SuperMoon

by H. A. Swain

  It’s the same question we had for our mother. Is he alive? we wanted to know, but she didn’t have an answer except to say our father would never come home again. I understood that much, but I wanted to know what had happened to his mind. Where did it go when his body was usurped by MUSC?

  “Where have these people gone?” D’Cart asks, and of course, no one answers. The crowd is deathly quiet, likely as confused as we are by this departure from pure consumerism.

  “They are out there,” D’Cart whispers. Other silvery holos float above her head. “Soulless bodies and bodiless souls floating in the ether, waiting to be reunited.”

  “Reunited?” Talitha says incredulous. “Has she lost her mind?”

  “They are gathering,” says D’Cart. Outlines of ExploroBots hovering in the vast emptiness of space fill the screen. D’Cart’s silvery holo floats up to join them.

  “Maybe she has, but,” I whisper to my sister, “don’t you ever wonder where Dad is?”

  “Of course I do,” she says, and climbs into the chair beside me. “But since when did D’Cart give two craps about people from the Wastelands or ExploroBots?”

  I shake my head, as bewildered as my sister, though something in what D’Cart says resonates with me. Sometimes I dream I’m floating—weightlessly, aimlessly in space, aware that I’ll stay in that suspended state forever. Then I wake up in a panic, worried that was my father’s fate. Did he know what was happening to him? Or was his mind replaced when they took over his body? Are the mind and body different things?

  I open my mouth to tell this to Talitha, but I don’t because that’s when D’Cart says, “We are coming. We are coming for them soon!”

  My sister and I look at each other, then the screen goes blank.

  TIME STAMP

  MOON

  LEAP DAY, MUSC YEAR 94

  EARTH

  JUNE 18, 2XXX

  UMA JEMISON

  MUSC SHUTTLE TO EARTH

  GENTLE SHAKING WAKES me. Groggy and confused, I squint one eye, expecting to see my mother standing beside my sleeping berth, rousing me for another day at school, but then I remember that I’m hurtling through space at eight kilometers per second toward Earth, and I bolt upright from my slouch. The harness straps jerk me back against my seat.

  “Ouch,” I mutter, and rub a spot above my collarbone as I sit up to take a look around.

  The others on the Shuttle sleep or have the glassy-eyed stare of people deeply engrossed in their Streams. I immediately glance at where my Lenz should be, then remember that I muted Darshan and took off my device to avoid the wrath of my mother and Dr. Fornax once they realize that I’m gone. But that means I have no idea what time it is, how long I slept, or how much farther we have to go before we land.

  To my left, a slice of bright white light bisects the circular window, cutting it into two distinct halves—one side glows greenish purple, and the other is dark, with a shrinking silver ball.

  Is that the Moon? I ask Darshan out of habit. It’s so strange not to have an immediate answer. I sit for a moment listening to the silence. At first I find it eerie. No Stream, no Darshan, no thotz. I feel completely cut off and isolated, as if I’m floating on my own in space, untethered. But then I realize what I’m hearing isn’t silence at all, but a different set of noises—the shu-shu-shu of the Shuttle engine; the bzzt of some loose bolt. The click of someone picking at her nails.

  I look out the window again at the quickly receding silver dot, and I feel excitement building in my belly. The truth is, I don’t know what it is, and that’s okay with me. Sometimes I don’t want empirical truth. Sometimes I want conjecture. Maybe it’s the moon, or a satellite, or the body of an ExploroBot that’s been deep-spaced, or a sky wolf, or a white hare, or just a chunk of ice rebounding after a celestial collision.

  Slowly, the bright white line in the center of the window spins like the point of a compass, and I realize the Shuttle must be changing directions. I try to get my bearings and puzzle through what I see. The light cuts the window horizontally now, with the top half black and the bottom shifting from purple toward blue. Then the center line goes from pure white light to fuzzy orange and bends as if frowning, and suddenly the image clicks. I understand that I’m looking at the curved horizon of a planet and that planet must be Earth.

  The dot of silver light in the darkness winks, then disappears. Good night, Moon! I think, and remember an artifact from my early childhood. An ancient book on a tablet that my mother read to me before bed when I was small. I expect to feel the tug of some emotion now that my home for the past decade is no longer in my sight, but what I feel instead is the buzzing of anticipation in my belly.

