Time to eat, everybody dig in.
Who was he kidding? Crass Duvall lost in space? They’d make a movie about his interstellar odyssey, exploring the horrible conditions he’d endured aboard the ship and all that rigmarole. Eating off all his friends and drifting he didn’t know where. A grave marker would be made up on Earth saying CRASS DUVALL lies here, 2004-2031, Forever in Our Hearts, and Forever Lost in Space.
He thought it was genius, going out like a true hero and all. They might even put his damn name in a textbook or magazine article. Science fiction junkies would read of his life on the backs of newspapers. Some might even speculate as to what happened to a certain Crass Duvall.
The real question he needed to answer was how to pull it off and still be able to come back to Earth. I mean, c’mon, he had stuff that needed to be done around the house and gnawing off stranger’s body parts for survival didn’t sound too appealing.
“Hey Persona,” Crass said aloud to the empty kitchen. “Can you find an old movie for me to watch, please?”
The colored walls changed colors and she was there, somewhere, but he couldn’t see her so well with all the sunlight flooding in from the beach.
“Hello again, Crass. Yes, I can help you. What is it you’re looking to watch?”
“2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s kind of a classic.”
“I’ve found it just now. Will you be using your glasses or the wall to view?”
“My glasses, definitely,” he said, fidgeting with the expensive frames. “I want to stay mobile.”
“I understand. I’m transferring the feed to your equipment now. Please enjoy,” she said and was quiet for the next few hours.
Crass kept his glasses on top of his head, watching parts in pieces as he relaxed on the bed in his room, away from the world and counting the hours until departure.
It was coming soon.
Mortals have dreamed of this day since they could look up and see the Moon staring back at them. Since the time Copernicus and Galileo were around, mapping out the stars and the planets with their primitive equipment. Astronauts were in space by the 1960s. Hell, they were racing towards it. By the 2020s, we saw civilian shuttles being sent off to the Moon and God knows where the hell else.
Money could buy you an incredible ticket out of this realm. Or in his case, you found yourself dealing more in the underground markets, making money by online gambling tournaments, mostly poker and blackjack. The currency used was Bitcoins, mostly because it left no paper trail. No bread crumbs to follow and find people that haven’t paid taxes in years. Yes, years. Decades sometimes, if they were an old timer.
People had bigger concerns. Like what minerals we could mine, steal, or borrow from our outer space neighbors.
Bottled spring water from Mars. Dust collected from the Rings of Saturn. Outer Space Tourism. It was the Gold Rush all over again—a case of history repeating itself. We left the United States and started making a stake for the real estate and treasure beyond Earth.
The world governments wanted to ratify the Outer Space Treaty. We could start auctioning off the Universe tomorrow. Who was going to stop them? The Ghostbusters with their proton packs chocked full of mood slime? Very doubtful.
With enough money, you could practically buy the space station and convert it into your primary residence. The Flying Parcel Service (FPS) would make a killing delivering packages to the residents in outer space.
Here’s my address, send me a card or a letter sometime.
1 International Space Station
260 N. Low Earth Orbit, Outer Space
Infinity-0000
Crass slipped the glasses down over his eyes and watched some of the movie before drifting off into the land of enchanted dreams.
The Moon was already there to meet him.
III: Hitching a Ride
Crass found directions to the launch site, a place called Innsmouth, on his phone. Turns out they were launching the rocket from a private island owned by some rich gazillionaire, which of course was only accessible by boat or a helicopter. Another catch-22.
On second thought, maybe he should’ve read that fine print.
Personally, he didn’t own either one of the two vehicles needed for transportation purposes. But there was an old friend from the college daze who had a helicopter tour business that ran along Florida’s eastern coast.
He was a hippie from the times before the millennium, an old-timer. And he didn’t fly unless he was flying high himself, if you catch my drift. He’d eat ten space cakes or fifteen psychoactive mushroom tops and then decide it was the perfect time to go tour the unmanned airspace above him.
