Yes, it's a fanfic. I'm as surprised as you.
Title: "And If You Ever Saw It"
Fandom: GalaxyQuest
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4950
(Note: My LJ has been extremely uncooperative today, and it seems unwilling to let me use a cut. My apologies for eating your entire screen with this thing...)
It was the deli tray’s fault. He could remember what it had been like during the post-Episode 81 lean years when he was temping: a pot of coffee that managed to be simultaneously weak and bitter, a couple of packets of carcinogenic sweetener, and if he was lucky a few stale off-brand donut holes, which he could only take if the permanent employees weren’t watching, and if he was willing to have the roof of his mouth feel like it was covered with Chapstick for the rest of the day.
But now things were different. Now, when Guy came to work, there were cold cuts. Whole grain mustard. Tiny slices of marbled rye bread. A bed of lettuce-no, not just lettuce, arugula. Instead of being soaked in caffeinated acid, his life now rested on a soft bed of leaves-or maybe roots or something, he wasn’t entirely sure. Nonetheless, Guy knew that this, wadding his morning sandwich into his mouth every shooting day, was living.
So he wasn’t about to complain. Nosiree bob. He’d been on the outside looking in before, and it didn’t bother him one bit that Jason and Gwen and Alexander had been given their own trailers on day one, and that Tommy’s agent had gotten him one at the start of season two. No, sharing with Fred was fine by him. There were no big actors, only big parts, or something.
But he had to admit that the big parts that really bothered him weren’t his and Fred’s. They were Laliari’s. Not that he could see them, most of the time-the ones that bothered him, that is. The tentacly ones. The parts he usually saw? Whoa, baby! No question, her transmogrifier or whatever it was made her one heck of a babe from head to toe, and judging by pages 48-49 of her Maxim pictorial, through pretty much all the parts in between.
Except that they weren’t real. He thought.
Actually, he tried not to think about them, tried hard, and tried hardest not to think that time he’d walked into the trailer and… well, Fred had apparently forgotten to hang a sock on the doorknob-that WAS the agreed signal, and he’d been very careful to leave plenty of socks near the door so they could use them-and Guy had run in to use the john while the electricians were fiddling with a wonky lighting effect… and he’d heard a noise that sounded sort of like two wet balloons being rubbed together… and he’d looked, and there was… it was…
Well, he hadn’t been able to watch Episode 44 of the original series, “Eight Arms of Danger,” since.
But Fred… man, Fred was over the moon. Over more than one moon. Over the Ten Thousand Moons of Morripun from Episode 73, even, and off into some asteroid belt full of rainbows and space unicorns or something. He would have followed Laliari into a wood chipper, and when he spoke her name, he sounded like he was about to burst into something-song, maybe, or tears, or just possibly flame. And she was completely devoted to him-it was obvious.
At least that’s what he told himself when he overheard her talking on the space radio. There had to be some explanation for it, surely. Because there’s no way it could mean-well, it just had to be something. Something okay.
It was the deli tray’s fault. He’d crawled under the table searching for a couple of kalamata olives that had slipped off his plate, and Laliari had come in without his noticing, at least not until he spotted her from the floor… and he couldn’t say anything then… because she was… wearing… no, not really wearing… her Anavian slave girl bikini… parts of it, at least… and he was… wait, what was she…?
She was talking on her Vox.
“It is good TO HEAR from you, LaliaRI,” said a familiar voice.
“It is likewise satisfying to hear your vocalizations, Commander,” said Laliari, and he could see that her breathing was doing… things…
Wait-what had she been asking about?
“I require the historical document from this date,” said Laliari.
“Does TECHnical Sergeant Chen NOT have copies of ALL relevant HIStorical DOCuments?” asked Mathesar.
“He does not, Commander. None of the crew has this December document, and the plan requires that I obtain it before .”
“We will SEE to it that it is downloaded to YOUR vox at the EARLIEST opportunity.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
“He suspects NOTHing?”
“Nothing, Commander.”
“Ahr ahr ahr ahr,” said Mathesar. And something began to grow cold along Guy’s spine.
“Hey, Jason, you got a minute?”
“Sure thing, Guy. Hey, you get a load of that Anavian slave girl get-up? Whoa. Don’t tell Fred, but whoa. I mean seriously whoa.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what I was-“
“I mean, good for him, you know? He’s what, a four, maybe a five with the right lighting? And she’s just about doubling him up.”
“Yeah, but see, I just heard-“
“Sure, I know it’s all high-tech and smoke and mirrors, but hey, you could say that about ninety percent of the gals on the show.”
“Sure, but-“
“Gwen included. But if you tell her I said that, I’ll have to toss you out the airlock.”
“Uh-“
“I’m joking, of course. Hey, you got the QuestCon schedule, right? I think if we all show up ready to schmooze and schmooze hard, there’ll be enough producers there who can count heads to see that the feature film’s a no-brainer. Think you can wave a Sharpie around enough to get us a deal with New Line?”
“Uh-“
“You’re the man, Guy. I’ve got a conference call I’ve gotta take-trying to land a host gig on SNL-but we’ll talk later, okay?”
“Uh-okay.”
“That’s the spirit, Chief Ingersol. Never give up, never surrender. Gotta run.”
“Yeah. See you.”
“Hey, uh, Alexander, have you-“
“Oh, sod me. It’s not enough that I have to stress out my remaining follicles by keeping this damned headpiece on all day again while Keith and David spend four hours prodding each individual lens with a stick trying to make the highlights of Gwen’s chest more visible, or that I’ve lost the chance to play Claudius at the RSC next summer because Patrick Bloody Stewart’s suddenly got a hole in his schedule and is stomping over the entire British theater landscape like Godzilla, or that I’m up for at least two Austen film roles that I’m too old for and Colin Bloody Firth’s going to snatch them out from under me before you can say ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’ and I’ll have to spend the next ten years of my life bellowing ‘Grabthar’s Hammer This’ and ‘Grabthar’s Hammer That’ and now, here comes our glorified extra, his apotheosis complete, his IMDB page getting a thousand hits a day, desperate for some advice on how to advance his bloody career, how to get a film role, how to bloody act, and I suppose I’ll have to drop everything-no wait, I have nothing to drop, no career of my own, nothing that would ever suggest a single performance of note, a single triumph in a legitimate role, not so much as a bloody curtain call-“
“Never mind.”
