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Afterwards, they successfully extract Jonah from the exterior vent along with a few of the guests. Grandma Pearl leaves. There’s no noticeable effect on their viewing figures. Max eventually stops acting like Kinga is devising new ways to murder him and then bring him back to life just to murder him again. He underestimates her.
After all of that, Kinga is in the lab, thinking of plans to shake up their formula. She looks over at the screen and Jonah is on it, alone.
She switches on the comm so she can hear what he’s doing. Which is – apparently – drumming on the console and singing along. She’s fairly sure it’s a rap battle between Cassandra and Apollo. He’s performing both parts.
Kinga flicks the button and watches Jonah startle and look up at the screen. He taps his side open. “Kinga?”
“Where are your little robot friends?”
He shrugs. “Sleeping. It’s pretty late.”
“They’re robots, why do they even need to sleep?”
“I don’t think they do, I think they just like the dreaming part.”
He doesn’t sound even a little perturbed by that. Kinga would have thought that the purpose of robot underlings would be that they do your bidding without the need for sleep and nourishment. Like, for example, a giant robot dinoworm that ruined the streaming wedding of the year just because someone with a key asked it to.
Kinga blows out a breath and disconnects the audio feed.
*
“Hey, Kinga.” Jonah waves at the camera and Kinga snorts.
She doesn’t know if he saw the movement on the screen or just happened to look up at the right moment. Though she’s been sitting here for a while now.
He says, “It’s a little weird that you’re just watching me. I’m not doing anything.”
Kinga opens the comm. “Exactly. I’m waiting for you to do something interesting.”
He holds up a cut-out of a figure, about the size of his palm.
“Mystery Science Puppet Theatre?” she asks.
Jonah laughs a little and looks surprised at himself. “I have a lot of these blanks.”
She knows: she watches him and the bots recreate scenes from every other experiment. She thinks it’s their way of trying to understand what’s happening. They do destroy quite a lot of them – in miniature earthquakes or asteroid crashes or through Gypsy being asked to portray the monster and swallow the background characters whole.
Jonah goes back to inking detail on this one. Kinga’s not sure where they keep getting craft supplies. Probably Max. He holds it up again. “Recognise anyone?”
It’s a tiny her. It has little bones in its red inked hair and everything.
Jonah makes it growl at the camera. “Push the button, Max.”
“Is this what you finally going insane looks like?” She probably should have developed a working definition before starting this experiment.
Jonah replies, “Me and every other tabletop gamer.”
“No, I’m pretty sure this is just you.”
He shrugs. “I work with the material I have. Supervillains and robots and henchmen, oh my. Don’t get too excited, I’m making one of everyone.”
“Of course,” she tells him. “My avatar needs some tiny spirits to crush.”
Jonah rolls his eyes and – very gently – pushes her figure aside to start working on the next one. He puts a lot of dedication into creating things which the bots will almost certainly just wreck later.
(She is proven right when, an hour after their conversation, Crow screams, “Voodoo!” and tries to drown one of them. Jonah pushes him away with one hand and asks, “If you think it’s voodoo, why are you putting mine in the motor oil?”
“It was the only way to be sure.”
Jonah sighs.)
*
It’s late, and it’s quiet out here, and Kinga’s only other option for company is Max, who is currently negotiating a fragile peace between the Boneheads and Ardy.
So she asks Jonah a question. “Would you have married me?”
He considers that. “I’m not sure.”
He should be afraid to tell her that. She controls of all the life-support in his little world. Jonah never seems bothered about anything for very long. The movies, sometimes, and he takes the robots’ concerns seriously. But even right at the beginning, he didn’t complain much. He doesn’t whine to go home. (He tried to fool Max into letting them escape a few times, but Kinga understands that impulse. Sometimes you have to test just how gullible a man can be.)
Taking her silence as if it means something, Jonah adds, “I probably would have said it. I like breathing. But honestly, where would you have gone after that? Married life?”
“True,” Kinga acknowledges. “There’s a reason you don’t see too many married couples on television.”
“Lack of imagination about the kinds of conflict and development that exist in adult committed relationships?” Jonah asks.
He’s not wrong. “I could get secret-pregnant,” Kinga muses. “Less room for variables that way. And medical scenes are full of dramatic tension. Plus baby names make great hashtags.”
