SuperMoon

by H. A. Swain

  “Pink Palace,” my brother says.

  The AutoPod peels out, and Quasar jumps, paws scratching at the window, barking like a maniac as we pass the ambling shuttle bus full of sleeping workers.

  “Get down!” I pull him to my lap, afraid his noise will trigger some kind of alarm. “Castor, come on! We can’t go up there!”

  “Sure we can! Look,” Castor says brightly, and holds up his TouchCuff screen for me to see. “The Yoobie girl was invited.”

  The whole way up Santa Monica Boulevard to Wilshire, I try my best to talk Castor out of his stupid plan, but he won’t budge.

  “We’re not Yoobies!” I insist.

  “Beside the point. There’s a big party at the Palace tonight. We can stream from there.”

  “No way,” I tell him. My heart is in my throat. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Stop being such a rywor tar,” he says. “I’ve been trying to get us inside for a year.”

  “Castor, please don’t make me do this,” I beg, but my brother barely listens.

  Instead, he has his face pressed against the window just like the dog. “Look how smooth and straight the roads are up here. Every plant is manicured. All the streetlights shine. It’s like the earthquake and tsunami never happened.”

  “No shit,” I say. “This is where D’Cart lives. Of course it’s the first priority for repair. Which is why we should turn around. Now!”

  Still, Castor doesn’t stop. We round a corner, and I glimpse the turrets of the Pink Palace above an expansive fringe of palm fronds.

  “This used to be a hotel for rich people and celebrities,” Castor says.

  “Who cares? Let’s get out of here.”

  “Then D’Cart took it over and knocked down everything around it to make this crazy palace. The grounds alone go on for miles.”

  My stomach tightens, sending bile into my throat. “I really don’t want to do this.”

  “Why?” asks Castor, finally clueing in to the fact that I’m freaking out.

  “Because! It’s too risky. There’s no place to hide. And clearly we do not belong.”

  “We will,” he says with a grin.

  He commands the Pod to pull over a few hundred meters short of the black-and-white-striped awning covering the portico of the Palace. Ahead of us a steady line of AutoPods inch up the half-moon drive.

  “Doors open,” Castor commands. “Time to go,” he says to me.

  “Castor. No. Please don’t leave,” I whisper-yell, but it’s no use. He hops out, and Quasar tumbles after him. They won’t come back, so I dart after them across the grass.

  UMA JEMISON

  MOON UTILITARIAN SURVIVAL COLONY

  AFTER I’VE HURLED what was left of my lunch into a trash tube, I slump on a bench outside the auditorium waiting for the class to end. If I go back in and see the spinning sky, I’ll barf again for sure.

  “You okay, starshine?” I look up and see Randazza Marmesh in her little food and beverage delivery vehicle idling in front of me. She is pleasingly plump in a way no MUSCies are. Soft folds of skin around her arms and belly make for the best hugs. When I was little, I’d curl into her lap at night when my parents were down in the mines because they didn’t trust a NanniBot to take care of me.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say. “Just a little queasy.”

  “Here, try this, it’ll settle your stomach.” Ms. Marmesh smiles kindly and hands me a foil packet from her stash in the back of the vehicle. As a Zero Gen herself, she still looks out for me, especially when my mom is down on the surface, which is most of the time.

  I unwrap the treat and pop it in my mouth. The bite of ginger coats my tongue and immediately soothes my stomach. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, starshine.”

  Before she can drive away, a woman steps off the AutoWalk on the other side of the hallway and stares from me to Ms. Marmesh and back to me. I glance at the patch on her blue and white tunic indicating her generation, cohort, and domicile number, G2C29D237. Of course, a Second Gen who lives in the tony two hundreds!

  “Are you in the right place?” she asks as if concerned for my well-being, but really she’s worried that I’m a low-level employee sitting down on the job.

  I catch Ms. Marmesh’s eye. She looks to the ceiling and sighs.

  “I’m part of Cohort 54.” I point to my own patch, G0C54D1235, then cross my arms and stare at the woman.

  “Oh!” she says, then nods in what she supposes is encouragement. Good for you, Earth Girl, making it out of the squalor of our ancestral planet! But really, she’s congratulating herself. Aren’t we progressive up here at MUSC, letting Zero Gens like you coexist with our Third Gen children?

