said by way of hello as he was navigating to his seat by the faint light of the door that was left open for the purpose. Inevitably he bumped some part of himself on some other thing.
"Will someone please GET THE FUCKING LIGHTS WORKING?"
Thunk responded a large noise somewhere overhead, and the whole studio came alive with light.
"That's good. What kind of outfit are we running here? A man could bruise his tuchas in the dark. OK, listen up monkeys. We're doing a space thing here that starts out on the ground. So I want two stages. Stage left is outer space and stage right is terra firma. Get me some kind of barrier between them."
At once a group of grips appeared from offstage carrying sections of prefab wall on legs and placed them in the middle of the stage, separating the left half from the right. Then they promptly disappeared offstage again.
"OK. Now stage left on the terra firma side - "
"Chief, stage right was to be the ground - "
"Stage right then - put a plant or something there so we can tell them apart."
And instantly a potted Norwegian Pine tree was placed center back of stage right.
"OK, that's good. Now we need the initial mood - lighting guys, hop to it!"
And at once a team of lighting technicians set about creating an ambience for the stages that had been created. They set up a bright daytime effect on stage right. Stage left, which was to be outer space, had a more diffuse effect and one of the technicians even had the stroke of genius of stringing a set of white Christmas lights overhead to be stars.
"I like it... what the fuck was that?"
There was a flurry of wings suddenly on stage. The pine tree had apparently had a small bird resident in it. When the bird deemed it safe to make a break for it off it went in a mad dash over the little wall separating the stages and straight toward the still open door to freedom.
"How the fuck did a bird make it in here? Is he out now? Good. You monkeys out back. Make sure there are no more critters back there. Find them and kill them - "
"Bill, no!"
"OK, find them and escort them lovingly out onto the grounds. People, I need People. Right now, two actors, stage right - "
"Four actors, chief - "
"Four actors, stage right, girl, boy, girl, boy..."
And four actors appeared on stage right as if by magic. They wore drab robes and by their appearance they could have been anyone, although whether consciously or not they were all trying to emulate Bill because that was how you got a callback and maybe eventually got on a show.
"Good so far, but we need context. I’ve got to think. That's 15 for coffee, people. Except you monkeys out back. I want astronaut training shit stage right and a spaceship stage left. You've got 15. Hop to it!"
And while some people started milling about the coffee table, the stages were being miraculously transformed into a training facility and a spaceship, largely made out of shipping boxes of various sizes held together with duct tape and painted rather hastily to give the needed illusions. At precisely the 15 minute mark everyone was back to their assigned places; Bill in the best seat in the house with Sheyn beside him, some sycophants behind them, four actors stage right and no one else to be seen.
"Sheyn. Work with me on this."
"Always do, chief."
"What kind of people are needed on a mission to Mars?"
Sheyn sighed internally. She knew it was Bill's style to redo the last scene of anything before forging off into new plot as if life had just come back from commercial, but it was still tiring sometimes. So Sheyn pulled out her painstakingly, though hastily, researched profiles of the qualities that would go into a successful Mars Mission, which she knew would be instantly overruled by Bill. But here goes anyway.
"The primary consideration would be highly skilled pilots or even better, astronauts, who excel in athletic abilities and have a diverse educational background, the right stuff if you will - "
"The right stuff - I like it. Make the male lead a real jock - a guy who takes insane risks for the hell of it. Men fear him, women love him - "
"So the lead is a male, and a jock and a natural leader. Male number one - make it happen. What's the makeup of the rest of the cast? We've got four spots, although one's a guest most episodes so really three."
"The most friction would come from a morning zoo format - two males and one woman. The males are always fighting for the female, whether it ever comes to the surface or not, it's always there - "
"OK, so the male lead, one other male, a female and then the guest spot which can go either way - "
"No, the guest spot has to be male too. Males you can ignore, another woman gives the odd man out in the zoo something to strive for. No good. The odd man out has to be frustrated - "
"You're saying everyone is straight. What if there's a gay character?"
"Not on this launch. Probably the next one. For this one, everyone is straight. Makes the morning zoo triangle work - "
"How about racial background?"
"Science fiction always starts out whiter than white and then over time the characters diversify. Like hockey."
"So male lead, female lead, odd man out and male guest. All white, all straight. You on stage; make it so. What kinds of personalities do they have?"
