Last Man Standing

It was only a fly.

Not a dragon. No, not a dragon. Definitely not a dragon, but a shade of green and a size that was unusual. The traveler had studied flies at one time, though he did not, at this moment, remember that. This one was shockingly green. Not emerald, not chartreuse, not lime or apple or moss or forest or inch-worm or baby-puke or any other green he knew. It was a metallic green: armored, glittery, menacing. Greener than green. The fly would never fade into the background, would be visible in every light. It took a certain cosmic confidence for a species to declare itself like that, to think so little of its predators that it evolved without the ability to hide. He liked that.

“Mr. Previn?”

He stepped closer to the glass wall showcasing a fleet of jumbo jets on the tarmac below. A river of passengers hummed behind him, flowing down the concourse.

“Mr. Previn?”

The fly was inside. Yes, inside, resting on the glass. How had it gotten in here? Did it emerge from its larval stage inside the airport? From a dung pile? From a corpse? Or did it navigate the intricate maze of pipes and vents and doors that led from fresh air to this climate-controlled cavern of humanity by chance? Both possibilities seemed equally unlikely. He didn’t know what kind of fly it was, and that bothered him. It was bigger than most flies: as long as the final joint of his pinky finger. But much too small to be a dragon.

“Mr. Previn!”

Someone touched his shoulder. He started and the fly took off. The man who had touched him was short and well dressed in a vaguely fancy way. Some might have thought his suit too tight, but it was clear to those who knew these things that the suit was carefully tailored to pull at the middle button and expose the fine weave of his orange gingham shirt in a deliberately haphazard fashion. His hands were small, and recently manicured. He was clutching an embroidered handkerchief in his left palm, and he wore loafers. Two dots of red burned on his cheeks.

The fly was already halfway down the vast atrium and zooming toward a huge electronic billboard flashing scenes of Singapore: a lion dance, a leafy park with doting parents hugging a young girl, a steaming dish of crab legs. Even silhouetted by a burst of fireworks, the creature still gleamed like a beacon in the dark.

“This way sir.”

The little man seemed to be waiting for something. He looked down at a leather satchel resting between them, then hoisted it with a sigh.

“I’ll just take this now, shall I sir? This way.”

He had followed the stranger because, well, why not? Now they were in a dark room with deep carpet, and low tables. The buzz of the concourse had slipped away as the door shut behind him.

“Here you go Mr. Previn.”

The little man set down what looked like a cranberry juice and a muffin beside the traveler.

“Why are you calling me Mr. Previn?” The little man didn’t say anything. “And who are you?”

“Good one Josh.” The little man laughed, but it was a nervous sound of fear, not humor.

“Josh?”

“You said I should call you Josh! Last Tuesday, at the weekly debrief. You said when we aren’t in public, when we aren’t in public, I should, I should, I should,” he struggled to get out the words. “Call you Josh. Josh. This lounge isn’t public. No one can hear us. There is no one near us.” His voice was squeaking. “You told me to call you Josh. That was your direction!”

“What are you talking about?”

The little man had looked about to cry, but his face suddenly shifted and hardened.

“Okay, fine Mr. Previn. Fine.”

The little man stood up.

“You can get yourself to Melbourne. You can deal with the crowds and the gate. You wanted to fly commercial? Without a security team? Said it was noooooo problem? Said your fans would protect you? Ha!”

“What?”

“Said you could do it without anyone? Without even me? Said you could do it with your eyes closed? Fine. Do it.”

The little man started to stomp off, then turned back and grabbed the leather satchel.

“Couldn’t even carry your own bag? Your sixty-thousand-dollar Ongaré satchel, could you Josh? Yes, Josh. I called you Josh. Well, you don’t have to carry it anymore!”

He felt no alarm at the stranger’s exit, just a gentle bewilderment. Why had the little man kept calling him Mr. Previn? Who was Mr. Previn? His name was, was . . .

The traveler sat in the comfy chair trying to conjure his name by force of will. It felt like searching for lost keys, digging through the pockets and corners and cupboards of his mind. The keys were there somewhere. His name was there somewhere. He knew it. He just couldn’t find it. The name the little man had thrown at him didn’t feel familiar at all. He would know his name when he heard it. His tongue would recognize his own name from muscle memory, if only he could get the first syllable. He whispered: “Peter, Derek, Philip, John, Jim, Stanley, Simon, Alex, Morris, Arthur, Tom, Matt.” But it was gone.

So, he didn’t know his name. Inconvenient, but not an emergency. He would figure that out when he got home. But. Home. He could not picture home, and he had no reference for where that might be. Did he live in a house? An apartment? A condo? And where? What country? Suddenly the traveler glimpsed the depth of the void in his mind; he didn’t know anything about himself at all.