“Gwen! Hey, you got a minute?”
“Only a minute-Keith wants me for some lighting thing.”
“Yeah, I know. I was just in our trailer, and Laliari-”
“You know?”
“Uh, yeah, Alexander was saying they were-“
“God, is the entire set talking about this?”
“No, he was just, you know, in passing-“
“I don’t care what some internet goon says, I have not had any surgery, my agent has not demanded more cleavage shots this season, and I am sure as hell not demanding a love scene with Jason Nesmith!”
“Oh, I know. I was just-“
“I am completely okay with my aging process. I am not trying to cling to some twenty-something ideal when I’m becoming more of a woman with every passing day.”
“You look great, Gwen.”
“Really? You’re not just saying that?”
“Yeah. I mean, uh, whoa.”
“Did you just say ‘whoa’ to me?”
“Yep.”
“Did he tell you to do that?”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? Did he say, ‘Looks like Gwen’s having her pre-birthday crying jag, why don’t you go tell her how great her boobs look’? Or did he just point and say ‘Whoa’ and wait for you to run up and try it on your own?”
“Hey, Gwen, I promise, I’m not-“
“Just leave me alone, Guy. They need me on the set anyway.”
“But-“
“I mean it. I’m not in the mood.”
“But-“
“And you tell Jason if he wants someone to ‘whoa’ me, he can damn well do his own dirty work.”
“Uh-okay-“
“God, it’s like working with seventh-graders…”
“So… I’ll come by later, okay?”
“Hey, Tommy, you in there?”
“No.”
“C’mon, man, I need to talk to you.”
“I got my own trailer for a reason, Guy.”
And naturally, when he couldn’t find Fred, he went back to the trailer and there he was. With Laliari draped over him.
“Hey, roomie,” he said cheerfully.
“Fred. Laliari. Did you two want to be alone?”
“No, no. Well,” Fred looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. “Not anymore.”
“We achieved simultaneous orgasm some twenty-three minutes ago,” added Laliari.
The twinkle faded. “Now, honey, you know we talked about discussing that.”
“You said not to discuss our insertion habits. Does that mean I should also avoid discussing the results?”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
Guy found himself nodding, probably a bit too enthusiastically.
“See? Guy agrees with me.”
“I see,” she said somberly. “I am sorry, Fred. I keep making errors. Your conversational habits remain alien to me.”
“You’re doing fine, honey. Just keep, you know, checking.”
“I have been scrupulous, darling. I have not spoken to any reporter since April because of the unfortunate clitoris incident.”
Guy tried not to smirk. On the red carpet at the Emmy Awards, Laliari had been asked what she was enjoying most as a newcomer to the show, and she’d replied that getting a clitoris had changed her life.
“Yes. Well. You’re doing a great job,” said Fred, then looked helplessly at Guy. “So-you coming to our Christmas party?”
The Christmas party. Christ. That was tonight. He’d completely forgotten. It was something he’d promised to attend ages ago-they’d been planning it for months. Planning, he thought. None of the crew has this December document, and the plan requires that I obtain it-
“Guy? You coming?”
“Sure,” he stammered. “Eight o’clock, right?”
“Eight it is.”
“You will not want to miss it, Guy Fleegman,” said Laliari, her warm smile baring her enormous white teeth a little more than humanly. “I have been planning something most unexpected.”
She didn’t laugh, thank god. Of all the Thermians, only Mathesar really attempted to duplicate laughter, and his dolphin-choking-on-a-sardine croak was something no other throat should attempt.
And if he’d heard Laliari laughing, what would that mean? That the plan was something light and fun? Or that the plan’s results would make an octopus-woman from another planet laugh?
“Well… I think they need me on the set,” said Guy, opening the fridge. “I just came in to get a soda.”
“We’ll see you tonight then,” said Fred. “Be ready to carol.”
“Fa la la la la la la la la,” said Laliari tunelessly.
He closed the trailer door behind him.
The fa la la haunted Guy for the rest of the day. It had sounded alarmingly like a machine gun. A jolly little machine gun firing out holiday spirit, but a machine gun nonetheless. When he pulled his Boxster up to Fred and Laliari’s hillside A-frame, he half-expected to be greeted by a quartet of robots blasting out fa la las to secure the perimeter.
Luckily, the carols inside weren’t being sung by Thermians, and Guy relaxed a bit, at least until the stereo began blasting some opera guy belting out “O Holy Night” so loud that you could probably hear it on Thermia. He saw Fred talking with Alexander, who was wincing every time there was a high note, and there was Tommy with his arm around a girl he was fairly sure he’d seen in the same issue of Maxim Laliari had appeared in, but there was no sign of their hostess yet. Gwen had cornered Keith by the bar and was giving him some kind of lecture. It looked painful. Jason, naturally, was holding court in the center of the room, with at least a dozen technicians, writers, and groupies hanging onto his every word. A couple of the PAs were out on the balcony lip-syncing, and a small group of people were crowded together near the wall where Fred’s photos were on display. Guy had been to the house before, so he expected them to be staring at the shot of Laliari on the beach at Hanauma Bay, but as he approached, he saw that they were inexplicably staring at a picture of Fred handing a little silver rocket ship to some curly-haired guy. And that one of the starers, a gawky kid with dark floppy hair, looked vaguely familiar. He was holding his cell phone up to take a photo of the photo.
“That was when he presented the Hugo to Joss,” the kid whispered, and suddenly Guy knew them. And more important, he knew he’d found his answer.
“Hey, it’s Brandon, right?”
The gawky kid suddenly straightened up as if he’d been caught with his hands in his pants, but when he recognized Guy, if anything he looked more nervous.
“Oh, uh, hi there, Mister, uh, Mister Fleegman,” said Brandon, trying to simultaneously greet Guy with a cool nod, a comradely handshake, and a fanatical embrace, and failing to settle on any of the three. “How are, uh, things going?”
“Just great, just great,” said Guy, punching his arm playfully and producing awe-struck stares from his companions. “How’s our number-one fan doing? You’re at CalTech, right?”
“Oh, uh, no, I transferred to USC. Video production. I recognized that my skill set for scholarship in quantum physics was a bit lacking-kind of like Sam Gamgee’s skills as a boatman, honestly-but over the years I’ve built up a real arsenal of digital media techniques that I-“
“Good to hear, good to hear,” said Guy, throwing an arm around him and leading him out to the balcony. “Hey, have you got a second?”
