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PRIME TIME
By Norman Spinrad
Edna chose to awake this morning to good old breakfast loop A. John was reading a newspaper over pancakes and sausages in the kitchen of their old home. The kids were gulping the last of their food and were anxious to be on their way to school.
After yesterday's real-time-shared breakfast with John, she really felt she needed the soothing old familiar tape from her files today. It might have been shot way back during the 1987-88 television season on a crude home deck, it might be snowy and shaky, but Edna still ran it three or four mornings a week in preference to the breakfast soaps or more updated domestic footage. Somehow it captured what prime breakfast time with John and the kids had really been like, and somehow that made it her prime breakfast programming choice.
Edna: Now, Sammy, you finish the rest of your
milk before you run outdoors!
Sammy: (slugging down the rest of his milk) Aw,
Ma, I'm gonna be late!
Edna: Not if you don't take your usual shortcut
past the candy store.
Of course the old tape hadn't been shot from her stereo perspective, and there was something strange about seeing yourself in your own domestic programming, and it certainly wasn't as well written as a breakfast soap, but then none of the soaps were personalized and none of her other domestic tapes with John had footage of the kids at grade-school age.
John was always after her to share real-time programming with him. He'd voice her over on the communication channel and show her tapes he had made for himself with her in them, or he'd entice her with shared domestic tapes, or he'd bombard her with porn-channel footage.
But the domestic tapes he programmed for them to share all took place in exotic locales, and the story lines were strictly male-type fantasies-John's idea of suitable real-time programming for the two of them to share ran to camel caravans across the desert, spaceship journeys to strange planets full of weird creatures, sailing the South Seas, discovering lost cities, fighting in noble wars. And her viewpoint role was usually a cross between Wonder Woman and Slave Girl. Well, that might be how John wished to real-time-share with her, but Edna preferred her soaps and romantic historicals, which John categorically refused to real-time-share with her under any
circumstances.
As for the porn channels that he wanted to realtime-share with her, the only word was disgusting.
Still, he was her husband, and she felt she had to fulfill her conjugal obligations from time to time; so five or ten times a season she gritted her teeth and real-time-shared one of his crude male porn channels in the sex-object role. Less frequently he consented to time-share a historical X with her, but only because of the implied threat she'd withhold her porn-channel favors from him if he didn't.
So by and large it was mealtime program sharing that was their least distasteful channel of contact and the one that saw most frequent use.
John: (wiping his lips with his napkin) Well,
honey, it's off to the salt mines. Ready to go,
Ellie?
Ellie: I got to make wee-wee first.
TOTAL TELEVISION HEAVEN 60-SECOND
SPOT #12 FINALIZED BROADCAST VERSION HARD CUT FROM BACK
A series of low, pink buildings, emphasizing sunrise through the palm trees.
Announcer's voice-over: (medium hard sell) To-
tal Television Heaven, the ultimate retirement community for Electronic Age seniors . . .
A rapidly cut montage from the adventure channels, the porn channels, the soaps, etc. Make it the
most colorful and exciting footage we've got and emphasize expensive crowd scenes and special effects.
Announce's voice-over: (orgasmic) Twenty full channels of pornography, thirty-five full channels of adventure, forty channels of continuing soaps-live, full-time, in over a hundred possible realities, produced by the finest talents in Hollywood . . .
CLOSE-UP ON A MAN'S HEAD
Intelligent, with neat, dignified, gray hair. As hands fit stereo TV goggles over his eyes. (Earphones already in place.)
Announcer's voice-over: (institutional) You live as the viewpoint character in a wonderland of sex and adventure through the electronic magic of total stereo TV!
MEDIUM SHOT ON A FAMOUS OLD ACTOR
Cast someone with recognition value who's willing to sign up for a two-hundred-year annuity.
Famous Old-Actor: And that's not all! Tape your family! Tape your friends! Take your loved ones with you to Total Television Heaven and keep them with you forever!
CAMERA PULLS BACK FOR A FULL SHOT
We see that the Famous Old Actor is being helped into a glass amnion tank. He keeps talking and smiling as the attendants strap him to the couch, fit the earphones and stereo TV goggles, hook up his breathing mask and waste tube, and begin filling the tank with fluid.
Famous Old Actor: A vast tape library. Customcut programs to your order! I wish I'd signed up years ago!
The throat mike is attached, his hand is taped to the tuner knob, the nutrient tube is inserted in his arm (no on-camera needle penetration, please), the amnion tank is topped off and sealed. The camera moves in for a close-up on the face of the Famous Old Actor, seen floating blissfully in his second womb.
Famous Old Actor: (filtered) I'm never coming out-and I'm glad!
DISSOLVE TO: SUNSET OVER TOTAL TELEVISION HEAVEN
The sun sinks into the sea in speeded-up time over
the pink pastel client-storage buildings, and a glorious, star filled sky comes on like an electronic billboard.
Announcer's voice-over: (transcendent) No man knows God's intent for the hereafter, but at Total Television Heaven modern biological science
guarantees you a full two hundred years of electronic paradise in the safety and comfort of your own private tank. And a full annuity costs less than you think!
FADE-OUT