He reached into the zipped right pocket of his khaki jacket. Yes, he had a phone, and he had known instinctively where to find it. That was good. It was turned off, so he pressed the two buttons to activate it, reassured again that he knew how to do this one thing, and waited for the phone to wake up. But when the screen finally came to life, it demanded a password. And that he did not know. He reached into a concealed breast pocket and found a wallet, passport and printed airline ticket: first class from Honolulu to Melbourne, via Sydney, in the name of Joshua Chalmers Previn. If he could use his phone, he could Google Josh Previn. Maybe he had a Facebook page or something, but he was locked out of his phone.

He sat in the lounge sipping the juice slowly, then went to the washroom. The man in the mirror didn’t look much like the photo in the passport. The traveller fingered his mustache and one edge lifted off his skin; he yanked and the bar of hair peeled away like a band-aid. The face looking back at him was still utterly unfamiliar, but now it was the same face as the picture in the passport. His haircut was very precise; he figured it cost a couple of hundred bucks at least. He fingered the hair around his left ear. Was that a small scar? He reached to his right ear where he found a matching ridge of flesh. Had he had plastic surgery? Is that why his face seemed so unfamiliar? How could he recall the price of a good haircut, how to Google someone, and the telltale signs of plastic surgery, and still not remember his own name, his own life?

He studied the river of travelers, looking for the little man who had been so angry, and so rude. A thin man with long black bangs was bent over a little girl whose dawdling appeared to be entirely directed at irritating the adult by her side. A tall woman in a tailored suit floated fast through the crowd, as if she were moving with the benefit of wings. A uniformed attendant was pushing a wheelchair that held what looked at first like a pile of clothes, but then something stirred and pale blue eyes emerged from skin sagging over lids. The traveler had a moment of sudden vertigo and the illusion that the crowd was on a loop, that if he stood here long enough, he would see the same man with the bangs; the same businesswoman in a hurry; the same ancient in the wheelchair.

Gate A62. That’s what his ticket said. The river was slowing at the edges, people turning to look his way. A teenager nudged her companion and pointed to him, and the other girl squealed. Then they spun out of the current and stood there looking at him, giggling and whispering. A large man with tattoos bleeding down his large arms noticed the girls and looked back to see what they were staring at, and scowled. A young woman in a rain jacket who moved like an athlete sidled up beside the teenagers. The athlete looked at her phone, looked at the traveler, looked down again and then raised her phone to take a picture.

He was too afraid to look back, but he could feel them pacing him, hunting him, wanting him. The attendant at the airport security office thought the traveler was joking — who would joke about amnesia? — but finally locked the door when he saw the size of the crowd gathering outside.

She arrived wearing dark blue pants and a cream silk blouse. The outfit was plain, but formal: clothes for an office, for a boss. A mirror reflected three uniformed officers lounging behind him flanking a scuffed brown door — the only door in the room. The men were older, bigger, but the woman was clearly in charge.

“You don’t remember anything at all?”

She had introduced herself, but couldn’t recall her name, or her title.

“Well, I remember the world, just not my presence in it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can read. I could pick out countries on a map, I think. I know the difference between Southern and Northern Italian cuisine. I can name the constellations, and I have a pretty good grasp of European history, I think. But no grasp of right now, of this moment.”

“What year is it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Century?”

The traveler started. What if he had been teleported through time? No. Unlikely. More unlikely than what was actually happening.

“Twenty-first century.”

“Who is the president?”

“The century. Was I right?”

She nodded her head.

“Who is the president?”

“Vance?”

“Hm. Social media?”

“What about it?”

“Do you know what social media is?”

“Of course I know what social media is.”

“Can you name some?”

“Why?”

“Just try please.”

“Facebook, Instagram, Proxy, BlueSky, TikTok, YouTube, Historica, DenofThieves.”

“Good.”

The woman looked relieved.

“What can you tell me about your own social media accounts?”

“Nothing. I can’t get into my phone. I don’t even know if I have social media accounts.”

“You do.”

“How do you know that?”

“You are a very famous man J.C. You have more than a million followers on Instagram alone.”

“J.C.? I thought my name was Josh?”

“Joshua Chalmers Previn.” She was reading from her laptop. “Born in Tupelo. Studied entomology at Old Miss. Married once. Divorced. No children. Your name is Josh, but most people call you J.C. That’s what they call you on Last Man Standing: J.C. And that’s your social media branding.”

“Last Man Standing?”

The woman nodded vigorously.

“What’s that?”

Dark Bennett was not happy to see Norgard. Not happy at all. Norgard strode into his Hollywood office as casual as could be, as if he were holding the winning hand in a game of high-stakes poker, as if he were about to open a negotiation. Foolish.

“Just decided to go for a fly-by today, did you? Wanted to flex your wings?”

Norgard wriggled his spine, sending shivers of green light bouncing off Bennett’s pale rose walls. His wings were shielded, but Bennett could still see them. Of course he could see them. He had made those wings for fuck’s sake. In all the ways that mattered, he had made Norgard.

