Winning Mars | Page 6

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. Sponsors love it. They just look properly horrified and give some insignificant percentage of their profits to the survivors and everyone's happy. Your big problem is legal."
And the fucking risk managers, Jere thought, thinking of 411, and the conniption they would have if he ever told them about this. "Tell me why we should take the chance. Pretend I'm stupid. Convince me."
Evan made a gesture and remapped the screen with colorful data, demographics, charts, multicolored peaks spiking like some impossible landscape. Stuff he had seen before, but this was far out of proportion. The audience was far larger than he'd seen in a good long time, and the engagement numbers were hitting the top of the screen. Jere thought of those impossible charts they threw at him, back during that single semester of college he'd endured. This was too perfect.
And yet it still bore the stamp of 411, Inc. The fuckers. But it might make them more likely to back it, Jere thought.
"Why?" Evan asked. "Three reasons. First, the Chinese."
"Didn't the Chinese