A Complicated Love Story Set in Space

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “Where do we begin?” I asked.

  “That depends on you,” Jenny Perez replied. “This was, after all, your idea.”

  “Fine.” I leaned forward. “The first thing I want to know is who Production is and what we’re involved in. You said we consented, but I don’t remember consenting to anything.”

  Jenny Perez waved her hand, and a sphere a little larger than a basketball appeared in the air between us. Its surface was divided into hundreds of squares, each of which displayed what appeared to be a program, though the facets were too small to make out much detail.

  “Production is an arm of Programming. Programming decides what is broadcast, and Production decides how. The rest is, unfortunately, covered by a confidentiality agreement, therefore I’m not at liberty to divulge any further information regarding the organization. I am also barred, by the terms of your contracts, which you are both currently in breach of, from revealing who you were under any circumstances until the completion of your contracts.”

  I started to speak, but Jenny Perez added, “And, no, I cannot tell you when your contracts are due to be completed.”

  “That’s convenient,” DJ said. “If you’re going to erase our memories, why not tell us anyway?”

  “Because, as Ty has exposed, the rewrite procedure isn’t always one hundred percent effective.” Jenny Perez smiled graciously. “Now, we would greatly appreciate it if you would disarm the Explodovat SD-23X self-destruct appliance and submit to rewrites.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What do we get out of it?”

  “Nothing.”

  DJ frowned at Jenny Perez. “This isn’t how a negotiation works. It’s about compromise. We get something and then you get something.” His voice was even and calm. He had the patience of a kindergarten teacher, whereas I wanted to tear Jenny Perez’s head off. The only thing preventing me from leaping off the bench was that she was as much a victim as we were. Whoever Jenny Perez had once been, this simulacrum wasn’t her.

  “You have nothing we want,” she said.

  “We have us,” DJ countered. “If you agree to let me, Noa, and Jenny remain together, we might consider surrendering.”

  “DJ!” I yelled. “No!”

  Jenny Perez was already shaking her head, though. “Until the conclusion of Now Kiss!, we can’t separate you boys, but Jenny’s character is scheduled to die in a horrible accident in the next episode, and she will be replaced.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and then it got worse.

  “Furthermore,” Jenny Perez said, “after audiences grow weary of you, and your program is inevitably canceled, you will never be permitted to perform in the same program or co-locate in the same transition school again.”

  “That’s not fair,” DJ said. “You’re not even attempting to negotiate. Why did you let us come here if you weren’t planning to make an effort?”

  As DJ and Jenny Perez continued to argue, their voices became little more than buzz. It didn’t matter what they were saying because they weren’t negotiating a contract, they were negotiating my life.

  I don’t remember standing, but I found myself looming over Jenny Perez, and DJ was tugging my hand, trying to get me to sit down again.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” I yelled.

  “Jenny Perez. Obviously.”

  I went off, ignoring her. “Production or Programming or whatever else. What gives you the right to exploit us? To exploit our stories and profit from them as if they were your own?”

  Jenny opened her mouth to answer, and I was sure it would be an absolutely thrilling reply, but I was done with her, and I shut her down with a single withering look.

  “My story belongs to me.” I shook my hand, still joined with DJ’s. “Our story belongs to us. We are the only people who get to tell our story. Not you, not Programming or Production. Us. We decide, not you.” I was yelling. Tears were running down my cheeks. The entirety of the anger and frustration I’d been holding on to since that first day burst out of me. But when I was done, and I’d run out of things to say, I let DJ pull me back down onto the bench.

  Jenny Perez waited a beat before beginning a slow clap. “Very pretty speech, but you wouldn’t have a story if it wasn’t for Programming. They put you together. They gave you the backdrop for your romance to blossom. Without Programming and Production, you would have never met.”

  DJ said, “I don’t believe that. Something keeps drawing us together. Something stronger than you. Maybe it’s fate or maybe we knew each other from before.”

  Jenny Perez brushed our words aside. “Irrelevant. Your story belongs to us.”

