Altered America

by Ingham, Martin T.

  That got groans from both David and Richard. “Man, don’t give up your day job,” replied Gordon.

  “Hey, I’ll have you know that I am an incredible painter!” Alan said in mock defensiveness.

  “Yeah, pity the same can’t be said about your piloting skills,” David replied, grinning at Alan’s mock outrage.

  “Gentlemen,” said the voice of Gerry Griffin, the lead flight director, over their radios, “Much as the guys here love listening to your scintillating dialogue, we do have a spaceship to fly.”

  “Oh, Gerry, you’re such a sourpuss!” Alan answered.

  “Yeah, you weren’t like this before the mustache!” Richard chimed in.

  “A-hem...” came the voice of Gerry.

  “Children,” David said, smiling. “There’s no need to make daddy angry like that. C’mon, let’s get ready.”

  With something muffled and low that sounded like ‘dad always liked you best’ from Alan, the three men began their checklist.

  * * *

  “And we have lift-off!” shouted Cronkite. “We have lift-off at eighteen minutes past the hour and the successful launch of Apollo 12!”

  * * *

  “Three minutes. S-IVB,” came the voice from Mission Control.

  David nodded his head in acknowledgement. It was just about three hours after launch. So far, everything had gone according to textbook; the launch, the entry into Earth’s orbit twelve minutes after launch, the two orbits around the Earth, everything.

  Now came the really important part; the S-IVB third-stage engine was going to push the spacecraft onto its trajectory toward the Moon with a Trans Lunar Injection burn. If everything went right, then precisely twenty-seven minutes later, the command/service module pair would separate from the last remaining Saturn V stage and dock with the lunar module still nestled in the Lunar Module Adaptor. If everything went right with that, then—and only then—would they ‘officially’ be on the way to the Moon.

  If anything went wrong, though...

  “Two minutes. S-IVB,” said the voice.

  David worked like an automaton, clicking switches and levers, going through every step of the process as literally thousands of hours of training worked their magic. As he did so, a small notebook attached to his belt dislodged from its velco strip and began to slowly drift around the cockpit. Alan swatted it aside with barely a glance and began to call out readout numbers to his two colleagues.

  “One minute. S-IVB.”

  This is it, thought David, as he initiated the final sequence.

  * * *

  “—and we’ve had confirmation from Patton that the docking procedure has been successful. Apollo 12 is now on course to the Moon—”

  * * *

  “Hey, what’s this?” Alan asked as he picked up a notebook. He got a brief glance of several phrases scribbled on it that had been hastily scratched out before David yanked it out of his hands.

  “Sorry, mine. Must have come loose back there.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Alan asked incredulously. “You still haven’t picked the words?”

  “They have to be perfect,” David said, tacking the notebook back onto his belt.

  “You do know that we’re on the way to the Moon, right?” asked Richard.

  “I have precisely four days, two hours, and six minutes before we land,” David said. “And they have to be perfect.” He leaned back into his chair and began work on the next checklist.

  “Man, this is going to be a long flight,” muttered Alan, as he worked on his checklist in response.

  (10)

  I searched along the changing edge

  Where, sky-pierced now the cloud had broken.

  I saw no bird, no blade of wing,

  No song was spoken.

  I stood, my eyes turned upward still

  And drank the air and breathed the light.

  Then, like a hawk upon the wind,

  I climbed the sky, I made the flight.

  —Elizabeth J. Buchtenkirk

  September 6, 1970 –Lunar orbit

  100 hours into mission

  They had been in orbit for just over a day now, with only a minor correction needed to put them into optimum orbit.

  Things had been going well for Apollo 12. Everything about the flight so far had gone according to plan. The entire flight had, in fact, not only been textbook, but better than textbook.

  The three men, being professionals, silently patted themselves on the back for their excellent skills.

  The three men, also being human, were now nervous about how long their luck would last.

  There were just a few more things to do. If everything continued to go according to plan, in about an hour David and Alan would enter the Lunar Module—known colloquially as the “Lem”—do one last final check of the systems, and then the Phoenix would undock from the Odyssey, About one hour after undocking, the Lem descent engines would fire and they would commence descent orbit insertion. And then about one hour after that, the Lem would perform a powered descent initiation—and start the procedure to come in for a landing.

  In about three hours, David and Alan were going to land on the Moon.

  “Please tell me that you have decided on your little speech,” said Richard. He was the Command Module pilot and, in about one hour, was going to be the loneliest human being in the universe as he orbited the Moon while his two colleagues were on the surface.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” David admitted.

  Alan and Richard exchanged a glance and then, without a sound, Richard handed over a small paper to Alan. This did not escape David’s attention.

  “What was that about?”

  “IOU,” said Richard. “I’m down fifty bucks because of you, David.”

  “I told you it was a sucker bet, but did you listen to me?” Alan chided. “No, you did not, and now you’ll have to pay for your insolence.”

  “Insolence?” repeated David.

  “I watched a bunch of British war movies just before we were quarantined. Sue me,” Alan replied.

