SuperMoon

by H. A. Swain

  “But I want to come with you!” she says. “I want to make sure you find your dog.”

  Despite my wariness, I have to smile at this Uma girl. “Most people don’t care about dogs that much.”

  “Oh, I love dogs!” she says. “It’s one of the reasons I’m here! We don’t have them where I’m from.”

  “Wow,” I say. “Merica sounds truly awful.”

  “Let’s go,” she says. “Before he gets too far away!” Then she runs straight ahead.

  “Stop!” I yell and grab her. “There’s an invisible barrier!” I yank her back just before she steps into the electrified shield. “It’ll shock you.” I pick up a stick and throw it. It pops and sizzles in the air.

  “Oh!” She shivers at my side. I see goose bumps rise up on her skin.

  I pat her arm to calm her. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” she says, and laughs nervously. “But how do we get in, then?”

  “Over here.” I point to a large rock on the other side of a creosote bush. “My brother and I dug a hole.”

  CASTOR NEVA

  ALPHAZONIA, EARTH

  AS SOON AS Mundie and Talitha are gone, I look directly at D’Cart and say, “I liked what you said about the ExploroBots last night on your Stream. I agree with you. What MUSC does to human soldiers is unconscionable.”

  “I meant every word,” she says. “That topic is especially important to me.”

  “Really?” I ask. “Why do you care?”

  A look passes over her face that I can’t quite read. A flash of anger maybe? Sadness? Some kind of regret? It resolves quickly into her placid stare. “Because somebody has to.”

  Although I should probably keep my mouth shut, as usual, I don’t. “Yeah, but…” I lean back and watch her carefully. “What’s in it for you?”

  “There has to be something in it for me?”

  “Of course. You’re a capitalist. First and foremost. You own an entire city.”

  “Ha!” Her laugh is bitter. “Just as I suspected. You’re too smart for your own good. Or mine, probably.” She looks at me carefully and shakes her head. “Believe it or not, I started out a lot like you, Castor Neva.”

  “I sincerely doubt that.”

  “It’s true.” She gets up and commands the holo screen to show a map of the western landmass.

  I’ve seen old maps of North America when it was a single nation from sea to shining sea, when education was free and humans drove cars and the government dictated who could marry whom and what women could do with their bodies. Back before the Moon colony even existed. How quaint! Now, Merica, a sickly yellow swath, takes up most of the area between the privatized cities like One World, the Distract, and New Yorkistan on the east coast and the Rocky Mountains in the west. AlphaZonia is a tiny red dot sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the San Gabriels. And in between is a gray area—the Wastelands.

  “I’m from there, too,” she says almost wistfully.

  I study her while she gazes at the map. Although her skin is smooth and dewy in the waning light coming through the windows, I can see tiny lines etched around her eyes and the smallest sag beneath her chin. I have no idea how old she is or where she’s really from. When Talitha first started parodying her Stream, I tried to trace D’Cart’s background, but all the references to her only go back twenty years. Before that, it’s as if she didn’t exist. So maybe she’s telling the truth. Maybe she did come from the Wastelands after all.

  “If you’re from the Wastelands, then how’d you get out?” I ask.

  She hesitates then says, “MUSC scholarship.”

  I smack my leg. “I knew there had to be a catch. You were one of the lucky ones.”

  “Lucky?” She whips her head around to me. “That’s what you think?”

  I nod. “Look what you have! Your own privatized city with thousands of citizen shareholders selling the stuff you make to millions of followers all over the world.”

  “I’m not sure luck had much to do with it,” she says. “I worked hard. Most people in the Wastelands are happy to exist off the scraps from the rich. Some are even grateful for the waste. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure and all that nonsense. But not me. When I was growing up, I knew I deserved more.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “Is that the reason you stole from me?” D’Cart walks back to the table to sit. She laces her fingers together and leans in closer, waiting for my answer.

  I sigh and rub my hands down my face. “I’m sorry. That was wrong. I shouldn’t have hacked your product stream. I’ll return all of the money and remove the product links and—”

  “I already took care of that,” she says, dismissively. “Any half-rate hacker can do that. Honestly, I expected more out of you.”

