Free Channel Blue by Jay Martel

face down while a medical technician stood nearby. An odd cartoon starfish appeared in the foreground and, in a high-pitched voice, yelled, ‘Now let’s go up his ass !’ An unseen audience laughed and applauded as the screen cut to the dark shadowy footage of a colonoscopy.
    ‘This is a show ?’
    ‘Why else would you put a camera up there?’ Amanda said. ‘Please. You didn’t think there was actually any medical value, did you?’
    While Perry considered this, an image of the cloud-shrouded Earth appeared on the wall in front of him, spinning in space as a deep-voiced announcer intoned, ‘Sick and tired of Earth? You aren’t the only one.’ The Earth then exploded in a cloud of fireballs, followed by a graphic: THE END OF EARTH . ‘Check it out this Autumn. Exclusively on Channel Blue.’
    ‘Don’t pay any attention to that,’ Amanda said, tapping away.
    Perry continued staring at the screen, which now showed what appeared to be an ad for a flying lawnmower. ‘Do people really hate us that much?’
    ‘I think hate is too strong a word,’ Amanda said. ‘It’s more like... I don’t know... bored and disgusted.’
    ‘Why? What did we ever do to them?’
    ‘When it first went on the air, people couldn’t get enough of Earth. They loved how naïve and stupid and selfish you all were, killing each other, eating your fellow mammals, starting wars over rocks you found in the ground. And every year it seemed like you became even more entertaining, with crazier and more effective ways of killing each other and yourselves: Bombs that could obliterate the world, super-viruses in biological labs, and, of course, the internal combustion engine, which in itself is quite a triumph of self-destruction on so many different levels. Careening around your highways in your metal boxes, poisoning the air, smashing into each other – our audiences had never seen anything like it. But then, they loved all the inexplicable behaviours, the ludicrous religious clashes, the constant fornication, the devastating wars over nothing – it all seemed fun and novel. For a while . Then, at some point, people grew tired of watching it. It was bound to happen. I mean, you live here, you know what it’s like.’
    Perry, of course, had issues with some of the people on Earth. Who didn’t? In some dark recess of his soul, he probably wouldn’t have minded seeing a mass slaughter of religious extremists, political pundits, investment bankers, fraternity boys and figure skaters. But to hate humanity so much that you wanted to see all of it destroyed? ‘Are we really that bad?’ he said.
    ‘You have to understand: in our world, poverty hasn’t existed in millennia. Here, in your richest cities, there are people with nothing, who don’t have a home, who don’t even have enough to eat. That’s incredible to us. How can anyone live in a house with twenty rooms while just down the street, a man lives in a cardboard box?’
    Perry felt defensive, though he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t think anyone should live in a box. Hell, he didn’t think anyone should have to live in his apartment. But, as Earth’s only representative in the discussion at hand, he felt an obligation to defend his planet. ‘Well,’ Perry said. ‘It’s complicated. You see, in a free-market system—’
    ‘And the killing ,’ Amanda interrupted. ‘In Eden, there hasn’t been a murder for 10,000 years. But here, you have complete strangers killing each other in massive numbers just because some guy in a uniform tells them to! It’s utterly insane! It’s a good thing you’re all so ridiculous and funny – otherwise, they would’ve started turning you off a long time ago. Here we are.’
    Amanda made a final tap on the pyramid and the wall in front of them filled with the image of a man in sunglasses driving a sports car through traffic while talking on an earpiece. His bright golf shirt was unbuttoned enough to reveal a tanned, shaved chest and a