The Moonborn: or, Moby-Dick on the Moon

by D. F. Lovett

  By the time I was old enough to make memories, his days of childhood and beauty had become nothing but a lingering nostalgia, tinged with tragedy and failure.

  Thirteen

  “We are here,” Starboy said, as the dome loomed before us and above us. Until now, I’d been lost in reviewing the list of books on my OurGlass and internally recounting everything I knew about the man whose life story I would soon be transcribing. Until I saw the domes.

  It’s not hard to picture or describe the Domes of Gamelan, aside than one aspect: they are giant. Monstrous. Endless. Seven domes, from A to G, with a railway connecting all of them. They stretch into the hidden stars, beasts against the abyss, orbs pushing into the void. And inside, they contain the climate-controlled atmosphere that the Moon lacks.

  I know nothing of the science behind it and have no interest in learning it, but I can assure you that it’s something magical: clouds and sky, a world inside a world, snow globes in the darkness.

  We docked at the entrance to Dome G, the docking station resembling the one from Armstrong Spaceport in concept but not style: an airlock, but one with panache and style, chrome and opacity, rather than the brutalism of the spaceport. The driver, that old man Jordan, parked the LUV by the other exterior transports. We walked through a small tunnel that entered into the actual dome.

  I was surprised to see a gravel road and a limousine waiting for us. The dome extended in all directions. The other thing that surprised me was rolling green hills, with forests and various buildings scattered across them. It looked as if there were a small village within spitting distance. I stared at it, not prepared for this sudden juxtaposition of space and country.

  “You can do the tourist shit later,” Starboy said, killing any moment of wonder that had been building inside of me. “Let’s get you a tuxedo. There’s a lot ahead of us.”

  I had never been in a limousine in my life, but nothing seemed special about this one. Not particularly long, or nice, or fancy. No surprises, other than the lack of a surprise. I wanted to look out the sunroof and the windows and take in the dome, to understand where I was and what it meant, but Starboy, who had seemed annoyed at previous conversational efforts, now wanted my attention.

  “This is Dome Gamelan,” he monologued, “which, yes, can be confusing, as they are all the Domes of Gamelan, but only this particular one is named Dome Gamelan. It’s also acceptable to call it Dome G.”

  “Dome G,” I repeated, my face against the window, trying to get a look at all of it.

  “You can roll your window down, you know,” he said. “We aren’t on the surface anymore. You won’t die.”

  “I know,” I said, fairly certain that I had known. Of course I wouldn’t die. I couldn’t see much outside other than trees and hills, all seemingly with mowed lawns, which struck me as odd. Why all these lawns if no houses? And small patches of sand here and there, which made very little sense.

  “Do you understand what you’re looking at?” Starboy asked.

  “The Dome G countryside, right?”

  “This is a thirty-six-hole golf course,” Starboy answered. “The only one on the Moon. Lucas Station has an eighteen-hole course, but even they agree that this is superior both in quantity and quality.”

  “You golf much?” I asked him, hoping he wouldn’t return the question to me. I still confused golf with baseball, both activities I had never seen in-person or in any form of media, near-extinct sports played only by select crowds, clinging to a fading world. I knew that golf attracted a wealthier crowd, but couldn’t tell you much more than that.

  “I detest it,” he said.

  “Does Captain Moonborn golf much?”

  “You haven’t heard the stories of his golf antics?”

  “His golf antics?” No, Starboy, how would I have heard of his golf antics, I wanted to ask. I was starting to really dislike Starboy. Another small man, thin and pale, wielding influence at every opportunity, reminding me of my outsider status. I could see him pushing and arguing, always getting his way. Of course they made him Vice President of Lunar Operations, this shrewd and irritating bully, the kind of small bully who people don’t fight, don’t argue back with, because he’s so unintimidating physically that you feel bad snapping back at him. I’m used to these kinds of bullies from taverns and bars and speakeasies across the EAU, the kind who see me and my height and start talking shit, thinking (correctly) that I’m the kind of reserved seven-foot man who knows to tolerate them. A guy like this punches me and I hardly feel it. I punch him back and it does damage and I spend life in a cell.

