by D. F. Lovett
“I don’t know,” I said. “But that’s different from frightening someone.”
“You like semantics, don’t you?” As Starboy spoke, he took off his loafers and walked around to the other side of the salt pool, where Q had sat. Neither of us spoke as he rolled up the legs of his trousers and dipped his feet into the pool.
“Is that better?” I asked, uncertain what else to say, speaking to break the silence.
“I’ve never been in here before,” he said. “Not since the voyage began.”
“This was my first time since the tour,” I said.
“I’m overmanned,” he said, a seeming non-sequitur.
“By me?”
“By Adam.”
“Aren’t you his first mate?”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But you saw us feud. Everyone did. You saw the cracks in the facade, the crumbling of this vision that Moonborn represents Gamelan and Gamelan stands with Moonborn.”
“Where does Gamelan stand?”
“This isn’t a goddamn interview, Ishmael,” he said, but the sneer did not return. Only the defeat, as he stared into the water.
“I haven’t lost my job, have I?”
“You’re still the ghostwriter,” he answered. “But what happens if this gets dangerous? That’s my worry. This whole thing—it should be a novelty, a laugh, an excursion to keep Adam busy and out of trouble. If he provides some service and eliminates some robots while he’s at it, then good. Then great. But this White, this hated bot, this one he talks about. It’s his demogorgon. You know what that is?”
“I read a lot of fantasy growing up,” I said, truthfully.
“This isn’t worth dying for. I have a family, you know. A child, a partner. The rest of you don’t. We intentionally chose people without, but no, I had to join the crew, and there is no changing who I am. No changing my family, my existence.”
“I know that this isn’t worth dying for.”
“Then there is something we both must do,” he said. “Not die.”
I don’t know what Starboy thought, what ideas and worries and dreams ran through his head as we sat there in the salt pool in silence. Nothing for me to say after he poured out his worries, after he revealed the concern that, yes, Adam Moonborn might be leading us on a path to certain death.
Of course, I can suspect what he thought.
He saw his shipmates for the heathen crew they were. Jordan the drunkard, Q the warrior, Nikolai the stranger, Moonborn the madman. Ishmael the Earthling, the ghost, the liar from somewhere far away. Ishmael, whelped somewhere next to a sharkish sea, somewhere inconceivably far away. Two hundred and fifty thousand miles away, at the very least.
The white AIM, our demogorgon. A monster out there in the darkness of the Moon, a man-made machine crouching and crawling and howling, a beast to be destroyed. A beast that would destroy us all. A crunching and grinding and screaming demon of the night.
I knew not what awaited us. I knew nothing.
But he did. Starboy knew.
“Do you understand my position, Ishmael?”
“The first mate,” I answered.
“What do you think I do for a living?”
“You’re Vice President of Gamelan Lunar Operations,” I answered. “Do you think I’ve been paying no attention?”
“But what does all of that mean to you? Whom do I work for, exactly? Adam Moonborn, or the Domes of Gamelan, or the Gamelan Corporation? How does the Gamelan Corporation feel about this little adventure we are on? How much of the Brandt family fortune still exists, and how much has Adam Moonborn spent?”
And then he began to talk more, began to explain:
The answers to all of these questions begin with the deaths of Elliot Brandt, age fifty-six at the time of his death; Olivia Brandt, age forty-nine at the time of her death; and their daughter, age eleven, Elizabeth Moonborn.
They left four living children: the twins, Mark and Richard Brandt, age twenty-two at the time of the accident; Adam Moonborn, age eighteen; and Olivia Moonborn, age fifteen.
Elliot and Olivia Brandt had a thorough living will at the time of their untimely deaths. They were known to update it regularly, as the dangerous life of space-based entrepreneurs required caution, diligence, and planning. The latest update had involved the all five of their children. When Adam Moonborn turned eighteen, the Brandts revised the will so that, in the event of their death, the guardianship of their daughters would pass to their three sons.
With this began the war between the brothers. The twins, living on Earth, believed that Olivia should return to Earth. Adam insisted that, as a Moonborn, she belonged on the Moon. Furthermore, they disputed the wisest course for her share of the Brandt fortune, which had been divided among the four surviving children.
The details of this are another narrative altogether, but suffice it to say, the rift began at this point and only continued.
Nearly thirty years later, Starboy explained, Adam Moonborn had not spoken to any of his surviving siblings in at least a decade. He had no role on the Gamelan Board, no presence in the operations of the company. His roles as Chief Disruption Officer and Mayor of the Domes of Gamelan were honoraries, titles granted by the distant Board. Moonborn reported to no one, received no salary. The Domes of Gamelan and all Lunar Operations for the Gamelan Corporation functioned entirely independent of his counsel, his opinion, and any of his actions. Dunn “Starboy” Heinemann did not work directly for Moonborn, but worked instead for Gamelan Corporation as a whole.
To summarize: Adam Moonborn was considered by many people, including his family, to be nothing but a very public nuisance. Starboy, in addition to all his other responsibilities, often functioned as the caretaker and lion tamer in the Adam Moonborn circus.
