Michael shuddered again. “Do you think they know we’re here?”
“You got me there, sailor,” Donald said.
They walked for a few minutes in silence.
“Haven’t you seen enough?” Michael questioned.
“I suppose,” Donald said. “But I’m going to press on for a while yet.”
“I wonder if this thing repairs itself.”
“If it does,” Donald said, “then we’d have to question who was more alive, this machine or these people who seem to have so little to do.”
Suddenly Donald put out a hand, stopping Michael in his tracks.
“What is it?” Michael cried.
Donald pressed a finger to his lips for Michael to be quiet. “Don’t you hear that?” Donald whispered.
Michael cocked his head and listened intently. He did hear faint sounds in the far distance: soft bursts piercing the otherwise heavy silence.
“Do you hear it?” Donald asked.
Michael nodded. “It sounds like laughter.”
Donald nodded as well. “A curious kind of laughter,” he said. “It comes at such regular intervals.”
“If I didn’t know better I’d say it was canned laughter, like what you hear on a TV sitcom.”
Donald snapped his fingers. “You’re right! I knew it sounded familiar.”
“But that’s crazy,” Michael said.
“Let’s check it out!” Donald said. “Let’s follow our ears!”
With mounting curiosity the two men proceeded, hoping to find the source. At the junctures of each corridor they had to stop and listen to choose a direction. Gradually the sounds became louder, and with it, their choices became clear. As they rounded a final bend, they could tell the noise was coming from a room on the left. At that point they were convinced they really were hearing a TV sitcom; they could even hear the dialogue.
“It sounds like a Seinfeld rerun,” Michael whispered.
“Shut up!” Donald mouthed. He flattened himself against the wall to the side of the room’s entrance and motioned for Michael to move beside him. Slowly Donald eased himself forward. To his surprise, it looked like the screening room of a TV station. The far wall was covered with more than a hundred monitors. All were turned on, most tuned to various programs although a few aired only test patterns.
Leaning forward a bit more Donald noticed a man sitting in a white contour chair in the center of the room facing the monitors. The guy was a far cry from the typical Interterran; he was balding with scruffy gray hair. Sure enough, on the screen directly in front of him were Elaine, George, Kramer, and Jerry.
Donald flattened himself back against the corridor wall, away from the open door. He looked at Michael and whispered, “You were right! It’s an old episode of Seinfeld.”
“I’d recognize those voices anyplace,” Michael said.
Donald raised his finger to his lips again. “There’s a geezer in there watching it,” he whispered. “And he surely doesn’t look like an Interterran.”
“No shit?” Michael questioned in a whisper.
“This is unexpected,” Donald said. He rolled his lower lip into his mouth while he gave the situation some thought.
“That’s for sure,” Michael said. “What should we do?”
“We’re going to walk in and meet this guy,” Donald said. “We might have lucked out here. But listen! Let me do the talking, okay?”
“Be my guest,” Michael said.
“All right, let’s go,” Donald said. He pushed off the wall and stepped into the room. Michael followed. They moved quietly although the TV was so loud, the man could never have heard their approach.
Unsure of how to avoid startling the man and yet get his attention, Donald merely stepped into what he thought was the man’s field of vision but off to the side. The ploy didn’t work. The man was mesmerized by the show; his face was frozen into a slack, comatose expression with lidded, unblinking eyes glued to the screen.
“Excuse me,” Donald said, but his voice was lost in another burst of canned laughter.
Gently Donald reached out and nudged the man’s arm. The man leaped from his seat. Seeing the two intruders in the process, he shrank back. But his recovery was almost as rapid.
“Wait a minute! I recognize you two!” he said. “You are two of the surface people who’ve just joined us.”
“ Join is not the right word,” Donald said. “We had no choice in the matter. We were abducted.” He eyed the man, who was no more than five-two with a stooped, bony frame. He had deeply set, rheumy eyes, course features, and a heavily lined face. He was the oldest-looking man Donald had seen in Interterra.
“You weren’t shipwrecked?” the man asked.
“Hardly,” Donald said. He introduced himself and Michael.
“Glad to meet you,” the man said cheerfully. “I was hoping I would.” He came forward to shake their hands. “And that’s the way people should greet each other,” he added. “I’ve had it with that foolish palm-pressing nonsense.”
“What’s your name?” Donald asked.
“Harvey Goldfarb! But you can call me Harv.”
“Are you here by yourself?”
“Sure as shootin’. I’m always here by myself.”
“What are you doing?”
“Not much,” Harvey said. He glanced briefly at the bank of monitors. “Watching TV shows, particularly the ones that take place in New York.”
“Is this a job?”
“Sorta, I suppose, but it’s more like I’m a volunteer. It’s mostly that I like to see bits and pieces of New York. I like All in the Family quite a bit but it’s hard to catch reruns nowadays. It’s too bad. Seinfeld’s all right but I don’t get much of the humor.”
“What is this room for?” Donald asked. “Just entertainment?”
Harvey laughed derisively while shaking his head. “The Interterrans are not interested in TV, and they don’t watch it much. It’s Central Information that’s interested. Saranta Central Information is one of the main media reception sites for Interterra. It monitors the surface media to make certain there is no reference to Interterra’s existence.” Harvey made a sweep toward the monitors with his hands. “This stuff plays twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
“Hey, that reminds me. You guys got a lot of coverage up there on CNN and the networks. You’re all in the news for having gotten consumed in an undersea volcano.”
“So there were no suspicions about anything abnormal?” Donald asked.
“Not a peep,” Harvey said. “Just a lot of geological jabber. Anyway, to get back to me, I volunteered to come down here and monitor TV shows for the files and to censor out any violence.”
“That doesn’t leave much TV,” Donald said with a cynical laugh. “Why bother?”
“I know, it doesn’t make much sense,” Harvey agreed. “But if they do watch it, it can’t have any violence. I don’t know if you know it or not, but these people, the real Interterrans, cannot stand violence. It makes them sick. Literally!”
“So you’re not a real Interterran.”
Harvey gave another short laugh. “Me? Harvey Goldfarb an Interterran? Do I look like an Interterran? With this face?”
“You do look a bit older than everyone else.”
“Older and uglier,” Harvey snorted. “But that’s me. They’ve been trying to get me to agree to let them do all sorts of stuff to me, even grow me hair, but I’ve refused. Yet, I have to say they have kept me healthy. No question about that. Their hospitals are like taking your car to a garage. They just put in a new part and out you go. Anyway, I’m not an Interterran. I’m a New Yorker. I have a wonderful house in the best section of Harlem.”
“Harlem has gone through some changes,” Donald said. “How long has it been since you’ve been home?”
“It was nineteen twelve when I came to Interterra.”
“How’d you get here?”
“A bit of luck and the intervention of the Interterrans. I was saved from drowning along with a few hundred others after our ship ran into an iceberg.”