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When you come back from the water cooler there’s a thick stack of papers on your desk, with a cover page reading “Consumer Feedback.” The day everyone in the studio has been dreading is finally here. Your job is to craft a summary of the packet that makes sense to the boss. You know that it won’t be good, hell, even Tenna probably knows that at this point, but you get to be the one to tell him. Skimming through it you see nose-diving graphs, low percentages, even lower starred reviews.
Dreading having to break the news to him, your knuckles hesitantly rap on the door to his office. He doesn’t answer right away, meaning you have time to fix his nameplate, which had come askew one of the many times he slammed the door behind him. “Mr. Ant Tenna, CRT,” written out on brash bronze. Talking and insincere laughing emanates from the room.
After a few minutes, timed by the clock on the wall shaped like him, you knock again, louder this time. A loud huff, followed by his voice saying “Excuse me for just one moment,” then his footsteps nearly stomping towards the door. You barely have time to back away before he throws it open.
“What is it?” He hisses at you, hand covering the receiver of his garish, show branded phone. Identical copies of it reportedly sit in warehouses across the world. “This is a very important call that you’re interrupting, you know.”
“Sir, um, the viewership reports have come in for this quarter.” You smile uneasily.
“Oh, why didn’t you say that sooner! That’s marvelous! That’s exactly what I wanted to hear!” He slams the phone down, and you hear the cheap plastic cradle crack. “Oops.” He looks at you, TV-host smile shining. “Well, don’t just stand there!”
You enter the office, leaving the door ajar.
“Tell me! Is it great? Is it better than you ever could have dreamed?” He’s swiveling back and forth in his chair. You can’t tell if he’s actually that excited about the ratings or if it’s just his game-show persona.
“The, um…” You try to find a way to phrase it nicely, but there isn’t one. “The ratings have gone down. They’re lower than they’ve ever been. Our surveys say that people think television isn’t enough anymore.” You understand why, but you can’t look at him and say what you rehearsed about how he’s becoming obsolete.
“Not…” His face goes blank, expressionless. “Not enough?”
“They don’t watch it with the family anymore, sir. Things have changed.”
“And you’re saying I haven’t changed with them.”
You’re at a loss, not wanting to confirm it but not wanting to lie by denying either. You stay silent as you watch him shrink, from nearly twenty feet tall to a fraction of that.
“Leave.” His fangs show before he turns away, short enough now that the back of his chair hides him. “Go!”
You hesitate for a moment, wanting to offer comfort. “Sir, I’m sure that—”
“Please.” He must be rattled, because you haven't heard him say that word to anyone before. You hurry out, gently shutting the door.
You’re surprised at how affected he is for a moment, but after you consider it, it fits with how he’s been acting lately. Clingy, even with his subordinates, easier to anger. Firing swaths of workers, rehiring them only to fire them again within the hour. He doesn’t conceal his insecurity anymore. But what are you supposed to do about that? Your job description doesn’t involve sugarcoating reality for him. He’ll get over it.
But you can hear him crying from your tiny office down the hall. No, not just crying, trying to hide how he’s crying but failing. He doesn’t seem larger-than-life to you anymore.
After half an hour of listening to him sniffle you head back to his office. If you get fired, you suppose, this studio is going down the drain anyway.
You knock lightly, and he goes silent, like he’s pretending that if you don’t hear him you won’t know he’s there. “Mr. Tenna? Sir?” You call, leaning towards the door frame. “Do you- um- need anything?”
He doesn’t answer.
“I’m coming in now.”
“No—” His panic is palpable but you go anyway, closing the door behind you.
He’s maybe four and a half feet tall now, sitting on the floor against his desk. Staticky tears make a water line at the bottom of his screen, sloshing as he moves his head to look at you. His suit is rumpled, and he’s dabbing a yellow pocket square on the place where he would have eyes.
“I told you to leave.” His tone is flat, but he wavers on the last word. He’s barely keeping himself composed. You feel even more sorry for him.
“I know that.” You move towards him slowly, like you would approach a wounded enemy.
“No!” He scrambles backwards until his shoulders hit the wall. “One more step and- and I’ll cut your pay in half! Into quarters!” You don’t stop. “I’ll make you into a garbage boy! I’ll fire you!”
“Go ahead.” You sit down next to him, and he moves away at first before stopping and simply turning his back to you. He looks like a child, hugging his knees to his chest.
The silence grows between you until he clears his throat with a burst of feedback and says “What are you doing here?” His voice doesn’t quite change, but there’s something more behind it now.
“I thought that you didn’t really want to be alone. Was I right?”
“…Yes.” His reluctance to admit that makes you stifle a smile. He’s just as one-dimensional as he is on TV.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“No.”
He makes you wait for it, but eventually he sighs heavily and starts talking. “I’ve never been this scared before. Never in my life. I feel like- like I’m about to be forgotten. What can I do? How can I stop it?” Tears are streaming to the bottom of his screen again in gloopy globules.
“Well.” You have to think hard about it. There’s no actual answer you can give that will fix everything. You have to tell him something that gets him feeling better but doesn’t give him false hope. You’ve already overheard rumors about executives pulling the plug on him. “The way I see it, you can sit here on the floor with me and cry, or you can give the people a show they’ll remember.” You wince, hoping he doesn’t notice how clichéd you sound. His face is blank again, so you can’t tell what he’s feeling.
“Hm.” His mouth comes back, with a small smile. “You really think that?”
He bought it. “Yes, sir.” The happiness in your voice gets him really grinning. You can tell now that throughout your conversation he’s grown a few inches, and he continues until the tip of his shoe crashes into the desk. He stands and returns to his normal height, though normal for him still means nearly four times your height.
He sees you struggling to get up from the floor and offers you his hand for support. That’s a first, him giving any sort of help to others. You haven’t seen him so much as hold a door in the time you’ve worked for him. Once you’re up he bends at the waist so that you’re face to face, another new development. You think that he likes towering over people, literally looking down on them as he gives orders.
“Thank you.” He says, hash marks of blush appearing on his monitor. He must be embarrassed, needing you to give him a pep talk. Having him so close to you makes you warm in the face too, though for a different reason.
“Any time. I mean it.” And you find that you do mean it, that you don’t just want him to go out onstage and do his job, you want him to be happy while he's doing it.