  “Then this is where our story ends,” I said.

  “Wait,” DJ said. “You told us we had the highest ratings of any program—”

  “Other than Murder Your Darlings, of course.”

  “But still,” DJ said. “Our ratings are good.”

  Jenny Perez nodded. “Especially after last night in the shuttle.”

  It took me a moment to realize what she meant, and when I did, I felt like my soul had left my body. Like I was floating in the air, looking down upon myself.

  “You didn’t,” DJ said.

  “Oh, but we did.”

  They’d seen everything DJ and I had done. I wasn’t ashamed of it, but that had been for us alone. It had been special. “How?” I asked. “We used Ty’s EMP device to eliminate your surveillance equipment.”

  Jenny Perez beamed. “Cleaning bots make wonderful spies.”

  “So the whole universe saw me and Noa together?” DJ asked. He was trembling with rage.

  “Only the beginning,” she said. “Now Kiss! is still a family show, so we tastefully faded to black at the appropriate moment. It was all very sweet.”

  “I hate you,” I whispered. “I hate you, and I am going to destroy you.”

  DJ squeezed my hand, and I thought he was going to tell Jenny Perez where she could stick her ratings. Instead, he said, “What if Noa and I agree to allow you to continue recording us and our relationship?”

  “Excuse me, what?” I looked at him in shock.

  “Hear me out,” DJ said, as much to me as to Jenny Perez. “We would stay on Qriosity, with Jenny and Ty, and Production could keep recording and broadcasting the show. In return, we would get control of the ship. We would be allowed to travel wherever we want, when we want, without interference from Production.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. That DJ had suggested something so ridiculous. “Hell no,” I said. “Even if I agreed to that, and I’m never going to, Production won’t.”

  Jenny opened her mouth, paused, and then said, “Well, now. That’s not actually a terrible proposal.”

  THREE

  I GRABBED DJ’S ARM AND pulled him off to the side so that we could talk as privately as possible while Jenny Perez silently communicated with Production. I assumed Production could still hear us, but there wasn’t much we could do about that.

  Before I could get a word out, DJ said, “They’re going to exploit us no matter what we do. This way, at least, we get to control how it happens.”

  “Would we be in a relationship?” I asked. “Or would it be a performance?”

  “Noa—”

  “I’m serious.” I looked over my shoulder at where Jenny Perez was sitting. Her eyes had a blank, empty look that disturbed me immensely. “If our survival depends on ratings, how could we ever know if our actions were genuine? How could I know if you were kissing me because you wanted to kiss me or if it was because you thought it was what the audience wanted?”

  DJ leaned his forehead against mine. “I don’t care about the audience or about ratings. But this could be a way out for us. A way to hold on to who we are.”

  “But is this who we are?” I sighed in frustration because I understood where DJ was coming from, but I also felt like he wasn’t listening to me. “We’re not little paper dolls to be dressed up and posed. We’re people, DJ. We weren�
�t born into this universe so that strangers could watch us make out.”

  “Is it really so terrible that they want to?”

  “It is if they don’t see us as people first.” I laced my fingers through DJ’s. “The title of our show is Now Kiss!, right?”

  “Yeah,” DJ said warily.

  “Because that’s the only thing that’s important to them. Not you, not me, not our lives. The things that are important to us are nothing more than the filler moments between the stuff that viewers really want to see—a couple of cute boys kissing.”

  It was one thing for DJ to say he didn’t care about the audience, but the moment we sold ourselves to them, we would become beholden to their fickle whims. What happened if our relationship didn’t evolve the way the audience wanted? What happened when DJ and I fought? What about when viewers grew bored with us?

  I caught DJ’s eye. I rubbed my thumb along his cheek. “We deserve more.”

  “Well said.” Jenny Perez was wearing a deeply unsettling grin that sent a shiver through my bones. “Bravo, truly.”

  “Do you accept our proposal?” DJ asked as if everything I’d said had been for nothing.