“Sumpin’ like that.”

Norgard sat on a chair in front of Bennett’s desk and pulled a bone toothpick out of the side pocket of his brilliant green suit. He stabbed at his gum, withdrew the toothpick, wiped a bit of gunk from the bone and flicked it onto Bennett’s floor.

“And your meat sack? He’s not even asleep, is he? He’s awake, somewhere in the world?”

“He’s with Pluto.”

“Pluto is not a demon.”

“Noooooo, not yet he’s not. But he’s close. Josh Previn isn’t going to get into any trouble on the long-haul to Sydney out of Honolulu. Not with Mr. Sycophant sitting with him in first class.”

“What do you want Norgard?”

“Oh, just hearing you ask that is almost enough Dark.”

Bennett said nothing, but he could feel himself growing subtly larger. Larger and more dangerous. Norgard could feel it too.

Bennett exhaled very slowly. As he did so, the edges of Norgard’s wings crumbled into ash.

“Don’t do that!”

Admirable, how little panic Norgard allowed into his voice.

Bennett did not stop.

“Why?”

One wing was half burned away, the other singed and glowing. Norgard was in agony. Bennett had calibrated the pain very precisely. He did not want the demon to lose his mind with pain — at least not yet. First, he needed to know why Norgard had felt he could abandon his mission and fly home without leave.

“I have an idea. An idea of how to get more out of Previn.”

The last words came out in a gasp.

Bennett nodded. The embers eating Norgard’s wings went dark. A tendril of smoke curled up from one edge.

“There is another level of darkness here. I can feel it.”

Bennett shrugged. Of course there was. Norgard had no idea, really. There was always another level of darkness. There was always darker.

“And we — you — can use Josh Previn to get us there.”

“No recollection at all?”

“None.”

“You host the number one reality television show in the world.”

“I do?”

The traveler could not have imagined anything less likely. He did not feel like a TV star, did not feel as he imagined a TV star would feel.

“What’s it about?”

The officers leaning against the wall sniggered in unison. The woman looked over his shoulder as if to scold them.

“Survival.”

“Huh?”

“You really don’t know?”

The traveler shook his head.

“You take a bunch of people to a jungle and whoever lasts longest wins a million dollars.”

“That sounds really boring.”

One of the officers spoke for the first time.

“It’s not. You drop them in the jungle without any food or shelter.”

“So I teach them how to get by in the wilderness? Do I know that stuff? Do I have wilderness skills?”

The woman was shaking her head.

“No, no, no. You don’t teach them anything. And you don’t stay with them.”

It took a long time to make the man they called J.C. understand. Participants were divided into teams and given a daily challenge. Each day, the losing team was forced to banish one of their own members from the game. They called it “murder,” but it was just sending players home.

“How do they pick who gets murdered?”

“Well, that’s the game.”

“So who wins?”

The same officer spoke again from behind him.

“The best liar.”

“The best liar?”

The woman answered his question.

“Pretty much. Banishment is by vote. And the key to not getting banished is getting people to believe that you won’t vote them out.”

“But somebody has to get banished.”

“Yeah.”

“So you lie.”

“Yeah. And then the people who got murdered pick the final winner.”

“So they punish the liars?”

“No. Most of them admire the ones who were best at deception, even those most deeply betrayed.”

“And America likes that?”

“Not just America, the world.”

“Why?”

Norgard’s singed wings smelled like burning hair.

“You think you know better than me? That you see possibilities more clearly than I do?”

“No. No, no, no, no. You sent me into the world, into a meat sack, to execute your plans but also to scout for you, to watch for opportunities, openings for the darkness. This is just that, just what you asked me to do.”

It was true. Dark Bennett had asked Norgard to scout for him. Back then, originally, when he first sent him to flirt with Joshua Chalmers Previn. But that was a long time ago. And Norgard. He did recognize that Norgard had made the most of his meat sack. He had taken Previn so easily. Dark had thought that was a function of Previn’s meagre soul, but he had re-evaluated. Perhaps that early conquest was as much about Norgard’s talent as it was about Joshua Previn’s weakness. No matter. Norgard had done quite extraordinary things with his Josh Previn meat sack. It was Dark’s plan, all Dark’s plan, but Norgard had brought it gloriously alive in a way that few demons could have managed.

First North America, and then Europe, and then South America. Joshua Chalmers Previn had taught the world to admire lying, and liars. He had turned lying into more than an art; he had made deception almost a universal virtue. It was astonishing really. It was what Dark had planned, what he had hoped, but not really what he had expected. And the eddies from that shift in the river, the spinoffs, were beyond Norgard’s fathoming. The personal consequences to an individual of accepting — nay, worshipping — the lie, well, that was incalculable. It was the biggest moral shift of the last several centuries. And he could perhaps not have accomplished this miracle without the talented Norgard now sitting in the stink of his own burning wings. And he could not continue the miracle without Norgard. The demon had been too long in that meat sack. The flesh of Joshua Previn would not survive possession by a different demon now.

