Writing Prompt: Arrested on Jeopardy

Decided to check in on WritersDigest.com, and I found this tasty writing prompt:

You are a contestant on Jeopardy and are in the lead. Final Jeopardy comes up and it’s a question you know. As you are on the verge of revealing your correct answer and claiming your winnings, FBI agents rush the stage and grab you and Alex Trebeck and march you both off into a back room and accuse you both of cheating. What happens next?

I decided to give it a shot, and I kinda whipped out this silly little scene. Maybe a little rough, but I wasn't taking this all that seriously. Hope it'll give you a good laugh or two.

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The black mask slides off my head. A blinding light floods my eyeballs, and I shut them. Somebody shoves the back of my head and shouts, “Eyes open, kid. Pay attention.” I never thought these FBI guys could be such d*cks.

I blink and slowly force myself to face the spotlight heating my face. I can’t make out anything past the light. But the more I look, the more I can see a shadow between the light and the darkness beyond it. It’s a human-shaped shadow. It must be another person—maybe another agent, or maybe the chief, however this sort of thing works. Whoever it is, the shape is still and quiet as a statue.

To my right, Alex Trebek is zip-tied to a metal folding chair. He stares ahead, breathing evenly. For an awkward moment, I can’t stop staring at him. Admiring him. Watching him on TV my whole life, I know he never freaks out the way the contestants and reality TV stars do. He never chews people up and spit them out the way Gordon Ramsey does. He’s not a blowhard like Donald Trump. No other TV star compares—Trebek is the symbol of civility and academia.

The d*ck slaps the back of my head again. “Pay attention. This is serious.”

“What is your problem?” I blurt aloud.

When I avert my gaze from Alex, I notice a woman in front of me. She’s short enough that her eyes line up with mine. And they’re sparkling emeralds that shine brighter than the spotlight behind her. I can’t stop staring at them. I barely even notice the FBI body armor encasing her wide body, or the assault rifle in her hands. The only thing that disrupts my attention is the pink bubble that suddenly expands from her thin pink lips.

When the bubble pops, she munches the gum all up and chews. The constant smacking should irritate me. Maybe it’s supposed to. But for some reason, I like listening to it.

She speaks with a Brooklyn accent. “So, you think you’re a smart one, don’t cha?”

I shrug, to the extent I can with my hands zip-tied behind my chair. “I made it to Final Jeopardy. That must count for something.”

“Yeah, right. A schmuck like you, just barely making it through night school, answering all those questions correctly for all this time. There’s something fishy about all this!”

“How do you know about my classes? You’ve been spying on me, haven’t you? For how long?”

“Don’t kid yourself, you had it plastered all over your Facebook wall.”

“This is ridiculous. You can’t arrest me for doing good on Jeopardy! I have rights…and this is an abuse of power…and…and…I demand a phone call! I demand a lawyer!”

Another slap on my scalp. “Calm down kid, you’re not being arrested.”

“What do you call this?” I shake in the chair.

The woman said, “It’s a test. Just relax, there’s no way you can fail it.”

From the corner of my eye, I watch the d*ck move away from me. He’s just as tall and scary-looking as Lurch, only he’s even scarier with the body armor on. Slinging his rifle around his shoulder, he reaches into a pocket and pulls out a shiny piece of fabric. He walks behind Trebek and holds the fabric thing over his head.

Alex finally speaks, “Gentlemen…ma’am…I hope you realize that if you go through with this, you will have to answer not only to my lawyers, but also to the studio.”

The dick hesitates, and glances at the woman. She blows another bubble, pops it, and resumes chewing. She gives a slight nod with her chin, and her partner covers Alex’s head with the mask. His entire head now looks like a silver bust, and tiny blue lights pulse from it.

The woman tells me, “Okay kid, you give us a few good questions, then we’re outta here.”

“What?” I ask.

“That doesn’t count. Here’s your first answer: this radioactive element has an atomic number of 94.”

“What?”

“Jesus, you are a moron after all. Come on, you had the right question to this thirty minutes ago. Did’ja forget already? Or maybe Alex gave you some help?”

Of course—the game. But this is ridiculous. Do they all think I cheated all this time? That Alex helped me? I know for a fact it’s not true. I simply knew the right questions, and I was quick enough to respond before anyone else. To prove my innocence, all I have to do is remember the same responses I had on the show!

Why then was my mind blank? Come on…atomic number 94…what’s an atomic number? Sh*t! I must have had the right answer during the show—why can’t I think of it now?

“EEEEE!” the woman shouts. “You lose! The correct question is, what is plutonium?”

“Oh come on, that’s one of the hard ones!”

The male agent says, “It was only worth $600.”

“Give me a $200 answer, and I will prove to you that I know what I know.”

