Part 1: Necking in the Rainbow Room ↑ top
Nancy would have needed a dozen obedient ostriches to tear Conan from Grace Nall. He was going on about Elvis's last days. Faster, louder, deader. A puppet whipping his own string, struggling to jerk himself to life.
When Nancy touched his shoulder, he felt like wood. The party had sucked out the strength and the softness, and the warmth from his blue eyes. He burned with an icy Elvis mania. "You look at what the guy ate every night and it's a nightmare. A real nightmare." "Those sandwiches, I mean, wow."
Perhaps this was the nightmare. This party, in the Rainbow Room, atop Rockefeller Center, where everything was starlight and moonlight and ghastly murk. ALF Records had taken over the restaurant to celebrate the weaving of its new Web site, The Vinyl Spider. The marketing campaign depended on $5 million in advertising on Late Night.
Nall smiled. "Bacon and peanut butter is not my favorite combination," she said. She could say anything. She was the grande dame of Web site marketing. She had begun her career in jackets from TJ Maxx. Tonight she wore a stunning black Versace gown, the darkness relieved only by the scarlet hourglass on her back.
Guards at street level kept Sly, Madonna, Liz, Michael, John-John -- all the tabloid riffraff -- from intruding on her elegant affair.
Nancy was happy for her glamorous friend, but she could not rest easy. She drifted away, toward this cluster of faces, that cluster, toward the tables where the production assistants and ill-favored writers sat. Beyond even them to the glass window. She stared down at the taxes and buses that streamed along the streets like rivers of yellow diamonds. When she looked away from the jeweled rivers, she noticed Warren Littlefield bending over Greg Kinnear.
When they separated, Kinnear dabbed his neck with a cocktail napkin. Nancy saw for the first time just how long and sharp Littlefield's incisors really were.
As they rode back in the car, Conan shrunken in the corner, ashes of himself, she tried to tell him. "Darling," she said. "Darling. I think Warren Littlefield is a vampire."
Conan watched the rivers of gold and diamonds roll past. Here, at street level, paradise mocked the damned. "Hmmm," he sighed, long after she thought he had forgotten her statement. "I always thought he was a Pisces."
Part 2: A New Rolodex Entry ↑ top
Nancy took Conan back to his swank penthouse herself to make sure he would go straight to bed, there to lie until a drop or two of blood had returned to his veins. He let her guide him along.
She had settled him with him his guitar and a mug of warm cocoa when the troll appeared. The troll popped out of the air in front of Conan's home karaoke machine, a gruesome illustration for Men at Work's "Who Can It Be Now?"
Conan stared at his steaming cocoa. Nancy gasped. "Who CAN it be?" she cried, much alarmed.
The troll was short and yellow, with snake-like black hair and a face encrusted with red, white and black carbuncles. The troll snuffled. "Shlorble, shlorble," it seeemed to say. "Florble. Florble."
Conan awoke from his daze. He pointed at his remote control. "On," he murmured.
Nancy pressed the on button. The troll's face appeared on the screen of Conan's widescreen TV. Another pair of lips was superimposed on those of the troll.
Conan plucked a note on the guitar. "Who are you?"
A choir of alien voices seemed now to speak through the troll. "I, I am the Allbell."
"And what of it?" Conan scoffed.
Nancy shivered. "What's an allbell?"
The troll chortled. "An Altfancobber. And what, dear lady, is an Altfancobber?"
Nancy stood up straighter, determined to maintain her dignity. "An Altfancobber is a Late Night viewer. A fan. A human being just like any other, with a home, and a computer, and a -- "
The troll interrupted her with peals of vicious laughter. "A human. Like any other. Oh child, how foolish you are."
The Allbell explained that Altfancobbers were trolls who lived in the caverns beneath 30 Rock. "The Internet posts, those are just a by-product of our demonic passions," the Allbell explained. "When we steal a human soul, new posts appear."
Conan threw down his guitar. "Enough prattle!" he hissed. "Why are you here?"
At this the Allbell grew solemn. "To warn you that strange days are these. Strange days are these.
The cock crows in the evening
to announce the devil's dawn.
The men who drink the richest broth
are certain indeed to spawn.
The only other certainty
is that virtue's hope is wan.
Take care foolish human
lest ye serve as Satan's pawn.
Conan looked intently at the TV screen, as if seeing what no one else dare see. "Damn," he said. "Damn. Must mean another killer Visa bill."
Part 3: Warren on the Weekend ↑ top
Warren Littlefield awoke Saturday morning in a huge brass bed at the St. Regis, a lovely NBC page unconscious beside him. He stuffed $500 in bills in her bra, wrote himself a receipt from her receipt book and instantly recorded the expenditure in the expense log on his Macintosh Powerbook.
The girl rasped, but Littlefield paid her no heed. He'd drunk only a pint or two. All the better for her to achieve that Calvin Klein pallor. He decided SHE should be paying him.
He stood for a moment in front of a mirror before getting dressed, gauging whether he were fit for public view. His eyes were bloodshot and his face pale under his blond beard, but, hey, this was New York, not Burbank. Bloodshot eyes: good. Pallor: good. Soap would wash the rusty stain off his cheek.
Sunshine poured through the windows, golden as if NBC had bought it from George Lucas. Littlefield accepted the sunlight with his usual nonchalance. He might be a vampire, but he was no cross-fearing hick from Transylvania. He lived in Malibu. He'd slather on his SPF 150 suntan lotion and slip on his shades, and everything would be cool. Way cool.
He entered 30 Rock like a tourist. He headed down to the funereal shops of the undead in the basement. He opened what looked like a closet door and took a series of stairways, tunnels and elevators to the home of his master: the Nielsen Ratings.
The Nielsen Ratings lived in a dark, damp cavern furnished only with the dozens of television sets executives had brought it over the decades. Brandon Tartikoff, Fred Silverman, Grant Tinker -- many and glorious were the names of the servants of this fearsome creature.
