Moon For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

  Walken came back with his third show, but this time it would go to HBO where he would have more freedom. The show was about a man who was brought into the US illegally when he was a child. After 9/11, he joined the Army and was sent to Iraq. After losing his legs in service of his country, he returned to the United States, unable to find a job, spit out by an uncaring military, and treated like a parasite because he was an illegal immigrant. He went on to become a leading anti-war activist.

  The second season focused on a single corrupt Senator who the main character decided to undermine before his next election. The season covered the Senator's history of voting for wars, fighting for funding for military projects in his state, while also taking money from defense contractors. Through the magic of TV, he was able to have a powerful Senator defeated and the defense contractors punished after exposing this corruption.

  In the right-wing media, Walken was a liberal hack that hated America. On the left, he was seen as a champion of transparency and accountability. Somebody who would expose corruption and oppose the government's secret and nefarious projects like spying on its citizens, using torture, and whatever else we don't yet know about.

  When Kingsley turned the TV on, Walken was in the middle of this speech.

  “-which started as an internal investigation under the Senate Armed Services Sub-Committee on Readiness and Management Support, has been widened to include first the Government Accountability Office and now the FBI, much to the chagrin of the members of the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee,” Walken says while shooting a dirty look at a fellow senator not far away. “We are looking into the JSF program, but also at all aspects of hardware procurement for every branch of the military as well as NASA, everything from fighter planes to tanks to satellites to rockets. We're looking closely at the decision to use sole-source cost-plus contracts, which effectively give a single company a monopoly, and to why anyone would ever think that's a good idea, and whoever thought that it was is going to have to answer for that, up to and including accounting for every single dollar they've ever made.”

  “Ultimately we stand here twenty years into a program, having spent a hundred billion dollars, planning on spending another four hundred billion, and we've got a plane that can barely fly. How could we have possibly gotten here? Is it just incompetence? Is it deception? Corruption? We're going to get to the bottom of this, the FBI is going to get to the bottom of this, and I personally am making sure that no member of the House or the Senate who might have any ties to defense contractors have anything to do with this investigation. There will be no conflicts of interest, I will see to it personally. And that means the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee is among those being investigated and have been asked to recuse themselves,” Walken says with a smile aimed at a colleague.

  “I'm angry, the American people are angry, and the Department of Defense is angry. The DoD is fed up with the way in which their budget has been treated as a pork trough. I believe that if you waste money that's meant to be used to defend the United States on something you know is going to be a boondoggle, all so you can further your own career or help your corporation's bottom line, that would be treason in my book. While we are still investigating, it seems that the only way you could get yourself into such a mess is if the people making the decisions weren't putting the defense of the United States as their first priority, but rather their career, their district, and their wallet. So get ready, because I think some of my colleagues will be in some very hot water very soon, and it's about damn time that America woke up to what's been the worst kept secret in Washington since Dwight Eisenhower first warned us about the Military-Industrial complex.”

  “Sounds like the DoD got fed up with porky politicians giving them bloated projects that sap their funds,” K says. “It's like the killer-drone-army realizing that humans are the enemy.”

  “But aren't they investigating us too?” Travis asks. “Maybe the FBI are the ones that are following you.”

  “But I'm clean,” K says. “As far as contracts go...”

  “What have the Kokes been doing? Weren't they trying to get us exempted from ITAR?” Josh asks, referring to International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which prevented SpacEx from exporting their services because their rockets were considered to be weapons by Congress.

  “They have massive lobbying power,” Travis says, “I mean, this sounds like they're going after all defense contractors and lobbyists and the whole system, not just the F-35.”

  “What about Kuznetzov?” Josh asks.

  “I haven't done anything illegal,” K says. “In terms of corruption. I've done plenty of illegal personal things.”

  “You better talk to legal. This is going to get worse,” Travis says ominously.

  “Come on guys, this is great news,” K says. “I'll bet you Lockheed, Boeing, ULA, they're all shitting their pants right now. Let's think about the BS way they accelerated the decision to hand ULA the crew transfer contract. You think that was on the level? This is only going to help us.”

  “Are you high!?” Travis asks.

  “A little,” K admits.

  “If anything,” Travis says, “the old guard will have enough lobbying power, have enough politicians in their pockets to protect them, and so the investigation will focus in on those who don't have power, like us, like lowly government employees. This is always how that goes. They'll find a scapegoat, they'll pick some procurement guys in the DoD and blame it on them, while ignoring the massive corruption in congress. Nothing will change except that another scandal will make NASA look bad and they'll have their budgets cut to punish them.”

  Chapter 4

  Kingsley arrives at the office and finds an attractive blonde woman standing at Seth's desk.

  “Good, they finally replaced you,” K says to Seth.

  “Actually this is Miss October, here to see you,” Seth says, very excited.

  “It's too bad you don't have red hair,” K says shaking his head.

  “I don't get it,” Seth says.

  “Then I could call her Red October,” K replies dead-pan.

  “But her name isn't really October,” Seth says. “She's a playboy...girl.”