“I don’t believe it,” said Brandon firmly. “Ms. Doe is incredibly gracious to Questarian fandom. She’d never do anything to harm us.”
“You trust her because she’s nice to fans?”
“Well, uh, it’s all I have to go on, really,” said Brandon.
“What does she do that’s so nice?”
“Well, she signs everything. Photos, magazines, t-shirts, DVD covers, you name it. She’ll autograph anything a fan brings to her. She’s really fast, too-does twice as much as Mr. Kwan. Some people say it’s like she’s got four arms.”
Guy resisted the urge to correct his math. “And you don’t think this-plan she’s talking about sounds, you know, like a problem?”
“Well, I can’t speak to the nature of the problem without knowing the nature of the plan, but the mere fact of her communication with her Commander-“
“It’s a secret plan.”
“A secret?”
“He even asked her about Fred and said ‘He suspects nothing?’ Does that sound a little, y’know…?”
“Oh. Oh, that is suggestive.”
“And she told me that whatever she was planning would be ‘most unexpected.’”
“You don’t think she was just quoting Episode 35, do you?”
“Which one is that?”
“The one where the crew takes on a new recruit who turns out to be a spy for the Sandar Empire.”
“Uh-oh.” The cold spot in Guy’s spine was spreading up through his chest.
Brandon swallowed. “It’s probably not anything, Mr. Fleegman. I mean, there are scores of reasons why a space-faring alien might plan something unexpected for her host… something her commander might find darkly amusing… something that no one would suspect…”
“It’s an invasion, isn’t it?” Guy hissed. “They’re going to invade Earth, and their ships will make crop circles in every major city and we’ve got to find their weakness before they do. Think, Brandon! Could it be microbes? Tap water? THINK, man!”
“Mr. Fleegman, any species of sufficient scientific knowledge to reach earth from interstellar space will be intelligent enough not to invade a water-covered planet if their weakness is water. That’s just ludi-“
“Well what IS it? We can’t wait until they get here and-and pull off their masks and start eating human flesh.”
“I hardly think they’d bother using humans as food, Mr. Fleegman. We don’t reproduce fast enough to make a good source of protein-“
“Dammit, Brandon, I’ve seen how this works! I’ve been there! You assume everything’s all right, that there’s a logical explanation for the alien’s behavior, and then you wind up dead in some canyon outside of LA before the theme song! And the next day you’re back off the lot trying to get a gig as a waiter on some nighttime soap! We’ve got to stop this!”
“Mr. Fleegman,” said Brandon. “You do realize that if this really did turn out to be an alien invasion, the show’s getting cancelled would be the least of your problems.”
Guy blinked. “Of course. Of course. But that’s how I know something’s wrong. She asked Mathesar for an episode of the show.”
“She did? Which one?”
“I don’t know,” Guy replied, thinking of the Anavian slave girl outfit. “I was kind of distracted at the time.”
“Well, that could give us some valuable clues… She didn’t give an episode number?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Did she describe the plot?”
“No. She just said it was one that Fred didn’t have.”
“Really? Mr. Kwan has a pretty extensive library of the show, at least from what his website reports.”
“She said nobody in the crew has this one.”
Brandon’s eyes got wide. “One of the lost episodes.”
“She wants an episode of Lost? That doesn’t make sense. She could just Netflix it, or-”
“No, a lost episode of Quest. During the original run of the show, there were a number of episodes that were shot, but never aired. They’re extremely hard to find, because only bootleg copies exist, and many of those are duplicates of duplicates, so they’re often rife with replication errors.”
“Have you got any?”
“Well, uh, they’re bootlegs,” said Brandon, whose face appeared to be reddening a bit. “They’re copyrighted material, so owning one technically puts one in violation of the law, so of course-“
“Okay, okay, have you seen any? Do you know what they contain that might help us?”
Brandon scowled in concentration. “I don’t remember anything about an invasion, certainly. There was ‘The Streets of Laredo,’ in Season One, which took place in the Wild West and they did a whole High Noon rip-uh, homage, and there was a lawsuit… Oh, in Season Three, there was one where the new Miss America was a guest star, but then she said that thing at the United Nations, so it got reshot with Ashley Judd in the role… but I can’t recall one that seems likely, and I’d speculate that Mr. Kwan has copies of those anyway. Did she say anything else about the episode she wanted?”
“All she said was ‘None of the crew has this December document, and the plan requires that I obtain it.’ She didn’t describe it.”
“Wait-she called it a ‘December document’?”
“Yeah. What’s that mean?”
“It means the episode aired in December. But none of the lost episodes of the show aired in December… unless…”
“Unless?”
Brandon stared back into the house with a mixture of horror and desire on his face. Whatever he’d thought of, he wanted to know if it was true-and at the same time he wanted to run away as quickly as he could.
Curiosity won out. “We should go inside,” he said at last. “If this is what I think it is… we need to be there.”
They pushed their way into the living room behind a knot of studio execs who looked at least three sheets to the wind and insisted on applauding at the end of every complete sentence spoken by anyone standing in front of the gigantic flatscreen on the wall. Fred was wrapping up his welcome speech, punctuated by drunken executive clapping, and preparing to send the guests back to their refreshments with a “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!” when suddenly Laliari appeared beside him. She’d changed out of the Anavian slave girl outfit, sadly, but she was still a significant distraction to both Fred and the audience, and his send-off faded away after “and to all.”
“We thank you once again for your attendance at this festive gathering,” she said, crisply enunciating every consonant. “Fred has told me so much about Christmas and the other winter solstice-related celebrations intended to serve as public denials that the days are short and dark and freezing, but the tradition I find most worthy of imitation is that of surprising others with gifts, and I have a most unexpected one here.”
And then she pulled out the detonator.
Guy’s legs propelled him forward from the edge of the room, but he never had a chance. By the time he’d waded through the mass of easily-toppled studio execs and tripped over the train of the dress worn, more or less, by the starlet over whom Tommy’s arm was protectively draped, Laliari was already pressing the button on the device, and Guy realized it looked strikingly like a TV remote. As he fell forward, he could see nothing but her huge, immaculate teeth, and as his chin struck the floor, he could have sworn she was laughing.
