The Moon Platoon

by Jeramey Kraatz

  Jasmine blinked, finally looking at him. “That’s right.”

  “I’m glad they managed to find some people as smart as I am.” Drue grinned. “So, listen, next time you talk to Elijah, put in a good word for me, okay, Jazz? Tell him I’ve got a ton of great ideas.”

  Jasmine just stared back at him.

  Hot Dog raised an eyebrow, leaning toward Benny. “You spent the entire flight from Earth with him?”

  Benny shrugged. “He was asleep most of the time.”

  By this time, the kids had all realized that Elijah was in the courtyard, and everyone was following him in a massive swarm, keeping a few yards of distance, as if they were afraid to get too close. He paused in front of the entrance to the garage, turning to the rest of the kids gathered behind him. Standing before Elijah in their matching space suits, Benny kind of thought they looked like a miniature army, ready to follow their beloved commander.

  “Hello,” Elijah said with a bulletproof smile. “Welcome to the future.” His voice boomed through the courtyard, pumping out of hidden speakers. “I hope you’re all ready for an exciting life up here on the Moon.” And then his expression changed, for a moment looking somehow sad. “This year’s scholarship winners represent the most impressive applicants I’ve ever had the pleasure of welcoming to the Taj. I have such high hopes for all of you.”

  He held out a hand, and the big man in coveralls gave him back his black driving gloves. Then Elijah turned and walked through the garage doors.

  Drue, Hot Dog, and Jasmine immediately turned their attention back to the custom Space Runner. Benny’s mind was still buzzing over the hologram technology he’d just seen. He’d known the Taj was full of electronic wonders, but to see them up close and in action was something he couldn’t have prepared himself for. He wondered what kind of holograms he might be able to design if he had access to that sort of tech. The insane pranks he could pull. Intangible zombies rising out of the football field to attack opposing teams. Holographic monsters waiting under his brothers’ bed. The stuff he had at home—the ramshackle machines and electronics that made up their caravan—might as well have been prehistoric in comparison.

  Who needed spiders?

  He tried to make a mental list of everything that had happened so far as he looked at the sky. Hundreds of thousands of miles away was Earth. His family. The Moon was sure to have all kinds of new experiences waiting for him, but part of the excitement was knowing he’d get to tell his brothers all about them when he got home. After all, they were the main reason he was up here in the first place—apart from the obvious excitement of going to the Moon. Their minds would be blown by the Space Runner trip alone, and he hadn’t even set foot inside the resort.

  As he stared at the planet above him, Benny promised himself that he’d get at least one good adventure out of his time at the Lunar Taj. Something to share when he got back home. Maybe he’d even figure out a way to bring some of the magic back to Earth with him. Not just money. And something more meaningful than Moon rocks or holovids.

  5.

  “Ahem.”

  The sound of a throat being cleared filled the Grand Dome. It took Benny a moment of looking around before he realized a man was standing behind a chrome podium beside the front doors of the Taj.

  “Hello?” His deep voice boomed. “If I could have your attention.”

  He snapped his fingers and his image was projected on either side of the Taj, thirty feet high, at least. Even in the video Benny could tell that he was exceptionally tall and so thin that he wondered if the man simply floated away whenever he stepped out of the resort’s artificial gravity field.

  “Gather round,” the man said, motioning for the kids scattered across the courtyard to come closer. He paused, looking up at his image on the side of the wall and taking a moment to smooth down the pointy beard on his chin that was dyed the same minty green color as his hair. “We’ll have plenty of time for meet and greets later, but we’ve got a schedule to keep. My name is Max Étoile. Once, I was talent manager to the stars, but now . . . now I live among them!”

  He flung his arm dramatically toward the sky and stayed that way, frozen, for a few seconds before continuing.

  “Life on Earth was glamorous, but when Elijah West offers you a spot managing the Lunar Taj, you don’t say no. Not that you’re our normal clientele. Let’s get you all accounted for so we can begin orientation. The first thing we’re going to do is get you set up with a new state-of-the-art Lunar Taj HoloTek that will guide you through the rest of your stay and give you your room and group assignments. If you’ll make your way inside in an orderly fashion, you can sign in at any of the guest check-in terminals using your biosignature and—”

  The crowd of kids surged forward, pushing past Max and through the entry doors.

