King of the Worlds

by M. Thomas Gammarino

  Dylan’s sense of purpose was instantly rekindled; there were more important things than his damaged ego after all. “I think I’m onto something big,” he said. “I don’t understand it, mind you, but I’m onto it.”

  “How do you mean, ‘big’?”

  He looked around cautiously. There were no obvious interlopers, but still he spoke just a hair above the level of his tinnitus: “It’s about Omni. I think something funny’s going on, something…corrupt.”

  “Interesting,” Chad said. “In theory Omni is incorruptible.”

  “In theory lots of things,” said Dylan. And he proceeded to tell Chad everything he knew about Mei-Ling Chen and Jade Astrophil and those phantom documents from Good Samaritan Hospital.

  “Sure, I know that hospital. I don’t know anyone who works there, but I could ask around.”

  “Great,” Dylan said. “But understand that you’ve got to be really discreet about it. We have no idea how deep this thing goes. We can’t be sure that anyone is trustworthy.”

  “How can you be sure that I am?”

  “It’s a calculated risk. And you’ve got to understand too that there’s basically nothing I can do from New Taiwan to help you. So what I’m hoping is that you’ll take enough of an interest in this to follow the trail on your own, at least for now. I’m passing the baton. For all we know, an innocent girl’s life might hang in the balance. Does this sound like something you could do?”

  “Don’t sweat it, man. I can ask around. No guarantees, of course, but I’ll be glad to do what I can.”

  The lack of passion in Chad’s voice was worrying.

  “Realize, dude, that this could be the most important thing we ever do with our lives. It could be the collaboration we were actually born for.”

  “I get it, man. I’m on it. Don’t worry.”

  “And remember, we can’t explicitly communicate about this via omni, so I’ll have to come down again if you find out anything. If we must refer to our missing person in a communiqué, let’s use a code name.”

  “Sure.”

  “Any preference?”

  “‘André the Giant’?”

  “That’ll work.”

  They ate the rest of their lunch in courteous silence since anything they could possibly talk about was sure to dredge up regret in its negative spaces. The silence did nothing to undermine the love, of course; if anything, it reinforced it.

  They hugged again at the Metro station.

  “I miss you, man,” Chad said.

  “Fucking A,” Dylan said. And then he made his way to the teleport to get copied and destroyed again.

  • • •

  A week later, Dylan was rocking the baby on his knee, simulating one of those up-and-down horsey rides that used to be outside the ACME when he was a kid, when Chad omni’d him:

  Dylar,

  I’ve finally managed to track down André the Giant. You’re not going to fucking believe this. Come on down.

  So Dylan took a personal day and was back in LA for an encore lunch at the Mexican place. This time Chad was as shifty-eyed and whispery as Dylan himself.

  “You’ve got some new intelligence?” Dylan asked.

  Chad leaned in. “To be totally honest with you, D, after you left last time, I was pretty sure I was going to let you down. I’m a busy man. I haven’t got time to be going on wild goose chases. But I kept thinking about it. You know what it was that got its hooks in me?”

  Dylan shrugged his shoulders.

  “It was that one little detail about the cuts on her wrists. That just got me somehow. Anyway, I kept brainstorming different ways of gaining access to those medical records, all the different people I could tap and such, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how right you were to be paranoid—because we have no idea who’s in on this thing—and finally I decided that the easiest thing would be just to get in there myself. I considered breaking in, burglar-style, but it’s impossible to pull that shit off in real life. So finally I decided the safest disguise was probably just the one I was already wearing. I might not be able to sneak my way into Jade Astrophil’s medical records, but I was pretty confident I could lawyer my way in. I have a degree in acting after all, and those are mutually reinforcing professions.

  “So I went right up to the information desk a few days later, having printed up all these phony documents in my most impenetrable legalese. On the top of one of them I had ‘WARRANT’ all in caps and bold, and I explained about due cause and the Pirandello Act and how, regrettable though it be, it was going to be necessary for me, in keeping with Beckett v. the State of California, to have a look at Jade Astrophil’s medical records.”

  “What’s the Pirandello Act?”

  “No such thing as far as I know. Ditto ‘Beckett v. the State of California.’”

  Dylan nodded. “Nice.”

  “So this guy at the desk says, ‘May I see your credentials?’ and I show him my license and flash the WARRANT again and tell him that if he’d read section 8, clause 4 of the Method Act, he’d find I was well within my rights as an attorney, and he just said, ‘Well, okay then. Miss Secretary Lady, would you please show this man to the records of one Jade Astrophil.’”

  “The Method Act?”

  “Pure fiction.”

  “Well played.”

  “So this lady took me into a little windowless room and granted me omni access to Jade’s records. I made haste and then got out of there. What did I learn? Just one thing: she’d been admitted two times, fifteen months apart, for the very same complaint: vesicovaginal fistula. Now what do you suppose that is?”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “How about a tear between the vagina and the bladder that is typically accompanied by intense pain, vaginal bleeding, and incontinence?”

  Dylan winced. “The cause?”

  “I wouldn’t want to speculate, though we can probably rule out a happy marriage.”

  “What about contact info?”