  That ticks me off, and I take it as a challenge. “You mean, like, being able to hack your followers’ TFT chips?”

  Her eyebrows shoot up, and she stares at me for a moment. Then she surprises me by chuckling when I thought that she’d get mad. “Well, Castor Neva, you’ve got me there. That is pretty impressive. So why don’t you explain to me exactly how you scanned the data from inside Cristela Wong Holtzmann’s brain.”

  I squirm. “I know it’s illegal to mess with their implants.” My palms sweat, and my heart speeds up. “But she came to me, you know! They all do. I don’t seek them out.”

  D’Cart narrows her eyes. “What do they want?”

  I pause, not sure if I should admit the truth, but then I realize I don’t have much choice. “DopaHacks,” I say quickly, without looking at her. “They want more dopamine.”

  “Dopamine?” D’Cart seems genuinely surprised. “Why dopamine?”

  “Because the old drugs don’t work on them anymore. The neural web you install regulates exactly how much dopamine and serotonin their brains produce, no matter what they drink or smoke or snort. But I found a way around that by going straight to the implants to temporarily rev up the dopamine and—”

  “Stop,” she says.

  I shut up immediately.

  Her eyes look a little wild. “Tell me exactly how you access their implants.”

  “Through the transnasal corridor your EndoscoBots make when they install the neural webs, duh,” I say.

  “Not possible.” With eyebrows flexed, she thinks out loud, puzzling through the process. “When I install TouchyFeelyTech, my EndoscoBots go in through the nostril, create a corridor through the sphenoid sinus and the sella in the skull behind the nose to insert our TFT between the pituitary gland and VTA. The neural web implants into the brain and connects my followers to me so they can experience my visceral sensations, which is why we control dopamine and serotonin, among other neurotransmitters. Then the EndoscoBot exits the same way, leaving a teeny lipid-covered graphene gate to protect the corridor.”

  “Yes, but I found something that can get through to the neural web.”

  Her mouth opens, just slightly, enough for me to know she’s intrigued. “What is it?”

  “If I tell you, will you let me go?” I ask.

  She rears back. “No.”

  So I cross my arms and look away. “Then I won’t tell you.”

  “Then I’ll kill your sister.”

  My breath leaves me like I’ve been punched. “What?”

  The warmth in her eyes has been extinguished. She looks at me, cold and calculating. “You and your sister are just two more Wasteland urchins that nobody’s looking for. I can make you or her disappear anytime I want. You’re both lucky I let you stay this long.”

  I swallow hard, but my mouth’s gone dry. “What about the Moonling?” I ask in a raspy voice.

  D’Cart thinks this over for about two seconds before she says, “Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. I could probably find another way to pick up that Moonling, but since your sister’s already working on it, we can stick to the plan.” She pauses, then says, “If…”

  I nod. I get it. “If I tell you how I access the implants?”


  She reaches over and pats my hand. “So smart, Castor Neva. So very, very smart.”

  I squirm away from her touch. “Okay, fine. But if I tell you, I want to know why you want the Moonling.”

  She shrugs. “Fair enough. You go first.”

  I lean forward and talk quietly. “I found something. At the MUSC dump behind the ExploroBot Creation Center near the Shuttle landing site. I think they might use the same transnasal endoscopy procedure as you to insert their brain-to-brain interface webs into the soldiers—”

  “Of course they do!” She smacks the table with both hands. “But what’s that got to do with it?”

  “Well, see, I was looking for fuel at the MUSC dump, but I found this other stuff. This goo. At first I ignored it, but—”

  “What is it?” she demands, impatient with my hemming and hawing.

  “I think it might be a bacteria or a virus. Whatever it is, it can cross the blood-brain barrier—”

  “Like meningitis?”

  “Yep, but it doesn’t kill anybody. Just makes them a little sick. Like with a cold or something, but the really cool part is, you can piggyback other stuff on it that will go straight to the implant. I use Banisteriopsis caapi,” I tell her.

  “Ayahuasca?”

