2007. Dangerous Games

HER OWN PRIVATE SITCOM by Allen Steele

The Reality TV craze has helped to generate the idea that anybody and everybody can be a television star, but as the sly story that follows indicates, it’s not always as easy as it looks…

Allen Steele made his first sale to Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine in 1988, soon following it up with a long string of other sales to Asimov’s, as well as to markets such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Science Fiction Age. In 1990, he published his critically acclaimed first novel, Orbital Decay, which subsequently won the Locus Poll as Best First Novel of the year, and soon Steele was being compared to Golden Age Heinlein by no less an authority than Gregory Benford. His other books include the novels Clarke County Space, Lunar Descent, Labyrinth of Night. The Weight, The Tranquillity Alternative, A King of Infinite Space, Oceanspace, Chronospace, Coyote, and Coyote Rising. His short work has been gathered in two collections, Rude Astronauts and Sex and Violence in Zero G. His most recent book is a new novel in the Coyote sequence, Coyote Frontier. He won a Hugo Award in 1996 for his novella “The Death of Captain Future,” and another Hugo in 1998 for his novella “Where Angels Fear to Tread.” Born in Nashville, Tennessee, he has worked for a variety of newspapers and magazines, covering science and business assignments, and is now a full-time writer living in Whately, Massachusetts with his wife, Linda.

RAY’S Good Food Diner was located on the outskirts of town near the interstate, across a gravel parking lot from a Union 76 truckstop. The town only had 1,300 residents, so it supported only two restaurants, the other of which was a pizzeria which served up what was universally acknowledged to be the world’s most indigestible pizza. This left Ray’s Good Food Diner as the only place within fifteen miles where you could get a decent breakfast twenty-four hours a day.

Every Friday morning at about nine o’clock, Bill drove out to Ray’s for the weekly meeting of the Old Farts Club. No one remembered who first started calling it that, but it pretty well described the membership: a half-dozen or so men, each and every one of whom qualified for the senior citizen discount, who liked to get together and chew the fat, both literally and figuratively. There weren’t any rules, written or unspoken, against women or children attending the meetings, but since no one had ever brought along any family members-their wives didn’t care and their kids were all adults now and, for the most part, living away from home-the issue had never really been raised. Which was just as well; in a world where seemingly everything had been made accessible to all ages and both genders, Ray’s Good Food Diner was one of the few places left where a handful of white male chauvinists could safely convene without fear of being picketed.

A grumbling row of sixteen-wheelers idled on the other side of the lot when Bill pulled into Ray’s. He parked his ten-year-old Ford pick-up in front of the diner and climbed out. The late autumn air was cool and crisp, redolent with the scent of fallen leaves and diesel fumes; he thrust his hands into the pockets of his Elks Club windbreaker as he sauntered past the line of cars. Even without glancing through the windows, he knew which of his friends were here just by recognizing their vehicles: Chet’s charcoal-black Cadillac with the NRA sticker in the rear window; Tom’s Dodge truck with corn husks in the bed; Garrett’s decrepit Volkswagen hatchback with the mismatched driver’s side door and the dented rear bumper. John’s Volvo wasn’t there-Bill remembered that he was in Daytona Beach, visiting his son’s family. Ned hadn’t arrived yet, either because he had overslept or-more likely, Bill thought sourly-he was too hungover from his latest whiskey binge. Poor Ned.

The small diner was filled with its usual clientele: long-haul truckers chowing down after sleeping over in their vehicles, local farmers taking a mid-morning break from their chores, a couple of longhair students from the nearby state university. He smelled bacon and fried potatoes, heard music from the little two-songs-for-a-quarter juke boxes above the window booths: Jimmy Buffett from the one occupied by a husband-and-wife trucker family, something godawful from the one taken over by the college kids. He unzipped his windbreaker, looked around…

“Hey, Bill!”

And there they were, sitting around two Formica-top tables pushed together at the far end of the room: the Old Farts Club in all their glory. Chet, Tom, Garrett… the regular gang, waving for him to come over and join them. A chair had been left open for him; if there was a better definition of friendship, Bill had never heard of it.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I called you all here today…” he began.

“Aw, shut up and sit down.” This from Chet, seated at the end of the table.