“And here I allow him to lead us toward another death,” Starboy said.
“You think we are headed toward death?”
“I don’t know yet,” Starboy said. “But I fear the future. The futures, I suppose, of all of us. We act like it’s all reveries and excitement, over this dry sea. But he could lead us all to our death.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
“I need to share it with someone,” Starboy said. “And you cannot share it. The contract you are under, the price of your disloyalty. You are not to share. Although you saw me argue with him. It’s no secret that we disagree about the importance of destroying Cetus. But what you might have taken for insubordination, it was something else. A conflict of wills. The ongoing question of which one of us holds the command. If anyone out here does, anyone other than the beast he intends to destroy.”
We sat in silence again.
And then, he broke the silence:
“What are you doing for the talent show tonight?”
“The what?”
“Tonight is the talent show,” Starboy said. “Didn’t you read the itinerary?”
“There’s an itinerary?”
“Posted in the kitchen. Next to the duty roster.”
“I didn’t notice that.”
“Let’s be clear about two things,” Starboy said. “First, you will participate.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s fine. I didn’t even know about it until right now but that’s fine.”
“Second, you are Ishmael Brandt. Several people will be doing talents related to literature or words, but you will not. Your talent must not give away that you have any interest or talent related to writing.”
I stared at him for a moment.
“What’s the dress code?”
“What do you think?”
Eight
What else could it be but a laugh? Is a laugh not the wisest answer, the easiest, when all of it is madness? What else could I do but laugh, but accept that now was the time for the talent show? Starboy revealed his fears and his doubts as Moonborn charged us into the dark, and what was there to do when I got back to my room but laugh, laugh, laugh?
And then:
“Each and eve
ry one of you has a talent,” Moonborn told us, dressed in a tuxedo, standing on a small raised stage at one end of the library, the largest room of the Ozymandias.
He had lowered the ship to a gentle hover. It rocked ever so slightly, unmoving over this patch of Moon.
Even Jennifer Curtis wore a tux, presumably printed, like mine, on the Moon. Our captain held his unlit briar pipe in his right hand, a microphone in his left. The other six of us sat in folding chairs, holding the drinks we had poured ourselves at the bar in the back of the room.
The order of the performances: Starboy, Nikolai, Jordan, Q, Jennifer Curtis, Ishmael, and then Adam Moonborn, of course, making himself the ultimate act.
All their acts, all their talents, all of them entertaining all of us.
First, Moonborn attempted the piano, tickling the ivories to our anxious appreciations. Not his official act, but a warm-up.
Next, Starboy.
I should be clear about something here: I still thoroughly disliked Starboy. Did his pathetic display in the salt pool evoke some kind of sympathy in me, or perhaps empathy? Some concern for him and his child and wife somewhere far away? Loosely, yes, perhaps loosely, but primarily I saw him still for the asshole he had been to me. The sneering, pale, gaunt and haunted man with no humor and no warmth.
Annoying, condescending, small, the perpetual weasel.
But people have all kinds of way of surprising you.
“My way,” he sang. My Way, a song from generations ago, the American song of defiance and victory. And with complete glory.
Yes, that is correct. Starboy did a magnificent Frank Sinatra impression, his voice consuming the library that suddenly felt too small to contain this glory and magnificence, as Moonborn played the piano.
The others all surprised me too. Only with Starboy did I have to fight tears I had never expected would arrive, but everyone, all these peers and strangers, they had a talent to reveal.
Nikolai, doing the trick where you’re a mime trapped in a box and you’re trying to escape, oddly convincingly.
Jennifer Curtis defied expectations. We anticipated words, recitation, something showcasing the skills of wordwrights. Instead she tap-danced
Jordan told crude jokes, pulling laughter from us, in spite of ourselves. He then juggled, eating an apple as he did so.
Q played the piano, the one Moonborn had attempted. She played with grace, with elegance, with a beauty and a skill that must have taken ten thousand hours of effort.
And then it is my turn.
Nine
The two songs I played contained nothing special that night on the ship, the night before people started dying. They contained truths, certain truths, but nothing special. Standard progressions, structures of blues, strummed chords and simple words.
But they reminded me of the devil. Of the stories I’d heard of him.
When we were children, our great-great-grandfather told us a story about where the devil lived. He told us that that the devil always lived at places where two paths crossed, at crossroads and bridges and forks in the highway. He lives there because those are the places where people get lost, and the devil loves the lost. He takes the lost and he gives them a new path, and it’s the path he wants them on.
The thing about my great-great-grandfather is that he never went to church. He didn’t believe in much, so when he talked about the devil, we listened, because it was nice to hear him believe in something. He would be reading us a picture book and then, interrupting the story someone else had written, he would tell us about the devil.
“You sound like Bobby Johnson,” he told me one day as I played the guitar in the kitchen and he listened from the macrovision room. Normally, the adults yelled at me to keep quiet when I played the guitar in the house, but he let me play, keeping the macrovision on silent as I did so.
“Who is Bobby Johnson?” I asked him.
