Moon Panic

by Bradley Birch

  Michael’s friend, Marty, stood along the perimeter of his apartment complex most nights. These nights were quiet but for the chanting of hundreds of Waste victims. They welcomed their god. They welcomed the cataclysm a falling moon would bring. They welcomed their freedom.

  During the frigid nights, the eye of God filled them with inner warmth. Even Marty’s backwards foot—which was cold and numb during the hottest summer days—did not bother him in the low temperatures. Marty hoped that the priest would lead a hymn that night. He liked singing with the others. It made him feel like part of a larger group.

  Marty’s breath steamed as he hobbled down the sidewalk on his crutches. He looked up and down, trying to spot Geoffrey. Sometimes his friend didn’t come out at nights. The wheels on his electric chair were skinny and bald. They’d occasionally catch the gaps in the pavement.

  Both neighbors and strangers shouted greetings to Marty as he made his way towards the intersection. If Geoffrey were along the short side of the building, Marty would be able to see him from the middle of the road. He looked both ways. Down a ways was a manual-steer rust-colored pickup truck, but it was driving at a crawl—probably because the driver was craning to get a glimpse of the moon as the autumn clouds parted.

  The survivors wore sweaters with the image of the lunazoe embroidered on the front. Someone waved a banner that read “GOD IS WATCHING.” There was Geoffrey, bent like one of the streetlamps that illuminated the gathering. He had a blanket across his lap, but it looked like it was about to slip to the ground. Marty called out to grab his attention.

  “Fuck you moon-loving, apocalypse-bringing sons of bitches!”

  Marty cocked his head towards the sound. It was a harsh voice, full of fear and ire. The pickup truck had silently rolled up abreast of the apartments. Marty watched a sinister black pipe slide out, then heard the clap-clap-clap of gunshots. Marty was dazzled by the headlights and noise. He had no idea how many shots had been fired. When the truck hit him, he believed it had been a bullet that struck him right up until he died.

  The Jester’s CSC inspection had been up for two months. The pilot knew it would fail. The grinding from the port side inboard aileron meant that the whole wing segment would need to be disassembled and repaired. It was at least a twelve hour job. For what the Jester was earning on a per-hour average, it would be lunacy to take her out of commission for that long, and who knows what else the inspectors would find to price gouge the good pilots of Earth. It was better to risk the fine should a CSC agent catch him.

  The Jester unloaded its passengers into the New York Interstellar Spaceport, where they’d connect to an interstellar flight that would take them through one of the Webgates. The spaceport was an absolute madhouse. It was so crowded that people could hardly move. Security was hopeless to deal with the masses of people. Some had been stranded in the terminal for over a week. Legs and backs were sore. Stomachs were empty. Tempers were short. It seemed there was delay after delay. Spacecraft waited in queues to dock with the terminals. The AI traffic controller system kept crashing. Manual operators had to be employed to route the thousands of ships.

  The Jester’s engines whirred back to life. In eight hours, it would be loading up more passengers to start the cycle all over. The spaceship pulled forward, ignoring the spaceport speed limits, but at the same time, the port side twisted up. The aileron was locked in place, a sheared bolt wedged in the delicate gear system. The people in the terminal watched as the colorful ship pulled a barrel roll in slow motion. The slowness was only an illusion. When the Jester touched against the roof of the spaceport terminal, both the ship and terminal vaporized instantly.

  Two weeks into the next moon well, the speed of the moon increased from 1 to 3mph. In another two weeks, a tonnage that was measured with twenty digits was plummeted to Earth at over 5mph. It sounded slow, and holding steady at its current max speed, it would take five years before a collision. That sounded like a lot of time, but the moon crash would be fatal to every multicellular being on the planet. Simulations predicted the Earth’s crust would split like a grape being squeezed between two fingers. To evacuate, the USSN would need to transport six million people off world every day for those last five years. In six months, when the speed reached 20mph, most had resigned that they had only a year left to live.

