L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 35 Page 22

  “Hey, Moonie: Go fetch! What’s p’s and q’s?”

  Moon Dawdler’s AI is always running, always learning—especially when it comes to me—but “Moonie: Go fetch” is my code that the coast is clear, and we can talk normal like. His tail wags just like a real dog’s too—it’s his zipline, you know, data and communications antennae. Oh, you think Dobermans don’t have tails? Well, they do, and my dog looks good with his, thank you very much. I got to choose his AI personality at MedGen too. They had this persona called Mr. Z that tickled me. The tech said I chose wisely, because his AI growth will lean toward strength and defense, just like Ziggy, the rapper turned bodyguard it was based on. Mom hates it. I love it, ’cuz my dog has to be tough. He’s breathing for both of us.

  “Yo, Dixie,” he says, deep and gruff like he’s from the mean streets of the Bronx, “you sure you want the dope on that question?”

  I pat his cold head with my good hand, the one that still feels. He’s got LED eyes, and I got to choose those too and they light up red, because I like red, and because when he speaks they glow and he looks like one of those mechanical hounds from Fahrenheit 451. Yeah, I read. I put my digidrive into thermonuclear meltdown with all those days at the hospital. I’ve begged Mom to get me a new PowaPlayah 4 from Earth for my birthday, the ones that can hold 2.5 pet bites, er, petabytes, and that’s gazillions of bytes, as much as a human brain! Please, please, please may it also be preloaded with MegaCoda, because that’s like every game, book, and song ever. And it comes with a thousand unlock tokens!

  Moonie clacks his jaw. “Yo, girl. You want the didgies or not?”

  My lips don’t always frame words so well from being burned and then reconstructed—the surgeon did her best—but Moonie always gets me. “Thilly T-Bone. Mom thaid it, so it can’t be that bad.”

  He tilts his head and his mouth moves with his words. “Woof! Okay. It means pints and quarts. Old English. Bar talk, my little Chick-chick-chickadee. Beer used to be served in pint- and quart-sized mugs.”

  “Ah, p’s and q’s.”

  “Word. The ’xact history is lost, but when bartenders were behind the stick—um, serving drinks—they’d keep tabs on how much customers drank, so they didn’t lose their green, know what I mean?”

  “No.”

  “Means to be careful, watch your step, be on best behavior.”

  “Oh, I get it!”

  “Woof! Power to the kitten.” He tilts his head the other way, silver ears cocked just like a Doberman’s. “And, since we’re on the topic of booze, just say No to drinking and drugs.”

  “Mom and Dad drink sometimes.”

  “They adults. You a kid. Just say No.”

  I pushed past a frond of an areca palm leaning over the path to the treadmill. “Who do you think will offer me booze up here?”

  He growled. “Okay, you got me. Just doin’ my thing, Chickadee.”

  I giggled. “Word.”

  I was about to connect the straps from the treadmill to my weight belt so I didn’t go bouncing into the air, and then the door to the outside airlock swishes open, making my ears pop. I turn. It’s the plump astrobotanist, his bald head shining like he had just greased it as he carries in one of those yellow tiger-striped packs. Those come from waste reclamation. He drops it with a thud on the path to the exit. He looks up and sees me.

  “What are you doing in here?” His face is always red, even when he isn’t annoyed. I don’t like his gravelly voice, he always talks too loud. I feel my panic rev up seeing him loom between me and the exit. My heart is thumping, my legs are shaking, and I can’t breathe. Fortunately, Moonie is between us. Moonie always has my back. Except when he has my front.

  “It’s, it’s my time, Mr. Franco.” I nod to the schedule screen next to the door.

  “Oh.” He swipes his hand over his head. Maybe he misses his hair, I know I did until it grew back. “Well, little girl, it’s always my time in this place. Unless you enjoy the smell of shit, you might want to reschedule.”

  Moon Dawdler has my bio readings—he could tell my heart rate just jumped. He flares his eyes at Mr. Franco and growls low. “What’s wrong with you, dude? You ghetto trash? You don’t use that kind of language around little girls.”

  Mr. Franco doesn’t even respond to Moonie, just ignores him and stares straight at me. “Look, I’ve got work to do before the next dump of spoiled tourists. It’s a small world up here, we all have to put up or shut up.” With that, he does look at my dog. Mean.

  “I, I, I’ll just come back tonight,” I say.

  “Come again?”

  I hate it when people don’t understand my words. I repeat them. Slower.

  “Oh. No night up here, girlie. North pole. Eternal sun.”

