by D. F. Lovett
(And yes, I should interrupt and say that, in this moment of speaking with Jennifer Curtis I did not pause and think to myself how labyrinthine are my lies. I didn’t know the word labyrinthine at this point either.)
“Adam. His whole journey. He might be referring to this creature he seeks as a White, but it strikes me more as a windmill. Do you disagree that he’s quixotic?”
I looked at Q, who regarded me with a blank-faced expression that meant she was also in over her head or that she was abandoning me to be in over my head alone. It meant anything, really.
“I don’t know what that word means,” I said.
“Of course you don’t,” Jennifer Curtis said, smiling. “You’re not the writer.”
Four
Perhaps I should tell you about the first time I saw Jennifer Curtis. On Earth, years before this lunar voyage.
Or perhaps I should tell you about how I became a flesher.
Or perhaps I should tell you more about this conversation, in the salt pool, with these two women.
And I will, in time. All things, in time.
First, something entirely different. An interview with Adam Moonborn, originally published in Male-Identifying Persons Quarterly, entitled “When the Lunatic Took Control of the Asylum.”
One should note that this is the final public interview between Adam Moonborn and any non-lunar media entity, conducted during his final visit to Earth at the age of thirty-five. It went nearly unnoticed initially, until people gradually realized that he would not be returning to Earth, would not be conducting any more interviews.
The interview was in my recommended reading, as assigned before I reached the Moon.
The interviewer and author, of course, if you didn’t already know it, was the up-and-coming, twenty-one-year old Jennifer Curtis, in what would become one of her breakthrough pieces.
Reprinted in its entirety.
Five: or, “When the Lunatic Took Control of the Asylum” by Jennifer Curtis
From Male-Identifying Persons Quarterly, Volume 62, Issue #6
I’m sitting across from Adam Moonborn as he takes the first bite of his subterranean-curated flaux-ster thermidor, the dish for which the Indigenous City Grill first graced the culinary map. The Grill is known for being a cyber-free environment, devoid of the chips and bits so ubiquitous in today’s society.
I’ve sat down for a meal with the notorious rakehell native Moonling to ask him about a number of things, including his recent business ventures, his widely documented nude exploits in New Vegas, the dynamics of his surviving family members, and his recent adoption of the flesher cause.
There is a certain amusement taken in Moonborn’s flesher cause. It reminds one of his attempts to repurpose “lunacy,” or his repeated investments in self-guided blimp tours. After a childhood in the spotlight and a young adulthood steeped in tragedy, Moonborn’s third act seems to be nothing more than ill-advised grasps at relevance.
It was not the intention of this interviewer, in sitting down with Adam Moonborn for MIPQ, to give him the softball questions of which he has become accustomed, but rather to dive deeper, truer, seeking the truth and the soul that lies within.
Interviewer
What led you to declare yourself a flesher?
Moonborn
Jumping right into it, are we?
Interviewer
You’re late to the movement. People have been putting implants in their heads for decades, and the flesher movement has been fighting them. Why is it only now that you funded an ad campaign featuring yourself with the words Keep Your Head Clean next to you?
Moonborn
You’re saying that I can’t say something unless I’ve been saying it my entire life?
Interviewer
I’m asking, why now? What happened? Did something change in your life?
Moonborn
I’ve never had a chip in my head. No bits, no implants. I think the real question is this: why is everyone on this planet so comfortable with handing their brains over to corporations? To making themselves part robot? You know the word for that, right? Cyborg. People don’t say it now, of course. They think cyborgs are something only in science fiction. But that’s what’s going on. The vast majority of human society is choosing to become cyborgs, and they’re choosing for their kids to become cyborgs. You think that’s okay? You think that’s cute? You think that’s something to laugh about?
Interviewer
So how long have you been this way?
Moonborn
My entire life.
Interviewer
You’ve been a flesher your entire life, but didn’t tell anyone until now?
Moonborn
I wasn’t a flesher. I’m not sure if, even now, I’m a flesher. Who coined that word, anyway? You know who? You want me to tell you? The media. And not just any media, but the pro-implant media. The media that wants you to taint your mind with man-made materials. And I’m the crazy one?
Interviewer
I didn’t say you were crazy.
Moonborn
You didn’t.
Interview
I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I’m not saying I disagree with you. I’m asking: why now?
Moonborn
You’re the journalist. Do some research.
Interviewer
Do some research?
Moonborn
Do some damn research. Here’s a question for you, another one: I told your employer that I demand to be interviewed by “a human,” not a cyborg. You know what your employer told me?
Interviewer
They told me that I was doing the interview because I was the only option.
Moonborn
I don’t care what they told you. Of course they told you that. You’re the only option. What they told me is that my definition of human is outmoded.
