Channel Blue (30 page)

The docbot was programmed to prompt a patient who was silent for more than twenty seconds. ‘It may be of some help to know that, according to our measurements, you had it done a week ago.’

‘Of course,’ Amanda said. ‘How could I have forgotten? I took a weekend in Antares, had it done. It’s something my boyfriend and I have been talking about, and I figured with Channel Blue getting cancelled I’d have some time to, you know, pregnate.’

Dr Roberts was all smiles. ‘Well, I’m sure he’ll be a perfectly programmed baby boy.’

‘Boy?’ Amanda said, unable to conceal her shock. Up to this moment, she hadn’t really thought of the blastocyst as a person at all.

‘Yes.’ The docbot frowned. ‘That is what you ordered, isn’t it?’

‘Definitely,’ Amanda said, recovering. ‘I’ve always wanted a... boy.’

‘Then congratulations,’ Dr Roberts said. ‘Who did your genetic programming?’

Amanda stood. ‘I’m sorry – I have to run. I’ll send all the records to the medibase. Thanks for reminding me.’

She charged out of the exit centre and practically ran back to her apartment. She deactivated all screens and sensors and did some breathing exercises to slow her heartbeat. She considered her circumstances, then packed a bag and took an elevator back to Los Angeles.

‘It was such an odd sensation,’ she told Perry. They still stood in his parents’ backyard. He stared at her dumbfounded, a pose he’d assumed minutes earlier and was having trouble breaking out of. ‘In a matter of minutes, my key beliefs had been pulled out from under me.’

She couldn’t imagine that the being growing inside her was somehow less than any Edenite. As a result, she could no longer justify feeling superior to products of fornication. This, in turn, led her to the realisation that the vaunted rationality of her people was a sham, and that the trauma of the Great Stultification had broken her culture’s moral compass: the idea that almost anything was justified in the name of entertainment was despicable. It had led the greatest minds and technologies in the known universe into a dark business that resulted in the torture and killing of other human beings. And yes, she, Amanda, had been a part of that. As she neared Earth in the elevator, she felt her sense of deep shame grow with the approaching planet.

The doors opened. She walked briskly down the hallway, hoping she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew, mainly because she didn’t want to have to look anyone in the eyes. She felt that if she did, they would sense her terrible judgement. When she came to the first unused screening room, she ducked in. She knew that they’d given up on
Bunt to the Rescue
, but she also knew they’d keep cameras on Perry, just in case he decided to resume his heroics or do something entertaining. He hadn’t, as it turned out, but that didn’t matter to Amanda. After she’d obtained a fix on his location, she grabbed her bag and slipped into the lobby, moving as fast as she could without appearing to rush.

She’d nearly made it to the glass double doors when Dennis called after her. ‘Amanda. What are you doing here?’ She paused and composed herself as best she could. Dennis approached, munching from a bag of popcorn. ‘I thought you were heading home.’

‘I am,’ Amanda lied. ‘Jared asked me to bring him some popcorn.’

Dennis smiled and sidled up to her confidentially. ‘I’ve already shipped three containers of it home,’ he said. ‘I’d send more, but I hardly have any room for my personal belongings as it is.’ He chatted idly about his packing struggles and how great it was that, even though the Earth was being finale-ed, they would soon be on their way home again – until Amanda excused herself, saying she only had a few minutes before she was expected back on the moon, and headed out of the door. She walked down Ventura Boulevard until she found a taxi that would take her to the airport.

‘I didn’t have any other options,’ Amanda explained to Perry. ‘I can’t have this baby on Eden.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Which is why you have to meet with the President of the United States and tell him how to save the world.’

CHANNEL 27

THE SERIES COMEBACK

Amanda’s plan was brilliant, a testament to her tremendous abilities as a producer, a veritable treatise on effective planning, a perfect example of her grasp of the macro and micro and everything in between.

It was also preposterous and couldn’t possibly succeed.

It involved a large donation of cash (courtesy of Channel Blue’s prop room, which she’d raided before her departure), the fancy clothes from the Del Waddle gig (dry-cleaned, thank God), a photo opportunity with the President of the United States, and a plan, so far unwritten, to save the world.