  “An orderly fashion!” he said again, sighing into the microphone.

  “Let’s go!” Drue shouted back to Benny before running forward.

  Jasmine and Hot Dog started after him. Benny was at the tail end of the group, but he didn’t mind—it meant that when he stopped, breathless, inside the doors to gape at the main lobby of the Lunar Taj, there was nobody to run him down.

  The lobby was four stories high, with walls that were at first metallic blue but then began to shift, until Benny realized that the entire room was made up of screens slowly cycling through the color spectrum. The floors were black marble, speckled with just enough gold leaf to make it look like he was standing on the night sky. On one wall hung a portrait of Elijah in a silver tuxedo. It must have been five times Benny’s height. Along another wall were framed paintings of speculative Lunar Taj designs and various blueprints. On the opposite end of the room, giant windows looked out onto the lunar landscape.

  Benny walked up to one of the check-in terminals. A gold-framed sketch of what appeared to be a first-generation Space Runner hung above it. Elijah’s signature was at the bottom right corner, dated almost ten years ago. Benny would have been two years old when Elijah was drawing this. It was shortly before his father lost his job and his mother had left. Right before they’d been forced to leave their home and join the caravan because they couldn’t afford the rent anymore.

  A flash of light in front of him broke his train of thought. An outline of his body and heartbeat appeared on the wall, identifying him based on his unique biological signature.

  “Check-in complete,” Pinky’s voice said. “Welcome, Benny Love, to the Lunar Taj. You’re going to have a great time. Please take your complimentary HoloTek for further information.”

  A panel slid away on the wall, revealing a sleek rectangle that appeared to be made of glass or some kind of shiny plastic. The top left and bottom right corners of the device were edged in chrome. As he picked it up, the electronic screen powered on, and he realized that by pulling on the metal corners, the HoloTek could stretch instantly from a pocket-size gadget to a foot-wide tablet. It was the type of hyperfast computing equipment he’d always dreamed of owning but never could in real life.

  Until now.

  On the wall in front of him, he saw his heartbeat start to go faster before the image faded away.

  “What room are you in?” Drue asked, coming up beside him. The boy was tapping away at his own HoloTek, hardly looking up at Benny.

  “Huh?”

  “Bottom right on your screen. What do you have?”

  It was only then that Benny noticed a small red horse on his HoloTek. The numeral twenty-six was glowing on its side.

  “Number twenty-six? A horse?”

  “Horse here, too! But I’m number one.” Drue grinned. “Let’s go see what those girls got.”

  He grabbed Benny’s sleeve and dragged him away from the wall, eyes scanning the crowds until he spotted his targets near the windows at the other end of the lobby.

  “Hey, so what rooms are you girls in?” he asked as he approached. “This might shock you, but I got—”

  “Drue, shut up,” Hot Dog said.
“Look at this view.”

  “Hey, I was just trying to—” Drue started.

  “Whoa,” Benny said, interrupting him. Beyond the four-story floor-to-ceiling windows in front of him, a swatch of carbon-colored land expanded for miles into the horizon, eventually giving way to a starry sky. It was so utterly still that Benny was for a moment sure he was looking at a high-def picture. But he wasn’t. This was real.

  “Mare Tranquillitatis,” Jasmine said, her voice breathy, barely above a whisper. “Also known as the Sea of Tranquility.”

  “It’s where Apollo Eleven landed,” Drue said. He pointed. “Look, you can almost make out the American flag, right by that glowing alien.”

  “What?” Hot Dog asked, pressing her face up against the window. “Where?”

  Drue snorted.

  “He’s trying to be funny,” Jasmine said, glaring at him for a second. “The landing site is on the other side.”

  Benny raised his hand to the glass, placing one finger on the point where the surface of the Moon and the sky met. The landscape seemed oddly familiar, not unlike that of the Drylands, just without wind blowing dust around everywhere. He wondered if he’d feel at home out there, too, racing across the gray plains.

  “Barely into the first day and the resort is already getting gummed up by grubby little hands,” Max said from behind them, tapping one shiny purple shoe on the floor.

