David Gerrold: A Season for Slaughter

Major Bellus began to cough. At first he tried to suppress it, then it became uncontrollable and he began to retch. He spasmed so badly, I almost dropped him. It was time to lower the man to the ground. He sagged like a bag of wet laundry. He rolled over on his side, clutching his stomach, coughing, choking, retching, and trying to wipe his eyes all at the same time. It was a lousy performance. Yes, the smoke was bad, but not that bad-

"Give me a break," I said. "You're not only a hypocrite, you're a fat, flabby, phony. You're not fooling anybody. You're conscious, and you can damn well walk the rest of the way by yourself." I jerked him back up to his feet. "Because if you don't, I'll fucking well leave you here. It'll make my life a whole lot easier. And I'm likely to survive a whole lot longer."

He opened his eyes and glared at me.

"Stow it," I said, cutting him off before he could speak. I took a step, pulling him after me. I'd made a terrible mistake, of course. Never call a man a coward in front of witnesses—especially if it's true. He'll never forgive you. And of course, by now, there were probably a lot of witnesses on line. Interesting deaths always pulled a high rating-and the heirs, if any, were usually grateful for the residuals.

The all-time record for residual benefits paid on an interactive death was still held by Daniel Goodman, a deranged Hollywood programmer.

The short version: Goodman was obscure, reclusive, and almost totally unknown, when he was hired by Lester Barnstorm, a somewhat tarnished and definitely over-the-hill executive at Marathon Productions. Barnstorm and Goodman had only one thing in common-both were desperate to prove their worth. Bath felt overlooked. And both were hungry for success of any kind. Goodman at least had talent, but he had no social skills. Barnstorm had lots of social skills, but no talent. It was a perfect partnership, a marriage made in hell. Barnstorm gave Goodman a rat-hole office, where he toiled for seventeen months, eventually developing an imaginative fantasy called The Solar Ballet. Although originally targeted as a minor low-end adventure, under Barnstorm's skillful management the project grew into the most incredibly bloated investment in the studio's history; thus guaranteeing the studio's investment in a major publicity effort in a desperate attempt to recoup some of the millions before the stockholders got wise and replaced the present management team. Daily, Barnstorm told Goodman how pleased he was with his work and showered him with gaudy promises-money, credit, even a parking place on the lot-but when The Solar Ballet finally geared up and went into actual production, Lester Barnstorm was credited as the sole contractor and Daniel Goodman was horrified to find that he'd been given only a minor credit as a "program consultant." When Goodman confronted Barnstorm, he was fired for being disloyal. Goodman promptly sued. Like most interactive-reality contractors, Goodman was an obsessive-compulsive; he had taped every meeting and logged each day's work in a personal diary. Unfortunately, most of the information that would have proved Goodman's case did not come to light until after his death, but the subsequent investigation uncovered a very damning collection. Barnstorm was revealed as a vague old man with few ideas, a hair-trigger temper, and a sniggeringly adolescent attitude toward sex. He knew how to make good speeches, however, and had built a career on telling other people exactly what they wanted to hear. Barnstorm had mastered the style of his industry; he had not mastered its substance. Most of his remarks on the tapes consisted of long, rambling quasi-philosophical discourses on humanity's failure to live up to Barnstorm's standards. Tape after tape demonstrated that Barnstorm had contributed only small pieces of the total project, while Goodman had done almost all of the actual writing and programming needed to construct The Solar Ballet interactive reality. In point of fact, the dispute between the two men could have been resolved quickly and without rancor-were it not for the lawyers. All that was needed was for Goodman's contribution to be fairly acknowledged and fairly recompensed. Unfortunately, by the time the real nature of the situation was understood, The Solar Ballet was only two months away from release; and the publicity mill was grinding away at full power under Lester Barnstorm's direct supervision. Any attempt to acknowledge Goodman's contribution would have been seen by Barnstorm as a direct attack on himself. The studio lawyers had been through these situations before. They knew what to do-keep the lid on the legal battle as long as they could. Nothing could be allowed to damage the earnings potential of the soon-to-be-very-successful Solar Ballet property. Unfortunately, as events progressed, the entire matter quickly became the studio's biggest headache. All three of the major guilds involved were claiming the right to arbitrate and wanted access to the evidence. The top management at Marathon Productions simply wanted the whole thing to go away; they would have been happy to pay Goodman in full; but Lester Barnstorm would have none of it. He had decided to take the matter personally. Unfortunately, the studio was now in a position where they needed to keep Barnstorm happy, so they (reluctantly) mounted a massive legal effort. They didn't care at this point, it was only "parking