He had told Norgard at the beginning that he could shift realms and blink himself across the ocean to reach Dark but warned him never to return without a summons. And in all the years of Joshua Previn’s rise, Dark had only summoned his demon twice. The shift was dangerous; Norgard was vulnerable in transit.

Dark Bennett let the silence stretch on. He sniffed at the perfume of Norgard’s smoldering wings. At last, he spoke again.

“I ask you one more time, Norgard: Do you think you know better than us the paths of evil?”

“No Lord. Never.”

Dark Bennett rolled a lick of fire across the knuckles of his left hand to his right and back again.

“Okay. Let’s hear your idea.”

The laptop screen wasn’t large, but it was large enough. It was clearly him on the screen, or at least, it was the same face he had seen in the bathroom mirror when he ripped off the fake moustache. He was dressed all in khaki, like an American on a safari in the 1950s, and he was handing someone a clunky, ugly necklace.

“This is mid-season.”

The woman in the suit was talking again.

“I record it for later.”

“You watch this show?”

“Sort of.”

The camera had cut to four people bumbling around a beach. Two settled on a log. The youngest dropped to the sand, his knees drawn up to his chin.

“Brenda! Please. Please!”

The young man wore a dirty blue blazer over a tan t-shirt. He looked as if he were trying not to cry.

“Shhhh.”

A woman sitting on a log opened her arms. The young man scooted toward her over the sand and put his head in her lap. She stroked his hair.

“Shhh. Of course not baby. It’s you and me till the end Kevin. Final four. You’re not going home tonight.” The young man sniffled and wiped the snot from his nose on his neck scarf.

The show cut to a different scene. The same woman was standing next to one of the women from the beach. Both wore bikini tops and had long braids falling over square shoulders hard with sharply defined muscles. But where Brenda was fair and tall, the other woman was short and dark.

“You swear it’s Kevin tonight?”

“I swear on my congregation Jackie. Kevin’s going home tonight.”

“Why would you send Kevin? I mean, good for me. He hates me. But why? Nobody on the jury is going to back him. He’s no competition for you at the end.”

“All true Jackie. All true. But I don’t just want to win. I want to be a legend. I want people like you at the end — real competitors, you know? You’re a force.”

“I don’t buy it Brenda. It feels like you’re setting me up. Kevin will do everything you say. You control his vote. Why would you give that up? Or, even if you don’t want him there at the end, why now?”

The woman with the blonde braids stretched her back into an arch and twisted before she spoke again.

“You want the truth? The real truth, truth?”

Jackie nodded slightly.

“He’s driving me crazy. He follows me around all day long and he never stops complaining. Never! Mosquitoes. He’s Hungry. John was mean to him. He has to carry wood. His sniveling is driving me absolutely bananas. I just. I just can’t stand him.”

Jackie grinned.

“Like the time he got that splinter after collecting wood for the fire?”

“Oh my God! He whined about that for hours!”

“And the way he snorts at night when he’s going to sleep?”

Jackie howled in laughter.

“Yes. Yes.”

“And he’s terrible at challenges.”

“True.”

“He’s good for my game, Jackie, but he’s terrible for the team and right now, at this point, we need a strong team most of all. We need to win challenges.”

Jackie was smiling wide.

“Pact?”

Jackie held up her palm for a high-five. Brenda slapped it and then slung her arm over the woman’s shoulders.

The traveler looked confused.

“So that lady, Brenda, she promised the guy on the beach she would protect him and then told Jackie to get rid of him. Do I have that right?”

The woman with the laptop nodded.

“Why would she do that?”

The woman held up her index finger to her lips and pointed at the little screen.

The camera was still following Brenda. Now she was talking to a man even taller than she, with muscles bulging out of a neon green singlet. He was shiny, as if his skin had been oiled.

“Jackie? Why would I vote out Jackie?”

“I know you’re sweet on her.”

The man frowned and Brenda held up her hand.

“Look, your business, but couples don’t do well on Last Man Standing. You know that. Intimate alliances make other contestants nervous. Means you can’t be trusted. One or the other always get voted off.”

“But we aren’t a couple!”

“The point, John, isn’t whether you are a couple or not, but whether the team thinks you are a couple. You know this game, John. Love is dangerous. Love is not an advantage.”

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to have you as a minister Brenda. Does your congregation have any idea how good you are at manipulating people?”

“I love my parishioners, John. Every one of them. And they love me.”

“I bet they do. Let me get this straight. If I don’t go along with your plan, you’re going to spread a rumor that Jackie and I are a couple. Do I have that right? That’s what you’re saying Brenda?”

“Me? Me? No. I wouldn’t do that. But the rumor’s already out there, John. Glynis asked me this morning if you two are together.”

