Saint Vidicon to the Rescue

by Christopher Stasheff

  It was a cold, crisp December night. Outside the large building the snow sparkled on the ground, falling through the air like the pearl white seasonal sequins that would be heavily discounted in the next few weeks. Inside the building the white of fresh, sterile paint made the cold hallways even colder as Beth headed toward the studio once again.

  As she opened the heavy metal door, one that always reminded her of a high-security bank vault, she was greeted with a blast of hot air. She took a deep breath and inhaled the heady scent of blue and pink gels baking over blazing lights, black cables freshly uncoiled, and the sweet aroma of canned coffee and melting duct tape.

  Ah, there was nothing like the smell of Christmas, and to Beth the Christmas holidays always began with the WBEG Winter Pledge Drive. Yes, there was nothing like begging for money to get you into the true spirit of the holidays. That reminded her to make a mental note to call her mother when she got home.

  She stepped into the studio and promptly sneezed as the searing heat of the lights for the set warmed her in an instant. She’d been going back and forth all day—and most of the week—between the warm control room, the cold hallways, and the hot studio. Something was clearly wrong with the heating controls in the building. Add that to the long list of things that were not working consistently, and it was amazing they were still on the air.

  Dodging phone volunteers and camera crew meandering back to their positions from the break between the breaks, and nimbly navigating around the dozens of cables strewn across the floor, Beth finally arrived at the cameras and began checking the tally lights for any improvements.

  “Seven minutes till the break,” a tall man with a bushy red mustache called out, then looked over at her. “Any luck?”

  “You tell me,” Beth replied. “Did they work last break?”

  He shook his head, then readjusted his headset and turned the volume up on the remote pack clipped to the waistband on his jeans. She sighed and turned back to the camera, slipping on the attached headset.“Mac?” she asked, pressing down the TALK button.

  “Yo,” he replied, slightly out of breath as if he had just run into position. He probably had. She could hear the distinctive crunch of potato chips on the other end. “Put up Camera Three.”

  She glanced at the monitor and saw the same image as the one in her viewfinder, but the red tally light wasn’t lit. She looked over at the other cameras and noticed a red light on Camera One. Well, that tally light worked, but by all explanations it shouldn’t.

  “Punch up Camera One,” she insisted. A moment later the image of a close-up on a telephone flashed onto the monitor—but the tally light lit up on Camera Three. She shook her head sadly. What was going on? The tally lights, like everything else, had been acting up for the last three days, and the engineers were working around the clock to fix the problems for tonight’s breaks. The problem was, they couldn’t find a problem. It defied explanation. The equipment only seemed to work when it wanted to. That was really nothing new in the TV industry, in this station in particular, but it was usually a little more reliable than this.

  Suddenly the chatter in the room died down as a short man in a bad toupee entered the room, followed by an entourage of assistants. Beth took a deep breath, took off the headset, and marched over to him as Bill, the tall mustached man, helped him settle into the comfortable, Victorian-style armchair on the mock-library section of the set.

  “Mr. Halloway, I’m Beth Grady, your director for the pledge breaks tonight.”

  The man smiled at her in a polite, distant manner as his assistants and Gerald Mann, the producer, began to fawn over him and get him ready.

  Mr. Halloway was the newly-elected mayor and had built and won the election on his “Education for All” platform. He had openly touted the pedigree and excellence of the local PBS station, WBEG, and therefore had insisted on being the cohost for the Saturday conclusion of their Winter Pledge Drive. The other host, Stanwick Sage, a WBEG employee who oversaw production of a local show, was sitting on the round central podium surrounded by pledge gifts. He was a pro at keeping the pledge breaks quick-paced, entertaining, and on track. The mayor appeared to have none of those qualities. Beth doubted he could write a speech himself, let alone remember it.

  That was why the little technical inconveniences such as reversed tally lights and malfunctioning TelePrompTers, were a major problem now, and why Beth was sure her pet ulcer had developed a sister. The mayor was less than an amateur at live television and had been very hostile to the idea of looking foolish in any way.

