"Ah, but that's the beauty of it. Four nuts on a desert island. What'll happen? Indeed. Who knows?"

Frank eyed Henry carefully. "Sometimes, Henry, I know your ideas are beyond bad taste and outright suck, but what happens as a result of your ideas is what catches fire."

"Congratulations, Frank, you're the first man astute enough to look up my sleeve."

"A wildfire," added Dillon. "Like a giant uncontrolled forest fire."

"The formula here is to create the conditions of chaos, and then just let chaos happen."

"Hmmm," said Dillon.

"Remember our new network motto: We don't showcase reality, we make it happen."

"Yes," said Dillon.

"Frank, I sense hesitation. Didn't I make you the most hated man in America?"

Dillon blinked. "Yes, you did. Just last night my wife got a death threat from an Islamic --"

"Frank. Frank. Being hated has made you rich. You golf with Ted Turner now, what the hell do you care. The best thing you can ever do is get crucified by talking heads on TV -- become hated, loathed -- as long as your concept stands on its own, is what people want and will buy. Randolph Hearst. You think Hugh Hefner's crying himself to sleep every night --"

The president of BOP sighed. "All right, Henry, relax, already. Jeez, you're like a little dog humping my leg. All right, you win. You can have your show."

"You won't regret it, Frank. By the way, the working title is Life of the Mind. And once this little gold egg hatches, we will open a new frontier of television. Then what'll happen? Everybody will be doing it. Look at Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Nobody has any shame about copycatting something successful and waving it around like the new white meat."

"Yeah, you're right about that," said Dillon, fidgeting.

"By then, though, we'll already be way ahead."

"We will?"

"We'll pull off our biggest coup yet," said Henry. He was grinning and his face glowed a bright red. "The market will be ready for it. We'll produce The Mary Magdalenes. We will put four women and one man who all think they're Mary Magdalene in the same house and let them live together for a month. We'll get six men and four women who all believe they're the devil or vampires of Napoleon or whatever. We'll run a lottery among all our viewers who are men, and the lucky winner gets to live confined with ten beautiful nymphomaniac women for a month. We'll call it One in a Million. By then, we won't be called a network anymore; we'll be a public service. And by then, I won't be a producer, Frank. You're going to make me rich while I make you rich. You're going to make me a vice president. Or a god."

Dillon looked uncomfortable. "Jeez, Henry."

Henry grinned at him. He didn't actually care about the money anymore. He truly wanted to make reality happen. In fact, he wanted to make television history.

"My name is Harry Groucho, no relation, heh, heh, and I'm an expert on germs. I agreed to come on Life of the Mind because I wanted to get the word out about proper hygiene, which is misunderstood. Germs cannot be beaten but they can be held at bay or else they get into your house, everywhere, on your skin, in your body and even in your brain." Pause. "First of all, a lot of people confuse bacteria and viruses. Viruses are tiny, simple creatures and bacteria are larger, more complicated machines. Both can make you sick. Bacteria can reproduce without viruses, but viruses need other cells to reproduce. Viruses are little monsters that attach to or become absorbed by a bacterium, then infect it, programming it to become a factory for making new viruses, which it does until it bursts, releasing new viruses that in turn go out and infect other bacteria. Viruses can be contained by your body but some, like Ebola, are parasites so strong that they literally start ingesting your body. You should wash your hands all the time. If you have pets, every time you touch your pet or touch anything that the pet touched or might have touched, you should wash your hands. You should wash them before eating, after you use the bathroom, if you touch anything that your spouse has recently touched. You should wear gloves and never kiss your spouse--" Henry's phone rang in the studio his people had set up on the island, where the blessed air conditioning ran all day and night. He picked it up and said irritably, "Yeah?"

"The cams and sound systems are set up in the major cities and the big screens are ready on this end. All the equipment is set up. It was a minor engineering miracle, but it all works. We're waiting for the go-order from Mr. Dillon."

"Great. All we need now is for these nutcases we're marooned with to have actually come up with something big."

"Yes, sir," said the voice.

Henry hung up, turned the volume down on the show's episode-one raw footage that he was viewing for a possible "best of" episode follow-up to the series, and started cleaning up and organizing his desk for the tenth time that day. His hands were shaking, so he lit another cigarette and tapped his foot, sighing loudly, looking at his watch for the tenth time that hour. Still three hours until showtime.

"I hope to work with my team-mates to make a cure for the common cold," Groucho said quietly on the TV monitor, "or perhaps a chemical that will destroy all those little ugly parasites that live in your bed and live off your dead skin."

Henry sighed and tapped his foot even faster. His leg was gyrating. He hated to sit still, especially when he wasn't in control. He hated not being in control.