"This is cutting-edge."

"Reality shows are everywhere, ever since that crappy Survivor. They're hack. I want something new. We're a world class network and we have to be cutting-edge."

"First of all, Frank, don't ever say, 'word class' in front of me again, or any other business terms that mean nothing," said Henry, smiling. "I'm not a stockholder or one of your dumb employees. Second, you can't say 'cutting-edge' over and over like some mantra or a prayer, although your network needs one. Saying it won't make it so. You have to actually do it. If that's too much like work, I can do it for you. Are you ready to listen?"

Instead of getting offended, Dillon's ears perked up.

"Well, all right, then," he said, pretending to be fascinated with cutting into his steak, "but don't waste my time, all right. This better be good." He blinked and looked up at Henry, as if realizing for the first time that he had never seen him at his golf club and really should have nothing to do with him. They weren't even in the same league. "If it weren't for Jimmy Cunkle," he added, "I wouldn't even be here talking to you."

Henry grinned and waited patiently until Dillon finished.

"First of all, it's a reality show," he said.

Henry's icon and hero was Jerry Springer, who had turned the production of human zoos into an art form.

Henry knew that America didn't want the Truman Show, where everybody's heart happily bursts in shiny homes across the land when their hero becomes self-aware and walks out into the world. A quiet, peaceful little town, where nobody's having sex or fighting, is boring. Only girls would like that, and Henry favored the heavy-testosterone male market, knowing that women could get dragged into male interests, but never the other way around. Plus only certain good-looking men, cleverly marketed, could become a woman's crush, while almost any good-looking woman, crudely marketed, could become a man's crush. But he was done with show-casing real sex. People wanted the grotesque side of humanity, he realized. They wanted gladiator contests. Every good story had to have conflict. Henry wanted to create a reality show that show-cased the grotesque side of humanity, a freak-show you didn't feel guilty about watching.

It was time to stop getting primitive. No more survival crap or temptation islands with good-looking phony people trying to win some popularity contest or resist temptation. We are entering the world of the mind now, he knew. He wanted to create an auto accident you couldn't tear your eyes off of, but one of the mind, one made up of people.

"The idea came to me when I was walking down Broadway past the Viacom Building and I see these black guys dressed in these weird Jewish-Arab outfits and preaching against white man this, white devil that, saying that blacks are the lost tribes of Israel. I was fascinated and I remember thinking, these guys are freaking weird!"

Dillon grunted, eating his steak, barely listening.

"In our show," said Henry, "we get a fanatic from each of the major world religions and put them in the same house. A Buddhist, a Hindu, a Moslem, a Jew and a Christian. We pay them but they have to debate religion for two hours a day. The working title of the show is True Believers."

"Is that it?" Dillon looked mildly interested now. "They sit around and --"

"No. They draw straws at the beginning of the show and the winner gets a church, temple or whatever built for his religion in some city in America. The losers have to help him build it. Then at the end of the five-episode series everybody worships God."

"Huh. How are you going to get them to agree to be on the show?"

"All fanatics have a point of view they want to get across, one that they think is the only right point of view to have. We're going to give them a national outlet. Think about it -- we'll probably have one less bombing and maybe one or two less jihads because of it. The show will also be cathartic for the viewers to see their champion arguing and to see these guys screaming and hitting each other. There will be office betting on who will kill who first."

Dillon grunted more, then said he would try it. It was a sick, tasteless idea but it sounded cheap enough and he was desperate for a good idea, any idea.

When the Hindu shot and killed the Moslem on TV in episode three, the show was canceled but the reruns made hundreds of millions and all the negative press coverage put BOP on the map.

Now Henry had another idea, one that was even better, that was even wilder. He barged into Dillon's office while the man was preparing to leave for a game of golf.

"Ten minutes, Frank, is all I ask and in return I'll make you hundreds of millions of dirty dollars in big, fat, greasy bags."

Frank sagged, then took off his jacket. "All right, Henry."

"I envision an island, a fantasy island. On it is a giant laboratory filled with exotic machines and boilers and test tubes. Ball lightning. Tesla coils, frothing beakers, tons of mysterious apparatus with no apparent purpose."

"Hmm," said Frank.

"We get four obsessive-compulsives on the island, people who are insane genius types. A germ freak, a guy into lost civilizations, a weird science nut and, for shits and giggles, a conspiracy theorist who will make everybody paranoid. We give them a laboratory and tell them that if they can come up with an invention that will significantly help mankind, we'll give them one million dollars. That way, we can play the 'IT' angle. What will they come up with? Ha ha."

"A million each?"