Moon Panic

by Bradley Birch

  MOON PANIC

  A TALE OF SUFFERING AND ANGUISH

  1.

  The first moon whisper almost saved the life of Alan Fabrycky. He read the news on a PPC held in a hand that trembled on the best of days, then tossed the device to a vague corner of his apartment, where it landed among plastic bags and empty bottles. Alan collapsed to his knees and hugged his chest tight, the anguish on his face no different than if he had been knifed in the heart.

  Rico, Sarah, and Jamie had been his friends. The isolation of the P units made for close-knit relationships. Any P worker could have told you that. Alan had known his lab partners better than his own siblings. Rico had a penchant for clearing his throat if, when he was finished speaking, the final syllable had been a shun sound. For instance: fixation, gyration, navigation, and so on. Such a strange thing to notice about someone, Alan pondered. Still, he could remember the way Rico would turn his head and put the back of his fist to his mouth while he made a little grunting sound.

  Having been only one of three females on the team, Alan was ashamed to admit most of what he recognized about Sarah was physical. Being a man of science certainly didn’t preclude him from his biological inheritance. No, he knew exactly how the three freckles by her left eye formed almost a perfect triangle. He knew how the crooked incisor would always catch the skin of a black bean when they’d have Mexican food for dinner. He knew how the occasional strands of red and brown lived among her dusty blonde curls.

  Snot clotted in Alan’s unkempt facial hair as he sobbed. The lives of his friends, whom he was closer to than any blood relative, left great big holes in his heart. These were the wounds that left him crippled. Had his heart been whole, the crushing weight of the billions who’d perish to the Waste might have been bearable.

  Alan moaned like a dying animal in that room lit only by whatever sunlight snuck in past the closed blinds. In truth, Alan had no idea what time it was. His habit was simply to wake, then drink. As it happened, he was fortunate enough today that drinking was available when he woke.

  The news of the whisper, which at that time had no name, felt like salt poured into Alan’s wounds. It burned so much because it was hope. And, being a man of science, he was precluded from hope when he knew there was no logical basis for it. He had watched the flesh melt from the faces of his friends like they were victims in some ghastly horror film. There was no hope for them. Where ever the SOS call came from, it wasn’t from P4.

  Alan sobbed until his ribs cramped. He gasped for breath. He might have rolled over and passed out for another six hours, but as the foreshadowing indicated, he was not to escape his fate. No, it was a memory of Jamie that doomed him. Jamie was an Indian fellow who drank a type of tea that looked unappealing, smelled repulsive, and tasted like an armpit. The tea made Jamie’s piss stink so badly that the P4 members would retch if they entered the lavatory before the air ducts could syphon out all the impurities. Alan’s miserable bawling turned into wheezy giggles as he recalled the banter and good-natured jokes directed at the Indian man. The smell of Jamie’s rank urine burned in Alan’s nasal as he relived the memory.

  The man stood. He found his PPC on the worn carpet between a floor lamp and a chair leg, then called for a TakeU. The yearning for hope had been extinguished. One funny memory was all Alan needed to keep from staring at the little screen for hours, watching a live feed of news anchors describe how they knew nothing until he eventually passed out. After all, a hardened alcoholic doesn’t need to leave the house in search of liquor. When the TakeU arrived, Alan left his PPC on a couch cushion.

  Joe—if there was ever a bartender’s name, it was Joe—had been serving at the Moldy Oldie for seven years. Alan had already been a veteran of the establishment by over a decade at that point, drinking away his sorrows and telling his story to whomever would listen. When Alan told him to turn the bar’s single holoscreen off, he did it without question.

  The Moldy Oldie had no windows. It was lit by hanging bulbs who’s crystal enclosures were still stained by nicotine from before the country-wide ban on cigarettes. The stools where upholstered with a maroon pleather that was cracked and exposing foul foam that had been cushioning Alan since he first stumbled into the joint. A satellite feed pumped in hits as old as the stools; staples from a culture long since stagnant. Men discreetly scanned QR codes on a digital bulletin board, the grimy screen advertising drugs, whores, and worse. Alan ignored all those distractions and ordered a double of his usual: a rum so black it looked like tar and tasted worse.