Jonah’s eyes go wide. “Are you-? I’ve changed my mind - I’ll marry you if it’ll keep you from trying to make some poor kid a fourth-generation super villain.”
“Meh,” Kinga says. “I’m a third generation super villain and I turned out fine.”
“Speaking as your kidnappee...”
“Oh, I’ve barely even tried to kill you. I’ll bet you had at least three more disastrous relationships back on Earth before I even met and then kidnapped you.”
Jonah corrects, “Kidnapped and then met. And maybe.” He hums to himself. “Should I be sad about that?”
“Regret is for losers. Forresters never quit. You would know that if you had decided to become one.”
He shakes his head. “I just don’t see Jonah J Forrester working for me.”
His loss.
*
Time passes differently here. Although Kinga has always felt a little like that. She isn’t sure if it was all the months she spent on her own trying to get back from wherever Grandma Pearl tried to abandon her. Or maybe all of the exposure to mad science experiments when she was younger. Time can be flexible.
Take the bots, for example, who are in each individual part probably younger than Jonah, but in collective seem older than all the humans on Moon 13, especially staring at her the way they are.
“Where’s Jonah?” she demands.
“Where’s Jonah?” they parrot back.
Servo says, “Oh, we’re on to you, missy. We know your game.”
“Everyone knows my game,” Kinga answers. “I sing it in the show open.”
“Don’t play dumb with us,” Crow says.
“We know you’ve been talking to Jonah,” Servo adds.
“And that’s our thing! Nobody else’s!” Crow waves a metallic fist at Cambot and then says, “Sorry buddy, you’re fine.”
“Once again,” Kinga reminds them, “you’re forgetting who’s in charge here. If I occasionally check on the status of the subject in between experiments, that’s command prerogative. If you don’t like it, there’s an airlock right over there, and I’m not afraid to send both of you out of it. And your little dog too!”
There is a brief silence.
“Wait, I’m confused,” Servo says. “In this metaphor, is Jonah the dog? Because that’s very confusing. Or is that- is it Gypsy?”
Gypsy lowers from the ceiling. “Because I find that offensive!”
“You’re supposed to find it offensive!” Kinga doesn’t have the time for this. “And Jonah’s the puppy, obviously.”
“Technically we’re all the tin-man,” Servo says, after a moment.
“Double-technically,” Crow adds, “None of us are. I’m a steel super-alloy with chrome plating and you’re, you know, plastic.”
“Take that back!” Servo demands
Jonah appears from the side door. “What’s going on guys?”
“Kinga insulted our complex robot heritage.” Servo spins around indignantly.
Kinga rolls her eyes. “I’m pretty sure that was Crow. And it’s time for the invention exchange, unless you want your complex robot heritage taken apart for the recycling collection on Moon 14.”
Jonah covers Servo’s ears, or where his ears would be if he had them, and not a series of microphones in his possibly-plastic chest. “On one hand, I’m glad you recycle, on the other-”
“Invention!”
“Fine, fine. Our invention takes a simple problem – the glut of ‘must-see’ streaming television – and pares it back for today’s busy or lazy media consumer. Welcome to the world of Netflix-Bitesize, an exciting new service making the slog of watching all those marathoning necessities as easy as reading a Buzzfeed listicle.”
“...Wait.” Kinga rubs her temples. “This is the opposite of helping. We want people to watch us.”
Jonah raises one eyebrow. “You want people to pay for streaming services. So, basic level: you watch all of the programmes your friends just won’t shut up about. Premium level: we watch, so you don’t have to! Think of the target markets. People who don’t want to actually watch shows, but want to complain about them online: we have a feed for all of the ways a show screwed up each episode. People who need to be ‘in the loop’ but have jobs and families and other time-sucks: top five tweetable moments from the new seasons the day they drop. And, for the people who want to be the kind of people marathoning the super-cool Danish political thriller, but in reality they're tired and just want to rewatch old episodes of The Magic School Bus-”
“Only old episodes,” Servo adds grimly. “Reboots are dead to me.”