  “You guys aren’t instilling me with a great deal of confidence here, you know?”

  Alan shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not the one waiting until the very last minute to have inspiration hit me.”

  “Look, it’s important that I have the right words,” David said defensively.

  “Hey, man, I’m not knocking your efforts,” replied Alan. “I’m just saying that I think you’re dragging this out too long. Just say a nice little speech and get it over with.”

  “But it has to be perfect,” David responded.

  That got a snort of laughter from Alan and a snicker from Richard.

  “Good thing we have such a perfectionist for a commander, right Alan?” Richard said.

  “Indubitably,” replied Alan, smiling.

  “Bah!” said David, with just a hint of a smile on his face. “We’ve got work to do, guys,” he said, turning around and floated off to a corner of the capsule.

  The two men grinned at each other and, after a moment, floated after David.

  * * *

  The separation of the Phoenix from the Odyssey went like clockwork, as did the Odyssey’s visual inspection of the Phoenix as the two ships pirouetted around one another. They were still fairly close to one another, at least for the moment, but their speeds and trajectories were wildly different now. In just about two hours, the two ships would be over 300 miles apart. But now—it was only a few hundred feet.

  David and Alan waved at Richard from their viewport and saw—or thought they saw—Richard wave back.

  The two men went back to their seats and got to work, going through the next checklist.

  “Alan?”

  Alan looked up from his checklist and stared at David. “Yeah?”

  “Have to ask—what would you say?”

  Alan closed his eyes in deep concentration for a long moment, and then opened them and let out a long sigh of frustration. “Beats
the hell out of me, man. I mean, I can understand why you’re having so much trouble coming up with a good line; after all, all of humanity will be literally looking up at you and the Moon when you say it. It’s going to be a big responsibility.”

  Alan cocked his head and stared at David.

  David looked... odd, as if he were staring out at something outside the capsule in shock.

  “David? Sir? Commander? Are you... okay?”

  David suddenly shook his head—as if he had come out of a dream—and smiled at Alan.

  “Alan—you’re a genius, you know that?”

  “I am? I mean, yes, I know I am!” He squinted at David. “With respect, how am I a genius, sir?”

  “I now know what to say. I now have the perfect words to say.”

  (11)

  Not secondary to the sun, she gives us his blaze again,

  Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day...

  In Heaven queen she is among the spheres;

  She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.

  —Henry David Thoreau, 'Night and Moonlight’

  September 6, 1970 –Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms), Moon

  We see a clear colour image of a ladder and a part of the Lunar Module. The camera angle is a bit odd; clearly the camera has been attached to the top of one of the landing legs and has been affixed so that it can get a clear shot of the astronauts stepping off to the ladder—and onto the lunar surface. The resolution is a bit low but still, nevertheless, quite clear.

  We see an astronaut, slowly and hesitantly, start climbing down the ladder. Sharp-eyed viewers can see that the astronaut is holding a video camera in one hand as he descends, its power cable trailing behind him. As he continues downward, we hear his voice.

  “I'm at the foot of the ladder. The Lem footpads are only depressed in the surface about 1 or 2 inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained, as you get close to it. It's almost like a powder. Down there, it's very fine.”

  “Roger that.”

  “I'm going to step off the ladder now.”

  Carefully, the astronaut jumps off the ladder and lands on the surface. As he lands, he raises up the video camera in his hand.

  “For thousands of years, humanity has looked up to the Moon.”

  There is a brief instant of static and then the view changes to that of a different camera. It’s shaky and slightly out of focus but the image it shows is unmistakeable.

  It is an image of the planet Earth, hanging up just above the surface of the Moon. It is a gorgeous image of blue and green, glistening like a jewel.

  “Now, from the Moon, humanity looks up to the Earth...”

  (12)

  If seeds in the black Earth can turn into such beautiful roses

  what might not the heart of man become in its long journey

  towards the stars?

  —G. K. Chesterton

  September 7, 1970 –Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms), Moon

  It had been a very busy day for David and Alan.

  Their time on the Moon had been planned down to the minute, with literally dozens of experiments that needed to be done in the brief window of opportunity they had on the lunar surface. Scientific equipment of all kinds had been set up, rock and soil samples collected and, at last count, 24 of the 25 film magazines they had with them had been exposed, with Alan given the task of finishing off the last magazine.

  Alan, in fact, had decided to leave a memento on the Moon: his silver astronaut pin. This pin signified an astronaut who completed training but had not yet flown in space; he had worn it for seven years. He was to get a gold astronaut pin for successfully completing the mission after the flight and he had felt that he wouldn't need the silver pin thereafter. So, with great fanfare, he had thrown it into a nearby lunar crater. David had smirked at that; he had thrown his silver pin into the ocean after he had returned from his Gemini 5 mission back in 1965.

