(Fan/Com) Reality Bites [T]

Well, more satire than comedy. This story is a send-up of the TV show Big Brother, as well as reality TV in general.

Anyway this first part is very long and a little boring as it sets the scene, it will get more interesting later on.

Part One

‘The Octagon’ was an amphitheatre built in the shape of an octagon (duh!). Like any ordinary amphitheatre its main purpose was to display cheap entertainment to the masses, but where the Octagon differed was in the type of entertainment displayed. Jutting out of the middle of the arena was a huge four-tier pillar, each tier sporting eight large movie screens. The Octagon was in fact the largest and best cinema in the entire three worlds, no matter where you sat (or stood, or perched) you could see one of the screens (steps and barriers were placed where the screens joined one another).

The sourcerer watched Midra's massive theatre fill up on a viewing dome, all from the safety of his rooms in the Coliseum (the replica in Midra, not the one in Rome).

“It’s called ‘reality TV’, they plonk a group of strangers together in some place they can’t get out of for a certain time and see what they do with each other.” He turned around to stare at the speaker. She was a young girl of about twenty and there wasn’t much to say about her except that, although she wasn’t ugly, no one would ask her out just on her looks.

“Can’t you bother someone else?” he asked slightly peeved. This annoyance was all an act, unlike this girl few people would talk to him as an equal and besides, he actually liked her company.

“It’s not as if there’s anything else to do around here except hang out in Elysia with ‘Princess Chelsea’,” the girl answered disgruntled.

The sourcerer sighed; they’d had many different versions of this argument before, “Kara, if it were up to me I would let you go. In fact, I would not have made that deal with your father in the first place. Good souls are almost useless here.”

Kara snorted, “some father, he gave up his only child so he could keep his ‘evil’ soul.” Kara walked up to the viewing dome and looked in, seeing if she could change the subject, “I can’t believe it, this is a fantasy-style dark world and yet they have TV.”

“That is because Midra is a parasitic universe.” The sourcerer waved his hand over the dome and the picture changed to an overhead view of the main continent of Midra. The continent contained every kind of natural (and unnatural) feature you could think of, from mountains to plains to forests to canyons, all in shades of black and dark gray, the only exception being a small brightly-coloured region complete with forests fields and castle. It looked like a typical world at the start of an epic fantasy, where the forces of darkness have control over all the land except for one small kingdom, the valiant kingdom of light, holding out against the encroaching darkness. “As you know a parasite is a creature that lives off another, taking resources from the host and giving nothing back. Our host universe is your universe of Gaia, and the resource that we take is your ideas, your concepts, your innovations. If we see something we like in your universe we take it, and mold it to our own particular tastes. That is why you will find so many things of your world in this one, like this coliseum, but not exactly the same, like the concept of television.” He waved his hand back over the dome, changing the picture back to the Octagon, “for the moment they have been taking television signals from your world, sifting through the content and showing the shows they like, but given the average intelligence of the common minions (and certain dark lords), only moronic programs are shown.”

“Soaps, talk shows and reality shows,” Kara finished, “but it seems the Octagon is fuller than normal, I can even see some dark lords coming in.” Sure enough a section towards the back had been nicely decorated and set aside, and some richly dressed very important looking people (and beasts) were taking their places in that section.

The sourcerer snorted, “honestly, we dark lords are supposed to be two standard deviations in IQ above ordinary minions.”

“Were you a mathematician in a past life?” Kara asked accusingly.

“No, but I’ve been an alchemist and a statistician,” he answered calmly, “besides I know why it’s so full, everyone in Midra's been talking about it. With the invention of the camera pod it is now possible for us to make our own television shows, and a certain someone had the bright idea of making a Midran version of Big Brother as our very first 'home-grown' show.”

“So where's the Big Brother House and who are going to be the contestants?” Kara asked, “in my world they built a special house with hidden cameras everywhere, and at the start of every season they went mad advertising the opening of auditions. But I haven't seen any special house or heard about any auditions being held.”

“Kara, remember what I said about changing an idea so that it suits your style,” the sourcerer answered, “you forget one very important thing, unlike you humans we have three whole universes to play around with, Midra Gaia and our enemy the light universe Ista.”

