26/25
Season 7 has ended but not without a little sting in the tail. I will be posting about what's coming next very shortly but here is a little continuation of my Network and Femnonymous series. Both are available in full on my index page.
Bryce uncapped the bottle of bourbon and filled the two glasses on his desk. He handed one to the other man in the office and clinked a toast. Despite it being years since he had been CEO of The Network in any kind of active capacity, the tradition of Friday afternoon drinks with his chief legal advisor had persevered and as usual both men were shooting the shit.
“I am telling you Bob – this new show, Hot House, is our way back in. Viewers can’t get enough of it. The audience is still there for our product. We could air Spot that Sissy tomorrow, hell, Make up or Fake Up, Mutually Assured Distraction – put any of that shit back on screen and the viewership would eat it right up.”
“Right…” Bob replied tentatively. “But aren’t you forgetting? The numbers were never the problem. It was them! It was…Femnonymous…” He almost whispered the last word. “I am sure you don’t need reminding, but they kidnapped six of our junior producers and promised to force them to play their own perverted version of the Apprentits!”
“Sure, sure,” Bryce waved his glass dismissively, “but that was years ago. And here we are, still waiting. I am sure if they were ever going to make good on that, they would have done it by now. And what do we have? A big lot of nothing!”
“Actually…” Bob began uneasily, “nevermind…” He looked down into his drink for several minutes but when he looked back up his friend was still staring at him raptly. Realising Bryce wasn’t going to let it go, he continued. “Alright, but this doesn’t leave this room,” he sighed. “Five years ago, a friend of mine at the FBI contacted me to tell me that they had raided a secret Femnonymous compound on an abandoned island. No-one was there, but they recovered tapes. It was the Apprentits. Their Apprentits!”
“Holy shit!” The CEO’s glass tumbled to the floor. “Have you seen them?!”
“No.” His legal advisor shook his head. “But my contact did send me this.” He turned to a filing cabinet and pulled out one of the drawers. After some rummaging he produced an envelope with the FBI seal and “Classified” stamped on the front. Bob removed a photograph from it and handed it to Bryce. “That’s a still from one of the tapes!” He looked at his friend with a serious expression. “So, you see why we can’t revive The Network?”
“Woah…” Bryce fell into his chair without taking his eyes from the picture. A woman with long blonde hair in a bikini was kneeling before the camera – her body and face clearly surgically enhanced to cartoonish proportions that still failed to hide an expression of shame and helplessness. He tried to match the creature in the photograph to one of the six producers taken by Femnonymous and realised he couldn’t even tell if they were originally male or female. “This is extraordinary!” He met Bob’s eye. “But this is exactly why we should revive The Network. This…” He tapped the photograph. “This could make us millions! Please tell me you can get those tapes! They can be our comeback special!”
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