It had 90 million heads and 180 million eyes. It insisted that NBC and the other television networks supply it with fruits and vegetables, but it let them rot. Instead, it washed down bag after bag of potato chips with beer and soda pop. Its main source of protein was the network executives themselves. Littlefield had heard ghastly tales about what happened to an executive from the old Dumont network back in the 1950s.
When it heard Littlefield coming, all 180 million eyes pointed at him. "What did you bring me?" it cried. "What did you bring me?"
Littlefield had come very, very well-prepared. "An anthology of Isaac Bashevis Singer's short stories," he said. "They're great."
"Excellent," the monster muttered. "Excellent." It took the anthology and set down on a pile of rotting broccoli and tomatoes.
"And I brought you a videotape of Conan's show. You told me you wanted something to cheer you up, to help you get out of his cave, and here it is."
"Thank you," the monster said, and set the tape down next to the Singer anthology. A rat nibbled on a tomato.
Now Littlefield presented a tape of young adults sitting on a sofa griping about their perfect lives. "And here's a sample of that show you wanted me to cancel."
"Oh yes," the monster said. "It's mush. Boring mush. It will destroy my soul." The monster slipped the tape in a VCR and watched it 500 times in a row. Littlefield left during the middle of the third repetition, happy that he had sated this master for another month.
The Nielsen Ratings was a treacherous monster. But the real monster, the monster of monsters, the silent power that all men and women carrying Powerbooks must serve, was The Bond Market. Littlefield had never seen that monster, nor dared to say its name to himself. He shuddered with delicious envy at the mere thought of that awesome agent of evil.
Part 4: Andy at Home ↑ top
Andy Richter spent that Saturday morning the same way he spent every Saturday morning: watching Scooby-Doo videos with his wife.
When his wife went out to go buy a plant, he turned off the TV and prepared for serious napping. He was about to drift off, thinking about the role of the Brady Bunch girls in modern culture, when Robert Smigel knocked.
The former Late Night head writer owned a co-op miles away in a ritzy building far beyond the reach of a sidekick's salary. He hardly ever visited Andy at home. Andy opened the door feeling like Shaggy about to enter a mummy's tomb.
"Yes? And you are???"
Smigel darted in without speaking, without smiling. His power-grunge Goodwill store Armani shirt hung on him as if he had been skipping meals for months. His curly black hair was longer and frizzier than ever. For the first time Andy had known him, every scrap of ironic distance was gone.
"Andy, what's the deal with the cloves of garlic hanging in Lorne's office?"
Andy had made it a policy to admit to knowing as little as possible about other people's offices. Especially the office of Late Night Executive Producer Lorne Michaels. "A cooking class?"
"I was just in LA. I've got to be back for casting. But there are really strange stories going around there about NBC. Really strange. What have you heard?
Andy poured Smigel a Coke. Shaken, not stirred. "Me, hear something? Now when has anyone ever told me anything?"
Smigel rubbed his forehead, as if trying to rub the thoughts away. "Andy. You'll never believe this. They say John Belushi has left his grave. It's empty. I swear. I saw it. They say a skeleton showed up at Burbank one night demanding a line."
"Must have been some bad trip, man." Andy gnawed on a carrot sticks his wife had cut for him. He wondered how it would taste deep fried and salted. "What does Conan say?"
Smigel frowned, nervous. "I can't talk to him about this."
Smigel had mumbled. But he might as well have screamed. Smigel could find a diplomatic way to tell anyone anything. Especially Conan, despite the show and the star thing.
"Something's different," Smigel said. "He's changed. I almost wonder if they've, if he's become, if -- " Smigel stared at Andy, eyes wide.
Andy shrugged. "Hey, it's not my kind of diet. I never did like soup."
Part 5: Origins of an Ostrich ↑ top
Tomorry nested that Saturday in a cluttered office at 30 Rock, preening her blue-black feathers as she rewrote a sketch. She could not talk, for she was an ostrich, but she was busy preparing for a hectic week of dashing off jokes, comedy bits and simple sketches.
Ever since Robert Smigel had left, Dino had written all of Late Night's material. The question of Dino's identity was complex. When he felt contemplative, he might become Jonathan Groff or Tom Agna. When other drivers cut him off in traffic, he became Mike Sweeney. When Conan had a really good hair day, that sometimes summoned the personality of Janine Ditullio.
On weekends, when Dino was alone with himself, he was not a writer. He was not even Dino. At least, not the Dino Stamatopoulos that Conan and Andy usually saw. On weekends, Dino assumed his true form.
Tomorry.
Now she sat in a pile of green blankets on her office sofa, careful to snap up stray feathers with her beak lest her secret be discovered. She had opened a bag of the tastiest birdseed and closed the blinds against the harsh white light of Sol. (A gentle red giant warmed the plains of her own world, the planet of the ostrich shapeshifters.)
Suddenly, the air sparkled. A figure half-materialized in the dusty air in front of her. A human male -- A human male with -- A human male with a BEAR growing on top of his head. Curious, Tomorry thought.
The male seemed to have as much trouble seeing her as she had seeing him. "Must talk," he croaked. "Must talk to Co-naaan O'Brien."
Must learn to pronounce Conan, Tomorry thought. But her ostrich beak was incapable of uttering any but the most rudimentary human speech. All she could do was coo.
"Great danger," the male insisted. Bursts of static drowned out all but a few stray words: "Kirk," "USS Enterprise," "NBC," "evil."
Finally, the static cleared. The male was as sharp as Conan and Andy on an NBC monitor. He gasped. "My god," he cried. "You're an ostrich. Is this an alternate universe? Get me a human. I need -- "
The static returned. The image vanished, leaving nothing but dusty sunlight. Perhaps this was a Trekkie prank, Tomorry thought. Yet she had a feeling in her rear gullet that there was something to "Kirk's" words, that somehow a fictional NBC universe had intersected with this all-too-real NBC universe.