  I glare back at her until she flinches and steps back on the moving walkway to hurry down the corridor.

  Ms. Marmesh winks at me, then, chuckling under her breath, she drives away.

  I sit quietly for another few minutes while the ginger candy melts on my tongue. I’m in no hurry to get anywhere until Darshan, my cyber assistant, shimmers in the peripheral vision of my Lenz and announces, Urgent message! I call him forward. His image sharpens, and he says, You are requested to meet with MUSC president and CEO Valentine Fornax in person. Please proceed to her personal work space.

  “What?” I say out loud. “Must be a mistake.”

  Darshan repeats the message.

  My heart races. I’ve only been summoned to see Dr. Fornax one time since I’ve lived here, and that was the worst day of my life.

  Why? I ask Darshan, and stay put on the bench.

  I have no other information, he says. Please proceed to Valentine Fornax’s personal work space.

  Is my mother okay? I ask before I move.

  I have no information to the contrary, Darshan says. Your heart rate is elevated and yet you are not proceeding at a pace that would indicate physiological exertion. Are you stressed? Would you like a relaxation exercise?

  Shut up, Darshan, I command, then hustle onto the empty AutoWalk.

  I send a series of thotz to my mom on my way to Dr. Fornax’s workstation, but she doesn’t reply. Which isn’t unusual. Everyone’s off Stream while they work, except when we’re on break, which is when Mom and I usually check in.

  Half of me wonders if someone hacked Darshan and sent me a fake message so I’d look like a dorkbot showing up at the MUSC CEO’s door while vicious malware publicly Streams every moment of my stupidity, but as soon as I near the vestibule of Dr. Fornax’s work space, a VirtuVoice connects to my Stream and says, Welcome, Uma Jemison. Dr. Fornax is expecting you. The AutoWalk diverts me, and a door wheeshes open.

  Too embarrassed to be seen by the MUSC CEO wearing my old clunky device, I remove it from my head and fold it into my pocket before I step inside. I assume I’ll be greeted by a hologram (Dr. Fornax could be anywhere), but inside the room, the real Valentine Fornax rises from her workstation and walks toward me with her hand extended. She is even more imposing in person. Taller than I remember. Her cropped silver hair shimmers, and her eyes drill into me.

  “So you’re Uma Jemison?”

  My palm is sweaty in her firm grip. “Yes, ma’am. We’ve met before.”

  “We have?” She looks at me, perplexed.

  “Is my mother okay?” I brace myself.

  “Your mother…”

  “Persis Sarachik. Chief of DrillBot repair.” My voice is tight with worry.

  Dr. Fornax blinks quickly, no doubt calling up my life history archive to her Stream, then her mouth falls open slightly. “I’m sorry. I had forgotten. Your father died in the MUSC Year 88 mining explosion.”

  “Yes.” I glance around the room and see that everything is just as I remember it, including a blooming orange zinnia plant under a grow light on the corner of her desk. “You called me here with my mother to tell us in person.” My chest is tight, and I can barely breathe.

  “I apologize.” Dr. Fornax sighs and offers me a place to sit. I settle on the edge of the white sofa,
the same place I sat last time I was here, but then my feet didn’t touch the floor.

  “The system should have warned me to be more attentive to your emotional needs. I’ll make a note for improvement,” Dr. Fornax says. “Your mother is fine, by the way. Absolutely nothing to worry about.”

  I let go an enormous sigh.

  “Are you okay now?” Dr. Fornax leans forward, her eyes locked with mine. She reaches out to squeeze my shoulder—a gesture so Earthly that I slump back with relief. “Do you need to rehydrate?”

  “I … uh … um … I’m fine,” I stammer as I sit up, perched like a nervous bird on the edge of the seating unit again. “But why am I here exactly?”