  “In his intoxicated days, Captain Moonborn would get rather aggressive on the golf course. It was meant to be a place of business and diplomacy, but he had a tendency to call his opponents bottom-dwellers and catfish and whatever the other vogue words were for Earthlings at the time, usually ending games about three or four holes in when he would start urinating on the golf course openly.”

  “That’s…”

  “Less than tasteful, yes,” Starboy said, now turning his own attention toward the windows. “But it is what it is. The past is the past.”

  “So all this is a golfing course?” I asked.

  “Dome G is the largest dome, but also the simplest,” Starboy said. “You enter the airlock in the west, and first it brings you past the shops and restaurants that you saw as you came in, the Hamlet, as we call it. Then the road brings you through the golf course, which is what we’re driving through now. South of us is the Gamelan Country Club. At the center of the dome is Gamelan Tower, which we are fast approaching. North of it, the Forests of Elizabeth. Then, in the east, Gamelan Chateau, the intended home of the Brandts and Moonborns.”

  “Intended home?”

  “Captain Moonborn has not lived there in years,” he said, with what seemed to be a half-hearted attempt at wistfulness in his tone. “His sister Olivia briefly lived there as well, before relocating entirely to Earth.”

  “Is that Olivia Brandt-Donahue?” I asked.

  “Yes, that’s what she calls herself now. I see that some of the reading stuck. Now, let’s review a few things. First, your name?”

  “Ishmael Richard Brandt.”

  “Your reason for being here?”

  “Work.”

  “The nature of your work?”

  “I don’t think I know that yet.”

  “Good, good. Making sure you weren’t jumping to conclusions or blathering about being a writer. Your family connections?”

  “Family connections?”

  “Exactly,” Starboy seemed pleased. “Your age?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “And now, just between you and me, who are you actually working for?”

  “Adam Moonborn.”

  “No,” Starboy said. “You report to me. I report to Captain Moonborn. Not Adam, not Moonborn. Captain Moonborn. Once your contract is up and the autobiography is complete, you will return to Spectral Wordsmiths, but until then, you work for Gamelan Moon, a subsidiary of Gamelan Corporation, and your direct supervisor is me, Dunn Heinemann, Vice President of Lunar Operations, whom you call Starboy. Clear?”

  “Clear.”

  “Ah, good.”

  The limousine slowed down now. For the first time, I’d been intrigued enough by the conversation to lose track of my surroundings.

  “We are here,” Starboy said, once again. “It’s time for you to meet Captain Moonborn.”

  Canto Two: Enter Moonborn

  One

  As he faced the attendees of his forty-seventh birthday party, Adam Moonborn remembered when his father took him to see the glacier.

  They had gone right up to it, in a small hoverboat designed to maneuver those icy waters. The hoverboat had been waiting for them when they arrived in a silver seaplane, one his father had hired but which, his father repeatedly told Adam and the press, he could easily have flown himself, had he had the interest that day.

  It was just Adam and his father in the hover
boat. The press had agreed to stay back one hundred yards. A few held devices, but most stood like pillars, their eyes capturing the momentous occasion.

  Years later, Moonborn had trouble knowing which of it he remembered himself and which of the memories were accumulated through seeing the clips and hearing the stories. He had only been four on this first trip from Moon to Earth, and his father, Elliot Xavier Brandt, trillionaire founder and CEO of Gamelan Corporation, had taken him everywhere. To the White House. To the Grand Canyon. To four continents and fourteen countries. They looked at where the Golden Gate Bridge had once stood, ate a multitude of food (most of which made Adam sick), and visited a classroom of other children Adam’s age, where he recited a poem to them from memory.

  But the part that really stuck with him—and that surfaced, again, as he stood and looked at the crowd at his forty-seventh birthday, his prepared remarks in his hand—was getting scared on the seaplane and scared again on the hoverboat and then the glacier, massive and blue and terrifying.