“We begin bombing in five minutes,” added Garrett.

The same opening lines, reiterated again and again over the last-seven? ten? fifteen?-years. Friendship is also the condition when your buddies tolerate your lame jokes long after they’ve ceased to be funny. Or perhaps it was only a requisite of growing old.

Bill took his seat, looked around. Everyone had a mug of coffee before him, but there were no plates on the table. Another unspoken rule of the Old Farts Club was that you ate when you were hungry; no one had to wait for the others to arrive. “Thought I was running late,” he observed, “but it looks like we all got here at the same time for once.”

“Nope. I’ve been here for a hour.” Chet nodded to Tom. “He’s been here almost as long as I have.”

“Almost an hour,” agreed Tom, studying the menu.

“I got here…” Garrett checked his watch. “Exactly forty-two minutes ago.” Garrett was like that. “We’re still waiting to order.”

“You mean, we’re waiting for someone to ask if we want to order,” Chet said.

“Yes, this is true.”

Puzzled, Bill glanced over his shoulder, scanned the room. The diner was no more or less busy than it ever was on a Friday morning; at least a third of the booths were vacant, and only a handful of people sat at the lunch counter. “So where’s our waitress?” he asked. “Who’s working today?”

Three men who had been nursing lukewarm coffee for the last half-hour or more looked at each other. “Joanne,” Chet murmured darkly. “But don’t bother to call for her. She’s in her own private sitcom.”

AS if taking a cue from an unseen director, Joanne suddenly appeared, walking backward through the swinging kitchen door, balancing a serving tray above her left shoulder. “Okay, all right!” she yelled as she turned around, loud enough to be heard over the dueling jukeboxes. “Just everyone hold their horses! I’m coming as fast as I can!”

In all the uncounted years he had been coming to Ray’s, all the many times Bill had observed Joanne at work, he had never before seen her shout at her customers. Joanne was born and raised in this town, and started working at Ray’s when she graduated from the county high school. The years had been rough on her-a low-paying job, a drunk husband who abandoned her after two years, a teenage son who dropped out of high school and was now seldom home-and long ago she had lost the looks and charm that had made her a one-time prom queen, but she was still, for guys like himself and the rest of the Old Farts, the little girl they had all watched grow up. If there were good ol’ boys, then she was a good ol’ gal.

Her uncustomary brashness drew his attention; the object hovering above her held it. A miniature helicopter purred about a foot above her head, its spinning rotors forming a translucent halo; as she walked past the lunch counter, it followed her into the dining room. Suspended beneath the rotors was a softball-size spheroid; a tiny, multijointed prong containing a binaural microphone protruded above three camera lenses that swiftly gimbaled back and forth.

“Oh, lordie,” he murmured. “Joanne’s got herself a flycam.”

“Is that what it’s called?” Like everyone else at the table, Tom was watching Joanne. “I knew they were called something, but I didn’t know what it was.”

“I call it a pain in the you-know-what.” Garrett picked up his cold coffee, took a sip, made a face. “What she’s doing with one here, I have no idea.”

Joanne sashayed to a pair of truck drivers sitting in a nearby booth, the flycam keeping pace with her from above. “All right,” she announced as she picked the plates off the tray and placed them on the table, “a western omelette with a side order of bacon, two scrambled eggs with sausage, a glass of orange juice and a glass of tomato juice. Will that be all?”

The drivers looked at the plates she had put before them. “Ma’am, I ordered a ham and bacon omelette,” one said quietly, “and I think my friend here asked for his eggs over-easy with ham.”

“And I didn’t ask for tomato juice, either,” added the other. “I wanted orange juice, too.”

“We-e-e-elll!” Joanne struck a pose, one hand on an out-thrust hip, the serving tray tucked under her other arm. “I suppose one of us made a mistake, didn’t we?”

“Yes, ma’am, I suppose one of us sure did.”

Joanne looked over her shoulder. “Ray!” she bellowed in the direction of the kitchen. “You made a mistake!” Then she pivoted on her heel, and raised her arms. “I swear,” she loudly proclaimed to no one in particular (except, perhaps, the flycam), “it ain’t my fault no one ’round here speaks English!”