It was kind of scary flying with him at times, but quickly looking to be the only option available at the moment. And Crass’s mind was made up that he was going to the Moon. The ticket was in his hand and he was ready to go. Only three hours left now. He had to figure out his plan quickly.
So he ate a space cake and double checked his luggage. He’d almost run off and forgot the damn phone charger. Would he have a signal…up there?
Can you hear me now?
That’s good.
Call Mom and Dad from the Moon base? Tell them their boy finally made it to space. He could just imagine that scene all day long, in absolute, crystal-clear clarity.
Just look at him go, would ya? Junior is on the Moon honey! Did you hear what I said? Well, turn down that damn TV and maybe you would.
Crass found Mickey’s number in the phone and tapped the connect button. His face popped into the screen three rings later.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Is it Crass Duvall I see here? Why are you calling me so late man? It’s five in the afternoon. You know I need my beauty sleep,” he said, throwing the hair out of his eyes.
“Mickey. Thank God you answered. I need a flight. I’ve got a few space cakes for you if you could help me out tonight. You still have the whirlybird?” Crass asked.
“Yep. Fueled her up about an hour ago now. Where you trying to go?” he asked.
Crass looked down at the ticket in his hand and read the address out loud.
“Innsmouth Island? Sure I know it. I’ve flown over it a few times. When you going?”
“In about two hours. They want me there by 10:00 pm so they can launch out early Friday morning on the red eye.”
“Agh-ite. I’ll be on your rooftop about 9:30. See ya.” and Mickey was gone from the screen.
The ride was secure. Crass sat down on the couch and ordered a bite to eat. Three minutes later, there was a white and red box of Shrimp Lo Mein sitting in the digiwave transporter.
And then he emptied his bowels at the request of the shuttle service. Seems they’d dealt with a few accidents on board and nobody he knew liked getting hit in the face with floating feces when they were vacationing. Lawsuits over endless piles of lawsuits quickly materialized, leading to very stringent rules on pre-boarding bowel evacuation.
This wasn’t the Earth-bound flights you were accustomed to expect. These space shuttles were still in the new phases of implementation. Things went wrong sometimes, everyone knew that from the Columbia and Challenger disasters, but most people weren’t expecting anything catastrophic, like having to deal with another human being’s excrement flying around their clean face. And who would blame them?
Geez.
He pulled the MoboGlobo glasses down and watched some of the movie he’d missed. Thursday night out on Atlantic Avenue was mostly quiet as the traffic slowly whispered through the warm night.
Shortly after 9:30ish, a whirling sound like a giant, heavy fan muffled by a pillow began coming closer to him, growing in intensity. He looked outside and saw a black helicopter riding up the dark beach line. There was a thud a few minutes later as Mickey touched down on the roof.
“Walls clear,” Crass said aloud to the empty room. All his projects and colors disappeared from the walls and he could see the entire floor of the condo through transparent sheets made of glass.
The engines died down, and moments later Mickey was walking down the staircase with his flight coat on, smiling. Black hair touched his wide shoulders and moved with him when he moved, constantly hanging around his eyes.
“What’s up Crass? Long time, no see huh?”
They shook hands and Crass placed a package wrapped tight in aluminum foil in his big hands. To help lock in the moisture. No one liked a dry cake.
“HEY! Thanks man. I ate my last one on the flight over.”
He unraveled one of the packages, examined the cake briefly, and swallowed it down with two fast chomps of his jaws like he was a pelican. Or a ravenous alligator.
“Want something to wash it down with?” Crass asked, pointing towards the kitchen’s stainless steel wall cooler.
“No, I’m fine thanks,” Mickey said enthusiastically, and turned his attention to the painting on the wall behind him. His head cocked to the right, a little, and he stared at the painting for several minutes until Crass began to think that his eyes would burn a hole straight through the canvas.