The blackness in which he was swimming seemed to have a huge multi-colored spiral whirling around white letters, but he couldn’t read them, but at least the percussion section that was accompanying it ended quickly. He closed his eyes, but then there were twinkly, jingly bell sounds and some kind of synthesizer noise underneath, as if Pink Floyd were making a Christmas album, and he could hear Gwen’s voice saying “It’s such a shame Doctor Lazarus has no one to spend Christmas with.”
“Well, Lieutenant Madison,” said Jason, “you know the Mak’Tar don’t celebrate Christmas.”
“No Christmas?” said Gwen.
“No decorating the tree?” said Fred. “No singing carols?”
“No presents?” piped a vaguely familiar voice.
“Oh. My. God,” another voice whispered nearby, one that sounded similar to the vaguely familiar voice. Guy was still putting two and two together here, but they both sounded like Tommy, except that the first one…
Well, what else could he do? Guy opened his eyes again. Things were blurry, and everything danced before his eyes, and the whole scene was off by ninety degrees because he was lying on the floor, but there before him was the bridge of the NSEA Protector. So that much was right with the world.
But then the jingles and the synthesizer started up again. And Gwen-dear god-she was singing. Some kind of “Deck the Wall with Boughs of Holly” thing about decorating the ship. And then Fred and Tommy chimed in… and they were… they were dancing…
Guy tried to close his eyes, but he couldn’t seem to remember how to do it. And it wouldn’t have helped, because he didn’t have earlids anyway. The song dragged on for what must have been a full forty-five minutes, but just as it ended, Alexander walked in and everybody else got quiet and evasive, and as soon as he left again Gwen and Tommy and Fred were making all these plans to surprise him with an old-fashioned Earth Christmas. And then there was another forty-five minute song about Santa coming to Tev’Meck, with Jason tossing in some extremely unconvincing “ho ho hos,” and Guy mercifully lost consciousness. Except that at one point he would have sworn he heard Alexander’s baritone singing to the tune of “O Holy Night”:
Oh, great Tev’Meck
Beneath the suns of Warrrrrrrrrrrrrvan,
By Grabthar’s Haaaam-mer
You wiiiiill beee avennnnnnnnged…
But he’d had a head injury, so he couldn’t be sure.
When he finally woke up, the party was over, and someone had moved him to the sofa. He tried to sit up and was greeted with a painful throbbing that started at the point of his chin and lit up the entire inside of his skull.
“Oh, jeez,” he said.
“Hey, Mr. Fleegman,” said Brandon’s voice, and suddenly the kid was sitting on the coffee table beside him. “How do you feel?”
“I’m okay,” Guy lied. “What happened? Did something blow up?”
“No, you just hit your head. But you missed all the, uh, excitement.”
That seemed to snap a couple of the Legos in his head back together. “Excitement. What did she do? What did she do?”
“Nothing. I mean, nothing dangerous. It was just a surprise for Mr. Kwan.”
“But what was it? What did she need that lost episode for?”
“The lost episode was the surprise,” said Brandon. “See, in December of 1979, before you were ever on the show, the producers tried to reach out to more mainstream viewers, reasoning that the hardcore science-fiction fan base was limited in number, so they put together a special in hopes of reaching a wider audience. It only aired once, and it’s never been released in any video format, and copies of it are just about impossible to find. Some fans think it’s been actively suppressed. It’s like the Lost Ark of Questarian fandom.”
“What is?”
“The GalaxyQuest Family Holiday Special.”
“But what-“ Guy began, only to be cut off by a sound he’d never heard before: Laliari in tears. It sounded like a rubber duck being forcibly drowned.
“I was only attempting to offer you surprise and delight!” she sobbed, leaning against the wall next to the flatscreen.
Fred was following in her wake, looking desperately unhappy. “I know you were, sweetie. It’s not your fault.”
“Well whose bloody fault is it?” bellowed Alexander, storming into Guy’s view with a head-rattling series of stomps. “If I lose my shot at Mister Bennet because that… that thing gets out in public-“
“You’re talking about the woman I love,” Fred said indignantly.
“I’m talking about that bloody video!”
Brandon leaned over Guy and whispered. “Anyway, if you’re okay, I should probably get going. My friends are waiting for me, and I have to do some website, uh, maintenance.”
“Sure,” said Guy, waving him off. “I’m good. I’ve got my crewmates to look after me. Good seeing you.”
“It was an unmitigated pleasure,” said Brandon, standing up. “Thanks, Mr. Kwan,” he called faintly, and then he was gone.
With Brandon no longer blocking his view, Guy could see Alexander and Fred bristling at each other in front of the flatscreen, but suddenly Jason was there, stepping in between them. “Look, Alexander,” said Jason, oozing his own special blend of command-grade b.s., “I realize we have a situation here, but there’s no need to panic.”
“There’s every reason to panic!” cried Alexander. “We’ve spent two decades trying to track down every copy of that show so we could get rid of it forever, and now Missus Technical Sergeant Chen has it beamed down from space to a whole new audience! How are we going to get backing for a Quest film if the whole internet is laughing at us disco dancing among the stars?”
“Come on, Alexander, it’s not that big a deal,” said Tommy.
“Oh, that’s easy for you to say. For you it was just a youthful indiscretion. Your testicles hadn’t even dropped. The rest of us are legally culpable.”
“Jason’s right,” said Gwen, stepping up to Alexander.
“Really?” Jason replied with a short bark of laughter. “Well, that’s good to hear.”
“About the special, I mean. Laliari, Mathesar only sent you the one copy, right? He didn’t make any others?”
“That is correct,” said Laliari, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand. “I requested only the one and the commensurate number was sent.”
“Then we have nothing to worry about,” said Gwen, opening the drawer of the DVD player, removing the disc, and bending it in half forcefully. “The people here may have seen it tonight, but they’ll never see it again.” She smiled a broad, beautiful smile and dropped the mangled disc into Alexander’s hand. “Merry Christmas, Doctor Lazarus. We get our feature film, and Mister Bennet is in the bag.”
“Unless somebody made a cell-phone video.”
Guy wasn’t entirely sure whether it was his own voice that had spoken, because he was passing out again. But as he drifted off, he heard Alexander’s roar of panic and Laliari’s renewed bubble and squeak, and he suddenly had an overpowering craving for marbled rye bread.
