“I don’t think it’s like that,” Dahl said.
“It’s exactly like that,” Hester said. “I’m meant to fill a spot and that’s it.”
“That’s not true at all,” Dahl said.
“No?” Hester looked up at Dahl. “What’s my first name?”
“What?” Dahl asked.
“What’s my first name?” Hester repeated. “You’re Andy Dahl. Maia Duvall. Jimmy Hanson. Anatoly Kerensky, for Christ’s sake. What’s my first name, Andy? You don’t know, do you?”
“You have a first name,” Dahl said. “I could look on my phone and find it.”
“But you don’t know it,” Hester said. “You never used it. You never call me by it. We’re friends, and you don’t even know my full name.”
“I’m sorry,” Dahl said. “I just never thought about calling you anything other than ‘Hester.’”
“My point exactly,” Hester said. “If even my friends never think about what my first name might be, that points out my role in the universe pretty precisely, doesn’t it?” He went back to looking at Matthew Paulson, in his coma.
“So, what is your first name?” Dahl finally asked.
“It’s Jasper,” Hester said.
“Jasper,” Dahl said.
“Family name,” Hester said. “Jasper Allen Hester.”
“Do you want me to call you Jasper from now on?” Dahl asked.
“Fuck, no,” Hester said. “Who wants to be called Jasper? It’s a ridiculous fucking name.”
Dahl tried to stifle a laugh and failed. Hester smiled at this.
“I’ll keep calling you Hester,” Dahl said. “But I want you to know that inside, I’ll be saying Jasper.”
“If it makes you happy,” Hester said.
“Jasper Jasper Jasper,” Dahl said.
“All right,” Hester said. “Enough. I’d hate to kill you in a hospital.”
They returned their attention to Matthew Paulson.
“Poor kid,” Hester said.
“He’s your age,” Duvall said.
“Yeah, but I’m likely to outlive him,” Hester said. “There’s a change for one of us.”
“I suppose it is,” Dahl said.
“That’s the problem with living in the twenty-first century,” Hester said. “In our world, if he got in the same accident, we could fix him. I mean, hell, Andy, think of all the horrible things that happened to you, and you survived.”
“I survived because it wasn’t time for me to die yet,” Dahl said. “It’s like Kerensky and his amazing powers of recovery. It’s all thanks to the Narrative.”
“Does it matter why?” Hester said. “I mean, really, Andy. If you’re just about dead and you survive and are healed by entirely fictional means, do you really give a shit? No, because you’re not dead. The Narrative knocks us off when it’s convenient. But it’s not all bad.”
“You were just talking about how it all made sense you were a nobody,” Dahl said. “That didn’t sound like you were in love with the Narrative.”
“I didn’t say I was,” Hester said. “But I think you’re forgetting that this meant I was the only one of us not absolutely fated to die horribly for the amusement of others.”
“This is a good point,” Dahl said.
“This show we’re on, it’s crap,” Hester said. “But it’s crap that sometimes works to our advantage.”
“Until it finally kills us,” Dahl said.
“Kills you,” Hester reminded him. “I might survive, remember.” He motioned to Matthew Paulson. “And if he lived in our world, he might have been saved, too.”
Dahl was silent at this. Hester looked up at him eventually to see Dahl looking at him curiously. “What?”
“I’m thinking,” Dahl said.
“About what?” Hester said.
“About using the Narrative to our advantage,” Dahl said.
Hester squinted. “This involves me in some way, doesn’t it,” he said.
“Yes, Jasper,” Dahl said. “Yes it does.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Charles Paulson opened the door to the conference room where the five of them sat, waiting, followed by another man. “Sorry about the wait,” he told them, and then motioned to the other man. “You wanted to see the show’s head writer, here he is. This is Nick Weinstein. I’ve explained to him what’s going on.”
“Hello,” Weinstein said, looking at the five of them. “Wow. Charles really wasn’t kidding.”
“Now, that’s funny,” Hester said, breaking up the slack-jawed staring four of the five of them were doing.
“What’s funny?” Weinstein asked.
“Mister Weinstein, were you ever an extra on your show?” Dahl asked.
“Once, a few seasons ago,” Weinstein said. “We needed a warm body for a funeral scene. I happened to be on the set. They threw a costume on me and told me to act sad. Why?”
“We know the man you played,” Dahl said. “His name is Jenkins.”
“Really?” Weinstein said, and smiled. “What’s he like?”
“He’s a sad, crazed shut-in who never got over the loss of his wife,” Duvall said.
“Oh,” Weinstein said, and stopped smiling. “Sorry.”
“You’re better groomed, though,” Hanson said, encouragingly.
“That’s probably the first time anyone’s ever said that about me,” Weinstein said, motioning at his beard.
“You said you had something you wanted to talk to me and Nick about,” Paulson said, to Dahl.
“I do,” Dahl said. “We do. Please sit.”
“Who is Jenkins?” Kerensky whispered to Dahl, as Paulson and Weinstein took their chairs.
“Later,” Dahl said.
“So,” Paulson said. His eyes flickered involuntarily over to Hester every few seconds.
