Elimination Night - By Anonymous Page 0,62

the ShowBiz magazine website. Below the masthead, there were no stories—just two words, in the biggest, boldest, blackest typeface I’d ever seen:

FALLEN

ICON!

Oh… fuck.

I clicked on the link, hoping the story wasn’t what I feared.

It wasn’t. It was worse.

At the top of the page was a screenshot from the previous night’s broadcast: Bibi with her hand over her mouth, and Joey in the background, slightly out of focus, grimacing—like they’d both just heard shocking news. ShowBiz must have trawled through every last frame of the first episode to capture that moment.

Assholes.

Below was a story by that annoying little scumbag Chaz Chipford, whose title had been upgraded (I couldn’t help but notice) to “Executive News Editor.” They’d even given him a byline picture, in which he smirked chubbily from under a reddish mullet.

He had written:

Bloodbath for revamped Rabbit warblefest!!! Ratings CRATERED during season thirteen premiere—down THIRTY percent overall; TWENTY-EIGHT percent in the target demo. Worse: It lost its number-one position to Bet You Can’t Juggle That!—the most dramatic upset the nets have seen in more than a decade. Sources tell ShowBiz that ex-backup dancer/Icon showrunner Leonard Braithwaite has been summoned to The Lot this morning by irate Big Corp honcho Sir Harold Killoch, who plans to “tear him thirty new assholes.” Is this The End for the Icon-ic show? Nigel Crowther certainly thinks so. And unless the impossible happens over the next few days, ShowBiz has to agree…

I sank into my chair and watched as the operating system of my phone finished loading. The screen flashed from black to white a few times before the default icons finally appeared. Then—after a lengthy search for a network—it informed me of all the things that had happened, phonewise, since I’d gone off-line the previous evening: “Missed calls (518). Text messages (164). Voicemails (107).”

This was it. Armageddon.

Before I had a chance to do anything: a barely recognizable voice from the other end of the room.

“STACEY! SWITCH ON THE BLOODY TVS!”

No response.

“STAAACEY!!”

Nothing but a muffled sob from the direction of the reception desk. Stacey was still a mess.

“STAAAAACEY!!!”

Len was moving closer now, at speed, kicking away chairs and wastebaskets as he went.

“STACEY, ARE YOU STILL FUCKING ALIVE? SWITCH ON THE TVS.”

He staggered into view. Holy crap, he looked bad. His tie was askew, his pants were creased, his fly was open, and… wow, his face… it had broken out into a tramp-like, whiteish-gray stubble, the color spectacularly at odds with the golden sheen of his recently upgraded Merm. He couldn’t have looked any worse if he’d spent the night in prison. I actually wondered briefly if he had spent the night in prison.

“FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!” he yelled, right in Stacey’s face. “DID YOU HEAR WHAT I—”

With another sob, the dozen or so flatscreens that hung from the office ceiling came to life. All were now displaying the same image: Nigel Crowther, shirt open almost from the waist, sunglasses on, makeup applied, his toilet brush of a hairdo practically quivering with smugness and indignation. He was standing beside a lime-colored Lamborghini while several aggressively branded network news microphones bobbed around in front of him like demented sock puppets.

A live-impromptu press conference was underway.

“Of course it’s all over,” Crowther was saying. “Why do you think I left? Any reality franchise that can’t get—oh—at least twenty million viewers on a weekly basis should be put out of its misery, if you ask me… which, obviously, everyone is.”

Those twinkly eyes.

That self-satisfied grin.

I wanted to throw something at the screen.

Now the TV reporters behind the camera were shouting over each other. To an inaudible question, Crowther responded, “Bibi and Joey? I have no opinion.”

More shouting. As before, it was impossible to hear exactly what he was being asked. “Isn’t it obvious?” Crowther laughed. “Like the rest of America, I wasn’t watching.”

He tried to walk away, but the news people weren’t done yet.

“Look, I’ll say one last thing,” announced Crowther, turning back to the camera and raising both palms. “Project Icon is the past. The Talent Machine is the future. I know that. You’re all smart enough to know that. The American public knows that. And I would hope that Sir Harold Killoch and the Rabbit network now realize that after the frankly embarrassing numbers we’ve seen today. Now, if you’ll please—”

“Mr. Crowther! Mr. Crowther!”

“Please… I have to… seriously… excuse me.”

Still more shouting, but the vertically hinged door of the former Icon star’s million-dollar ride had now powered open, and he was already climbing inside. Once seated, he gripped the