Tomorry decided against rushing to Conan with the warning until she learned more about it. She remembered the favorite saying of her long-laying, long-brooding mother hen: "Never open an egg until you know who is in it."
Part 6: Conan's Real Father ↑ top
The guards let Captain O'Brien pass as if he were a priest in a terrifying cult, as indeed he was. Down the long pea-green corridor he strode, past the rooms filled with electronic computing machinery, madmen intentionally infected with anthrax and imbeciles exposed to nonlethal doses of radiation. Into a large bright lab with windows that presented a grand view of the Charles River.
Sentries saluted as he entered. Genuine U.S. Army fascists. He hated this place.
The Pentagon had ordered the "Bug Works" to shade its windows, lest the Russians observe its activities from rowboats. Professor Von Richthofen had compromised by using venetian blinds. They let sun shine on activities that deserved to grow mold in the dark.
"My dear Thomas. So good of you to come. How is your lovely bride?"
"Great."
Von Richthofen looked like the same old Nazi mad scientist; his lab, like the same old Frankenstein lab. Benches cluttered with beakers, Bunsen burners, oscilloscopes. Mounds of notebooks. A few grinning skulls. The whole setup offended O'Brien's sense of order. Worse, Von Richthofen sneezed every few seconds. He kept a hand kerchief ready but still managed to spray O'Brien with a fine sticky mist.
"Professor, let's skip the small talk. I'm really busy at Mitre." There, O'Brien was doing his Army service by continuing his work on detecting communicable diseases. Quite different from Von Richthofen's black Nazi magic. Plus, there was less mucus.
Von Richthofen scanned O'Brien's dossier. O'Brien was startled to glimpse not letterhead from Harvard, or the Bug Works, or even the Army, but from the FBI. "You were 22 in 1951, when the trouble in Korea began. Yet you chose to continue your education and get a medical degree."
Von Richthofen paused, as if inviting O'Brien to speak. O'Brien held his tongue. Even when Von Richthofen sneezed on him the ninth time.
"You've just completed a research fellowship in pathology at Cambridge. We all know how good the Brits are at keeping our secrets from the Soviets. Hah hah."
Again, Von Richthofen paused, and again, O'Brien held his tongue.
"Thomas, the Soviet leadership is in chaos. We have word their scientists are about to put an artificial satellite in the space above the Earth. These are grave days. Grave days. Are you with us?"
O'Brien had a harder time keeping quiet. He saw no reason to expect Armageddon from the Soviets. Von Richthofen -- now there was someone who worried him. The guy ought to stay home when he was contagious.
Finally, O'Brien said, "I'm a loyal member of the U.S. Army Medical Corps."
"Let me show you something that could change everything."
Von Richthofen drew O'Brien to a microscope and presented two slides, one marked Transylvania, the other marked Roswell. Both showed spiraling colonies of microorganisms unlike any he had seen before -- more like miniaturized electronic circuitry than living creatures.
O'Brien closed his eyes. "They're . . . very strange."
"One came from a charred cadaver at the site of a mysterious occurrence in New Mexico." Von Richthofen said. "The other from the grave of a reputed vampire in Romania. They can live on earth. They sometimes adapt to the mice we provide as hosts, sometimes not. We want you to determine why."
O'Brien turned abruptly away from the microscope. Away from Von Richthofen. He could not look at the man, or his inflamed red nose. "Do -- " He stopped, nausea rolling from his stomach through his intestines. "Do -- Do they affect PEOPLE?"
Von Richthofen sneezed a big, wet sneeze. This time into his kerchief. "Whe' I i'jected mythelf," he wheezed, "it gabe me a teddib' co'd. Teddib'."
O'Brien spent days afterward washing himself with the strongest antiseptics he could find. He spent decades trying to forget he had visited the Lab of the Snot That Came From Outer Space.
Part 7: Saturday in the Park ↑ top
Light light light. Noise noise noise. Sunshine, the clanging of the radiator -- Conan was too tired to make sense of his apartment. He lay in bed like an albino log.
He had spent the past six days forcing himself to understand ALL THAT. Manhattan. The orders his producers shouted at him. Worst of all: NBC. N-B-C. Nasty Brain Crusher. Nattering Blob Creator. Noggin-Bashing Creeps.
Conan's weary hybrid synapses failed him. An hour on a sulfurous beach beneath the Triple Sun would have done wonders for his feline half, but he had no idea half his genes came from the Cat People of Alpha Centauri IV. He thought he purred because, well, EVERYONE purrs. Right?
He had only a vague idea that Alpha Centauri was a star, no idea that it had planets, and not even a clue that half of him lived to catch and eat the Flying Rodent People of Alpha Centauri IV. He thought he liked Adam West because, well, the original live-action Batman represented the ideal Cold Warrior. A caped version of Lincoln or Kennedy. Conan chose to ignore the ravenous hunger he felt whenever West donned his mask.
Chirp chirp. The phone. "This is your mother, dear. Just wondered how you were doing. Bye."
Doing? He could barely understand the question. But, somehow, as if by magic, he woke up in Washington Square Park. He sat on a bench beneath a dusty tree, a hat pulled over his face, playing "Don't Be Cruel" to an audience of squirrels. The squirrels made him, er -- He chose to ignore that. He could always buy a hot dog from a street vendor.
"Hey, Conan."
It was Andy, looking more or less alive. He was carrying a small bag of vegetables from a green grocer. He reeked of garlic. And, for the first time that Conan could remember, he was wearing a crucifix on a chain. A silver crucifix. He peeked into the paper cup on the bench next to Conan.
Conan felt more or less dead, but he roused enough to laugh. "Water, sweet water."
"I just -- "
"Not blood."
"Conan, this is getting really -- "
Conan played louder and laughed maniacally, because that was much easier than admitting he was as confused as Andy. Perhaps he should study this vampire situation. First, though, he needed a nap.