“Mister Paulson, Mister Weinstein, there’s a reason we came back to your time,” Dahl said. “We came to convince you to stop your show.”
“What?” Weinstein said. “Why?”
“Because otherwise we’re dead,” Dahl said. “Mister Weinstein, when you kill off an extra in one of your scripts, the actor playing the extra eventually walks off the set and goes to get lunch. But where we are, that person stays dead. And people are killed off in just about every episode.”
“Well, not every episode,” Weinstein said.
“Jimmy,” Dahl said.
“Chronicles of the Intrepid has aired one hundred twenty-eight episodes over six seasons to date,” Hanson said. “One or more Intrepid crew members have died in ninety-six of those episodes. One hundred twelve episodes have death portrayed in one way or another. You’ve killed at least four hundred Intrepid crew members overall in the course of the series, and when you add in episodes where you’ve had other ships destroyed or planets attacked or suffering from diseases, your total death count reaches into the millions.”
“Not counting enemy deaths,” Dahl said.
“No, those would bump up the figure incrementally,” Hanson said.
“He’s read up a lot on the show,” Dahl said to Weinstein, about Hanson.
“All of those deaths aren’t my fault,” Weinstein said.
“You wrote them,” Duvall said.
“I didn’t write all of them,” Weinstein said. “There are other writers on staff.”
“You’re the head writer,” Hester said. “Everything in the scripts goes through you for approval.”
“The point is not to pin these deaths on you,” Dahl said, cutting in. “You couldn’t have known. From your point of view you’re writing fiction. From our point of view, though, it’s real.”
“How does that even work?” Weinstein said. “How does what we write here affect your reality? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Hester snorted. “Welcome to our lives,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Weinstein said, turning his attention to Hester.
“Do you think our lives make any sense at all?” Hester said. “Y
ou’ve got us living in a universe where there are killer robots with harpoons walking around a space station, because, sure, it makes perfect sense to have harpoon-launching killer robots.”
“Or ice sharks,” Duvall said.
“Or Borgovian Land Worms,” Hanson said.
Weinstein held up a finger. “I was not responsible for those land worms,” he said. “I was out for two weeks with bird flu. The writer who did that script loved Dune. By the time I got back, it was too late. The Herbert estate flayed us for those.”
“We dove into a black hole to get here,” Hester said, and jerked a thumb at Kerensky. “And we made sure to kidnap this sad bastard to make sure it would work, because he’s a main character on your show and won’t die offscreen. Think about that—physics alters around him.”
“Not that it keeps me from having the crap beaten out of me on a regular basis,” Kerensky said. “I used to wonder why bad things kept happening to me. Now I know it’s because at least one of your main characters has to be made to suffer. That just sucks.”
“You even make him heal super quickly so you can beat him up again,” Duvall said. “Which now that I think about it seems cruel.”
“And there’s the Box,” Hanson said, motioning to Dahl.
“The Box?” Weinstein said, looking at Dahl.
“Whenever you write bad science into the show, the way it gets resolved is that we feed the problem into the Box, and then when it’s dramatically appropriate it spits out an answer,” Dahl said.
“We never wrote a Box into the series,” Weinstein said, confused.
“But you do write bad science into the series,” Dahl said. “All the time. So there’s a Box.”
“Did they teach you science in school?” Hester asked. “I’m just wondering.”
“I went to Occidental College,” Weinstein said. “It has really good science classes.”
“Yeah, but did you go to any?” Duvall said. “Because I have to tell you, our universe is a mess.”
“Other science fiction shows had science advisers and consultants,” Hanson pointed out.
“It’s science fiction,” Weinstein said. “The second part of that phrase matters too.”
“But you’re making it bad science fiction,” Hester said. “And we have to live in it.”
“Guys,” Dahl said, interrupting everyone again. “Let’s try to stay on target here.”
“What is the target?” Paulson asked. “You said you had an idea you wanted to talk about, and all I’m hearing so far is a bitch session at my head writer.”
“I’m feeling a little defensive,” Weinstein said.
“Don’t,” Dahl said. “Again: You couldn’t have known. But now you know where we are coming from, and why we came back to stop your show.”
Paulson opened his mouth at this, probably to object and offer any number of reasons why that would be impossible. Dahl held up his hand to forestall the objection. “Now that we’re here, I know that just stopping the show can’t happen. It was a long shot anyway. But now I don’t want the show to end, because I can see a way for it to work to our advantage. Both ours and yours.”
“Get to it, then,” Paulson said.
“Charles, your son’s in a coma,” Dahl said.
“Yes,” Paulson said.
“There’s no chance for him ever coming out of it,” Dahl said.
“No,” Paulson said after a minute, and looked around, eyes wet. “No.”
“You didn’t say anything about this,” Weinstein said. “I thought there was still a chance.”
“No,” Paulson said. “Doctor Lo told me yesterday that the scans show his brain function continuing to deteriorate, and that it’s the machines keeping his body alive at this point. We’re waiting until we have the family together so we can say good-bye. We’ll have him taken off the machines then.” He looked over at Hester, who sat there silently, and then back at Dahl. “Unless you have another idea.”