“She did?”

Brenda nodded.

“And you guys do spend a lot of time together. And voting her out, that’s good for your game John. You know that. Going to the jury with Jackie would not be good for you.”

“Going to the jury with you, Brenda, that wouldn’t be any better.”

“Oh no, you’d be way better off competing against me at the end than against Jackie.”

“Why? You’re controlling this whole game, have been since we got to the beach.”

“Yeah. I won’t deny that John. I think I’m playing pretty well. But by the time we get to the jury, I will have made a lot of enemies. I’ve already made a few. We vote Jackie out tonight, she won’t pick me as the winner at the end. You know she’ll pick you.”

“Who did you tell her to vote for?”

“Kevin.”

“Really? She bought that, that you were going to murder your little lap dog?”

“Yeah. She did.”

“So how do I know you aren’t doing the same thing to me? Convince me that everyone’s voting Jackie, just so I’ll feel safe, while you’re actually convincing everyone to get rid of me tonight?”

“Yeah. I might do that down the road John. It’s a definite possibility. But not tonight.”

“Why?”

“Look at yourself dude. We need you. You’re strongest person on Polapongo Island. If J.C. tells our team we need to pull an ox cart or fell a tree to survive another day, well you’re our guy. Why would we waste that? It would be insane to let you go now.”

“I guess. For now. But under that reasoning, you really should be getting rid of Kevin. He’s as weak as they come.”

“But he’s really good with puzzles.”

“He is?”

“There are a lot of puzzle challenges in the middle of the game, before J.C. disbands the teams. Kevin is going to be really helpful with those.”

“But I won’t be? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No. The value of your muscles will decrease as the game starts to shift from brawn to brain, but I don’t know anything about your brain John. We haven’t talked much. You might be a genius. Your brain might be as buff as your biceps. The point is, between your muscles and Kevin’s clever little head, after tonight maybe we won’t have to send anybody from this team home at all. Keep everybody until the other team crumbles, and then we’ll all be on our own.”

John had untied a bandana from his neck and was twisting it in his big hands.

“How about I vote for Kevin tonight? That way if Jackie has a protection charm, we’ve still got, you know, a plan.”

“I don’t think so John.”

He looked away from her as he spoke.

“Jackie. We have a pact.”

“Uh huh. So?”

“I promised her.”

“Well, that’s Last Man Standing, isn’t it John?”

“It doesn’t feel right.”

“Well, it will impress the hell out of the jury John. Murdering your bestie. It’s the kind of bold, ambitious move that really counts when they’re reviewing your game play. It might sting for Jackie tonight, but by the time the final vote comes around, she’ll see you had to do this. She’ll admire you for it. Also, you vote Jackie tonight and you show the team that you’re loyal. Show the team that the gossip spread by Glynis isn’t true.”

The woman flipped the laptop closed.

“None of this is familiar?”

The traveler shook his head.

“Nothing?”

“No. Nothing at all.”

The fire tumbled across Dark Bennett’s knuckles, rolled into his palms, and began to dance, flaring up and down in rhythm. Norgard watched, saying nothing. Then the fire curled into two balls, each orange with heat, but no longer alive with flame. Dark threw one ball up, then a second, like a juggler beginning an act. The first completed its arc and froze in midair halfway back to his palm. The second froze too. The glowing orbs sent a sheen through the smoke lighting up Dark’s face.

“So, you were saying?”

Norgard pulled his eyes away from the glowing orbs but did not look at his boss.

“Yes. Well. Confusing good and evil, good and bad. That’s part of the basic mission, right?”

A ball flared.

“Don’t tell me what I already know.”

“Well, LMS has had a full generation of viewers now. Research out of Harvard recently…”

Dark interrupted. “One of ours?”

“No, not one of ours, which, of course, makes it more interesting. Rosenblatt quantified the effect of LMS for the populace of one small town in America.”

“Let me guess, Indianapolis?”

“No. Close. Boise. Boise Idaho.”

“And I care?”

“Yes! He can prove demonstrably that LMS has changed the moral fabric of Boise. Families that watched the show had much lower loyalty behaviors and much higher rates of divorce, estrangement, and inter-family and inter-generational hostility.”

“This is not new Norgard. This is not the first study confirming our hypothesis.”

Norgard held his palm out as if to say, ‘Stop,’ then quickly put it back in his lap. Shit, had he really just told his boss not to interrupt?

“There is more. Rosenblatt looked at the generalized ethics of the entire city. Because he had an existing ethics protocol in place for a different study before the show began, he was able to isolate the effect of LMS from other factors.”

“And?”

“LMS has subverted core values across the entire populace. The people of Boise now admire lying. They don’t just tolerate it, they actively admire a person’s ability to deceive, and, also, to a less clear extent, to betray. And the correlation is not confined to viewers.”

“Really.”

