rRego had modified the anti-gravity system so it was working all the time, though he kept control of it in case he wanted to wind up Radius Limpfast during their live broadcasts.
I need to fit a charcoal filter to that dog’s spacesuit, he said to himself as he went past Stark and Laura’s room. I may be a robot, but smells like that could play havoc with my delicate circuits.
‘My god I’m hungry,’ Stark muttered.
‘Me too,’ said Laura.
Huh, me too, Crumley, who was now awake, said to himself. But no-one ever listens to me.
Stark reached out in the dark for the bedside light switch, but it wasn’t there.
‘I can’t find the light switch,’ he said.
‘The one on my side’s missing too,’ said Laura. ‘That’s odd.’
‘No, hang on a minute,’ said Stark, ‘we’re not at home. We’re in the big house out in the country, remember?’
‘Oh yes, so we are,’ said Laura. ‘I can’t remember if there are bedside lamps or not.’
There was a faint line of light over to one side of the bedroom. It was the sort of light that shines round the edge of the curtains in the dead of night.
Laura got out of bed and walked carefully towards the light. She slipped her fingers round something that felt like a curtain or blind, pulled it aside a bit and looked out.
She wanted to say, ‘Oh my god,’ but she fainted before she could.
‘What?’ said Stark, as he heard her collapse on the floor. ‘Wassermarra?’
Silence.
He too got out of bed and walked towards the window. He tripped over Laura, fell forward, grabbed the blind and tore it off the wall.
Stark managed to say, ‘Oh my god’, before he fainted too.
rRego, who never slept because he was a robot, had heard Stark and Laura blundering around and went into their room. He pulled a small electronic prod out of one of his many storage compartments and gave the two unconscious humans a little shock,56 which woke them up and calmed them down at the same time.
‘Good morning, people,’ he said.
With the blind torn off the wall, Stark and Laura could now see beyond any doubt that they really were on the moon. Their immediate reaction was to faint again, but rRego gave them both another quick prod before they could.
‘How …?’ Stark began.
‘When? What? Who?’ added Laura, with a few other questions, ending with, ‘Where are the children?’
‘Primrose is in the Lounge-Room Module with the old lady and the dog,’ said rRego. ‘All fine. Everything’s under control. Come with me, please. Then I will go and get the other one.’
‘I might just stay here for a bit,’ said Stark. He went back to sleep as Laura followed the robot along the corridor into the Lounge-Room Module.
‘Hi Mum,’ said Primrose, when they came into view. ‘This is so cool and the robot machine guy thing is brilliant.’
‘rRego,’ said rRego to Laura. ‘My name is rRego.’
‘OK,’ said Laura, trying to get her bearings. ‘Yeah, I mean, I thought we’d be living on food pills like you see in the movies, but if you tell rRego what you want to eat, he can produce it in a few minutes,’ Primrose explained.
‘What, you mean if I want a fried egg sandwich with a slice of bacon and lettuce, he can make that?’ said Laura.
‘Of course, no problem,’ said Primrose.
‘Do you want one?’ rRego asked Laura.
‘Well, it wouldn’t be exactly a fried egg sandwich with a slice of bacon and lettuce,’ Granny Apricot said. ‘But it sort of looks a bit like it and tastes just like it.’
‘So it’s not a real sandwich, then?’ said Laura.
‘Oh, yes it is,’ said Primrose. ‘It’s just that rRego doesn’t need to cut a couple of slices off a bread loaf, or get some bacon slices out of a fridge, and we haven’t got any chickens up here.’
‘Would you like me to make you some?’ rRego asked.
‘Some what?’ said Primrose.
‘Some chickens,’ said rRego. ‘I can do them roasted, poached or running around alive.’
‘Maybe later,’ said Granny Apricot.
‘So it’s not a fried egg sandwich with a slice of bacon and lettuce at all, then?’ said Laura
‘Not exactly,’ said Granny Apricot.
‘So what is it, exactly?’ said Laura.
‘Chemicals,’ said rRego.
‘I’m not eating chemicals,’ said Laura.
