It might have been fun to listen in on a few of those panel discussions, but when we got to the convention center, there was a sign announcing that the entire program for the day had been canceled out of respect for Conrad Stipe.
The lobby outside the main hall was crowded with costumed attendees sharing their grief and seeking consolation. They were hugging each other, sobbing, and looking generally shell-shocked.
Monk had the same look, only for entirely different reasons.
“What is wrong with these people?” he said.
“The creator of the show they love was just killed, Mr. Monk. Surely you understand grief.”
“Yes, of course I do,” Monk said. “What I don’t understand is their devotion to a TV show.”
“Beyond Earth wasn’t a typical series,” I said. “Stipe created an entire universe of his own and then told stories within it. If you wanted to watch the show, you had to learn all about his universe and how it worked. You couldn’t watch it as casually as your basic cop show. I guess some people got into it a lot more than others.”
I thought about Hibler and his ears and cringed.
“How do you know so much about Beyond Earth?” Monk asked.
“I participate in this thing we call American popular culture.”
“I wouldn’t tell too many people that you’re a member, ” Monk said, lowering his voice. “If word gets out, it could come back to haunt you.”
“Everyone in America and in most of the civilized world is steeped in it,” I said. “Except you.”
“What if you ever decide to run for public office? The press will dig up your involvement. Your name isn’t on any of their membership lists, is it?”
“There isn’t a list, Mr. Monk.”
“There’s always a list,” he said.
I decided to drop the subject before I got one of Stottlemeyer’s Monkaches.
“Do you want to know about the show or don’t you?” I asked.
“I guess I don’t have much of a choice if I want to solve this murder.”
“Okay, so it goes like this,” I said. “When Earth’s first starship Discovery broke the boundary of our galaxy, it passed an alien satellite that had been sitting there for millions of years and triggered its automated program.”
“That’s the show?”
“I’m just getting started,” I said.
“Oh God,” he said.
“The satellite fired a missile that destroyed Earth, then it generated a wormhole and sent a signal of some kind through it. An instant before the wormhole collapsed, the Discovery flew into it and was hurled light-years into the unexplored reaches of deep space. So with Earth destroyed, the multiethnic crew of the Discovery, the planet’s best and brightest, are all that remains of humanity.”
“That’s a terrible show.”
“I’m still at the beginning,” I said.
“There’s more?”
I explained that the crew soon discovers that they aren’t the only ones in this terrible plight. They join up with the survivors of other worlds that met the same fate. They band together and create the Confederation of Planets. Their shared goals are to find the evil alien race responsible for this galactic genocide and prevent it from happening to any other worlds, to find new planets on which to reestablish their races, and to promote peace and understanding throughout space.
There were about a dozen characters on the show, but I told Monk about only the major ones.
The big three were the adventurous Captain Stryker, of course, and the sexy and mysterious Starella, and the brilliant Mr. Snork. But there were others also: teenage stowaway Bobby Muir, and the intellectual scientist slug-creature Glorp, and pioneering surgeon Dr. Kate Willens, and, finally, the unspeakably evil Sharplings, the aliens with inside-out bodies who ate souls for snacks.
“How could their bodies be inside out?” Monk said to me.
“Their organs were on the outside of their bodies instead of inside.”
“Then what was inside?”
“Their outsides,” I said.
“That makes no sense,” Monk said.
“But it was scary,” I said. “Whenever the Sharplings came on, I had to watch the show from outside the room.”
“How could you be scared by something that makes no sense?”
“You’re scared of phone booths,” I said.
“But that makes sense. They’re death traps,” Monk said. “That’s why you don’t see them anymore.”
“You don’t see them anymore because now we have cell phones. Phone booths aren’t scary at all. But aliens with intestines hanging from their bodies who can suck your soul out through your eyeballs are terrifying.”
In fact, as I said it, someone dressed as a Sharpling walked past and I almost grabbed Monk for protection. I knew it was just someone in a suit, but it still gave me the shivers.
“Phone booths exist,” Monk said. “Sharplings don’t. They have no basis in reality.”
Neither did Monk, but I didn’t say that.
“Not all shows can be as good as the Weather Channel, ” I said.
“I can’t believe that a show with inside-out characters was a success.”
Okay, he had me there.
“Actually, it wasn’t,” I said. “Beyond Earth was canceled after only two seasons. But it came back ten years later as a cartoon, with the original actors doing the voices.”
“Did anyone watch that?”
I shook my head.
“So why are they bringing the show back now?”
“Maybe because there are so many people who are still passionate about it, thirty years after it was canceled.There aren’t a lot of TV shows that inspire that kind of devotion.”
“You say that like it’s a positive thing,” Monk said.
We walked into the convention hall, where I saw that Stipe’s murder wasn’t stopping the fans from shopping. The place was mobbed and the dealers seemed to be doing a brisk business in Beyond Earth merchandise.
Perhaps the fans were working through their grief by buying mementos from the show. I know that my mother often deals with stress by shopping. When I
