The Moonborn: or, Moby-Dick on the Moon

by D. F. Lovett

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Q’s down there right now. It’s your turn. Grab everything you brought, including that tuxedo, and get down there.”

  I did as I was told. Grabbed everything, including that damned tuxedo, one thought looping through my mind the entire time, again and again: what kind of a madman wears a tuxedo on a flying saucer?

  And then I reminded myself, hovering saucer.

  Three

  You entered it by climbing up a metal ladder. There were five of these ladders, each descending from below deck. Four of them along the exterior, evenly spaced from one another, and one in the very middle.

  I climbed up the one in the middle, with Q climbing it above me.

  At the top of the ladder, a hatch. Q pressed her right, spacesuited palm against the hatch, and it opened. We climbed through an airlock, an established theme at this point. Everything on the Moon needed an airlock. This was not the world I knew.

  Above the airlock, a cavernous cargo hold.

  “All five entrances have ladders and airlocks,” Q narrated, taking off her helmet. “But this is the one where the hatch can widen enough to accommodate bigger parcels. Take a look around.”

  I did as she suggested, and saw a number of what appeared to be smaller flying saucers, one-man flying saucers.

  “These are what we call the flying saucers,” she said. “Or the fliers. Which is why we don’t call the Ozymandias a flying saucer. Did Starboy correct you on this yet? We are not in a flying saucer.”

  She walked over to one of the small crafts, placing a hand on it.

  “This is a flying saucer,” she said. “We are in the cargo hold. This is the one airlock that can change shape as needed, widening and shrinking. When we take these things out, it’s through this airlock.”

  “The Ozymandias shits out the smaller saucers,” Jordan said. I hadn’t noticed him enter the cargo hold.

  “I prefer to view it as a metaphor for birthing and motherhood,” said Q. “Although I’m not sure if Adam appreciates that reading of it.”

  “This whole level is the cargo hold?” I asked.

  “No,” said Jordan. “There’s more storage through the door I just entered, including the proofsuits. That’s where you’ll suit up before entering the hold. Plus the swimming stream and the running track. But we can give you a tour of those later. Let’s hit the Ship Center.”

  Another crewmember waited in the Ship Center: a young man named Nikolai, who introduced himself as “another deckhand.”

  Hearing this introduction, I realized something: my title was deckhand.

  The tour from here involved Q attempting to lead me through the ship as Jordan and Nikolai contradicted, debated, and chimed in at any moments they found necessary. I took bearing of my surroundings as my three fellow crewmates spoke, directing most of their comments at me in their efforts to show who knew the most.

  The Ship Center was an empty room with one hatch in the floor, one in the ceiling, and four doors around the edge. The doors were labeled: bow, port, stern, and starboard.

  The Ozymandias was a saucer, Q explained to me as I looked at the doors, and thus a circle. Here is the way the Ozymandias worked: seen from the side, it had four levels. Seen from above, it could either be divided into four quadrants or seven circles.

  The four quadrants were nearly identical, so that if you looked down at the saucer as if it were a pie graph, it would appear that each of the four subjects consumed exactly twenty-five percent. (I used lots of pie graphs during my days as an aspiring corporate whistleblower, so I find that to be a very useful illustration.) From an exterior perspective, the saucer was just a saucer, with little to no distinction between these four quadrants. The outside gaze could detect no windows, no portholes, no viewing decks. All these were disguised from the exterior, like the mirrors in interrogation rooms. But the four quadrants had important distinctions.

  Quadrants, circles, and layers. And here is what Adam Moonborn and his design team named the four quadrants, going clockwise: the bow, the port, the stern, and the starboard. They took inspiration from the conventional parts of a ship but re-appropriated them, as the ship could go in any direction it chose. In no way should these be mistaken for nautically accurate.

  The Bow Quadrant contained the planning room and the library.

  The Port Quadrant contained a sauna, a hot tub, and a greenhouse.

  The Stern Quadrant contained the armory and meditation chamber.

