Girl on the Moon

by Burnett, Jack McDonald

  Conn arranged to continue to stay at the NewsAmerica studios, where it seemed she would not be arrested, promising that if her plea were answered, NewsAmerica would have the first interview with a Pelorian since the war had been made official.

  She stayed for five full days before Persisting’s avatar contacted her by e-mail. She pleaded with him to come to the studios and be interviewed—she herself would arrange to be his interviewer. “Helping me rescue Grant is an important step in repairing Pelorian-US relations,” she told him, “as long as we play it up properly.” He reluctantly agreed to come in the next day, a Wednesday. She warned him there were federal agents at the studios, and almost certainly reading this e-mail exchange. Persisting said he had gotten quite good at avoiding authorities since he’d met Conn.

  He came in the next day through the smokers’ door. He hugged Conn awkwardly, and Conn returned the gesture just as awkwardly. The producer, and Ethan Wilkins, hadn’t liked the caveat that Conn herself would interview the Pelorian, but she convinced them that was the only way he would agree to it.

  “I would prefer that Mr. Wilkins interview him,” she said. “Actually, I would prefer that Hayley Brigham interview him. No offense. But this is the only way to get him in here.”

  And here he was, and before long, they were on the air. And not confined to the space exploration feed anymore, either.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Friends

  May 14, 2036

  Conn was nervous, and she was sure it showed. She was manic, too, but hoped that would be advantageous. “Do you have any plans to attack the United States?”

  “If you believe we are aggressors, at least believe that we are not foolish. We are less than a million beings, far from all of us able to fight. War with the United States would end badly for us.”

  “With your advanced technology?”

  “Perhaps unfortunately, there is nothing more advanced than your nuclear weapons when it comes to destruction.”

  Conn thought about confronting Persisting with Murrdip Hangzhii’s accusation that Pelorians would use Russian atomic weapons against America, but she wanted him to keep answering questions, not get angry and leave. “What about avatars? Couldn’t you make as many of those as you needed to fight a war?”

  “Regardless,” Persisting said, measuredly, “war with the United States would be foolish. And in any case, we value peace, and are trying to be peaceable neighbors.”

  “Who are the Aphelials?”

  “The Aphelials are an extraterrestrial race originating in your Mizar and Alcor star system. They have committed genocide on my people, and would eradicate us if they could.”

  “Has this race followed you here?”

  “I regret the possibility. They’ve been pursuing us for decades.”

  “Are they a threat to humankind?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t know. We know they are a threat to us.”

  “How do you control your avatars? Is my friend Persisting on Wrangel Island or the moon or somewhere, talking to me through this avatar?”

  “No, Conn. As you recently learned, we upload copies of our consciousness into so-called avatars. Named by you, I don’t know if you remember.” Conn did. “We were reluctant to share the technology with you. We have, nonetheless, shared a great deal of technology with you.”

  “We’ll get to that in a minute. You and your avatar aren’t the same being, are you?”

  “Two completely different beings.”

  “Isn’t that immoral?”

  Persisting was obviously uncomfortable with the line of questioning. “We do not replace a consciousness with our own,” he said carefully. “We simply create and animate a new us. I am Persisting. Created by Persisting. I have never been anyone else.”

  Conn continued, “What happens when you’re done with an avatar? How do you retire it, so to speak?”

  “Painlessly,” an irritated Persisting said.

  “There’s some kind of off switch in the palm of their hands, right?”

  “I am uncomfortable talking about that for security reasons, Conn.”

  “You’ve shared at least some of the technology with us, as you’ve said. Didn’t you share that part?”

  “Your military would produce avatars to do its fighting. Every day, on the moon, we would brace for an invasion by avatars in pressure fields. The technology we gave you, used against us.”

  “But you don’t really think we humans can send a lot of people to the moon, do you? You were surprised we even showed up at the Apollo 15 site. You probably didn’t know we’d been to the moon until the moon shower.”