  The president’s only hope was in the containment plan. The project had to be kept secret. The whole country was on verge of civil war. Domestic terrorism plagued the union. Waste groups were bombed and massacred. The moon was now twice the size in the sky, and every few days it grew by another percent. The resolve of the apocalypse-wishers grew in tandem. Worse was the threat from other planets. There were a dozen planetary governments vying for galactic dominance once the Earth was destroyed. There were a hundred under the jurisdiction of the United States Space Navy vying for independence. Rebellions were already under way. Worlds that would have never risked retribution from the USSN knew that it would collapse completely in a year or two.

  If any of these worlds had known about the facility in the desert—with all its fusion reactors—a single strike would destroy Earth’s final chance. So the project was kept secret and the world population was distracted with the executions. Every two weeks, one of the Pelagic researchers who contributed to the project which produced the lunazoe was killed on live television. It wasn’t blood sport. The executions were humane lethal injections. It was still enough to satisfy some.

  The executions culminated with the sentencing of Nora Dobbs. Instead of the conservative business suits she had worn during the trials, she was in ill-fitting prisoner’s garb. Her hair was not in its usual tight bun, but hung in limp strands, having suffered from lack of quality shampoo and conditioner. Her last words were, “May God forgive me,” and then the plunger pushed a deadly cocktail into her arm and she said no more.

  The president would have liked to have tried Thomas Belew, Nora’s accomplice in covering up her crimes, but the captain could not be found. It had been a clever ploy. Belew knew that Nora would give him up, so he negotiated for payment of the bounty in full prior to releasing her location. Belew provided the USSN with video footage of his meeting with her on Freeport as proof that he knew her exact location. By the time prosecutors knew he was involved, he had vanished.

  So bereft of any more distractions, the world burned itself down. People looted. Industry stopped. Murder skyrocketed. Savagery commenced. The moon well never ceased. It fell at 50mph. Tides flooded coastal cities. Animals went feral. The priests on television rejoiced.

  It was Michael Everet’s birthday when the president ordered the Webgate open. A pinprick appeared less than a hundred thousand miles above the surface of Earth. It expanded to the size of a human hand: a rainbow-colored mass in the shape of a five-pointed star. The points curved inward slightly, like it was a piece of fabric draped over an upside-down bowl. The points rippled as the exotic energy stabilized.

  In an instant, the star shape ballooned to a hundred miles across. The kaleidoscopic effect withdrew to the edges and the inside was replaced with inky darkness and a scattering of distant stars. At this point, the Webgate was visible from Earth. Onlookers were confused by the hazy ring of light.

  The next expansion was slower. Energy that could power modern cities for a hundred years surged in the desert facility. The shape warped and twisted at the edges as the WebGate expanded past 256 miles, becoming the largest Webgate ever opened. Still, it continued to 500 miles, then 1000.

  At the halfway point, expansion paused. Engineers ensured that the cooling systems kept the chain of reactors from bursting into flames. Physicists tracked the ejections of exotic matter from the Webgate’s edges. Never had mankind twisted the universe at such a scale. Nothing about the Webgate was outside the realm of physics, but everyone watched, waiting for something unexpected.

  After a tense period when the Webgate generator had is integrity verified, the Webgate expanded again to its final size of 2500 miles i
n diameter. The rippling colors created a borealis effect that was visible across North and South America. The edges of the wormhole thrummed like strings of a guitar.

  In truth, the Webgate was stationary. However, as the world turned, it appeared to crawl across the sky. People watched the strange energy wave swoop beyond the atmosphere in equal quantities of hope and dread. It approached the moon with the lunazoe’s silver, unblinking eye.

  With the precision of the galaxy’s greatest golfer sinking a hole-in-one, the moon slipped into the Webgate and disappeared from Earth’s sky.

  9.