  The Starboard Quadrant contained the galley and the medical room.

  Circles referred to the Ozymandias when admired from above but, as one might deduce, they also referred to the seven circles within one another.

  The outer circle, called the First Circle, held only the cabins and the four operations rooms. The Second Circle was a simple hallway, looping around the ship. There were three such hallways: the Second Circle, the Fourth Circle, and the Sixth Circle. The Third Circle was where we had the library in the Bow Quadrant, the galley, and so on.

  The Fifth Circle held the more serious rooms: the armory in the Stern Quadrant, the planning room in the Bow Quadrant, the medical room in the Starboard Quadrant, and the greenhouse in the Port Quadrant.

  Finally, the Seventh Circle, the very center of the ship, with ladders both ascending and descending, so one could climb up to the Control Roost or down to the cargo, engine, and airlock.

  But now, let us dwell for a moment on the aesthetics of the thing. The entire ship had hardwood floors. I know how little sense that makes. We all know spaceships and what they look like, or at least the general idea of them. You think Moon and space and flying saucer and you think words like sleek and postmodern and metallic and chrome and all the things we’ve seen for centuries, since men first imagined what it would be like to live among the stars.

  But no, not here. Not the Ozymandias.

  Mahogany and cherry and pine, Asiatic carpets, leather armchairs and antique grandfather clocks. Some wicker, too. Moonborn had a certain aesthetic, an era he enjoyed harkening back to.

  It was as if one had been tasked with designing both a country club and a spaceship simultaneously, without ever having been in either. Chandeliers, chess boards, stained glass, a shuffleboard.

  “The Brandts once owned cruise ships,” Jordan chimed in as we looked at the games room. “You can see that in the domes, and you can still see some of that in how Moonborn designed this thing. We create what we know.”

  “They never owned cruise ships,” Q said.

  “Yes, they did.”

  “Well, it’s not where any of their money came from.”

  “Ishmael, you’ll be in the Port Quadrant with me,” Jordan said. “Means we get best access to the sauna. C’mon, now, I’ll show you there.”

  I looked to the other two, who both regarded me blankly. This was apparently the end of the tour.

  I followed Jordan to my cabin.

  Four

  “Humans need water,” Jordan explained as we walked. “That’s why I chose the quadrant with the sauna and hot tub.”

  It nagged at me, vaguely, that it had been Jordan I was left with. Not Q, who seemed to be the commanding officer in this present team. Not Nikolai, the closest man to my age who, unlike Jordan, didn’t seem out to get anyone.

  “Humans do need water,” I answered. “That’s one of the best arguments against the Moon, isn’t it? It’s part of what scares me about coming up here.”

  “Up here,” he smiled. “It’s still up here to you?”

  “Does it ever stop being up here?”

  “Anytime someone refers to it as up here to you, kid, they’re making fun of you,” he said. “You and that writer, the woman Moonborn hired. And me. You know what makes the three of us different than the rest of ‘em?”

  I regarded him silently as he said this. Did he see my face during Jennifer Curtis’s announcement? Was he about to tell me that he, too, was here to write a book about Adam Moonborn?

  Be
fore I could guess what he meant, he kept on talking. We had paused at a series of doors marked Cabin Blue, Cabin Yellow, and Greenhouse. I knew one of these cabins would be mine, but didn’t know which one, and I didn’t know how to find out when he seemed stubborn to get to whatever point he wanted to share with me.

  “You’re not one of them,” he continued, seeing that I had opened my mouth to talk but not giving me the wiggle room for it. “Neither am I. You weren’t born up here, she wasn’t born up here, and everyone knows I wasn’t. I’m far too old to have been. The other five? They’re all Moonlings. They’re proud little Lunatics. They’ll tolerate us, they’ll have us around, they’ll put us to use, but they’ll never get to know you. They won’t accept you. They can smell it on you, that you’re not one of them. Just one look at you. Look at how tall you are! You could never be one of them. They all know each other. I saw you looking at Q, and I don’t blame you. She’s beautiful. Moonborn likes his staff young and good-looking, everyone who works for him. But don’t forget that she wants nothing to do with you. She wants nothing of your sort.”