‘Come on, Mum,’ said Primrose. ‘Everything you’ve ever eaten and drunk has been made of chemicals. The entire world is made of chemicals.’
‘Don’t be so silly,’ said Laura. ‘A banana, say – I mean, that’s not made of chemicals, is it?’
‘Well, what’s it made of then?’ said Primrose.
‘Banana. It’s made of banana.’
This went on for quite a while, with rRego trying patiently to explain chemistry, physics, genomes and advanced fruit construction to Laura Contrast.
‘Yes, but who is this Jean Gnome?’ Laura said at one point. ‘I thought there were no such things as gnomes.’
rRego contemplated banging his head against the wall but realised that if he did, he would probably smash a hole in it, which would mean the immediate and total loss of oxygen in the MUD, followed very quickly by the immediate and total being dead for all the humans and the dog, and he quite liked the dog, especially as it seemed to be in love with him.
So rRego got a pen and paper and eventually convinced Laura that every single thing everywhere was made of chemicals, and that a genome was sort of like LEGO for building people and plants and animals, including bananas and jellyfish.
‘Even my thumb?’ said Laura.
‘Yes, even your thumb and all your other bits,’ said rRego.
‘And you’re saying that inside your brain you’ve got the genomes for everything?’ said Laura. ‘And a big box of chemicals, so you can build absolutely anything?’
‘Pretty much,’ said rRego.
‘All right, I’ll have a fried egg sandwich with a slice of bacon and lettuce, please,’ said Laura.
‘Tomato sauce or barbecue sauce?’ said rRego, as he went into the Creation Module.
rRego was the only one who had access to the Creation Module. To enter it, you had to go through two doors that were less than half a metre apart, which meant that if anyone was standing behind the robot hoping to see what was inside as he went in, all they’d see would be the outer door closing before the inner door opened.
No way do I want any humans in here, rRego had said to himself, when he’d been building it back on Earth. It would be like letting a small puppy run mission control at Cape Canaveral.
But then, he added, the so-called mission control for this particular mission was a bit like that anyway.
Apart from the scientists who had programmed the MUD control systems, no-one on Earth, not even Radius Limpfast or any of the production staff, knew about the Creation Module.
rRego collected a few grams of one chemical from this jar, a few from that, some more from up there and a few from over there, and put them all into a crucible.57 He stirred them up with a laser-spoon58 and put the crucible in his hi-tech ultra-cryptic furnace,59 set the timer and warmed a plate in his secondary back-up hi-tech ultra-cryptic furnace.
‘Here you are,’ he said two minutes later, as he handed Laura her almost-but-not-quite fried egg sandwich with a slice of bacon and lettuce with tomato sauce.
Laura tried to eat the sandwich without looking at it in case she saw any chemicals. She didn’t know what chemicals looked like, but she guessed they wouldn’t look very nice.
However, a few minutes later, she was only too happy to say that rRego’s creation was probably the best sandwich she had ever tasted.
rRego wasn’t a great cook, but he was a great chemist. He could just as easily have made an adorable puppy as a sandwich. All it took was mixing the chemicals in the right amounts and the righ
t order, and cooking them at the right temperature for exactly the right length of time.60
‘This may seem all a bit unlikely,’ I hear you say, ‘since this robot was only made a few weeks ago. How could he be so incredibly clever?’
Well, this is a perfect example of the saying ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’.61 Because Radius Limpfast is so mean and always looking for ways to save money, he bought a truckload of really old computer parts, including an experimental super-computer that was deliberately dismantled because it was much, much, double-much cleverer than the scientists who built it and everyone else on Earth, and no-one likes a clever clogs.62
And, as luck would have it, it was the triple-genius brain of this incredibly, massively, overwhelmingly clever, clever, clever wonder computer that ended up as rRego’s brain.
So far, there were two humans he liked – Primrose and Granny Apricot. The other three were harmless, but not very bright, though their dog did show promise.
A few hours later, Stark woke up again. rRego picked it up on his sensors and went to get him.