Fandom: GalaxyQuest
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4950
(Note: My LJ has been extremely uncooperative today, and it seems unwilling to let me use a cut. My apologies for eating your entire screen with this thing...)
It was the deli tray’s fault. He could remember what it had been like during the post-Episode 81 lean years when he was temping: a pot of coffee that managed to be simultaneously weak and bitter, a couple of packets of carcinogenic sweetener, and if he was lucky a few stale off-brand donut holes, which he could only take if the permanent employees weren’t watching, and if he was willing to have the roof of his mouth feel like it was covered with Chapstick for the rest of the day.
But now things were different. Now, when Guy came to work, there were cold cuts. Whole grain mustard. Tiny slices of marbled rye bread. A bed of lettuce-no, not just lettuce, arugula. Instead of being soaked in caffeinated acid, his life now rested on a soft bed of leaves-or maybe roots or something, he wasn’t entirely sure. Nonetheless, Guy knew that this, wadding his morning sandwich into his mouth every shooting day, was living.
So he wasn’t about to complain. Nosiree bob. He’d been on the outside looking in before, and it didn’t bother him one bit that Jason and Gwen and Alexander had been given their own trailers on day one, and that Tommy’s agent had gotten him one at the start of season two. No, sharing with Fred was fine by him. There were no big actors, only big parts, or something.
But he had to admit that the big parts that really bothered him weren’t his and Fred’s. They were Laliari’s. Not that he could see them, most of the time-the ones that bothered him, that is. The tentacly ones. The parts he usually saw? Whoa, baby! No question, her transmogrifier or whatever it was made her one heck of a babe from head to toe, and judging by pages 48-49 of her Maxim pictorial, through pretty much all the parts in between.
Except that they weren’t real. He thought.
Actually, he tried not to think about them, tried hard, and tried hardest not to think that time he’d walked into the trailer and… well, Fred had apparently forgotten to hang a sock on the doorknob-that WAS the agreed signal, and he’d been very careful to leave plenty of socks near the door so they could use them-and Guy had run in to use the john while the electricians were fiddling with a wonky lighting effect… and he’d heard a noise that sounded sort of like two wet balloons being rubbed together… and he’d looked, and there was… it was…
Well, he hadn’t been able to watch Episode 44 of the original series, “Eight Arms of Danger,” since.
But Fred… man, Fred was over the moon. Over more than one moon. Over the Ten Thousand Moons of Morripun from Episode 73, even, and off into some asteroid belt full of rainbows and space unicorns or something. He would have followed Laliari into a wood chipper, and when he spoke her name, he sounded like he was about to burst into something-song, maybe, or tears, or just possibly flame. And she was completely devoted to him-it was obvious.
At least that’s what he told himself when he overheard her talking on the space radio. There had to be some explanation for it, surely. Because there’s no way it could mean-well, it just had to be something. Something okay.
It was the deli tray’s fault. He’d crawled under the table searching for a couple of kalamata olives that had slipped off his plate, and Laliari had come in without his noticing, at least not until he spotted her from the floor… and he couldn’t say anything then… because she was… wearing… no, not really wearing… her Anavian slave girl bikini… parts of it, at least… and he was… wait, what was she…?
She was talking on her Vox.
“It is good TO HEAR from you, LaliaRI,” said a familiar voice.
“It is likewise satisfying to hear your vocalizations, Commander,” said Laliari, and he could see that her breathing was doing… things…
Wait-what had she been asking about?
“I require the historical document from this date,” said Laliari.
“Does TECHnical Sergeant Chen NOT have copies of ALL relevant HIStorical DOCuments?” asked Mathesar.
“He does not, Commander. None of the crew has this December document, and the plan requires that I obtain it before .”
“We will SEE to it that it is downloaded to YOUR vox at the EARLIEST opportunity.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
“He suspects NOTHing?”
“Nothing, Commander.”
“Ahr ahr ahr ahr,” said Mathesar. And something began to grow cold along Guy’s spine.
“Hey, Jason, you got a minute?”
“Sure thing, Guy. Hey, you get a load of that Anavian slave girl get-up? Whoa. Don’t tell Fred, but whoa. I mean seriously whoa.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what I was-“
“I mean, good for him, you know? He’s what, a four, maybe a five with the right lighting? And she’s just about doubling him up.”
“Yeah, but see, I just heard-“
“Sure, I know it’s all high-tech and smoke and mirrors, but hey, you could say that about ninety percent of the gals on the show.”
“Sure, but-“
“Gwen included. But if you tell her I said that, I’ll have to toss you out the airlock.”
“Uh-“
“I’m joking, of course. Hey, you got the QuestCon schedule, right? I think if we all show up ready to schmooze and schmooze hard, there’ll be enough producers there who can count heads to see that the feature film’s a no-brainer. Think you can wave a Sharpie around enough to get us a deal with New Line?”
“Uh-“
“You’re the man, Guy. I’ve got a conference call I’ve gotta take-trying to land a host gig on SNL-but we’ll talk later, okay?”
“Uh-okay.”
“That’s the spirit, Chief Ingersol. Never give up, never surrender. Gotta run.”
“Yeah. See you.”
“Hey, uh, Alexander, have you-“
“Oh, sod me. It’s not enough that I have to stress out my remaining follicles by keeping this damned headpiece on all day again while Keith and David spend four hours prodding each individual lens with a stick trying to make the highlights of Gwen’s chest more visible, or that I’ve lost the chance to play Claudius at the RSC next summer because Patrick Bloody Stewart’s suddenly got a hole in his schedule and is stomping over the entire British theater landscape like Godzilla, or that I’m up for at least two Austen film roles that I’m too old for and Colin Bloody Firth’s going to snatch them out from under me before you can say ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’ and I’ll have to spend the next ten years of my life bellowing ‘Grabthar’s Hammer This’ and ‘Grabthar’s Hammer That’ and now, here comes our glorified extra, his apotheosis complete, his IMDB page getting a thousand hits a day, desperate for some advice on how to advance his bloody career, how to get a film role, how to bloody act, and I suppose I’ll have to drop everything-no wait, I have nothing to drop, no career of my own, nothing that would ever suggest a single performance of note, a single triumph in a legitimate role, not so much as a bloody curtain call-“
“Never mind.”