Jonah goes on, “Instead of lying, or relying on gifs on tumblr to keep up to date, you get a one-page summary full of intelligent, culturally appropriate insight. Why do they keep cutting back to the men in Orange is the New Black when they’re literally all the worst? How does the world-building in Jessica Jones fit in with the established MCU mythology or does it? Just how much is American Gods a complex fable for our confusing modern times despite being written fifteen years ago? For these answers and more, simply subscribe to our premium service and you too can watch television without spending your time and energy actually watching television.”
Kinga stares at him. “That’s actually sort of genius.”
“Wow,” Jonah says.
“Sort of,” she emphasises. She can’t have him thinking he’s impressed her.
*
“Are you lonely,” Kinga asks. “Is that it?”
Jonah is poking at a small pile of metallic parts that used to be his twentieth attempt to build a new robot. He blinks. “Am I what? I mean, my social circle is pretty limited, what with being imprisoned on a satellite and all.”
Kinga nods in the direction of the sad remains, and gives up and points. “Marvin the Murdered Android.”
“Oh.”
“Cause you’re batting zero here. The terrible twosome are not going to accept a new baby brother.”
Jonah shrugs. “I don’t know, I guess I like building them. Tom and Crow are great, but it’s kind of nice to put one together from scratch. Although the dismembering is becoming kinda disheartening,”
Kinga smirks. “See, what I’m hearing is that you want to make a baby of your very own. Thinking of reconsidering my plan?”
“Not even a little.”
“Can’t blame a girl for trying. Have you thought about building them a sister? Maybe it’s a robo-testosterone thing.”
“Nah,” Jonah says, “I’m pretty sure they’re equal-opportunity destroyers of the competition.”
“I knew I’d find something to like about them.”
Jonah prods at a metal arm that looks like it’s been broken in its socket. It is not going back on.
Kinga rolls her eyes. “Do I need to send you more parts before you use up all of your invention exchange materials making inevitably doomed robots?”
“I’m sorry?” Jonah asks.
Kinga yells, “Max!”
“Yes, Kinga? Can I get you anything?” Max appears to her left and looks curiously at the viewscreen.
“Send these idiots some of the miscellaneous metallic crap in Moon 14. Nothing radioactive.”
Max looks at her as though he’s expecting her to rescind the order and laugh in Jonah’s confused face. She thinks about it for a moment.
While she’s considering, Jonah sits up straight, robot limb still in his hand. “Thanks, Kinga.”
And now it would just be tacky to change her mind. Kinga is evil, but she likes to think she goes about it with a little class. She waves her hand at Max. “Go. Send.”
*
When Kinga walks past the screen, Jonah is sitting at the bridge looking at the lens. When he sees her, he knocks the console.
Kinga tilts her head and opens the audio. Before she can remind him that she’s the one in charge here, Jonah interrupts.
He says, “I’ve been thinking about your event-television problem.”
“Still refusing to accept that marrying me would have been the simplest course?”
“I’m just not sure marriage is what your viewers look for in drama. They’ve moved beyond the simple will-they-won’t-they week-to-week relationship development. Honestly, Max stopping the wedding was probably the best thing that could have happened, hashtaggingly speaking.”
“Ugh.”
“Think about it! What you need is, like, something totally unexpected.”
“You seemed to find our marriage unexpected,” Kinga points out.
“Hm.” Jonah rolls his shoulders and stretches. “At the time, I guess, but I’m in-universe. Your modern viewer watches with an eye on these things.”
“Polar bear?” she suggests.
“Overdone. You need... a disaster, or something, like Moon 13 systems go offline and it’s a desperate race to save the station, and explosion! Cut to you and Max in the Backjack, which I’ve flown in to rescue you.”
“This is sounding a lot like a ploy to get your ship back. And I’m not blowing up the base, I’m a megalomaniac, I’m not nuts.”
He bounces on the balls of his feet. “Or, maybe, you clone Max, and then you fall in love with Clone-Max, but he’s only interested in... Gypsy, I guess, because everyone loves love-quadrangles-”
“That’s a lie,” she interjects, and Jonah unexpectedly grins at her.
“And then somehow Clone-Max gets killed, because Synthia is honestly the only clone I know of who hasn’t had to die so that the real version could live, only then, after you and Max finally get together, the camera pulls back and we see his glowing spine because he’s the clone and he’s fooled us all. He has a plan.”