  “Earth,” I whisper, and press my hand against the window as if I could feel the warmth of the glowing horizon, but the window is as cold as empty space.

  A narrow arc appears over the growing blue and purple planet. We seem to slow suddenly. The warp galumphs in my belly and pops my ears as the Shuttle tilts and shudders. I expect to feel sick, but mostly I feel giddy. Then I gasp at an eerie green glow swirling over the top of the Earth’s surface. Thin rays of white, pink, and purple light flicker like lost souls beaming into the darkness—no spaceships and travel suits needed. They are free now. Unencumbered by arms and legs and bully brains. But that’s not true. What I’m seeing is the aurora borealis.

  We learned about this phenomenon in my third-year Atmospheres class. When I told my mother the northern lights occur when charged particles from the sun cause atoms to release particles of light called photons across the Earth’s magnetic field, she quoted a long-dead Earth poet named Thoreau: “What sort of science is that which enriches the understanding but robs the imagination?” At the time, I thought she was being so Earthy and closed-minded about truth, but now I see her point. The beauty of the aurora borealis isn’t captured by its explanation. I want to paint, sing, and dance what I see outside the window. Along with understanding why it happens, I want to celebrate that it happens at all. Something we never do on MUSC.

  The glowing lights fade as we cruise around the top of the Earth. In its place, the thin lip of black space has faded to striations of blue, from the darkest ink to what I remember as the color of the sky, and my heart speeds up. When I was little, my father told me that the Earth is like a beautiful marble floating inside a protective bubble. But why is the inside of the bubble blue? I asked, looking up at the sky. Because blue light waves are the shortest and scatter more easily so that’s mostly what you see even though all of the other colors are still there, he said. Soon we’ll pierce the blue bubble, which contains the happiest memories of my youngest years. Will it be anything like I remember? Or are my memories like a child’s drawing that captures only best parts of life?

  I grip the arms of my seat. Out the window, strings of tiny white and orange dots appear. The pattern reminds me of bacteria colonies, but surely they are cities. Then they’re gone beneath a thick blanket of gray clouds, where flashes of lightning ricochet around like ideas inside a brain.

  As we cross the planet, the sky grows less dark. On the horizon I see a faint pinkish-orange line. The sun setting to the west. I look again for the moon and find it faint and ghostly in the window across the aisle. I gasp at its beauty. I haven’t seen the Moon like this since I was small.

  Gears whirl, and the Shuttle tilts, sending me forward in my harness as the body of the ship comes into alignment with the tail fins and we flatten out to glide. This should be the easy part, when we descend smoothly and effortlessly toward the ground, only I feel jittery and uncertain. As we get closer and closer to the ground, my heart swells up with fear. What was I thinking? I purposely disobeyed the MUSC CEO! I left without permission! I abandoned my mom and implicated my best friend in my misbehavior! And for what? This dying planet down below populated by the worst of what’s left of humanity caught in endless wars. What in the name of Jupiter was I thinking?

  I can barely breathe, then two loud BOOMs rattle the w
indows. My heart jumps into my throat.

  “No!” I wail, and shoot my arm out to grip the man beside me. “I don’t want to die!” I say as the Shuttle shakes violently and plummets toward the Earth.

  TALITHA NEVA

  ALPHAZONIA, EARTH

  BOOM! BOOM! TWO louds bangs wake me. I jump up from where I’m slumped in a chair, then hit the ground, arms overhead, expecting dust and debris to fall from the ceiling. But it doesn’t. Everything stays intact. Only the window and the glasses on the table rattle.

  “What the hell was that?” I ask as I pick up myself up off the floor.

  At the window, Castor points to a silver streak trailing twin exhaust streams across the early evening sky. “Shuttle,” he says.

  “I thought it was another quake.”

  “Remember when we were little and stood up like meerkats looking for eagles whenever the MUSC Shuttles came down?”

  “I always waved,” I admit, and join my brother at the window. “I imagined there was a pilot waving back at us from the cockpit.”

  “Shuttles are automated, duh.”