“Gwen! Hey, you got a minute?”
“Only a minute-Keith wants me for some lighting thing.”
“Yeah, I know. I was just in our trailer, and Laliari-”
“You know?”
“Uh, yeah, Alexander was saying they were-“
“God, is the entire set talking about this?”
“No, he was just, you know, in passing-“
“I don’t care what some internet goon says, I have not had any surgery, my agent has not demanded more cleavage shots this season, and I am sure as hell not demanding a love scene with Jason Nesmith!”
“Oh, I know. I was just-“
“I am completely okay with my aging process. I am not trying to cling to some twenty-something ideal when I’m becoming more of a woman with every passing day.”
“You look great, Gwen.”
“Really? You’re not just saying that?”
“Yeah. I mean, uh, whoa.”
“Did you just say ‘whoa’ to me?”
“Yep.”
“Did he tell you to do that?”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? Did he say, ‘Looks like Gwen’s having her pre-birthday crying jag, why don’t you go tell her how great her boobs look’? Or did he just point and say ‘Whoa’ and wait for you to run up and try it on your own?”
“Hey, Gwen, I promise, I’m not-“
“Just leave me alone, Guy. They need me on the set anyway.”
“But-“
“I mean it. I’m not in the mood.”
“But-“
“And you tell Jason if he wants someone to ‘whoa’ me, he can damn well do his own dirty work.”
“Uh-okay-“
“God, it’s like working with seventh-graders…”
“So… I’ll come by later, okay?”
“Hey, Tommy, you in there?”
“No.”
“C’mon, man, I need to talk to you.”
“I got my own trailer for a reason, Guy.”
And naturally, when he couldn’t find Fred, he went back to the trailer and there he was. With Laliari draped over him.
“Hey, roomie,” he said cheerfully.
“Fred. Laliari. Did you two want to be alone?”
“No, no. Well,” Fred looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. “Not anymore.”
“We achieved simultaneous orgasm some twenty-three minutes ago,” added Laliari.
The twinkle faded. “Now, honey, you know we talked about discussing that.”
“You said not to discuss our insertion habits. Does that mean I should also avoid discussing the results?”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
Guy found himself nodding, probably a bit too enthusiastically.
“See? Guy agrees with me.”
“I see,” she said somberly. “I am sorry, Fred. I keep making errors. Your conversational habits remain alien to me.”
“You’re doing fine, honey. Just keep, you know, checking.”
“I have been scrupulous, darling. I have not spoken to any reporter since April because of the unfortunate clitoris incident.”
Guy tried not to smirk. On the red carpet at the Emmy Awards, Laliari had been asked what she was enjoying most as a newcomer to the show, and she’d replied that getting a clitoris had changed her life.
“Yes. Well. You’re doing a great job,” said Fred, then looked helplessly at Guy. “So-you coming to our Christmas party?”
The Christmas party. Christ. That was tonight. He’d completely forgotten. It was something he’d promised to attend ages ago-they’d been planning it for months. Planning, he thought. None of the crew has this December document, and the plan requires that I obtain it-
“Guy? You coming?”
“Sure,” he stammered. “Eight o’clock, right?”
“Eight it is.”
“You will not want to miss it, Guy Fleegman,” said Laliari, her warm smile baring her enormous white teeth a little more than humanly. “I have been planning something most unexpected.”
She didn’t laugh, thank god. Of all the Thermians, only Mathesar really attempted to duplicate laughter, and his dolphin-choking-on-a-sardine croak was something no other throat should attempt.
And if he’d heard Laliari laughing, what would that mean? That the plan was something light and fun? Or that the plan’s results would make an octopus-woman from another planet laugh?
“Well… I think they need me on the set,” said Guy, opening the fridge. “I just came in to get a soda.”
“We’ll see you tonight then,” said Fred. “Be ready to carol.”
“Fa la la la la la la la la,” said Laliari tunelessly.
He closed the trailer door behind him.
The fa la la haunted Guy for the rest of the day. It had sounded alarmingly like a machine gun. A jolly little machine gun firing out holiday spirit, but a machine gun nonetheless. When he pulled his Boxster up to Fred and Laliari’s hillside A-frame, he half-expected to be greeted by a quartet of robots blasting out fa la las to secure the perimeter.
Luckily, the carols inside weren’t being sung by Thermians, and Guy relaxed a bit, at least until the stereo began blasting some opera guy belting out “O Holy Night” so loud that you could probably hear it on Thermia. He saw Fred talking with Alexander, who was wincing every time there was a high note, and there was Tommy with his arm around a girl he was fairly sure he’d seen in the same issue of Maxim Laliari had appeared in, but there was no sign of their hostess yet. Gwen had cornered Keith by the bar and was giving him some kind of lecture. It looked painful. Jason, naturally, was holding court in the center of the room, with at least a dozen technicians, writers, and groupies hanging onto his every word. A couple of the PAs were out on the balcony lip-syncing, and a small group of people were crowded together near the wall where Fred’s photos were on display. Guy had been to the house before, so he expected them to be staring at the shot of Laliari on the beach at Hanauma Bay, but as he approached, he saw that they were inexplicably staring at a picture of Fred handing a little silver rocket ship to some curly-haired guy. And that one of the starers, a gawky kid with dark floppy hair, looked vaguely familiar. He was holding his cell phone up to take a photo of the photo.
“That was when he presented the Hugo to Joss,” the kid whispered, and suddenly Guy knew them. And more important, he knew he’d found his answer.
“Hey, it’s Brandon, right?”
The gawky kid suddenly straightened up as if he’d been caught with his hands in his pants, but when he recognized Guy, if anything he looked more nervous.
“Oh, uh, hi there, Mister, uh, Mister Fleegman,” said Brandon, trying to simultaneously greet Guy with a cool nod, a comradely handshake, and a fanatical embrace, and failing to settle on any of the three. “How are, uh, things going?”
“Just great, just great,” said Guy, punching his arm playfully and producing awe-struck stares from his companions. “How’s our number-one fan doing? You’re at CalTech, right?”
“Oh, uh, no, I transferred to USC. Video production. I recognized that my skill set for scholarship in quantum physics was a bit lacking-kind of like Sam Gamgee’s skills as a boatman, honestly-but over the years I’ve built up a real arsenal of digital media techniques that I-“
“Good to hear, good to hear,” said Guy, throwing an arm around him and leading him out to the balcony. “Hey, have you got a second?”