  The Webgate collapsed on itself minutes later. Bursts of exotic energy interfered with satellites and spacecraft for weeks as the fabric of the universe snapped back into place. The night sky on Earth became a lonely place.

  A new Webgate was opened—this one much smaller—to the part of the galaxy where the orphan moon drifted. This became the new de facto quarantine. The president and USSN admiral were both confident that the lunazoe could pose no further threat to Earth or its inhabitants. New orbital facilities were sent through this Webgate to continue research.

  The moon continued to call, apparently unaware that none of its signals would ever reach Earth again. Researchers watched the visions and debated among themselves if they really were witnessing the souls of the dead. Moon panic was over.

  The next president inherited a mess of a country, but a hopeful path towards recovery was open and available. Ninety percent of the USSN’s assets dedicated to the lunazoe situation were freed, allowing Delta-V to reestablish authority over vast parts of the galaxy.

  The US3 Hamilton left for a distant star where virtually all trade routes had been intercepted by a hostile power. It left without Erin Zeiger, who claimed she could no longer serve a government which lied to its people at such scale. She begged her lover, Jason Reidberg, to join her in retirement. He had enough years of service to collect a reasonable pay.

  The benefits were good, too. The only downside was that retirees did not have the same priority when it came to Waste vaccine availability. Jason said farewell to Erin. He gave her a kiss and an embrace long enough to remember all the years they had spent together.

  When Jason looked at himself in the mirror that night, he knew he made the right decision. He was strong. He was disciplined. He was a military man. He belonged on a starship. Captain Robert Hawley had even hinted that Jason might one day be promoted to Captain, himself.

  Steven Gorski really knew how to live, Thomas Belew thought as he arrived to the applause of his former crew. The men had done good. There were beautiful women lounging about. Everyone had glasses of expensive scotch and champagne. A feast had been laid out, prepared by chefs whose payrolls surpassed most executives.

  The hollowed asteroid contained about ten main buildings, plus quarters for the staff. Belew strolled down a cavernous room that was like the lobby of an upscale hotel. His boots clapped against the solid marble floor. Crystal chandeliers hung from a ceiling at least three stories high. Belew braced his hand against a column that two grown men could not have gotten their arms around and admired the fountains along the nearest wall.

  The room was so much like a hotel lobby that it even had a grand piano tucked in by the wide stone staircase that curved up to the first floor’s balcony that overlooked the ballroom. Belew tapped a key with his ungloved hand. Ivory.

  Belew had never known he could love a place like he did the asteroid habitat, and he had only seen part of one building so far. He lifted his right arm off the hook and tossed the pen on the lid of the piano. Its insides sloshed as it rolled to a stop. With the pointer finger of his other hand, he peeled off the leather glove to reveal skin that was pale and clammy. Belew stretched his fingers and followed the routine of cracking all his knuckles. He wiped the sweaty palm on the tail of his royal blue jacket.

  The bench felt like it had never once been sat upon. The cushion was cool and springy. The piano sounded as rich as in any concert hall as Belew pounded out In The Hall Of The Mountain King by Edvard Grieg, his fingers never forgetting their practiced dexterity.

  On Earth, Michael Everet covered the increasing number of suicides among Waste survivors. For them, hope was lost. There were some church groups that went so far as to organize mass suicide pacts. Michael was not one of these folks. His new right leg and foot were finally strong enough to hobble around for short periods with the aid of crutches.

  It was doubtful Michael would ever be able to walk completely without aid, but freedom from the wheelchair was a powerful motivator. His knot of a left leg would take a decade or more to rebuild fully, and with his waning income, he wasn’t sure if he should pursue the expensive surgeries. Erin made a great field reporter, but without his USSN insider, Michael had little insight into the progress the researchers made trying to stop the lunazoe. Nobody did.

  With the moon panic over, Michael had little choice but to write speculative pieces peddling conspiracies and hearsay. Michael’s career would remain stagnant until the opening of the first moon gate, when moon panic resurfaced across the entire galaxy.