Stark was still very sleepy and everything was a bit of a blur. He had completely forgotten he was on the moon.
‘What time is it?’ he kept asking. ‘I don’t want to be late for work.’
rRego extended two extra arms and held them on either side of Stark’s head, sending a slight electrical current through the grey lumpy stuff inside the human’s head. Now Stark was really awake, rRego led him along the corridor until they reached the Lounge-Room Module.
‘Whoa,’ said Stark, as he saw the view through the window. ‘It looks like we’re on the moon. How did they do that? I mean, hey, everyone, we’re on the moon!’
‘Yes, Dad, we know,’ said Primrose.
rRego made Stark and Jack – who rRego had woken up earlier and taken to the Lounge-Room Module – two incredible sandwiches, and then everyone sat around looking out of the glass wall at the bleak, endless, lifeless desert that was the moon. Apart from some shallow craters and a few bumps that could hardly be called hills, never mind mountains, the terrain stretched on towards the distant horizon. It was grey with added grey and bits of grey here and there.
And though in the past a few spaceships and asteroids had landed and stirred things up a bit, nothing had moved for millennia, not even the tiniest speck of dust – though obviously fresh dust was arriving from every corner of space all the time.
rRego loved the moon for its everlasting calmness and he knew that the humans would soon begin to hate it for exactly the same reason.
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ he said.
‘What? Where?’ said Primrose.
‘Out there, the moon,’ rRego replied.
‘Yeah, but what?’ said Primrose. ‘I can see all the dust and stuff, but I can’t see anything you might call beautiful.’
‘Can’t you sense the far-out serenity of the place?’ the robot asked.
‘Hello,’ said Primrose, ‘it’s dead. There’s nothing.’
‘But it’s timeless, eternal,’ the robot replied, but he knew his humans would never see it that way.
‘I think it’s rubbish,’ said Primrose. ‘Is there anywhere I can charge my phone? It’s gone completely flat.’
‘Yes,’ said rRego, realising that depression meant more than a dent in the ground. ‘There’s a socket over there.’
He was about to tell the girl it was pointless charging her phone because there was no way she’d ever be able to get a signal on the moon, but charging it and then visiting every square metre of the MUD to look for phone signals would keep her occupied for a while.
‘Can I go out and play?’ said Jack, but before rRego could answer, the giant monitor on the wall burst into life and there was Radius Limpfast.
‘Hi guys,’ he said with heavy-duty enthusiasm. ‘How’s the moon? Brilliant, eh? I wish I could be up there with you.’
‘Why aren’t you, then?’ said Primrose.
‘Ah well, it was the medical,’ Radius lied. ‘I so wanted to come, but the quacks said no – heart problem or something.’
‘What, you mean you haven’t got one?’ Primrose sneered.
‘Primrose!’ Laura Contrast snapped.
‘Hey, it’s OK, little lady, good joke,’ Radius said, and laughed.63 ‘Anyway, people, are you ready to meet and greet?’
‘Greet who?’ said Laura.
‘The world,’ said Radius. ‘The entire world.’
‘They’re all waiting to meet you,’ added Fiona Hardly, who was sitting next to Radius.
‘Indeed,’ Radius agreed. ‘You are global superstars, but the world doesn’t even know your names.’
‘Yes,’ said Fiona. ‘So when we go live, the first thing we’ll do is introduce you.’
‘Speaking of which,’ Radius added, ‘it’s time you meet Sabrina Plumm. She’ll be the main studio presenter down here at Watch This Space central.’
The screen changed to a slick silver studio set with an enormous picture of the moon in a night sky covering the entire back wall, and in the middle of the floor was Sabrina Plumm, LIMP-TV’s most popular presenter.
Sabrina was about thirty years old or, to be precise, looked as if she was thirty years old. Her hair was much too blonde and she wasn’t dressed enough, but she was a superstar in her own right and every teenage boy’s dream of the perfect grown-up fantasy woman. There was a huge Sabrina Plumm fan club, and every week she got hundreds of letters with offers of marriage.
Naturally, Primrose didn’t like Sabrina Plumm, but her dad and little brother adored her.
