Episode 140, originally published 13-Jul-2001

Malcolm's Ex

Will ex-wife Olivia's exam with Ingersol result in an expose'?
Will ex-con Larry be expelled by Jabot?
Will expired Matt/Carter be exhumed for an extended run?
Will ex-girlfriend Britanny exasperate ex-waif Mackenzie?

Olivia calls her bank on the phone. "Could I speak to the manager, please?" "Just a moment," says a voice at the other end. "This is Miss Underwood," comes another voice. "The bank manager?" Olivia asks, just to be sure. "That's right. How may I help you?" "I'm going to be involved in a legal sting operation, and I need a favor. Some people may call and ask about my financial status. I need you to lie for me." "I'm afraid we can't overinflate the value of anyone's net worth, ma'am." "No, no, you misunderstand. I need you to tell people I don't have the money I have. Can you do that?" "Well,... it's a bit unusual. But, I guess we could. As long as we don't have to put it in writing." "Thank you very much. I don't think you'll have to put it in writing. And I'll call you when the bad guy is in jail so you can go back to giving out proper information about me." She puts down the phone.

Malcolm is with a social worker talking about his case. "Let's go down our checklist for how fit a mother Olivia is," the worker is saying. "First, we'll call her bank and find out if she has adequate funds in case of an emergency." "Oh, come on. She's a doctor. Of course she's gonna have that," Malcolm says. "Well, let's just check, shall we? ..."

Larry is in the Jabot board room apologizing profusely to Nikki. "I'm afraid it wasn't just that incident with Brad, he says to her." She rolls her eyes. "You had another run-in?" she asks. "Uh, huh. At the coffeehouse. With your ex-husband, Victor." "You're really making this hard on me," Nikki says. "Look," Larry says, "let's just call this whole thing off because I'm obviously in way too deep. Just send my severance check over to the penetentiary, 'cuz that's where I'll probably be by the time you get around to printing it..." He walks toward the door, which is standing ajar.

At Olivia's office, Warren Ingersol is about to arrive. Olivia holds up a small hand-held tape recorder to Alex. "Shouldn't I use this?" "No, it's much better if I stand behind a door and try to remember what is said than if you tape it. It's more personal." "But what if you don't hear, or if you forget?" Olivia asks. Alex glares at her, "Olivia, are you interested in helping or just interested in making excuses?" Olivia sighs and puts the tape recorder away. Just then, they see someone's shadow approaching through the frosty glass and Alex steps behind a door to listen.

Ingersol enters Olivia's office and introduces himself. "I hope you don't mind meeting out here in my waiting room," she says loudly, trying to make sure Alex can hear. "No need to shout, Dr. Winters. I'm right here," he responds. "Now just how can Lawson be of help to you?" Olivia's eyes dart to the door and Ingersol's follow. Alex leans hopefully into the door, straining to hear. The door quivers and Ingersol raises an eyebrow to the camera, alerted to something fishy going on, but he says nothing. In his pocket, he switches on a small tape recorder. "I'm hoping you can make me rich," Olivia says. "Rich?" he asks, playing innocent. "Well, you know, I've heard that one can make a lot of money by controlling costs. You know, not doing certain tests and all that?" "Well, we would never ask you to do anything that wasn't in the best interest of the patient," Ingersol says, enunciating carefully for his tape recorder. "No, of course not. I'd be the one to take care of that. You'd just make sure the money shows up regularly in my bank account..."

Back at the Jabot board room, Larry is just leaving, but as he gets close to the door, Jack steps in. "Hold on there, Mr. Warton," Jack says. "Oh, no," Warton says, "now what? Did I step on yet another person's toes?" "Did I hear you correctly that you had a run-in with Victor Newman over at Crimson Lights?" Larry nods. "Yes, sir. But it won't happen again," Larry promises. "The hell it won't," Jack says to Larry. "Now, look here, I don't know what Nikki here's been telling you, but upsetting the Black Knight is not exactly a firing offense around here. In fact, it might just make you a friend or two." "Now, Jack, ..." Nikki says. "Don't you 'now, Jack' me," Jack tells Nikki, "It's nice of you to have supported us financially, Nik, but if you were just acting as the progpaganda arm for old moneybags, we'll look elsewhere." Jack turns back to Larry. "Now, Mr. Warton--Larry is it? Why don't you come with me while I explain our program for fast tracking promising mailroom employees to the corporate board of directors..." Larry looks back at Nikki with a gleeful shrug as Jack ushers him out.

