The Golden Globe

Still, Sparky knew no security was perfect, and Rocko knew Sparky was unlikely to fire him unless incidents like this became commonplace. Rocko was very good at what he did. There had been three stalkers at various times in Sparky's career deemed dangerous enough to warrant more than a restraining order. Two of them were serving long jail terms, and the third had not been seen or heard from in over three years. Sparky never asked.

He put the production-cost numbers back in their file and called up the story department. The analysis of the next seven proposed episodes was supposed to be delivered today, and he wanted to see what his staff of geniuses thought of the proposals. He was just in time; the Scrawlpad was downloading the moment he called up the file. He began to read.

Sparky had originally been designed as an endless (one hoped) series of one-offs. Each episode was to stand on its own as a story, watchable by anyone who had never visited the Sparky universe before. There was continuity, in that each character had a history created through his adventures in previous episodes, and to a lesser degree, a back story. These tidbits were all written down by the series historian, and maintained in a small document known as a bible. All television series had bibles. They enabled new writers to come into the fold and read up on each character, know where he or she had been in life, know his limits and strengths and personality. For the first several years that was just about all that was in the bible. Episodes did not co

When ratings begin to slip, new approaches are called for. The prevailing wisdom was that Sparky's target audience was too young to participate in complicated multiepisode plots. Too confusing, the pollsters said.

Sparky paid for another survey. This one found that estimates of the target audience were skewed by the fact that large numbers of viewers were staying loyal to Sparky even when they passed out of the targeted demographic: four-to-ten-year-olds. The show scored well all the way up to thirteen, when hormonal pressures led most Sparksters toward more sexual shows. And even then, kids who had grown up with Sparky still showed an interest in product tie-ins and in collecting memorabilia and old episodes. Sparky had filed that away for future consideration: surely there was a way to profit from this almost instant nostalgia when the teens grew into adults and had more money to spend. To that end, not much was ever thrown away from a Sparky production. It was all labeled, filed, and stored. "Taking a page from Walt Disney's book," Sparky called it. "If you can make money on it once, why not make money on it five or six times?"

"Retain the ephemera" became the watchword at Thimble Theater.

Then Sparky commissioned another study, and it was here that his feel for the audience transcended the dry pronouncements of focus groups and play-therapy sessions, measurements of eye movements and pupil contractions and palm sweat and heart rate, all so scientific and so lacking in the most important ingredient, to Sparky: magic.

He did the new study himself. He disguised himself and went out among the children. He hung around them and he listened to them, and he watched their eyes. He wasn't looking for pupil dilation, either. He was searching for that gleam of wonder as a child stammered out his recollections of a story that moved him. He found it, many times, and he found out something else. These kids remembered shows from two years ago.

So the show was revamped, gradually, to become a longer, continuing saga. Armageddon Angry was built up as the arch villain. Each episode might be seen as a skirmish, and each season as a war. There was a term in the industry for this kind of plotting, known as the "story arc." A problem would be posed in one episode, dealt with to a greater or lesser degree in three or four more episodes, and brought to a climax in the sixth installment. Meantime another arc had begun around episode three.

Keeping it all straight was a formidable task. The series bible grew from a dozen stapled sheets to a massive volume tended by a staff of three. There was another department whose mission in life was to steal. Steal from dead people, it's true, but steal nonetheless. Sparky had long ago given up coming up with plots and, except for the occasional inspiration, characters. Anything in the public domain was fair game. Old comic books were a fertile source. Almost anyone who had had his or her own comic book in the twentieth or twenty-first century had made a guest appearance on Sparky by now. Sparky had visited locations from Gotham City to Surf City. Old movie and television serials had been plundered for plotlines and cliffhangers. Sparky had entered alternate universes, places where classic private eyes, singing cowboys, half-breed aliens with pointy ears, and giant radioactive ants actually existed.

The show also had to keep up with trends. One fairly recent i

'Saur-punchers. 'Saurboys 'n 'Saurgirls. Sparky liked it. Brontoboys. Yuck. He lined it out. There were lists of words used by actual cowboys, suggestions how they might be adapted. Dogies. Chuckwagon. Brandin' and calf-ropin' and hog-tyin'. Bobbing off their tails. Did they really do that? Cayuses and fillies and remudas and geldings and poontangs and chaps and spurs that jingle-jangle-jingle. He'd heard somebody was using a T. Rex to round up his herd. True? Make a note, find out. And what the heck was a dogie? Some kind of cow dog?

Sparky was enjoying himself. This was the kind of work he liked. It was like studying for a role, something he still did, faithfully, as his father had taught him, even though he hadn't played any role but Sparky for a long time. His memory was practically photographic, and jammed with odd facts that had been learned for one role or another. At the same time there were vast gaps, and for the same reason. If he were called on to play, for instance, Christopher Columbus, he would soak up everything he could learn about fifteenth-century Spain and Portugal, but quite likely remain ignorant of the fourteenth century. And why not? What was the point of learning all those things unless you pla

He was so immersed in his reading that he didn't hear Rocko approach. The bodyguard tapped him on the shoulder. "He's here," he said.

"He's... oh, right." Sparky left his pad on the table and struggled out of the chair, which was too big and too plush for his comfort. He and Rocko stood together, the big man a little behind, ever alert, as a commotion drew nearer and nearer in the direction of the jetways. Someone was shouting over other voices. Then six or seven people burst into the room in a tumbling chatter, all centering around a tall, handsome figure.

"—criminal!" the man was saying. "I expect you to find out who's responsible and..."