“You’re weirdly into this.”
“I watch a lot of genre movies. I know what I’m talking about.”
“You watch terrible movies. I know because I send them to you. I shouldn’t be taking your advice on anything.”
“Probably not,” he concedes, and yawns. “I should go to bed now. Goodnight, Kinga.”
At some point not very long ago, he mostly called her sir. She supposes this is her fault for trying to marry him.
“Dream me up some better plot developments than clones,” she calls after him, and thinks she hears him laugh.
*
The latest experiment is forty-seven minutes in, and Jonah throws something at the screen. “What the hell is this?”
“Who throws a shoe?” Crow asks.
The screen vibrates, but doesn’t crack. It’s designed to take all kinds of punishment, although that hasn’t been tested before.
“I just- I don’t understand how this got-” Jonah’s words run into yelling incoherence and he throws the other shoe.
Kinga pauses the movie and watches as Jonah storms out of the theatre. Her audio feed follows them back to the bridge.
“You talk to him,” Crow says.
“No, you talk to him,” Servo shoots back.
“He’s your human.”
“Oh, suddenly he’s my human when he’s losing it and throwing footwear?” Servo rocks back and forward. “Where was this when everything was cowboy hats and big dreams?”
Kinga opens the comm. “Out!”
Jonah looks up.
“Out,” she says again. “Anyone mechanical who doesn’t want me to open up a can of EMP in that satellite, scoot.”
The robots trundle off, grumbling at each other.
Jonah glares through the camera. “I know, I know, cattle prods and cut-off oxygen supplies.”
“We’ve given you way worse movies to watch than this. What gives?”
He blinks. “You brought me out here to check on me? I thought driving me insane was the point of this whole thing.”
Making a billion-dollar entertainment brand is the point of the whole thing. The experiment is just a means to that end. But Kinga is still a mad scientist at heart (in her blood) and something new just happened. Jonah hasn’t got angry before. Disbelieving, frustrated, sometimes – at everything from period-typical racism and misogyny through to continuity errors and poorly focused cameras. But he’s never lost his temper.
Kinga says, “This is for science. Tell me what you’re feeling.”
“What am I feeling?” He laughs. “So attacked right now.”
“I paused the damn thing,” she tells him. “I’m going to have to put it back on, we have to finish the experiment.”
“Why the hell did you pick this?”
That’s also new. She shrugs one shoulder. “It’s a really shitty movie.”
“But it’s boring! Like no one involved in this cared about it even a little bit. It’s just dull from start to what I can’t even imagine as a finish right now. I can- you know, I get the bad ones. Where they forgot how gravity works, or plot, or the basic categories of human emotion. But at least they care about some part of it. I mean even you- you’re trying to do something. An evil, profit-driven something, sure, which has inconvenienced me pretty significantly, but at least you’re... it’s not just random meaningless nothingness.”
She gives that a moment. “Okay.”
Jonah bangs his head on the console.
Kinga turns to her controls and fires a package over to the satellite.
Jonah now has his cheek pressed to the desk, staring at the wall.
Gypsy drops from the ceiling. “Delivery, boss.”
He turns his head. “What?”
“Delivery.” She drops the parcel, unpacked from the drone but not unwrapped.
Jonah peels the foam away and then looks back at the camera. “What is this?”
“Extra experiment,” Kinga says. “Limited time offer, just for today. A challenge. Make this movie interesting, Jonah Heston.” She pushes the button.
The robots come back in, shrieking. “Movie sign!”
Jonah grips the bottle of vodka in one hand. “We’re finishing this with a drinking game. Shot for every inexplicable pan over someone’s knees? Dramatic stings where absolutely nothing dramatic happens? You guys can think of some too.”
“Uh, Jonah?” Servo asks. “We can’t get drunk.”
“And we have tried,” Crow adds.
“We’ll figure something out.” Jonah tells them. “Come on, movie sign!”
*
Kinga opens up the audio but can’t think of anything to say.
Jonah drums his fingers lightly on the desk. “Movie?”
“Not right now. Max was screening a few choices, but then there was a spill, and some footage of a shipwreck got mixed in with an alien-whale screaming in space. Or maybe not, it could just have been a really strange narrative choice.”