“It’s a Dalí reprint,” Crass said, walking over to the painting and observing it for himself again, for the thousandth time. “You like it? It’s called Swans Reflecting Elephants for obvious reasons.”
Mickey looked to be in a trance, his eyes were not blinking. He’d found the Twilight Zone, and slipped off into its strange and hazy embrace. Several minutes later he finally broke the silence with a question.
“Who is this man over here to the left of the trees?” he asked.
What the hell is he talking about?
Crass was perplexed. He’d never seen any man in the painting. Just, you know, swans and elephants and trees and a strange landscape and some other foul creation towards the bottom frame.
“Look,” Mickey said. “He’s right there in black and white.” He stepped back and observed from a better focal point.
Crass edged closer towards it, and indeed, there was a man standing there. His head was tilted down as if contemplating the strange landscape.
“I’ve never seen this until now. How did you pick it right out like that? I’ve had this painting for over a year now and never saw that.”
Mickey said, “I wish I had a good answer for you, but I don’t and we need to get in the air soon.” He pulled the cuff of his leather flight coat back and checked the watch wrapped around his hairy arm.
“What time is it?” Crass asked.
“Four minutes till ten. How much do you weigh?” Mickey asked. He was brushing back his long hair and looking Crass over, from top to bottom, trying to put an estimate on it.
“A buck forty or so. Why?”
Mickey grinned. “I’d rather not crash and die because we overloaded the bird, alright? It’s a fuckin safety precaution, asshole. How about your bags?”
Crass walked to his room and snatched the bags off the bed. He was taking only one with him, and brought it to Mickey, who felt it, and then returned it.
“What’s in the bag?” he asked. He was sitting on the leather couch now, once again in deep admiration of the surreal painting on the wall. Lights encased the top of the frame, and spilled over on the canvas.
“Clothing and shit. Space cakes, a notebook, and my MoboGlobos,” he said. “The trip is for like…three days I think, two nights. Like a weekend retreat kind of deal.”
“What’d you just say?” Mickey asked, turning his head and grinning.
“What? MoboGlobos? They’re a high tech optical-mounted head display for recording among things. A good friend of mine, Jean Glassé, has lent me one of three prototypes. And they do a lot of stuff,” Crass added.
“Interesting. So I’ve gotta know I guess. Where are you going up there?” Mickey asked.
“The LunaDome. It’s a resort and hotel on the Moon, somewhere. I don’t know if it’s the most tourist-friendly attraction, but it’s the Moon, which means we’ve entirely left the fuckin planet known as Earth,” Crass said. “And that’s my present goal, Mick. To just really get away from here and escape for once in my life.”
Mickey looked at him curiously. “There’s nobility in it. I’m really quite envious and that isn’t a lie,” he said, standing up off the couch. “When I was fourteen, I dreamed of flying someday, but I remember thinking then that the real badasses were the guys stepping aboard that shuttle at Cape Canaveral. They were the real American heroes.”
Crass wasn’t going to argue with that. Although he thought Walt Disney or Eli Whitney were also capable of being on that list. At least, he thought so. He withheld this thought from Mickey as best he could, despite being under the influence and all.
“You ready?” Mickey asked.
Crass grabbed the bag, hoisting it over his shoulder. “Does a bear shit in the woods?”
Mickey looked up and his face stretched out into a jolly grin. The hair was in his face again. He brushed it away.
“I guess he does, until he runs out of trees.”
They laughed and walked up the staircase to the roof—a full twenty-five stories high.
The shiny black chopper sat on the building top, waiting for them in the cool night’s breeze. And below were the sounds of the gentle surf washing over the long dark arm of the beach.
IV: Innsmouth
They flew along the scant coastline, heading south along the silent beach. Mickey and Crass talked through the headsets onboard the swiftly moving helicopter.
“I bought this bird at an Army surplus auction. It’s still got the guns on the front and the missiles on the wing, though I suspect those are as dead as a doornail.”