  “I remember when you first came to us.” Dr. Fornax leans against her workstation, arms crossed, looking down at me. “You were the youngest Zero Gen we had ever accepted on scholarship.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I know.” The story of my family’s emigration is well-worn lore. Where I’m from in North America, if you didn’t have the means to buy your way into a privatized city like AlphaZonia, you had two choices: live in the libertarian nightmare of Merica or eke out a living in the Wastelands. My parents chose the Wastelands. Until I came along. Then they wanted something better and pinned all their hopes on me. They stuffed me so full of knowledge that the moment I turned five, I tested off the MUSC scholarship charts, which was our ticket to the Moon.

  “Not everybody was happy that I let you come,” Dr. Fornax says.

  “I’m sure they weren’t,” I say quietly, because I’m well aware of the controversy my family caused.

  Before me, Zero Gen scholarship kids had to be at least ten years old and were brought up here without their families. But most of them wilted under the pressure and eventually left the colony. Over the years, I’ve searched all kinds of data archives for any information on deserters who went back to Earth: Yuriko Blevan left on a business trip then stayed on Earth to start a no-tech colony in the Amazon; Jiyun Watts built her own escape pod that went sideways and burned up on reentry to the Earth’s atmosphere; Reza T. Sunshine called it quits when she was assigned her LWA and became a sea vegetable farmer on a garbage patch in the center of the Pacific Ocean; and the most infamous of all, Zaniah Nashira, a young scholarship kid who changed the course of MUSC history with her BBI breakthrough in Dr. Fornax’s lab. The formation of the ExploroBot program propelled Fornax to CEO, but Zaniah disappeared when she was fifteen without a trace. I’ve looked and looked for more info on her, but there’s nothing else. Not a single image of her survives. It’s as if she’s been officially erased from our history. After her debacle, the scholarship program was suspended until my family unit was taken as a whole.

  “We saw enormous promise in you,” Dr. Fornax says. “So we took a chance. I personally took a chance on you. I staked my reputation bringing your family here together. What do you have to say about that?”

  “Um … thank you, I guess?”

  “You guess?” She draws in a sharp breath.

  I cringe. “Sorry. It’s just that, well, I don’t understand why I’m here.”

  “Given all that I just told you, imagine my shock and utter dismay when I learned that you want to go back to Earth for the month of Sol.”

  “But … what’s the problem with that? I thought we could do anything we wanted on the Sol of our sixteenth year.”

  “In my experience, Earth-born humans like you go back for only two reasons.” She pauses, then points her index finger in the air. “One: to attend to family matters. But as far as I know, you have no family there to speak of, do you?”

  “No, ma’am,” I admit. “My parents were each only children, and my grandparents died long ago.”

  “Or, two.” She holds up a second finger. “They leave and don’t intend to come back.”

  “Oh!” I flinch. “No, not me! I don’t want to go for good.” A wave of nausea engulfs me as I remember what I said to Micra. “That was a joke!” My temperature rises. Did she rat me out? Again? “Going back is just my Sol request. You know. Twenty-eight days to do anything I want before…” I trail off.

  “Before what?”

  “I get my LWA,” I mumble.

  “Why not take a few weeks down at TourEsa on the surface of the Moon? Or hit the beach simulators? Or take a rover for a crater run, then head up to the casinos on the dark side? Or apply for a satellite internship to hone your skills in your favorite field of study?”

  She walks around to the other side of her desk as she lists all the things everyone else in my cohort will do during our month off. But those people are perfectly happy at MUSC. A few weeks away from the SkyLab is enough for them to recharge before dedicating themselves to a Life’s Work Assignment. I can’t say this to the president of MUSC, though, so I sit meekly, withering under her stare, as I gather up my courage to whisper, “I don’t want to do those things. I want to go to Earth.”

  She stops, spins on her heel, and looks at me again. “Why?”

  I sit, stupidly mute. Do I dare tell her that every night I dream I’m swimming in the ocean, being pulled closer and closer to shore? “It’s like the tides on Earth,” I finally say. “I feel drawn.”

  “You feel drawn?” Dr. Fornax rolls her eyes, so obviously annoyed with my emotions getting in the way of logic. “That’s not a real reason. Unless you can come up with something better, you’ll need to put in a different request.”

  “Are you…” I hesitate, afraid to articulate the truth. “Canceling my trip to Earth?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “But, but, but…” My entire body feels heavy, as if the g-force of rotation has increased and pressed me harder against the seat. “Tomorrow is Leap Day. My flight leaves in less than twelve hours!”