It's the morning of the next day. Olivia is at her desk at the hospital when some FBI agents enter. "Dr. Olivia Winters?" one asks. "Yes, that's me," she responds. "I'm afraid you're under arrest." She looks surprised. Then Warren Ingersol steps in and smiles. He pulls out a small tape recorder and plays for her some choice moments of their conversation. "I can't believe how this woman wanted more money for less work, even at the risk of her patient's lives," he tells the agents. "Yes, sir," one of the agent says, "it's disgusting. Come with me, ma'am," they say to Olivia, as they haul her off to jail.

* * * * * HALF TIME * * * * *

Across town, by what must be sheer coincidence, it's morning also. The phone rings and Esther answers. "Chancellor Residence," she says. "Mac? Yes, I think she's around. Just a moment, please." She puts down the phone and calls up the stairs. "Mac? Mackenzie?" Mac comes running down the stairs. "What is it, Esther? If it's about the tofu scramble I left on my plate--" "No, it's not that," Esther says with a frown. "It's the telephone--it's for you." "Oh," Mac says, brightening. "Thanks..." She runs to get the phone. "Mac? It's Ned at the homeless shelter." Mac is surprised, but pleased. "Hi, Ned. How's everything going? Do you need me to come by and cover for someone?" "No, not exactly. It's just--well,--that girl from your web site--Britanny--the one who's been going out with Billy--" "You've been watching the web site?" Mac asks excitedly. He blushes, though she can't see it. "Well, ever since that 'anonymous donor' gave us a computer, we've been becoming more 'net aware' ..."

Trisha is at home sitting in a chair with a funny grin on her face when Matt/Carter (Marter) enters. She looks up, surprised. "How did you get here?" she asks worriedly. "Don't you remember?" he says. "Just as we were crawling out of the wrecked car, I came over to you and put my hand on your forehead and said 'Remember...' like Spock did in Star Trek II. "Oh, great," she says, "so your katra is stuck in my head. No wonder everyone thinks I'm going nuts." "Sorry, babe. What was I to do? I was done for and I wasn't about to risk the police shooting me before I made the transfer into someone..." "Well, that's just great," she mutters, because the technology for getting your katra back out into a suitable host won't be given to us for another hundred years. What am I going to do, wander around with two brains?" Marter shrugs. "After my contribution," he explains, "it's really just one and a half... but I can see how with what you're used to it probably feels more like three..."

"Ned, it's fine," Mac reassures her former landlord at the other end of the phone. "It's great, even. I think it's good that the people down at the shelter aren't left out of the Internet experience. But what was this about Britanny?" "Right. Britanny. Well, I don't know exactly. She came by here. She didn't give her name, and I pretended not to recognize her. But she was asking a lot of questions--about you, and where you came from. Didn't sound on the level." "Nothing is ever on the level with Britanny." "Do you know what she might have been up to?" "I can guess. And it means I'll have to work fast. Thanks, Ned. I owe you. Really. Thanks." She puts down the phone and starts to run out the door. "Wait!" Esther calls to her. "I boxed up your leftover tofu scramble..." "Sorry, Esther, I don't have time. Send it to the homeless shelter. I'm sure someone there will want it." "The homeless shelter? What a good idea!" Esther says excitedly, as she trots back to the kitchen to arrange to "help".

In Trisha's living room, she and Matt are chatting amiably about how they're going to get even with Nick and Sharon, when suddenly a Vulcan officer in pajamas--oh, no, wait a minute, that's a Star Fleet uniform--enters from offstage. "Tricia McNeil?" he asks, reading the name off a palm pilot. He looks around, wondering who she might have been talking to. "I'm sorry--did I interrupt something?" he adds. She shakes her head. "I was just talking to--er,--my--" "Marter's katra?" he asks hopefully. She looks shocked. "How did you know?" she asks, glancing worriedly at where Marter has been sitting. "Ms. McNeil, would you mind if I attached a holographic projector to your arm so that I could see and talk to him?" She looks skeptical. "Really. It won't hurt a bit," he encourages her. "Ok," she says nervously, rolling her eyes and extending her arm.

Stopping in at Crimson Lights on her way to the new Glow by Jabot house, Mac sits at one of the flat screens, typing furiously to search engines, looking for all the Mackenzie Browning's in the United States phone books. "Forty-seven of them," she mutters. "Good. One of them must live in the general area that I come from. Ah, here's one. Now, let's see..." She pulls up Adobe PageMaker and makes quick work of typesetting a document that looks remarkably like a school transcript. It's not long before she's pressing PRINT. Taking another school transcript out of her purse and opening it, she substitutes the new document for the old. "There," she says. "Now I just have to leave this transcript laying where nosey old Britanny will find it and she'll be off on her wild goose chase... This is going to be fun."

