by D. F. Lovett
“Can’t risk it. We can’t alert it to our presence. But watch—you’ll all know where it is in just a moment.”
And with that, just below us, one of the flying saucers shot out from the undercarriage of the ship. A gasp went through the room at the shock of it, aside from Moonborn, who shouted huzzah!
“There’s our Starboy!” he exclaimed. “Best pilot to ever hold a Vice President position at Gamelan Corporation!”
Only now did I see the bot. It was a pathetic sight to behold. A small, puttering, puny creature. It hardly even looked to be moving from where we watched. But on did Starboy charge, the derring-doer that he was, not directly taking the flying saucer but swooping and looping, spiraling downward until he zeroed in on the little machine.
Starboy fired on it and, with an anti-climactic poof, there was no more robot. I wouldn’t have known it to be a success if it weren’t for the cheers of Moonborn and, softly and sycophantically, the rest of the room. Including me, of course. I cheered.
But I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t sure if I’d just watched an act of war, a rich man’s sport, or a dramatic act of euthanasia.
“It’s time to set the Ozymandias down,” Moonborn said. “Crew, prepare for a landing!”
Nine
Captain Adam Moonborn sat at the head of the table, reveling in the successful mission. The touchdown itself had been a slow and gentle process, nothing more than a slow lowering with a gentle bump. The sensation brought back memories of an enclosed shopping mall I’d attended as a child and one of the rides it had, a dull Ferris wheel. Moonborn had piloted us through the landing with the five of us crowded behind him in the Captain’s Roost, watching and learning. He kept one of the screens in the Captain’s Roost focused on a view of the cargo hold, where we watched the flying saucer ascend through the open hatch. Starboy had climbed out, giving a thumbs-up to the camera, again receiving great acclaim from Moonborn: “That’s how it’s done! To the galley! It’s time to celebrate.”
Now we sat, the seven of us around the table for the first time. The table held a turkey (raised in Dome C), roasted white asparagus and potatoes (both from Dome D), and a multitude of other foods, all from one Dome of Gamelan or another. Several bottles of wine adorned the table, along with bottles of non-alcoholic sparkling cider, Moonborn’s celebratory drink of choice.
“I commend you all,” Moonborn said, raising his glass. “But, above all, our very own Starboy. Our first foe, dismantled. There are many more where that came from. How many, I do not know. I cannot say. We have our estimations. We know that some are terrifyingly dangerous, and others will go down without much of a fight. This one? Docile, perhaps, but our action was necessary.”
Another speech. I wondered if I should be taking notes, but then, of course, I couldn’t take notes without drawing suspicion about who I really was and what they’d hired me to do. Only one name on the book, as Starboy had said. Adam Moonborn.
I looked over and saw that, of course, Jennifer Curtis was taking notes. Because she could take notes. On a pad of paper. With a pen. She scribbled, looking up as Moonborn spoke, focused on his words, catching them along with her observations. I could imagine her book already, how much better it would be than whatever nonsense Moonborn and I created. I could hear the reviews already: a wry look at an eccentric trillionaire, from pre-eminent journalist Jennifer Curtis.
“Do you know what unites you?” Moonborn said.
“We are Lunatics,” Nikolai answered.
“No, I cannot say we all are,” Moonborn responded. “Both Ishmael and Curtis are new to the Moon. Jordan self-identifies as a Lunatic, yes, and perhaps they will too, one day, but for now, no. It’s not fair to say that they are Lunatics, not yet.”
“We are crewmembers of the Ozymandias,” said Jordan, laughing raspily as soon as he choked out his words.
“I suppose that’s an accurate answer, Jordan, but not what I had in mind,” Moonborn said, smiling.
“We believe in Adam Moonborn,” Starboy said.
Moonborn said nothing to that one. A silence hung in the air for a moment, leading me to wonder if that bullshit answer had actually been the one Moonborn wanted.
“I traveled the Earth as a young man. A few times. I left when I was eighteen, never to return. And there’s a reason I never returned. I generally hate—I disdain—most Earthlings I meet, those in the room at the moment being obvious exceptions. You know why? Because Earthlings aren’t present. They’re somewhere else, watching something far away, reading something, talking to someone. They put those chips, those implants, those soul-destroying technologies in their heads and it makes them so inhuman, so distant and soulless and forever far away. You can spend days with an Earthling and they won’t have any idea they’ve met you at the end of it. Believe me, I know. My father took me on three tours of Earth, before his death. I lived there for six weeks, when I attempted one of their so-called universities. My father and I, we touched a glacier, with a great crowd behind us. We saw the Eiffel Tower. We rode a balloon basket over the Grand Canyon. We took motorbikes along the Wall of China. And you know what I remember about all my time spent on Earth? What I remember about nearly every Earthling I met? I remember how absent they were. How far away.”
Moonborn went silent for a moment, pondering. And, I think, a little proud of his speech.
Ten
Moonborn spoke:
“You will never be like these people,” my father told me.
“What is wrong with the Earthlings, Papa?”
