Dark Side of the Moon

by P. C. Rasmussen

  Mike grabbed her arm, stopping her before she could completely lose it. "What do I have to do to make you calm down, Moira?" he asked, his tone flat, his eyes sparking a warning. "Kyle has made some valid suggestions. That you don't believe in aliens is your business, but there is no reason to jump down his throat like that. Do I make myself clear?" The quiet authority of his voice, the sense of leadership he emanated was enough to make Kyle change his mind about who was in charge here. Mike was definitely the guy the others listened to.

  "Are you telling me you think the loonies are aliens?" she spat angrily.

  Mike's grip on her arm tightened and he pulled up a little, almost lifting her off her feet in the process. "You secure that shit," he snapped, now decidedly angry. "You are entitled to your opinion as Kyle is to his. But I do not want to hear that tone. Do you get me?"

  Moira seethed for a second longer, then started to simmer down, the look in her eyes one of caution.

  "DO YOU GET ME?" Mike bellowed into her face when she didn't respond.

  She shrank from him, swallowing convulsively. "Yes, I get you," she muttered.

  For a moment longer it looked like Mike might tear her arm off and bludgeon her to death with it, but then he let go, drew in a deep breath and let it out very slowly, calming himself down in the process. "Good," he said sternly. He eyed her for a moment longer before turning his attention back to Kyle. "Are you seriously suggesting that?" he asked calmly.

  Kyle shrugged. He was impressed by Mike's ability to turn one hundred and eighty degrees mood-wise. He figured others would be intimidated, afraid that Mike would yell at them like that, but Kyle wasn't easy to intimidate. He'd spent most of his adult life being pretty indifferent to others. On the surface he appeared to care, but underneath he had learned not to give a shit. His dealer had been the one person he hadn't wanted to lose, but that had nothing to do with Pete as a person and everything to do with the goods he delivered. And his father had yelled at him enough in his youth for him to have developed a kind of immunity to it. "I'm not suggesting anything. I'm just saying what I've heard. I have pretty good night vision and that over there," he said, waving a hand in the direction of dome 5, "looks like pitch-black darkness to me. A normal human being wouldn't be able to see anything over there. So unless these loonies have mutated in some way, they're not human."

  Mike eyed him for a moment longer while nobody else had anything to say on the matter, then he smirked. "You've got some interesting ideas, son," he said and clamped a hand lightly onto Kyle's shoulder. "The light from this dome penetrates over there. It's gloomy and the far end is pretty much dark, but you can still see. And dome 5 is completely empty. There's nothing but moon dust over there to block the light from over here. I've been through it once and there's nothing over there. Whatever was there before, the loonies have either reduced it to dust or moved it all into dome 6. My bet is on the latter. What dome 6 contains ... well, nobody around here knows." He let his hand drop again. "And the loonies aren't aliens. They're human; fucked up humans, but still humans. And even the loonies aren't loony enough to go into dome 6. If there are aliens up here, they would be hiding out in the last dome. And, despite the fact that nobody's ever found any evidence of it, we're all pretty convinced that whatever is hiding in dome 6 is cannibalistic. The loonies can be too. They've been known to take bites out of people. But I've never actually witnessed them downright eating anyone. There are some pretty gruesome horror stories going around, but still - there is no evidence of them being true."

  "Still doesn't disprove the alien theory," Kyle said with a smirk. "But ... as Moira here pointed out ... I don't know jack shit. I only arrived a week ago and for that time, I've been in dome 2."

  The look Mike gave him told him that the other man was thankful that he wasn't riling Moira up more than she already was. "It's all good," he said and returned his attention to the tunnel. "Let's fill this up and see what happens."

  They started a line and the people of dome 4 were happy to help out. The idea of blocking off the tunnel seemed to appeal to everybody. But they only went in as far as the light reached. None of them were keen on going beyond that point and even Kyle had second thoughts about that.