The man in the pajama/uniform attaches a small box to Trisha's upper shoulder using a wrap-around arm band, then opens a small door on the box and flips a switch. As soon as he does, a beam from the mechanism leaps out and Marter appears. "Nothing happened," Trisha says. "That's because you could already see him," the guy from the future says, "but I couldn't. Now I can." "And I can touch him, too," the officer says, extending his arm to touch Marter." Marter pulls away, but moves toward Trisha. "Hey, if anyone's going to feel my touch it's going to be Trisha here. ... Oooh, and maybe Sharon, too. ..." "Hey!" Trisha says, reaching for the switch on the armband, "you're a figment of my imagination, ok? Don't be getting greedy." "Relax," he assures her, "I'm just following through on the plan you brought me in for, right?" She sighs and lets out a deep breath. "Right."

"Forgive me for asking," Marter sys to the Star Fleet guy, "but what's your interest in all of this?" "Are you kidding?" the man from the future says, "You're one of my favorite characters. History records that you were almost allowed to leave the show when Nick murdered you in a recent episode, but you were brought back artificially. The problem is, the plot device they used isn't strong enough to keep you going for another 700 years." "700 years?" "Of course, you're still the number one show, beating out 'Eons of our Lives', 'Another HyperDimension', and even "The Guiding Subspace Particle Beam" by a handy margin."

Both Marter and Trisha are amazed with what the visitor from the future can tell them. "How long does my character last?" Marter asks finally. The man looks puzzled at the question for a moment, but then replies in a whisper, "I probably shouldn't tell you, since knowledge of this fact might somehow affect your future contract negotiations, but--well,--you're still on the show, even in my era." "I am? I must be very old." "No, not really. Sometime in the next decade, they'll invent a certain spa in Switzerland that acts as a kind of reverse boarding school, making you rapidly younger instead of older." "What about me?" Trisha asks. "Am I still--?" She stops mid-sentence, afraid to ask. "Blonde? Yes, I'm afraid even 28th century technology hasn't figured out how to counteract the ill effects of light hair color on higher brain function." "Wow, this is amazing," Matt says, "what about Newman? I guess he doesn't last much longer..." The man gets nervous. "I may have told you too much already, I can't say more."

Marter takes his future fan by the arm, happily noting that the portable holographic projector seems to give him the power to inflict pain. "Look here, man, I need to know--what else happens in the future?" He grabs the officer's throat. The man can barely breathe. "I can only tell you the obvious parts..." "Obvious?" "You know. Like that Olivia Winters still has a chip on her shoulder about some long forgotten indiscretion that Malcolm Winters did against her back in the previous millenium..." Marter, utterly bored by that one, tightens his grip. "Come on, that's not drama!" The man can barely speak now. "I know," he whimpers, "I fast-forward through it too. But you asked what happens and..." "I mean, like, what about me and Larry?" "Larry? Oh, you must mean Larry Warton, Nikki's on-again, off-again husband and Jack's right hand man over at Jabot..." Marter is really irritated now, tightening his grip even more. "Right name, wrong guy. Larry Warton's an ex-con, man." But the grip has gotten too tight. The man slumps dead on the floor. Trisha reaches down to check his pulse. "I think he's dead," she says.

As she examines the dead body on the floor, Trisha hears someone fumbling with keys outside the door. Before she can worry further about the body, it fades from existence. "That was convenient," Marter says, grinning. She presses the button on her arm and Marter fades from view, too. "So was that," she says to herself. Her father enters and sees her. "Hello, sweetheart, how are you doing?" "I'm fine, Daddy, how was your day?" "Just fine," he says. "I had a very nice talk with Victor Newman. And, honey, I promised I'd make sure you were taking your medication regularly." "Oh," she says with a grin, "you don't have to worry about that. I went out today and bought a portable IV device that continuously delivers medication into my blood. As long as I have this little band on my arm, you'll know everything is just fine." "That's great, sweetheart," Keith says with a smile, "I'm glad you've got everything under control." She pats her arm. "Thanks, Daddy, don't worry about me. With this new device, I definitely have the situation under control..."

That's all for this episode. Hope you learned something. Don't miss Episode 141!
If you missed any older episodes, see the index.

Feedback, good or bad, is always appreciated.