“Sadness is your only contribution,” said the Kenner behind the mask.
“The unreal utopia is on the horizon,” Kenner said, standing and leaving the table. He left the room and walked out into a desert. He could see a squinting highway far off, parallel to the horizon, and a white autonomous semi parked at its center. He walked toward it, noticing that his ankle was now on-ly slightly sore and no longer swollen. He ran, covering impossible distances with ease.
The sky was an intense jewel-like blue and darkest at the horizon. A swarm of small white birds flew above him in an undulating cloud, and he took it as a blessing. The birds transformed into an Indi-an deity with countless faces and arms. Shiva? An electron could be both a particle and a wave at the same time, depending on how one observed it, depending on the very fact of the observation itself. This thought came to him, was hurled into him like a sharp stone from the deity on high. Useless information except that he was living the truth of it every second. Meaning as wide as the ocean. He ran, looking up, looking back down, looking up again. The swarm dispersed as he reached the highway, laughing.
He climbed onto the semi and opened the roof hatch, climbing down. He opened the metal slid-ing door and found Abram, Aila, and himself, all sleeping. He sat in the dust, his legs still twitching from the exhilaration of the run, and looked at himself asleep, drunk, and drooling, broken. A whiskey bottle tipped over near his feet. His swollen, grotesque ankle. He felt a theatrical dream empathy to-ward himself, the self ruined and dreaming. He began to cry. Life is a disease. He repeated the words, mindlessly digging into the dust with his shaking hands. Knowledge as unconscious as dust. A dismantled animal. On the other side of the capsule, the child dreamed, but her dreams crossed into a place inscrutable.
41
Abram sat inside a small crater, leaning against the rim. He ate a cold sandwich and watched Kenner, who remained slumped, sleeping on the other side of the room. He watched the little girl’s feet twitch in her sleep. A long time passed like this, but there was no way to tell how long. Hours or minutes, his inner chronology had broken somewhere along the way. He asked the screen the time and received no answer.
He remembered the series of moon paintings he put together for a group show in Berkeley ten years before. He sold none of them, of course, and they sat stacked in a friend’s garage in Petaluma. One painting depicted a nude male, a self-portrait, alone inside a large dome on the lunar surface, looking out into the useless infinite, touching the glass.
Aila made a strange choking sound and Abram flinched. He found her in the same position, sleep-ing. Most of her red hair had fallen out and lay scattered in clumps around her. The lower half of her face had swollen and elongated into a short muzzle-like protuberance, the skin tight and stretched to its lim-it. Her nose had wrenched and swollen into a snout. Abram let out a guttural yell and fell back onto the dust, creating a small cloud as he scrambled, wild-eyed, toward Kenner.
“What’s going on?” Kenner said, eyes flashing open.
“The kid. There’s something wrong with her.”
They watched the girl slowly stand with her back to them, unsteadily hunched and bestial.
“Okay. That’s it. I’m done. Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Kenner said, pulling feebly at the locked door.
The little girl made her way to the vending screen. Abram and Kenner crouched, terrified, on the other side of the room. The screen strobed indecipherable sigils, and the girl reached into the vending slot. She ambled toward Abram and Kenner, her breathing thick and labored, her feet swollen and near-ly bursting from her shoes. She handed Kenner an unlabeled pint of whiskey and Abram a phone, her small pink hands blackened as if deeply bruised at each fingertip.
“Thanks,” Abram said.
She returned to the strobing vending screen and sat, watching it. Kenner broke the seal on the whiskey and took a drink and then offered it to Abram, who wordlessly pushed it away. They watched the porcine child on the other side of the long room.
“This is chaotic. This is . . . This is . . . I think I’m losing my mind,” Abram said.
“No, man. I see it, too. The kid is turning into some kind of animal. I wonder if we’re next.”
“Whatever,” Abram said, turning to face the wall. “I’m calling Edie on this thing, or maybe I should call the police first.”
“What are you going to tell the police? We’re locked inside a semi full of moon dust with a mutant pig-child?”
“I don’t know. There was a shootout, remember? People were killed. We were almost killed.”
“Okay, but we don’t know where we are or where this thing is going. And they’ll think you’re a lu-natic.”
“I know that we were on Interstate 40. We started there. Maybe they could track this phone.”
“Mirrored navigated experiences,” the child said, still sitting across the room and staring at the screen, her back to them.
“What did she say?” Kenner whispered. “She’s listening to us.”
“I don’t care. I’m calling Edie first. Shit, what’s her number?”
“Who memorizes phone numbers?”
“It’s (415) 305-4187,” the child said, slowly.
Abram typed the number, and then stared in mute astonishment at the child, who became more pig-like with each passing moment.
“Where is this semi going?” Abram asked the child.
The child turned and hobbled over on her short, crooked legs, her ears newly pointed and folded over at the tips, two faintly visible crosses on the top of her hands. They were the blue-green color of veins. The small nails on her blackened fingers were falling off. Only a few wispy strands of red hair still clung to her scaly scalp. Her T-shirt, purple with a green octopus graphic, strained under her expanded torso.
“Lick Observatory,” she said, “at 7281 Mount Hamilton Road.”