Part 8: You're the Genius ↑ top
Two fans recognized Conan as he reached the Brill Building. He preferred eating fat-free vegetables to small talk with fans. But if he blew off fans, they might tattle to the tabloids, and Warren Littlefield would hear about the tabloids. The less Littlefield heard the better.
So Conan stopped. He managed a thin, bloodless little smile.
The tall bearded fan said, "I'm Joseph Nebus." The female red-haired one said, "I'm Lesley Grossman." As if he should know them.
"We're regulars in your Internet newsgroup, alt.fan.conan-obrien," the bearded one explained.
Conan thought of his desk: the pile of must-watch audition videos sent by the children of Warren Littlefield's dear friends. The pile of cryptic memos from his executive producer, Lorne Michaels. The budgets, the ratings reports, the angry letters from the guest who saw a cockroach in the green room, the frightening folder of lawsuit threats, the jar of hard candy, and, somewhere underneath all that, the folder of print-outs from alt.fan.conan-obrien.
The last time Conan had checked it, most of the comments seemed to come from a crazy woman who had chosen to analyze his show rather than develop plans for perpetual motion machines or theories about the conspiracy between the Trilateral Commission and Madonna.
Conan ignored the Allbell's warnings. Joseph and Lesley seemed real enough, not like gremlins who lived beneath 30 Rock.
"Hey, it's great to meet you," Conan told them after a long, weary pause. "We really appreciate the support of the fans."
The fans made sincere, intelligent statements about how much they loved the show, and Conan replied with humble gratitude, and all the while he wanted to bite their sweet, adoring heads off. For, really, he believed, they loved him only insofar as he could fill some gaping hole in their souls that he could never see, let alone fill. Meanwhile, they could do nothing to fill the gaping hole in his own soul. He knew the hole was there. He did not know he could fill it simply by spending a few minutes a day nibbling on catnip and playing with a ball of yarn.
"Well," he said. "I've got to get back to work."
It was an off week for Saturday Night Live. As Conan had hoped, Lorne Michaels was in his office.
Lorne leaned back behind his giant desk, talking on the speaker phone, holding a small jade figurine. He had purchased the figurine from a grave robber decades earlier, years before he had begun his climb to the top. Conan was the only other living soul who knew its secret: it was a talisman from an ancient Egyptian vaudeville cult. It granted comic inspiration to those it deemed worthy.
Warren Littlefield was on the line. "Next week's episode of Saturday Night Live had better be funnier than last week's, or I'll drink your blood for breakfast."
"Warren, the writers had an off week last week. It happens."
"Make them work harder."
"They already work hard. They need help from the muses."
"Look, Lorne, you're the genius. Make those damn muses cooperate or f**k their f**kin' c**ts out. Goodbye."
The phone shut itself off with a mechanical click. Lorne studied the figurine, his face lit by a hope as mad as the faith that had illuminated the faces of Conan's fans.
"Lorne," Conan said. "What's going on with NBC?"
The older man shook his head, eyes clouded. "The way of comedy is hard," he murmured.
"But what about NBC?"
Michaels closed his eyes. "Go, my son," he rasped. "And may your path be strewn with banana peels."
Part 9: Sternina ↑ top
This is a story about a man who lived in a house in southern Connecticut. A simple house with 55 rooms, a barn full of Mustangs that never touched the road, and two crews of gardeners. One for the violets inside the house that the owner never noticed, and one for the roses on the grounds that the owner never approached.
And a mechanic, and a guard, and an endless row of dusty guest rooms that never held a guest, except for one poor woman, Margaret, who had a troubling habit of inviting herself.
For this was David Letterman's house. The Larrabees began Sabrina with a party, but this is no fairy tale. Letterman gave parties in his sad castle only when his agent, Mike Ovitz, and his executive producer, Robert Morton, conspired with his girlfriend to bring in the network royalty and affiliate nobility unannounced. Letterman would climb into the back of a CBS car in the morning, and when he returned there would be salmon, stuffed mushrooms, music, and, worst of all, PEOPLE. Endless people, talking, stealing his pictures, asking for his autograph.
Once, he could have pushed back the sadness for an entire night. But years of guzzling Nutrasweet-laden Diet Coke had addled his brain. He could clear the confusion in the day, and at night long enough to greet an affiliate station manager or two on the way out of the Ed Sullivan Theater. But at night, at night -- The most he could do was lie back and watch the Home Shopping Network. It was his favorite channel. HE was the one responsible for buying all those polyester-construction paper dresses and Buddy Biancalana baseball memorabilia. Enough to keep the perky hucksters on the air. The company would be bankrupt if it weren't for him, Carson and Arsenio Hall.
This misty Sunday morning, there were no horrid crowds of PEOPLE at his home. Just one well-behaved competitor: Howard Stern. He came for brunch in a beige Armani suit, a pair of beige loafers and a tasteful strand of pearls.
Letterman welcomed him with genuine pleasure, and a pang of what he might have recognized as surprise if it weren't for all that Nutrasweet.
The radio host held out his hand. He'd painted his nails a delicate coral. "Dave, it's great to see you so relaxed."
Letterman took the dainty hand and put his arm around his old buddy. "You look lovely, my dear. I hardly recognized you."
His friend laughed. "It's the hair."
And that was the truth: the King of Talk Radio had covered his leonine black mane with a lovely pageboy wig that showed off his delicate features to their best advantage.
Just then, a Ford Taurus screeched to a halt in Letterman's driveway, knocking down a bush and a young tree. The King of Talk Radio sniffed. "Conan."
Letterman shrugged, embarrassed. "Gee. The kid said he had to ask me about something. What could I do?"
Conan got out of his car, a bit like an impossibly large white rabbit emerging from a small black hat. He held back when he noticed his longtime tormentor standing beside Letterman. "Sorry, didn't mean to -- "
Letterman made a show of smiling. "Conan, I want you to meet Sternina." Conan's eyes widened when he recognized the elegant transvestite. "Wow, I didn't realize, I mean, Howard -- "
The radio host leered at the younger man. "Please, Conan. Sternina. I prefer to be called Sternina."