But the entire time she was talking, Perry wasn’t really listening. He could only think two thoughts:
I’m going to be a father!
and
I can’t possibly be a father!
Back and forth these thoughts pulsed in his brain, like the two filaments in a strobe light, or the two notes in a Philip Glass symphony. Then another thought intruded, this one a darker chord:
Why is she doing this to me?
Here he was enjoying his last carefree days before Armageddon – he’d finally stopped wanting to be with her and had actually found some kind of happiness, or at least maybe the closest that he, Perry Bunt, could come to experiencing that Brigadoon-like emotion – and then she suddenly showed up, roaring back into his life with, of all things, an embryo in her uterus!

Normally, Perry was very cautious about birth control, not that he’d had a lot of recent opportunities to practise it. In a distant, more sexually active time, he’d prided himself on maintaining deposits of condoms in his bedroom, his car and inside the filter casing of his Jacuzzi. Fancying himself an evolved man, he was never one to fob off the responsibility of unfertile sex onto his partner. But he hadn’t brought it up for discussion on the floor of the service van – other matters seemed more pressing – and of course now he was paying the price.

He could hear the narrator of a school sex-ed film in his head: ‘Even when your partner is from outer space, discussion of birth control is
mandatory
.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Perry said. Amanda had just come to the part of her plan in which they arrived at the White House for a photo opportunity with the President. She was showing him the engraved invitation, which he was far too distracted to consider. ‘You don’t fight, you don’t shit, you don’t have sex, but you still get knocked up? How can that be?’

‘
In utero
conception is technically impossible,’ Amanda answered. ‘It’s not supposed to be part of our genetic make-up. So there must be a recessive gene that no one knows about. It’s not an issue, of course, because it’s almost never put to the test.’

‘I would say that it’s an issue,’ Perry said. ‘It is most definitely an issue.’

‘I obviously had no idea this was going to happen.’

‘Great. Fantastic. Like I don’t have enough to think about right now.’

Amanda arched her eyebrows. ‘It doesn’t seem like you’re doing much thinking. You’ve been living with your parents, drinking beer and having sex with a barmaid.’

She was right, of course, but it only made Perry more irritated. ‘That’s my business, OK?’ he said, his voice rising. ‘I’m not the one blowing up the planet.’

Amanda stared at him. ‘I know you hate me and Eden and everything we’ve done here, and I can’t say that I blame you. But don’t hold it against the baby.’

‘Baby?’ Perry choked out a burst of incredulous laughter. ‘I can’t believe you! Is this what happens? You people have sex once and your brains go out the window? You come from a civilisation that doesn’t even reproduce outside of a laboratory and suddenly you’ve got a
baby
? It’s a bunch of cells the size of a pinhead! You’d rather be on a planet dying with a bunch of losers because of a pinhead?’

‘I suppose,’ Amanda replied. ‘Though I guess I would describe the situation somewhat differently.’

Perry shook his head. ‘Baby or no baby, you need to get out of here.’

Amanda took a deep breath. ‘You of all people should understand. Products of fornication have no opportunities in my world. I can’t be responsible for bringing a baby into that situation.’

‘
No one’s forcing you to have a baby
. You have other options.’ As soon as the words left his mouth, Perry regretted them. But Amanda remained matter-of-fact.

‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure you’ll understand, because I’m not sure I do.’ She averted her eyes, formulating her words. ‘As a rule, Edenites don’t believe in fate. The concept of destiny is something a child might believe, but not an adult. Adults know better. But this—’ She brushed her hand across her stomach. ‘This is beyond my understanding. I mean, I supposedly don’t even have
the gene to reproduce
. And beyond that, the probability becomes even more miniscule. We’re talking about a series of events, each less probable than the one before it: leaving my coat in your class; your walking through the security door at Galaxy Entertainment; the steel plates in your head shielding your brain from the collar; your attempts to save the world and getting beaten up, which made you a star on Channel Blue, which threw us together in a van under the freeway where we lost our minds for several seconds.’

‘I think it was more like a few minutes,’ Perry said.

‘Whatever. This is a series of events that is so impossibly ludicrous—’

‘I wouldn’t really call it
ludicrous
.’