Interviewer
But you’re here. We’re doing the interview. Why?
Moonborn
Because they provided you. A clean interviewer.
Interviewer
Is this your policy moving forward? No “cyborgs,” as you say?
Moonborn
You know what Hemingway said, right? Ernest Hemingway? He said you should never have such an open mind that your brain falls out of your head.
Interviewer
That was Hemingway?
Moonborn
I know my literature. Hemingway, one of my heroes. Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Kennedy. You know what Lincoln did?
Interviewer
He ended slavery.
Moonborn
So they still do teach history. I heard they cancelled it. The corporations would like that, cancelling history. They’ve reinstalled it, through the widespread process of implanting technology in brains, creating this fake world. This zombie world.
Interviewer
Zombie world?
Moonborn
You heard me.
Interviewer
Isn’t that insensitive?
Moonborn
What, “zombie”? I can’t say “zombie”? Fine, I won’t. But what would you call it? Kids in sweatshops who think they’re playing a game somewhere because that’s what their chips are telling them? Companies owning the lives of their employers, or worse, the unemployed who just spend their lives in some dream somewhere, because they put a little thing in their brain that lets them.
Interviewer
Let’s talk about your family.
Moonborn
No.
Interviewer
Your brothers.
Moonborn
I said no.
Interviewer
You have joined a movement that is in direct contradiction to the work being done by your family’s company? And do you not make money from that company? Even if you are on the Moon?
Moonborn
You keep calling it “the Moon”.
Interviewer
Is there some
thing else to call it?
Moonborn
That’s not what we call it there. Not anymore. You can call it “Moon” or you can call it “Luna” but no more calling it “the Moon”. A recent endeavor, but one that will stick. To refer to my home as “the Moon” is outmoded, irrelevant. In fact, I’m not sure what this interview is accomplishing, but I have a hard time believing that it’s doing anything good for my people. I am a Moonborn, I remind you. A Lunatic. We are the true pioneers. We are rebels born of sky. We have our own world, without concern for your news and rumors. The very notion that this interview will be consumed via implants in heads, via mindpieces, it makes me sick. Sick and troubled. Have you never asked yourself why all the richest men, the most powerful men, don’t have chips in their heads?
Interviewer
How true is that?
Moonborn
My brother Mark Brandt. You know him, of course. Mark Tyrell Brandt. The younger of the Brandt twins, the middle brother of the Brandt-Moonborn children. It gets confusing talking about us, I know, and I think it’s why you see relatively few attempted complete biographies of my nuclear clan, because of the whole Brandt-Moonborn label, or even the Brandt-Moonborn-Phillips label. Too confusing, isn’t it?
Interviewer
It’s not that confusing.
Moonborn
Ask yourself why Mark doesn’t have a chip. Is it because he’s a flesher? He’s never announced that, has he? I don’t think he’s one. Not in the sense that people use that designation, but still, he has no chip in his mind. Yet he rakes in money hand over fist through Gamelan Intuitions [the bio-technological implant division of Gamelan.]
Interviewer
I haven’t seen his lack of a chip documented.
Moonborn
And has it crossed your mind why Richie does not communicate with me? And why he never conducts interviews, never does any of the media appearances now? Even since he had himself chipped, ever since he handed himself over, he lost that spark. [Note: When Moonborn says “spark,” it is not to be confused with MindBodySpark, the bio-technological implant product of Boiler Industries.] We all did shows as children, you know. Talent shows, for our parents and their guests. But where is Richie now? Somewhere in the nucleus of Gamelan Corporation’s North American headquarters, an idiot whose life signifies nothing, lost to this world. And why do I care? Because he is my blood and I love him. He might not share my surname, but I care about him and I wish for him to return to the land of the living. I want him to visit Moon. To use that mind of his, rather than have that mind imprisoned with its degrees and brilliance in the servitude of a company he knows nothing of.
Interviewer
What will Richie say when he reads this interview?
Moonborn
I don’t care what he says to anyone else. I doubt they will let him read it, that they will let my words infiltrate his tainted mind. I’m sure Gamelan controls what Richie reads. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have hope. I always have hope.
Interviewer
And what else do you hope for?
Moonborn
More hope.
Six
We sat in the salt pool in silence. I knew not what to say to her accusation of me, the idea that I was not a writer.
She was, of course. And I knew she was, because everyone knew she was. Her interview with Moonborn had been only one of a number of pieces that rocketed her into prevalence in a time when writers were forgotten entities, extinct creatures, alien people clutching alien gods. Far from a reacher like me.
“Adam Moonborn has never existed in a world without being its center,” Jennifer Curtis said.
“Okay,” I said.