Then she flounced away, her hips swinging with overdone suggestivity. The two drivers gaped at her. “I’m not paying for this!” one yelled at her. “This isn’t what I ordered!”

Joanne ignored them. She was already advancing on the two college kids sitting in the next booth. They stared at the flycam as it moved into position above their table. “What’ll you have, guys?”

One of the students pointed at the drone. “Uhh… hey, is that thing live?”

“Taped,” she said briskly, dropping her voice for the first time. “Just pretend it’s not there.” She raised her voice again. “So what’ll you have, kids?”

He gawked at the camera, absently combing back his hair with his fingers. The other student nervously looked back at his menu. “I… uh… can I have…?”

“Son, what were you smoking last night?”

Startled, he looked up at her. “What?”

“Oh, you were smoking what.” She beamed down at him. “That’s new to me. I’m just a poor country girl.”

“Huh? What are you…?”

“Look, dudes, let me rap with you, okay?” She lowered her order pad, bent over the table to look them in the eye. The flycam dropped a few inches closer, its cameras recording everything. “I was your age once, and yeah, I used to get pretty wild…” She took a deep breath. “But dope is just a bad trip, y’know what I’m saying? A thing is a terrible mind to…”

“Huh?”

“Aw, dammit.” She shook her head, glanced up at the flycam for a moment, then returned her attention to the students. “I mean, a mind is a terrible thing to waste, and you’ve got your whole future ahead of you.”

“I… what?” Stammering with disbelief, the student glanced between Joanne and the hovering drone. “I… hey, lady, I don’t use drugs!”

“Neither of us do!” His companion peered up at the flycam. “Hey, we’re straight! I swear, We’re straight! Geez, we just came in here to get breakfast and…”

“Think about it,” Joanne said solemnly. “Just… think about it.”

Then she was off again, heading for another table, the flycam following her like an airborne puppy. “Can we at least get some coffee?” the first student called after her.

“What in the world is that fool girl up to?” Tom murmured.

“Taping another episode of her net show.” Chet watched her progress across the dining room. “Joanne’s Place, something like that…”

“But this isn’t her place.” Tom was bewildered. “It’s Ray’s. Ray’s Diner. What’s she doing, some kind of TV show?”

As always, Tom was behind the times. No surprise there; he was still trying to get over Bush losing to Clinton. But Bill recognized the technology; eight years might have gone by since he retired as physics teacher at the local high school, but he still kept subscriptions to popular science magazines.

Flycams were miniature spinoffs of unpiloted military reconnaissance drones. Initially intended to be used for law enforcement, only police departments were able to buy them at first, but it wasn’t long before they became inexpensive enough to enter the consumer market, and now they were available at electronics stores for approximately the same price as a high-end camcorder. Early versions were remote-controlled, but later models had the benefit of newer technology. They could be programmed to automatically track someone by his or her body-heat signature and voice pattern and follow them around, during which time they would record everything he or she did and spoke, with the data being transmitted to a nearby datanest. Bill figured that Joanne had probably parked the nest in the kitchen, or perhaps under the lunch counter.

“It’s a net show, Tom.” Chet watched Joanne perform for another pair of truckers seated at the counter. Now she was playing the coy vixen while she took their orders; she had loosened the top button of her blouse, and she was letting them get an eyeful of pink cleavage as she freshened up their coffee. The drone waited overhead, its mike and lenses catching everything. “She’s got that fly-thing following her around while she works, and when she’s done at the end of the day, she takes it home and makes it into another episode.”

“Like for a TV show, you mean.”

“The net.” Chet gave him an arch look. “Don’t get out much, do you? No one watches TV anymore ’cept old duffers like us.”

“Hey, did anyone catch Miami Vice last night?” Garrett, always the peacemaker. “They showed the one where Crockett and Tubbs…”

“See what I mean?” Chet waggled a finger at Garrett, cutting him off. “We’re used to shows about make-believe characters in make-believe stories, but that’s not where it’s at anymore. Now you can go out, buy one of those things, hook it up to your DVD and your home computer…” He snapped his fingers. “You’ve got your own show.”

“My wife really likes that stuff.” Garrett had surrendered; no sense in trying to talk about an old cop show in perpetual rerun on a local cable station. “Every night, she sits down in the den and just searches back and forth, looking for the newest shows people have put on.”

