Channel Blue (29 page)

Perry glanced at the boarding pass. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

Amanda didn’t answer. She gazed out at the fallow fields stretching in a flat brown plain to the horizon. ‘By the way, where are we? This place is depressing.’

‘It’s called the Midwest. You might know it from pie-eating contests and threshing-machine accidents. And you really shouldn’t be here. Those pens are doing their jobs. It’s already a World War in the Middle East, even though nobody’s calling it that. You should be far, far away, well on your way back to Planet Wonderful.’

Amanda fixed her eyes on Perry. ‘I can’t live there anymore,’ she said. ‘And since I can’t live in the world I come from, we have to fix this one.’

CHANNEL 26

IMPLANTED ON EARTH

It turned out that while Perry was busy becoming the golden boy of the apocalypse, Amanda’s luck was heading in quite the opposite direction. When she returned to Galaxy Entertainment, all everyone wanted to know was what she’d done to piss off Perry under the freeway. No one gave a damn about what had happened to her, it was all about getting the Earthle back on the show.
What were you doing under there?
they’d asked her repeatedly.

Of course, telling them that she and Perry had been having coitus on the floor of a service van was out of the question for many different reasons, the main being that she wasn’t sure herself why she’d done it. What was she thinking? Had she completely lost her mind? She had, obviously, but now she was sane again, and if not for the irritating stickiness she felt all over her body, she might have been able to convince herself that it had never happened.

Almost
convince herself.

In any case, her animal regression had served to confirm the degenerate sordidness of such an act and to ensure that nothing like it would ever happen again. She thought:
I now know why we’re a product of something more than fornication.
But no sooner had she thought this than she caught herself reliving the entire unseemly act in her memory, as if she had
enjoyed
it. But she hadn’t. Had she?

All of this was going through her mind while Marty Firth and the other producers were questioning her like a common criminal.
Why did you park? You know we’re on a tight production schedule. What did you tell him?

Without any reference to what came before, Amanda told them that before his forced removal from the gas station, Nick Pythagorus had managed to slip his Orby plaque into Perry’s pocket, and that Perry had discovered it, figured out what it meant, and walked off the production.

‘Then what are you doing here?’ Marty said. He and Vermy stared at her as if she were a ghost. ‘You should’ve gone after him.’

‘He hates us!’ Amanda yelled, catching Marty off guard. He definitely wasn’t used to being yelled at. Edenites typically didn’t raise their voices unless there was a fire in the next room or an avalanche bearing down on them. They knew that there were very few cases in which communication wasn’t hindered by shouting. Everyone in the conference room stared at Amanda in shock. ‘He hates us and doesn’t want to have anything to do with us and I don’t blame him.’

Amanda felt her face flushing. It was the second time this week.
What the hell is going on?
She was acting like the worst kind of Earthle girl, the kind who rode her emotions like a destructive tsunami through life.

‘Well, Amanda,’ Marty Firth said slowly, as if speaking to a lunatic, ‘you need to talk to him, convince him to stop behaving like an infant. It doesn’t matter whether the Earth is an amusement park, a zoo or a rabbit farm, it’s not going to be
anything
unless he cooperates. I mean, he’s jeopardising
this entire production
.’

‘You talk to him. I’m done.’ She stood and walked to the door.

‘Get back out there or you’re off the channel,’ Marty said.

‘Fine,’ Amanda called back. ‘Just blow it up so we can all go home.’ She ran into her office, deactivated all the sensors, and was trying to clear her head when Dennis burst in.

‘You’ve got to see this,’ he said.

‘Not interested.’

‘Oh, you will be.’ He activated the main screen on her wall and Perry Bunt’s face loomed before them. ‘Amanda and I fornicated,’ Perry said. ‘Did I mention that already?’

Amanda buried her face in her hands. She knew that no one in the galaxy would believe Perry, that they would ascribe his hysterical ranting to the bitterness of an Earthle facing the imminent destruction of his planet. But this was small consolation.

Dennis attempted unsuccessfully to contain his jubilation. ‘You should see Marty going crazy out there. He wants to put it on the channel
so bad
.’ But he couldn’t, Amanda knew. This footage would effectively kill
Bunt to the Rescue
and Marty still hoped – futilely, she was certain – to bring it back on the air for another few profitable episodes before Earth was finale-ed.