  “Yeah, thanks kid, I think I can handle this from here,” K says as he escorts Miss October into his office. “Kingsley,” he shakes her hand and waves her to sit down. “Want a drink?”

  “It's 9:15,” Miss October replies.

  “Yeah but when you run a space program you realize all time is relative,” K says. “I still didn't catch your name.”

  “Amber.”

  “Amber October,” K says, sitting down.

  “Amber Grierson actually.”

  “Well what can I do for you Amber?” K asks.

  “I'm writing a piece on you, I thought you knew this was an interview.”

  “Hmm, must have been some miscommunication. Well here's what you can put in your little article, I make rockets and if you suck up to me I might let you ride my Griffin.”

  “Actually I was wondering if you could elucidate for me on the subject of the usefulness of Mars colonization, which seems to ostensibly be an attempt by the wealthy to escape to a Capitalist Utopia of a man-made Martian colony and leave us poor people to die on the polluted Mother-Earth their oil money left behind.”

  “That one sentence was like taking a whole semester of Marxist-Feminist literary theory. Seems Miss October is a rather fitting name after all,” K replies after he metaphorically picks his jaw up off the floor.

  “I'm a journalist that happens to be in the body of a beautiful woman, not the other way around,” Amber replies.

  “What would 'beautiful woman in the body of a journalist' even mean?” K asks.

  “If I didn't look like this, I would still be here interviewing you. I'm here interviewing you for Playboy Magazine as Miss October because of my looks. There's a difference.”

  “But a beautiful woman in the b
ody of a journalist would just be a journalist...with the personality of a beautiful woman? So like a ditzy ugly girl.”

  “Are you saying pretty girls are ditzy?”

  “No,” K says, trying not to walk further into a trap, “but have you ever met an ugly ditzy girl?”

  “Yes...”

  “I just got up, not much of a morning person, and I feel like the feminist police just walked into my office, so maybe we could start this over,” K asks.

  “I'm not the feminist police.”

  “It probably wouldn't be so bad if I had known about this interview ahead of time and could have at least Googled you.”

  “I'm sure you'd love to Google me. I spoke to your assistant quite extensively about this,” Amber says.

  “The Hamster up there?”

  “No, it was a woman.”

  “Oh, then that was my previous assistant, who I fired for being a gold-digger.”

  “You did what now?” Amber asks.

  “I'm going to stop digging right about now,” K says. “You're not writing a feminist article about the Penocracy and how bullets and rockets are all phallic shaped are you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well you know, there are like ultra-feminists that say things like that, I just want to ask them to design a rocket that's not pointy and see how well that goes,” K says. “This is all off the record right?”

  “No.”

  “Well then I want to make absolutely clear that I am a feminist,” K says. “I listen to Amanda Palmer,” he adds.

  “Why did this become about feminism?” Amber asks.

  “Because of the phallic something, Mother-Earth and men are from Mars. You brought it up!”

  “So do you think it's a coincidence that rockets and spacecraft are phallic shapes?”

  “Look, I've got a busy day, and so maybe we should reschedule. That or you can just follow me around.”

  “I'll follow,” Amber says quickly.

  “Great,” K says sarcastically.

  Kingsley leads Amber to one end of the SpacEx factory.

  “Don't you take notes or something?” K asks. Amber simply taps on her smart-phone which is in a shirt pocket right over her large breast, indicating that it's recording. “So that's not awkwardly bringing sex into this.”

  “So where are we going?” Amber asks.

  “The Payload Mating Facility,” K says.

  “Mating?” Amber raises an eyebrow.

  “Do you have any questions, or is this just a follow me and take note of all my screw-ups kind of thing?”

  “Why do you insist on hiring bachelors?” Amber asks.

  “Well,” K knows he's on shaky legal ground. “I don't insist. It's a preference, not a rule, we don't discriminate. It's just that when it comes to launching people into space, I feel that it makes sense to risk the lives of those people who have less to lose.”

  “I'm not talking just about astronauts,” Amber replies. “According to my research, the only company that consistently hires more single people is Hooters. So are you filling your company with sexy singles to entice people to want to work here? Is it a way of using the prospect of sex to get people to work longer hours?”

  “I, uhh...”

  “Are you aware that a memo you wrote has gone viral?”

  “I wrote a viral memo?” K asks.

  “I asked six employees what it was like working for you, and they all mentioned the memo.”

  “Which memo?” K asks.

  “Not Enough People Are Working On Saturdays,” Amber replies. “It's a brilliant poem. Symbolizes the soul-sucking nature of the American job market and does it with such a tasty passive-aggressive tone. Great work. Got a comment?”

  “So here we are in the Payload Mating Facility,” K replies. Final preparations were underway for the first Eagle Heavy flight. “She's a beaut ain't she?” K says, looking at the Bigelow inflatable habitat which would become the first component of SpacEx's own space station.

  “She?” Amber asks. “So cars and rockets and other inanimate things, you call those she? How quaint.”

  “It's not like that,” K protests. “I'm calling my space station Excalibur.”

  “Pulling your magic sword out of a sheath that only lets you have it?” Amber asks. “You do realize that's all a penis and virginity metaphor right?”

