Memoirs of a Timelord (14 page)

       So to make a long and exhilarating story short; I slept with Elvis, and it was great, like Tony the Tiger grrrreat, like 4th of July fireworks great.  Toes were curled, backs were scratched, and funny faces were made.  Yeah, it was all that and a bag of chips too.

       See, you remember all that energy he used to shower the audience?  Well imagine that he focused all of that on you, and while he's doing that your own Onkx is emitting your response which feeds his response which heightens your response, and on and on and on in one incredible loop.  I swear we burned a terawatt or more.  This was not ordinary human intercourse.  This was how Angels have sex, like Kong climbing the Empire State Building, or Zeus and Aphrodite rocking Mount Olympus.  We knocked out power for two blocks and tripped seismic sensors for a hundred miles.

       Mmmm.  Memory enhancements. I forget, what was I talking about before? 

       

       

       Now what you gotta understand about this op is that this wasn't just some small-town talent show.  This was StarElite.  The show had dominated the number one slot for the last twelve seasons.  It was huge.  Commercial advertising sold for prices like you'd see during Super Bowl back home.  It was insane how much money was wrapped up in this show.  It wasn't just entertainment to them.  StarElite was more like this shared dream of fairytale success for the downtrodden masses of the Voh Empire, and there were a lotta downtrodden.  The talent contest was more popular than sports, and bigger than religion.  You see, a show back on Earth ran for an hour a week.  But out here StarElite got more airtime than the Truman Show.  Every detail of our lives were recorded and broadcast.  In a sense, we each got our own channel with around the clock coverage until we get eliminated.  Even then, the losers go to a backup channel where they still get a few hours of coverage a day as they compete against each other.  Viewers can see not only the performances and interviews, but every waking minute of our lives.  They can focus on a single contestant or dozens of us simultaneously.  Fans who logged the most hours were able to unlock hidden footage or director's secrets of upcoming episodes.  

       See, the thing about StarElite is that the show wasn't just a moneymaker.  It shaped perceptions and distracted people from the gutter most of them lived in.  The Voh are the perfect example of an advanced stellar industrial society where lawmakers have completely removed all consumer safeguards in favor of big business.  It'd be the same as if back on Earth you closed down the EPA, the FDA, and the Better Business Bureau at the same time.  Companies can do as they please in the name of profit, and as the rich grow richer there comes a great stratification to the economy.  In this world the upper 1% own 113% of the wealth.  How can they own more than a hundred percent?  By keeping the masses in debt.  Something made possible by the passage of statutes enforcing hereditary debt.  In any of the thirteen districts, you could find yourself saddled with the debts of your nearest living relative, even if you never met them.  Add steep interest rates and you have a mass of people who owe vastly more than they own.  In this world, there is no such thing as a Bill of Rights. There were even a few Debtor Prisons in the primary districts.  StarElite was nothing more than a very profitable tool to distract the people from seeing what the Oligarchy was really doing, and it worked very well.

       What really shocked me about the Voh was that not only did they treat their own people like absolute shit, but they were even worse to foreigners.  Remember when I said there were thirteen districts to the empire in this era?  Well, three of those were a nation formerly known as Tenyaa.  See, when the Boss first injected humans into this galaxy, they were a mix of religions and faiths, just a hodge-podge of people from mass-death events.  Remember that big chemical spill in India?  Yep, those people got harvested right besides the entire crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald, or the people that died on 9-11.  He just dumped them out there on Theti, to evolve as they may.  So human nature being what it is, the first survivors immediately separated themselves into groups.  Most were cultural, but many were faith-based.  As the centuries passed, Theti was a cultural pressure cooker.  There was some pretty serious blending of the religions until a single homogenous faith emerged in the eighth century; The Domulites.

