INTRO

“Listen. Burnett.” Jeff Probst stared out a rain-and-dirt-specked wall-sized window before whispering into the phone. “I can do this. Trust me.”

“Isn’t 49 enough? Haven’t you had enough?” the British voice on the other side of the call was pleading. “You’re not a kid anymore, Jeffy. We barely got out of New Zealand, what if something goes wrong next time? Really wrong, I mean.”

Miles away from Jeff’s mountainside penthouse, past the foreclosed sign and the dilapidated driveway, the tiny gleams of LA traffic raced up and down the wet highway, each to its own destination. Jeff didn’t really see them though. He was staring over the lights, through the stormy night toward the far east – toward the island. His wrinkled forehead made a thump sound as he leaned forward and rested it against the huge window.

“Mark, please. Just give me this. I don’t have to tell you what season the next one is.” Jeff closed his eyes and visualized a flashing neon 50 the size of a Hummer and himself as a younger man lying on top of it. “I need it.”

Mark didn’t answer. He grabbed a framed picture from the desk he was sitting at. In it, a Survivor: The Amazon-era Jeff Probst with a full head of black hair and a smile that could capture even the 18-24 demographic’s hearts was laughing, his arm hung loosely around a camera man’s neck, gently pulling him downward for one of his infamous noogies – the menace of the jungle back then. Mark smiled. Probst’s noogies were the only menacing thing about him in those days. Where are you, good friend? Mark thought, wiping the dust off the glass. What island have you gone and lost yourself on?

Mark knew that giving the aging Survivor host another shot at running the show he’d created so many years ago was the right thing to do. They weren’t the friends they once were – you couldn’t go through an experience like season 49 with someone and maintain a comfortable relationship – but he still cared for the old coot and he wanted to see him have this. Big 50. Hell, it meant as much to him as it did to Jeff, Mark realized.

But he couldn’t forget that cheek-burning dread of public shame. The sound of coming home to an empty house that was once filled with family and pets. The constant neck pains from having to look down and hide his face everywhere he went. Mark put the picture back in its place on the desk and mouthed the words he’d said thousands of times to thousands of strangers in the streets of LA: Get the fuck off me, I told you I’m not Mark Burnett! He wouldn’t put himself through any of that again, not even for Jeffy.

“No, Jeff.” Mark said, adjusting his phone headset so that the microphone rested squarely in front of his lips. “No.”

On the other side of the city, Jeff listened uselessly to that no. It sounded longer than any other no he’d ever heard – including the one he’d heard after the cancellation of The Jeff Probst Show back in 2012 – and closed his flip phone shut. He trudged across the empty apartment and lay down in a sleeping bag in the corner without even taking his boots off. He touched one of the tattered blue sleeves of his island-weathered button down and stared at the ceiling in the dark, unblinking. He had one last move, one final play. Jeff’s thin lips curled upward. Season 50 was his. He rolled over on his side and went to sleep, facing eastward.

I. CREATION

One year earlier, three months after the events of Survivor 49: New Zealand had destroyed Mark Burnett’s life and career and turned Jeff Probst into an all-you-can-eat humiliation buffet for a thousand ravenous celebrity blogs and tabloids.

Jeff was tinkering in his laboratory.

He’d built the lab deep underneath his glorious mountainside penthouse – the home he’d lived in since the runaway success of Survivor 40: Heroes vs. Villains 3 had made him into an international celebrity. The lab was only accessible by way of a secret tunnel that could only be opened by completing a three dimensional puzzle shaped like a fish, tossing the several rings that would then fall from the ceiling upon the puzzle’s completion onto three separate posts, and then pulling a lever that would raise a flag and also cause a bookshelf to swing open, revealing the tunnel as well as a gaudy immunity necklace that Jeff sometime liked to wear for fun at parties. Originally he had intended to design cutting edge immunity and reward challenges in the lab, but that had all changed now.

Now the lab was where the Survivor host did his thinking. And his planning.

Jeff examined the schematics that were stretched out on his work table and rubbed his tired Jeff Probst eyes. He’d forgotten to order a key part he needed and it was going to delay the project. Who am I kidding, he mumbled. I’m a reality show host, I’m no scientist! Jeff hurled a wrench from the table across the room at the far wall and watched as it bounced off and clanged onto the floor. The feathery, beaded immunity necklace he was wearing jangled slightly before he pat it still gently.

NO! the voice in his head answered. YOU’RE NOT JUST A REALITY SHOW HOST AND SURVIVOR ISN’T JUST A REALITY SHOW. IT’S THE GOLD STANDARD OF REALITY SHOWS. AND YOU ARE THE GOLD STANDARD OF THE HOLY GENRE’S HOSTS, PROBST. DO NOT FORGET.

But that still doesn’t make me a scientist! Jeff shot back.

The voice didn’t answer and Jeff felt like he’d won the argument, but also like he’d somehow lost it too. He sighed and gazed at the large object in the center of the room – his creation. It was covered by a sheet. He’d been working on it since he’d returned from New Zealand three months ago, since the voice in his head had started talking to him. Jeff untied a rope that was tethered to one of the table’s legs and the sheet dropped to the floor with a satisfying whoosh and then suddenly present in the lab with Jeff was

A metal man, the color of chrome, 7 feet tall and sporting that familiar island-weathered blue button down with the sleeves rolled up. A human-like crop of jet black hair gushed from its metallic cranium, coming together to form a widow peak in the front, just like the Survivor host’s days of yore. Its aluminum smile sparkled shiny silver and Jeff couldn’t help flash his own Emmy-worthy smile back in its direction.

CALL HIM THE PROBOST! The voice in Jeff’s head boomed.

The… Probost? Jeff asked the voice. I’m not sure, I mean it’s pretty good, but... the Survivor host trailed off.

NO GOOD? I GUESS IT IS A LITTLE CONFUSING. YOUR NAME, IT’S JUST SO CLOSE TO BEING ABLE TO REALLY ACHIEVE THAT PERFECT MASHUP.

How do you mean?

YOU KNOW. PROBST. ROBOT. THEY’RE SUCH SIMILAR WORDS, THEY’RE JUST BEGGING TO BE PORTMANTEAU’D. PROBOT… PROBSTBOT… SHIT IF ONLY COCHRAN WERE HERE.

What about Robo-Probst?

And once again, the voice didn’t answer. Or maybe it did and Jeff simply didn’t hear it over the tribal chants and drumbeats of the Survivor theme song that had begun to play in his mind.