  Beth glanced at the phone volunteers and shuddered slightly, wishing there had not been a mistake with how the groups had been assigned. The local Bankers’ Association was supposed to be here, but instead they had somehow gotten switched with a new group of some sort of sci-fi fan club. All the volunteers were wearing black cloaks with large green eyes painted on the backs.

  Now, Beth had nothing against sci-fi fan clubs or dressing up to be on television. She liked to role-play herself and attended sci-fi/fantasy conventions whenever she could. WBEG welcomed their support as much as that of any group in the community—last night, the phone volunteers had been the Doctor Who fan club for WBEG’s annual marathon, a very entertaining and nice bunch of people. Most of them had dressed up as characters from the show, several had tripped over very long scarfs either they or someone else was wearing, and one man had even tried to bring along his small schnauzer, dressed in tin foil and named K-9. Compared to them, green-eyed cloaks were tame, but there was something about the group that gave Beth a very uneasy feeling—as though they were watching her and waiting for something. Maybe it was the green eyes on their cloaks. That was what she told herself as she headed back to the control room. The volunteers could wait, and the producer could deal with the mayor—she had a break to run.

  “Three minutes to air,” Mac told her, as she dashed into the control room, realizing halfway down the hall how close they must be to air time. She threw on the headset and plopped down in the director’s chair. It retaliated for the abuse by rolling backward into the wall. She grabbed the edge of the table and slid the chair back up to it, then flipped a bunch of switches, pressed a few buttons, and spoke into a small microphone.

  “Ready in Master Control?” she asked.

  Static answered; then a smooth voice, low and cool, spoke.

  “Ready.”

  Beth frowned, trying to figure out who the engineer was, since it was obviously not Fred, the high-pitched computer nerd who’d been scheduled. Shrugging it off, she glanced at Mac, who sat behind the switcher, fingers poised above the buttons and twitching from too much coffee. “Ready?”

  He nodded. She checked with the CG and Audio operators, then flipped on the permanent TALK button on her headset. “Ready in the studio?”

  “Ready,” Bill replied.

  “One minute till air,” she announced, looking at the red numbers on the countdown clock ticking away. “Whenever you’re ready, go ahead and give it to us, Master Control.”

  There was an almost imperceptible flash in the image on the program monitor, one of ten monitors that were set up at the other end of the room across what the crew affectionately called “the Grand Canyon,” empty space between the control desk and the monitors.

  “We’re hot and live with thirty seconds to go!” Beth declared. The nerves were killing her. She was so nauseous she was afraid she might throw up, and gripped the cool surface of the table for support.

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  She closed her eyes and silently offered up a prayer to St. Vidicon to keep the equipment working until they were off the air. Luckily it was only a six-minute break.

  “Um, Tony—I could use a little help here . . .”

  “Whassamatta?” Tony swam up from the depths of sleep, saw St. Vidicon’s face, and tried to remember that he always felt refreshed after one of these errands. “Who’s in trouble now?”

  “Beth, that young television director
you helped last June,” St. Vidicon said. “Her equipment is rebelling again.”

  “Gotcha, boss.” Tony stood up, looking around him at the maroon tunnel.

  “Oh, and—you might need this.” Father Vidicon pressed something into Tony’s hand. A quick glance showed Tony it was a rosary. “Uh, thanks,” he said, and stuffed it into his pocket, then spread his hands. “How do I get to the TV station?”

  “Like this,” Father Vidicon said, and Tony felt the floor drop out from under him.

  “Ten seconds.”

  Under the table, Beth’s leg was twitching anxiously.

  “Ready open mike, ready cue talent, ready fade in one,” she called. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . Open mike, cue talent, fade in one!”

  They were live and on the air. Whether or not they stayed that way was up to the good Lord and St. Vidicon.