       So you had this pretty radical faith, actually more of a Franken-religion, built with parts of old and dead religions until you had a super dogmatic faith that demanded control of a person's daily life in return for guidance to an everlasting salvation.   Under the church's founder, Emil Vander, they settled the farthest reaches of their planet, the absolute wilderness, and created a theocratic empire known as Tenyaa.  Seeking to ditch the technological distractions and live a simpler life, the Domulites tried to build a little paradise in their corner of the world, and it almost worked.

       But the bulk of the people on the planet, prolly 80% or more were Colbai.  Where the Domulites answered to their God Hadra, the Colbai worshipped the ism's; capitalism, industrialism, and consumerism.  They were a people of insatiable hunger and desire, they wanted it all, and they wanted it now!  To this end they expanded quickly, and sacked the planet for more and more resources until the only territory they did not own was Tenyaa.  

       At first it was like Delta Force storming an Amish village.  The Colbai would invent a bullshit reason to make a military incursion into Tenyaa, and take a chunk of Dom land when they only partially withdrew.  The entire time the media was busy painting the Domulites as religious fanatics who could not manage themselves without compassionate oversight by the Colbai.  Over the next hundred years the Colbai Collective took more and more land, pushing the Domulites into a corner that eventually became the thirteenth district.  Of course by that time, the church people had started to fight back.  But with the media heavily slanted against the Indians, every defensive act was reported as a threat to Voh harmony until finally there was statutory law that restricted Domulites to their own shrinking territory.  On Earth we called this apartheid.  

       With a massive media machine dancing to their tune, it was easy for the Colbai leadership to paint the Domulite as the villains.  They even taught their school children that people from the 13th district were violent as a result of their limited intelligence quotient.  It was right there in the textbooks and everything.  It only took a few generations before these ideas were widely accepted as factual.  It was Alabama in the fifties.  The only thing missing was the separate water fountains.  They woulda had them except the Colbai didn't even have the charity to add the second waterline.  They expected the Dom to drink hose water around back.  No shit, hose water.  

       So how does this have a fracking thing to do with a talent show?  Like I said, the show was used to keep the masses happy.  Viewers could distract themselves from their own miserable existence by plugging into someone else's life.  But when they did, fans could be comforted in knowing that the person they watched at the other end of the feed was Colbai.  The Dom were strictly prohibited.  If you had ever been to a Church of Hadraa then you could consider yourself blackballed.  If you were a practicing member of the faith you prolly couldn't even get an exit visa out of the 13th.   Add to that the fact that the contest rules strictly forbade Domulites or sympathizers from even auditioning.  These people were Antebellum.     

       I was still having a little trouble seeing how my singing was supposed to shatter the barriers of apartheid and bring peace to the empire, but then this was all butterfly theory we're talking about here.  The tiniest of changes to the timeline could paint public perception enough to start a small shift towards the left.  That's how a Temporal Editor does things; a nudge here, a shove there.  Sometimes our work is as subtle as a bus stop bench, or as magnanimous as the Hindenburg disaster.   More often than not, we are simply muse to the movers and shakers in your society.  Think of DorLek as that guy who whispered epiphanies to JP Morgan and Andrew Carnegie.  

       So even though I had studied the mission plan, I was not entirely convinced of the outcome.  I knew the Boss researched this stuff in ways that I did not yet understand, but it still seemed like a long shot when you are living in segregated Mississippi circa 1955.  No TV show, no matter how immersive, would change public perception that much.  No way in hell.  These people were taught the Klan mantra as soon as they start school.  You had institutionalized bigotry at every level.  

       "When we walk, we take one step at a time.  There are many steps in a voyage." DorLek said, his voice echoing in my head as he talked to me through the Guf.  There was something just so reassuring about his presence.  It had taken a few years but I was beginning to learn that no matter how crazy something may sound, if the Boss said it would work, then by Grapthar's Hammer it was gonna friggin' work.  