  They all took a step back from the window.

  “Pinky, get them to their rooms and arrange to have these windows cleaned as soon as everyone’s gone. Elijah may be treating this place like a sleepaway camp but it’s still a luxury resort.”

  Pinky’s voice was then everywhere, reverberating through the lobby. Her image appeared on one of the walls. This time she wore a pair of glasses with thick black frames.

  “Please note your room assignments on the bottom right corner of your new HoloTeks. Because of the number of scholarship winners this year, we’ve broken you up into four randomly assigned groups that you’ll stay in for the remainder of your visit. The teams will be led by members of Elijah’s Pit Crew, and will be staying on separate floors. Throughout the next two weeks, your team will be your family, and you’ll compete against the other groups in a variety of challenges. There may even be a special prize for the team who proves to be the most courageous, ambitious, and brainiest.”

  “This is it,” Drue said. “I bet this is how they’ll pick who gets to stay.”

  “I’d better be on a good team,” Hot Dog said.

  Benny glanced at Jasmine and Hot Dog’s HoloTeks. They both had horses as well. At least he’d already met a few other members of his group.

  “Oh, man, I’ve gotta be on the Miyamura team. Please let me be on the Miyamura team,” Drue whispered. “Those twins are the fastest racers in the universe behind Elijah. I need to know their speed secrets.”

  “I hope I’m with Trevone from the second EW-SCAB year,” Jasmine said. “He’s so smart. I read his interview in Lunar Wired last month and he’s just”—she blushed—“so interesting.”

  “On the first floor we’ll have the Firebirds, led by Sahar Hakimi,” Pinky said. Sahar’s face appeared above the icon of a golden bird, tail feathers splayed out like flames. Her eyes were piercing, the same dark color as the scarf wrapped around her neck and head.

  “I tried to talk her into letting me drive her car when I visited the Taj last summer,” Drue said. “I thought she was going to break my face.”

  “I hear she hardly says a word,” Hot Dog said.

  “She doesn’t have to. Her eyes are very, uh, expressive. I could definitely tell what was going through her head that day.”

  Benny had read that Sahar was from the Middle East and came from a caravan similar to his. They’d tried to cross a desert, but something had gone bad along the way. They’d run out of water, or maybe it was gas—Benny’d seen several versions of the story, but Sahar herself had never gone on record. All he knew for sure was that in the end, only she had emerged from the desert, barely alive. The next year, she’d gone to the Moon.

  “On the second floor,” Pinky continued, “are the Chargers, led by Trevone Jordan.”

  A blue lightening bolt appeared below Trevone’s photo.

  “Of course,” Jasmine said quietly. “It’s his favorite color.”

  “The Vipers will have joint leaders—the Tokyo twins, Kai and Kira Miyamura—on floor number three.”

  Drue looked back and forth between the red horse on the screen and the smaller one on his HoloTek.

  “Crap,” he muttered.

  “That means—” Benny started, but he was cut off by Hot Dog’s gasp.

  “Finally, the Mustangs will be on the fourth floor, led by Ricardo Rocha,” Pinky said.

  “The beast from Brazil!” Hot Dog half shouted. There were practically hologram hearts in her eyes. “The only person from the first scholarship year to be invited to stay on the Moon. Did you know he was living in an abandoned building and leading a street gang in South America before he got invited to the Taj?”

  “It wasn’t a gang,” Drue said. “It was an amateur soccer team that ran drills in the streets. I don’t know how he was the one who got picked to stay up here. He’s not even a very good pilot.”

  But Hot Dog either didn’t notice Drue was talking or didn’t care about what he had to say.

  Pinky smiled. “Now, please make your way to the elevators at the back of the lobby and find your rooms. Simply place your hand on the door to unlock it—the room is already keyed to your unique biosignature. And once again, welcome to the Lunar Taj. I guarantee it’s an experience you won’t forget.”

  6.

