Memoirs of a Timelord (16 page)

       Rex and Molly were a little shaken; they really thought we were busted.  I could have flashed them with some calm waves, but the script called for them to be terrified, to better enhance the surprise at the end.  The Boss knew what he was doing.  

       "I have never made a single dingo off of my music.  Once I record the track, it is given directly to the trust for marketing.  By the time the first payments roll in, the song has been in their possession for days.  I have to obtain permission from the foundation each time I perform the song again because I no longer own it." Meexon relaxed in his chair knowing what would come next.

       "Look, I had my legal team go over the arrangement, and it is our prerogative to dismiss you from the contest if the issue is not resolved to our satisfaction." The beefy executive tried to bore his way thru Meexon with a hard look.

       "And you are suggesting...?" With the barest hint of a smile, Meexon opened the door for them.

       "That this revenue needs to be funneled through the network on its way to a final destination.  We want to be able to control the flow of the cash to its final charitable recipient, safeguard it to ensure it gets to the right parties.  You are using our show to market your product, and we simply want a taste of that." This time it was Yakov's turn to sit back and relax.

       "You could dismiss us, that is true.  Foolish, but true.  First off, current viewership is three hundred times higher than it has ever been.  Additionally, my contractual rights are clearly spelled out in my network contract so I would be on very solid ground when I have my lawyers rape your network.  For this much money, they would be crawling out of the walls, begging to represent me." Meexon paused to take a sip of the coffee in front of him.  "No, you are not going to go down that path, and I am not going to cede control of those songs to your network so they can skim revenue intended for those who truly need help.  I have to admit, your request and veiled threats have upset me.  In fact I find your conduct such that I cannot consider us friends anymore."

       Yakov and his lawyers gave that a hearty laugh.  The only friends these guys cared about were Redbacks.  

       "And since we are no longer friends, there will be no more pro bono work for you." Meexon stood to leave."

       "Excuse?" Yakov had an odd look on his face.

       "You have been generating significant revenue off of our performances, and contractually we are due a portion of the revenue for all original works performed." Meexon took a last sip of the coffee before making a show of carefully setting it on the edge of the desk ever so gingerly.

       "No it doesn't." The first lawyer insisted.

       "Not wanting to affect my amateur standing, my revenues for my songs will be forwarded to this charitable organization." With a flourish, Meexon touched Yakov's desk.  Immediately the address for a soup kitchen in Varga appeared on the surface, shoving aside all other documents.  "The contract also dictates that the events you have been shuffling us to every day are strictly voluntary, so we four will be setting our own calendar from now on."

       "Your contract does not specify any such thing.  You're nothing but a singing shithouse lawyer." The attorney showed his open disgust as Meexon and I started towards the door.  Rex and Molly were still terror-struck in their seats.  

       "I suggest you read it again." I gave the lawyer a wink.

       Yakov laughed as he dismissed our claims.  "We know what's on our contracts.  They're a boilerplate; they haven't changed in twelve seasons of the show."

       Once more Meexon touched the desk and downloaded a copy of his contract.  A deft movement and he had the small-print blown up big enough for them to all read.

       "What the frack...?" Yakov wasn't a lawyer, but he knew something was wrong with the flowery legalese he was reading.  Behind him his lawyers were sneering at what they read.  But the looks were gone once the network chief pulled up his own personal copies of the contract.  

       "What the hell?" one of the councilors was barely audible. 

       "Who the hell did this?" Yakov was aghast as he read further.  "Who gave you this contract to sign?"

       You have no idea how hard it was to keep a straight face as all four of us pointed to the lead attorney.  Immediately Yakov was on his feet and mad as hell.

       "You're fired!  Get the zilch outta here!  Now!" He pointed to the door as the lawyer objected.

       "This is not the contract I used..." The jurist seemed truly perplexed, Voh secure documents were unbreakable.  It was impossible to alter a document once the content had been locked.  Or so they thought.  The truth is, encryption is math, and the Onkx knows math.   It was like playing Sudoku in Hexidecimal.

       "Security!  I need this son of a bitch escorted out of my building, NOW!" Yakov shouted into an intercom app on his desktop before bellowing at his lead attorney.  "Fired! FIRED!"

       "We'll just let ourselves out." I gave a coy smile as I opened the door.  Yakov had started shoving lawyers around when the four of us finally slipped out of the room.

       

       

       And so it went, week after week, we four dominated the competition.  Every performance better than the last.  Meexon showed his true talent in bringing us all together into a precise machine.  He just had this way about him; you wanted to do things for him.  I shouldn't have been surprised when I found out he was older than Bara.  The Boss had been using Meexon's specialized skills for thousands of years.  Moving him from job to job, good ol' Elvis was easily the most-travelled musician in the known universe.  Some of the memories he imparted to me thru MoTi were soooo funny.  He had this one about him and him and Ann Margaret that I still laugh about.  I couldn't help but idolize him to some degree, the guy really had talent, and he'd been everywhere.  How many people have you met that could keep an entire planet in breathless anticipation?  All the guy needed was a microphone and an instrument...any instrument, literally.  People tried to test him by surprising him with odd instruments during interviews, but he never disappointed.  If it could be used to emit a single musical note, Meexon could play it.  It helped that he had a Timelord watching over the entire operation, so there'd be no real surprises.

       Every day I was amazed at the level of manpower devoted to this operation.  With my enhanced eyes I could spot every one of the Boss's plants.  The odd thing was that very few of them were in prominent or powerful positions.  Most of the cutouts were little roles like gaffers or publicists or legal assistants.    The Boss's touch was light; just a nudge here or a hint there.  Although I had read the entire Op order and script, I still was not seeing how our efforts would do more than introduce a bunch of old Earth music to the Borg.  But Elvis seemed convinced of the plan, so I did as I was told and tried to keep up.   