       So, with never less than three drone-cams following me everywhere I went, the entire Planet of Theti got to know me, along with nineteen other young, eager, contestants.  Every discussion, every argument, every hit, every failure was instantly broadcast out to the waiting masses to be digested and discussed at the water cooler.  I had been prepped on this aspect of the gig.  Despite the diminutive size of the cameras that hovered at various distances from me, I was painfully aware of them.  There could never be a moment when I was not charming or entertaining, and that's where the rub came in.

       While I had the looks on the outside, inside I was still Jenna Ramirez, combat medic and lifetime Tomboy.  That being said, you can imagine the kinds of things I was prone to saying on reflex, especially when irritated.  Back then I was still a little coarse.  But I was no good to the plan if I threw out a stream of profanities and alienated the viewers.  I either needed a muzzle or a filter.

       There was a third option, but it involved extra homework.  Here is how it would work, just imagine all those times that someone said something dickless to you and you were caught without a snappy retort.  Now imagine if right at that minute you could hit the pause button and just take a minute to collect yourself, analyze the situation, and tailor a perfect response.  Well guess what, that's Timelord 101 stuff right there.  Unfortunately, I was a green horn, and still a few years away from my formal studies in temporal manipulation; it is an advanced skill.  But the Boss said that with my abilities in the Guf, I should be able to at least handle some basic parallel parking.  Of all the temporal skills, standing still on a 4th dimensional thread is the easiest.  Anytime I needed to think a minute I would just halt the timeline for a few seconds while I considered how to politely tell some creepy reporter to back off while I rehearse.  It took practice, but I used my parlor trick to make sure Zeva was that fun-loving girl down the street, always ready with something witty to say.  

       I tried to use Veena as my image.  She was so much fun; even the library was a happening place when she was around.  Me?  I was never that kinda girl.  In my old life I made as many enemies as friends, fortunately that meant I only had a few enemies.  I wasn't the outcast, but I sure as hell wasn't the life of the party either.  I had to really focus on being that girl; snarky, with a touch of rebel.   

       It helped that I could view myself from the outside by hijacking the feed from my camera escorts.  By this time in my development I had mastered the Touch to the point that I could control technology through thin air.  A few more years and I could control some lower beings too, but with the homework I already had, I was in no hurry to go there yet.  Between the studies DorLek assigned, Meexon's tutoring, and the contest itself, I was too damned busy to do anything but work.  

       It was right before the first elimination challenge, when we were supposed to be gearing up for our own performances, and the network people were dragging us downtown for some bullshit ribbon cutting ceremony.  Instead of practicing so we could stay in the game, we were smiling and waving like stooges for the network.  None of us was compensated for these appearances because it would invalidate our amateur status, but that didn't mean that the network didn't profit from the event.  They pimped us out like it was payday in a sailor town, and it had been grating on all of our nerves.  The last five events had all served food, but we never stayed long enough to get a single bite.  Finally I decided I wasn't going to get on the bus until I grabbed some of that fried dog on a stick.  It smelled delicious, so I stepped out of line.  One of the handlers stepped into my path, and I was about to bury my foot in his crotch when I noticed Sasquatch standing by the buffet table.

       My first thought was 'holy fucking goat shit, the Voh are gonna go berserker when they notice Bara standing there.'  These people view all other species as enemies.  Disintegrate first, and ask-questions-later was the Colbai custom.

       Then I realize that everyone has stopped moving.  Even my camera escorts are frozen over my old location in line for the bus.  Sidestepping the handler who seems to be looking at something far beyond me, I walk up to Bara who's cleaning out the buffet line.  He looks at me sideways before gesturing to the steaming grill where seasoned meatsticks had been rotating slowly before my furry brother halted the timeline.

       "I heard you were on your first gig." He cleaned a turkey drumstick with a single chomp, pulling a clean bone from that gaping maw of his.

       "You get drafted too?" I wondered if his visit was personal or business.

       "I'm doing my job, teaching you the ropes." He smiled with that mucky mouth of his, "C'mon, let's get a few beers, mebbe do some fishing, shoot a few guns, the usual human stuff.  Hey, I like the new skin, really suits you."