‘Hi guys,’ Sabrina said. ‘This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. You must be over the moon. Haha – of course you are!’
Up on the wall, on either side of the big TV in the MUD Lounge-Room Module, there was a row of TV cameras that the technicians in the studio on Earth could control. They could zoom in and out and follow anyone around, and in every corridor and module there were more cameras. There was no part of the complex that the people on Earth couldn’t monitor.64 (‘That’s why they’re called monitors,’ Radius had joked.)
‘So, guys,’ Sabrina continued, ‘we will be going live in five. Touch up your lipstick and straighten anything that needs straightening for one of the greatest moments in modern history!’
‘One of? One of?’ said Radius off-camera. ‘I think we mean THE greatest moment.’
‘Of course, of course,’ Sabrina said.
Boys, Primrose thought. Every boy in the world will adore me.
‘Wait, wait, wait,’ she shouted, rushing out of the room to find a mirror, followed by Granny Apricot. ‘Give me two minutes.’
‘Here’, said Apricot, delving into one of her endless pockets, ‘I’ve got lipstick, eyeliner and hairspray.’
rRego came out after them, raced off round the corner and returned a few seconds later holding a mirror and a spray can of metal polish, which he was covering himself with.
‘Remember one thing,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’ said Primrose and Apricot at the same time.
It was kind of weird having a conversation with a robot, but it was something the two of them were getting used to pretty quickly, especially as rRego seemed to be able to tell what they were thinking and, more importantly, what they wanted. Stark and Laura would never feel at ease like that. As far as they were concerned, rRego was simply a machine that waited on them and fixed stuff.
‘Go punk,’ said rRego.
‘What?’ Primrose said, and laughed.
‘Go punk,’ rRego repeated. ‘Stir it up.’
He took the can of hairspray from Granny Apricot and with his two other arms teased Primrose’s hair into wild spikes. He then did the same to Apricot.
‘Brilliant!’ said Granny Apricot.
‘I love it,’ said Primrose. ‘Mum will freak out.’
‘Exactly,’ said rRego, giving the old lady and the girl bright red lipsticked mouths and really heavily black-lined eyes.
Fiona Hardly’s voice came down the corridor from one of the speakers in the wall. ‘Come on, come on. It’s time,’ she said, and when she saw them: ‘OMG. What have you done?’
‘Just a bit of make-up, that’s all,’ said Granny Apricot. She and Primrose went back into the Lounge-Room Module.
‘And now … OMG!’ said Sabrina Plumm.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Radius, who’d been distracted by the enormous sums of money that were pouring into LIMP-TV’s bank account from around the world. ‘OMG!’ he said when he caught sight of Primrose and Apricot.
‘Exactly,’ said Sabrina Plumm and Fiona Hardly.
‘Oh well, it’s too late to do anything about it now,’ Radius said. ‘We’re about to go live.’
INTERIOR LIMP-TV – MAIN STUDIO
Sabrina Plumm, glamorous TV presenter, stands in the middle of the floor in the bright glare of the studio lights. Behind her, in a row of chairs, sit a select team of experts.
SABRINA
Hello world, and welcome to the greatest television event EVER.
The experts all nod their heads in complete agreement, apart from an old white-haired professor who nods his head because he has dementia and hasn’t the faintest idea where he is, and was only brought in because he looks exactly how the viewers imagine a super-genius professor would look.
SABRINA
Indeed, this is a truly historic occasion – not just a world-first, but a GALAXY-FIRST. We are now going live to the moon, and I mean, LIVE. This is NOT a recording.
The studio audience, who have been specially auditioned, trained and dressed to look exactly like a studio audience,65 open their eyes wide and ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’.
SABRINA
And so, right now at this very moment, without any further ado, let us meet the Contrasts. They are not, I hasten to add, a highly trained team of scientists, but a family of normal everyday people, just like you and me. Well, no, not like me. I’m not like that at all. I mean a normal everyday family, with a mum, dad, teenage daughter, younger son and a lovely old granny.
Out to Launch Page 9