Of course, the footage would still find its way out there; beyond the established broadcast networks, there were thousands of pirate channels devoted solely to outtakes from around the galaxy. Within moments, Perry’s rant would appear on one of them with a chyron reading something like: ‘Bitter POF Claims To Have Had Sex with Producer’ and everyone she knew would see it. Given the recent popularity of
Bunt to the Rescue
, she wouldn’t be surprised if it became the Most Viewed Outtake for seconds, maybe even minutes.

After Perry insulted Marty and Elvis and his feed was cut off, Dennis turned to her. ‘Everyone’s saying it couldn’t possibly have happened,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You having sex with the Earthle.’

Amanda sank back in her chair and rubbed her forehead. ‘What do you want, Dennis?’

‘As crazy as it sounds, I just want to ask the question. I thought I saw a little something between you two the other night. And for all his Earthleness, Perry Bunt doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would make up something like that.’ Dennis leaned forward. ‘Did you have sex with an Earthle?’

Amanda closed her eyes and wished she could disappear. ‘Just leave me alone.’

‘I’ve heard it smells awful. Did it smell awful?’

‘Out!’ Amanda stood and pushed Dennis into the hallway. ‘Go eat your popcorn while you can.’

This time, she locked the door. She sat down at her desk and felt something she hadn’t remembered feeling before, and she didn’t like the feeling at all. It was shame. She only knew what to call it because she’d used the word frequently in Channel Blue programme guides to describe episodes of her shows. Now, like so many of the Earthles’ repellent attributes, she was taking on this one as well. And there was more, coming so quickly it was hard to sort out. She also felt hatred for Earth and especially for Perry Bunt, a dark, smouldering contempt that boiled in her stomach like bad food.

She rested her forehead on her desk. The surface came to life with the magnificent chiselled features of her boyfriend, Jared. She’d forgotten to turn off her phone.

‘Hey,’ Jared said, his voice laden with concern. ‘Are you OK?’

Amanda would’ve preferred that he yelled at her and hung up, but of course he would never do that. The year that Jared was born, empathy was one of the most popular traits for boys. She nodded back at him. ‘Yeah,’ she said. She dreaded asking the next question, but felt like she had to. ‘Most Viewed?’

Jared nodded. ‘For almost thirty seconds now.’ He shuddered. ‘I can’t believe that Earthle. You expect them to be unevolved, but what a thing to say. Ick.’

Amanda tried to hide her irritation and think of things to say that were true. ‘If I don’t see another one, I’ll be happy,’ she said.

‘Well, you won’t have to. You can head straight to the moon and ditch that dirt clod.’

There was a pause and Amanda felt buffeted with wave after wave of unpleasant emotions: loathing for Perry Bunt, disgust with herself, and intense dislike of Jared for being so reasonable.

‘I did it,’ she finally said.

‘What?’

‘I had sex with him.’

After a beat, Jared burst out laughing. ‘Oh my God,’ he said.

Amanda found herself forcing a smile, going along with the joke that wasn’t.
Why am I pretending?
she thought. He didn’t need her to. She could insist that she had indeed experienced coitus with an Earthle and he would’ve found some way to understand it. That was it, she decided. She didn’t want him understanding anything else about her.

‘You totally had me,’ Jared said, wiping away tears of laughter. ‘Working on Earth has done nothing to tame that wicked sense of humour.’

‘No.’

‘Well, here’s some good news.’ Jared perused a screen. ‘You’ve already cycled out. It’s down to third Most Viewed. Hold on. Still dropping. Forty-second!’ Jared smiled with relief. ‘It’s all those mutants being hunted on
CrazyWorld 26
.’

Amanda smiled wanly. ‘Thank goodness for mutant hunting.’

‘They can shorten a cycle, that’s for sure.’ Jared’s eyes remained fixed on his screen. ‘Still dropping. Down to eighty-ninth! You watch. In another thirty seconds, some mom giving birth to seventeen children will make it disappear completely.’ Jared focused back on her, his bright blue eyes each the size of serving plates on her desk. ‘Now do me a favour. I’m serious now, Manda. Get out of there. Go to the moon, do your exit work, and get back here. I want to be with you.’ He smiled. ‘And hey, if you decide you actually want to experiment with sex, I guess I’d be up for trying it. Earthle-style. No kissing, though – I have to draw the line somewhere.’

