by D. F. Lovett
Twelve
Moonborn righted the flying saucer, pointing us again at the battle in front of us.
We hovered. We watched. The White, that squid, that octopus, that lunar sea monster, its great white legs constricting around the Ozymandias, crushing it.
No one in the Ozymandias but Starboy as it crashed into the crust of the Moon, erupting, crushing, ceasing its brief life before us.
Where is Q, I whispered.
Moonborn said nothing.
The White loomed in front of us, a hundred yards off or so, harmed but alive, as alive as any machine can be. The wreckage of the Ozymandias lay below it. And their bodies, somewhere in that wreckage.
The bomb didn’t go off, he said. Starboy didn’t pull the trigger.
You brought a nuclear bomb, I said. You would’ve killed us all.
But it didn’t go off, he said. It’s still in there, still in that ship, but it didn’t go off.
I said nothing.
You will not write my autobiography, he said. Will you?
I don’t know, I said.
It seems that we are not to survive, he said. We are not to make it out of this alive.
We might live, I said.
Tell my story, he said, if you survive. All of it, not just the good parts. Or this story, at least. Lots of people are going to tell my stories, but you’ll be the witness to my death.
You aren’t dying, I said.
There is a satchel in here, he said. For you.
What is it?
Duplicates of my writing. In case the Ozymandias is destroyed. I worried it would be. You left yours in your cabin, I’m assuming. Tragic. That copy of Moby-Dick would’ve been worth a pretty penny.
All of them are dead, I said.
I know, he said. And only you are escaped alone to tell them.
His voice, it sounded choked. He was crying, I realized.
I do not know for whom who he cried. Probably for himself.
And with that, he sent us barreling at the White, a straight trajectory at it.
I have a laser harpoon, he said. Maybe I can kill it yet.
Thus, I kill it, he said.
We were ten yards from the White, looming over the wreck of the Ozymandias, when Adam Moonborn ejected from the flying saucer. No time for me to take the controls, no time for me to keep the flying saucer from losing all control. He flew from the saucer as I, trapped in it, spiraled down to the lunar surface.
The flying saucer had been made to crash, airbags exploding from its sides to brace for impact. They had prepared for such incidents.
I saw him, in my spiraling descent to the surface.
He landed atop the White, attacking it with the laser harpoon as he landed. And then, the impact, my flying saucer crashing into the surface. And with it, the darkness.
Canto Nine: The Epilogue
The drama’s done.
There is one final piece, but of course you already know it. The bomb went off, eventually. The nuclear bomb whose wake has kept all humans from the far side of the Moon.
There has never been an Earth in the sky, not on that side of the Moon. A Sun, yes, but never an Earth. For billions of years, that side of the Moon has hid from the eyes of man, until man thought to conquer it.
There is no Earth in the sky, on that far side. There is no Moon in the sky, not when you stand on the Moon. But there are stars. When you are in the long night, there on the far side of the Moon, the stars you see are like nothing you could imagine. I had wondered where the stars were when I landed on the Moon. I found them on that other side.
Remember that I grew up on the crowded and lonely and cloudy and light-filled Earth. I knew not what night could be. I knew not what stars could be.
In all my dreams, in all my nightmares, in all my meditative moments, in all my moments of truest bliss and truest woe: I remember those stars, and all the worlds they contained.
The Sun did not rise on me, in that cold and lonely desert.
The Sun did not rise, but I did awaken. When I awoke, both Adam Moonborn and the White were gone.
No one has seen either of them since.
I was stranded, a castaway, out there alone, like the cannibal a generation ago.
On the second day, some sails drew near. The sails of that strange ship Chronos, finding another lost child.
They carried me back, another orphan, past the wreckage, through the boundless bare abyss, across the lone and level sands.
Afterword
This book could not have happened without the help and encouragement of many people.
Thank you, first of all, to the team of copyeditors: Greg Ball, Annemarie Bossert, Rob Kaiser-Schatzlein, Patrick Laine, Andrew Lindsay, Molly Long, Thomas Lovett, Tom Solderholm, and Emma Welter.
There are a few other people, places, and things who deserve mentions: Denison University and the Minneapolis Writers Workshop, two institutions that have been significant in this journey; Niko Pueringer and Sam Gorski, for re-introducing me to the joy of writing science fiction; Joe Tarczon, for encouraging the reading of quality science fiction; Jacki Essig, for writing an article on robots that guided some of the ideas in this; Timothy Lovett and Abbey Lovett, for each helping in their own ways; the founders and organizers of National Novel Writing Month; the members of the /r/writing and /r/nanowrimo subreddits; the Boiler Room and Kindred Farm Retreat for serving as great venues for writing and editing; and everyone else who has encouraged me or taught me something in this process.
Of course, thank you to Molly for encouraging me throughout this entire process. This project went from idea to book in a short amount of time, and her support made that possible.
And finally, thank you to Herman Melville, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Kurt Vonnegut, and all the other authors and artists, both living and dead, who inspired this work.
D. F. Lovett
November, 2016