Conan blinked. "Why, certainly. Of course. Sternina."
Later, they sat on Letterman's seldom-used brick patio, picking at Norwegian salmon and caviar left from Ovitz's last visit. Conan fought to keep the damn fish eggs from rolling off the toast. "Funny," he said to Sternina. "I don't picture you naming yourself after a sea sprite who saves virgins from fates worse than death."
Sternina leaned forward, so close his hot breath blew across Conan's cheek, his hand almost touching Conan's knee. "Nah," he said, closing the gap and squeezing Conan's knee. "I'm named after the sprite's sister. The one who leads virgins TO fates worse than death."
Conan swallowed hard. "Cool. Sounds like a cool choice to me."
Part 10: Theft of Innocence ↑ top
The hairy hand crept up Conan's thigh. He felt as if he were watching someone touch an actor in a movie.
Sternina cackled. "Hey, Dave, I think he's nervous. Tell me if I'm making you nervous, sweets. It makes me hornier."
Conan roused enough to smile. "Sorry. I was just wondering where you bought your nail polish."
Sternina played the same dull improv script the rest of the morning: trying to impress Letterman by spooking Conan. Conan struggled to be polite. Finally, after two hours, Sternina decided to flirt with Letterman's driver.
Conan coughed. Easy to do, because he had just smoked five Cuban cigars. "Dave, I, uh, wanted to ask you about something."
"I have no idea what to do when the NBC condom machine swallows your change."
"Could we go somewhere more private?"
Letterman made a sour face, but he led Conan into his house, through hallways and up stairs into a dark, dusty study. The only interesting feature was a display case full of NBC affiliate mugs and miniature Indy cars. Letterman slid into the chair behind the desk. "What's the problem?"
"How long has Warren Littlefield been drinking human blood?" Letterman shrugged, screwed up his face as if to smile. "Why ask? What can you do?"
"Do about what?"
The question brought out Letterman's inner corpse. He seemed to age 50 years in a second. He shambled over to his display case and rooted around in the shelves. "I, uh. Conan. There are, uh, things you don't know about me."
Conan wanted to do something, but he had no idea how he could comfort the older man.
Letterman pulled out a small black cube. "I . . . When I was in the Boy Scouts, there was a scout leader. I went to scout camp and found out he . . . "
He stopped. He examined the wall in horror for a full minute before continuing.
"He wore metallic silver long johns. When I learned this, he took me into his ship and performed an experiment."
Conan shuddered. "A . . . probe?"
Letterman snorted. "No! He wasn't a friggin' pervert. He was an alien. He showed me the probable future of our planet." Conan took the black box, steeled himself for images of burnt out cities, glassy craters and deserts poisoned by acid rain.
Instead, Conan entered a virtual reality where every mother looked and acted like the mom from a detergent commercial, every father was like the father from a lawn mower commercial, and every child was like the children from cereal commercials. Where every song sounded like a Barry Manilow song, minus Manilow's wit, musical ability and depth of feeling.
Letterman covered his eyes to hide his tears. "Conan, they have no souls. No souls, I tell you."
"Where does Littlefield fit in?"
"There is a force of evil in this galaxy, Conan. A force of terrible evil."
"You mean the Dark Side."
"No. The Khaki Side."
"And they've come here to enslave us?
"Worse. They've come here to use our souls in party dip. Goddamnit, Conan, to the Khaki Side, our loves, our hopes, our fears, our dreams -- all they are is a goddamned appetizer!!!"
Conan lowered the black cube, staggered back into an easy chair. "Damn," he whispered. "Damn. I guess that explains the Danny Bonaduce show."
Part 11: Twelve Ostriches ↑ top
Conan ran over only three curbs and received only one speeding ticket on the way back to Manhattan. His careful driving belied the battle going on inside his head.
The Devil appeared with a neatly formatted chart. "Ignore the Khaki Side," the Devil urged. "Look at this set of priorities. Keeping job, high. Getting laid, high. Fighting the Khaki Side, low. What the heck is a Khaki Side? Why should it be any worse than paisley?"
Conan thought the Devil was being awfully cavalier about the alien conquest situation. "Dave says they want to turn human beings into party dip."
"Hey, a prospective sponsor is a prospective sponsor."
Conan would have liked to have heard from an angel. But as usual, a bear had taken the angel's place. "When the forest catches fire," the bear lectured, "a bear should warn all the living creatures."
"Right," Conan said. "Right." He wondered what the hell the bear was talking about.
The bear chased the devil into Conan's hypothalamus, leaving Conan to his own bleak musings. If he were not for himself, who would be for him? If he were only for himself, what was he? If not now, when? And, after considering these ethical questions first raised by Rabbi Hillel 1,900 years earlier, he came to a fourth question: How was it that he, Conan, a good Catholic boy, always seemed to date Jewish girls?
Conan continued pondering as he crashed through the garage door at his apartment building. He barely roused as he handed his insurance card to the parking attendant. Once he made amends for the door (he bought the building a new one every week or so), he fell into an even deeper funk. His feet walked him into the elevator. His fingers pushed the button for his floor without help from his brain.
The Allbell had to slap him on the back to get his attention.
"Conan O'Brien," the Allbell said, its voice a chorus of alien voices. "They have summoned you." Somehow, the Allbell seemed to have an easier time communicating than it did the first time it had visited Conan.
Back Conan lurched, through the elevator wall, down into another reality. He lay on his back, disco music pulsating through his blood cells, strobe lights and a magenta Lava Lamp dazzling his eyes. In the storm of light stood whiskered cat people in dashikis, polyester leisure suits and giant green kitty Afros.
The most severe of the cat people screeched at him. "So," she mewed. "What have you learned? How did the Vampires of Alpha Debtmarketium IV infect our delicious, nutritious ostriches with incurable salmonella?"
