Redshirts

at the picture Dahl was holding. “You have got to be kidding me,” he said.
    “What?” Paulson said, looking at the three of them. “Do you know him? Do you know Matthew?”
    All three of them looked at Paulson.
    “Matthew!” screamed a woman’s voice, from out of the room and down the hall.
    “Oh, shit,” Duvall said, and launched herself out of her chair and out of the room. Dahl and Kerensky followed.
    In the lobby, the receptionist had attached herself to Hester, sobbing in joy. Hester stood there, wearing a receptionist, deeply confused.
    Hanson saw his three crewmates and came over to them. “We walked into the lobby,” he said. “That’s all we did. We walked into the lobby, and she screams a name and then almost leaps over her desk to get at Hester. What’s going on?”
    “I think we found the actor who plays Hester,” Dahl said.
    “Okay,” Hanson said. “Who is he?”
    “Matthew?” Paulson said, from the hall. He had followed his three guests out of the room to find out what was going on. “Matthew! Matthew! ” He rushed to Hester, hugged him furiously and started kissing him on the cheek.
    “He’s Charles Paulson’s kid,” Duvall said to Hanson.
    “The one who’s in a coma?” Hanson said.
    “That’s the one,” Dahl said.
    “Oh, wow,” Hanson said. “Wow.”
    All three of them looked at Hester, who whispered, “Help me.”
    “Someone’s going to have to tell them who Hester really is,” Kerensky said. He, Hanson and Duvall all looked at Dahl.
    Dahl sighed, and moved toward Hester.
    *   *   *
    “Are you all right?” Dahl asked Hester. They were in a private hospital room, in which Matthew Paulson lay on a bed, tubes keeping him alive. Hester was staring at his comatose double.
    “I’m better off than he is,” Hester said.
    “Hester,” Dahl said, and looked out the doorway, where he was standing, to see if Charles Paulson was close enough in the hall to have heard Hester’s comment. He wasn’t. He was in the waiting area with Duvall, Hanson and Kerensky. Matthew Paulson could have only two visitors at a time.
    “Sorry,” Hester said. “I didn’t mean it to be an asshole. It’s just … well, now it all makes sense, doesn’t it?”
    “What do you mean?” Dahl asked.
    “About me,” Hester said. “You and Duvall and Hanson and Finn all are interesting, because you had to have interesting backstories, so you could all get killed off in a contextual way. Finn getting killed by someone he knew, right? You, about to be killed when you go back to Forshan. But I didn’t have anything unusual about me. I’m just some guy from Des Moines who had a B minus average in high school, who joined the Dub U Fleet to see some of the universe before he came back home and stayed. Before I came on the Intrepid I was just another sarcastic loner.
    “And now that makes sense, because I was never meant to do anything special, was I? I really was an extra. A placeholder character who Paulson could pour his kid into until his kid got bored with playing actor and went back to school to get a doctorate. Even the one thing I can do—pilot a shuttle—is just something that got stuck in because the show needed someone in that seat, and why not give it to the producer’s kid? Make him feel special .”
    “I don’t think it’s like that,” Dahl said.
    “It’s exactly like that,” Hester said. “I’m meant to fill a spot and that’s it.”
    “That’s not true at all,” Dahl said.
    “No?” Hester looked up at Dahl. “What’s my first name?”
    “What?” Dahl asked.
    “What’s my first name?” Hester repeated. “You’re Andy Dahl. Maia Duvall. Jimmy Hanson. Anatoly Kerensky, for Christ’s sake. What’s my first name, Andy? You don’t know, do you?”
    “You have a first name,” Dahl said. “I could look on my phone and find it.”
    “But you don’t know it,” Hester said. “You never used it. You never call me by it. We’re friends, and you don’t even know my full name.”
    “I’m sorry,” Dahl said. “I just never thought about calling you anything other than ‘Hester.’”
    “My point exactly,” Hester said. “If even my friends never think about what my first name might be, that points out my role in the universe pretty precisely, doesn’t it?” He went back to looking at Matthew Paulson, in his coma.
    “So, what is your first name?” Dahl finally asked.
    “It’s Jasper,” Hester said.
    “Jasper,” Dahl