‘It was!’ Amanda practically shouted. ‘In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have come up with something like this. In all the years I’ve watched Earthles do the craziest, most ridiculous things, I could never have imagined something like this happening. Could you?’

The truth was that Perry could have, and actually, several times, had, but he would never admit to it. ‘Maybe not, but you make it sound like some kind of freakish event.’

‘That’s a perfect way of describing it –
a freakish event
. And you were the one who always told us in class how we shouldn’t use freakish events in our scripts. How, if there was a coincidence after the first act, the audience wouldn’t buy it and feel cheated. Why? Because in real life
it never happens
.’

Perry nodded. ‘Yeah, OK, so no self-respecting writer would have anything to do with this. What does that prove?’

‘That there’s something going on here! And while I’m not prepared to call it God or fate or destiny, I’m not prepared to undo what’s already been done. And part of me does think—’ Amanda’s voice trailed off for a moment. ‘Part of me thinks that I was meant to have this boy with you.’

Despite himself, tears filled Perry’s eyes. He quickly blinked them away, but it was too late – they’d already derailed his rage.
Damn it, she was doing it again
. He felt his anger melt into a pool of warm mush that collected in his chest, making every heartbeat reverberate throughout his entire body. Amanda stared at him. ‘Are you helping me or not?’

After a moment, Perry took the invitation from her. Engraved script invited ‘Mister Perry Bunt’ in ‘appreciation for his generous support’ to a meeting with President Brendan Grebner in the Oval Office at eleven the following morning. Perry shook his head. ‘The President’s posing for photos with campaign donors while there’s a war in the Middle East?’

‘He doesn’t know it’s the last one,’ Amanda said. ‘He thinks there’s going to be another election, which tend to be very expensive. He shakes a few hands, poses for some pictures. It’s part of his job.’

Perry continued to gaze sceptically at the invitation. ‘I could go to the President with the most convincing argument in the world, but he’d never buy it. I’ll be the crazy guy in the White House. It’ll be like Del Waddle’s all over again, only worse.’

‘I’ve thought of that,’ Amanda said. ‘You know that the President is a deeply religious man, right?’ Perry nodded. He hadn’t followed the last presidential campaign very closely – like half of his fellow citizens, he preferred complaining to voting – but he did know that Brendan Grebner had talked frequently about his faith in God and how it would help him govern the nation. In a paradox that only Edenites would find entertaining, citizens of the United States preferred leaders who received advice from an invisible being whose existence was, by its very nature, impossible to prove.

‘The night before I quit Channel Blue,’ Amanda continued, ‘I asked Jeff to stop by the Lincoln Bedroom and visit President Grebner.’

It took Perry a moment to realise what she was saying. ‘You gave the President a vision?’

Amanda nodded. ‘Jesus Christ told President Grebner that the world was about to end, but that Perry Bunt would be coming to see him soon with a plan to save it. When the President shakes your hand, all you have to do is tell him your name. He’ll know why you’re there.’

Perry couldn’t help smiling. ‘That’s good.’

‘You wrote the original scene – I’m just doing what producers do best.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Steal from writers.’

Perry smiled. He knew there was a reason he’d conceived a child with this woman. ‘And what will I say to the President when he asks me how to save the world?’

‘The usual: stop being selfish, stop killing people, stop poisoning the planet—’

Perry shook his head emphatically. ‘I’m going to need more than that. He’s the President of the United States, for God’s sake. Even if he thinks Jesus sent me, he’s going to want specifics.’

Amanda waved one hand impatiently. ‘I’m not worried about that. There’s a million things he could do to make Earthles seem less repugnant. If you can get him to cancel a single bombing mission, or melt down one nuclear weapon, that might be enough to keep us on the air.’

‘Maybe,’ Perry said. ‘But if we’re going to do this, we need to do it right. We need a concrete plan to save the world.’

‘Fine,’ Amanda said. ‘We’ll come up with something on the plane.’

Perry remained unconvinced. ‘What makes you think anyone will be watching? You quit your job. And I quit whatever I was doing. How do we know anyone’s even out there anymore?’