  “We knew the moon wasn’t off-limits to you, if you put your mind to it. And we know that your people have produced drastically new technologies to fight wars with for a hundred and fifty years. Do you suppose maybe that has been your military’s plan all along? Develop new technology, new products, new things to sell? New weapons, to use in new wars?”

  “But you’ve done everything you can not to be perceived as a threat. You want to be perceived as a friend to humankind.”

  “Perhaps we’ve done that to buy time to make enough machines and avatars to fight with. But perhaps we’ve done it because we are not a threat.”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “I’m surprised to hear it coming from you, but yes. That is the question.”

  “Why here? Why Earth, why the moon?”

  “Our home orbits an old, very metal-poor star. When the Aphelials first became interested in us, we learned quickly how to extract metals from rocky ground, even hard-to-find metals. When we fled, we were looking for someplace barren, metal-rich and unused, preferably near a habitable planet. Our race has located and settled in four such places since first fleeing the Aphelials. This is the fifth.”

  “You’re mining the moon for metal you can use to make machines of war.”

  “Of defense.”

  “Do Aphelials and humans share a common ancestor?”

  Persisting looked at her, and she was worried she’d lost him. “There was a library aboard the spacecraft you lent me,” she lied. “I read it there. Do they?”

  “That is a theory,” Persisting said. “You are both bilaterally symmetrical.”

  “Both humanoid, in fact.”

  “You were attacked by one on Tethys, I understand.”

  “An Aphelial killed two of my friends and seriously wounded another, destroyed two spacecraft, and nearly killed me.”

  “Then you know them for what they are. They are no friends of yours.”

  Conn recognized the line: Murrdip Hangzhii had said it about the Pelorians. “Persisting, were we ever meant to figure out how to travel along the fifth dimension? Or did you set us up to fail?”

  “Conn...”

  “You made China invade Russia in exchange for nitrogen power, didn’t you?”

  Persisting said nothing. Instead, he rose.

  “And once Russia is yours, you’re going to use their nukes against us.”

  Persisting stepped away from the chair.

  That was when someone walked into the room with a gun.

  SIXTY-SIX

  The Avatar

  May 14, 2036

  It was Glenn Bowman himself.

  “Stop where you are, abomination,” he spat. “You can stay right here with your good friend and co-conspirator Conn Garrow.” Conn rose from her chair. “You’re here to make war on us, to annihilate us! Don’t come any closer,” he said to an assistant producer, who was creeping toward him.

  “You call me an abomination,” Persisting said, “but I am alive. A living being.”

  “Why do you think I want to shoot you?”

  “Mr. Bowman,” Conn said, “these avatars, they are alive. They’re created by the Pelorians and get their consciousness from them, but then they’re living things. You don’t want to kill somebody live on the feeds.”

  “We’re at war with these things, Miss Garrow!” He
was red in the face. “You’ve been the leading denier of that fact. You’re a traitor to your country and to your species.”

  “Conn is neither of those things,” Persisting said. “She is a businesswoman. There was something in it for her. There was something in it for all of you!”

  Conn was stung. She didn’t know why she kept expecting Persisting to consider her his friend, but she did.

  “Mr. Bowman,” she said, “I’ve seen one of these Aphelials myself. His weaponry is staggering. With literally just a wave of a staff he crushed two spacecraft into junk. He killed two astronauts and almost a third. Almost me. We should be finding out from the Pelorians what we can expect from the Aphelials. They might be more of a threat than the Pelorians will ever be.”

  “We need to stop fighting and talk instead? How typical.”

  “We might need allies to protect us from the Aphelials. If you have another technologically advanced alien race you can call, by all means do so,” Conn said.

  “For all we know, these Aphelials are on our side. You said they were humanoid. There’s a point in their favor, right there.”

  “Mr. Bowman,” Persisting said, “why don’t the three of us—or four, we can get a reporter in here with us—why don’t we talk this out? There’s no need for violence.”