“I don’t believe it,” said Brandon firmly. “Ms. Doe is incredibly gracious to Questarian fandom. She’d never do anything to harm us.”
“You trust her because she’s nice to fans?”
“Well, uh, it’s all I have to go on, really,” said Brandon.
“What does she do that’s so nice?”
“Well, she signs everything. Photos, magazines, t-shirts, DVD covers, you name it. She’ll autograph anything a fan brings to her. She’s really fast, too-does twice as much as Mr. Kwan. Some people say it’s like she’s got four arms.”
Guy resisted the urge to correct his math. “And you don’t think this-plan she’s talking about sounds, you know, like a problem?”
“Well, I can’t speak to the nature of the problem without knowing the nature of the plan, but the mere fact of her communication with her Commander-“
“It’s a secret plan.”
“A secret?”
“He even asked her about Fred and said ‘He suspects nothing?’ Does that sound a little, y’know…?”
“Oh. Oh, that is suggestive.”
“And she told me that whatever she was planning would be ‘most unexpected.’”
“You don’t think she was just quoting Episode 35, do you?”
“Which one is that?”
“The one where the crew takes on a new recruit who turns out to be a spy for the Sandar Empire.”
“Uh-oh.” The cold spot in Guy’s spine was spreading up through his chest.
Brandon swallowed. “It’s probably not anything, Mr. Fleegman. I mean, there are scores of reasons why a space-faring alien might plan something unexpected for her host… something her commander might find darkly amusing… something that no one would suspect…”
“It’s an invasion, isn’t it?” Guy hissed. “They’re going to invade Earth, and their ships will make crop circles in every major city and we’ve got to find their weakness before they do. Think, Brandon! Could it be microbes? Tap water? THINK, man!”
“Mr. Fleegman, any species of sufficient scientific knowledge to reach earth from interstellar space will be intelligent enough not to invade a water-covered planet if their weakness is water. That’s just ludi-“
“Well what IS it? We can’t wait until they get here and-and pull off their masks and start eating human flesh.”
“I hardly think they’d bother using humans as food, Mr. Fleegman. We don’t reproduce fast enough to make a good source of protein-“
“Dammit, Brandon, I’ve seen how this works! I’ve been there! You assume everything’s all right, that there’s a logical explanation for the alien’s behavior, and then you wind up dead in some canyon outside of LA before the theme song! And the next day you’re back off the lot trying to get a gig as a waiter on some nighttime soap! We’ve got to stop this!”
“Mr. Fleegman,” said Brandon. “You do realize that if this really did turn out to be an alien invasion, the show’s getting cancelled would be the least of your problems.”
Guy blinked. “Of course. Of course. But that’s how I know something’s wrong. She asked Mathesar for an episode of the show.”
“She did? Which one?”
“I don’t know,” Guy replied, thinking of the Anavian slave girl outfit. “I was kind of distracted at the time.”
“Well, that could give us some valuable clues… She didn’t give an episode number?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Did she describe the plot?”
“No. She just said it was one that Fred didn’t have.”
“Really? Mr. Kwan has a pretty extensive library of the show, at least from what his website reports.”
“She said nobody in the crew has this one.”
Brandon’s eyes got wide. “One of the lost episodes.”
“She wants an episode of Lost? That doesn’t make sense. She could just Netflix it, or-”
“No, a lost episode of Quest. During the original run of the show, there were a number of episodes that were shot, but never aired. They’re extremely hard to find, because only bootleg copies exist, and many of those are duplicates of duplicates, so they’re often rife with replication errors.”
“Have you got any?”
“Well, uh, they’re bootlegs,” said Brandon, whose face appeared to be reddening a bit. “They’re copyrighted material, so owning one technically puts one in violation of the law, so of course-“
“Okay, okay, have you seen any? Do you know what they contain that might help us?”
Brandon scowled in concentration. “I don’t remember anything about an invasion, certainly. There was ‘The Streets of Laredo,’ in Season One, which took place in the Wild West and they did a whole High Noon rip-uh, homage, and there was a lawsuit… Oh, in Season Three, there was one where the new Miss America was a guest star, but then she said that thing at the United Nations, so it got reshot with Ashley Judd in the role… but I can’t recall one that seems likely, and I’d speculate that Mr. Kwan has copies of those anyway. Did she say anything else about the episode she wanted?”
“All she said was ‘None of the crew has this December document, and the plan requires that I obtain it.’ She didn’t describe it.”
“Wait-she called it a ‘December document’?”
“Yeah. What’s that mean?”
“It means the episode aired in December. But none of the lost episodes of the show aired in December… unless…”
“Unless?”
Brandon stared back into the house with a mixture of horror and desire on his face. Whatever he’d thought of, he wanted to know if it was true-and at the same time he wanted to run away as quickly as he could.
Curiosity won out. “We should go inside,” he said at last. “If this is what I think it is… we need to be there.”
They pushed their way into the living room behind a knot of studio execs who looked at least three sheets to the wind and insisted on applauding at the end of every complete sentence spoken by anyone standing in front of the gigantic flatscreen on the wall. Fred was wrapping up his welcome speech, punctuated by drunken executive clapping, and preparing to send the guests back to their refreshments with a “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!” when suddenly Laliari appeared beside him. She’d changed out of the Anavian slave girl outfit, sadly, but she was still a significant distraction to both Fred and the audience, and his send-off faded away after “and to all.”
“We thank you once again for your attendance at this festive gathering,” she said, crisply enunciating every consonant. “Fred has told me so much about Christmas and the other winter solstice-related celebrations intended to serve as public denials that the days are short and dark and freezing, but the tradition I find most worthy of imitation is that of surprising others with gifts, and I have a most unexpected one here.”
And then she pulled out the detonator.
Guy’s legs propelled him forward from the edge of the room, but he never had a chance. By the time he’d waded through the mass of easily-toppled studio execs and tripped over the train of the dress worn, more or less, by the starlet over whom Tommy’s arm was protectively draped, Laliari was already pressing the button on the device, and Guy realized it looked strikingly like a TV remote. As he fell forward, he could see nothing but her huge, immaculate teeth, and as his chin struck the floor, he could have sworn she was laughing.
