Chapter 58: Test Pilot

I’M CERTAIN I had a point to make with that whole story. I can draw all kinds of conclusions from it that probably don’t have relevance. Even gods who are generally seen as horrific in their worst appearances have a humorous side to them. My time with A’a reminded me of my time with Zeus, only with less fucking.

I also noticed that there are phenomena that the gods don’t understand, even in the world they created. A’a had no idea what came over the girl that made her tell the story she did. I didn’t mention the fact that she’d seen us setting up the last stone. Perhaps she was just a gifted storyteller and made it up on the spot. It wouldn’t be the first time a storyteller saw something they didn’t understand and made up a story about it. Read the daily news.

A’a did show me his island getaway. I couldn’t see it until we’d sailed right onto the beach. He had quite a comfortable dwelling there and said he just needed to get away from his brothers at times. And it got soggy at the bottom of the sea, even for a sea god. I wondered if Poseidon had joined the Greek gods on Olympus when they withdrew and if so, did he have a sea there to rule over or was he happy to be on dry land?

I will say that since that time, I have searched for the island of A’a on maps to no avail. When satellite imagery became available, I searched all over the South Pacific for an unidentified island and could not find one. I’m sure the imagery would have revealed it, just as airport x-rays showed my satchel. The video cameras saw it, too.

I found reference to an island called Land of Davis after a pirate who had sighted it but did not land. After many decades, reference to the mysterious island disappeared from maps and it is all but forgotten. It is possible that Davis did see the island during a time when A’a was entering or leaving his secret kingdom.

I will also say that this story illustrates that gods are capricious. Or perhaps they quickly forget. I encountered the god of the sea again years later (after I’d found another island just at the time of its mass marriage ritual) as I sailed westward and was caught in a battle between the brothers Tawhirimatea and Tu (also sometimes identified as Tangaroa or A’a. That was when my voyage on the Pacific came to an abrupt end when my little ship was cast half way across Australia by the warring brothers.

What brought all this to mind was our refuge while we were planning the next season of To Boldly Go. Peninnah had managed to acquire a very nice villa on a Pacific Island and we’d been enjoying relative peace and quiet. It was getting to be time, however, when I needed to shoot a test pilot of the concept for the next series. I was going to emerge from isolation yet again.

“We’re going to have fun with this,” Doug said as I sat with the family and crew. “The fabulous ladies of Crew 1 did a great job of sorting and matching up contestants.”

I looked around and saw the cameras running. So, Doug wasn’t just talking to us, we were actually in the beginning stages of recording the show. I noticed that the cameras were mostly behind us, so they’d be showing Doug over our heads. Avril, however, was in front where she could record facial reactions and ... Let’s just face it and say she was making sure we had tits on display. She’d been recording the entire process of the evaluation and selection of candidates—hours and hours of recording. We’d discovered something intriguing: In Areola, the batteries for the cameras never ran down. We didn’t have to go to the natural world to plug them in to recharge.

“Now, we left a few details out when you were doing the evaluations. Nothing critical that would affect your decisions, but something that might have subconsciously caused some subtle shifts. We intentionally removed the names of the contestants and you have referred to them only by their contestant number. We also removed the location information. Our applicants come from literally all over the world. And our first set of three contestants are from three different continents: North America, Asia, and Australia. This will show how well we can work in coordinating things in a quick and effective way.”

There were a number of exclamations and comments about the minor deception, but no one was upset about it. It made sense that they might have rejected someone on the basis of a name or of a country of origin. We’d been heavily North America-centric in our first round having only five of thirteen contestants from countries other than the US. This was almost like a random drawing to find out where we would travel.

“The interviews with the candidates will occur over three days in each country. Bob will need to make a decision quickly after that, assisted, of course, by you lovely ladies. You’ll get to see all the footage as it’s revealed and I’m sure you’ll be cheering for your favorites. So, the initial interviews will all be over in nine days. Then Bob will cycle back through to the women to tell them who he really is and whether they were successful. This might require some fine tuning. We will pay each of the losers, but our signed releases allow us to film them candidly and to broadcast the footage without limitation, regardless of whether they are chosen.”

“How are we arranging the travel?” Liz asked. “I assume we still need our production crew and cameras.”

“Yes and no,” Doug said. “I’ve talked over some of the logistics with Bob and we’ve agreed on a trial for the first set. Bob will travel alone.”

“What?”

“No!”

“He can’t leave us!”

“Calmly. Calmly, ladies. Bob will travel with ... er ... um ... the portal. When he arrives in each location, he will summon forth the players needed for the interview, including camerawomen. I have a ground crew already in place in each of the locations, gathering background footage and seeing how aware the contestants are when they are filmed. These will all be distance shots with telephoto lenses. We aren’t getting close enough to tip them off.”

“When we get to the location, I’ll um ... use some tech ... um ... that enables us to move without being noticed by people. I use it to disguise the portal, for example.” I was trying every way possible to not say I was going to cast a spell that would make them unnoticed. “It does not shield us from electronic or mechanical recognition, however. We don’t blend with the air, so to speak. People just won’t notice us. That way, the camera crew that joins me from Areola should be able to get in fairly close to the subject and record all our interactions without her noticing.”

“Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land,” Karla sang. She was a Georgia girl and I guess they never forget.

“The great thing about this is that we don’t need to mess around with entry visas and passports—except for Bob. And he’ll be incognito. Once we’re inside, we’ll stage the operation and make the recording. Then he’ll put us back on his shoulder and beat feet for the next location.”

It all sounded like it would be easy. It wasn’t, of course.

I took our private plane from Tahiti to Honolulu and put it in storage after I’d passed customs and they’d agreed there was nothing in my satchel that shouldn’t be. In fact, they’d called in a supervisor, led me to a white room and emptied everything there was in the satchel, x-raying it again when it was empty.

“All right,” said the Customs Officer. “Where is the portal?”

“Really? It’s a television effect. Haven’t you seen them before?”

“I knew it. All this fuss over a fake TV reality show. The stupid brass have their undies in a bunch over this transporter thing you’re supposed to have.” He lowered his voice confidentially. “So where did you stash all the babes you had on the show. There were some seriously good-looking women there.”

“They were fun to work with. They’re all still hiding out in California. We’re trying to put together a second season concept, but it’s rough going,” I answered lightly.

“I thought that palace scene looked like California. Well, if you need a guy to help you manage all the women, call me. You can repack now.”

I put my underwear, shaving kit, toothbrush, and change of clothes back in the bag and left the checkpoint. Across the way, I could see agents still crawling all over my plane. I took a Wiki Wiki Shuttle to the main terminal and grabbed a cab to my ocean-front home farther north.

That could have gone worse. I had visions of them tearing the bag apart at the seams. I needed to figure out a way to change the appearance of the bag itself. I was going to change my own appearance, as well. From here, I wouldn’t be traveling as Bob.

My problems were resolved through an unexpected means. I stopped at the main shopping area in downtown Honolulu to pick up some clothes. It’s a shopping Mecca and people go there from all over the world to buy designer clothes and accessories that they could get for half the price in any big shopping mall on the mainland. But I needed clothes to fit my new image. The image I adopted, in the changing room, was that of a blond surfer dude I’d seen on the beach. The body wasn’t quite as big as I normally choose, but it was strong, fit, and young. This next part of the trip could be fun.

However, as I was shopping and strolling through the stores, I came upon a display of “The Bob Satchel” by a top name luggage manufacturer. Hmm. I examined the quality of the bag and it wasn’t bad at all. Of course, it was made of cow leather instead of goatskin, as my original bag was. If anyone was sharp enough at customs to identify that, the difference would give me away right off.

“That is our best seller!” a bright young woman said as she came up to me. I mean, it’s flying off the shelves. We’ve sold at least a hundred of them since the end of that mini-series on TV. It’s almost impossible to get them now because the manufacturer in Hong Kong can’t keep up with the demand. And they’re all over. The world, I mean. Look at this copy of GQ. It has pictures of handsome guys like you carrying it from Europe to Asia to America. I’ve got to tell you, though, most of the guys in these pictures don’t look as good with it as you do.”

“You don’t need to flatter me to make the sale,” I laughed. “I’m sold.”

“I’m not really. Are you a beach bum? It’s, like, just my luck to pick out somebody who doesn’t have a penny to his name. But I guess you wouldn’t be buying this bag if you were poor.”

“That’s true. $500? Wow!”

“Marcie, our manager is raising the price another twenty percent, but I haven’t got them marked yet. She says no one knows the difference between $500 and $599. Can you believe that? No one’s supposed to notice the price went up a hundred bucks!”

“Is this like your career? I mean selling luggage?”

“Oh! No, but I haven’t had much luck with my real career, and a girl’s got to eat.”

“What’s the real career?”

“Singer actor dancer. Triple threat, they say in the theatre. But live theatre is being undercut by the media. Ever since that pandemic hit a few years ago, people don’t go to as much live entertainment as they used to. At least not live theatre. I guess the music venues are still packing them in. I finally thought I had my big break. New show, with good music, and I had the lead. Then opening night—would you believe it?—management came through and told us the show was canceled and the theatre was closed by order of the governor. They kept telling us we’d pick up where we left off, but the playwright died from COVID and the theatre company went bankrupt. The building is in use for corporate meetings and live audience recording of comedians and such.”

“Gee, that’s too bad. I bet you’d be dynamite on stage. I used to do some performing myself. All classics though,” I said. I didn’t say I was in original Greek plays 2,500 years ago.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day,” she quoted. “I was in that Scottish play in college. We learned classics as much as musical theatre.”

“I hope that one didn’t have any catastrophes waiting in the wings.”

“Only minor ones. I grabbed a drink of water just before going on stage and was choking when I heard the messenger tell me the king was coming. I made it through, though:

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty!

“I got some nice notices.”

“It gives me the chills to hear you talk like that,” I laughed. Her voice was really quite compelling.

“It’s high school drama these days. You find Shakespeare in specific festival theaters around the country. Ashland, Stratford, Stratford, and Stratford, Canterbury, Cambridge. I am not going to even consider going to Alabama for their festival!”