  It should have taken a lot longer than it did and Kyle only realized that there was a junk pile in dome 4 as well when they neared the end and had filled up the tunnel with every single bit of useful scrap. And the tunnel was pretty much blocked off. It would take some serious work to empty it again, not that he thought the inhabitants of the first four domes had any intention of doing that.

  Sweaty and tired after a good day's work, Kyle stood beside Mike and eyed their handiwork. "You know ... there's something I don't get about this place," he said.

  Mike glanced at him. "What's that?"

  "LPC is a lifer colony. There are no guards, so technically that means they don't give a crap if we live or die. So why bother? Why do they go through all this effort to send us up here, to keep us alive?" he asked while still watching the content of the clogged-up tunnel.

  "Because they need to have a clear conscience," Mike said and shrugged lightly. "Even though they consider us the scum of the earth, they still feel an obligation towards us. We're out of sight and we can't get back home, so they don't need to worry about us further than just getting us here."

  "Then why send food? Why send repair crews?" Kyle pressed on and gave the other man a scrutinizing look.

  "Because they have an obligation to the folks we left behind too. They can't just send us up here and forget about us. Families would not sit still for that," Mike said and shrugged. "Well, this looks like it might hold them off for a bit. Let's see if it's all still there tomorrow."

  "You think it might not be?" Kyle asked with some surprise.

  "What Moira said earlier is true. We've tried this before and it didn't hold." Mike rubbed the back of one hand over his brow, wiping away the sweat accumulated there. "Let's head back. I for one need something to eat and a good shower."

  Kyle sniffed at his sleeve and grimaced. "Ditto," he countered.

  ***

  Scary prospects

  In part it was curiosity as much as it was anything else. Kyle was curious by nature and hard to intimidate. Having been subjected to a father like his, he figured nothing much could scare him anymore. The thought that maybe this place could change that wasn't something he consciously considered. What he did think about was the lure of the loonies. Crazy people had always fascinated him to some degree. Mostly, he figured, it was because they were so far outside of standard human behavior, that they appeared alien in their insanity.

  For instance, what made a psycho so indifferent to the suffering of others? Was it really a genetic mistake, an inability to feel, or was it something else? In the middle ages they had talked about demons; in the modern ages, they talked about genes and brain chemistry. But they were no closer to solving this myth than they had been when the world was young. So, if there really were defunct people in domes 5 and 6, how had they turned out that way? What was their story? And would they share it without considering him an easy meal?

  He smirked to himself while trailing through the habitat of dome 4 toward the blocked-off tunnel. He had slept a little, ensured himself that Daniel - whom he now considered his protégée - was okay and had then decided to return to the scene of the crime. According to Mike it was night time. He glanced upward at the ever-present lights and past them at the constellations, which still made no sense to him, and wondered how they could tell. He would have to take Daniel up on the teaching-bit and learn a little more about how to get by in this dump. Being able to tell time was one thing he needed to learn when there was nothing else to really measure it by.

  Dome 4 was quiet. People were sleeping. A few were out, foraging or whatever they did when they couldn't sleep, but the majority of the people he had seen earlier were nowhere around and all the doors he passed were shut.

  He rounded anot
her corner and came to a full stop when he caught sight of the tunnel - which was as clear and open as it had been the first time he'd seen it. "What the hell?" he muttered. By his calculations, it had taken them the better part of a day to fill it up. Now, hours later, but by no means a full day, the tunnel was clear and for all intents and purposes it looked like there had never been anything in it to begin with. The lights were still out halfway down and the floor, walls or ceiling of the tunnel showed no signs of the previous litter of scrap metal.

  Baffled, Kyle didn't really think about what he was doing when he stepped into it and walked through to where the darkness took over. He stopped and squinted into the gloom for a moment, then glanced back the way he'd come. For some reason he had expected a foul odor from the other end of the tunnel, but even though the air was anything but fresh, it was still breathable, albeit a little stale.