  Flashes of light and miniature glowing squiggles flew past, the speed increasing. Finally there was an explosion of light and a pyjama-clad man tumbled to the floor of a pitch-black tunnel.

  Hold on to your gigabytes and pass the Pepto—Tony had a new assignment.

  He got to his feet and immediately fell down again as the floor moved beneath him. He looked down and saw, covering the floor of the tunnel (and taking up most of the corridor), four huge cables, each the width of a sidewalk and all moving around under his feet. They started to sway and jump more and he scurried to stand, bracing himself against the flexible rubber-coated wall. Then he realized that the tunnel was no longer completely dark and that each cable was a different color—red, green, yellow, and blue. He looked down the tunnel for the source of the light, but before he could pin it down, the cables began to shake violently, the red one in the middle shaking most of all. He gripped the walls for support and waited to see what new monster was savaging the world’s technology this time.

  He didn’t have long to wait. A line of men and women, only as tall as his waist if that, appeared. They were dressed in brightly-colored long-sleeved shirts with coordinating trousers and vests. On their heads were pointed hats, the tips of which glowed as though they encased light bulbs. They looked like garden gnomes—like the tacky plastic kind you see in your neighbor’s yard—only they had to be much smaller and were moving very quickly. In fact, they were running. Each one was carrying a giant letter, white and faintly glowing. The first one was capitalized and eventually Tony glimpsed a period running to catch up with the rest of the sentence. There seemed to be hundreds of them, racing through the tunnel and trying not to panic as a comma slipped and fell. Tony rushed to help him up. “Excuse me—what’s going on?”

  The gnome roughly shoved him out of the way, grabbed the comma, and took off at lightning speed to jump back into the place he had deserted. The others brushed passed him, not even noticing him as he leaped aside to make way for a giant O. More than five hundred of them ran past, disappearing into the tunnel once more, the light going with them.

  Since Tony didn’t have anywhere else to go, he ran after the gnomes. He fell several times on the tricky, moving cables before he finally saw light ahead of him—red, this time, and coming fast. Two gnomes raced toward him, holding an enormous glowing red ball between them.

  “Watch out! Tally light coming through!” one of them shouted.

  Tony jumped back against the wall and the glowing ball shot past him at top gnome speed. He frowned after it, then turned to go on down the tunnel after the letter carriers.

  Finally, he came to a glowing blue hole in the side of the tunnel. He took a deep breath and jumped through it, landing on a green cable on the other side. Looking around, he saw he was in another tunnel just like the first. He followed it, moving warily, since he really had no idea where he was going. At last the floor began to slope upward, the slope steepening until Tony was climbing more than walking, feeling as though he were three years old and trying to climb up a slippery steep slide.

  Finally, he came to the top and crawled through a hole that was slightly larger then the biggest letter. He found himself in a glowing room with metal walls. Looking up, he saw that the light came from a hole in the ceiling that gave a glimpse of a more brightly-lit room above. Looking down again he saw, about a third of the way from the back wall, a huge blackboard with slim metal bands forming rows in equal widths across it. Half a hundred gnomes were standing on platforms beside the blackboard, holding their letters in front of them, while still more were climbing into place and even more were waiting to get on. In front of the blackboard ran three slightly taller gnomes, all dressed in yellow with gold stars on the tips of their hats. One held a scroll of what looked to be computer printout, shouting out words to the other two, who were arranging the letter-gnomes in order. The entire blackboard was moving upward into the even more brightly-glowing room above them.

  Their speed seemed to vary, and as Tony stepped forward, hoping to get a better look, he noticed that there was another blackboard behind the first that was moving down, toward the room he was in. Letter-gnomes stood on the thin platforms and jumped down as soon as they were within three feet of the floor; then, still holding their letters, ran back to the larger group, waiting to get cycled back in.