Dark had hoped for something like this when he had pitched LMS thirty years before. Getting humans to applaud pain and punishment was an old trick. That part wasn’t new. His twist had been to ditch the necessary bad guy. Last Man Standing had reversed the roles. His audience applauded liars and cheered the murder of innocents. He had hoped the show would have influence beyond the audience, but he hadn’t put that in his plan. His promise was already big enough. To suggest a greater impact would have caused the higher-ups to label him as naive. Dangerously naive.

“So, you’re saying our LMS effect is being demonstrated among people who have never seen the show?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“And is this widely known and accepted?”

“No. The research shows that although people now privately admire the skill of lying, they still publicly adhere to the honesty proposition.”

“And has he published this research?”

There had been a flurry of studies when LMS first launched that were critical of the show’s moral skew, but the show was too compelling for critics to get any traction.

“No. He’s at least two years away from publishing. We have lots of time to prepare.”

Dark waved his hands as if shooing away a fly. The glowing orbs danced in the air as he did so.

“Don’t worry about the researcher. Rosenblatt you said? Nobody is going to listen to some Harvard nerd yelling about the end of the world. He’ll be an amusement, nothing more. You have brought me good news and good news is to be savored, but it was not necessary to leave Josh Previn’s meat sack to do so.”

The orbs of fire grew to the size of basketballs and began to make a crackling sound.

“You said you have an idea?”

Norgard tried not to look at the roiling balls of fire and tried not to look at his boss as he answered.

“Yes, I do. Children.”

“Mommy?”

A small girl stood in the door of the interview room.

“Come here baby.”

The girl skittered toward his interviewer and held the woman’s silk sleeve with two small hands. She appeared to be about nine years old. She was wearing a pink t-shirt and baggy pants and most of her hair had escaped a ponytail that might have started high on her head. A long purple scabbard and a denim pouch were slung from a wide belt slung around her small hips. The scabbard knocked her knees as she ran around the table.

“Detective?”

His interviewer addressed a stout black woman who had come into the room behind the child.

“Sorry Katelyn. We have a disturbance in Concourse Three. She looked pointedly at the officers flanking the door. “I have to go and these officers are all off in ten minutes. I’m not leaving Angela alone in the station. You know I can’t do that.”

“Of course.”

The door slammed shut behind the woman.

“Angie, I’d like you to sit in the corner over there.”

The child shook her head no and looked at the traveler.

“I know you.” Her voice was little, but strong.

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Who am I?”

“You’re the man on that show.”

“What show?”

“The show Mommy won’t let me watch.”

The traveler looked at his interviewer, who had blushed slightly.

“I guess.”

“But you’re different. You look different.”

The woman answered instead of her daughter. “I think people always look different on TV than they do in real life, honey, don’t they?”

“Maybe.”

“This is your daughter?”

The woman nodded.

“Is there no day care in the world anymore? No school?”

“It’s Saturday.”

“So you bring your daughter to work on the weekends? Junior cop for the day?”

It felt good to be the one asking the questions, like stepping on solid land after a seasick trip across a choppy bay.

“I don’t work on Saturdays, or not usually, and I’m not a cop.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I am director of the office of traveler assistance.”

“What’s that?”

“When people get in trouble at the airport, they send them to me.”

“You see a lot of amnesiacs?”

“No. You’re my first.”

“See a lot of TV people?” He couldn’t quite bring himself to say, “TV stars.”

“Yeah, well, enough. You might be surprised.”

“Children?”

“Last Kid Standing. LKS. A spin-off, but with children.”

Dark Bennett immediately understood, but doubted if Norgard had grasped the depth of what he was suggesting.

“How?”

“Well, Last Man Standing is supposed to be about the reward, the million-dollar prize, but even the dullest dolt knows that no one watches because they care about who wins. They tune in for that shot of betrayal, of deceit, of blessed evil relief.”

“And?”

“And with kids we can go deeper. We can be more explicit. Kids are already subject to punishment. Parents, teachers, relatives — they are supposed to punish them for their own good. So we build that into the programming.”

“They aren’t going to let us throw a bunch of kids into the wild without food or shelter.”

“No. No they won’t. Or at least not yet. The kids will have food and minimal shelter, but it will still be jungle-like, simple.”

“And the hook?”

“They’ll still be playing for some kind of reward – maybe college tuition or a relative’s hospital bill cleared – but every week some child will be punished: ridiculed or humiliated, hurt in some way. A circle of kids chanting, “Fatty! Fatty!” Or twenty-four hours in which they aren’t allowed to speak to anyone — not one single person. Maybe they have to wear a big board calling them ‘Dummy’ or something.”

“Hmm.”

“The punishments will all be built off what society already does to kids: time-outs, dunce caps, yelling at them.”

“And what kids do to each other.”

“Exactly: humiliation, shunning. We find out their vulnerable points before the show: missing dads, learning disabilities, alcoholic moms, convict uncles, that sort of thing.”