  “Do you even care if I shoot you? I don’t think you do. I think I could shoot you in the head, and wherever you are, you, the real you, would just say, ‘Oh well, there goes another one.’”

  “It doesn’t matter what he thinks. It matters that this is a living being!” Conn cried. She stopped short of calling him her friend. Was he really? Or was Glenn Bowman right? Had he been right all along?

  “You don’t understand, none of you understand, what they can do with these things,” Bowman said. “They can fight a war without a single casualty. They can infiltrate the enemy. You get that. But it’s a license to act consequence-free. Avoid responsibility. Do whatever you want, because when you’re done? Just shut them off. Make a new one.”

  “All of that may be true,” Persisting said. “But the avatar, this technology, doesn’t cause it. Just like people, there are lazy, duplicitous, even evil Pelorians. They would act that way with or without access to so-called avatars.”

  “And how do avatars act? By definition? They’re temporary. Here and then gone.” Conn began to wonder if Bowman’s problem with Pelorians, avatars in particular, was personal.

  “I’m here now,” Persisting said. He carefully sat back down, and motioned for Conn to do the same. “Let’s talk about it.”

  “You,” Bowman spat at Conn. “You haven’t asked him the big question yet. Ask him where human avatars come from.”

  Persisting’s avatar looked at Conn almost pleadingly. Some Pelorians are lazy, duplicitous and evil, she thought. “Where do they come from, Persisting?” she asked, in almost a whisper.

  “Conn, it doesn’t matter—”

  “It matters. Where do they come from?”

  Persisting still balked at answering.

  “From the cerebrospinal fluid and bone marrow of people. Dead people, obviously,” Bowman said. “That’s where they come from. And guess what happens if they need an avatar, but there don’t happen to be any dead people nearby?”

  “How do you know this?” Persisting asked Bowman. Conn’s jaw dropped.

  “It’s true?” she said.

  “People don’t get killed to make avatars, if that’s what you’re saying,” Persisting said.

  “Don’t they? Not one, huh?”

  “Bone marrow and CSF are precious commodities,” Persisting said. “We have—had—many so-called avatars among the population of the United States who were copies. We don’t kill people to make them.”

  “He’s lying,” Bowman said.

  “Who is this person whose body you’re in right now?” Conn asked. “Where did he come from?”

  Persisting leaned over to look into Conn’s eyes. “He died in a traffic accident in Delray Beach, Florida. That’s where he comes from. And there are or have been a dozen more just like this one.”

  “How do you produce avatars of twentieth-century celebrities?”

  “With great effort and expense,” Persisting said.

  “You can say avatar technology only amplifies the kind of being who’s already there,” Bowman said. “But you don’t have to search far to find a Pelorian willing to kill. A hundred and fifty thousand avatars? If a quarter of them come from people who are killed, that’s genocide.”

  Conn looked at Persisting’s avatar in horror.

  “That,” he said, “overstates it. Yes, there are bad actors, there were especially early on when we hadn’t gotten to know you—”

  “I don’t think I want you to talk anymore,” Conn said.

  “Right, why don’t you shut up and stand up, so I can shoot you properly?”

  Persisting stood. “If we’re as disposable as you say, what does shooting me accomplish? You said yourself, I’ll just shrug and say ‘Oh, well.’”

  “The thing is,” Bowman said, “I don’t blame you for turning this country onto your side. I blame her.”

  He pointed the gun at Conn. Fired.

  At the same time, Persisting’s avatar cried out, and leaped in front of the shot.

  He took it right in the chest. He fell to the floor, motionless.

  Several NewsAmerica staffers rushed Bowman and subdued him. The gun skittered away across the floor.

  Conn froze in shock. Then she saw four people struggling to keep Bowman down.

  She calmly rose and strode to the gun. She picked it up.

  She approached the tangle of bodies.

  She knelt beside Bowman. His hands were balled into fists, and he struggled.

  Conn serenely brandished the gun, and she saw Bowman’s eyes go wide. She stared down the barrel of the gun at him for a few beats. Then she knocked him on the head with its butt.

