Redshirts

admit that I have no idea how this screwy voodoo works, but if I were trying to do this, I wouldn’t be using a substitute Hester, because who knows how that would affect your son’s healing process. He might not end up himself.”

“Right,” Dahl said. “Which is why we offer the following solution.”

“I stay behind,” Hester said.

“So, you stay behind, pretend to be my son,” Paulson said. “You make a miraculous recovery, then we make the episode where you play my son, and we make you well.”

“Sort of,” Hester said.

“What is it with these ‘sort ofs’?” Paulson snapped. “What’s the problem?”

Dahl looked over at Weinstein again. “Tell him,” he said.

“Oh, shit,” Weinstein said, straightening up in his chair. “This is about that atom thing, isn’t it?”

“Atom thing?” Paulson said. “What ‘atom thing’?”

Weinstein grabbed his head. “So stupid,” he said to himself. “Charles, when we wrote the episode where Abernathy and the others came back in time, we did this thing where they could only be here six days before their atoms reverted to their current positions in the timeline.”

“I have no idea what that means, Nick,” Paulson said. “Talk normal human to me.”

“It means that if we stay in this timeline for six days, we die,” Dahl said. “And we’re already on day three.”

“It also means that if Matthew goes to their timeline, he only has six days before the same thing happens to him,” Weinstein said.

“What a stupid fucking idea!” Paulson exploded at Weinstein. “Why the fuck did you do that?”

Weinstein held his hands out defensively. “How was I supposed to know one day I’d be here talking about this?” he said, plaintively. “Jesus, Charles, we were just trying to get through the damn episode. We needed them to have a reason to get everything done on a schedule. It made sense at the time.”

“Well, change it,” Paulson said. “New rule: People traveling through time can take as much fucking time as they want.”

Weinstein looked over at Dahl, pleadingly. “It’s too late for that,” Dahl said, interpreting Weinstein’s look. “The rule was in effect when we came through time, and besides, this isn’t an episode. We’re acting outside the Narrative, which means that even if you could change it, it wouldn’t have an effect because it’s not being recorded. We’re stuck with it.”

“They’re right,” Paulson said to Weinstein, motioning at the Intrepid crew. “The universe you’ve written sucks.” Weinstein looked cowed.

“He didn’t know,” Dahl said to Paulson. “You can’t blame him. And we need him, so please don’t fire him.”

“I’m not going to fire him,” Paulson said, still staring at Weinstein. “I want to know how we fix this.”

Weinstein opened his mouth, then closed it, then turned to Dahl. “Help would be appreciated,” he said.

“This is where it gets a little crazy,” Dahl said.

“Gets?” Weinstein said.

Dahl turned to Paulson. “Hester stays behind,” he said. “We take your son with us. We go back to our time and our universe, but he”—Dahl pointed at Weinstein—“writes that the person in the shuttle is Hester. We don’t try to sneak him in or have him be another extra. He has to be central to the plot. We call him out by name. His full name. Jasper Allen Hester.”

“Jasper?” Duvall said, to Hester.

“Not now,” Hester said.

“So we call him Jasper Allen Hester,” Paulson said. “So what? He’ll still be my son, not your friend.”

“No,” Dahl said. “Not if we say he isn’t. If the Narrative says it’s Hester, then it’s Hester.”

“But—” Paulson cut himself short and looked at Weinstein. “This makes no fucking sense to me at all, Nick.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Weinstein said. “But that’s the thing. It doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to happen.” He turned to Dahl. “You’re using the shoddy world building of the series to your advantage.”

“I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yes,” Dahl said.

“What about this atom thing?” Paulson said. “I thought this was a problem.”

“If it was Hester here and your son there, then it would be,” Weinstein said. “But if it’s definitely Hester there, then it will definitely be your son here, and all their atoms will be where they should be.” He turned to Dahl. “Right?”

“That’s the idea,” Dahl said.

“I like this plan,” Weinstein said.

“And we’re sure this will work,” Paulson said.

“No, we’re not,” Hester said. Everyone looked at him. “What?” he said. “We don’t know if it will work. We could be wrong about this. In which case, Mister Paulson, your son will still die.”

“But then you will die, too,” Paulson said. “You don’t have to die.”

“Mister Paulson, the fact of the matter is that if your son hadn’t gone into his coma, you would have eventually killed me off as soon as he got bored being an actor,” Hester said, and then pointed at Weinstein. “Well, he would kill me off. Probably by being eaten by a space badger or something else completely asinine. Your son is in a coma now, so it’s possible I’ll live, but then again one day I might be on deck six when the Intrepid gets into a space battle, in which case I’ll be just some anonymous bastard sucked into space. Either way, I would have died pointlessly.”

He looked around the table. “I figure this way, if I die, I die trying to do something useful—saving your son,” he said, looking back at Paulson. “My life will actually be good for something, which it’s avoiding being so far. And if this works, then both your son and I get to live, which wasn’t going to happen before. Either way I figure I’m better off than I was before.”

Paulson got up, crossed the room to where Hester was sitting and collapsed into him, sobbing. Hester, not quite knowing what to do with him, patted him on the back gingerly.

“I don’t know how I can make this up to you,” Paulson said to Hester, when he finally disengaged. He looked over to the rest of the crew. “How I’m going to make it up to all of you.”

“As it happens,” Dahl said, “I have some suggestions on that.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The taxi turned off North Occidental Boulevard onto Easterly Terrace and slowed to a stop in front of a yellow bungalow.

“Your stop,” the taxi driver said.

“Would you mind waiting?” Dahl asked. “I’m only going to be a few minutes.”

“I have to run the meter,” the driver said.

“That’s fine,” Dahl said. He got out of the car and walked up the brick walkway to the house door and knocked.

After a moment a woman came to the door. “I don’t need any more copies of The Watchtower,” she said.

“Pardon?” Dahl said.

“Or the Book of Mormon,” she said. “I mean, thank you. I appreciate the thought. But I’m good.”

“I do have something to deliver, but it’s neither of those things,” Dahl said. “But first, tell me if you’re Samantha Martinez.”

“Yes,” she said.

“My name is Andy Dahl,” Dahl said. “You could say that you and I almost have a friend in common.” He held out a small box to her.