by Pfantazm

Author's Note: This is a story about reality TV. This ain't reality. If this sort of thing is reality, then what the hell am I doing here?

The show, characters, game concept and production company are all fictional and don't exist. (I just checked the company in a search engine.) I'm pretty sure Europe exists, and the cities I mention. What happens in this story, nah, that's all fake too. I'm just a big ol' liar. But you love me anyway.

This story will only appear on my web site, Pfantazm's Haunt, www.pridesites.com/pfantazm .

Alright, I'll admit it since the whole world already knows it: I was a mattress tester. Believe me, it's not nearly as interesting a job as it sounds.

I was leafing through the posts on a newsgroup I subscribed to, about game shows, and someone posted a notice that they were auditioning for a new TV show. The ad asked, have you ever wanted to be a secret agent? Would you know when to "Double Cross" your team, and would you be able to keep from getting "Double Crossed" yourself? It went on to say that they were looking for six players for their show. It listed a web site and an address for sending video screen tests.

The site went into a bit more detail about what the show was about: six players, but instead of the usual method of eliminating players, Everyone would be in the game until the end. Loyalties between the players would still be shifting, because there was only one prize waiting at the finish for the players who successfully completed their overall mission. Those players would split one million dollars.

Testing mattresses doesn't pay that well.

I rented a tuxedo, borrowed some really cool sunglasses, had an ex of mine who was a photographer get together with a couple of buddies of mine, and we all put together an audition tape. We figured everyone who did a skit for their tape would pretty much have to go for some kind of James Bond parody. I think we pulled ours off pretty well. We threw in a lot of humor, and I know a little bit of martial arts, so our one fight scene at least looked halfway believable. I was Double o' Nothing, the gambling spy. We had a blast making it, even if we thought nothing would ever come of it.

I mailed in the tape after making a souvenir copy, and figured that was probably that.

In late April, I got a form letter in the mail from Fieldstone Productions saying that my tape had earned me a chance at a real audition. The letter gave me a PIN and a phone number to call. There was also a list of dates and locations where the auditions would be held. I was to call, give my name, PIN number, and which location was most convenient for me.

I called everyone else up first. Now we were starting to get excited. Out of the thousands of tapes they must have received, I had a shot.

The two nearest locations were San Francisco south of us and Seattle to the north. (The only other West Coast spot was Los Angeles, which I said was way too intimidating, and it was eliminated early.) From where I was living in southern Oregon on the coast, the two trips were about the same distance, but the Seattle auditions were scheduled for the weekend, while the San Francisco ones were not. That settled it. The four of us would take the Friday off, and drive up together.

I called in to the production company and left a message on the machine that picked up.

It was mid-May, and we set off on our road trip. My stomach was unsettled the whole way there, like being at the top of a hill on the roller coaster, but all the time. I was laughing nervously at every dumb joke that got told. My companions pretended not to notice. They're very good friends.

We checked into a motel, with my ex, Carol the photographer, sharing a room with me. We'd been steady boyfriend and girlfriend in high school, ages ago. We ended up talking all night long, her trying to calm me down. All I could think was that I was glad we'd brought two people along to drive us to the hotel where the auditions were to be held. I'd get us all killed, and Carol would fall asleep at the wheel.

The next day we showed at the designated place up an hour ahead of time. There I saw a sight to turn my blood cold. There had to be 50 or so people waiting, even that early. Over the sixty minutes before they would start calling names, more would arrive by the carload. Some of them surely had to be here for moral support, like Carol, Mike and Chester, but still. There had to be some 200 people or more waiting in the hotel ballroom. Even if three out of every four were here as hand-holders and back-up drivers, there were fifty people auditioning.

There would be another audition at the hotel tomorrow, and then the producers would pack up and fly to a different city on their tour around the country. At a safe estimate, I had a one-in-a-thousand chance of making it on the show. I was crestfallen.

Our names were called in roughly the order we had phoned the 1-800 number declaring that we'd be here today. I turned out to be near the end, and I and four other lucky people would be called in to the business room beside the ballroom, where we were all hanging out, and be interviewed for fifteen minutes or so.

The four people I was with were a petite little blonde who was so nervous that she was practically whispering everything she said, a fifty-year old military guy who'd actually had some limited experience in intelligence, and an athletic man and woman who looked like they'd make a great couple.

We were all asked the sorts of questions you'd expect: name, age, did we have a criminal record, did we have a passport, if not, was there any reason we wouldn't be able to get one? Why did we want to play? What would you do to win the million? Would you try to get everyone on your team an equal share, or try to get it all for ourselves?

The blonde had no shot. If she could speak in an audible voice for the producers, she wasn't going to do it for a camera. I would have thought the army guy would have had an excellent chance, but they seemed to lose interest in him when the revealed he'd done some. I guess they wanted amateurs. So I only had two real opponents in that room.

Then came the question: Why do you think you'd make a better player than anyone else in the room?

The remaining male whom I'd considered a contender had a couple of inches on me, easy. He was a personal trainer with an ego that was even bigger than he was. He tore into each and every one of us, criticizing everything from the blonde's shyness to the other lady's clothes to my job. I could see the military man flexing his fist and wishing there weren't people he was trying to impress nearby.

Me, I was keyed up on lack of sleep, still in a bit of shock over the number of people I was competing against, and now pissed off. And I had the good fortune to go after the musclehead.

I said that while arrogant assholes who like shooting their mouth off without engaging their brains might make for good ratings because, after all, every show like this needs someone to hate, you can easily find one just by grabbing people off the street at random, and they should hold out for one who does a better job than the one here today. On the other hand, I told them, to be a real spy takes courage, intelligence, quick wit, and the toughness to stand up to the assholes of the world whatever they may do to you.

I don't remember exactly what I said beyond that. I was acting on pure emotion, and in a job interview or something, that kind of outburst would probably be fatal. The athletic woman was covering a smirk with her hand, and the military guy's hand was relaxed.

When I left the room and rejoined my friends, I crashed. Hard. I don't remember how I got back to the motel but I woke up there Sunday morning.

What I didn't know was that the Sunday auditions were far fewer than the Saturday ones. I didn't know that, geographically speaking, more people felt Seattle was the closest city to them than any of the others, which were mostly East Coast. I didn't know that I wouldn't really be compared to people from other cities, except for type, so that they didn't get all men, or all whites, or all non-assholes, so that we'd be from all over the country.

I made the show, and I phoned everyone I'd ever met to tell them. I booked half of June and all of July off work.

You all know how it turned out. Well, the ones among you who were fans of the show do. I went to Europe and got to play spy for a month or so. I was a Hollywood Square afterwards, which was almost as cool.

Back in May, though, among the great many things I didn't know about the game, I didn't know how it would affect me after everything had settled down again. Anyone would figure, going in, that the next few weeks were going to be the most intense, unforgettable days you would live. You'd build very strong friendships out of necessity of being in the kind of situation you were in, and those friendships might not survive outside the game. And money? Money would change anyone, even the sort who go back to working at the post office after winning seventeen million bucks in the lottery.

But what I didn't know, and what probably even the most dedicated viewer doesn't know, was one aspect of the game that the producers decided wasn't very appropriate to put on television: the things I learned about myself because of one other player. The one I would have bet would have the least impact on me.

This story is the inside scoop on "Double Cross".

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