  "To hell with it," he growled and moved on, breaking the unseen barrier and stepping into the darkness beyond. The further he walked, the more he could see, and by the time he stepped out at the other end, his eyes had adjusted completely to the darkness. And it wasn't all that dark in dome 5. There wasn't any obvious light, but apparently Mike was right; the light from dome 4 penetrated the distance and lit up dome 5 with a vague, wavering light. And what he could see ... was nothing. As Mike had said, this dome seemed to be one big empty expanse. There was no housing, no tents, and no growths. All there was to see was a big open 'plain' - in want of a better word - and nothing else.

  For a long moment he just stood there at the mouth of the tunnel and surveyed what he could see of this dome. In truth, each dome was pretty damned big, and without anything obstructing his view, it seemed enormous.

  A sudden sound attracted his attention. It was a snuffling sound like an animal with a cold sniffing the air. It sounded wet and it sent a shiver up his spine. He couldn't deny the instant onset of concern, but he held his ground and looked around for the source. And then he spotted it. It was a shape, low to the ground, moving like a crab. But it wasn't one, because it was too damned big to be a crab. The snuffling sound came again and this creature - he assumed it was one of the loonies - edged closer.

  Now that he was focused on it, he realized that it most definitely wasn't a crab. The body was frighteningly thin, the tugged-up knees came all the way up to the shoulders and the hands were on the ground, the arms acting more like a second set of legs. Stringy dirty hair hung around a hollowed-out face with eyes that were too big and a mouth that was full of black stumps. Kyle watched the guy edging even closer, saw the flinch when the eyes briefly focused on the light beyond him, and he knew without the shadow of a doubt that the loonies at least were very much human; probably deranged, insane, malnourished, but still human.

  Aware that he was putting himself in harm's way, he raised both hands. "I mean you no harm," he said quietly and hunkered down.

  The crab-man edged closer still, sniffing the air noisily, the too large seeming eyes shifting restlessly in their sockets.

  "Can you speak?" he asked.

  The creature stopped moving and eyed him for a moment. "Yes," he rasped. "'course I can. What, you think I'm stupid?"

  For some reason Kyle hadn't expected this guy to display too much intelligence, but he figured that over the course of twenty-five years, nobody could have mutated that much. "No," he countered. "It's just the way you move and keep sniffing the air."

  The guy pushed up a little before gingerly rising to his feet. He was wearing something akin to a loincloth and that was it. "What's it to you?" the guy rasped, coughed almost angrily and spat a glob of black mucus on the ground. "What you want?"

  Kyle sent a look out over the expanse, glanced back at the tunnel for a second and then eyed the guy again. "Did you remove all the junk from the tunnel?" he asked, well aware that there had to be others like this guy out there.

  The skinny guy eyed him. "What's it to you?" he asked.

  "I'm curious," he confessed.

  Skinny Guy snorted. "Don't you know what curiosity did?"

  Kyle couldn't help a chuckle. "I'm no cat," he countered. "So, did you?"

  Skinny Guy snorted again. It seemed to be a thing with him. "So what if we did?"

  "Why?" The answer to that would tell him a lot.

  Skinny Guy eyed him. "Why not?" he snapped and dropped down into a crouch. "Better get outta here. This ain't a place for newbies." That said, he crab-crawled away again.

  Kyle watched him go, frowning. Considering the size of the domes and the emptiness of this one, there really was no specific reason for Skinny Guy to move that way. He lingered for a moment longer, looking for others like Skinny Guy and couldn't see anyone. That of course didn't mean they weren't out there. For them to have cleared the entire corridor in less time than it had taken Kyle and the others to fill it, there would have to be a lot of them. And where was all the junk? Had they taken it to dome 6? He gazed across the expanse to the approximate position of the next tunnel and wondered what the last dome hid. At some point he wanted to know. He hated not knowing things and it was easier to plan against whatever threat the inhabitants of dome 6 might pose if they knew what they were; or rather who.