  “There was nothing in the records.”

  “Nothing? How could there be nothing?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m telling you: zilch. It didn’t make any sense to me either. So I puzzled over what to do next, and I kept coming up empty-handed until one day I’m meeting with a very famous actor client of mine and I straight up ask him, ‘Did you ever hear of anyone named Jade Astrophil?’ And would you know he got all hush-hush and said, ‘Jade? Sure, I know Jade. You one of hers?’ So I bluffed and said I was, yeah, and he said, ‘I didn’t know they ever admitted attorneys up there,’ and I was all like, ‘I guess I’m special that way.’ And then he said something like, ‘Jade’s a sweetheart. Maybe we’ll see her together sometime.’ I told him I’d like that and he winked and gave me a high five.

  “I didn’t have a clue what we were talking about until my next client, another well known actor whose name I’m not at liberty to disclose, came in and I told him, ‘Hey, I’m thinking of seeing Jade Astrophil pretty soon. What do you think?’ He whispered, ‘Is she coming down?’ and I said, ‘I was thinking of going up actually.’ And do you know what he said then?”

  “I’m sure I don’t,” Dylan said.

  “He said, ‘Is there a launch coming up?’”

  In an instant, Dylan felt as if he’d grown a hundred feet taller. “See!” he said. “See!”

  “I’m sorry, brother. I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

  To be sure, despite being sworn to secrecy, Dylan had eventually confided in Chad about his trip to the moon, but Chad had never believed it for a second. He’d seemed offended, in fact, that Dylan would try to pass off such a patent story on him. As if his actual success wasn’t spiteful enough! Dylan, of course, had been offended in his own right.

  “Fuck,” Dylan said. “You made me doubt my own sanity there for a while.”r />
  “Well you can stop. That was my bad. You’re plenty sane.”

  “So Jade’s in the moon? Go figure.”

  Dylan wasn’t sure what to make of this new information yet. Was Jade’s being in the moon just an extraordinary coincidence? Or was there some invisible web of logic connecting her being up there to his once having been?

  “Alas,” Dylan continued, “I’m afraid that can only mean one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She’s a sex worker, if not an out-and-out slave.”

  “I guess that does compute, doesn’t it?”

  “Inside the moon is the most heinous patriarchy humanity has ever known. It computes.”

  “I see,” Chad said, about half as soberly as was called for.

  “So what did you say when he asked whether or not a launch was coming up?”

  “I told him I might be mistaken, and then he said, ‘I know Hef and them used to go up on odd days here and there, but I’ve certainly never been invited any day but First Friday.’ So I said something like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know. Are you going up First Friday then?’ And he said, ‘I don’t think so. I’m trying to turn over a new leaf with regard to all that. I’m sure it’ll be good though.’ I stopped pressing my luck at that point. I might have finagled a proper invitation, but it was starting to feel sort of dangerous.”

  “Understood,” Dylan said. “I’ll take over from here. Good work, Chad. I knew I could count on you.”

  “No problem, buddy. It was easy. Now let’s just hope I don’t get assassinated.”

  • • •

  Dylan spent the next couple of days in Chad’s apartment, omni’ing in sick to school and dreaming up schemes for how he could get himself back up in the moon. In theory there could be a RiboMate in the Grotto by now, but with all this talk of launches—and considering the Loonies’ vested interests in secrecy, ritual, and tradition—Dylan felt pretty sure there wasn’t.

  Plan A: He would stake out some actor and trail him to whatever undisclosed location the launch was going to take place at. Unfortunately, though every kid these days had a Crypsis suit,36 the true invisibility cloak remained elusive.

  36_____________

  i.e. Active camouflage—built-in cameras projected HD images onto panels in the suit itself, blending the kid in with whatever was behind him vis-à-vis the viewer.

  Plan B: He would travel to the space/teleport in Selena City, rent a rover and try to make his way around to the far side and locate the entrance to the Grotto himself. Because it was shielded from radio interference from Earth, however, the far side, excepting the small outpost around the DeGrasse-Tyson radio telescope, was a vast desert. Moreover, Dylan had no coordinates to point him in the right direction. So that was probably out.

  Plan C: He would go in disguise as some other celebrity, preferably a quiet one. He was an actor after all. But he’d been trained in interpretation, not impersonation, and pulling this off would require some heavy-duty makeup and prosthetics of the sort only a Hollywood insider could manage; needless to say, invoking such services would clearly pose too great a security risk.

  Plan D: He would simply stow away somewhere in the rocket ship. A Crypsis suit might get him that far. Not only was the ship’s precise location a mystery, however, but even if this strategy got him through the airlock, he could hardly rely on it to get him all the way to Jade Astrophil.

  Plan E: Like Chad in search of medical records, his safest disguise was probably the one he was already wearing. He would go as himself.

  He hated the idea. He had lately conquered his fear of returning to the geographical Hollywood, but returning to the industry was a different matter. He hadn’t seen most of the glitterati in decades, and the thought of cavorting with them now, and confessing that he was a family man who taught high school, was almost enough to make him call off the search. Almost. But the cuts on Jade’s wrists had gotten to him at least as much as they had Chad, and now that he had the vesicovaginal fistulas to reckon with as well, he could almost hear her plaintive, defenseless cries across the void.