       Every week there were new songs, and the entire planet waited breathlessly for every note.  It was as if they were starved for the new music.  It took me a while to really understand their situation, but eventually it occurred to me that Voh music sucked.  They are an industrial people, their mindset is expansion and manufacturing and conquest of new lands.  So although they were technologically advanced compared to Earth, the Voh society had poorly developed arts and humanities.  They just were not a creative people, artistically anyhow.  When it came to bleeding a planet dry for its resources, they were super-savants.  Intellectually they were amazed by Karaoke.

       So do you remember when you were a teenager and you discovered a new song you really liked?  Y'know, that song you played over and over, and that feeling you got as you were compelled to sing along every time.  You played that song until you knew every nuance, every inflection and note.  Now imagine being the average Voh citizen, living in Shitsville with nothing to look forward to but death by toxic saturation, and suddenly you feel that sensation as the music permeates your very soul.  It's a little like falling in love, finding a new favorite song.  Then imagine that happening four times a week.

       Desperate for relief from the world they lived in, more and more viewers tuned in to the show.  Mainly they were there to see Meexon.  But Rex, Molly, and I all picked up our share of publicity.  By the tenth week there were so many people pulling the show down off the Line that there were serious connectivity issues as portions of the network crashed.  People demanded more bandwidth, including protests, threats, and a little bottle hurling.  It took a few weeks but the masses prevailed in pressuring their masters for better conditions.  It didn't sound like much, but for a people oppressed by their own industrial complex it was huge.  We had their full and undivided attention.  That's when Meexon made his first controversial move.

       "The proceeds of tonight's songs will be used to fund children's hospitals in the thirteenth district.  The conflict in the area has killed and injured many people, but no group or demographic has been more heavily impacted than the youth of Tenyaa.  The use of micromunitions has proven to be most effective against the children." His eyesbrows furrowed in concern, Meexon Prestar reached out to the entire viewership.  While he spoke, I had taken over the audio-visual system and was running images of kids frightfully injured by the self-seeking projectiles that were known to linger for hours until being discovered by unwitting victims.

       "Please, we need every penny for this tragedy happening right here on our own planet.  These are children...boys and girls and infants who need your help.  Please purchase the songs off the Line knowing that your contribution will be doing God's work." 

       Now, had anyone else done that it would have started a bigger fire than it did.  But this was Meexon Prestar, adopted son of every district on the planet, and all he was asking them to do was help the innocent children, not the militants.  How could anyone object to that?  The Oligarchy did, but their efforts to rein us in were being seriously cock-blocked by the Boss and a whole other crew of cutouts.  Really more of an army, DorLek had people working for him that didn't even know they were working for him.  He had strings into everything, and every one of the operatives was stone-cold loyal.  They had to be or the Boss'd put them back where he got them from, and you know how that works.  

       Intended to run for 21 weeks, the season was in the seventeenth week when we made our biggest move yet.  It was judgment night, when the voters decided who was going home.  There were five of us on the stage as the host bantered with the judges.  We all knew who was slotted to go home.  With only one non-band member remaining, it was clear that Olav Ziegel was done for.  He had no chance whatsoever against our numbers.  Most people didn't even know who he was.  Hell, people had started calling StarElite the Meexon show.

       So anyhow, the host is about to tell Olav the bad news, as if it weren't a foregone conclusion already, and Meexon stops him.  Pulling an old-school document out of his pocket, he hands it to the host.

       "Read this first." He pointed a finger to the paper in the host's hands.

       Surprised at the interruption, the Host opened up the folded paper with a grin.  With Meexon there had been many surprises, and up to now they had all been pleasant.  But this bombshell left their plastic Master of Ceremonies frozen in shock.  With a dozen cameras floating around the stage, it wasn't long before one of them was able to grab a snapshot of the document and rebroadcasted the image to every corner of the globe.

       "You're from the thirteenth...?" One of the judges stammered.

       "Meexon Prestar is a Dom?" The host was incredulous.  His whole life he had been told that the people of Tenyaa were inferior to the Colbai.  It simply did not add up that a musical genius like Meexon could really be one of them.

       "Ladies and gentlemen, Lords and Ladies, I Meexon Prestar was born in the thirteenth district.  My parents were devout Domulites, and for this reason, by article seventeen of the network's code, I am ineligible to participate in this competition." With that he turned and left the stage.

       The turmoil was intense.  The roar of the audience was beyond deafening, it shook the very foundations of the coliseum we were in.  They had to go to commercial break twice, and the crowd was still not settled.  Finally back on track they were about to give Olav the boot again when I stopped the host this time.

       "Read it." I said simply as I handed him my birth certificate.  He knew right away what it was.  Except for the very old, the Colbai had electronic birth certificates.  With considerably less technology available after a hundred years of embargos, the Dom still relied on old-fashioned printed documents when it mattered.  

       "I too was born a Domulite.  Under the law I am defined as being less than a whole citizen.  My vote only counts for one half of a Colbai vote.  And now simply because of the church my parents attended, I am deemed legally unfit to participate in this competition." I turned to leave before pausing to look back.  "These are your laws, not mine."

       Another two commercial breaks and the show was well into overtime, but there was no way they were pulling the plug.  They had billions of viewers tuned in, comm lines were jammed, and in some parts of the world the news was going out on the emergency broadcast system.  Really, they were that friggin crazy about this show.  Viewers were foaming at the mouth when Rex stopped the host for a third time.  Expecting another birth certificate, the Emcee was surprised when he was handed nothing.

       "I was born a citizen of the third district, I am Colbai, there is no doubt.  But if Colbai law prevents my friends from competing as equals, then I want no part of the process." Rex was surprisingly firm in his tone, with Molly nodding her pretty little head right beside him.