  Jenny Perez laughed. “No. Most definitely not. But we do have a counteroffer.” She looked like a predator. She looked victorious.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Submit to rewrites and we won’t have Jenny thrown out of the airlock.”

  I felt like I’d swallowed molten lead as Jenny Perez waved her hand through the air, projecting an image of Ops from Qriosity into the air. Jenny was sitting at her station, eating a Nutreesh bar, like all was right with the world.

  “Have you finished?” Jenny Perez asked.

  Behind Jenny, Ty nodded. He looked straight at us and said, “I’m terribly sorry about this, mates, but I’d prefer to live.” He pressed a button on the console in front of him.

  “Self-destruct has been canceled. Thank you for trusting the destruction of your ship to Explodovat. Explodovat is a fully owned subsidiary of Gleeson Foods.”

  Jenny stood and rounded on Ty. “You son of a bitch!”

  Ty had the decency to look ashamed. The last thing DJ and I saw before Jenny Perez killed the image was Ty aiming his pistol at Jenny.

  I lunged at Jenny Perez, but DJ grabbed me around the waist.

  “That was hardly a challenge.” Jenny Perez looked bored now. “You lost before you even set foot on this ship.”

  “What did you offer him?” DJ asked.

  “A better life.” Jenny Perez spread her hands as if to say, What did you expect? “He contacted us, after your clandestine meeting aboard the shuttle, and said he would help us if we rewrote him as the lead of his own program. We declined his offer, of course. We had no need for him, until you pulled your sneaky stunt with the self-destruct.”

  “How?” I asked. “DJ told me the encryption on the self-destruct was impossible to hack.”

  “We had no need to hack it,” she said. “We simply provided Ty with Qriosity’s command override codes. That gave him backdoor access to the self-destruct system, allowing him to shut it down. We would have done it ourselves, but it couldn’t be handled remotely. It’s a flaw in the system that we plan to rectify.”

  My shoulders slumped. I held DJ’s hand limply in my own. “So that’s it? It’s over?”

  “Not over,” Jenny Perez said. “Noa North and DJ Storm have a bright future ahead of them. Production is even considering adding a third character to your relationship. Love triangles are back in vogue.”

  “So you’re not gonna rewrite us?” DJ asked.

  Jenny Perez rolled her eyes. “Oh, we’re definitely going to rewrite you. Production wants to guarantee that you don’t remember any of this and that you’ll be more pliable in the future. Everyone hates repeats.”

  “At least we’ll be together,” DJ said.

  “This isn’t fair!”

  “It’s cute that you think life should be fair, Noa.” Jenny Perez stood, her anger as swift as a summer storm. “Do you think it was fair that I sacrificed my childhood to people who saw me as little more than a resource to exploit? Do you think it was fair that I had to grow up under the perverted gaze of degenerate men who maintained a public countdown until my eighteenth birthday, as if that made their lust somehow less revolting? Do you think it was fair that I never truly knew whether my family loved me or whether they were simply sucking up to me to make sure I would maintain them in the lifestyle to which they’d grown accustomed?” Jenny Perez seemed to swell in size as she spoke, her voice filling the room.

  “Life isn’t fair, boys. We each have our part to play. This is yours; get used to it.”

  In a strange way, it was comforting to see Jenny Perez truly lose her temper, to see a side of her that wasn’t polished and perfect. She might not have been real, but maybe she was human after all.

  Jenny Perez looked like she was going to continue to lecture us, but instead she cocked her head to the side like she was listening to a voice we couldn’t hear, and said, “What now?” She waved her hand, bringing up a picture of Ops. At first, it appeared that Jenny had tackled Ty and was attempting to wrestle the gun from him, but I quickly realized that’s not quite what was happening.

  Jenny’s arms were wrapped around Ty, and she was kissing him. Though, if I’m being honest, it looked more like she was trying to suck the last breath from his lungs. In the background, Qriosity’s computer said, “Warning! Qriosity will self-destruct in five minutes. Warning!”

  “Well,” Jenny Perez said, “I did not see that coming.”