Jonah wrinkles his nose. “I’ll look forward to that? I guess? So what’s up?”
Kinga can’t sit here and deal with him if he’s going to acknowledge that she hasn’t got a reason to be looking at him right now.
Jonah goes on, “You sound less jubilantly wicked than usual. Everything okay?”
Oh. Kinga brushes it off. “Well, as test subjects go, you’re not providing me with a lot of material at the moment. You’re mostly as sane as you were when I brought you here.”
“There are some people who would argue that was a low bar to start with. Hey, want to watch some TV?” Jonah drags the ugly CRT set around to face her.
She didn’t mean to let them have that. Then she decided that the crappy set with its ancient VCR would be a sterner test of their resolve than no television at all. Of course, Jonah and the bots had embraced it with open-hearted enthusiasm, eagerly working their way through nineties television between movies. And between craft club, and dream sharing, and their regular improv nights. This might be why her experiment isn’t working.
“What have you got?” she asks.
“We’re working through early series Friends. We snagged one of those dumpster-comets when it was flying past, you know the ones they put all the VHS boxsets on when they figured out that there would literally never be a time when Friends wasn’t showing on syndication somewhere? I think this is the one with Phoebe’s dollhouse. Which is pretty cool.”
“Did you have a dollhouse growing up, or did you just really want one?” Kinga asks. It’s a little like scientific background.
Jonah’s mouth pulls into an uncertain frown. “I made one, I guess? It was sort of a clubhouse for a couple of Barbies and the Star Wars figures. I made them some robots and aliens too. And the house could fly.”
“Of course it could. Of course you did.” He’s still waiting. She can hear the background noise of the VCR rewinding to the start of the episode. “Go on then.”
He presses play, and leans back so he’s not blocking her view of the screen. God, he’s nothing like her at all.
*
Max backs away from her when he sees the needle. Kinga supposes she can understand that. “Relax,” she tells him. “I’m not drugging you, I’m just stealing some of your blood.”
“Um.” He holds his hands up but doesn’t touch her. “I’m sure that’s fine, but can I ask why?”
“Because it’s a better genetic sample than the hairs you keep shedding on all of our equipment.”
Max touches the top of his head gingerly.
Kinga reaches out, beckoning with her fingers. “Arm. Now.”
Max pushes up his sleeve and extends his arm so she can stab it. He winces a little, and looks away from the syringe when she draws blood.
Kinga smiles brightly and turns to look at the camera. “So, for our half of the invention exchange, Max and I have a new innovation in cybo-cloning technology.”
“We do?” Max asks. “Wait-”
“Ever needed to do something important, but you’re just too clumsy or socially awkward to handle it? Our new technology creates a perfect copy of you, without any of your flaws or insecurities! Perfect for job interviews, presentations, first dates, super important henchman tasks...”
Jonah looks amused. “You’re creating a clone of Max?”
“Not a regular clone, obviously,” Kinga says. “Clones are the worst. This is more like a bio-cyborg-duplicate.”
“Well all right then.” Jonah is still smiling. “Be sure to make him exactly like the original in looks, and not give him any distinguishing cyborg features that can’t be hidden easily and then revealed at a dramatically appropriate moment. Followed by smash cut to credits.”
“I’m thinking of a glowing spine,” Kinga says. “Not all of the time, just during shocking reveals.”
Max glares at her. “But you hate clones.”
She shrugs. “I’ll have plenty of time to think about that while I’m growing one. Maybe more than one. Unconventional family units are excellent for ratings.”
“We don’t have...” Max gives up. “What about the movie?”
“Yes,” Jonah says. “What nightmare fuelled world are we entering today?”
Kinga turns to stare at him. “You know that it’s no fun for me if someone else says it.”
“I know.” Jonah’s grin is not wicked. If it was, Kinga would have to investigate whether he had been replaced by his evil duplicate. But Kinga has spent months observing the behaviour of her test subject, every strange and aberrant thing he has done. She doesn’t know if the viewers would have spotted this one. (She underestimates them.) But that smile – like a small but powerful secret between the two of them – she notes as it happens and puts away to study later. That smile is a piece of new data.