“Kid, you don’t even know—“

The woman held up her hand, and the man fell silent. “Okay then, how’s about this? Jane Austen lived in this English city, best known for its Roman baths.”

Oh! I know this one. Literature is one of the things I was always good at. And everybody loves Jane Austen! Now…where did she live?

Sh*t! I can’t think of any English city. Can’t be London, can it? No, that’s Charles Dickens. Wait, who says both couldn’t have lived there? No, the answer specified Roman baths? What English city has baths?

“EEEEE!” the woman says. “The correct question is, what is Bath?”

“Seriously?”

The man says, “The correct response was actually in the answer, dummy.”

“I had a brain fart!” I cry.

“Yo,” the woman says. “Remove the thingy. We got to show the kid what a false positive looks like.”

The man removes the “thingy” from Trebek’s head. For a moment, his eyeballs flutter. Was he suffocating under the strange hood? Was it a mild stroke? When his eyes settle, he looks around, breathing normally, acting normally.

“Okay kid, riddle us this,” the woman says. “This hypothetical particle travels faster than the speed of light.”

Oh! I know this! The answer pops in my head right away and flies off my tongue. “What is a tachyon?”

“Congrats, kid. Now, how the hell is it you know what a hypothetical physics particle is? You never even had this come up on the show yet. You don’t look a nerd, either.”

I shrug. “I just popped in there.”

“Don’t cha think it’s funny that it popped in there so fast, right after we liberated Alex’s noggin for ya?”

“Wait, are you telling me—?”

The male agent says, “It’s a psychic transference, kid. Alex wanted you to win, so he’s been beaming the responses to your head directly.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard! I can’t believe my tax dollars pay your salaries!”

“Well, we appreciate the zero-year funding.”

“This makes no sense! Even if he could psychically beam me the answers, why would he do it now to prove your point?”

“Because he can’t help it,” the woman says. “I think it’s time to level with ya. Here’s the real Alex Trebek.”

In the space of one second, the woman swings her gun in Alex’s direction and squeezes the trigger. A hole pops in his head, and the back of his skull bursts open. The shot makes me jump. When I see the man I always knew and looked up to my whole life sitting limp, my stomach becomes an anvil. It’s so heavy, I can’t keep anything down—vomit spurts from my mouth. The woman jumps back from me.

Trembling, I shout, “I can’t believe it. You murderous bastards!”

Then, I see movement from the chair. Alex’s body convulses. My first thought: something in his brain is firing off the last synapses he’ll ever have, and his nerves are just twitching in response.

Then I notice the blood. The strange yellow ooze dripping out of the hole in his head.

A spark explodes in his eyeball, and blue liquid spits out of the eyehole. From the back of his head, something slides out and hits the floor with a loud bang. It’s a dark lump with spindly silver legs. It starts to scurry, but the man stomps on it hard. The thing cracks under his boot and oozes yellow fluid.

He says, “Didn’t take Alex to be one of the Bowvian models. Looks like I owe you a drink.”

The woman waves her hand dismissively. “He was a hard one to nail down, don’t worry ‘bout it.”

Shaking and stammering, I manage to release all my pent up confusion and shock in one barely-comprehensible phrase. It somehow comes out in a little girl’s voice. “WHATTHEF*CKWASTHAT?!!”

A voice answers me from behind that spotlight. “That was a robot, my friend. One of many that has infiltrated show business worldwide.”

I forgot about the shadow behind the spotlight, watching us the whole time. His voice is so familiar. It’s a voice I knew from TV, so friendly, but with a certain gravitas I always admired. Can it be?

The man steps into the light, and I behold the face of Tim White. The very same reporter who hosted my favorite show when I was a kid: Sightings. 

The woman blows another bubble, pops its, chews it. “Congrats, kid. You just won yourself the chance of a lifetime.”

The male agent cuts the zip ties, and I can stand up again. When I try, my legs shake, and I stumble back on the chair. Tim White simply smiles and says, “This is a shock, I know. But I’ve seen others who couldn’t handle the truth nearly as well as you.”

“What is all of this?” I ask.

Tim offers his hand. I take it, and he helps me to my feet. Patting me on the back, he says, “We’re building a team, and we need all the help we can get. Trebek was just a pawn—one of many. He wanted to recruit you for the Ultracomglomerate.”

“The what?”

The woman says, “It’s kinda complicated, kid. Let’s just say there’s some alien start-up trying to horn in on the human race, enslaving anybody who can be suckered on a game show and replacing them with clones.”

The man says, “And really, how can you not know Trebek is an alien robot? No human being is that civil or smart.”

Tim guides me out of the room. “Come. Everyone’s dying to meet you. We’ll have dinner in the mess hall—Sajak’s getting pizza and Bob Barker’s paying.”