Mickey tapped a red button on his hand lever and bullets ignited from the stolid .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the front, not very far from Crass’s feet. He felt the impacts jolt through his soles like electroshock therapy.
“It’s the same one I flew back in the war,” Mickey said.
“Why didn’t they take the guns off?” Crass asked “Isn’t that kind of crazy to sell to a civilian, or even a veteran?” Seemed like a crazy fucking idea to him.
“The irony is most of the people buying these things are casual buyers…like purveyors of antiques and collectible stamps and other useless shit that collects dust. It’s much easier to buy a helicopter than it is to acquire a license to actually fly the damn thing.”
Overhead, four blades whipped the air, carrying us further out into the night; and up ahead, coming over the dark horizon now, the lights of a bright-neon city danced everywhere like violent graffiti on the tall, seductive buildings erected over the Daytona skyline.
A blimp hung high over downtown and slowly turned to its port side, revealing a message typed in big and white block letters across its mammoth size screen.
WATCH 4 PATCHES OF HEAVY FROGS
OUTSIDE TEMP: 82°
TIME: 10:09 pm
Crass started laughing out loud and Mickey looked at him cautiously, chuckling a little under his breath.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You didn’t see that blimp in the sky? The one with the typo on the side—Watch for patches of heavy frogs. You didn’t see that just now?” Crass asked. He had to see it, he thought.
“Nope,” Mickey replied. “I’m watching for stray birds or any of those stupid little FPS toys that are always zipping around the air these days. We’re about to turn southeast and…”
He checked a few instruments on the panel.
“We’ll be at Innsmouth in about seven minutes.”
Crass was baffled Mickey hadn’t seen the flying fuckup in the sky. He ate another space cake and forgot about it. Mickey unwrapped one of his own, gobbling it down as the beach disappeared behind them, and nothing except the Atlantic Ocean was in their windshield now. The lights of the city glimmered behind them and were gone from sight.
“Dammit! This fog is thick.”
That was Mickey’s voice coming through the headset.
And he was right. It rolled off the windshield in soft billows
, circling lazily around the craft. The rotation of the blades cut through it like warm butter, and a moment later the windshield had cleared, and we saw the dim lights of an island city with high terraced walls rising out of the depths of the dark waters.
A large, white shuttle was pointing toward the darkening skies above us. A tingle of excitement rushed through the atmosphere as we approached closer to it, and the island below.
Mickey landed us on the helipad situated on top of the estate (castle?) some reclusive architect ostensibly sunk money into, painstakingly renovating it for commercial space transportation.
Two gentlemen dressed in black, three-piece suits were walking out on the helipad. Crass’s first thought was: these are the Men in Black coming to erase our memory. Mickey killed the engines and the men approached the doors carefully, keeping their heads down as they walked over towards us.
“Welcome to Innsmouth, gentlemen. Your crew and safety instructor are awaiting your presence downstairs in the theater room. Right this way, please.”
Mickey and Crass had not much of a choice but to follow the Men in Black downstairs and see what awaited them there. Maybe those memory scans wouldn’t have been a bad idea, after all. Crass tried cracking a joke about it, but the stern hosts didn’t appear amused at all.
These guys have about as much humor as a brick wall, he thought. Emotionless pricks.
We followed them downstairs and to an elevator heading for the basement level. The doors opened up and we were escorted down a long and narrow hallway with coffered ceilings and exquisitely carved mahogany trim.
A few pictures and shiny plaques hung on the wall, which Crass hardly noticed at all. The tall double doors with arched panels in front of him held his attention uninterruptedly. They swung outward as we neared closer to them.
The guy on Crass’s right, Man in Black #1, was holding his hand to his ear and muttering something under his breath. These were the guys who were hard-wired in to the system and knew only one objective: Fit the Code, Save a Life. They avidly believed Facesnap could possibly help them get along in the world.
LunaDome: A Novel Page 2