“They have done something to their brains,” he told me. “They’ve all done something to their brains. They put little computers in their brains and it makes them so they will never be the same. We banned these little computers from the Domes of Gamelan. One day we will ban them from the entire Moon.”
“Why did they put the computers in their brains?”
“Because other people told them to.”
“Who?”
“Us. Our family, and the people who work for us. We sold the little computers to them. So many of them, the things they have in their heads, they’re things our company put there. It’s where our family got our money. Progress. That’s what they called it. That’s what they told me it would be. But that’s the trouble with that thing they call progress. You can’t take it back.”
“Are we going to help them?”
“They like having their brains the way they are now. I don’t know if we can help them. We have to accept that they like it better this way. But we can prevent the Moon from becoming like the Earth. We won’t let our friends and family go down this same path.”
Eleven
Moonborn paused again, and I wondered if he had finished. I looked around. Jordan’s eyes were cast down, into his drink. The others, I couldn’t read. People would look at Moonborn and then back down. Starboy slouched, not looking at anything or anyone but the table.
Only Q stared directly at Moonborn, and her expression, once again, I could not read.
Jennifer Curtis’s pen moved rapidly, notes upon notes.
“Perhaps you’ve figured it out by now, but I invited all of you because you’ve never had chips in your heads. A few of you, born and raised in the Domes, of course you didn’t. But you could’ve moved down to Earth and gotten one. Could’ve moved to Lucas, to Aldrin, to the Belt Mines. Any of you could have abandoned this ship far before the Ozymandias launched, and you didn’t. You get it.
“And Jennifer Curtis, you wouldn’t have been invited here if you’d ever had a chip. Of course, I’m sure you wouldn’t be half the writer you are, had you been chipped. Jordan, damned proud you’ve had the life you’ve had, and damned proud your mind is pure, and damned proud you’re on my team.
“And Ishmael. Ishmael Brandt, my distant relative. I’m glad to have you here. I’m glad you joined this team. I’m glad you’ve kept your mind free, your soul free, free enough to join us here.
“This is my team. You are my team. And I wouldn’
t trade away a single one of you.”
A silence followed this. He’d finished. He’d said what he had to say, and it left the other six of us to react, there, at the table. So what did we do? We clapped. We all clapped, we all stood and we all clapped.
I clapped. I applauded Adam Moonborn, for that speech, for the voyage. And I meant it.
For the first time since I’d reached the Moon, I was where I wanted to be. I had found some kind of home, some kind of family.
Twelve
We went in three directions after dinner: Nikolai and Jordan remained to clean the galley, Q and Curtis accompanied Starboy to clean up the scraps of the robot he destroyed, and Moonborn invited me, his cousin Ishmael, to join him in the Captain’s Roost.
“Cousin,” he said, as the teams were divided up to go their select ways. “I’m gonna lift this thing back up, get us moving again. Would you like to join? We can catch up.”
When we reached the Roost, he launched right into it. As he spoke, we could see the three on clean-up duty, on the surface outside, gathering the scraps of the destroyed robot. Moonborn held that same silver device from earlier. It looks like another small saucer, the same shape as the Ozymandias, as the flying saucer Starboy had flown outside to destroy the robot. He was directing what must be the exterior cameras with it, I realized.
“The Northern Lights. You familiar with those? Aurora borealis, they call it.”
“I am.”
“Yes, but have you seen it?”
I shook my head.
“We went to some lakes, to see it. They call it the Boundary Waters, although it’s smack-dab in the middle of North America. You know there are lakes you can’t see the other side of? No one ever told me about that, before my third trip to Earth. I grew up thinking lakes were little and oceans were big. No one told me about these giant lakes. I’m not complaining about my education, of course. It was a good education. Just, they didn’t really teach me about lakes.”
The ship rocked as he spoke, tipping from side to side.
“Why is the ship moving?”
“My bad.” He held the small silver device in his hand up to his eyes as he said this. “This thing mixes me up sometimes.”
“What’s that thing?”
“It’s how we fly the ship. You’ll get yours as soon as we finish this training. They’re pretty fun.”
“How do we prevent one another from accidentally taking control?”
“Simple. It’s based on seniority. I control the ship, unless I turn mine off. From there, it’s Starboy, Q, Nikolai, Jordan, then you.”
“So I’m last?”
“Well, we haven’t given Jennifer Curtis controls, but, if we did, you would be second-to-last. I guess we might give her controls still. Haven’t decided. So your training is really, well, a formality, based on the possibility that the first five are unavailable. But I can toggle over to you and your hand saucer—” he paused, handing me a small silver device identical to the one in his hand, but with the number 6 engraved in it, “—at any moment. Try it out.”
“Hand saucer?” I held the device in my hands. It was smooth, but with some divots and apparent buttons around the edge.
“We are going for a very specific aesthetic, so yeah. Hand saucer. Tell me if you feel this.”
The hand saucer buzzed in my hand.
“What do I do?”
“You can toggle between views. The ship isn’t in fly mode right now, but when it is, you just move the saucer where you want us to go.”
“This is safe?”
“I had Teller implement a lot of safety overrides. So yeah, more or less.”