  “Well, sort of. I isolate one compound from the caapi plant called harmaline that I piggyback on the goo. Then I put the goo up their noses so it goes into the neural web to temporarily increase the amount of dopamine being manufactured. And sometimes, while a Yoobie is flying high, I can get close enough to scan a little extra data from a TFT implant with this little device I made…” I reach for my cuff.

  “I’m not interested in that.” She swats my arm away, then sits back, eyes narrow, mouth pursed. “I want to know more about the goo you found. Is it still there? At the MUSC dump?”

  “Oh, yeah. There’s a vat of it half buried behind the facility. You don’t need much. I could get it for you,” I offer. “If you let me go.”

  “Nice try,” she says, and rolls her eyes. “We’ll send your sister.”

  “Aw, man,” I say, and slump. “Talitha’s going to kill me.”

  “Better than me killing her.” D’Cart cracks herself up, but I feel sick.

  Once she stops laughing, I say, “Okay, now it’s your turn. I told you how I get into the TFT implants. Now you tell me what you want with the Moonling.”

  D’Cart chuckles as if she finds my curiosity amusing. She gets up from the chair and walks back to the holo map once again. This time, she commands it to zoom out farther and farther. To the south of AlphaZonia, I see remnants of the half-built wall that used to separate the old United States from what was Mexico. To the north, over the San Gabriels, there’s a blue circle drawn around the designated MUSC Shuttle landing site. Not far from that are the ExploroBot Creation Site and the Dumps in the Wastelands near where we grew up. She keeps going, zooming out until we’ve left the Earth and are peering down at the planet from space.

  Without looking at me she says, “Let’s just say I’m looking to expand.”

  UMA JEMISON

  WILDLANDS OF ’FITH, EARTH

  TALITHA SHOVES THE rock aside, which isn’t really a rock but a decoy made of hard plastic that’s half covering a hole. “We found this washed up on the shore one day,” she says. “For a while there were lots of old movie props that floated in. We figured some of them would come in handy. And they did.”

  A cool wind rises from the shallow opening in the ground. “Look, paw prints,” she says, and points to the ground with her toe. She smiles. “Quasar definitely came through here,” she says, and slides into the hole feetfirst and disappears. A few seconds later, she pops out from behind a bush on the other side of the invisible barrier. “Your turn!”

  I slide in, pulling the rock behind me to hide the hole. I inch my way forward through the musky, earthy smell until I see light on the other side. There’s just enough room for me to curl up and flip over so I can climb out headfirst.

  Talitha offers me her hand and pulls me up.

  “Wow,” I say, grinning and brushing dirt from my clothes. “That was fun!”

  Talitha snickers, then says, “You have a strange sense of fun. But I like it!”

  I feel strangely validated when she says this. Not to mention blushy and warm. Maybe it’s the excitement of all the novel experiences, but I have the strongest urge to stand closer to Talitha. To feel her skin on mine. To drink in her scent. But I keep my distance. I don’t want to seem any more odd than I already must.

  I follow her and talk nonstop as she picks a path through small gnarled trees and scrubby brush on the hillside. “What is this place? Who lives here? How did you find it? Why did your dog come here?” The questions spill out of me and bounce around the rocky crevices. From somewhere nearby, faint music and muffled voices travel over the hills.

  Talitha presses her finger against her lips. “Shhhh.” She slows so we’re side by side. She’s taller than I am, and thinner. The giraffe to my rhino. She speaks quietly as we walk, her eyes scanning the area around us. “The Wildlands of ’Fith can be a rough place. All sorts of creepy people come through here to slip into the city.”

  “Oh,” I say, edging closer to her side. “How do you know that?”

  Talitha smirks. “Because three years ago, my brother and I came in this way.”

  “You did? You must’ve have been really young.” I have to watch my feet as we pick our way up the steep rocky path in the waning light.

  She shrugs. “Not that young. Thirteen when we came. We stayed at the Observatory for about a year before we found a house inside the city.”

  “The Observatory?”