“On her computer?” Slowly, Tom was beginning to catch on. “You mean, like on… whatchamacallit, web sites?”

Bill nodded. “Sort of like that.” He didn’t add that the web sites were old tech; no sense in confusing him any further. “The net has all these different nodes, millions of them, and you can rent time there, put in your own program. Anything you want.”

“Anything?” Tom’s eyes widened. “Like… you mean… anything you’ve recorded with one of those…?”

“Yes. Anything.”

Yes, anything. Bill had his own desktop system, a decrepit old Mac he had been nursing along for years with mother boards and internal modems bought from online junkyards or cannibalized from CPUs purchased at flea markets. Slow as autumn sap from a maple tree, but it was enough to let him patch into the net if he didn’t mind waiting a few extra minutes.

He didn’t mind, although there wasn’t much worth looking at, really. Too much homemade porn, for one thing; every fool with a flycam seemed to think he was king stud of the universe when he got in bed with his wife or girlfriend, and wanted to share his glory with the world. Only slightly less prevalent were the boatloads of fanatics who sincerely believed that they had stumbled upon vast conspiracies involving crashed UFOs, biblical prophecies, and political assassinations; their flycam caught them standing outside military bases, government offices, or ancient Egyptian ruins, delivering rants fascinating only for the width and depth of their meaninglessness.

Those shows were easy to ignore, yet they were also the ones made by thousands of ordinary people during the course of their daily lives. They modeled their shows after the TV programs of their youth-Cheers, Seinfeld, and Major Dad for the sitcom enthusiasts; ER, Melrose Place , and Law & Order for the would-be dramatists-and tried to live up to Hollywood tradition. Convenience store clerks who fancied themselves as comedians. Night watchmen thinking they were action heros. Bored housewives staging their own soaps. Teenagers solving mysteries in shopping malls. Truck stop waitresses producing sitcoms, starring themselves in the lead role.

Joanne disappeared into the kitchen, pausing for only a moment to carefully hold open the door for the flycam. “There she goes,” Chet murmured. “Probably going to check the system, maybe put in a fresh disk, put a fresh battery in the ’cam. When she gets home, she’ll look at everything she got today, edit it down, maybe add some music and a laugh track. Then she’ll put it on the net. Joanne’s Place, staring Joanne the wisecracking waitress. Just a poor ol’ country girl trying to make it through the day.”

He picked up his coffee cup, saw that it was empty, put it back in its saucer. “Jesus H. Christ. And all I wanted was…”

The door swung open again and a lean young man in a cook’s apron carried out a couple of plates of food. “There’s Ray Junior now,” Garrett said. “Let’s see if we can get him over here.” He raised a hand. “Hey! Ray!”

Ray acknowledged him with a nod of his head before he went to the two drivers who had complained about their breakfast. He delivered the re-orders and spent a minute apologizing for the foul-up, then scurried around the room, pouring coffee for other disgruntled patrons. Bill couldn’t help but to feel sorry for him. Ray Junior had taken over the diner a little over a year ago when his dad retired and moved to Florida; he had done well to keep the family business going, especially on this part of the interstate where nearly every other truckstop cafe was owned by one restaurant chain or another, but he couldn’t afford to lose regular customers.

“Ray, what’s going on with Joanne?” Chet asked when Ray finally got to their table. “I’ve been here nearly a hour now and she hasn’t taken our orders.”

“I’m really sorry about this.” Ray had fetched a cup for Bill and was pouring coffee for everyone. “I’ll get her over here as soon as she comes off break.”

“She’s taking a break.” Chet glanced meaningfully at the others. “At least the second one she’s had since I’ve been here.”

“I’ll get her back here.”

“You ought to fire her. She’s more concerned with that damn toy of hers than with doing her job.”

“Well…” Ray Junior absently wiped a rag across the table. “Y’know, Chet, I really can’t do that. Joanne’s been here for nearly eighteen years. She’s like family. And…”

He hesitated. “And?” Garrett prompted.

