“My Fair Bag Lady?” “My Fair Bag Lady.” “That was the pitch?” “Yup.” “What’d you say to them? “I said, ‘What the fuck?’—and they were like, ‘So, you’ve heard of our network?’ “Their network?” “Yeah. The WTF network.” “For real? “It is to them, and My Fair Bag Lady is going to be their flagship program.” “Okay. Back up. Were they pitching a show or a network?” “With these guys, it’s one and the same. They just kept throwing out this wild ass idea like some pixie dust in a goddamn fairy tale where they all live happily ever after in WTF land.” “Why didn’t you tell ‘em they could go WTF themselves?” “I dunno. They had this firkin.” “Is that some kinda gun? Did they threaten you?” “No. No. Wasn’t like that. A firkin is a small keg. And they kept pouring me this really good brew. And the more they poured, the better their pitch sounded. Total beer goggles on my part, but I think you need to hear the details.” “Why? I’m not drunk. And My Fair Bag Lady and this WTF network sound like the worst kind of diarrhea. Beyond explosive.” “It is. Completely and totally. It’s crapulous crap. Such a heinous reality show that even the Japanese might not touch it.” “What are you saying?” “I’m saying that it could possibly be the train wreck of all train wrecks that red, white and blue rubber-necking Americans won’t be able to look away from.” “Total exploitation?” “That’s it.” “Okay. Spew it.” “You’ve seen My Fair Lady?” “I’m corporate, not illiterate. Henry Higgins. Eliza Doolittle. Victor Frankenstein goes Victorian Frankenstein reanimating a Cockney flower girl into a London debutante. Rags to riches.” “You got it. Now, these WTF guys want to turn ‘rags to riches’ into ‘hags to bitches’—with a capital ‘B’. Their My Fair Bag Lady would be a competition based on who could take a homeless bag lady and turn her into a diva. Bottom line: how fast and far a bag lady could climb the social ladder.” “Heinous. Sheer depravity.” “Exactly. All the more reason to consider it.” “Of course, but this reeks. If it’s a competition, you know what’s going to happen with augmentations.” “Yup and you nailed it with the Frankenstein analogy. We’d see every tech enhancements out there. It’d push the boundaries of the meta-human controversy. Nurture vs. nature vs. nanotech. It’d be killer.” “That’s just what I’m afraid of. Augmenting the life and soul out of one of these pitiful souls, bit by mega-bit, one lascivious episode after another.” “So much better for ratings.” “Are we really considering this?” “It’s like Oppenheimer and The Bomb. We can’t stop ourselves once we know it’s possible.” “We have the power to say no. Or at least not on our watch.” “It’s us or them. These WTF guys will firkin seduce some other cockroaches.” “I guess in the big picture, there is no more deserving audience than the American people. God love our arrogance and asininity—which need no technical augmentation.” “Yes, God help us all and our WTFness.” “Amen to that. Now, what’s next?” “We need to bag our first little Doolittle off the mean streets.” “I already have regrets. You?” “Me? I could’ve danced all night…”