  Twenty-one years had passed since the accident on P4; Since Alan had watched three friends—one an occasional lover—dissolve like old food in a soaking pan; Since the four months in quarantined isolation; Since the wide scale spread of Waste that humanity had been anticipating for years. After all that time, the sickening bittersweet taste didn’t even make Alan flinch.

  Alcoholics rarely trouble themselves with notions beyond the rim of their glass, so Alan hardly noticed a man take the stool next to him. Outwardly, Alan stared solemnly at the glass. Inwardly, he was once again peering through the porthole of the engineering lab as Jamie pressed a boney mockery of a hand right through Sarah’s left breast.

  “Name’s Belew,” a voice said. “Like the color, but not spelled the same.”

  When Alan looked over, he groaned at Belew’s cheerful demeanor. The man was young—maybe forty or fifty. His face was clean shaven, his hair short. Not military, but money. He wore a jacket of royal blue. It was real leather, not the imitation stuff they sat on. It had so many silver buttons that the majority of them had to be decorative, especially considering Belew’s handicap.

  The arm didn’t sit in a sling, but rather a hook like a cheap metal hanger suspended Belew’s wrist from one of his jacket buttons. Alan didn’t need to try very hard to imagine what the limb withered by Waste looked like beneath the expensive overcoat. Still, the gloved hand retained enough strength to clutch some sort of commemorative pen. Alan was sure people asked him all the time what the pen was from, but he didn’t care.

  “Joe!” Belew called, hailing the bartender with a bang of his right fist. Strange. Alan knew every regular that patronized the bar. And they knew not to engage with him. “A shot for my friend and I. Leave the bottle.”

  Joe stooped—Alan’s rum wasn’t kept on the wall behind the bar, but under it—and set the liquid obsidian between the men. He didn’t recognize the man in the fancy jacket, but knew enough about Alan to figure it had something to do with his former lunar work.

  Belew poured them both drink after drink. Alan didn’t know the man, but endured his stories in exchange for the liquor. It was 130 proof, the strongest the bar could legally serve. Alan watched with greedy eyes for every drop that fell into his cup. He never licked the inside of a glass clean, but rarely did he sacrifice a tangible amount.

  “And he gave me this pen,” Belew finished, though Alan hadn’t been paying attention at all. Something about politics on some world Alan had never been to and had no desire of visiting. With the Webgate network expanding every day, any man with a with a thirst for power could become a president. Or a king.

  Belew fumbled in a pocket with his one good hand. It was a deliberate series of motions that procured a cigarette, brought it to his mouth, then held a lighter up to ignite it. The stranger enjoyed one deep drag of the illicit carcinogen before the bartender caught a whiff.

  “Are you crazy?” Joe half-asked, half-shouted from down the bar. “You can’t have that in here.”

  Belew held the contraband between two fingers as he gestured.

  “What, this?”

  It was all so fluid, Alan thought. All he could think through the ordeal was how fluid everything had been. Belew’s movement. The fire. The injection
.

  As Belew waved the cigarette about like a felon brandishing a firearm in a police station, his wrist caught the lip of the rum bottle. Still three-quarters full, the bottle let loose a torrent of ichor that was Alan’s lifeblood. He was in shock at the moment, but was not above sucking the fluid from the dirty bar top when sense returned.

  Senses did not have time to return, unfortunately. The dark, spreading puddle took Belew by as much surprise as Alan. In shock, the cigarette tumbled from his fingers and ignited the liquor with a dry whump. The flames dribbled over the edge and alit Alan’s pant legs.

  Alan and Belew both instinctively pushed back from the bar. The only problem was that Belew’s feet came down first, and one boot was firmly locked on the metal rung of Alan’s stool. Alan tried to push himself away, but the fiery waterfall continued unabated, searing his thighs and running down to his shins.

  Belew leaned forward, and with his one hand, swiped the toppled bottle from the lacquered bar. The dark bottle make one half turn before crashing into the far wall and exploding in broken glass and boiling liquid. The other bottles on the shelves were similarly engulfed.

