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    “Five.
    “Four.
    “Three.
    “Two.
    “One.”
    “What-up, y’all? Casey Lattimer, rockin’ on here wit ya, being on the rammer for the third straight—”
    “Cut!” the voice cried impatiently from the booth. “Christ, Casey, read the fucking line.”
    “Dude, I’m reading right off the fucking PrompTer.”
    “You said ‘being on the rammer.’ Twice. Does that make any sense to you?”
    “It’s on the fucking PrompTer, dude!”
    This was not cool. With scores of dopey-eyed teens pressed against the glass, watching Casey Lattimer tape his “live” video intros in R 2 Rev’s Manhattan studios, it would not do for the network’s star veejay to betray the stoned, mellow-assed persona the creative team had spent so much time crafting.
    Hutch watched from the shadows, curious to see how his newest star would handle himself, knowing it was just a matter of time before they had to free Casey from the safe-to-tape confines of the studio and set him loose as a functioning audience interactive. It was the flaw in Hutch’s good fortune, the greasy spot on his high-wire, that so much of his success depended on the on-camera skills of borderline mongoloids.
    “If it’s on the fucking PrompTer, I say the fucking words. If you don’t want the fucking words coming out of my fucking mouth, then get fucking someone to fix the fucking PrompTer!”
    Hutch looked to the kids gathered outside the studio on this Tuesday afternoon. Intoxicated at being so close to an actual TV celebrity, they nevertheless were squirming uncomfortably at the hint that bad vibes were seeping into their fantasy world.
    Everything was shiny on R 2 Rev; everybody was down. Hutch could practically read it on one chubby girl’s anguished face: Are there bad vibes at R 2 Rev, just like out here in the real world? Do they hate each other here, just like my mom and dad?
    Hutch stepped onto the heated studio floor, putting a supportive hand on Casey’s shoulder as he squinted at his stage crew beyond the lights.
    “How about it, Neal? Do we need to make some changes around here to make sure that the TelePrompTer is set properly for the talent?”
    The disembodied voice of Neal, the long-suffering floor director, absorbed yet another loss in the battle of “talent” versus common-fucking-sense. “We’re on it, Hutch. Won’t happen again.”
    “Come here,” Hutch said to his star, wanting to get him away from the scrutiny of the teens outside. But first, some damage control. “Give ’em one.”
    As programmed, Casey cast off his dark mood, turned to the throng with a taunting leer, and laid his trademark on them: both middle fingers, raised rigidly. Twin totems of maximum bad boy-ness.
    “ Fuck you! ” his trademark said. “I’m in here, drawing a nice paycheck for selling you the darkest, most cynical load of crap we can come up with, while you’re out there shivering in the cold instead of getting an education that might actually make you smart enough to see through this scam.
    “But just in case you fail to grasp the true terms of our relationship, here’s a genial ‘ FUCK YOU! ’”
    (Somewhere tucked into a lightless corner of the control room was an NYU film school grad, whose sole job was to work within the 30-second tape delay to digitally blur any offending fingers before they were beamed to the world. Twice in the net’s brief life, they had failed and the network had been fined. Hutch kept the toothless FCC complaints framed behind his desk.)
    Thrilled and flattered, the gathered gumheads saluted back in kind, already looking forward to the envious looks on the faces of friends somewhere else when an actual TV personality told them to go fuck themselves.
    “Fuck you! ” their frozen middle fingers replied. “Fuck all of us! Goddamn, aren’t we something, out here with our attitudes and our middle fingers all up in the air like this!”
    Casey basked in their adoration, extending his arms to their limit, willing