It was one of the hardest moral codes to overcome: that instinct to protect children. But this was such a natural progression. The world already applauded Last Man Standing. And, of course, the audience wouldn’t be seeing their own children on the screen. The moral obligation to other people’s children was much easier to ignore. That once-removed-thing; it had been key to the success of LMS.

“This could work.”

“Yeah. I was thinking nine- to twelve-year-olds. Maybe younger. Maybe we can go as low as seven, eventually. Not sure if we could get away with that.”

“Yet.”

“Exactly! Yet. There is so much potential.”

“Corporeal punishment.”

“Yes, absolutely. Not in season one. We’ll have to bring the audience along for a while first, but it’s legal to hit children in just about every country on earth, though still generally frowned on in most. So, it’s not really a stretch. Maybe we’ll figure out a way to make it appear as if it’s for the child’s good to hit them. Or maybe it’s a challenge where kids hit each other to save their team. Or vary the implements.”

“Hairbrush. Belt. Stick. Options built into a challenge? More points for more pain?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“You’ve come up with something here Norgard. You’ve looked at contestant recruitment?”

“Totally untapped. Wide open. You know those Hollywood moms. And the mommy bloggers. It’s a rich, rich field.”

The two orbs of fire had melded into one ball the size of a cantaloupe. The orb was spinning, throwing sparks around the room.

“We should get a double-blind study set up before we launch. Something like Rosenblatt did in Boise, some way to quantify the impact.”

The red door opened. A guard in a pink and orange striped uniform studded with rubies stepped into the room and knelt before the desk. Norgard was shocked. Who would dare interrupt Dark Bennett in conference?

“Your Lord.”

The man nodded twice, then stood, waiting for permission to speak.

“Well?”

“It’s Joshua Previn your Lord. He isn’t on the plane.”

The director of traveler assistance slid the laptop toward her briefcase.

“Wait!”

The traveler reached out his hand to keep her from taking the laptop away.

“What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“In the show, in the game?”

“You really don’t know, do you?”

“No. Did they kick out that woman who was lying to everyone?”

All three officers guffawed behind him.

“And why was she talking about a congregation and parishioners?”

“She’s a minister.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s what she is.”

“You mean on the show? Like her role is to help contestants pray or something?”

“No. Not like that at all. Brenda is a minister in real life. That’s what she does for a living.”

“In real life?”

“Yes, I think she has a church in Indianapolis. Or maybe it’s Idaho.”

“But won’t her parishioners get upset? I mean, if they see the show they will see her lying and lose faith in her.”

The biggest officer spoke from behind him.

“Man, you just don’t get it at all. Your own show. Brenda is the bomb, J.C. She’s one of the best players you’ve ever had. Her people are thrilled. Thrilled. She is kicking ass all over Polapongo.”

“But she’s betraying people.”

“That’s the point man! She’s winning.”

“So, so who got sent home? What happened?”

The woman sat back and stared at him.

“Even you. You can’t resist it, can you? You’re just like the rest of us. You have to know. You can’t resist the compulsion of your own show.”

She flipped open the screen again and pressed fast forward.

“Here. I’ll show you.”

It was his face on the screen, but the child was right: he did look different. It was night. Seven contestants were crowded on a long bench facing a fire pit. There was Brenda, and Kevin, and the big man Brenda had called John, and Jackie, and three others.

The camera swung to the man who had the face of the traveler.

“Before we get started. John, how are you feeling tonight?”

The big man in the green singlet shook his head.

“Not, um great.”

“It’s different than watching it at home, isn’t it?”

John nodded.

“This betrayal stuff, it isn’t an act, is it Jackie?”

The woman with the black braids nodded in agreement.

“Yeah. You don’t expect it, watching at home. You don’t know how real it is J.C. I mean, we’ve only been out here a short while, but these relationships.”

He interrupted her.

“The emotions are real, aren’t they?”

“Completely real J.C. This is really hard.” Jackie looked down the bench at the other contestants. “I think we all feel it.”

“Well. Let’s get to it. Time to find out who will be murdered tonight.”

The woman fast-forwarded her laptop and then stopped when the camera settled on J.C.’s face again. He was pulling slips of paper from an urn.

“Jackie. Jackie. Jackie.”

Jackie’s mouth hung half-open, a look of utter shock on her face.

“And by unanimous vote Jackie, you are no longer alive on Polapongo Island.”

Jackie looked over at the big man, but John was staring at the dirt beneath his feet. She waited what seemed like a long time, then sprang up and sprinted away. The camera still lingered on the group.

“Love you!” Brenda said it first. “Love you!” called Kevin at Jackie’s retreating back. And then a chorus of “Love you’s” followed the defeated contestant as she disappeared into the night. John was the only one who said nothing. He had covered his face with his massive hands.