  I stared at him, thinking I understood now. I still couldn’t identify an age for him—somewhere between fifty and seventy-five—but I recognized he’d settled entirely into the idea of being an old man. He’d found a comfort blanket, an identity as an expat Earthling under the protective layer of age. A perpetual excuse to talk the most, to have an opinion on everything, an excuse for cynicism, an endless source of wisdom and guidance.

  “Which cabin is mine?” I asked.

  Five

  The ship began moving as I sat down on the bed in my cabin. The entire wall of my cabin gave me a clear view of the ground moving below the Ozymandias: again, the rolling hills of the golf course and, beyond them, the edges of the dome. I could see the airlock we had entered through, the docking station where I first entered this dome, and noted, unsurprised, that it appeared just the right size for the Ozymandias to squeeze through and out onto the surface.

  I wondered, again, if I was responding correctly. Should I be feeling the thrill of adventure? The dread of the unknown? All I could recall feeling over the last day was uncertainty, anxiety, and embarrassment. Would I be embarking on the adventure of a lifetime while too embarrassed and insecure to take the requisite risks?

  The ship rocked gently, a smooth tipping motion, side to side. I detected a faint wobble, which seemed appropriate, given its shape.

  Out the window—or the wall, I wasn’t certain which—I discerned that we were headed toward Gamelan Tower. We were headed to pick up the remaining members of the crew: my subject, Adam Moonborn; my employer, Dunn Heinemann; and my rival in writing, Jennifer Curtis.

  For my crewmates, the adventure was at hand. But my adventure had been going for days, since a few mornings ago, when I’d abandoned my emptied apartment on Earth for a thirty-six-hour spaceplane trip off-world. The thrill and the rush had both faded, leaving only exhaustion in their wake.

  With the voyage of the Ozymandias on the cusp of beginning, I decided it was time to lie down and take a nap.

  Six

  This time, I slept. I did not dream, I did not jolt awake, I did not try to catch my soul as it floated to the clouds. I slept and I slept, like a rock. Spectral Wordsmiths had warned me that I’d be spacelagged but I had shrugged it off. I hadn’t even looked up a definition for spacelagged.

  I can imagine what dreams I would have, had I dreamt during that long nap. They say you always dream, whether you remember it or not. I suspect I dreamt of the abyss. I suspect I dreamt of waking up outside the domes, outside the ship, suffocating and screaming and disappearing into the crushing and unforgiving surface. Or perhaps I dreamt of being exposed as a fraud, of being mocked and laughed at by Jennifer Curtis, the real writer. Perhaps the crew found the discussion questions I’d written in the autobiography of an acclaimed momtrepreneur or celebrity zookeeper and they’d read the questions aloud, laughing at my past. Perhaps I dreamt of waking up back on Earth, or of my return flight on the spaceplane touching down into the Atlantic Ocean, saltwater filling my lungs.

  Perhaps I dreamt of an empty casket, an unwritten obituary, a forfeited funeral.

  Those were my fears as I lay down and closed my eyes.

  But I do not know of what I dreamt during that long nap.

  When I awoke, I felt no anxiety, no hangover from a nightmare. Only the sense of being well-rested, ready for the next obstacle.

  When I awoke, no green lights or golf courses.

  When I awoke, the vast expanse.

  When I awoke, the Ozymandias had left the Domes of Gamelan. We had begun our journey. We had found space.

  Seven

  I arrived to a busy scene in the galley. They called it “the galley,” but really it was a large open kitchen and dining room. A long pine dining table, of course, with high-backed wooden chairs and place settings with excessive silverware.

  “Ishmael!” Jordan called out as I entered the room, approaching me and pushing a champagne glass into my hand.