  Alan patted at his soaked jeans, but the flames would not be squelched. Joe, quicker with the fire extinguisher than Belew would have expected, turned it on the flames crawling across the shelves of high-octane beverages. Belew finally managed to push away from the bar and rolled on top of Alan as they both crashed backwards onto the floor.

  By this time, Alan was crying out in pain, and the weight of Belew on top of him smothered the flames. Alan couldn’t tell if Belew was intentionally trying to help him, or if the two were just entangled in a uniform terror and panic.

  White plumes of flame retardant dust billowed over the bar and eventually engulfed the two men. Far away, an alarm warned of the hazard. The men groped at each other in confusion before Belew crawled off Alan and stood. His coat was askew and his hanging arm was cocked at a slightly different angle. The gloved hand still clutched the shiny black pen.

  There wasn’t a moment for Belew to straighten himself before Joe hauled him out of the bar. Alan watched as he patted out the last of the flames on his pants. Belew made a motion to resist once he was on the street, but Joe raised the fire extinguisher menacingly and the wealthy looking man retreated.

  The bartender flipped the storefront holographic to closed, then ushered out bewildered patrons. Alan had smelled burnt caramel once, and it wasn’t unlike the burning rum. He sat stunned on the bar floor, steam rising from his pant legs, and realized for the first time he could recall that he was completely sober. Joe knelt beside him to aid.

  Alan refused an AmbuRide, but Joe ordered one anyway. He left before it arrived, but only made it a block before the chafing on his thighs forced him to hail a TakeU. He played no music from the vehicle’s radio. Slummy buildings raced by in silence.

  There were blisters. There was redness. It would probably all peel off in the coming days. There would be a risk of infection. There would be pain. Alan didn’t mind. The pain brought clarity. It burned away the haze of alcohol like the rising sun erases a morning fog. He sat in the empty bathtub with a wet towel draped across his legs, PPC in hand. The breaking news story hadn’t changed.

  A signal was broadcasting from the moon’s surface. It was the standard SOS hail that the Commercial Spacefaring Commission required on all spacefaring craft and orbital installations. It broadcast for fourteen minutes, stopped for six, then had been broadcasting continuously ever since. Speculation was wild. It was suggested that an illegal transport could have crash landed. Bad news for them, as the whole lunar body was a class one quarantine. Even worse, the signal was triangulated to the silver swamp region, so anyone onboard was likely already suffering from a dreadful itch.

  The female news anchor perked up. “We have just received confirmation from the CSC that the signal matches the registration of the Pelagic 4 research and development center. Pelagic 4 was listed in their database as terminated, meaning destroyed. For those who aren’t aware, the CSC assigns every properly registered ship its own unique identifier. These codes, what we might think of as passwords, ensure the security and legitimacy of all communication and traffic control, and are the foundation of all Webgate travel.”

  Her male counterpart continued as soon as she was silent. “Viewers likely need no reminding of the P4 incident. It’s been over two decades, but we still see the outcome most every single night. The Pelagic institute still has functional lunar bases which are used to study the lunazoe, but P4 is one of several that are thought to have been lost. We have with us Nora Dobbs, head of the Pelagic institute, to explain how it’s possible for P4 to be broadcasting after all this time.”

  Alan clicked off his PPC and put a knuckle to his chin. Nora was a businesswoman with no scientific background. That's not to say she wasn’t skilled at acquiring grant funds or securing contracts, as it was in the case of the lunar centers. However, she certainly couldn’t offer any insight into how it was possible for P4 to broadcast a signal. That’s because it wasn’t possible.

  For four months, Alan had no human contact. In effect, he was in a quarantine within a quarantine. The outer layer was a Space Navy cruiser parked in orbit, ready to blow him and the ship he was on into atoms. All he could do was watch the telescopic views of his old workplace as the superdome membrane curled in ribbons like peeling paint. Their orbit brought P4 into view every six hours. The dome collapsed after twelve weeks. There was nothing recognizable within.

