Shatnerquake (2 page)

Shatner beamed a smile right back.
 
“Money well spent.”

CHAPTER TWO

The convention’s theater was a marvel of modern movie-going.
 
Four screens, each ten stories high.
 
Three stories of seating gave each theater a capacity of around two-thousand.
 
Even though it was early on the first day of the convention, the theaters were already three-quarters of the way full.

Rick was alone in the projection booth, sitting on the floor and smoking a joint.
 
He listened to the footage being played.
 
William Shatner was cursing as he blew a contestant’s prize money on “The $20,000 Pyramid.”
 
It made him proud that they were able to get a hold of the unedited footage.

For the convention, the Cathode-La was holding a four day/twenty-four hours a day William Shatner marathon.
 
Each of the fours screens was continuously playing movies, shows, and other footage from Shatner’s career.
 

Rick was in charge of the projector for the day shifts in theater three.
 
It was an easy gig, once every hour or so he had to change the film reel.
 
Outside of that, there was not really anything else to do.
 
The booth also provided a good smoke-spot in the crowded hotel.

I hope I get to meet him
, thought Rick as he took another hit,
but I bet he’s a dick in real life.

He coughed out the smoke as a voice came over his walkie-talkie.
 
“Anyone
else seeing
a light behind their screen?”
 
It was Michael from theater one.

Rick stood up and looked out of the booth.
 
On the screen Shatner was throwing a chair and storming off the set.
 
At the bottom center a glowing blue light was distorting the image.
 
It looked as if someone had turned on a blue lamp behind the movie screen.

“I got it too,” said Rick into the walkie-talkie.
 
Two more voices came over.
 
Emily and Jacob from theaters two and four also were seeing it.

“Rick, go check it out,” ordered Michael.

Rick sighed.
 
“OK.”
 

He took another drag from the joint and snuffed it out as he left the projection booth.

* * *

Natalie shut the door behind her as she entered the room.
 
She carefully and calmly bolted the door and pulled out a cigarette.
 
She lit it and regarded the figure in the center.

A man sat hunched over in a wooden chair.
 
He wore black jeans and a black “Maniac Cop” t-shirt.
 
He was missing his right hand, the sure sign of a Campbellian.

The man lifted his head and both his eyes were blue bruised shut.
 
His bottom lip was split open and clotted blood coated his chin.
 

Directly above the man hung a bare light bulb.
 
The light brightly illuminated the center of the room but left the edges bathed in black.

On the left and right side of the man stood convention guards in the darkness.

“We found him in the backstage halls of the theater,” said the guard on the right.

“He won’t talk yet,” said the guard on the left.

Natalie took two long steps forward and stood directly in front of the man.
 
She sucked in almost the entire cigarette, leaving only a stub of burning ember.

“He will,” she said through plumes of smoke.

She grabbed his right arm and put out the butt on the scarred stump.

* * *

“While on the set of TJ Hooker, which make and model of car did you find the most comfortable to hang off of?”

Shatner signed a DVD set of the Original Series and handed it back to a pimply teen wearing a home-made cardboard communicator on a red sweater.
 
The teen giggled and scurried off, clutching his new prized possession.
 

“I never really… took notice,” said Shatner as he took a nine-by-twelve photo from the next person in line, curiously wearing a
Battlestar
Galatica
shirt.
 
Bob glared at him until his picture was signed and he walked away.

Bob watched him until he was halfway across the room and then asked, “Was it emotionally hard on ‘Rescue 911’ being constantly surrounded, I mean mentally, by so much trauma?”

Shatner smiled at the next person in line.
 
At least Bob had enough sense to stand by the side of the table and let others pass by.

“I’m a… professional,” said Shatner, “I can deal… with anything.”

Stay professional.
 
Stay professional.
 
Stay professional.
 
Stay…

* * *

Rick stepped into the back screen room.
 
It wasn’t really a room; each of the walls
were
the backside of each of the theater’s four screens.
 
