by John Scalzi
“Are you happy living this way?” Dahl asked.
“I haven’t been happy since my wife died,” Jenkins said. “It was her death that got me on to all of this anyway. Looking at the statistics of deaths on this ship, seeing how events on this ship played themselves out. Figuring that the most logical explanation was that we were part of a television show. Realizing my wife died simply to be a dramatic moment before a commercial. That in this television show, she was a bit player. An extra. She probably had about ten seconds of airtime. No one watching that episode probably has any memory of her now. Don’t know her first name was Margaret. Or that she liked white wines more than red. Or that I proposed to her in her parents’ front yard during a family reunion. Or that we were married for seven years before some hack decided to kill her. But I remember her.”
“Do you think she’d be happy with how you’re living?” Dahl asked.
“I think she’d understand why I do it,” Jenkins said. “What I do on this ship keeps people alive.”
“Keeps some people alive,” Dahl said. “It’s a zero-sum game. Someone is always going to have to die. Your alert system keeps the old hands here alive, but makes it more likely the new crew get killed.”
“It’s a risk, yes,” Jenkins said.
“Jenkins, how long were you and your wife stationed on the Intrepid before she died?” Dahl asked.
Jenkins opened his mouth to respond and then shut it like a trap.
“It wasn’t very long, was it?” Dahl asked.
Jenkins shook his head to say no, and then looked away.
“People on this ship figured it out before you came on it,” Dahl said. “Maybe they didn’t come to the same conclusions you did, but they saw what was happening and guessed their odds of survival. Now you’re giving them better tech to do the same thing to new crew that they did to your wife.”
“I think you should leave now,” Jenkins said, still turned away from Dahl.
“Jenkins, listen to me,” Dahl said, leaning in. “There’s no way to hide from this. There’s no way to run from it. There’s no way to avoid fate. If the Narrative exists—and you and I know it does—then in the end we don’t have free will. Sooner or later the Narrative will come for each of us. It’ll use us however it wants to use us. And then we’ll die from it. Like Finn did. Like Margaret did. Unless we stop it.”
Jenkins looked back over at Dahl, eyes wet. “You’re a man of faith, aren’t you, Dahl?” he said.
“You know my history,” Dahl said. “You know I am.”
“How can you still be?” Jenkins said.
“What do you mean?” Dahl asked.
“I mean that you and I know that in this universe, God is a hack,” he said. “He’s a writer on an awful science fiction television show, and He can’t plot His way out of a box. How do you have faith when you know that?”
“Because I don’t think that’s actually God,” Dahl said.
“You think it’s the show’s producer, then,” Jenkins said. “Or maybe the president of the network.”
“I think your definition of what a god is and what my definition is probably differ,” Dahl said. “But I don’t think any of this is the work of God, or of a god of any sort. If this is a television show, then it was made by people. Whatever and however they’re doing this to us, they are just like us. And that means we can stop them. We just have to figure out how. You have to figure it out, Jenkins.”
“Why me?” Jenkins asked.
“Because you know this television show we’re trapped in better than anyone else,” Dahl said. “If there’s a solution or a loophole, you’re the only one who can find it. And soon. Because I don’t want any more of my friends to die because of a hack writer. And that includes you.”
* * *
“We could just blow up the Intrepid,” said Hester.
“It wouldn’t work,” said Hanson.
“Of course it would work,” Hester said. “Ka-plooey, there goes the Intrepid, there goes the show.”
“The show’s not about the Intrepid,” Hanson said. “It’s about the characters on it. Captain Abernathy and his crew.”
“Some of them, anyway,” Duvall said.
“The five main characters,” Hanson amended. “If you blow up the ship, they’ll just get another ship. A better ship. They’ll just call it the Intrepid-A or something like that. It’s happened on other science fiction shows.”
“You’ve been studying?” Hester said, mockingly.
“Yes, I have,” Hanson said, seriously. “After what happened to Finn, I went and learned about every science fiction television show I could find.”
“What did you find out?” Dahl asked. He had already briefed his friends on his latest encounter with Jenkins.
“That I think Jenkins is right,” Hanson said.
“That we’re on a television show?” Duvall asked.
“No, that we’re on a bad one,” Hanson said. “As far as I can tell, the show we’re on is pretty much a blatant rip-off of that show Jenkins told us about.”
“Star Wars,” Hester said.
“Star Trek,” Hanson said. “There was a Star Wars, though. It was different.”
“Whatever,” Hester said. “So not only is this show we’re on bad, it’s plagiarized. And now my life is even more meaningless than it was before.”
“Why would you make a show a knockoff of another show?” Duvall asked.
“Star Trek was very successful in its time,” Hanson said. “So someone else came along and just reused the basic ideas. It worked because it worked before. People would still be entertained by the same stuff, more or less.”
“Did you find our show in your research?” Dahl asked.
“No,” Hanson said. “But I didn’t think I would. When you create a science fiction show, you create a new fictional timeline, which starts just before the production date of that television show. That show’s ‘past’ doesn’t include the television show itself.”