I did as he recommended, toggling between views. I could see Starboy carrying scraps of the robot back to the ship. Q trailed behind him, holding a larger chunk of it. The body of the broken bot.
“Why are they doing that?”
“We aren’t leaving any scraps out here,” Moonborn said. “Some of them we’ll bring back onto the ship. Others, we’re going to fire up the beam and take care of them right under the ship. Melt them into the surface.”
“No littering? Is that what this is, an environmental crusade?”
“You know what this is,” he answered. “I’ve kept no secrets about what this is. We are here to make this world safe. The Moon needs to be saved. This isn’t about litter. This is because of what they’ll become if they’re left out here.”
“What they’ll become if they’re left out here,” I said, repeating his words back to him absent-mindedly as I toggled more between the screens, experiencing the different views. It made more sense to me than I’d expected, smoothly changing the views on the walls to my preference by the simple finessing of this hand saucer, as Moonborn called it.
“Are you enjoying yourself?”
“When do I get to actually fly this thing?” I asked.
“Perhaps after we’re back up. But Ishmael, listen. If you’re going to ask questions then you should listen to the answers.” He said it calmly, composed, but I caught something under there, trouble under his words.
“What question did I ask?”
“You’re wondering if I care about littering, and no, no. I don’t. Not at all. That’s another task, another mission. It’s not that I care what the surface looks like or anything. We don’t leave the scraps out here because of what they would become. Like I said.”
I looked at him, making eye contact, forgetting the device in my hand, the fun of the screens.
“What would they become?” I asked.
“There’s a reason this has all become so bad, so twisted. You leave a robot out here, any scraps of it. You leave anything, anything that can be consumed, repurposed, and they’ll use it and turn it into themselves. They’ll breathe life back into it. Sometimes they turn them back on. They can fix each other, you know. These machines, they were made to learn, to improve, to grow, to constantly become something more, something better. So they’ll either bring it back, this creature, if we leave it here, or one of them, one of the bigger ones, it’ll add it to itself. You missed some of what I told the others, while you slept, but it’s going to get bad out here, Ishmael. You’ll need to learn to pilot the fliers, or at least man their cannons. Everyone is expected to do something, to carry some weight. Even if your purpose is something other than that, there are still expectations. Now tell me, because I need to know: what questions do you have for me?”
What questions did I have for him?
Was he referencing that life I’d led, the life I’d recently escaped and would perhaps be returning to soon: the life of asking questions of strangers, about strangers?
Or was this why I was here?
Of course it was why I was here. Of course he wanted me to do my job. That thing they’d hired me to do.
“Which part of your story do you want to tell first?” I asked.
“That’s for you to figure out,” he said. “Do you know enough about my life to tell it yet? To craft it? To shape it?”
“No,” I answered, truthfully.
“Then what do you need to know?”
“I need you to tell me the things you’ve never told anyone,” I answered. “There needs to be a reason for people to read this book, this story of your life. There needs to be a reason that they read this one, by you, your life, and not the one by Jennifer Curtis. They’ll read hers too, but you need this one to be special.”
He stared at me.
“Do you normally talk that much?” he asked. “And I haven’t noticed because I’m too busy talking?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I need you to tell the truth.”
This surprised me. From my own mouth, the thing that bothered me. Adam Moonborn was a liar and I was supposed to weave his lies, these thoughts, repeatedly, coming to my mind, weighing me down. People knew him to be a liar. I knew him to be a liar, knew him to be lying to everyone, to the ship, to the Moon. He called me a cousin. He called me a blood relative, had constructed an iden
tity for me.
But right now, he just stared at me.
“Do you think I lie?” he asked.
I nodded.
“What do I lie about?”
“You tell them I’m your cousin,” I said. “This whole thing, an elaborate lie.”
“And it bothers you?”
“What I’m saying is that it makes this hard. I need to know that your story, the life story I’m here to tell, is the truth.”
“The truth doesn’t matter,” he answered. “And I don’t know where you got the idea that it did. You are here as an idea, an abstraction, a lie. You are the one who lies with every breath, Ishmael, and it’s what you agreed to. It’s the contract you signed. You can quit at any moment, but you’d better have a plan for getting off this ship, off this moon, back to Earth. You ready to pay your own way?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“You call me a liar again and we’re done,” he said. “Well, unless you just accept it. Yeah, I’m a liar. But stop acting like it’s a bad thing. You’re here to tell my life story. My autobiography. Not the truth, but my truth. So drop your righteous shit and accept that you’ve been given the opportunity of a lifetime. Now ask me another question. A good one.”
“Why don’t you like chips? Why did all of us have to be clean? Why the flesher movement?”
“I like that question,” he nodded, a pleased smile on his face. “That’s a good one. You’re on a redemption arc, Ishmael, and I’m liking it.”
“Thank you.” They told me once, during a work training years ago, that there is only one polite and confident way to respond to a compliment, and it’s thank you. Anything else says something negative about you.
“Before I answer, I want two things. First, there’s a stack of pages waiting for you in your cabin, in the drawer of the bedside table. It’s what I have written so far. My life story, so far.”