“Why? Why are we going there?”
“In a system built of dreams, everything hides.” She smiled, showing small, sharp teeth. She sat in a small crater near them and watched with little pig eyes.
Abram called Edie, his hand and the phone shaking.
Edie answered on the first ring.
“Hello?” she said, out of breath.
“Edie, it’s me. It’s Abram.”
“Oh my god, Abram. Where are you?”
“I don’t know. Arizona, maybe?” His voice cracked and his eyes filled with tears. “I know where we’re going, though. Lick Observatory. “
“I’m on my way there now.”
“What?”
“It’s on Mount Hamilton near San Jose. We’re driving there now.”
“Why? Don’t go to the observatory. I’m calling the police after I get off the phone with you. I just wanted to tell you I love you, and I’m okay, and just get someplace safe. Hello? Are you there?”
Abram tossed the dead phone to the ground, covering it in lunar regolith. The dust stuck to every-thing via static electric charge. Abram and Kenner were coated in the gray-black dust up to their waists.
“You’re getting drunk?” Abram said.
“Yeah, my ankle is killing me, and that pill I took hasn’t done shit.”
Abram turned to the child. “What is going on? What’s going to happen at the observatory?”
“Bombardment sequence. The invisible time,” she said.
“Why are you turning into a talking pig?” Kenner said.
“I’m not a pig. I’m Aila. I’m five.”
“Is this a test?” Abram said. “Are they going to kill us? Do they want to know more about what we saw on the memory card? We told them everything we know.”
“Dreams are ghost science,” she said.
“Are they watching us right now through that screen over there? The Blue Lady cult or the NRO? Are they the same thing?” Abram said.
“Nothing is beyond our reach.”
She beckoned Abram toward the vending screen and accompanied him, lumbering on all fours.
The
screen flashed to life.
Lick Observatory. Located at the top of Mount Hamilton. The mountain road winding to the summit has approximately 365 turns. Gliese 876 was discovered at Lick Observatory. A red dwarf star approximately 15 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Aquarius. One of the closest known stars to the sun confirmed to possess a planetary system.
“Why are you taking us to Lick Observatory?” Abram asked the screen, his hands rising uncon-sciously as if to defend himself from a physical attack.
Lick Observatory. You will find me. The point of silent gravitational emergence.
“Do you know what this means, Aila? Can you explain it to me?”
“She is talking to you. Why are you sad?”
Abram didn’t answer. He returned to Kenner, who still lay slumped against the wall, drinking and glassy-eyed.
Abram thought of the scene in Pinocchio when they turned into donkeys. Metamorphosis. He thought of Kenner’s earlier rant about CRISPR, about gene editing, about human-animal chimeras. Abram couldn’t help but feel sudden immense compassion for the child. Compassion mingled with dis-gust and disbelief in equal measure. The child stared up at the blank vending screen. Abram stared at the chrome handle of the locked door. They all corkscrewed blindly upward, toward an unavoidable des-tination. Blindly. A fake moon. A system built of dreams.
42
“There’s a mouse in here.”
“What?” Abram said, waking suddenly and wiping his mouth.
“Yeah, I woke up because I think it was crawling on me, like in my hair,” Kenner said, searching the small room with his eyes and grimacing.
“Are you okay? You look all pasty.”
“Well, I just threw up. Over there in that crater. Don’t worry, I buried it.”
“It kind of smells like whiskey vomit in here.”
“No it doesn’t. I buried it. You wouldn’t have said anything if I hadn’t told you.”
“What’s the kid doing?”
“The pig? She’s been watching the screen since I woke up. Just sitting there, watching the flashes. She laughed a few times. I don’t know. It’s just flashing green lights.”
“How long were we asleep?”
“No idea.”
Abram idly tried the sliding door. It opened.
“Holy shit, it’s open,” Abram whispered.
They watched the pig girl on the other side of the moon room. She sat with her back to them, not moving. Kenner silently closed the door behind them.
Abram opened the roof hatch to roaring sheets of rain. Shielding his eyes, he could see that they were climbing a narrow mountain road. Just beyond the road and the steep drop-off beside it were sparse trees. A dusty, wet grass smell. Abram pulled Kenner up and they sat on top of the creeping tanker, being pelted with cool rain, climbing steadily. They were moving nearly slow enough to leap off with minimal injury, Abram figured.
He turned to see Kenner sitting, spandex pants pulled down, dick out, pissing off the side and laughing. Abram laughed, turned his back to Kenner, and did the same. An acceptance had crept in from somewhere. They could jump off and walk away if they wanted to. Free will entered into the equa-tion. Had a selfish, masochistic urge brought the past week’s suffering down upon him and Kenner? To what end? A yearning for authentic experience, even suffering, in a plastic world, thereby rejuvenating his artistic aspirations? The thought was perverse. Had he made it all up, out of nothing? The rain washed away the accretion of desert dust and moon dust and blood, vomit, sweat—elemental things. Kenner said something that Abram couldn’t hear through the persistent metallic pattering, and he moved closer.
“What do you think is gonna happen when we reach the top?” Kenner repeated.