“He’s a boy. Died a long time ago. Sold his soul to Lucifer, after the fall. Probably went to hell for it, but learned guitar. Worth it, I’d say. This world is nothing but compromises and negotiations and who knows if Hell exists. Not that it can be that bad down there. Hell is what you make it, I’ve heard.”
I liked the guitar, liked it better than words. Still do. Words are too solid, too rigid. Their interpretations fewer, their insights limited. They tell you something either too clearly or not clearly enough, where the right song or the right piece of art contains multitudes, simplicity, universes. A song can free you from the desert, from an ocean, from a bad dream.
That’s something I’ve learned. You ever find yourself in a nightmare you can’t escape, the kind with a monster chasing you through halls, and there is an easy solution: you start to sing. It’ll wake you right up.
I played and I played for them that night, during the talent show, before Moonborn’s act. I showed them a piece of myself, a glimpse at the man who hid behind Ishmael’s mask.
My songs received applause. Perhaps not as much as I expected. Perhaps less. Perhaps people were surprised, confused, alarmed by how much of myself I revealed. Perhaps they saw the truth that broke through, and it revealed to them how much they did not know.
What my great-great-grandfather did not know is that it’s not just crossroads where the devil lives. He can live anywhere people are lost, and people can be lost anywhere. Places like the ocean or the desert or the sky or the Moon.
Ten
This is a poem that someone very important to me would recite, when we were young. His voice hoarse, a cracked whisper. It hadn’t been like this a few days ago, when I met him.
Like all great poems, I’ve never understood it. No one understands it. Who can ever understand a poem? It says something about what great men do, the things we accomplish, the legacies we build.
Ramses, Genghis Khan, Jesus of Nazareth, Aristotle, Kennedy, Alexander the Great. These are the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
It’s not that I recorded everything he said. He gave me a copy of the speech afterward. We sat in rapt attention, even Jennifer Curtis, her pen and notebook nowhere to be seen.
We remember men who died millennia ago, he continued. Men and women both. We remember them for the worlds they build and for the wreckage they leave behind. You and me, we will leave so much wreckage behind us. The burned and charred remnants of the devils who haunt us.
I met a traveler from an antique land, he said. This is the poem now. Listen.
I have it memorized. He cleared his throat.
As I said, a traveler from an ancient land. This part isn’t the poem, it’s just me clarifying for you. I want you guys to know what’s going on. The narrator, he met a traveler from a foreign land.
Moonborn drew himself up, like an actor in some prestigious performance.
He said, Moonborn said, before breaking his pose again.
I need to clarify something here, Moonborn said. The rest of the poem is the traveler speaking.
He said two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert, Moonborn continued, finally reaching some kind of rhythm, some discovered eloquence and confidence.
Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies.
He paused for dramatic effect, and then:
A visage is a face. Like, a statue’s face.
I stared at him, uncertainly creeping in, anxiety over whether I was meant to be following the narrative of this poem.
Its frown and wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command, tell us that its creator well those passions read.
The word “sneer” caught me. Sneering Starboy and his quiet revelation in the salt pool. The truths and dangers, the things he feared.
Stamped on these lifeless things, Moonborn continued. The hand that mocked them. The heart that fed.
He paused again, longer, closing his eyes. We watched him, silence, the man standing on the stage, no words, long breaths in and out. And then:
My name is Ozymandias! he shouted now.
King of kings!
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
He bellowed this last word, giving it his all, his entirety. Moonborn broke then, relaxed, looking at us. He moved gently, shifting his weight from foot to foot. I realized he was individually making eye contact with us all.
That’s the engraving, he said, in a calmer voice. The engraving, on the statue. It says that he’s Ozymandias and he’s the king.
He paused, then puffed himself up again and spoke in his voice of poems:
Nothing else remains.
Round the decay of the colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.
Eleven
We applauded, like he meant for us to, because he had given a brilliant performance and because they paid us to applaud.
I knew what child had once recited this poem. That lost sister, who died somewhere in these foreign lands. We applauded and we shook hands and slapped one another’s backs, complimented and smiled and nodded and agreed.
But Moonborn had not finished. He looked at us again and began to speak, not poetry now but a speech, seemingly both rehearsed and improvised at once:
Twelve
Moonborn continued:
Sunsets are significant, here on the Moon. On Earth, they get them every day. I’m looking at you, Ishmael, and you, Jennifer, when I say that. You’ve been spoiled. Here, we see sunsets and sunrises but once an Earthling month.
Time was when the sunrise nobly spurred me. Time was, the sunset soothed me. But now the lovely light, the Sun, it soothes me not. Its light hardly touches me.
You think me mad. Starboy especially, Q too. All of you, you see me and you see madness. I know.
But what none of you know is that I’ve chased it before, and it’s made me something hated. Starboy knows. Q knows. For the rest of you, consider this a revelation. You see this leg? This right leg of mine? You see nothing amiss, do you? You see nothing that would give you pause? I never limp, I never favor left or right, do I? I don’t. I know. I’ve studied my own walk a thousand times, I know it at all times, and there is never a limp.