Conan wondered if someone had slipped a pill into his water, sweet water. "Look, if you're a sponsor and you're unhappy with the introduction to your new advertising campaign, I swear I'll be more sincere next -- "
The Allbell popped into the room, a lumpy, brownish splotch in an ocean of psychedlic felinosity. "Come on, Tinkerbell. You screwed up. You sent me to the wrong time. This Conan has no idea what you're talking about."
Before Conan could scream for his segment producer, the cats and the lights whirled. Whirl, whirl, whirl. He stood in the elevator, shaking like one of Letterman's terrified girl interns. He might have assumed the entire disco cat people episode was a hallucination, except for one inconvenient detail: the Allbell was standing right beside him.
Conan refused to look at the hideous creature. "I don't know if I want to do anything," he said. "I don't know if anyone should do anything."
"Be careful what you say. They monitor you through a device implanted in your hairpiece."
"Regardless," Conan continued, "it's time to talk. There must be a better way . . . "
He stopped, trying to remember a line from T.S. Eliot. "Between the khaki and the magenta falls the shadow."
No, that wasn't it. But it was close. Conan wished he knew what the hell that line meant.
Part 12: Leaving Charlotte ↑ top
Conan had no strength to chase the Allbell away. It oozed along behind him like a giant pet slug, following him all the way into his apartment.
When he made himself a mug of hot cocoa and collapsed into his easy chair, it made itself a cocktail of mustard and dishwasher detergent and oozed onto the floor in front of him. He hoped the building management would consider its trails the effects of normal wear and tear on the carpet.
Despite his overall sanity, curiosity got the better of him. "What the heck are you?" he asked. "Why do you smell so bad?"
The Allbell coughed a foul blue goo into a handkerchief, settled back on its haunches and began its unpleasant tale of decay.
"Once," it flurbled, its voice gradually settling into a screech that Conan could understand, "I was a woman named Allison. I lived in North Carolina . . . "
Allison found her managing editor at the restaurant's best table, plying roasted garlic dip on a real estate magnate. "Hey, Robert," she crooned, touching his shoulder. "My ATM card stopped working. Could I -- "
Robert excused himself politely but quickly. He herded Allison toward the door. "Damn you," he hissed. He shoved a wad of twenty dollar bills into her hand. "Go away. Forever."
"I'm just going to use it to -- "
"I know what you're going to use it for," Robert said. "Information. There are 12-step programs. You could stop reading The New York Times. Taper off on USA Today. Cut Internet use to five hours -- "
Allison spat at Robert. "How dare you. How dare you." She was practical enough to keep his twenties. She paid her electric bill and reconnected her telephone. When she got home, she booted up her computer like a woman turning a faucet in the Sahara. She guzzled posts about showbiz gossip, Babylon 5 and, above all, Conan O'Brien. Information flooded through her eyes, into her neurons, till distended cells exploded, splattering raw Conan data on their neighbors.
Arrow key arrow key arrow key, till she surfed through a cyber tunnel of Conan screen captures into a cyber temple. One more tap of the arrow key and she faced a blinding offwhite fog. A creamy whirlwind spun out of the fog, and soon it extended a creamy arm. "Behold!"
Name after name scrolled down, each a bright silver hyperlink that gleamed only for as long as it took for an electron to jump from one reality to another. Name after name flashed into nothingness.
Allison forced herself to back away, horrified, stimulated and somehow comforted by her first glimpse of the Home Page of the Webmaster of Death.
Allison stuffed her clothes into a garment bag and hopped on a train to New York. Through the grimy windows, Allison saw her fate roll past: dead leaves, dead warehouses, dead shops. Tombstones. Dead people who drifted along the sidewalks because the Webmaster of Death had forgotten them.
Allison took a room at the McBurney YMCA in Chelsea. It was a flophouse for the forgotten: gray floors flecked with rot; lead-flavored woodwork; residents who included alcoholics, incompetent drug dealers, paranoids who were not schizophrenic and paranoids who were.
Allison sank ever deeper into information intoxication, emerging from the Internet terminals at New York's Midtown Public Reference Library only long enough to choke down an occasional cup of coffee at an Internet cafe.
A Web wrangler took pity on her and let her gorge on Conan data. "Not that I don't care," he said. "Not that I'm indifferent to what you are doing to yourself. But I trust your judgment. I accept you for what you are."
"Cool," Allison said, and arrowed her way into an Andy Richter site.
Finally, on Friday, she reached the pinnacle: she attended a Late Night taping.
She sat in the third row. She could hear everything. Her line of sight was perfect. The show featured a scene with telepathic baby chicks.
But Allison wanted to leap through the screen and be one with the data, or for Conan to leap through the screen and be one with her. Here, there was no screen, only air, yet she could not leap toward the stage. Conan would not leap up toward her. They remained two separate bundles of wavicles, their probability spectra touching in only the unlikeliest of alternative universes, the ones where Pat Buchanan was kind.
She drank one photon of information too many. The virtual particles that formed her soul began to oscillate with the coherence of a suspension bridge nearing collapse. They bounced and bounced, and suddenly all of her selves rotated through the 12th dimension, into a props closet at 30 Rock.
She lay unconscious for days. When she awakened, she was the Allbell.
Conan snorted . "That's the most self-indulgent hooey I have ever heard."
"Yes," the Allbell flurbled. "Yes. The Offwhite Lords have sent me to roam New York in this form until I get a life."
Conan shook his head, musing that the Allbell's task might take a very long time.
Part 13: 30 Rockefeller Plaza ↑ top
Prolonged exposure to the Allbell plunged Conan into a daze. The next morning, he stumbled into an NBC car, barely aware that it, or the driver, existed.
He drifted through morning meetings, the rehearsal and the taping. Finally, after 14 hours, he was alone in his office with his fear and his Eisenhower mug.