“So they're just going to take a group from Ista and place them in Midra and follow them around to see what they do?” Kara asked.

The sourcerer chuckled, “that wouldn't be very entertaining as most if not all of Ista knows about this dimension. But very few people from Gaia even know that there are other dimensions, how much more entertaining would it be to watch a group of Gaians stumble around Midra instead.”

Kara snorted, trying hard not to laugh, from her time in this world she had a pretty good idea of what this would involve, “so this means we’re not going to watch?”

“Hah, I wish,” the sourcerer answered, waving his hand over the viewing dome, “knowing the dark lord behind all of this I have to watch to make sure Midra isn’t destroyed just for ratings.”

* * *

Melview Secondary had the reputation of attracting the below average intelligent variety of teenage students, with Paul Newman and Sam Madison being two prime examples.

“Hey I watched Miss Universe last night, man those babes were hot,” Paul said as he and his best friend Sam headed for the school buildings.

“Yeah I watched that too,” Sam answered, “wouldn't it be great if we were stuck on a desert island with all of them?”

“Or better still, if we were gallant knights in a fairytale and those were all princesses who were eternally grateful to us for saving their kingdoms,” Paul said, almost drooling.

“Yeah that would be great,” Sam said, drooling just as much as Paul.

“Yeah,” Paul said, continuing his line of thought, “we'd go on adventures, slay dragons, save damsels in distress and get lots of kisses.”

“There's just one problem,” Sam answered, “I don't know how to ride a horse.”

Paul thought about this for a moment, then said, “well if we were knights then we would've gone to knight school and they would've taught us how to ride horses so we would be right.”

“Great, that takes care of one problem, just one other thing though,” Sam said, “I don't know how to use a sword.”

Paul was about to answer when suddenly the world shimmered for a split second, and what felt like a bolt of static electricity shot through them.

“Sam did you feel that?” Paul asked a little worried.

“Yeah,” Sam answered just as worried, “what was that?”

The two stood stock still and looked around, but everything looked the same way it had looked before the strange electricity feeling, nothing was different.

“Probably just some stray electricity, nothing to worry about,” Paul answered shrugging it off, “come on let's keep going.”

They rounded the corner and walked through the school gates. As no teachers had shown up to open the buildings all the students were standing around on the obligatory school asphalt basketball courts talking and playing basketball melee (this was basketball with no rules). But the moment Paul and Sam walked through the school gate every single student stopped what they were doing, looked straight at them, and laughed hysterically.

“Hey what’s going on?” Paul exclaimed to the world in general.

“Yeah, I mean, I know the school uniform’s daggy and all but…” It was at this point that both boys looked down and screamed.

“Paul, I’m wearing a dress!”

“Sam, I’m not wearing anything!”

Both boys looked at each other and screamed louder.

“Oh gosh, what happened to our uniforms?” Paul asked, really panicking now.

“Yeah just a second ago we were wearing them so how did they ... Oh no!” Sam exclaimed pointing, “look on the flagpole!” Sure enough, hanging from the top of the flagpole were two full uniforms, their worst fear.

“Oh great, today had to be one of those nightmare days,” Paul moaned.

As there was nothing else to do but go up there and get their uniforms the two boys proceeded to climb the smooth flagpole, with the whole student body watching from below. It was about halfway up the pole when their second worst fear was realised, under all their weight the pole was starting to bend, and the wind blowing in their faces didn’t help either.

But their luck held out, until they were in reach of their clothes that is, because just as Paul (in the lead) stretched out his hand to grab the clothes a loud clear and familiar voice boomed out over all the hooting and cheering from the assembled students, “Paul Newman and Sam Madison what is the meaning of this!”

“Oh no! The principal! Man this really is a nightmare!” Sam wailed.

If they were nervous before they were doubly so now, and it didn’t help that they were sweating twice as much as when they started. Right then, just when the boys thought things couldn’t possibly get worse, a huge gust of wind swept over the pole, lifting both the clothes and the screaming boys off the pole. Neither went flying for long, a huge black vortex opened up out of nowhere and swallowed them, just as the bell rang for classes.