"This is essentially a science fiction reality show. Science fiction characters are usually poorly rendered because eggheads who write science fiction don't know from personality. It's standard to take one reasonably functional personality and split it up three or four ways into its constituent bits. Also makes good TV, because the split personalities have to work together to make anything happen, they're incomplete individually, but they all really distrust each other at a fundamental level. So character one is the Jock. He is aggressive though not combative amongst good guys. A natural leader. I say he's a gifted pilot. Done. Character two has to be what is mostly left when you take the aggression and leadership out of a character. This is a softer character, full of empathy - "
"I'm getting the female lead here - "
"You bet. The female lead is empathetic to the other characters. She is the emotional soul of the group. She's also a literary device for bridging the other characters together when they get too far apart. Make her a doctor - that will give her an excuse for being empathetic without getting all schmaltzy about it - "
"And she's very attractive, but still extremely competent as a doctor, so the other characters can't totally smother her - "
"Right. Big boobs. Big boobs make big TV."
And the female actor onstage disappeared and was instantly replaced with an obvious doctor who was quite pretty and quite amply a woman. She stood beside a handsome actor who was now quite decidedly the leader and an excellent pilot.
"That's two characters down. We've taken a complete personality and split out the leadership from the empathy. How do we get a third character out of this?"
"Simple. We split out the logic from the first two. We make a third character who is all about logic. He embodies liberal thinking, always taking new facts and points of view and melding them into a cohesive whole that nicely summarizes the plot for the viewers. He's the brains of the outfit. That makes the leader impulsive, fearless, and full of all that Alpha male shit that doesn't require brains. The doctor is empathetic and lovey-dovey and touch-feely and this keeps getting her into situations because she doesn't really think things out in advance. Oh, and the third guy needs some physical thing that makes him stand out. Not a deformity or anything, just a thing. Maybe with his ears."
"How about we make him black?" asked Sheyn. "I know you said whiter than white initially, maybe breaking the mold would be edgy."
"Black. Could work. Try it."
And another actor appeared on stage. A black actor wearing glasses.
"Glasses off! I said not a deformity! Thank you. Now this third character is totally logical and has zero empathy and zero leadership abilities, but is still oddly attractive to the right woman in the right situation. Do it."
The actor onstage put on a cool jacket that somehow made him appear really smart but also aloof and maybe a little dangerous in a James Dean kind of way. Sheyn nodded her approval.
"Three down chief. What about the every-other-show walk-on?"
"He's a minor character, but loveable and gushing with personality. He’s the comic relief. Whenever things get too heavy he steps in and lights the place up. He’s the technical guy but you can tell it’s all horseshit whenever he talks techno-babble, he’s just there to be lovable. He's not going down to the planet but staying on the ship, so we need some minor flaw in him that keeps him isolated from the others in some way - nothing too obvious - an accent. He has a slightly annoying accent that means he's not from around here and not really part of the group. So he’s just naturally funny and has some kind of accent. I say he’s Jewish - what do you think?”
“Jewish it is. How about the others? So far they’re Goyim."
“Flip a coin on the female lead, but the alpha male and the logic guy are the complete opposite of Jewish. They’ll never have any funny lines. Stage Monkeys! Make it happen!
A fourth actor appeared on stage, looking a little like Woody Allen. He stood a little way away from the rest of the group but still made you smile just to look at him.
"Almost done, chief. We've fleshed out the characters' personalities, but how about their belief systems? What about religion?"
"Oy Gevalt, spare me. What has religion got to do with anything? This is science fiction. All the characters are atheists. OK - Writers! Ten-Hut!"
At the back of the audience, four bookish looking individuals stood up and nervously resisted their impulse to bow.
"You guys stay here and get me some words on paper. I want a two hour pilot and four different plot directions with 5 minutes of script for each direction, and I want it tonight before any one of you goes home or eats or drinks or shits or anything else for that matter. Do it."
The writers immediately started conferring and floating ideas and calling for the movement of actors and props on stage. Meanwhile, Sheyn and Bill took their leave. They walked back towards the executive tower to continue weaving the fabric of reality. There were many other worlds that would all stop spinning if they didn't get a good twist every once in a while.
"It's good to be alive, isn't it, Sheyn."
"You bet, chief."
"When the writers have got some more meat on the bones of the characters get some good profiles written up and off to Casting."
Cast in Stone was the casting company under the Fun Fact umbrella, and over the years they had become almost supernatural in their ability to find people who were exactly like the profiles that Bill had dreamt up.
"I want these characters to become flesh and blood immediately after our meeting with the Consortium. I have a good feeling about this one. There is not a single damn thing that can go wrong."
Sheyn's mind was reeling with all of the things even she could think of that could go wrong with a manned mission to Mars, and she was afraid of heights and so seldom flew even. So her response had to be:
"I'll get right on it, chief."