The blackness in which he was swimming seemed to have a huge multi-colored spiral whirling around white letters, but he couldn’t read them, but at least the percussion section that was accompanying it ended quickly. He closed his eyes, but then there were twinkly, jingly bell sounds and some kind of synthesizer noise underneath, as if Pink Floyd were making a Christmas album, and he could hear Gwen’s voice saying “It’s such a shame Doctor Lazarus has no one to spend Christmas with.”
“Well, Lieutenant Madison,” said Jason, “you know the Mak’Tar don’t celebrate Christmas.”
“No Christmas?” said Gwen.
“No decorating the tree?” said Fred. “No singing carols?”
“No presents?” piped a vaguely familiar voice.
“Oh. My. God,” another voice whispered nearby, one that sounded similar to the vaguely familiar voice. Guy was still putting two and two together here, but they both sounded like Tommy, except that the first one…
Well, what else could he do? Guy opened his eyes again. Things were blurry, and everything danced before his eyes, and the whole scene was off by ninety degrees because he was lying on the floor, but there before him was the bridge of the NSEA Protector. So that much was right with the world.
But then the jingles and the synthesizer started up again. And Gwen-dear god-she was singing. Some kind of “Deck the Wall with Boughs of Holly” thing about decorating the ship. And then Fred and Tommy chimed in… and they were… they were dancing…
Guy tried to close his eyes, but he couldn’t seem to remember how to do it. And it wouldn’t have helped, because he didn’t have earlids anyway. The song dragged on for what must have been a full forty-five minutes, but just as it ended, Alexander walked in and everybody else got quiet and evasive, and as soon as he left again Gwen and Tommy and Fred were making all these plans to surprise him with an old-fashioned Earth Christmas. And then there was another forty-five minute song about Santa coming to Tev’Meck, with Jason tossing in some extremely unconvincing “ho ho hos,” and Guy mercifully lost consciousness. Except that at one point he would have sworn he heard Alexander’s baritone singing to the tune of “O Holy Night”:
Oh, great Tev’Meck
Beneath the suns of Warrrrrrrrrrrrrvan,
By Grabthar’s Haaaam-mer
You wiiiiill beee avennnnnnnnged…
But he’d had a head injury, so he couldn’t be sure.
When he finally woke up, the party was over, and someone had moved him to the sofa. He tried to sit up and was greeted with a painful throbbing that started at the point of his chin and lit up the entire inside of his skull.
“Oh, jeez,” he said.
“Hey, Mr. Fleegman,” said Brandon’s voice, and suddenly the kid was sitting on the coffee table beside him. “How do you feel?”
“I’m okay,” Guy lied. “What happened? Did something blow up?”
“No, you just hit your head. But you missed all the, uh, excitement.”
That seemed to snap a couple of the Legos in his head back together. “Excitement. What did she do? What did she do?”
“Nothing. I mean, nothing dangerous. It was just a surprise for Mr. Kwan.”
“But what was it? What did she need that lost episode for?”
“The lost episode was the surprise,” said Brandon. “See, in December of 1979, before you were ever on the show, the producers tried to reach out to more mainstream viewers, reasoning that the hardcore science-fiction fan base was limited in number, so they put together a special in hopes of reaching a wider audience. It only aired once, and it’s never been released in any video format, and copies of it are just about impossible to find. Some fans think it’s been actively suppressed. It’s like the Lost Ark of Questarian fandom.”
“What is?”
“The GalaxyQuest Family Holiday Special.”
“But what-“ Guy began, only to be cut off by a sound he’d never heard before: Laliari in tears. It sounded like a rubber duck being forcibly drowned.
“I was only attempting to offer you surprise and delight!” she sobbed, leaning against the wall next to the flatscreen.
Fred was following in her wake, looking desperately unhappy. “I know you were, sweetie. It’s not your fault.”
“Well whose bloody fault is it?” bellowed Alexander, storming into Guy’s view with a head-rattling series of stomps. “If I lose my shot at Mister Bennet because that… that thing gets out in public-“
“You’re talking about the woman I love,” Fred said indignantly.
“I’m talking about that bloody video!”
Brandon leaned over Guy and whispered. “Anyway, if you’re okay, I should probably get going. My friends are waiting for me, and I have to do some website, uh, maintenance.”
“Sure,” said Guy, waving him off. “I’m good. I’ve got my crewmates to look after me. Good seeing you.”
“It was an unmitigated pleasure,” said Brandon, standing up. “Thanks, Mr. Kwan,” he called faintly, and then he was gone.
With Brandon no longer blocking his view, Guy could see Alexander and Fred bristling at each other in front of the flatscreen, but suddenly Jason was there, stepping in between them. “Look, Alexander,” said Jason, oozing his own special blend of command-grade b.s., “I realize we have a situation here, but there’s no need to panic.”
“There’s every reason to panic!” cried Alexander. “We’ve spent two decades trying to track down every copy of that show so we could get rid of it forever, and now Missus Technical Sergeant Chen has it beamed down from space to a whole new audience! How are we going to get backing for a Quest film if the whole internet is laughing at us disco dancing among the stars?”
“Come on, Alexander, it’s not that big a deal,” said Tommy.
“Oh, that’s easy for you to say. For you it was just a youthful indiscretion. Your testicles hadn’t even dropped. The rest of us are legally culpable.”
“Jason’s right,” said Gwen, stepping up to Alexander.
“Really?” Jason replied with a short bark of laughter. “Well, that’s good to hear.”
“About the special, I mean. Laliari, Mathesar only sent you the one copy, right? He didn’t make any others?”
“That is correct,” said Laliari, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand. “I requested only the one and the commensurate number was sent.”
“Then we have nothing to worry about,” said Gwen, opening the drawer of the DVD player, removing the disc, and bending it in half forcefully. “The people here may have seen it tonight, but they’ll never see it again.” She smiled a broad, beautiful smile and dropped the mangled disc into Alexander’s hand. “Merry Christmas, Doctor Lazarus. We get our feature film, and Mister Bennet is in the bag.”
“Unless somebody made a cell-phone video.”
Guy wasn’t entirely sure whether it was his own voice that had spoken, because he was passing out again. But as he drifted off, he heard Alexander’s roar of panic and Laliari’s renewed bubble and squeak, and he suddenly had an overpowering craving for marbled rye bread.