The Unauthorized Guide to MindShifter

A novella in 8 episodes. Episode 3: Read the Comments

It had to be her. It had to be.

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The experiment continues!

Last week, I posted the second episode of my novella, The Unauthorized Guide to MindShifter, a thriller about lost TV shows, missing friends, and flyover small towns. The response so far has been small in number, but what readers have told me has been quite positive. It appears I may be fated to a be a cult favorite. I’ll take it!

Episodes are released every Thursday, all leading up to the thrilling SEASON FINALE! The remaining episodes will be available for paid subscribers, all of whom are extremely cool and smell good. Subscribe to follow along!

Also, each Sunday over the serialization window, I’ll be writing a little essayistic something-or-other about TV. Original fiction and trenchant commentary? What don’t you offer your readers, Adam?

Enjoy the episode!

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Previously, on The Unauthorized Guide to MindShifter . . .

Emma told Dorothy, producer of the show she’s working on, about the cruel trick she played on Melinda back in high school. The details of actor Harold Lieber’s death on 9/11 were revealed. And Emma found a clue on one of Melinda’s videos . . .

Episode 3: Read the Comments

Dorothy was not in her room. Knocking on her door and waiting a full minute for a response confirmed that. Emma texted her instead, which felt like an imposition. On set, Dorothy tried to remain as present as possible, speaking to crew members and interview subjects in person, face-to-face. Communication over walkie-talkie if necessary. Maintaining a personal touch was her job. When she did get texts, and especially when she got calls, usually it was NowPlay checking up on her progress. Making sure she got the right footage to appeal to the earmarked taste clusters.

Of course she got the right footage. That was her job and she was good at it. She didn’t need some executive checking in like a chaperone at a middle school dance.

But Dorothy needed to see this. Now. Emma texted, asking where she was. She had something to show her. The restaurant off the lobby, Dorothy responded.

The restaurant was a TGI Friday’s, actually. The franchise restaurant installed in the lobby of the franchise hotel, like some matryoshka doll of modern capitalism. Just the sort of junkspace that her friends and colleagues—well, colleagues, really, since she didn’t have time for friends—in New York disdained in favor of the local, the artisanal, the curated. Farm-to-table restaurants. Whole bean roasters. Yet as she entered the lobby and looked for Dorothy’s table, she was overcome with a sense of nearly religious awe.

This place, this TGI Friday’s in the lobby of the Holiday Inn–this was the only place that was real. More real than any restaurant with good reviews. Spiritually real. A threshold between this world and the next.

Her reverie was broken, however, when she arrived at Dorothy’s booth and saw she wasn’t alone. Sitting across from was Diane Henig, Emma’s mother.

“Emma, hello,” said Dorothy. “Sit.” As if it were the most natural thing in the world to find one’s boss and one’s mother sharing a basket of potato wedges discussing God knows what. Emma did as she was instructed, though. Pulled out a chair and took a seat. She was still carrying her laptop, open to Melinda’s YouTube page. Yet as she took her seat, she closed it.

Diane Henig regarded her daughter, her only child, with a mixture of pride and incomprehension. Pride, for Emma had managed to make herself, the daughter of a single mother marooned in a small Indiana town, into something remarkable. A filmmaker. A consultant for NowPlay. Living her glamorous life in the big city. Even though it wasn’t at all glamorous, as Emma tried to remind her during their phone calls. She was a glorified gofer, fetching coffee, booking rooms. But to her mother, she was on the other side of the screen. That meant glamour, renown, achievement. She could not understand Emma’s frustrations over her lack of success. She had made it out of town. A successful launch. She had done what Diane had done herself could not. How could she want anything more? What more was there to want?

Dorothy said, “Diane was telling me about you and Melinda.” Making Emma think she would be expected to offer some anecdote, something that could explain where Melinda might be.

But Diane Henig, speaking like a guest on a talk show, said, “That girl! I never knew what to make of her. So serious, like a little adult. More adult than me, even! But you and her were bosom buddies, weren’t you? I told myself, it was a good thing you had a friend like that. You didn’t have any others!”

Dorothy said, “They didn’t always stay friends, though. Right? Did something happen?”

Diane said to Emma, “Did she do something to you?” Emma said to her mother, “No, mom. Nothing like that. She’s missing. We can’t find her. Do you have any idea where she might be?”

Diane said, “I never knew what she was up to. Always on her computer. You—you were the only one who could talk to her face-to-face. A girl who doesn’t want to talk to her friends, in person, just on the computer. Can you imagine!”

Dorothy said, “When was the last time you saw her?” Diane said, “She was always over at the house, after it happened. The planes, you know. Watched the news all day on our TV. Don’t know why she had to do that there.”

Emma said, “Her mom got sick of it.” Diane said, “She would, wouldn’t she.”

Dorothy asked, “The last time you saw Melinda Midge was just after 9/11? That’s more than,” she tapped her fingers on the table, “more than fifteen years ago. You haven’t seen her at all?”

“She’s always on that computer, like I said!” Diane said. Emma said, “You’re always on your computer, mom.” Diane said, “I am always on my phone.”