  She points up, and I see a beautiful old building shimmering in the last rays of sun. From here, it looks like a pristine monument to some bygone era on Earth. But, as we get closer, I can make out fractures running through the white walls that show the Observatory’s age and state of disrepair.

  I hurry to keep up with Talitha. Her long legs lope at a faster pace than my short ones. Plus, I’m not used to the heavy air, dense with water and nitrogen. Even though the sun is nearly down, it’s still brutally hot, and I’m sweating through my long underwear.

  At the top of the hill, we come out of the woods and rest for a minute beneath the sprawling canopy of a big tree. Talitha takes off her hooded jacket and rolls up her sleeves. Then she flips her head over and catches all her beautiful red hair in a knot on top of her head. I am speechless for a moment. She reminds me of a sculpture made from clay, all smooth curves, no angles anywhere. I imagine placing my hands into the perfect indentation between her ribs and hips. She catches me staring, and I quickly look away.

  “What?” she asks.

  If I weren’t already bright red from the heat, my embarrassment would be completely obvious. “Nothing, sorry, it’s just that, um … I like your clothes.”

  Now she stares at me. Mouth open slightly. I look down self-consciously.

  “I’ve never seen a silver outfit like that,” she says. “What’s it made of? Did you buy it off a Stream?”

  “Uh, um,” I stammer, then say, “I’m not sure…” Because I can’t exactly blurt out that it’s a MUSC-issued undergarment all Moonlings wear. Even though this girl seems really nice, I don’t know if I can trust her yet, and I need to keep a low profile while Dr. Fornax is trying to find me.

  “Come on,” Talitha says. “I’ll show you around.”

  We stroll past the front of the building. Most of the windows have been replaced by reinforced metal, but it’s still quite pretty.

  “That’s strange,” I say, pointing to the copper-colored dome in the center of the roof. “Look at that crack. It looks like one big seam, moving out from the top in a perfect spiral. Like a lotus flower or a pinecone about to open.”

  “The earthquake and tsunami did some weird things,” she tells me. “AutoPods on top of trees. Boats on top of buildings. Houses sliding down hills as if th
ey melted. Construction cranes skewered through skyscrapers like toothpicks in cheese. But look at all the little details that survived.” She points to intricate designs in the plaster and metalwork around the entryway—scallops and zigzags and etchings of ancient astronomers and their instruments. “Aurelia takes good care of this place.”

  “Who’s Aurelia?”

  “The caretaker,” Talitha says. “And if I’m correct, Quasar is probably with her right now. Come on.” She leads the way up a winding stone staircase on the side of the building, calling, “Quasar! Quasar, come!”

  The dog’s sweet little face appears over the edge of a crumbling wall at the top of the steps, and I shout, “That’s the dog I saw earlier!”

  Talitha runs to him. She tries to catch the dog in a hug, but he’s too excited. He hops on hind legs, forepaws on her shoulders, tongue licking at her face.

  “Quasar! My lovey! I was so worried about you! I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  I stand at the top of the steps, grinning and envious of Talitha and her dog. This is so much of what it means to be human on Earth, I think. To love something and have it love you back and never feel afraid to show it. The beauty of their reunion makes my chest feel tight and heavy, as if something is trying to break through, like a little green shoot pushing through hard ground after a long-awaited rain.

  “Do you want to say hi?” she asks me once Quasar settles down.

  I nod.

  “Quasar, sit,” she says. He plops down and waits politely for a treat.

  Talitha hands me a bright orange strip from her pocket. “Mango Bango Oink Oink Jerky,” she tells me. “His favorite.”

  Quasar politely nibbles it from my palm, which tickles. I drop down to one knee and bury both of my hands in his fur. I let him nuzzle my ear and pull in his burnt-sugar smell. “Hello! Do you remember me? I look a bit different now. So nice to finally meet you.”

  He leans in and pants happily.

  A shadow passes over us, and Talitha says, “Hey, Aurelia.”

  I look up to greet the caretaker, then I gasp and topple backward onto my butt. “Oh, my gad,” I cry when I see a half-human-looking AI robot staring down at me. “She’s … it’s … that’s … not a human!”