  They were making words and sentences. A speech. Suddenly he realized what he was seeing. He had been sent to help out with the often-malfunctioning PBS station WBEG once again. A few months before he had fought against a swarm of gremlkins who had attacked the character generator. The problems had escalated beyond that now, just when the station seemed to be doing better financially, and the equipment was either not working at all or working sporadically. He’d been sent inside the system to find out what was wrong and fix it, paying particular attention to the tally lights. He realized that what he was looking at was obviously the inner workings of the TelePrompTer. However, he had never in his life heard that TelePrompTers were operated by gnomes.

  A voice boomed inside the room, echoing off the walls. “Ten seconds . . . Five . . . four . . . three . . .”

  Tony realized the “room” was connected to the intercom system.

  “Two,” the voice said. “One . . . we’re off the air.”

  Every gnome in the room, except the ones on the platforms, collapsed, taking deep gulping breaths as if they had just come up from an underwater battle. No more gnomes appeared on the blackboard in front and gnomes riding down on the back blackboard jumped off it, tossing their letters toward the outer edge of the room and falling to the floor in a crumpled heap. Eventually both blackboards slowed to a stop and the gnomes, having recovered somewhat, slowly stood up, holding on to each other for support.

  “The next break is in twenty-one minutes,” the echoing voice boomed.

  There was a resounding cheer from the gnomes, and they all charged toward Tony.

  Chapter 19

  Once again, the gnomes barely noticed Tony as they ditched their letters and jumped into the hole that led back into the tunnel. He watched each one slide down the slope crying out in joy and running off into the tunnel—which, Tony realized, was the cable that connected the camera to the control room.

  The room was emptying fast. In a few moments he would be alone and more confused than ever, and given some of his recent missions, that was really saying something. Before he could think about the consequences, he threw himself in front of the exit hole. Four or five gnomes promptly collided with each other, creating a gnome pile-up. Several of them cried out, and a younger one even squeaked in panic.

  One of the yellow-clad gnomes—a sturdy-looking, middle-aged female with small spectacles—skidded to a stop near the pile and glared at Tony furiously. “What exactly did you think you were doing, young man?!?” she demanded. “Do you realize how many gnomes you could have hurt?!? And every one of us is important if we’re going to help the station survive the night!”

  Tony stood up as soon as the gnomes had de-piled themselves, all glaring at him ferociously. He looked around apologetically, brushing off his clothes. “I’m sor
ry. I just need to know what’s going on. Who are you?”

  Several of the gnomes harrumphed and a few laughed. The yellow woman looked at him skeptically. “You don’t look like an imp or a gremlin. Are you the one damaging the system?”

  “Oh no,” Tony said quickly, eyeing some of the more burly gnomes who were shaking their fists at him. “I’ve been sent to help.”

  “Sent?” another gnome, this one various shades of brown, demanded. “Sent by whom?!?”

  “St. Vidicon.” Tony figured he might as well be honest, since they probably didn’t know who Father Vidicon was anyway—but a murmur of surprize and gasps of reverence echoed through the steel chamber. In a single smooth motion all the gnomes swept off their hats and bowed their heads. After a moment of silence they replaced their hats and looked at him with new respect.

  All but the yellow lady. “Prove it,” she snapped.

  Prove it? How? Tony stared, at a loss, then remembered Father Vidicon’s gift. He felt in his pocket and pulled out the rosary.

  The yellow lady gasped, staring.

  So did Tony. He had never before seen a rosary made from computer chips and strung on a strand of fiber-optic cable. The cross that dangled from it was made from four burned-out capacitors.

  The gnomes murmured and took off their hats, bowing their heads. The yellow one nodded, apparently satisfied.

  Tony, however, was still confused. “How did you hear of Father Vidicon? He’s scarcely been martyred yet.”

  “Silly boy,” an older gray-haired gnome with a pocket protector and slight potbelly answered. “We operate clocks and watches and hourglasses and sundials!” He paused. “Well, okay, not sundials—but time doesn’t matter to Technomes!”

  “Technomes?” Tony asked. He had never heard of such a thing.