Sometime around midnight, his Macintosh booted up. Strange characters snowed across the screen. Conan blinked. When he opened his eyes, a man and woman stood in front of his desk. The man was fair and athletic and looked like Melissa Gilbert's husband. The brunette was perfect in every way, except for the pointy ears sticking out from her long, shampoo-commercial hair. Conan refused to believe that his visitors were anything other than rabid fans who had snuck past security.
Conan felt in a drawer for his head shots. "Who should I make them out --?"
A powerful hand thumped Conan's desk. Eisenhower shook. "Wait just a doggone minute," said the fair-haired man. "We're not here for autographs."
Miss Pointy Ears glared at her companion. "Apologies, Mr. O'Brien. I am Delenn, and this is Captain Sheridan. What Captain Sheridan means to say is that, in your universe, we appear on Babylon 5, a science fiction television program."
Delenn trapped Conan's chin with her own claw-like hands. "Mr. O'Brien, please, listen to us. You work in 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Have you not wondered what happened to the first 29 Rockefeller Plazas?"
Conan wondered what it was like to date a woman with pointy ears and long lacquered fingernails. "The first 29? They disappeared."
"Don't you find that odd, Mr. O'Brien?"
"Odd?" Conan shrugged. "Hey, this is New York."
Part 14: Delenn Explains Everything ↑ top
Delenn held Conan's hands, her wise eyes feeding his soul with their warmth. She made him feel as if he could pay all his bills and organize his closets. He decided he would do more than sign an autograph for her: he would let her husband take a picture of him standing next to her.
Delenn had other ideas.
"Please," she insisted. "You must take us seriously. You are our last, best hope for saving an entire bundle of realities."
Conan wondered why all the pretty female fans all were crazy. He pondered the ethics of sleeping with women who were mentally ill. Just as he came up with a hypothesis that sex might be good for such women, Sheridan interrupted with a cold shower of evidence. "Your blood," Sheridan said. "You never could donate, could you? Strange antibodies."
Conan had felt little in weeks, but suddenly he was afire with confusion. Sheridan smiled and lifted a stuffed mouse from Conan's desk. "Half of your genetic code comes from the Cat People of Alpha Centauri IV. They stored their expedition crew in virus form. The rocket took 10,000 years to reach this world. The viruses survived, and one of them came alive in you. You carry secrets for fighting the Khaki Side."
"A pity," Conan said. "I'm a talk show host, not a galactic warrior."
Delenn pulled back. "Mr. O'Brien, this is the nexus. Above Warren Littlefield, you have The Nielsen Ratings. Above that monster, The Bond Market. And, above The Bond Market, General Electric. A corporate empire that believes that the entire universe should bow down to its light. It has distorted the fabric of the universes to make them as dull as possible, to ensure that Moody's gives its bonds an Infinite A rating in every reality."
"Ma'am, you exaggerate. General Electric is just a company. A company that has granted me certan lucrative stock options."
"But it is also a front for the Khaki Side. Does exercising your options mean more to you than saving your universe and millions like it from a future of conformity?"
Delenn's words troubled Conan. He escaped by pouncing on the stuffed mouse and wrestling with it on the floor.
Part 15: Maysie and the Lost Key ↑ top
When Conan returned to his senses, Delenn set a small blue box before him. Instantly, his own picture appeared in the air above the box, surrounded by rings of smaller pictures.
The first ring consisted of images that resembled the head shot in the center. The second ring showed variations: Conan with a beard. With a mustache. With a severe overbite.
The third ring showed a menagerie of animals and aliens that somehow reminded Conan of himself.
The fourth ring showed rocks, puddles and clouds.
Conan shrugged. "Maybe it would work on the Warner Brothers network."
Delenn tapped a button. Now, Conan could see that each picture represented a mountain of other pictures. He understood the full story behind each image the instant he looked at it.
In some he was not a human being at all, but merely a character hallucinated by the hideous Allbell.
In some he was strong and happy. In others he was so crippled by an attack from the Khaki Side that he sent his brother to break off a relationship with a girlfriend.
Conan shook his head. "Definitely TV-14."
"It's not a television program," Delenn said. "It's a fate meter. It measures the distance that people, objects and ideas extend into alternative realities. Into the fifth dimension, so to speak."
"How sad. What do you want me to do with this fate meter?"
"We want you to help us reach a wise man who may know the hidden weaknesses of NBC. Ernie Kovacs. We understand that you've spoken to him."
Conan thought hard about this task. He in this universe might be able to reach Kovacs, if he had the key to the safe that held the right Ouija board. But his former assistant, Maysie Anderson, was the one who had kept the keys to the Ouija board safe. Conan had no idea where the keys might be.
Conan took over the controls of the fate meter to find a path to the knowledge he needed. He found that some versions of himself had treated Maysie well, while others had gained sadistic pleasure from sending her out for ever-rarer brands of bottled water.
The Maysie Andersons who had kept the Ouija safe key were the same Maysie Andersons who had searched high and low for filtered, melted Antarctic ice.
Delenn helped him to free his soul from his body and travel through astral projection to a citadel of the Khaki Side, the Jones Temporary Agency in Midtown Manhattan. There he encountered a version of Maysie. She lay face down on a sofa in the women's bathroom, shaking like a bowl of Mexican jumping bean jelly.
"No more assisting," Maysie sobbed. "No more assisting. I'm going to find a job that uses my intelligence and education. I'm going to find a job that uses my intelligence and education. I'm going to . . ."
Part 16: Starship Zippers ↑ top
Conan reached out to calm his former secretary. "Easy, Maysie. Easy. Secretaries are people, too."
Maysie lay still. She looked confused for a moment, then grateful, then terrified. She rolled off the women's bathroom sofa and under it, pressing herself against the wall like an enormous cockroach.
"Please," she shrieked. "Please. There was no fresh salt-free caviar for me to buy. None. None. Please don't kill me."
