Redshirts

commercial. That in this television show, she was a bit player. An extra. She probably had about ten seconds of airtime. No one watching that episode probably has any memory of her now. Don’t know her first name was Margaret. Or that she liked white wines more than red. Or that I proposed to her in her parents’ front yard during a family reunion. Or that we were married for seven years before some hack decided to kill her. But I remember her.”
    “Do you think she’d be happy with how you’re living?” Dahl asked.
    “I think she’d understand why I do it,” Jenkins said. “What I do on this ship keeps people alive.”
    “Keeps some people alive,” Dahl said. “It’s a zero-sum game. Someone is always going to have to die. Your alert system keeps the old hands here alive, but makes it more likely the new crew get killed.”
    “It’s a risk, yes,” Jenkins said.
    “Jenkins, how long were you and your wife stationed on the Intrepid before she died?” Dahl asked.
    Jenkins opened his mouth to respond and then shut it like a trap.
    “It wasn’t very long, was it?” Dahl asked.
    Jenkins shook his head to say no, and then looked away.
    “People on this ship figured it out before you came on it,” Dahl said. “Maybe they didn’t come to the same conclusions you did, but they saw what was happening and guessed their odds of survival. Now you’re giving them better tech to do the same thing to new crew that they did to your wife.”
    “I think you should leave now,” Jenkins said, still turned away from Dahl.
    “Jenkins, listen to me,” Dahl said, leaning in. “There’s no way to hide from this. There’s no way to run from it. There’s no way to avoid fate. If the Narrative exists—and you and I know it does—then in the end we don’t have free will. Sooner or later the Narrative will come for each of us. It’ll use us however it wants to use us. And then we’ll die from it. Like Finn did. Like Margaret did. Unless we stop it.”
    Jenkins looked back over at Dahl, eyes wet. “You’re a man of faith, aren’t you, Dahl?” he said.
    “You know my history,” Dahl said. “You know I am.”
    “How can you still be?” Jenkins said.
    “What do you mean?” Dahl asked.
    “I mean that you and I know that in this universe, God is a hack, ” he said. “He’s a writer on an awful science fiction television show, and He can’t plot His way out of a box. How do you have faith when you know that?”
    “Because I don’t think that’s actually God,” Dahl said.
    “You think it’s the show’s producer, then,” Jenkins said. “Or maybe the president of the network.”
    “I think your definition of what a god is and what my definition is probably differ,” Dahl said. “But I don’t think any of this is the work of God, or of a god of any sort. If this is a television show, then it was made by people. Whatever and however they’re doing this to us, they are just like us. And that means we can stop them. We just have to figure out how. You have to figure it out, Jenkins.”
    “Why me?” Jenkins asked.
    “Because you know this television show we’re trapped in better than anyone else,” Dahl said. “If there’s a solution or a loophole, you’re the only one who can find it. And soon. Because I don’t want any more of my friends to die because of a hack writer. And that includes you.”
    *   *   *
    “We could just blow up the Intrepid, ” said Hester.
    “It wouldn’t work,” said Hanson.
    “Of course it would work,” Hester said. “Ka-plooey, there goes the Intrepid, there goes the show.”
    “The show’s not about the Intrepid, ” Hanson said. “It’s about the characters on it. Captain Abernathy and his crew.”
    “Some of them, anyway,” Duvall said.
    “The five main characters,” Hanson amended. “If you blow up the ship, they’ll just get another ship. A better ship. They’ll just call it the Intrepid-A or something like that. It’s happened on other science fiction shows.”
    “You’ve been studying?” Hester said, mockingly.
    “Yes, I have,” Hanson said, seriously. “After what happened to Finn, I went and learned about every science fiction television show I could find.”
    “What did you find out?” Dahl asked. He had already briefed his friends on his latest encounter with Jenkins.
    “That I think Jenkins is right,” Hanson said.
    “That we’re on a television show?” Duvall asked.
    “No, that we’re on a bad one,”