“I do,” Dahl said. “Charles, I think we can save your son.”
* * *
“Tell me how,” Paulson said.
“We take him with us,” Dahl said. “Back to the Intrepid. We can cure him there. We have the technology there to do it. And even if we didn’t”—he pointed at Weinstein—“we have the Narrative. Mister Weinstein here writes an episode in which Hester is injured but survives and is taken to sick bay to be healed. It gets done. Hester survives. Your son survives.”
“Take him into the show,” Paulson said. “That’s your plan.”
“That’s the idea,” Dahl said. “Sort of.”
“Sort of,” Paulson said, frowning.
“There are some logistical issues,” Dahl said. “As well as some that are, for lack of a better word, teleological.”
“Like what?” Paulson said.
Dahl turned to Weinstein, who was also frowning. “I’m guessing you’re thinking of a few right now,” he said.
“Yeah,” Weinstein said, and motioned to Hester. “The first is that you’ll have two of him in your universe.”
“You can make up an excuse for that,” Paulson said.
“I could, yes,” Weinstein said. “It would be messy and nonsensical.”
“This is a problem for you?” Hester asked.
“But the thing is that two of him in their universe means none of him in this one,” Weinstein said, ignoring Hester’s comment. “You had—have, sorry—your son playing this character here. If they both go, there’s no one to play the character.”
“We’ll recast the role,” Paulson said. “Someone who looks like Matthew.”
“But then the problem is which of the—” Weinstein looked at Hester.
“Hester,” he said.
“Which of the Hesters the new one back here affects,” Weinstein said. “Besides that, and I’m the first to admit that I have no idea how this screwy voodoo works, but if I were trying to do this, I wouldn’t be using a substitute Hester, because who knows how that would affect your son’s healing process. He might not end up himself.”
“Right,” Dahl said. “Which is why we offer the following solution.”
“I stay behind,” Hester said.
“So, you stay behind, pretend to be my son,” Paulson said. “You make a miraculous recovery, then we make the episode where you play my son, and we make you well.”
“Sort of,” Hester said.
“What is it with these ‘sort ofs’?” Paulson snapped. “What’s the problem?”
Dahl looked over at Weinstein again. “Tell him,” he said.
“Oh, shit,” Weinstein said, straightening up in his chair. “This is about that atom thing, isn’t it?”
“Atom thing?” Paulson said. “What ‘atom thing’?”
Weinstein grabbed his head. “So stupid,” he said to himself. “Charles, when we wrote the episode where Abernathy and the others came back in time, we did this thing where they could only be here six days before their atoms reverted to their current positions in the timeline.”
“I have no idea what that means, Nick,” Paulson said. “Talk normal human to me.”
“It means that if we stay in this timeline for six days, we die,” Dahl said. “And we’re already on day three.”
“It also means that if Matthew goes to their timeline, he only has six days before the same thing happens to him,” Weinstein said.
“What a stupid fucking idea!” Paulson exploded at Weinstein. “Why the fuck did you do that?”
Weinstein held his hands out defensively. “How was I supposed to know one day I’d be here talking about this?” he said, plaintively. “Jesus, Charles, we were just trying to get through the damn episode. We needed them to have a reason to get everything done on a schedule. It made sense at the time.”
“Well, change it,” Paulson said. “New rule: People traveling through time can take as much fucking time as they want.”
Weinstein looked over at Dahl, pleadingly. “It’s too late for that,” Da
hl said, interpreting Weinstein’s look. “The rule was in effect when we came through time, and besides, this isn’t an episode. We’re acting outside the Narrative, which means that even if you could change it, it wouldn’t have an effect because it’s not being recorded. We’re stuck with it.”
“They’re right,” Paulson said to Weinstein, motioning at the Intrepid crew. “The universe you’ve written sucks.” Weinstein looked cowed.
“He didn’t know,” Dahl said to Paulson. “You can’t blame him. And we need him, so please don’t fire him.”
“I’m not going to fire him,” Paulson said, still staring at Weinstein. “I want to know how we fix this.”
Weinstein opened his mouth, then closed it, then turned to Dahl. “Help would be appreciated,” he said.
“This is where it gets a little crazy,” Dahl said.
“Gets?” Weinstein said.
Dahl turned to Paulson. “Hester stays behind,” he said. “We take your son with us. We go back to our time and our universe, but he”—Dahl pointed at Weinstein—“writes that the person in the shuttle is Hester. We don’t try to sneak him in or have him be another extra. He has to be central to the plot. We call him out by name. His full name. Jasper Allen Hester.”
“Jasper?” Duvall said, to Hester.
“Not now,” Hester said.
“So we call him Jasper Allen Hester,” Paulson said. “So what? He’ll still be my son, not your friend.”
“No,” Dahl said. “Not if we say he isn’t. If the Narrative says it’s Hester, then it’s Hester.”
“But—” Paulson cut himself short and looked at Weinstein. “This makes no fucking sense to me at all, Nick.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Weinstein said. “But that’s the thing. It doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to happen.” He turned to Dahl. “You’re using the shoddy world building of the series to your advantage.”