“They created him this way. Designed a world around him. Invented a colony on the Moon and made him its mascot.”
“And what is your question for me?”
“What is it, to live in that shadow?”
“Don’t we all live in the shadow of the Moon?” That one made me proud. A good line, I thought.
“The Moon shines bright because it fears the Earth’s shadow.”
Not Jennifer Curtis dropping this line, but Q. She had sat in silence until this line, and the silence returned after she spoke it. A filling silence, rushing in to crush the void.
“What do you say to that, Brandt?”
“I don’t,” I said, after a moment’s pause. That moment when I didn’t remember I was Brandt. How long it takes us to learn our new selves.
“You’re not James Bond, you know,” Q said.
“Who said I was James Bond?”
“You come parading in here like you’re some desirable anti-hero, nothing but a swimsuit and towel. Have some self-awareness, Ishmael.”
“You both feel this way?” I asked, looking at Jennifer Curtis.
“It’s not like Q and I’ve had a chance to discuss this but, yeah, it’s a little weird you aren’t picking up the social cues that we want you to leave. We’ve been sitting here alternating between silence and awkward tension since you walked in.”
“I was thinking about that interview you did,” I said. “And who are you to say I’m not a writer?”
“I don’t care if you’re a writer,” Jennifer Curtis said. “What I want is a real answer about you and your relative, who is apparently your employer now. The captain of your ship? How does that feel? Are you happy you agreed to it?”
“Yes.”
“If you’re not going to offer real answers, then Q and I can finish our interview elsewhere.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, sure. I get it.”
“So what’s your answer?”
“I mean, I agree that you should finish your interview elsewhere,” I said.
I could have handled that better, sure. There are always better ways.
I’d like to avoid any reminiscences, any moments of reflection on the early days of my life, any childhood insights and revelations of nascent pain. This should not be a story of Ishmael, or of the person Ishmael was before he landed on the Moon, but only a story of the Ozymandias and its fate and the fate of its crew.
But I can’t leave out my own life entirely, because my own past accompanied me on that ship, and because when I tell the tale of the crew I still have to tell the parts that included me.
I first heard the name Jennifer Curtis not when I saw the byline of her famous Adam Moonborn interview in Male-Identifying Persons Quarterly, but two years earlier than that, when she and I were students studying “Introduction to Micro-Narratives” under Dr. Cornelius Greene at Jobs University’s Lehrer-Peretti Journalism Program.
Jennifer Curtis had no reason to remember me, for three reasons.
The first is obvious: she never knew me as Ishmael Brandt. No one did, before I landed on the Moon.
The second is that I kept anonymous, while she shone. Greene heaped praise on Jennifer Curtis. We knew her micro-narratives for their crisp precision, their aphoristic beauty, and their shining truths. Everyone in the university knew her, knew what she would become, knew what she was destined to do.
The third reason is that we both dropped out. My debts become insurmountable as I continually realized that I lacked the talents or advantages or funds of my peers, lacked the depths of knowledge that they had concerning literature and non-fiction narratives and the history of reporting and the history of truth. I had barely made it through my undergraduate studies and had always found myself drawn to one particular story: adventure. The only old books I could ever remember liking were The Count of Monte Cristo and the never-ending catalogues of science fiction and fantasy. My peers spoke of strangers who reported, celebrities who weaved truths, while I missed deadlines so I could read about adventures to the stars. I found myself the position at Spectral Wordsmiths, for which my Bachelor of Arts in Words and Ideas was enough. The concept of post graduate education receded into a mist somewhere, forgotten, at peace.
Jennifer Curtis dropped out for a different reason. She wrote a seri
es of micro-narratives about the violence at World Bowl One, brief but brilliant works that rocketed her into her first wave of viral fame, freeing her from her studies and landing her one of the few full-time positions at Male-Identifying Persons Monthly.
I descended and she rose, with no reason ever to know who I was. I never forgot her and the shadow she cast, with those embers of jealousy and resentment always ready to flare up when she finally returned.
There is more, of course. More to that story.
But first: knock, knock.
Seven
“Grand snoozing tonight, mate.”
I turned to see Starboy standing next to the salt pool, fully clothed. He wore a blank expression, but I knew the sneer rested gentle, ready to breach at any moment.
“Starboy. You scared me,” I looked at him as I spoke, attempting eye contact, but he stared past me, gazing at the water of the pool.
“They said you frightened them,” he said.
“Who?”
“The two women you just frightened out of here.”
“I didn’t frighten them.”
“Jennifer Curtis said you interrupted her interview with Q. You come stumbling down here like the oaf you are, splashing into this pool, and you think that won’t interrupt them? How do you define an interruption, Ishmael?”