“Because that would be recursive and meta,” Duvall said.
“Yes, but I don’t think they thought about it that hard,” Hanson said. “They just wanted the shows to be realistic in their own context, and you can’t be realistic if there’s a television show version of you in your own past.”
“I hate that we now have conversations like this,” Hester said.
“I don’t think any of us like it,” Dahl said.
“I don’t know. I think it’s interesting,” Duvall said.
“It would be interesting if we were sitting in a dorm room, getting stoned,” Hester said. “Talking about it seriously after our friend has died sort of takes the fun out of it.”
“You’re still angry about Finn,” Hanson said.
“Of course I am,” Hester spat. “Aren’t you?”
“I recall you and him not getting along when you came on the Intrepid,” Dahl said.
“I didn’t say I always liked him,” Hester said. “But we got better with each other while we were here. And he was one of us. I’m angry about what happened to him.”
“I’m still pissed at him for knocking me out with that pill,” Duvall said. “And I feel guilty about it, too. If he hadn’t done that, he might still be alive.”
“And you might be dead,” Dahl pointed out.
“Not if I wasn’t written to die in the episode,” Duvall said.
“But Finn was written into the episode,” Hanson said. “He was always going to be there. He was always going to be in that room when that bomb went off.”
“Remember when I said I hated the conversations we have these days?” Hester said. “Just now? This is exactly the sort of conversation I’m talking about.”
“Sorry,” Duvall said.
“Jimmy, you said that whenever the show started, it created a new timeline,” Dahl said, and ignored Hester throwing up his hands helplessly. “Do we know when that happened?”
“You think that might help us?” Hanson asked.
&n
bsp; “I’m just curious,” Dahl said. “We’re an alternate timeline from ‘reality,’ whatever that is. I’d like to know when that branching off happened.”
“I don’t think we can know,” Hanson said. “There’s nothing that would signal where that timeline twist happened because from our perspective there’s never been a break. We don’t have any alternate timelines to compare ourselves to. We can only see our timeline.”
“We could just start looking for when completely ridiculous shit started happening in our universe,” Hester said.
“But define ‘completely ridiculous shit,’” Duvall said. “Does space travel count? Contact with alien races? Does quantum physics count? Because I don’t understand that crap at all. As far as I’m concerned, quantum physics could have been written by a hack.”
“The first science fiction television show I found information about was something called Captain Video, and that was in 1949,” Hanson said. “The first Star Trek show was twenty years after that. So, probably this show was made sometime between the late 1960s and the end of television broadcasting in 2105.”
“That’s a lot of time to cover,” Dahl said.
“Assuming that Star Trek actually exists,” Hester said. “There are all sorts of entertainment programs today that exist only in our timeline. The timeline we exist in could go back before this Star Trek show was actually made, and it exists in this timeline basically to taunt us.”
“Okay, now, that is recursive and meta,” Duvall said.
“I think that’s probably what it is,” Hester said. “We’ve already established whoever is writing us is an asshole. This sounds like just the sort of thing an asshole writer would do.”
“I have to give you that,” Duvall said.
“This timeline sucks,” Hester said.
“Andy,” Hanson said, and motioned away from the table. A cargo cart was rolling up to the table they were sitting at. Inside of it was a note. Dahl took the note; the cargo cart rolled away.
“A note from Jenkins?” Duvall asked.
“Yeah,” Dahl said.
“What does it say?” Duvall asked.
“It says he thinks he’s come up with something that might work,” Dahl said. “He wants to talk to us about it. All of us.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I want to warn you that this sounds like a crazy idea,” Jenkins said.
“I’m amazed you feel the need to say that anymore,” Hester said.
Jenkins nodded, as if to say, Point. Then he said, “Time travel.”
“Time travel?” Dahl said.
Jenkins nodded and fired up his holographic display, showing the timeline of the Intrepid and the tentacles branching down, signifying the collection of episodes. “Here,” he said, pointing to a branching node of tendrils. “In the middle of what I think was this show’s fourth season, Abernathy, Q’eeng and Hartnell took a shuttle and aimed it toward a black hole, using its gravity-warping powers to go backward in time.”
“That makes no sense at all,” Dahl said.
“Of course it doesn’t,” Jenkins said. “It’s yet another violation of physics caused by the Narrative. The point is not that they violated physics in a nonsensical way. The point is they went back in time. And they went back in time to a specific time. A specific year. They went back to 2010.”
“So?” Hester said.
“So, I think the reason they went back to that year was because that was the current year of this show’s production,” Jenkins said.
“Science fiction shows had their people going back in time all the time,” Hanson said. “They were always having them meet famous historical people or take part in important events.”
Jenkins pointed his finger excitedly at Hanson. “But that’s just it,” he said. “If a show goes back to a specific time in its actual past, they’ll usually key it to a specific important historical person or event, because they have to give the audience something it knows about history, or else it won’t care. But if the show goes back to the present, then it doesn’t do that. It just shows that time and the characters reacting to it. It’s a dramatic irony thing.”