  We were missing two: Jennifer Curtis, the writer, and Captain Adam Moonborn. Nikolai had cornered Q into a conversation, overheard briefly, which appeared to be about Nikolai’s son, and which also seemed to encompass an explanation of why he’d missed attending the gala. Starboy had made it onboard, sneering and sipping champagne as he stood in the corner.

  Jordan, it appeared, had been eschewing conversation to await my arrival.

  “He’s awake,” he said heartily, narrating my entrance to no one aside from me.

  “I needed a nap.”

  “That’s a serious nap. You missed the captain’s speech.” The way he emphasized captain suggested a lack of reverence or respect for Moonborn’s title.

  The door to the galley swung open, and Curtis entered. She smiled at everyone, shyly, before walking directly up to me and extending her hand.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met yet,” she said. “Jennifer Curtis. I’m the writer.”

  “You’re the writer,” I repeated.

  “Yes,” she said. “Were you at the gala last night?”

  “Everyone else has already met Mrs. Curtis,” Jordan explained, apparently on her behalf. “We did crew introductions when you were asleep.”

  “Of course, of course,” I said, attempting a recovery. “You’ve met everyone else. I’m…” I entirely blanked for one brief moment of terror, the name slipping me, escaping, something I had to grasp quickly to maintain the facade but entirely outside my mind’s reach.

  “The cousin, right?” she said, not missing a step, seemingly not even noticing my hesitation. She interpreted it as if I’d been searching for the title with which to introduce myself. “You’re the cousin who he recently found? Ishmael Brandt?”

  “That’s me,” I said. “Ishmael Brandt. You can call me Ishmael.”

  “The writer is here,” Jordan said loudly, directing his voice at the room in general. “Does that mean we can eat?”

  “Not on this ship,” Starboy answered. “As first mate, I demand we attend to etiquette.”

  “Isn’t Moonborn piloting us?” said Jordan.

  “He is. I’ll be relieving him, now that his interview is over. Do not begin until he has arrived.”

  We waited, one moment and then another. Jordan drank, Nikolai spoke of his children, and Q asked Jennifer Curtis about her journalism career. We waited, growing hungrier, until Moonborn finally arrived.

  Well, not his person, but his voice, over the speakers.

  “I invite all of you to the Bow Quadrant Operations Deck. We have found a target.”

  Eight

  Moonborn waited for us. We entered, Nikolai first, Jordan last, the rest of us between them. He stood with the windowalls to his back, holding a small silver device in his hand that I hadn’t seen before. He was dressed in a blue suit, a white Oxford shirt, and brown loafers, without socks. The blue of his suit matched the color of our spacesuits.

  “Bots are hard
to find,” he said, with no welcome beyond this. “But not impossible. We have three kinds out here that we will eliminate: mappers, miners, and builders. The first two are what they sound like. The third, builders, not quite. And no, not all of them are Gamelan machines, but everyone is aware of what we are doing out here in this ship. I’ve urged all other companies to withdraw any benign robots of which they have full control. From here, all robots on the open surface are considered loose bots, and loose bots will be destroyed. The official press declaration for the Voyage of the Ozymandias went out last night, as I announced it in person. There have been no objections.”

  “Hear, hear,” slurred Jordan, raising his wine glass. Moonborn nodded at him.

  “This means that everything existing on the surface is, officially, an enemy.” Moonborn turned and looked out the windowall. “Including that small mapping bot down there right now, abandoned and reporting to no one. It would be sad, were it not for the danger in it. Every one of these machines has the ability to kill a human being, and no incentive not to.”

  Moonborn unclipped a radio from his belt, a small blue radio that, again, matched the color scheme he seemed to have committed to.

  “Starboy, are we a go?”

  “Roger that, Captain,” came Starboy’s voice through the radio.

  “To the windowall, please,” Moonborn said, gesturing for all of us to move forward to join him.

  I strained my eyes, looking for the robot. I could see the pockmarked surface below us, about five hundred yards below. The mapper, as he’d called it, was nowhere to be seen.

  “There it is,” Q murmured from my left. Then, louder, “Adam, you have a laser pointer so you can point it out to everyone?”