Credits were rolling across the screen. The traveler studied the scene, trying to figure it out. If he was the man in the show, why had he announced that the vote was unanimous? That meant Jackie knew that she was betrayed by the big guy, the guy she trusted and maybe even loved. Surely the host didn’t have to reveal that? He could have protected her from that truth, couldn’t he? And why did the others call out, “Love you” to the person they had just — as far as the show was concerned — just murdered? It didn’t make sense. None of it.

“People watch this?”

It was a serious question, and his interviewer seemed to understand that.

“Yes, more than a hundred million people every week, or so I hear. Yours may be the most recognized face on the globe.”

The room fell silent except for the sound of Angela playing in the corner. She had withdrawn a floppy purple sword from her scabbard and was tapping it lightly on the floor.

“But, but, but…”

He stumbled on the words, and then it was like clouds parting after a storm, sunlight returning. He still didn’t recognize his face, or know who he was, but he understood this show. People watched exactly for the moment he had just seen. They watched for the cruelty. The show validated their inner demons. It told them those dark impulses were common, and just fine. The show told them it was okay to feel petty, mean, cruel. More than that. It was okay to act on those feelings, the ones that used to cause shame. It was better than okay. It was the route to victory, and victory was all that mattered.

Oh God. What had he done? For the first time since he saw the fly, the traveler had no interest in learning anything more about his life.

“Oh. Oh.”

The orb exploded with a thundering crack. Fire licked the walls, and the office filled with the smell of sulphur.

“Tell!”

“The flight was delayed so Pluto took the meat sack to our lounge but then, for some reason, Pluto left him.”

Norgard interrupted. “That’s not possible. Pluto is bound to Joshua Previn. He can’t leave him.”

“Idiot!” screamed Dark Bennett. “Pluto is not bound to the meat sack. He is bound to you. And you put an ocean between you and your vassal; you broke your connection.”

He almost ended Norgard there. They both knew it. Even the guard knew it. But the Joshua Previn meat sack was still useful, was still vital. He was needed for Last Man Standing and he would be needed to launch Last Child Standing. And Norgard was the only one who could make that meat sack function. Dark Bennett let himself imagine it only for an instant: Norgard’s insides on the outside, Norgard unable to scream, his tongue severed at the base, but his ears intact, forced to hear the smacking, slicing, crunching sound of Dark eating him alive. But it was only an instant of imagining — more and he would give in to that urge. Instead, he restored the demon’s wings and tethered them to his emptiness.

“Go!”

The woman was looking at her phone.

“Heh. Your producer has sent someone to pick you up.”

“My producer?”

“I lobbed a call in to my counterpart in LA on my way in and she tracked down your producer, Dark Bennett. You’ve missed your flight to Australia, but he’s arranging a private flight. A security escort is going to meet you in the VIP lounge.”

“The VIP lounge?”

“Yes. That area of the airport is restricted, so we just have to get you over there.”

The three officers walked behind him. The director of traveler assistance walked ahead, and her daughter darted between, thwacking a long purple sword on each concrete pillar as they passed.

The world looked different leaving the airport police station than it had going in. The concourse still hummed with humanity — it had that lovely, low melodious roar of a busy crowd going about its day, but now there was a tone of menace in that hum, a tone he had not noticed before and that he now knew would be with him always. The sky had been crystalline blue when he had scurried toward the station beneath the great hall’s vaulting atrium of glass. Now there were clouds, each dipped in gold on one side.

Thwack!

The child slammed the rubber sword on a bench and giggled. The traveler jumped, but the girl’s mother just reached out for her daughter’s hand and kept moving quickly through the crowd.

How could people watch that show? He had expected some kind of redemption in the storyline; people lied and betrayed each other, and it looked like they would get away with it, but then they didn’t. But that didn’t happen. It was the opposite. At least according to the woman, and according to the officers who had lounged behind him. Bad was good. Everyone liked Brenda. They liked her. It was the opposite of a redemption story. What was the word for the opposite of redemption? He couldn’t think of it.

Thwack!

John jumped again as the child’s sword slapped a pillar to his left. Angela had wriggled away from her mother again.

“What are you doing?”

“Slaying dragons.”

“Slaying dragons?”

“Yes. Can’t you see them?”

The rubber blade came down again, this time on a metal trash bin, ringing it like a bell.

The girl’s mother was doing nothing, nothing at all, completely ignoring her daughter’s disruption and destruction.

“No. I can’t see any dragons.”

“Are you sure?”

Thwack!

“I’m sure.”

But then there was a sliver of green at the edge of his vision. A fly. A fly of the most extraordinary green he had ever seen, a fly so bold and big that he had once mistaken it for a dragon. John reached out a fingertip toward the thing of beauty.

Thwack!

And then its beauty was gone, replaced by a dull, dark, brown, lifeless husk. Something dead at his feet. The child had stopped darting around. Angela was, for the very first time, smiling. Smiling just for him.

“Told you you could see dragons.”