Redshirts

writer.”
    “I’m feeling a little defensive,” Weinstein said.
    “Don’t,” Dahl said. “Again: You couldn’t have known. But now you know where we are coming from, and why we came back to stop your show.”
    Paulson opened his mouth at this, probably to object and offer any number of reasons why that would be impossible. Dahl held up his hand to forestall the objection. “Now that we’re here, I know that just stopping the show can’t happen. It was a long shot anyway. But now I don’t want the show to end, because I can see a way for it to work to our advantage. Both ours and yours.”
    “Get to it, then,” Paulson said.
    “Charles, your son’s in a coma,” Dahl said.
    “Yes,” Paulson said.
    “There’s no chance for him ever coming out of it,” Dahl said.
    “No,” Paulson said after a minute, and looked around, eyes wet. “No.”
    “You didn’t say anything about this,” Weinstein said. “I thought there was still a chance.”
    “No,” Paulson said. “Doctor Lo told me yesterday that the scans show his brain function continuing to deteriorate, and that it’s the machines keeping his body alive at this point. We’re waiting until we have the family together so we can say good-bye. We’ll have him taken off the machines then.” He looked over at Hester, who sat there silently, and then back at Dahl. “Unless you have another idea.”
    “I do,” Dahl said. “Charles, I think we can save your son.”
    *   *   *
    “Tell me how,” Paulson said.
    “We take him with us,” Dahl said. “Back to the Intrepid . We can cure him there. We have the technology there to do it. And even if we didn’t”—he pointed at Weinstein—“we have the Narrative. Mister Weinstein here writes an episode in which Hester is injured but survives and is taken to sick bay to be healed. It gets done. Hester survives. Your son survives.”
    “Take him into the show,” Paulson said. “That’s your plan.”
    “That’s the idea,” Dahl said. “Sort of.”
    “Sort of,” Paulson said, frowning.
    “There are some logistical issues,” Dahl said. “As well as some that are, for lack of a better word, teleological.”
    “Like what?” Paulson said.
    Dahl turned to Weinstein, who was also frowning. “I’m guessing you’re thinking of a few right now,” he said.
    “Yeah,” Weinstein said, and motioned to Hester. “The first is that you’ll have two of him in your universe.”
    “You can make up an excuse for that,” Paulson said.
    “I could, yes,” Weinstein said. “It would be messy and nonsensical.”
    “This is a problem for you?” Hester asked.
    “But the thing is that two of him in their universe means none of him in this one,” Weinstein said, ignoring Hester’s comment. “You had—have, sorry—your son playing this character here. If they both go, there’s no one to play the character.”
    “We’ll recast the role,” Paulson said. “Someone who looks like Matthew.”
    “But then the problem is which of the—” Weinstein looked at Hester.
    “Hester,” he said.
    “Which of the Hesters the new one back here affects,” Weinstein said. “Besides that, and I’m the first to admit that I have no idea how this screwy voodoo works, but if I were trying to do this, I wouldn’t be using a substitute Hester, because who knows how that would affect your son’s healing process. He might not end up himself.”
    “Right,” Dahl said. “Which is why we offer the following solution.”
    “I stay behind,” Hester said.
    “So, you stay behind, pretend to be my son,” Paulson said. “You make a miraculous recovery, then we make the episode where you play my son, and we make you well.”
    “Sort of,” Hester said.
    “What is it with these ‘sort ofs’?” Paulson snapped. “What’s the problem?”
    Dahl looked over at Weinstein again. “Tell him,” he said.
    “Oh, shit,” Weinstein said, straightening up in his chair. “This is about that atom thing, isn’t it?”
    “Atom thing?” Paulson said. “What ‘atom thing’?”
    Weinstein grabbed his head. “So stupid, ” he said to himself. “Charles, when we wrote the episode where Abernathy and the others came back in time, we did this thing where they could only be here six days before their atoms reverted to their current positions in the timeline.”
    “I have no idea what that means, Nick,” Paulson said. “Talk normal human to me.”
    “It means that if we stay in this timeline for six