Ray shrugged. “Well, y’know, we’ve never been able to afford so much as a billboard. All we’ve ever had was word-of-mouth. Meanwhile we’ve got competition from all the chain operations down the highway. But this show she’s doing… well, she always puts the name of the place in the credits…”

“So it’s free advertising,” Bill finished. “You’re hoping it’ll draw more customers.”

Ray nodded. “The ones that get popular… y’know, get a lot of hits… and, well, y’know, if it gets picked up by one of the major net servers, AOL or someone like that, then it could make us…”

“Famous,” Chet said. “Famous across the whole country. Soon you’ll be taking down the old sign, put up another one.” He raised his hands, spread them open as if picturing a brand-new fiberoptic sign. “I can see it now. ‘World-Famous Joanne’s Place.’ Maybe you can even sell T-shirts and bumper stickers.”

“You know I’d never do that,” Ray Junior said quietly.

Chet scowled. “Naw, I’m sure the notion’s never occurred to you.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Bill said quickly. “Thanks for the coffee, Ray. Sorry to keep you.”

“On the house. Same for breakfast,” he added as he moved away from the table. “I’ll get her out here to take your orders.”

“Hear that?” Tom said as Ray Junior beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen. “Breakfast on the house! Not bad, huh?”

“No,” Bill said. “Not bad at all.”

THERE was an uncomfortable silence at the table. “So…” Garret said at last. “Anyone seen today’s paper?”

That was how the Old Farts usually spent their Friday meetings: discussing what they had read in the paper. Baseball season was over, so now it was time to talk football. Sometimes the subject was politics, and how those damn liberals were destroying the whole country. Or maybe it would be about what was going on in Russia, or the people who were about to go to Mars, or someone famous died last week, and pretty soon it would be close to eleven and it was time for everyone to go home and do whatever it was that country gentlemen do in their golden years. Check the mailbox, feed the dogs and cats, putter around the yard, make plans to have the kids over for Thanksgiving. Take a midafternoon nap and wait for the world to turn upside-down again, and hope that it didn’t fall on you when it did.

“S’cuse me.” Chet pushed back his chair and stood up. “Need to get something from my car.”

“What did you leave?” Tom asked.

“Just some medicine. Don’t let no one take my seat.” He pulled his denim jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged into it as he walked past the lunch counter and pushed aside the glass door next to the cash register.

Garrett mentioned an awful murder that had occurred a few days ago in the big city a couple of hundred miles away, the one that had made all the newspapers. Pretty soon everyone was talking about it: how it had been committed, who had been arrested, whether they really had done the deed, so forth and so on. Bill glanced over his shoulder; out the window, he saw that the trunk lid of Chet’s Cadillac had been raised. He watched Chet slam it shut; he turned and began walking back to the diner.

“Funny place to keep medicine,” he murmured.

“Huh?” Tom cupped an ear. “What’s that you say?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Chet came back into the diner, took his seat again. The rest of the guys were still discussing the murder, but he didn’t seem to have anything to add; he simply picked up a menu and opened it to the breakfast page. Bill noted that he didn’t take off his jacket.

A couple of minutes later, the kitchen door banged open again, and there was Joanne. The flycam prowled overhead, filming her every move, as she imperiously studied the dining room. Act II, Scene II: Joanne returns from break. Cue incidental music, audience applause.

“Hey, Joanne!” Garrett raised a hand. “Could we have a little service here, please?”

She heaved an expansive sigh (the audience chuckles expectantly), then pulled pen and order pad from her apron. “Can’t a girl get a break ’round here?” she said (the audience laughs a little louder) as she came over, the flycam obediently following her.

For the first time, Bill noticed how much makeup she was wearing: pancake on the cheeks, rouge around the eyes, red lipstick across the mouth. She was trying to erase her last ten years, at least for the benefit of the camera.

“Seems to me that’s all you’ve been taking lately,” Chet replied, not looking up from his menu. “We’ve been waiting over an hour now.”

Joanne dropped her mouth open in histrionic surprise (wooo, groans the audience) as she placed her hands on her hips. “We-l-l-l-l-l! I didn’t know you were in such a goshdarn hurry! What’s the matter, Chet, you waiting for a social security check?” (More laughter.)