  Don’t worry, Jade—I’m on my way, he telepathized back, fully aware that one couldn’t really get out there via in here.

  So he got in touch with Terry Gilliam. And he did so, quite deliberately, via omni. Dylan had no idea how exactly the conspiracy involving the disappearance of Mei-Ling Chen/Jade Astrophil from Omni did or did not relate to the conspiracy involving a patriarchal utopia in the moon, but it was clear now that the two plots were intertwined, and since Omni was somehow implicated in covering up the former, it might be instructive to see what it would do with communications regarding the latter.37 Gilliam promptly replied:

  37_____________

  To be sure, there was ample speculation in the Omniverse about the existence of a patriarchal utopia inside the moon, but it was just enough as to seem the paranoid fantasy of crackpots in orgone accumulators, and hardly worthy of serious attention.

  Good God, man! I wondered if I’d ever hear from you again. It’s been, what, a couple of decades? How are things on wherever-you-are-again?

  All’s fine here. I’ve just been a bit nostalgic lately and remembered you telling me Once a Loon, always a Loon. I thought it might be nice to revisit some old stomping grounds.

  Trying to get back in the industry, are we? It’s basically in shambles, but there’s no better place to rub elbows than up there.

  Not really trying to get back in the industry. Just trying to get the most out of life. Can you tell me how I can set up a rendezvous?

  Sure thing, Dylan. There’s a regular launch on first Fridays. That happens to be tomorrow. You want me to see if I can book you a spot? You’ll have to depart from Earth,

  of course.

  That would be great. I really appreciate it.

  No sweat, my friend.

  Gilliam wrote back a few minutes later with the departure information:

  Tomorrow’s launch is full up, but could you be at Reno Spaceport at 9 am Saturday? They’ve got a secret pad there.

  Sure.

  The captain will meet you in Arrivals. They’re making a special trip for you. You’ll be traveling alone. I’ve already let the cat out of the bag. Hope you don’t mind. I regret that I can’t make it—my niece’s birthday—but maybe we’ll see you up there regularly from now on. There’s no place like it.

  I can’t thank you enough, Terry. Not sure I’ll ever be a regular, though I do hope to see you somewhere soon anyway.

  Perfect. Dylan had some thirty-six hours until launch and Reno was some five hundred or so miles away. Unfortunately, before he hied to the moon and risked his life in an effort to save a fragile Asian sex slave, he felt he needed to see his family one last time. So en route to Reno, he made a quick detour of some 2,001 light years.

  He could have told Erin another lie—something easy to digest, that he had another conference to go to maybe—but since he’d turned forty and a new leaf, things had been going well for them. They weren’t having sex or anything crazy like that, but they were treating each other more like friends than enemies, and he didn’t want to screw that up by violating her trust.

  So he told her of the ongoing adventures in the Jade Astrophil saga.

  “So let me get this straight,” Erin said. “You basically know nothing about her except that she wrote you some fan mail twenty

  years ago?”

  “And that Omni deleted her.”

  “Possibly,” she said. She was skeptical about his eyewitness testimony, and of conspiracy theories in general.

  “And that she now lives on the moon,” Dylan added.

  “Right.”

  And now she was just humoring him. He had eventually confided in her too about his time on the moon—omitting the bit about Fantasia, of course, and glossing over the part where he li
ed about going to Catalina—but she’d been as offended as Chad. Her brain simply refused to acknowledge any narrative that contradicted the official version of things, and the official version of humans on the moon began with JFK and NASA’s Apollo missions and, finally, Neil Armstrong’s small step/giant leap. It was no problem for her that she and her husband now lived in another sector of the galaxy from the one they’d grown up in, because that was a matter of record, but the possibility that very powerful men had terraformed a cavern inside a rock just 238,900 miles from Earth a decade before the formation of NASA was tantamount to saying that Columbus didn’t really discover America: nuts!

  This sort of narrow herd-thought infuriated Dylan to no end, and they’d fought about it for years before he finally accepted that, evidence be damned, she was never going to believe him and he might as well stop trying. They’d reached a separate peace on the matter, more or less.

  “So what are you hoping to accomplish by going up there?” she asked.

  “I need to find out what’s happened to her. She has disappeared from Omni, Erin. Do you understand what a big deal this is? She’s been rubbed out, as if she never existed. You can’t do that to a person!”

  “Okay, so let’s say I believe you. Let’s say she’s living in the moon. What’s so bad about it? You made it sound like a paradise.”

  “Okay, here’s the thing about the moon, Erin. Basically the moon, the party cavern inside anyway, exists for the pleasure of very powerful, wealthy, and dastardly men. It’s a paradise for them perhaps, but it’s hell for women. They’re slaves, in effect, and in addition to whatever cooking and cleaning they may do, many if not all of them are sex slaves.” He didn’t go quite as far as to tell her he’d once invoked their services and enjoyed every shivering second. Nor did he bother to recall that Fantasia had told him she was very handsomely compensated, which just needlessly complicated things.