  Finally, he managed to subdue his almost insatiable need to just walk out there and see what happened. What it was that held him back was hard to define, but it was there and it was the first time in his life that he felt the near urge to run the other way. He didn't, though. He turned around and walked slowly back toward dome 4 while fighting the urge to look over his shoulder all the time. There was definitely something creepy about dome 5 and it wasn't Skinny Guy and his cohorts. Kyle didn't fear people, never had. Or, at least, as far as he could remember he never had. There had been times in his childhood when he had feared his father, of course. But that man was barely human. "Was?" he muttered under his breath and grimaced. "He is barely human. He probably hasn't croaked since he abandoned me to my fate."

  Stella's words suddenly came back to haunt him. What if she was right? What if Jonathan Whitmore wasn't his father? That thought made him sigh. So what if he wasn't? It wouldn't change anything. The man would still be a prick and Kyle would still be stuck in this pit of despair. "Who needs enemies when you have a dad like mine?" he groused quietly and stepped out of the tunnel into dome 4.

  A breeze hit him from behind, an almost-sigh that brought with it a smell he couldn't identify. It wasn't bad as much as it was fear-inducing. It sent his primal instincts into overdrive and made him take a half-stumbling step sideways in an attempt to turn back to see what monstrosity was breathing down his neck. The tunnel lay silent and empty behind him. There was no indication of movement, no sign of anything in the darkness beyond the halfway point.

  He stood and stared into the length of the tunnel for a long while, a part of him expecting to see big glowing eyes in the darkness, but then he finally managed a smile. "You're jumping at shadows, man," he told himself. But he could not shake the sense that something was down there at the other end, watching him; something not human. "I'm just tired," he added and shook his head, drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment.

  Shaking out his hands, he lingered for a moment longer, exhaled almost explosively, turned his back on the tunnel and strode away. Right now, he had the greatest urge to keep walking until he reached the first dome and the door that would lead into the arrival area. And even there he knew he would not feel entirely safe.

  ***

  Day time is night time

  Most of Kyle's adult life had been spent in a fog of drugs and booze and it was hard to impress someone who had no sense of reality. But even when he had been sober and drug-free, he had been hard to impress.

  By the time Mike and his fellow gardeners got up from their well-deserved sleep, Kyle was sitting on a chair next to the ever-burning fire pit in the middle of the clearing, while he was watching the flames and trying not to think too much about what he had sensed in that tunnel.
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br />   "Good morning," Mike said and stopped next to him. "You look like you haven't slept a wink all night. Is this place getting to you now?"

  Kyle glanced up at him. What could he really say to that? "Nah, I get insomnia from time to time," he lied. He'd never had insomnia a day in his life. Well, maybe when he had been high on some weird drug Pete had cooked up, but not when he was clearheaded.

  "Don't we all," Mike said, grabbed a chair and sat down next to him. "So, what do you do to beat it?"

  Kyle smirked. "Usually sitting around and staring into fire helps. I guess I'll be back to sleeping soundly tonight ... or whatever you call it here. I think the constant light is messing with my head," he added and nodded upward. "Who can tell day from night when it's always light out?"

  Mike grinned and patted his shoulder amicably. "You'll get the hang of it in the end," he promised. "Most people get used to it in some way."

  Kyle glanced at him. "What happens to those who don't?" he asked.

  "They go nuts. We've had a few cases. One guy couldn't handle it at all. He took a spacewalk, kept babbling about needing darkness but being afraid of the loonies. He chose the easy way out, I guess," Mike said.

  "A spacewalk?" Kyle arched an eyebrow. "I thought there was no way out of here but the way we came in."

  "There are airlocks in every dome." Mike looked a little uncomfortable about that. "I guess they don't mind it if we kill each other or ourselves. And an airlock ... that's a convenient way out for those who can't take it anymore. If you hadn't come along, I kinda think Daniel might have chosen that path. Billy for sure. That kid is all nerves. It'll take a while for him to calm down."

  "Where is Billy?" Kyle asked, suddenly realizing he hadn't seen the kid since they'd relocated to this dome.

  "Around. I saw him before I went to bed." Mike sent a look up toward the top of the dome. "Time for breakfast. You coming?" he asked and rose.