Winning Mars | Page 6

the kind that
came from years of cigarettes and booze or expensive operations. He
looked fifty, which meant he was probably at least seventy, especially
if he palled around with dad, who at seventy-four was also scraping the
last of the best med-tech before the docs threw up their hands and said,
in fatalistic voices, We're not miracle workers here!
But Jere had to give him credit. Evan didn't wear animated clothing,
have his hair dyed neon green, or even carry an eyepod. His jacket was
black and boring and imperfectly tailored, like it had been made by real,
imperfect humans somewhere in the world, rather than grown to his
shape. He wore a boring gray collarless shirt underneath, devoid of
even a corporate logo. He even had a big clunky metal watch, one of
those awful things you probably had to have whirligig life-support for,
a thing that throbbed and ticked on your wrist like a bomb. He
imagined Evan falling into the ocean and being dragged down into
black depths by the weight of that watch.
He seemed, well, almost comfortable being old.

"So you have an idea for me," Jere said.
Evan looked at him, zero expression, eyes like carved lumps of lead.
For a moment, Jere thought Evan would ask him again if he found him
amusing, and he'd have to stutter and make something up, or throw the
old asshole out on his ear. And how would dad like that?
Then Evan's face animated, like some nineteenth-century atomaton,
made of brass and wood, cranked to life iron gears.
"I have a proposal," he said.
Jere waited. He waited some more. Finally, he said, "What is it?"
"We resurrect the reality show," Evan said. "We take it to Mars."
For a moment, Jere sat there, mouth open. He'd expected something
stupid. Something even monumentally stupid. But not something so
stupid that it was in danger of creating a black hole of stupidity.
"Resurrect the reality show?"
"Yes."
"And take it to... Mars? As in, the planet?"
A nod. "As in the planet."
Jere stopped again. You gotta be kidding me, he wanted to say. Get the
fuck out of my office, he wanted to say. Dad, I know you're filming this,
and it ain't funny, he wanted to say.
But. The look on the old fuck's face. He looked so. Like. Serious. And
if Jere threw him out of the office, dad would hear quick. And there
would go the chance for any sweet parental financing.
"So, you're saying we send a bunch of people to Mars. And have them
do? What? Like running and jumping and stuff like that?"
Evan studied him for a moment with those lead eyes. Then: "You don't

think I'm serious."
"No, no, it's not that--"
"Yes. It is. You think I'm some old nut, from the end of the TV age,
trying to push his own dumb agenda on you."
Jere said nothing. That was so close to his own thinking it was a little
surreal.
Evan held up a hand. "No. Don't deny it. I know what you're gonna say.
This doesn't make any sense, you'll say. This costs too much, you'll say.
People will die, you'll say."
"You're telling me they won't? Die, that is?"
Evan sat back in his seat. "Of course someone is going to die. Probably
lots of someones."
Jere nodded, trying to hide his surprise. So maybe the old fuck wasn't
just another crank with a stupid dream trying to suck his nuts. He was
-- at least -- realistic.
"Death is a legal problem," Jere said.
"You're saying that all your stunts, all your shows, haven't gotten
anyone killed?"
"Neteno doesn't do snuff."
"What about the new Afghanistan thing? Or the Phillipines?"
"That was news."
Evan nodded. "So nobody died."
"Nobody who didn't volunteer--"
Evan made a disgusted noise. "No bystanders died? Not a one? You

can guarantee that? You'll do a deposition?"
Very realistic. So maybe taking this meeting was not just a complete
padre-suckup. Maybe his father was right, just this once.
Jere just looked at him. He waited for the old guy to drop his eyes.
Hard eyes like agate. He waited. And kept waiting.
"Make your pitch," Jere said. "And make it good."
"I have data," Jere said, waving a pocket-projector. "Can I show it?"
Jere nodded. "Lights down," he said. The window overlooking
polychrome Hollywood dimmed to twilight, and the room light ramped
down and blue. Evan pointed his pocketproj at the screen, descending
to the side of Jere's desk.
Evan stood up and paced in front of Jere's obsidian desk, as colorful
graphics lit the screen. WINNING MARS, it said, A proposal for
Neteno.
"First, let's dispense with the death thing," Evan said said.
"Sponsors don't like it."
"Don't lie.