  He had reached out his hand to touch it and his father brought them close enough so they could. Adam pressed his palm against it and pulled back in pain. The glacier had been so cold. Colder than anything he had ever known. Almost as cold as his birthplace. Almost as cold as the Moon.

  Two

  We met in a library, full of paperbooks, on the top floor of the Gamelan Tower. Starboy and I rode the elevator to the top, which opened into a vast room. The entire fourteenth floor had been converted into one open room, the walls alternating between bookcases cluttered with books and glass windows, giving views of the rest of the dome. I could see the gravel road we had taken to get here, the rolling hills of the golf course and beyond. But it took a moment of hesitation to decide which to look at, the view or the books, both entirely new and foreign, both washing over me in their novelty.

  As I turned to take it all in, I realized we weren’t alone. He’d been waiting for us in a high-backed leather armchair at the far end of the library.

  “Ishmael Richard Brandt, in the flesh,” his voice boomed from across the room. Captain Adam Moonborn, the first man born on the Moon, infamous rakehell, incorrigible troublemaker, recovering drug addict and professional celebrity. The Prince of Space, the First Moonling, the Mayor of the Domes of Gamelan.

  Like most men born to wealthy and attractive parents, Adam Moonborn has a natural handsomeness. But it’s important to note that most photographs of him, especially the famous ones, are of his younger days. He’s always been famous for his shoulder-length blond hair and the beard he has worn since the age of fourteen, both of which are still there. He’s taller than your typical Lunatic, but still significantly shorter than me, standing around six feet. These days, his lifestyle has started to catch up with him, his muscled body softened by age. Of course, his tailored clothes always flatter, even if he has let himself go.

  “Captain Moonborn, it’s nice to meet you,” I said, extending my hand for the handshake. I had to start walking toward him, as he’d been waiting at the other end of the library, at least fifty yards from the elevator.

  “Don’t call me that,” he said, laughing, as I reached him. “You’re my cousin, you have to call me Adam. Well, you can call me Captain in front of the crew. Everyone will call me Captain in front of the crew, including you—you’ll be crew.”

  “I’m your cousin?”

  “Perfect!” He looked thrilled at this point, as if I’d shown up with a present in hand. “I told Starboy to save the best reveals for me.”

  Starboy reached us now, not having hurried or made any effort as I rushed across the room to shake Moonborn’s hand.

  “Let’s all have a seat,” Moonborn announced, looking around as if he wasn’t used to hosting two additional people in this space. The library had a variety of sitting spaces, and the look on his face suggested a determination to choose the best. He ended up leading us back to the armchair where he’d begun and grabbing two other nearby armchairs for the two of us to sit on, dragging them across the wood floors.

  The entire scene seemed about as far from the idylls of lunar living than anything I could imagine. Hardwood floors, Asiatic carpets, a polar-bear rug, mahogany bookshelves, a cherry writing desk. The only thing that seemed to be missing was a roaring fireplace, until I noticed that there was a fireplace back near the elevator which, now that the doors had closed, blended in as more bookshelves. The entire library was a vast room, high-ceilinged, containing more books made of paper than I could imagine still existed.

  “Did you bring a tuxedo?” he asked me, once we had all sat down.

  “The tailor is en route,” Starboy answered.

  “Good, good.” Moonborn exuded excitement and energy, clutching a rocks glass filled with ice and the last sips of a brown liquid. He looked down, seeming to notice it for the first time. “Damn, where are my manners? What are you drinking?”

  “I’ll have what you’re having,” I answered, thinking this was always the right answer.

  “I’m having a ginger beer. Surely you’re more exciting than me.”

  “I’ll pour us each a Scotch,” Starboy said as he stood up.

  “Ishmael Brandt,” Moonborn said now, looking me up and down. “You really are tall, huh? They told me that. Wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t be a problem up here. People don’t grow as tall on Moon as they do on Earth, did they tell you that? Or did you read it? It’s a gravity thing. Makes me wonder how tall I would be. Not that I’m unhappy with my height. Just makes me wonder.”