Chet continued to study the menu. “Joanne,” he said quietly, “I’ve been coming here to eat before you were born. I bounced your little fanny on my knee when you were a child, and told Ray Senior that he should give you a job when you got out of school…”

“And if it wasn’t for you, I could have been working for NASA by now!” (Whistles, foot-stomping applause.).

Chet ignored her. “Every time I’ve come here, I’ve put a dollar in your tip glass, even when you’ve done no more than pour me a cup of coffee. So after all these years, I think I deserve a little common courtesy, don’t you think?”

Joanne’s face turned scarlet beneath the make-up. This wasn’t part of the script. “Well, I don’t… I don’t think I have to… I don’t have to…”

“Joanne,” Bill said softly, “just take our orders, please. We’re hungry, and we want to eat.”

“And turn off that silly thing,” Chet added. “I’d like a little privacy, if it’s not too much to ask.”

Reminded that the camera was on her (the audience coughs, moves restlessly) Joanne sought to recover her poise. “We-l-l-l-l-l, if it’s privacy you… I mean, if you don’t… I mean… if you don’t mind, I’d just as soon…”

“Sorry,” Chet said, then he reached up and grabbed the flycam.

The drone resisted as his fingers wrapped around its mike boom, its lenses snapping back and forth. Its motor whined as the rotors went to a higher speed, and for a moment it almost seemed alive as it fought against Chet’s grasp, then he yanked it down to the table.

Tom’s coffee went into his lap and Garrett nearly overturned his chair as they yelled and lurched out of the way. “No! Hey!” Joanne reached for the flycam as Chet turned it over. “Stop! What are you…?”

Chet pushed her aside with one hand, then twisted the drone over on its back. The rotor blades cleaved through a plastic salt shaker and swept the pepper cellar halfway across the room before they snagged against the napkin dispenser.

Bill instinctively pulled his coffee mug out of the way. “Chet, what the hell…!”

Then Chet pulled out from beneath his jacket the tire iron he had fetched from his car trunk and brought it down on the flycam. The first blow shattered the camera lens and broke the mike boom, and the second shattered its plastic carapace and ruined a compact mass of microchips, solenoids, and actuators. The third and forth blows were unnecessary; the flycam was already an irreparable mess.

Then he dropped the tire iron on the table and sat down. There was a long silence as everyone in the diner stared at him. Then…

Long, spontaneous applause from the live studio audience.

As Joanne stared at the wreckage on the table, Chet picked up his menu and opened it again. “Okay,” he said, letting out his breath, “I’ll take two scrambled eggs, bacon, home fries, wheat toast, and tomato juice. Please.”

Tears glimmered in the corners of Joanne’s eyes. “I don’t… I don’t believe you just… that was my…”

“Show’s canceled, Joanne.” Ray Junior, standing at the lunch counter behind them, spoke quietly. “Will you just take the man’s order?”

Joanne’s hands shook a little as she raised her pad and dutifully wrote down Chet’s order. Then she went around the table and copied down everyone else’s. Tom asked for blueberry pancakes, link sausage, rye toast; Garrett requested a western omelette, no fries or toast, and a large glass of milk.

Bill had lost his appetite; he only asked for a refill of his coffee.

Joanne snuffled a bit as she thanked no one in particular, then she turned away and marched on stiff legs back into the kitchen. No one said anything when Ray Junior came out a moment later with a brush and a plastic garbage sack. He avoided everyone’s gaze as he silently whisked away the debris, then he vanished through the swinging doors.

“Well…” Tom began.

“Well,” echoed Garrett.

Chet said nothing, slipped the tire iron beneath his chair, and picked up his coffee.

“Joanne’s a good kid,” Garrett added.

“That she is. That she is.”

“Leave her a good tip, guys. She deserves it.”

“Yeah, she certainly earns her money.”

“Hard-working lady.”

“Damn straight. That she is.”

More silence. Across the room, someone put a quarter in a jukebox. An old Johnny Cash song entered the diner. The door opened, allowing inside a cool autumn breeze; a heavyset driver sat down at the counter, took off his cap, and picked up the lunch menu. A sixteen-wheeler blew its air horn as it rumbled out of the lot, heading for parts unknown.

“So… Braves blew it again, didn’t they?”

“Yep. That they did.” Bill cleared his throat. “Now it’s football season.”