ticket money." The Marathon lawyers were able to stonewall almost every subpoena and keep the claim from reaching an arbitrator for nearly seven years; they were able to suppress most of the evidence because, in their words, "it could prove injurious to our good name and the earnings potential of our property." Translation: Let us finish milking this cash cow, and then we'll argue about your share. During that same period, the publicity department continued to churn out ream after ream of material about the genius of Lester Barnstorm, the sole creator of The Solar Ballet, thus creating and maintaining a vivid public perception that Barnstorm, the great man, was being unfairly and maliciously attacked by a disgruntled ex-employee. During that same time, they were also able to arrange (purchase) Humanitarian awards for Barnstorm from four different national organizations, a Congressional Citation, a successful worldwide lecture tour, the naming of a Lunar crater in his honor, a Black Hole award, and a star on Hollywood Boulevard. During those same seven years, The Solar Ballet realities earned 3.7 billion dollars from first-run domestic releases, foreign distribution, pay-per-view, cable, network, and direct-software sales; not to mention ancillary merchandising, including book and video spinoffs, clothing, electronic goods, personal props, restaurant tie-ins, toys, breakfast cereals, educational materials, and royalties from look-alike cosmetic surgery. During the same seven years; the cumulative legal expenses bankrupted Daniel Goodman. He lost his savings, his house, his wife, his car, and, incidentally, what was left of his sanity. Finally, one day in October, despairing of ever seeing an equitable resolution of what he perceived as the theft of his greatest work; he calmly walked onto the lot, entered the (now-renamed) Barnstorm Building, went in through Barnstorm's private entrance, and took Lester Barnstorm hostage in his own office. Barnstorm's courage lasted only until he realized that Goodman was now truly psychotic. Goodman was carrying handcuffs, Mace, a taser, a Bowie knife, a revolver, a laser-pistol, and a Snell 11mm automatic household assault rifle. It wasn't until after several liberal applications of both the taser and the Mace that Barnstorm began to realize the predicament he was in. He began crying and babbling and begging for mercy. He hadn't realized, he said, how badly he had treated Goodman. What could he do to make it right? Goodman answered in a voice that was dead calm. He said, "All I want is the truth." What Barnstorm did not know was that Goodman had wired himself for both sound and video. By the time the SWAT team arrived and surrounded the building, Goodman's agent had negotiated lucrative real-time on-site video contracts with one domestic and two worldwide networks. As a result, most of what transpired in Barnstorm's office during the next nine hours went out live. The A. C. Nielsen company estimated that during peak viewing hours, more than 1.2 billion people were tuned in to The Solar Ballet Hostage Crisis. Goodman had deliberately preempted the seventh game of the World Series. (Which the Detroit Tigers won, by the way. The victory riot claimed twenty-seven lives.) During Goodman's persistent at-gunpoint interrogation, Barnstorm confessed to sleeping with three of the cast members of the production (two female, one juvenile male), and five of the extras. He admitted to having once had a serious alcohol problem, which he now had completely under control, due to the temperate application of marijuana and Valiam, and the occasional (once or twice a day) recreational use of cocaine, Quaaludes, methamphetamines, or Dago-black, all supplied by his personal lawyer. The only bad side effect of the drugs, he said, was that they tended to diminish your sex drive. Barnstorm acknowledged that he was frequently impotent, except for the occasional devoted attempts at fellatio by two of the office secretaries, the computer-maintenance woman, the staff librarian (male), and his twenty-three-year-old wife, none of whom (he claimed) knew about the others. His opinions about the relative skills of all of them were equally derogatory, though he gave the staff librarian high marks for enthusiasm, if nothing else. He went on to admit that his greatest disappointments were his children: his thirty-year-old son, now a preoperational transsexual, and his daughter, who had recently married into an Afro-American Urban Heritage Commune and had become the seventh wife of Chief Amumba-9. He casually admitted stealing scripts, stories, outlines, and program code from Goodman and twenty-three other interactive-reality contractors who had subsequently worked on the project, but dismissed it with a casual, "Everybody does it," and went on at length to prove this point, giving example after example that the head of the studio legal department had personally discussed with him. As the conversation continued, Barnstorm became even more loquacious. The bottle of scotch in his bottom desk drawer lubricated the unraveling of enough salacious gossip to fuel a whole season's worth of prime-time melodramas. He chatted amiably about which two female stars had slept with each other, which two male stars had slept with each other, which three stars had once had a ménage a trois on the studio's chattered jet, which young actor had once confessed to doing it with a dog, and why gerbils were illegal in the state of California. He