  “You said I’m your cousin?” I’d been trying to reserve this question, waiting for it to come up organically, but after this unprompted rant about my height, I worried how much longer it would be before he circled back to it.

  “Ah, yes, it’s the story I invented for you. Spectral, after we hired you from them, they said we should create a backstory for you. A reason you’re around, who you really are. I don’t know if you heard about this, but I’ve been investigating genealogy, trying to learn about all the roots and branches, the leaves and the forks, you know. Who am I related to? And, well, it’s been disappointing. A lot of stripe-wavers down on Earth. Lots of citizens of the Sovereign States of America. Almost exclusively, really. You know the type. I saw you’re an EAU citizen. We only interviewed EAU citizens, and I’m sure you would agree with me that the divide of the United States was a great move. I used to be an American citizen, did they tell you that? I was born to Americans. Well, you know that part, but that makes you an American citizen until you renounce it. Or it did. I’m still confused about how the EAU and the SSA operate now, but I’m sure you’re not an expert in international diplomacy or whatever category all of that falls into. But yes, the idea is that you’re my third cousin. I’m banking on no one investigating that one too closely.”

  Starboy had returned at some point during that monologue, handing me a Scotch with a drop of plain water. I sipped it, trying to look as if I were used to drinking it in this fashion.

  “And we’re saying that I’m here for some kind of family reunion?”

  “Of a sort,” he said, shrugging and squinting, as if my question had given him cause for genuine consideration. “I’ll be announcing a mission tonight. A grand mission, ambitious, with a beautiful purpose. You’re to be part of the crew. I’ll only tell you that now. The rest of it, well—it’s unknown to anyone but Starboy and me and a few other members of the team. Starboy gave you the book of poems, yes?”

  “He did.”

  “Are you a big poetry guy?”

  “I am,” I lied. Poems have never spoken to me, have never made any sense to me. I can write a set of questions analyzing what a poem means, but in terms of actually enjoying or appreciating the poem, I can’t. There’s always something I’d rather be doing than reading a poem.

  “My father had a reputation for being bookish,” Moonborn said, taking on an air of genuine wistfulness, unlike Starboy’s earlier act. “Poems and novels, always the classics. He inst
illed it in us. Always reading the classics. Bleak House and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Great Gatsby and Gone Girl. I remember him picking up one of the books I was reading once and he looked it over and said, ‘Try a classic.’ And he handed me Go Set a Watchman. Changed my life. He didn’t bother with the contemporary stuff. Lots of nonsense out there, lots of rubbish.”

  “I’ll have to read that one.”

  “You haven’t? Oh, yes, you must. Inspiring stuff. Now, your top five favorite books. Go.”

  There is the reality of questions like this, and then there is what you tell people. Unfortunately, in this moment, I choked. Not only did I lie, but I chose the wrong lies. Of the five books I named, four were not the right answers. He frowned as I listed them. The only one that prompted a nod out of Moonborn was For Whom the Bell Tolls, a novel I’ve never read but which, of course, I’ll get around to one day, and I thought it safe to assume it would make it onto that list when I eventually read it.

  “I’m glad you have Hemingway on that list,” he said. “But you’ll have to excuse me if the others are too contemporary for my tastes. I believe in the classics, like my father did. He always said you can have all the newest tech, you can and should pursue the future, but when it comes to words you should keep to the classics. Only the best.”

  This is not the response I’d aimed for.

  “Is it that you prefer novels from recent history or that you simply haven’t read the classics?”

  “I’ve read the classics,” I said, attempting to save myself.

  “But they don’t impress you? While these other, newer authors do?”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I’ll give you a list of my top hundred if that helps.”

  “You’ve told me your top five and that’s good enough. I respect you for it. It took courage. It’s not my top five, but you told me the truth. Don’t worry, I won’t make you recite your favorite poem. Not yet, at least.”