Rick could see four backwards Shatners, completely surrounding him.
 

The theaters were soundproofed from each other but in the back screen room there was no soundproofing.
 
The noise from all four showings blended together.
 
Lounge-crooning merged with electronic beeping and police sirens with a laugh-track accompaniment.
 

In the center of the bare floor was a VCR.
 
The side panels were removed and wires jutted out from its mechanical viscera.
 
On top of the machine were two blue light bulbs.
                    
Rick stepped closer to the VCR and then took notice of the front display screen.
  
55…54…53…52…

Rick held up his walkie-talkie, “I got something back here…”

* * *

Natalie walked over to a table against the back wall of the room.
 
She picked up a rag and wiped the blood off her hands.

She walked back to the
Campellian
and lit up another cigarette.
 
He lay on the floor in a fetal position.
 
The chair he was sitting on now lay shattered against the left wall.

He rolled and softly cried, cradling his left arm.
 
It now ended in a bloody stump.
 
Strips of flesh hung from the crude wound.
 

He tried to get to his feet but he was woozy from blood loss.
 
He tried to use his stumps for more support.
 
The combination of pain and the blood-slicked floor were too much for his weakened state.
 
The stumps slipped out from beneath him and he crashed down.

Natalie snickered.

“Fiction Bomb,” he weakly said.

“What!” Natalie crouched down and grabbed his hair.
 
She pulled his head back and screamed, “What the fuck did you just say?”

“There’s a Fiction Bomb behind the theaters’ screens.”

Natalie stood up and kicked the man in the face.

Fiction Bombs were the result of the Network Wars.
 
They were devices that, when set off nearby film stock, erase the media from reality.
 
No one remembers the entertainment.
 
There are no records of the entertainment.
 
It completely disappears.
 
They were illegal, but certain terrorist sects and unscrupulous networks were still known to use them.
 

Natalie rushed to the room’s door.
 
She turned back and addressed the convention guards, “Sodomize him with his hand until he tells you how many other Campbellians are here.
 
If he doesn’t talk in two minutes, kill him.”

* * *

Shatner signed and signed while Bob talked and talked.

* * *

“It’s a Fiction Bomb!” yelled Michael from over the walkie-talkie.

“What?” said
Rick.

“I just got off with Natalie,” replied Michael, “It’s a Fiction Bomb!
 
Turn it off!”

Rick dropped the walkie-talkie and rushed toward the Fiction Bomb.
 
He grabbed it and began tearing wires from the side.
 
He picked up the device and smashed it against the floor.
 
Both light bulbs shattered into glass shards that pierced his hands in a dozen places.

Rick picked up the black box with bleeding fingers and looked at the display.

2…1…

If the blast had not immediately liquefied Rick and splattered him onto the screens in a billion droplets, he could have taken comfort in the fact that he had fucked up the Fiction Bomb enough so it did not work properly.
 

Those in the theaters heard a loud blast and saw the screens become red-tinted as Rick hit them.
 
Then the blast hit them, reducing all those in the theaters and projection booths to piles of gray ash.
 

The theaters and the screens, however, remained unharmed.
 
The films showing flickered and then the images disappeared.
 
They
glowed
a bright, vivid dark blue and moved erratically in and out—as if alive and struggling to take a breath.
 
In the blue, shapes began to move.
 
They took form and grew limbs and heads.
 

These blue figures danced around the screens and then began to smoothly step out of the picture.
 
They began to move about the now-empty theaters and become more defined figures.

One figure formed a brown suit and a briefcase.

One twirled its microphone about by the cord.

One flipped open his communicator.
 
“Captain to ship.
 
Captain to ship.”
 
No one answered.

More and more figures emerged from the screens.

At first they were without feeling but, as they became whole, this new world filled their senses.

First came the feeling that they didn’t belong—some fundamental urge that this world was not for them.
 
That they were pale shadows of something else already here.