  Benny stopped two feet inside his assigned room. The backpack he had slung over one shoulder dropped, hitting the floor behind him. He’d been expecting the place to be nice, but hadn’t really given a lot of thought as to what that might actually look like. And now he was here, standing in a suite that was at least ten times bigger than his RV on Earth. Everything was plush material and dark, polished metal, the walls a slate gray with thick red stripes shooting across the room. Huge pictures of distant planets and celestial bodies hung in metallic frames on all the walls except the farthest one, by the bed, which was just one big window looking out onto the Moon. There were multiple couches, a small dining table, and—

  There was a flicker of light a few yards away from him, and suddenly a woman with blond hair piled high on top of her head was standing beside a tufted chair.

  “Hello there, Mr. Love,” she said.

  Benny took a step back, nearly tripping over his bag as he let out a string of half words.

  The woman smirked. “Sorry, I probably should have warned you before I appeared. We haven’t been officially introduced. I’m Pinky, the artificial intelligence who runs the Lunar Taj and your personal concierge for the duration of your stay. We’ve found that our guests are much more comfortable being able to visualize the entity keeping their oxygen regulated and appointments in order instead of trusting a disembodied voice. And, as a privacy measure for our guests, my holographic form serves as a reminder that I’m not always watching or listening. I’m only present in your room when I’m here, if that makes sense. Do you understand, Mr. Love?”

  Benny stared back at her in silence.

  “No one’s ever called me Mr. Love before.”

  “Would you prefer Benny?”

  He nodded. Pinky smiled.

  “All right, Benny. How about a quick tour?” She turned away from him, motioning to the kitchen at her left. “Against my nutritional recommendations, Elijah insisted that the pantries be stocked with all sorts of packaged snacks and pastries in addition to fruits and vegetables grown in our lower-level greenhouses.”

  Benny made a mental note to fill his backpack with anything left over on the last day—free souvenirs for his brothers.

  Pinky continued, leading him deeper into the room.

  “This closet is full of custom-fit s
pace suits and some casual clothing for downtime. Of course, that’s all yours to take with you in two weeks. This desk is equipped with a holosurface that can project three-dimensional images of the resort, your daily schedule, et cetera. Ah, and the entire wall across from your bed is a screen operated by your new HoloTek. You should find any sort of media you want streaming from our servers—music, videos, games. We have everything.”

  “Everything?” Benny asked. He’d rarely been able to pick up enough of a signal to watch clips of cartoons whenever they were deep in the Drylands, and now he had anything he wanted at his fingertips, presented in trillions of ultradef pixels.

  Pinky nodded. “If we don’t have it already, we’ll get it for you. Just say the word. Now, a next-gen gaming system is built into the server. You’ll find instructions on operating the holographic interface on your HoloTek, but there are a variety of controllers on the dresser should you prefer something a little more old-school. Apart from that, everything should be self-explanatory. Is there any way I can be of service now, before I go?” Pinky asked.

  Benny could feel goose bumps prickling his arms underneath his space suit. He was pretty sure it wasn’t from the sight of the room alone.

  “It’s kind of cold,” he said.

  “The suite is set at an optimal temperature of seventy degrees Fahrenheit,” Pinky said. Then she adjusted her glasses and bounced her head back and forth. “Of course, that’s probably a little chilly for someone coming from the Drylands.”

  Benny felt warmer air blow across his face from a hidden vent.

  Pinky continued. “This should be more comfortable, but if you’d like an adjustment, just let me know. All you have to do is say my name. Otherwise, please enjoy yourself.” She grinned, and then she was gone, blinked out of existence in an instant.

  Benny stood still a few moments, unsure of what to do first. Eventually he started walking around slowly, looking at all the shiny surfaces and electronics. Everything was so clean. He was almost afraid to touch anything for fear of getting grime on it. Despite all the amenities, though, the thing that he ended up focusing on was the kitchen sink. He stood in front of it, just staring for a while, before turning one of the knobs on and taking a step back. For someone who’d spent most of his life in the desert searching for clean water, seeing a seemingly endless supply shooting out of the faucet was almost as exhilarating as the high-tech electronics or the fact that he was on the Moon at all. He splashed his face, and then drank deeply from the stream—huge gulps that hurt his throat—before suddenly feeling guilty and turning it off. The faucet seemed almost wasteful, too indulgent, even though he figured the water would be recycled somehow and that the people who normally visited the Taj were likely far less concerned with such things.