  “I know that now,” I say. Then I turn away. “Oh, poor Quasar!” I cry, and pace across the room. “He hates the booms! You don’t think he’ll bolt, do you?”

  Castor goes back to a chair and sits, legs crossed, elbows on his knees. “He’ll wait for us.”

  “For how long?” My stomach knots up as I try to estimate how long we’ve been inside. “We were probably nabbed around ten or eleven last night, and it’s evening now of the next day…”

  “At least they’re feeding us.” Castor picks at what’s left of the fresh fruit, bean paste, and hard crackers a DomestiBot left for us in the afternoon.

  “But … what if…”

  “What if … what if! You worry so much, Talitha. Always have.”

  “Maybe you should worry a little more,” I grouse.

  Castor stares at me, face hardened, arms crossed. “Mundie will come for you, you know that, right?”

  Sweat pools under the tessellated triangles of the stupid jumpsuit pressing into my skin. My whole body feels itchy.

  “I saw him,” Castor admits. “He watched the whole thing when we got nabbed.”

  “Ugh! That’s even worse.” My stomach churns. “If he bails us out, I’ll feel indebted to him.”

  “You don’t owe Mundie anything!” Castor says. “Life is just a series of transactions.”

  “Yeah, well, some emotions cost more than others,” I tell him.

  He shakes his head. “You’ve got to have thicker skin if you’re going to survive here.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to stay anymore,” I tell him, and stomp around the perimeter of the cramped space. “Maybe I’m tired of always skulking around, pretending I don’t exist, living off everybody else’s scraps!” I fling my arm at the leftovers on the tables. “Always worrying that we’ll get caught!”

  “So stop worrying.”

  “How can I when you do such stupid stuff?” I yell.

  “So you’re going back to the Wastelands? Is that what you’re saying? Gonna live with Mom?”

  I rest against the wall. “Might be better than eking out a living here where we’re barely considered human!”

  “It’s no better there, and you know it,” says Castor. “Mom lives inside a bubble of her own creation.”

  I sigh. “At least in her bubble, I wouldn’t be afraid all the time.”

  “That’s called complacency, Talitha.” Castor stretches his arms overhead and yawns.

  “Or maybe it’s just called life,” I argue.

  “Yeah, well, if living in the Wastelands is life, then I’ll pass.”

  “You always wanted more,” I say quietly, and turn away. “Even when we were little. More food. More water. More stuff.” I wish I could go someplace else, away from my brother, but the room is barely big enough to hold both of us and the furniture.

  “Of course I want more,” he says. “And so should you. We’re just as good as any Yoobie. Probably better.”

  I gaze out the window again. Somewhere in the desert, not far from the Dumps, where we grew up, another Shuttle will soon land. Moonlings will disembark and head our way.

  “Mom should have tested you for a MUSC scholarship. You would have gotten in, I bet.”

  “I wouldn’t have gone,” he says. “Not after what they did to Dad. D’Cart may be a little loopy, but she’s right. What MUSC does to soldiers is despicable.”

  Every once in a while, we catch sight of Moon visitors walking around the tourist spots in AlphaZonia. They are tall and thin, neither male nor female as far as I can tell. They remind me of the pale worms Castor and I used to dig up in the Dumps that would recoil from sunlight and fresh air as soon as we exposed them.

  “MUSCies are so strange-looking, all walking around in their matching blue and white travel suits,” I say.

  “But their faces are weirdly cute,” says Castor. He’s sprawled across both chairs, his long legs hanging over the edge of one and his arms akimbo off the other. “Almost cartoonish with their long bodies and big heads with giant round eyes blinking out from their protective hoods.”

  “Yeah, what’s with the hoods?” I ask.

  “Chronic neutropenia.”

  “English, please.”

  “Low white blood cell counts. Comes from being born off-planet and growing up in induced gravity. Plus, their environment is so sterile, they haven’t built up antibodies to pathogens down here. One breath of fresh air, and they could all die!”

  “Why do they even come here, then?” I ask, but don’t expect an answer. “What do they want?”

  “Earth products. Food. Minerals and other resources they can’t get up there,” Castor says. “They’re not as self-sufficient as they like to pretend.”