  Alan put his hands on the bathtub lip and pushed himself into a more comfortable position. As he did, he let out a bark of pain as searing lightning shot up into his armpit. He tried to turn his arm over to see what the problem was, but it wouldn’t move. Had he been able to bring the pale flesh of his inner elbow into view, he might have made out the little red pinprick where something had pieced his flesh. Instead, Alan’s head drooped millimeter by millimeter until his chin rested on his chest.

  The foreshadowing of Alan’s death was slightly misleading. While the suggestion that Alan would have survived had he not left for Moldy Oldie that night is true, it implied that this survival was substantial, as though some grave accident would have been avoided. That was not the case. Had Alan stayed home, he would have indeed lived to see the next day, but sooner or later the same fate would have befallen him. No, he did not die in an accident. Alan Fabrycky was killed.

  His heart gave one final beat. Not five minutes later, the SOS signal stopped, and the first moon whisper was over.

  2.

  The first moon plume came so close to the US3 Hamilton that it was for a time considered an intelligent attack. Jason Reidberg, a squirrelly Jewish kid, had just entered middle school when the lunazoe broke out. The news cycles at the time were consumed by the millions succumbing daily to Waste, but by the time he graduated, the vaccine was in production and the moon’s silver streaks were clearly visible from Earth.

  Jason wasn’t particularly on good terms with his family. The United States Space Navy promised him exciting alien vistas. Like most recruitment promises, it was a lie, but by the time Jason realized that, the paperwork was already signed and rubberstamped.

  The first two years, Jason never stepped foot on a starship that wasn’t sitting in a hangar on Earth. Even then, he was usually unloading cargo or—worse—scrubbing the corridors clean. During these two years, Waste finally reached Earth, and the terrestrial death count was already estimated at a hundred million plus. The telescreens showed masses of twisted, deformed bodies. Wet, intelligent eyes peered out from skulls that neck muscles could no longer lift or turn. Ribs slick with sweat protruded from the thin fabric of hospital gowns. The most severe cases looked like little more than giant fetuses. Their twig-like arms twitched and grasped at invisible butterflies. The commercials begged for donations and aid to fund their treatments. Even with the vaccine, logistics just simply didn’t exist to treat billions dying across the galaxy all at once. The fetus peo
ple begged Jason for help in his dreams. He stopped watching the telescreen during his rec time.

  When the two years of training drills and menial tasks were over, Jason was offered a four-year extension. He grimaced at the thought of committing such a large chunk of his life. His old home life hadn’t seemed so bad after running mock patrols all night in the rain or snow. The Space Navy was expanding in a big way, though. It needed ship crew for longer periods of time as the Webgate network probed further into the galaxy. The thought of finally leaving Earth appealed to Jason, but the reason he signed was a simple one: servicemen were guaranteed regiments of Waste vaccine and priority treatment of the disease.

  The US3 Bishop was Jason’s first home in the sky. Now that his basic training was completed, he could let his dark curls grow back in, and he realized he was no longer the freakishly skinny Jew that he’d been when he signed up. His shoulders were broad. His chest was proud. In many ways, his body was the opposite of those he watched suffer on TV. Jason was surprised to find himself yearning for PT, enjoying the sweat on his body, relishing the soreness after a good workout.

  The next four years were mostly spent escorting shipments of Waste vaccine to rural worlds. There was never any real combat. Occasionally, Bishop would fire warning shots at vessels that strayed too close and failed to respond to hails. A transport ship was never lost under the protection of the US Space Navy, but there were many more transport ships than there were cruisers. Logistics became an issue again. One cruiser might be assigned to twelve targets. This emboldened pirates. Real combat began along the branches of the Webgate.

  Of course, there was the issue of destinations. Twelve shipments usually meant between two to four final locations. Rendezvous points were missed and the transports were either forced to continue unguarded or circle around the Webgates until their assigned protection arrived. Both actions attracted predators.

  A decade into Jason’s service, humanity finally began to get a handle on the Waste. The vaccine was being manufactured on every human world and in quantities that could scale with even the most aggressive population explosions. The skies became safer. Space Navy operations were diverted to exploratory ventures. With resources freed from the fight against the Waste, humankind was able to expand at exponential rates again. It seemed an inevitability that we’d stumble into someone else’s territory.