Conan tried to reach under the sofa to pat Maysie, and she slid even further out of his reach. She whimpered like a horribly abused dog till Conan lifted the sofa up to uncover her. She fainted. Conan roused her and reassured her five times before she trusted him enough not to fall unconscious at the first petrifying sight of him.
Conan helped her into an empty office. He sat her in an armchair and squatted on the floor next till him while she explained to him who and what he was in this alternative reality. In this reality, the Khaki Side had already attacked and enslaved the Planet Earth with the help of a diabolical army of Zippers.
The Zippers came in all sizes: small Zippers that zipped around human beings' heads and controlled their thoughts. Medium-size Zippers that zipped around buildings and permitted the Khaki generals to change colors, textures and climate control options at will. And large Zippers that fastened the Solar System into an isolated sack of space-time subject to the Khaki people's evil whims.
The Khaki occupation was a brutal one. The invaders plastered Calvin Klein ads everywhere, destroyed every piece of women's clothing that was not a Size 2, and required every living Earth creature to wear Brown, the New Black.
In this reality, Conan was not just a high-strung talk show host with a habit of throwing flaming jars of kerosene at unsatisfactory employees. Here, he was an agent of the Khaki Side, sent to generate propaganda in support of the Khaki dress code.
"I tried to hold out," Maysie whispered, eyes moist with memories. "I tried to stick to my jeans and a nice blue pocket t-shirt. But they came at me. Again and again. And again and again. Every time we destroyed one, 10 more came to take its place. More and more and more."
"More what?"
Maysie hid her face in her Brown (i.e., New Black) Size 2 mini skirt. "Of their catalogues," she breathed. "Their catalogues."
"Do they have any weaknesses?" Conan demanded. "Any at all? What about jamming the teeth of the Zippers?"
"No. There is only one hope. You must -- you must -- " Maysie looked up at the ceiling in horror. "Hack the t -- "
And a Zipper opened up the ceiling of the office and swallowed Maysie whole. It grabbed onto Conan and pulled and pulled, but Delenn yanked him back into his home reality. All the Zipper got was the tip of his pompadour.
Delenn watched him with worried eyes. "Well?"
"The tabs. We've got to hack the tabs off the Zippers."
Sheridan thumped the desk in disgust. "Damn, I knew it. If only we'd sent operatives in with rust when we still had a chance."
Part 17: Conedun ↑ top
As Conan sat silently with Delenn and Sheridan in his office, wishing he could slip into an alternate reality where he could be a ski bum, two monastic trolls knelt together on the sidewalk outside 30 Rock.
The trolls used bowls of brilliantly colored sand to paint a large, round pizza of truth on the pavement.
Interns in brown linen slacks and secretaries in brown cotton miniskirts strolled past without even looking.
A few executives in buinsess suits dropped spare change in the trolls' midnight blue Conan mugs.
Only the hell-eyed Moody's credit analysts stopped, and looked, and understood.
The motif of one quarter of the pizza of truth was the Conan head drawing. The innermost heads were drawn with the pure, mad innocence of youth. The middle heads formed brilliant hosts of scarlet-crested cherubim.
At the rim, in an area obscured by the trolls' robes, the Conan heads seemed to fade into the all-devouring grayness of the pavement.
A second quadrant depicted the economic history of the Khaki Side in terms of the widening and narrowing of club ties.
A third quadrant told the story of Earthlings' belief and disbelief in Idealism with a series of superrealistic images of William Shatner's scalp.
A fourth commemorated the noble civilizations formed by the trilobites who lived in America's inland seas, 300 million years ago, in all their dazzling, never-to-be-forgotten glory.
In the center of the Mandala at 30 Rock, the two "invisible hands" of Capitalism were made visible.
Each of the hands was clenched in a fist. The middle finger of each fist was fully extended.
Five years earlier, a small, Canadian figure rode forth across the steppes of America on a fine white horse.
The soul of the Lama Ernie Kovacs had risen to a higher sphere in the 1960s, and now Michaels was responsible for finding the new Kovacs.
Michaels rode and rode, stopping to lunch at many five-star restaurants. After weeks of reviewing tapes, he found himself in the writers' conference room on the set of The Simpsons.
The producers of The Simpsons stopped Michaels outside the gates.
"He is not the One that you seek," the producers declared. "He is signed to a long-term contract."
Michaels brushed them aside and strode in to meet his candidate.
Michaels lay three objects before Conan O'Brien: a whoopee cushion, a wig and a butt from a bitter cigarette.
Conan picked up the butt.
Michaels bowed. "You are the One."
Conan frowned.
The holy ones educated Conan in Art Deco palaces of black marble and gold trim. He applied himself dutifully to performing on his television show.
One morning in the summer of 1993, chaos intruded: a financial adviser spoke to Conan and told him about the meaning of his General Electric stock option plan.
Behind Nielsen Ratings lurked The Bond Market.
Behind the Bond Market were two iron handles held by two invisible hands. Hands clenched in two tight, angry fists. Middle fingers fully extended.
Conan met in the nether world of Conference Call with the Gray Men and One Token Woman of GE Corporate Accounting.
"We all must get along," Conan said. "There must be room for laughter. For love. For joy. For tender feelings."
The Gray Men and One Token Woman replied: "Estimate your expected contributions to Fourth Quarter Net Income."
Conan dreamed that night that his friends and loved ones had failed to meet the analysts' earnings expectations.
Conan summoned an NBC page evening in the first year of his reign and plied him with many cigarettes and doses of caster oil.
The page danced the dance of fate.
"Tell me," Conan pleaded. "Tell me what I must do."
"You -- must --- leave."
"When?" Conan demanded.
"When -- when -- when you have placed all the NBC Commissary silverware, and all of Robert Wright's office furniture, and all of GE's assets in an account managed by discreet Swiss Nazis, then you must leave. "
And do what?
"Do -- "
The page died, and there were no more prophecies to be gotten from his cold mouth.