  “Nobody is,” I say, and slide down the wall to sit with my head on my knees, half hoping Mundie will come and half dreading what will happen if he does.

  UMA JEMISON

  MUSC SHUTTLE TO EARTH

  “HEY,” THE SECOND Gen guy beside me looks down at the arm that I’m clutching.

  “Sorry!” I retract my hand, mortified that I screamed and grabbed a stranger, thinking I was about to die.

  I look around. No one else seems to have noticed what I’ve done. Most people are asleep. The few who are awake are so engrossed that the sights and sounds of real life are blocked out by what’s playing inside their minds.

  “You okay?” the man asks in a rare show of MUSC compassion.

  “What was that noise?” I ask.

  “Sonic booms. It happens when we drop below the speed of sound,” he explains.

  “Do people on the ground hear them, too?”

  “They’re used to them by now,” he says with a shrug. “Probably barely notice.”

  I look out the window and try to imagine what it’s like to be down there. On the ground. What do people do? Is anyone like me? Or will I be as different on Earth as I am on the Moon? Will I ever fit in anywhere?

  The man looks out his window, then says, “We’ll be on the ground soon. We’re at about thirteen thousand meters up. Two minutes from touchdown, I’d say. I’m Burnell Chen-Ning, by the way.”

  I whip around to face him and see the resemblance around his eyes to Gemini, his son.

  “You’re Uma, right?” he says, and points to the name and number embroidered on my flight suit.

  “Uh, yeah.” I cringe, waiting for him to nail me for running away.

  “Nice to meet you,” he says, and offers me his hand. “Aren’t you in my son’s cohort?”

  “Yes,” I say, still half holding my breath.

  “I wish he’d come to Earth for his Sol trip,” Mr. Chen-Ning says.

  “You do?”

  “Absolutely! I wish more kids your age would come.” He looks out the window again. “It’s a fascinating place.”

  We’re close enough to the ground that I can see the patterns on the surface of the Earth.
I trace the fractal arms of a river winding its way across the land, then the ridges of some mountain chain, like the spine of a sleeping creature.

  “There’s the landing strip,” Mr. Chen-Ning says.

  I see a straight, dark path outlined on either side by small dots of light. I tense up again when I hear the whirl of gears.

  “Those are the wheels coming down,” he tells me with a smile. “Just a minute or so, and we’ll be on the ground.”

  Suddenly I can’t breathe. That means in a few moments, I’ll set foot on Earth for the first time in ten years. I have no plan. No place to go. No way to get around. I figured I’d let Darshan take care of everything once I arrived, but now I can’t turn Darshan on, and I have no idea what I’m going to do. I hold on to the armrest and brace myself as the concrete of the runway looms up and up. I expect a jolt, but the landing is smooth as the wheels touch down and the gravity of my situation takes hold.

  When we come to a stop, everyone around me moves. Unbuckles harnesses, gathers belongings, stands to stretch their legs, but I stay put. I haven’t yet let go of the armrests. Not because the landing was scary but because I’m not sure what comes next.

  Mr. Chen-Ning leans over. “Don’t be nervous,” he tells me. “People say Earth is a hellhole, but there are nice things about AlphaZonia. Automated food marts in Lost Feelies, where you can get anything you want to eat. GladiatorBot Smackdowns, where you can watch robots fight to the finish. The virtushops on Rodeo Drive, where you can try on different versions of yourself. And Soggywood has tons of entertainment options.” He unrolls the protective hood from the back of his jumpsuit and zips it over his head to stave off Earth infections his immune system can’t handle. “Just stay away from the Wastelands,” he tells me through the tiny speaker built into the face mask, “and you’ll be fine.”

  “Thank you.” I wave good-bye.

  I wait until everyone else has exited before I pick up my device. I leave Darshan off, but I attach it to my head in case I need him, then I cloak myself in the protective hood. As I leave the Shuttle, I breathe so hard with anticipation and fear that my mask fogs up. The autotemp controls kick in and pump cool air so that my mask clears just as the doors to the terminal wheesh open. I stand, stunned, blinking into the sunlight bursting through clear ceiling panels overhead. Swirls of white on darkening blue trail across the sky like thick splays of cake icing that I haven’t eaten since I was five.