  It was my turn to grin. “I did say that we’d rather die than submit.” With the hand that wasn’t holding on to DJ, I held up Ty’s EMP so that Jenny Perez could see it clearly. “Sorry about it.” I pressed the button, and Jenny Perez collapsed to the floor.

  NOW KISS! EPISODE TEN, SCENE FOUR

  INT. PRODUCTION SHIP MUX HALLWAY

  NOA NORTH and DJ STORM flee from the meeting room after disabling JENNY PEREZ and ending the negotiations.

  NOA

  Killing Jenny Perez felt more satisfying than I’m comfortable admitting.

  DJ

  You know she’s not actually dead, right?

  NOA

  Don’t ruin the moment for me, DJ.

  Noa and DJ stop running. Noa leans against the bulkhead, breathing heavily.

  DJ

  Which way?

  NOA

  Bleep if I know.

  DJ

  Are we doing the right thing?

  NOA

  What choice do we have? What choice have they left us?

  DJ

  I just want to make sure that you’re sure. You know I’ll follow you anywhere, Noa North. I’ll even jump out of a ship for you.

  NOA

  How many times are you going to bring that up?

  DJ

  As many times as I can. I jumped out of a bleeping ship!

  Noa and DJ continue sprinting down the passageway, eventually arriving at the umbilical connecting Production ship MUX to Qriosity. DJ and Noa dash swiftly across.

  INT. Qriosity—OPS—MOMENTS LATER

  DJ and Noa run into Ops. JENNY PRICE and TY DAVENPORT are still locked in an embrace, exchanging oral bodily fluids. It is both visually and aurally displeasing. They separate when they realize they have an audience.

  QRIOSITY COMPUTER

  Warning! Qriosity will self-destruct in thirty seconds. Warning!

  NOA

  Thanks for not actually betraying us.

  TY

  Technically, I did betray you. However, Jenny changed my mind. She made a terribly convincing argument.

  DJ

  Gross.

  JENNY

  How is it gross when I do it, but it’s totally cute when you and Noa slobber all over each other in the galley?

  QRIOSITY COMPUTER

  Warning! Qriosity will self-destruct in fifteen seconds. Warning!

  NOA

/>   I’m sorry it’s ending like this, but—

  JENNY

  Don’t say it.

  NOA

  At least—

  DJ

  Seriously, Noa. I’ll break up with you if you say it.

  NOA

  We get to go out with a bang.

  QRIOSITY COMPUTER

  Warning! Qriosity will now self-destruct. Thank you for trusting the destruction of your ship to Explodovat. Explodovat is a fully owned subsidiary of Gleeson Foods.

  EXT. SPACE

  Production ship MUX detaches from Qriosity, and quickly flies as far from the other ship as its thrusters can propel it.

  Qriosity explodes.

  FADE OUT.

  EPILOGUE

  I WOKE UP ON A spaceship. And I was dead.

  It wasn’t the first time.

  DJ slung his arm around my shoulders and leaned his head against mine. I slid my arm around his waist. We stood in Ops on board a ship called Qriosity and watched the stars. There was nothing on the viewport. No planets, no space school, no Production.

  “Did it work?” Jenny asked. “Because I’m sick of wondering if I’m being watched by a bunch of pervs.”

  “Production is a computer program,” Ty said. A violet hickey the size of golf ball peeked out from under his collar.

  Jenny glared at him. “I don’t care. Computers can still be pigs.”

  DJ coughed to remind them that they weren’t alone. He turned his attention to Ty. “Well? Did it work?”

  Ty nodded. “I did as we discussed on the shuttle. I betrayed you, suggested to Production that I could assist them with disabling the self-destruct but that I would need the command override codes to do so, and then used those codes to gain control of Qriosity.”

  “What about their surveillance equipment?” I asked.

  “The program I wrote should have disabled the systems they were using to monitor us at the exact moment the fold drive engaged.” DJ shrugged. “To Production, it should’ve looked like we blew up.”