  Alan, ever the practical joker, had smuggled a camera-shutter self-timer device on board and had taken a photograph with himself and David in the same frame. There had been a brief moment of panic when Alan couldn’t initially find the timer, but a few seconds of extra searching had turned it up. As the timer was not part of their standard equipment, the image would almost certainly throw all the post-mission photo analysts into confusion over how the photo was taken. David could almost hear the shouts of ‘faked mission!’ that would ensue once they got back to Earth.

  All in all, it had been a very successful mission.

  They had just about five minutes left before they were required to return to the Lem and start the process for ascent.

  But there was one last thing that David needed to do...

  A memorial bag containing a gold replica of an olive branch as a traditional symbol of peace and a silicon message disk had been placed in the Phoenix. The disk carried the goodwill statements by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon as well as messages from the leaders of 73 other countries around the world.

  It also carried a diamond-studded astronaut pin given to Deke Slayton by the widows of the Apollo 11 crew.

  And, lastly, a 1928 Peace Dollar.

  David had found the perfect spot for it—a small hill overlooking the area. Slowly, reverently, and with great care, he placed the bag into a small hole and covered it up.

  As he got up, his eye caught the horizon.

  Earth had risen up and was now hanging, once more, up in the lunar sky, glistening in all of her glory.

  David began to feel the first tears well up into his eyes.

  “We did it,” whispered David, as the tears clouded his sight. “We did it, guys,” he repeated to the universe.

  And the universe heard him...

  Author Biographies

  Erik Bundy

  Erik Bundy lives in the magical North Carolina woods where mice claiming to be cousins move in for the winter then take the towels when they leave in spring. The federal government pays him not to work in one of their offices. He is a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop and a grand prize winner in the Sidney Lanier Poetry Competition. He has published stories and poems in a number of magazines and anthologies.

  James S. Dorr

  James Dorr’s newest collection is The Tears of Isis, released by Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing in May 2013. This joins his two prose collections from Dark Regions Press, Strange Mistresses: Tales of Wonder and Romance and Darker Loves: Tales of Mystery and Regret, and the all-poetry Vamps (A Retrospective) from Sam’s Dot/White Cat. An active member of SFWA and HWA with nearly four hundred individual appearances fromAlfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine to Xenophilia, Dorr invites readers to visit his site at:

  http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com

  Lauren A. Forry

  Lauren A. Forry is a sci-fi and horror writer originally from Bucks County, PA. She holds an MA/MFA in Creative Writing from Kingston University, London and a BA from New York University. She is currently writing a series of historical horror novels which explore the sociological changes in the UK over the past half century. The first, ‘Mr. Brownawell’s Collection’, was awarded Kingston University’s Faber and Faber Creative Writing MA prize.

  Dan Gainor

  Dan Gainor is a media critic, a veteran editor, and writer with more than two decades experience. He has been published in a wide variety of publications, including Investor’s Business Daily, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Orange County Register and The New York Post. He is the Vice President of Business and Culture for the Media Research Center and has been an editor at several news organizations including Congressional Quarterly and The Baltimore News-American.

  Brad Hafford

  Brad Hafford is an archaeologist and economic anthropologist who also writes speculative fiction. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001 and has been researching and teaching there ever since. His father was a Pinkerton's detective many years ago and he still remem
bers stories of the detective life—but not quite like the ones in Revolution 1865...

  Martin T. Ingham

  Martin T. Ingham is the author of various Science Fiction & Fantasy works, including West of the Warlock, The Guns of Mars, and The Rogue Investigations. When he isn't writing, he likes to dabble in numismatics, horology, and antique auto restoration, among other hobbies. He currently resides in his hometown of Robbinston, Maine, with his wife, Jenna, and their four children, Sylvia, Wyatt, Kathryn, and Lois.

  Learn more about Martin's works at his website:

  http://www.martiningham.com

  Sam Kepfield

  Sam Kepfield is a writer who is forced to earn a living as a criminal defense attorney in Hutchinson, Kansas. He has a bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University (B.A. 1986), a law degree and an M.A. in History from the University of Nebraska (’89, ‘94), as well as doctoral work at the University of Oklahoma.

  By night he writes science fiction and a few horror stories. His work has appeared in Science Fiction Trails, Electric Spec, and Aoife’s Kiss. His story “Not Because They Are Easy,” which appeared in the Rocket Science anthology, was considered for Best Short Story of 2012 by the British Science Fiction Association. His first novel, “Magic Man, Gold Dust Woman, and the Dream Machine” was released by Musa Publishing in March 2013. His short story, “Lay Down My Sword,” appears in Martinus Publishing's VFW: Veterans of the Future Wars anthology.

  Jackson Kuhl

  Jackson Kuhl is the author of Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer (The History Press, 2011), a historical biography of the Revolutionary War patriot and privateer. His alternate histories and gaslamp fantasies have been published in Black Static and a number of anthologies.

  http://www.jacksonkuhl.com

  Bruno Lombardi

  Bruno Lombardi was born in Montreal in 1968. He has had a rather distressing tendency to be a weirdness magnet for much of his adult life. If your friend's cousin's brother-in-law tells you a story and swears it's true and that it ‘happened to someone he knows’, it was probably Bruno.