Amanda laughed falsely and hated herself for it. She told Jared she was on her way home and hung up.

She felt a tremendous sense of relief as soon as she arrived on the moon. Nobody stared at her in the hallways as she made her way to her apartment. Maybe Jared was right. She’d cycled out and the entire humiliating incident was safely behind her.

She spent the rest of the week packing up her belongings and wrapping up her shows. She produced final episodes for several series, including an elaborate finale for Steve Santiago, in which the Jacuzzi salesman, on one of his jaunts to Mexico to buy cheap prescription drugs for resale to cancer patients, was kidnapped by a drug gang and brutally sodomised in the basement of a Tijuana bar before dying in a knife fight. The moment before life ebbed from his body, Jesus Christ (Jeff) appeared before him and said, ‘Told you.’

The ratings were better than they’d been, but still not great.

The way in which Amanda’s other shows ended wasn’t much cheerier. Earth was now all about bad endings. Amanda didn’t protest or ask questions. She just produced. There’s nothing anyone can do now, she told herself. For the first time, she felt resigned to Channel Blue’s cancellation, and she had to admit it was a relief.

On the day she was scheduled to catch a ship home, she woke early to take care of the last formalities. At the exit centre, the receptionist processed her transfer application and waved her into the examination room. There she sat in a rotating armchair while two Class 3 medibots wheeled out of the walls and scanned her. Once they had completely retracted, she stood and stepped to the exit. But the door didn’t open. Instead, a pleasant voice said, ‘Dr Roberts needs to follow up on your exam.’

A different door opened and Amanda walked through it into an office where a fully sentient Class 5 docbot sat behind the desk. Like all docbots, it was named Dr Roberts, after the author of the first software, and it was configured to appear as an older fatherly male with a white jacket and white hair. The desk in front of Dr Roberts was covered with homely objects like souvenir paperweights and fishing lures, props intended to reassure the patient. Docbots had always had the most human-like aspect of any of the helper bots. This, according to history, was because Edenites had at first refused to go to them with their health concerns. While it was one thing to depend on a robot to guard your house, fix your car or take out your garbage, it was quite another to engage one in a discussion about anal itching.

‘Hello, Amanda,’ Dr Roberts said, smiling. ‘Or should I say: Congratulations!’

Amanda paused. ‘Why?’

Dr Roberts chuckled warmly, which is what docbots were programmed to do when they didn’t understand a patient’s question. ‘We need to update our medical records,’ it said. ‘Who was your genetic programmer?’

Amanda frowned, confused. ‘I don’t remember the name, but my records have been in the medibase since my conception.’

‘Not for you, Amanda,’ Dr Roberts said lightly. ‘I meant for your child.’

Amanda stared at the docbot blankly, which prompted the machine to give her more information. ‘It seems that you had a fertilised ovum implanted in your uterus, but we have no record of it.’

Amanda shook her head. ‘That’s not possible.’

A screen lit up behind Dr Roberts, showing what appeared to be a lumpy pink golf ball floating underwater. ‘That’s your blastocyst,’ the docbot said cheerfully. ‘Now, as you know, while women still have the option of choosing this method of pregnation,
in utero
fertilisation can be relatively risky. In order to safely track the baby’s development, we need to know where you had the implantation performed.’

In the back of a van
, Amanda thought. How had this happened? Nobody got pregnant. Nobody had sex either, of course, but
definitely
nobody got pregnant.

The panic in her throat kept her from thinking clearly; her thoughts were coming in shabby clumps instead of the ordered rows she was accustomed to. She stared at the lumpy pink golf ball on the screen and felt a strange flutter in her heart that made no sense to her at all. It certainly looked like the product of fornication. Could the medibots already detect the genetic randomness of the cells rapidly subdividing in her uterus?
No
, she decided,
they’re probably not even programmed to consider it.
That would be like programming them to recognise a disease that was eradicated a thousand years ago.