  When he was struck, his fists relaxed. Conn pushed the gun away across the floor, and got a death grip on his right hand with both of hers.

  “No! Don’t!” Bowman shouted. It startled the NewsAmerica people, who stopped struggling, as did Bowman.

  Conn put her thumbs on his palm. “Why not?” Conn said. “It won’t kill you. Not the real you.”

  His hand flexed and he tried to tug it away, but Conn kept hold.

  “I’ve worked for six years to become Glenn Bowman. You can’t just take all that away.”

  “Why? Why become the most vocal opponent of Pelorians on Earth?”

  “It never stops,” Bowman seethed. “We use avatars, we become lazy. We don’t care. We keep running. We fight, we run. We fight, we run. It’s got to stop! If we just stop using avatars, the Aphelials will leave us alone!”

  “I thought Aphelials were genocidal maniacs,” Conn said, still with a two-handed grip on Bowman’s hand.

  “The Aphelials are trying to wipe out avatars, not us!” Bowman said. “It’s all avatars. It’s all avatars, and fortresses on moons, and commandeering a planet’s weapons, and another species sent back to the stone age. It has to stop!”

  “Did you kill Bowman?”

  “What difference—”

  “Did you kill him? To become him?”

  “OK, yes. But—”

  Conn squeezed. Nothing happened right away, except the avatar looked at his newly released hand in horror.

  “It’s not necessarily painless, you know,” he said. “It triggers sudden cardiac arrest.”

  “I didn’t know that. Oh, well.”

  “We underestimated you,” Bowman said. “All along. You’re a strange civilization, you know that? You develop the capability to travel to your moon, and then you don’t use it. We didn’t know what to make of you. Were you anti-technology? Anti-exploration, antiscience, antiknowledge? Some of you were, but altogether, you weren’t. Yet you refused to go back to your moon, or go to Mars, or to one of Saturn’s moons.”

  “Until some
one did,” Conn said.

  “Until Peo Haskell did. You, and your brave colleagues, yes, but all because of her. All because—”

  Bowman let out a brief croak, sighed and slumped.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  Exploration

  May, 2036

  An enterprising company quickly manufactured and marketed a protrusion to strap to the right hand that would turn off any avatar with a handshake. Handshakes became tests, proof of humanity. The company that made the protrusion made a fortune.

  Conn didn’t buy one.

  She struggled with whether Persisting’s avatar taking a bullet for her was proof of friendship, or proof that Pelorians considered avatars disposable. If it had been Persisting, the original Persisting, and there was no such thing as avatars, would he have tried to save her life at the risk of his own?

  To answer that question would also answer this one: had Conn murdered Glenn Bowman? Or had she avenged Glenn Bowman’s murder? Had she killed at all?

  What happened would be easier to live with if the avatars were constructs, puppets, something to be used up and discarded. But Conn couldn’t convince herself that was true. Persisting’s was a living body, and it had Persisting’s mind. A mind that died when the body was shot in the chest. There may be others like him. But this one, the one who died saving her life—that was her friend. They all were. Whether they cared to say so or not.

  And Persisting had been right: if you gave some people incentive to kill, they’d kill. Those were bad people. That didn’t mean that all human beings were evil. Likewise, there were bad Pelorians. That didn’t make them all evil.

  Bowman, or the avatar that looked like him, said that the Pelorians killed people to make avatars from their CSF. He himself had killed to substitute himself for Bowman. When Conn thought about that, she became almost ill. But then she remembered the Pelorians’ cadre of twentieth-century avatars—Audrey Hepburn, Muhammad Ali, Marie Curie. They didn’t have access to any of those people’s bodies. But they made avatars that looked like them, with great effort and expense, Persisting had said. So they had made avatars that weren’t essentially clones of the people they came from. Bowman and Murrdip Hangzhii could call the Pelorians evil all day, but Conn refused to believe they routinely killed people to make avatars. She’d seen avatars they couldn’t have killed to make.