To demonstrate the difference, she took her phone out of her pocket and performed an elaborate pantomime. She placed it on to her ear and mouthed a silent, boisterous conversation. She tapped at the screen, laughing all the while, in imitation of some lively text exchange. She held it before her to snap some photo, some memento for her camera roll. Her phone the baton she employed to conduct the orchestra of her world.

Such performances had embarrassed Emma all throughout her youth. Yet now, in this TGI Friday’s, curiosity exceeded embarrassment. Curiosity regarding Dorothy, who witnessed Diane’s performance with deep amusement. Dorothy placed her hand over her smiling mouth, thus making her eyes appear voyeuristic, as if she were peering through a window. She glanced, briefly, at Emma. Mothers, the glance said. She lowered her hand and opened her mouth to speak. Just before she did, Emma felt a strong premonition as to what she would say. She was proven right.

Dorothy said, “Would you like to be interviewed for this project?”

Her? Diane Henig? Interviewed for her daughter’s big-time TV show? “I’d love to!” she said. She beamed at Emma, who weathered the look like an embarrassed adolescent. Which, when it came to her mother, she was, and always would be.

“What, now?” said Diane. Dorothy nodded. Diane said, “I’m due at the salon in just a minute here. But later this evening, maybe?” Dorothy said, “Sure.” She entered Diane’s info on her phone. Diane stood to leave, and said to Emma, “You and me working together!” Emma, tight-lipped, nodded in response.

Her mother gone, Emma remained at the table with Dorothy. Her laptop sat on the table, next to Diane’s emptied glass of iced tea. She needed to show what she’d found, the p0pcorrn comment on Melinda’s video. But she asked Dorothy something else. Something she shouldn’t have asked if she cared about advancing her career.

“What are you doing?” she said. Her tone was accusatory. Dorothy, ever the professional, said, “She can give us insight into your relationship with Melinda. She’ll look great on camera, too. Better than you.”

Emma said, “I did that as a favor!” Dorothy said, “You are not in a position to do favors for me. You are my subordinate. You carry out my will. Unless you’re no longer capable of doing so?”

Her bluntness shocked Emna, even though it shouldn’t have. She had worked with her before. She knew she was fully capable of manipulating subjects, goading them into revealing their secrets, if that was what it took to get the footage she needed. Emma admired that ruthlessness. She wanted to claim some of it for herself, make others do her bidding even as they realized it went against their best interests to do so. But she had proven she was just as vulnerable to Dorothy’s manipulations as anyone else. Giving that interview, recounting her friendship, and betrayal of, Melinda demonstrated that. And now, Dorothy arranging another interview, with Emma’s own mother, proved that Dorothy was attempting to salvage this debacle by making Emma herself a part of the story. The eternal drama of teenage girls. And that, Emma knew, was the death knell. Become part of the story, the tale rather than the teller, and you lost all control. That was was how shows like Fan Files worked.

To think that talking her way onto this production, finagling her connection to Melinda into a story consultant credit, could have actually worked! She had believed that! But she wasn’t working the angles. She was making herself vulnerable. And Dorothy, the true professional here, had pounced.

Emma said, “I can do whatever you need me to.” Hierarchy reestablished. Reified, even. Dorothy higher than before, and Emma lower. At this rate, she’d be lucky to retain her lowly title of production assistant.

Dorothy nodded at the laptop, which Emma had forgotten about. “Something you need to show me?” she said.

The word was out of her mouth before she could even consider the consequences of keeping silent about it. “No,” she said.

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Excerpt from The Unauthorized Guide to MindShifter by Melinda Midge:

Chloe Rachel Mann grew up in the industry, behind the camera. Her father was a carpenter for several different production designers, constructing sets for TV, film and, especially, commercials. Her mother was a hairdresser who frequently worked on the same productions as her husband. A man-and-wife duo, both of them dues-paying members of their respective unions. And both of them suspicious, as only those who work behind the camera are, of those who worked in front of it.

They forbade young Chloe from going into acting, directing, screenwriting, producing, all of it. Vipers and thieves. So of course she defied them and dove headlong into acting, landing her first paying gig at age seven, in a Pop Tarts commercial. More roles followed: guest star in a TGIF sitcom, one line in a direct-to-video family movie. More failures too: she auditioned for many roles she didn’t land, losing out to, respectively, Lacey Chabert, Christina Ricci, Mischa Barton, and Alexis Bledel. Under advice from her agent, who said she always came off as more mature for her age, she eschewed family fare and focused on more dramatic roles.

A guest spot on Walker, Texas Ranger led to her getting a brief paragraph of coverage in Entertainment Weekly. Which made casting directors take interest. The director responsible for MindShifter loved her and, following the fastest audition process young Chloe had ever experienced in her extensive-for-her-age career, she landed the role of Eliza Danvers.

Chloe quickly became close with her costars. James Evan Pace (Agent Trammer) and Harold Lieber (Dr. Rathbone) served as a surrogate older brother and kindly uncle, respectively, for her. But her relationship with creator Paul Gass was distant, even chilly. This was only alluded to in the press coverage at the time, which largely consisted of trade publications that could never report what was truly going on behind the scenes. Yet subsequent knowledge, which you will find compiled in these very pages, makes the truth clear.

Chloe Rachel Mann discovered Paul Gass’s secret.