  “This is going to be the longest day of my life,” K says, staring blankly ahead.

  “So what do you call her?” Amber asks.

  “Bigelow calls this a BA330, but I named . . . this module Guinevere,” K replies. Kingsley decides to take control back over the content of this interview by making it as technical as possible.

  “Since this module is no longer headed to the ISS, it needs a more robust propulsion system. Each BA330 is built to be a spacecraft unto itself, with thrusters, solar panels, batteries, life support, the works. But as we're starting a space station of our own, we need something beefier. So we bought a service module from Paragon Industries, a fellow newcomer to the space industry that makes a common service module that could be theoretically fitted to a number of different spacecraft. They also make a plug-and-play environmental control system, which they call Commercial Crew Transport Air Revitalization System or CCT-ARS. You want me to spell that for you?”

  “I think I got it,” Amber replies, bored.

  “The CCT-ARS provides several life support functions: Air temperature, humidity regulation, Carbon Dioxide filtration, trace contaminant filtration, air circulation, and post-fire atmospheric recovery. The Paragon Service Module provides these life support functions as well as a pair of engines and the fuel to place the station module into it's destination and keep it there.

  NASA had originally promised Paragon that they could supply the service module for the Orion spacecraft, but then NASA wanted to get some support from the European Space Agency, so they threw some work Europe's way by using the service module from the Automated Transfer Vehicle, an unmanned resupply ship. The hope was that if Europe had some part in the coming SLS, they could contribute some funds towards the missions NASA hoped to undertake such as visiting a near-Earth asteroid or a return to the Moon. But little has been accomplished by this move other than cutting Paragon's legs out from under them.

  Paragon was left without their prime customer, just as Bigelow had been left hanging. This is what happens when you depend on Congress. And so, just as had happened with Bigelow, I came along and bought a Paragon Service Module. She's the first PSM to fly.

  “She? Did you name this one too?” Amber asks.

  “Nope, just the old patriarchal Freudian slip again,” K replies. “The BA330 is attached to the PSM on one end via a Common Berthing Mechanism (CBM). The other end of the BA330 has another CBM docking port which was supposed to have mated to a CBM on the ISS. Instead, we've mounted a six-way docking node to this end of the BA330.”

  “Why are there different kinds of docking ports?” Amber asks K.

  “Russia and America developed different docking mechanisms. Originally, docking ports were either male or female, though NASA insisted on using non-sexual terms and instead went with 'active' and 'passive.' For example, the Apollo Command Module had a male docking port, that 'plugged in' to the female docking port on the Apollo Lunar Module. You could not dock two Apollo Command Modules together any more than you can mate two male electrical plugs. The Soyuz uses a similar 'Probe and Drogue' layout. When they did the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, they needed to develop a new docking mechanism to allow the two spacecraft with different male docking mechanisms to join up.”

  “But was gay marriage legal then?” Amber asks.

  “See I'm giving you information on the history of human space exploration and you're just making dick jokes,” K says.

  “Sorry?” She's not sorry.

  “The Russians and Americans jointly developed a new docking system called Androgynous P
eripheral Attach Systems (APAS), which was the first docking mechanism that could switch between male and female, or if you're at NASA, it could switch between 'active' and 'passive.'”

  “Are you sure it's not dominant and submissive?” Amber asks.

  “Quite sure, besides dominant and submissive roles don't have anything to do with anatomy,” K replies.

  “True enough, I'm known to be dominant from time to time,” Amber says, staring K down, seeing if she can put a chink in his cool armor. “I guess I didn't realize how much of space travel was BDSM related.”

  “So some of the ports are APAS, and others are the new and imaginatively named NASA Docking System, or NDS. The NDS is androgynous, but NASA of course doesn't use that word, it supports both autonomous and piloted docking, pyrotechnics for emergency separation, and once mated, two NDSs can transfer propellant, water, oxygen, and pressurant from one spacecraft to another. This all sounds well and good, however the NDS is not compatible with the APAS or the CBM, and thus this attempt to create a standard, has only further complicated matters, at least for now.”

  “Wait,” Amber says. “So the new NASA androgynous berthing mechanism, once berthed, can transfer fluids?”

  “I don't see where you're getting sexual innuendo from: the docking of spacecraft is accomplished by a male probe fitting into a female drogue, or with a pair of switch-hitting androgynous mechanisms, but if the parts aren't a good match then a mating adapter is used. And the end result is the berthing of two spacecraft which can transfer fluids.”

  “Right. Not sexual at all.” Amber concedes.

  “So you have no questions? That's the best you got?”

  “Is there a difference between docking and berthing?” Amber asks.

  “One usually comes nine months after the other,” K quips. She stares at him, not taking to his joke. “If the ship maneuvers it's docking. If the two are joined up by a mechanical arm it's called berthing. But colloquially you'll find the two terms often used interchangeably. Questions?”

  “Why is your work force 84% male?” Amber asks. Kingsley freezes up, thinking through several answers before saying any words. “Here comes a bullshit answer to cover the real answer.”