“So if the show just has them wandering around a past time, if they meet someone famous, it’s the past, but if they don’t, it’s the present,” Duvall said. “Their present.”
“More or less,” Jenkins said.
“That’s some great show trivia,” Duvall said, “but what does it have to do with us?”
“If we go back to the present, we can find a way to stop it,” Dahl said suddenly.
Jenkins smiled and touched his nose.
Duvall looked at the two of them, not quite getting it. “Explain this to me, Andy,” she said, “because right now it just looks like you and Jenkins are sharing a crazy moment.”
“No, this makes sense,” Dahl said. “We know when the present is for the show. We know how to time travel to get back to the show’s present. We go back to the present, we can stop the people who are making the show.”
“If we stop the show, then everything stops,” Hester said.
“No,” Dahl said. “When the Narrative doesn’t need us, we still exist. And this timeline existed before the Narrative started intruding on it.” He paused, and turned to Jenkins. “Right?”
“Maybe,” Jenkins said.
“Maybe?” Hester said, suddenly very concerned.
“There’s actually an interesting philosophical argument about whether this timeline exists independently, and the Narrative accesses it, or whether the creation of the Narrative also created this timeline, causing its history to appear instantly even if to us on the inside it appears that the passage of time has actually occurred,” Jenkins said. “It’s very much a corollary to the Strong Anthropic Principle—”
“Jenkins,” Dahl said.
“—but we can talk about that some other time,” Jenkins said, getting the hint. “The point is, yes, whether it existed before the Narrative or was created by it, this timeline now exists and is persistent even when the Narrative does not impose itself.”
“Okay,” Hester said.
“Probably,” Jenkins said.
“I really want to throw things at him,” Hester said to Dahl.
“I’m going to vote for the idea we exist and will continue to exist even when this show stops,” Dahl said. “Because otherwise we’re all doomed anyway. All right?”
No one offered a disagreement.
“In which case, to get back to what I was saying, if we go back in time and stop the show, then the Intrepid stops being a focus of the Narrative,” Dahl said. “It goes back to just being a ship. We stop being glorified extras in our own lives.”
“So we won’t die,” Duvall said.
“Everybody dies,” Jenkins said.
“Thank you for that news flash,” Duvall said, irritated. “I mean we won’t die just to give an audience a thrill.”
“Probably not,” Jenkins said.
“If we really are in a television series, then it’s going to be hard to stop,” Hanson said, and looked to Dahl. “Andy, a really successful television series could be worth a lot of money, just like a good drama series today can be. It’s not just the show, it’s everything around it, including things like merchandising.”
“Your boyfriend has an action figure,” Hester said to Duvall.
“Yeah, and you don’t,” Duvall shot back. “In this universe that’s a problem.”
“I’m saying that even if we do travel back in time and find the people making this show, we might not be able to stop it,” Hanson said. “There might be too much money involved.”
“What other option do we have?” Dahl said. “If we stay here, the only thing to do is wait for the Narrative to kill us off. We might have a slim chance of stopping the show, but a slim chance there is better than a certainty of a dramatic death here.”
“Why even bother trying to stop the show?” Hester said. “Look, if we really are extras, then we’re not actu
ally needed here. I say we go back in time and just stay there.”
“Do you really want to live in the early twenty-first century?” Duvall asked. “It wasn’t exactly the most cheerful time to be alive. It’s not like they had a cure for cancer then.”
“Whatever,” Hester said.
“Or baldness,” Duvall said.
“This is my original hair,” Hester said.
“You can’t stay in the past,” Jenkins said. “If you do, you’ll dissolve.”
“What?” Hester said.
“It has to do with conservation of mass and energy,” Jenkins said. “All the atoms you’re using now are being used in the past. If you stay in the past, then the atoms have to be in two places at the same time. This creates an imbalance and the atoms have to decide where to be. And eventually they’ll choose their then-present configuration because technically speaking, you’re from the future, so you don’t actually exist yet.”
“What’s ‘eventually’ here?” Dahl asked.
“About six days,” Jenkins said.
“That’s completely idiotic!” Hester said.
“I don’t make up the rules,” Jenkins said. “It’s just how it worked last time. It makes sense in the Narrative, though—it gave Abernathy, Q’eeng and Hartnell a reason to get their mission done in a certain, dramatic amount of time.”
“This timeline sucks,” Hester said.
“If you brought atoms forward, they would have the same problem,” Jenkins said. “And in that case they’d choose the present, which means the thing from the past would dissolve. It’s a pretty problem, actually. Mind you, that’s just one of your problems.”
“What else is there?” Dahl asked.
“Well, you’ll need to acquire a shuttle, which will be no small matter,” Jenkins said. “It’s not like they’ll let you borrow one for a lazy excursion. But that’s not actually the hard part.”
“What’s the hard part?” Duvall asked.
“You’re going to have to get one of the five stars of the show to come with you,” Jenkins said. “Take your pick: Abernathy, Q’eeng, West, Hartnell or Kerensky.”
“What do we need one of them for?” Hester asked.