  “Not anymore it doesn’t,” she says. “Do you understand?”

  I sit, stunned into silence, ready to burst with anger and frustration, but as I’ve done a thousand times at MUSC, I push my emotions into the hard pit of my stomach. I swallow down my tears because only Earthlings cry. MUSCies don’t. They are taught from the time they are little that expressing emotions marks one as intellectually inferior. And gad forbid anyone be inferior up here on the Moon!

  “Well?” says Dr. Fornax. In that moment, the dark eyes of my hero seem more sinister than mischievous, and the hard line of her jaw marks her as stolid instead of strong.

  “Yes,” I say quietly as I rise on shaking legs. “I understand.”

  “Good,” Dr. Fornax says as I turn to go. “And, Uma,” she calls after me, “come up with something quickly. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on Sol altogether.”

  TALITHA NEVA

  ALPHAZONIA, EARTH

  “WE CAN’T DO this. It’s crazy!” I argue in harsh whispers as I follow my brother and Quasar across the lush side lawn of the Pink Palace. We flee into the shadow of a giant rhododendron bush. Castor pushes inside a tangle of purple flowers and leads us to a small clearing between the tall security wall and the greenery.

  “Look.” He holds up his cuff again. “I already snagged the identity data from the Yoobie girl’s TFT chip. The party’s on her agenda, and she has a plus one. The security system will think we’re legit and let us in.”

  “Hello? Castor! Neither of us looks a thing like Cristela Wong Holtzmann!”

  “Really?” he says, completely deadpan. “If only I weren’t a complete amateur and had thought of attaching your appearance data into her files. Oh, wait.” He smacks his forehead with the flat of his palm. “I already did that.”

  “Okay, fine, my face will show up in the security file, but what if the girl shows up in person?”

  “There’s no way that girl is coming to this party. She’s zooming like a comet down in the Basin. She’ll be there for at least an hour until the stuff wears off.”

  “But—”

  “Talitha!” He waves away my concern. “It’ll be okay. Her AutoPod will go back to pick her up. She’ll be fine. We’ll go inside and stay for
ten minutes, fifteen tops. Which will give us just enough time to Stream the party, hack some product links, and get the hell out. Nobody will even notice that we’re here.”

  “Except all of our followers!” I say.

  He nods, happily. “And they’ll love it!”

  “But we don’t look like Yoobies.”

  “First off, if you’re going to pass as one, stop calling them Yoobies,” Castor says smugly. “And secondly, put this on.” He hands me a black bundle he’s dug out of his knapsack.

  “What is it?” The thing unfolds into thousands of tiny, hard nylon tessellated triangles, each hinged together to form a mosaic of moveable fabric. Murky moonlight filters through the bush, casting a botanical pattern on my arms and legs as if I’ve got some kind of strange skin disease.

  “Kinematic Jumpsuit!” Castor says. “The latest fashion craze for discerning AlphaZonian females.”

  “Oh, gross!” I hold the suit away from my body as if it might be contaminated. “Did you steal this from the girl?”

  “God, no! I’m not that uncivilized. This is the newest RayNay DeShoppingCart design. I hacked the manufacturer specs and printed it to your exact measurements. You’ll look like one of the crowd in there.”

  “I don’t know.” My stomach roils with worry as I turn the outfit over and over, trying to make sense of one large hole and four tubes.

  “Come on, Tal!” He huffs. “How many opportunities do we get like this? It’s perfect! We’ll be in and out super quick. It’s a no-brainer.” He laughs. “Get it? No-brainer. ’Cause we don’t have TouchyFeelyTech in our brains and—”

  “I get your stupid joke, but I’m not so sure about your stupider idea.”

  “It’s not stupid,” he says seriously. “We haven’t had a good haul in months. There’s less and less to scavenge, and we have nothing left to sell. Our followers are getting bored and hopping onto other Streams. We have to make some money, or we’ll be on that bus of ReConstruction workers.”

  “Maybe we could go legit,” I argue. “Work for D’Cart like Mundie?”