The Reploids by Stephen King
THE REPLOIDS
No one knew exactly how long it had been going on. Not long. Two days, two weeks; it couldn’t have been much longer than that, Cheyney reasoned. Not that it mattered. It was just that people got to watch a little more of the show with the added thrill of knowing the show was real. When the United States – the whole world – found out about the Reploids, it was pretty spectacular. just as well, maybe. These days, unless it’s spectacular, a thing can go on damned near forever. It is neither believed nor disbelieved. It is simply part of the weird Godhead mantra that made up the accelerating flow of events and experience as the century neared its end. It’s harder to get peoples’ attention. It takes machine-guns in a crowded airport or a live grenade rolled up the aisle of a bus load of nuns stopped at a roadblock in some Central American country overgrown with guns and greenery. The Reploids became national – and international – news on the morning of November 30, 1989, after what happened during the first two chaotic minutes of the Tonight Show taping in Beautiful Downtown Burbank, California, the night before.
The floor manager watched intently as the red sweep secondhand moved upward toward the twelve. The studio audience clockwatched as intently as the floor manager. When the red sweep second-hand crossed the twelve, it would be five o’clock and taping of the umpty-umptieth Tonight Show would commence.
As the red second-hand passed the eight, the audience stirred and muttered with its own peculiar sort of stage fright. After all, they represented America, didn’t they? Yes!
“Let’s have it quiet, people, please,” the floor manager said pleasantly, and the audience quieted like obedient children. Doc Severinsen’s drummer ran off a fast little riff on his snare and then held his sticks easily between thumbs and fingers, wrists loose, watching the floor manager instead of the clock, as the show – people always did. For crew and performers, the floor manager was the clock. When the second-hand passed the ten, the floor manager counted down aloud to four, and then held up three fingers, two fingers, one finger … and then a clenched fist from which one finger pointed dramatically at the audience. An APPLAUSE sign lit up, but the studio audience was primed to whoop it up; it would have made no difference if it had been written in Sanskrit.
So things started off just as they were supposed to start off: dead on time. This was not so surprising; there were crewmembers on the Tonight Show who, had they been LAPD officers, could have retired with full benefits. The Doc Severinsen band, one of the best showbands in the world, launched into the familiar theme: Ta-da-da-Da-da … and the large, rolling voice of Ed
McMahon cried enthusiastically: “From Los Angeles, entertainment capital of the world, it’s The Tonight Show, live, with Johnny Carson! Tonight, Johnny’s guests are actress Cybill Shepherd of Moonlighting!” Excited applause from the audience. “Magician Doug Henning!” Even louder applause from the audience. “Pee Wee Herman!” A fresh wave of applause, this time including hoots of joy from Pee Wee’s rooting section. “From Germany, the Flying Schnauzers, the world’s only canine acrobats!” Increased applause, with a mixture of laughter from the audience. “Not to mention Doc Severinsen, the world’s only Flying Bandleader, and his canine band!”
The band members not playing horns obediently barked. The audience laughed harder, applauded harder.
In the control room of Studio C, no one was laughing.
A man in a loud sport-coat with a shock of curly black hair was standing in the wings, idly snapping his fingers and looking across the stage at Ed, but that was all.
The director signaled for Number Two Cam’s medium shot on Ed for the umpty-umptieth time, and there was Ed on the ON SCREEN monitors. He barely heard someone mutter, “Where the hell is he?” before Ed’s rolling tones announced, also for the umpty-umptieth time: “And now heeeere’s JOHNNY!”
Wild applause from the audience.
“Camera Three,” the director snapped.
“But there’s only that-”
“Camera Three, goddammit!”
Camera Three came up on the ON SCREEN monitor, showing every TV director’s private nightmare, a dismally empty stage … and then someone, some stranger, was striding confidently into that empty space, just as if he had every right in the world to be there, filling it with unquestionable presence, charm, and authority. But, whoever he was, he was most definitely not Johnny Carson. Nor was it any of the other familiar faces TV and studio audiences had grown used to during Johnny’s absences. This man was taller than Johnny, and instead of the familiar silver hair, there was a luxuriant cap of almost Pan-like black curls. The stranger’s hair was so black that in places it seemed to glow almost blue, like Superman’s hair in the comic-books. The sport-coat he wore was not quite loud enough to put him in the Pleesda-Meetcha-Is-This-The-Missus? car salesman category, but Carson would not have touched it with a twelve-foot pole.