also discussed the gross earnings of The Solar Ballet property at length, including what the property was actually worth, not what the studio merely admitted. Apparently, at least 30 percent of all earnings disappeared without ever showing up on any books anywhere; this was even before the gross earnings were computed; the studio head himself had once explained to Barnstorm how this worked. By maintaining close political ties with two members of the House of Representatives Committee on Organized Crime, the studio was able to make use of several very efficient moneylaundering facilities in Panama, Jamaica, Haiti, the Grand Bahamas, Quebec, Hong Kong, and Vancouver. By now, Goodman was stunned speechless. He had clearly tapped into a gold mine of Hollywood lore. He knew that Barnstorm liked being important; he hadn't known that Barnstorm liked being this important. Barnstorm not only liked knowing secrets; he liked having people know that he knew secrets; he wallowed in showing off. Also, by now, he was sauced to the gills. It would have been impossible to stop him. He had momentum. And also, by this time, almost nobody on the SWAT team wanted to. The district attorney's office, three guilds, seven unions, forty-three legal firms, and an uncountable number of agents, business managers, writers, producers, directors, and performers were all hanging on Barnstorm's every word as well. They weren't disappointed. Lester Barnstorm went on to reveal that he liked to watch tapes of unusual sexual gymnastics and prided himself on his collection, including a number of private tapes so legendary as to have achieved near-mythological status; tapes of various celebrities from the entertainment world, sports figures, the inevitable rock stars, of course, and a number of nationally known politicians, enjoying themselves enthusiastically by themselves, with each other, and even with the occasional commoner. Barnstorm even went so far as to preview several of the juicier parts of the tapes for Goodman, which conveniently allowed two of the wired-in networks to catch up on an afternoon's worth of missed commercials, the progress of the last World Series game, and a recap for late tuners-in. The third network, a French-based international carrier, unashamedly showed everything and tripled its ratings. By the time Barnstorm was finished, he and Goodman had managed to destroy one hundred and twelve careers, thirty-seven marriages, four legal firms, a critical alignment of power in the House of Representatives; and the entire upper echelons of management at Marathon Productions. The broadcast resulted in twelve investigations, ninety-three criminal indictments, and over three thousand civil suits. The crisis ended just as Barnstorm began talking about his abortive career as a deputy sheriff in San Bernardino, and a particularly nasty murder/drug/sex scandal that was still unsolved, but which had very possibly involved several members of the Los Angeles Police Department, a Girl Scout troop, and the studio executive who had originally hired Barnstorm. It was at this very moment, apparently acting without orders, that a SWAT team sniper, shooting through Barnstorm's picture window from the top of the studio's water tower, neatly took off the top of Goodman's head. Goodman died instantly. Shortly thereafter, Barnstorm was horrified to discover that everything he had said and done during the past nine hours while negotiating (begging) for his life had been seen by over a billion fascinated human beings. The highest rating of his life and the destruction of his career had been simultaneous events. The editorial columnists didn't even grant him the saving grace of comparing his fall to a Greek tragedy; he was just a bloated old fart whose last shred of dignity had disappeared long before the last commercial. Barnstorm survived this triumph for only another eighteen months, just long enough to realize to the fullest measure that he had become the industries most noteworthy pariah. His wife left him, his children refused to have anything further to do with him, and even his dog ran away from home. Two of Barnstorm's lawyers went to jail, the third refused to answer his calls. The studio banned him from the lot and delivered his personal items to his home the very same evening. His cast resigned en masse, followed shortly thereafter by most of the office staff. He (and later his estate) was served with so many subpoenas that his son (soon to be his daughter) ended up marrying one of the marshals from the district attorney's office. Meanwhile Goodman's heirs collected over three million in up-front money, plus an additional twenty-one million in bonus bucks, based on an unprecedented total audience share for hostage dramas. Over the next ten years, they collected 170 million in reuse rights and residuals, plus percentages of actions made possible by Goodman's original contract; which turned out to be three times as much money as they would have made if Lester Barnstorm had treated Daniel Goodman fairly in the first place. The lesson was not lost on other performers. The three-guild, eight-month wildcat strike that followed was called The Goodman Strike and resulted in one of the most significant realignments of power that the industry had ever seen. A statue of Daniel Goodman still stands in the courtyard of the Writers' Guild Plaza, an inspiration to artists everywhere. Flowers are placed in front of it every year on the anniversary of his death.