“I don’t know. Maybe get questioned? Arrested? Edie at least knows where we are.”
“There’s 365 curves in this road. I wonder which one we’re on now.”
“Seems like we’re pretty high already.”
“What happened to that gold bar you were carrying?” Kenner asked.
“I buried it in the desert.”
“We can go back for it when this is over.”
“No, I’ll never go back there. It doesn’t matter,” Abram said.
“I hear that, brother.”
“What do you think the kid was talking about in there? All that random nonsense. Dreams are ghost science? Invisible time?”
“What about the fact that she turned into a talking pig? I told you she wasn’t human. I told you she transformed when we were on the roof and she killed Annie.”
“You didn’t tell me she transformed.”
“Yeah, man,” Kenner said. “She turned into like a black cloud or a flock of birds or something.”
“We were drugged. Multiple times. Who knows what really happened this past week?”
“You saw her turn into a pig down there.”
“Maybe she’s a child actor and they put prosthetics on her while we were sleeping,” Abram said. “Just to freak us out and gauge our reaction.”
They passed a small building, once a guard station, now empty and derelict. The scraggly forest gave way to manicured grounds and a series of dormitory-like buildings. The semi came to a silent stop in front of a symmetrical temple-like building, a large, white-domed cathedral apse at the end of either wing. They sat in the rain, which was now more of a mist, slack-jawed and soaked, legs hanging over the side of the tanker like two degenerate farmhands. Abram kicked the side of the tanker with his heel to signal the little girl inside.
“Hey, we’re here.”
Nothing.
Abram climbed back down and poked his head into the moon room. He didn’t enter fully for fear of being locked in again. The little girl, the pig girl, wasn’t there. When Abram reemerged, he found that Kenner had made his way down and was hobbling toward the front doors of the observatory. Abram climbed down after him.
The doors were unlocked. The lights came on as they entered the vestibule. The smell of scuffed floor tiles, old wooden doors, a university after hours. Abram thought of his college years. Pursuing a degree in philosophy. Had he pursued a degree in business, perhaps his chosen career would have lacked meaning but been more successful, more focused. A girlfriend once told him he was focus-averse. Now he wandered an abandoned institution dedicated solely to bringing the infinitely distant into fo-cus.
The halls were dotted with new metal display cases jutting from the walls like cave formations. Photos of the moon, detailed transparencies. Visitor information. They apparently hosted periodic moon-gazing cocktail parties with live classical music for wealthy patrons. A small conference room rem-iniscent of the room they were locked in at the police station, the same type of office chair. The lights came on as they entered each room. An oil painting of James Lick (1796–1876) with a large, ridiculous beard. They went up a narrow, crooked stairway and found themselves inside a dome containing an an-cient telescope, all dark wood and brass, the ceiling ribbed like the hold of a ship. It smelled like the black grease of machinery, yellowed crumbling paper, old wood.
“Hello, anybody here?” Abram repeated as they made their way deeper into the building, Kenner holding his shoulder and limping, both still soaked and leaving puddles, their shoes making loud squishing sounds. Abram’s right shoe was falling apart. They heard a dog barking somewhere far off out-side. The wind in trees. The growing dark, purple-blue light through spattered windows.
They walked outside to an adjacent building on the loose, wet gravel. They were surprised to find that the semi had departed without a sound. The little girl was gone. Had she turned entirely into a pig and escaped into the tall golden grass? Another large building was unlocked and they entered the lob-by. Everything 1950s, space age. A silver chandelier that looked like an atomic model. Wood paneling, linoleum. Eames chairs along a curved corridor.
They heard coughing and stopped in front of an office door. Number 42. Abram knocked and then opened it. A man sat at a large wooden d
esk, finished coughing, and then smiled at them, holding out his hand in a gesture to sit down. The room was a museum piece. All the period details authentic and correct. Old metal filing cabinets.
The man wore a suit but exuded a folksy warmth. He had a graying beard, thinning hair. Possibly in his late sixties. He had the air of a cowboy from an old movie. A cowboy in a black suit. When they sat nervously, he offered them a cigarette, which they both refused. Who smoked cigarettes? He laughed and coughed and then activated a device on the desk that looked like a small flying saucer to capture the cigarette smoke. It made a quiet whirring sound and only worked when he held the cigarette close to it.
43
“Well, you boys finally made it,” the man said in a West Texan drawl. “My name is Dan. Y’all need anything? You could sure as hell use some cleanin’ up. You both look like hammered shit.”
“Why were we brought here?” Abram said, nervously scanning the room.
“We’ll get to all that. There’s a whole hell of a lot of ground to cover. You boys are in a very privi-leged position. We only let about three hundred people in the whole damned world work here, and we only let about twenty people in on what you’re about to see.”
“This place is an observatory, right? Are you guys like secret government astronomers? You going to show us a flying saucer?” Abram said, attempting humor.
Dan burst out in loud, gravelly laughter and wiped a tear from his eye. Abram and Kenner joined in reluctantly.
“Aliens? I can tell you a little about that if you want, but there ain’t much to it—that we under-stand, anyway. Not really our department.”
The Fact of the Moon Is Stranger Than Most Dreams Page 25