  Now he’s talking to me like I’m a stupid kid. That burns. “You know what I mean.”

  “Sure kid.” He steps between the fronds and motions that the way is clear. To leave. Moonie sends the spark to my chest and fills my lungs with air and we head for the exit, Moonie growling low.

  I look out the corners of my eyes. Mr. Franco scowls as we pass. “Nice dog. What do you feed that thing, nuts and bolts?”

  He’s not funny. I try to bite my tongue, I really do, but Dad always says I have a lot of Mom in me.

  “Fat botanists,” I whisper, but it’s a loud whisper. I kinda hope he hears it. And then, lightbulb. What if he did hear me? I go tell Mom about all this, he’ll tell her I insulted him. Dad says loose lips sink spaceships. I seal the hatch.

  On days when the tourists aren’t here, the resort lobby is our living room. Like tonight. The lobby’s just another resin-and-moon sand cube in the underground gerbil maze, but it’s way bigger than our pod, and can hold about fifty people! It’s got holo projectors on the walls, and a reception desk at one end, and an airlock at the other that connects to the garage and entrance tunnel. The rover sits there—Dad picks up tourists in it when they land, and it’s also for taking them out on excursions. Don’t tell anyone, but Dad even let me drive it once, on one of our father/daughter days. We drove to Darkside. There isn’t really a dark side of the Moon, but when you live at a base that’s specially planted to get never-ending sunlight for the solar cells, you miss night like you miss Earth.

  I have never seen so many stars.…

  When the noisy tourists arrive, Dad waves at the walls and up come the feeds from Tycho crater, or Mare Crisium, what I call the pompom tip of the poodle’s tail, and they’re all ooohs and ahhhs. Poodle? Yeah, there’s a French poodle on the Moon. God did all kinds of silly things to make us laugh, and the poodle outlined across the right face of the Moon is one of them. You’ve never seen it? Look again.

  But tonight it’s just us, and so it’s sunset over the Olympics. We like that view. We used to go camping there when we lived in Seattle. You see, unlike tourists, we can see the Moon anytime we want. With all the grays up here, you start missing Earth colors real fast. Really helps to have the big views from the projectors too. You don’t feel the moon cave scrunchies so much.

  Mom’s clearing our dinner trays as I go sit on the air sofa, Moonie trailing at my side, auto adjusting my tubes so they never scrape the floor. We had real peas and tomato slices tonight—not wrinkly like the hydrated chicken—but yuck, now I know what they’re grown with. I can’t wait for pizza night again—pepperoni is my fave!—but now I’m wondering what’s in the sauce.…

  Dad’s already over at the front desk, checking schedules, assigning pods, doing prep stuff. Mom will check their med records later. They get cleared by FlashPoint’s doctors, of course. Mom says she’s their 239,000-miles-from-home insurance policy. You’d be surprised how often they need that policy.

  “Dad, can I switch to Iguacu Falls?”

  “Huh? Ask your mother.”

  That’s Dad’s default. He looks like blond-haired Thor, but he doesn’t have his
hammer. I look at Mom. She looks like a fiery Valkyrie, and the sweep of red hair down both shoulders looks like copper wings about to slap the air.

  “Mom?”

  “It’s dark there, Dixie.”

  “Duh, right. How about Waimea Falls? It’s still light on Oahu.”

  “Don’t you want to update your Spacebook fans? It’s been a few days.”

  “Nah, nothing exciting to report. I need hot news. If it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead.”

  “What?”

  I shrink into the couch. “Nothing. Heard a reporter say that on my newsfeed.”

  Mom looks all skeptical, and flashes her death-ray stare at my dog.

  I like doing my vlogs, and my fans are the reason we’re up here. When Make-Me-A-Wish denied mine for “insurmountable costs and logistics,” I was crushed. So were Mom and Dad, because they taught me not to let anything that happened stop me from reaching my dreams, and I worried LOTS I had reached too high. But then I sent a zip to The Seattle Times. That probably was unfair, I was already famous. I survived America’s worst school bombing after all. Well, the Times started it, and my story went global. They contacted FlashPoint too, and after lots of their science people checked me out and interviewed Mom and Dad, it was all systems go. They even designed my own spacesuit that Moon Dawdler could plug into. I became their poster girl. “If Dixie can do it, why can’t you?” I don’t mind. It got me to the Moon.

  Mom zips the trays into a blue tube bag. “There’s always something interesting up here, honey. You just have to find the angle.”

  I stroke my hair. I’m always stroking my hair, ’cuz I’m so happy to have it. “Here’s an angle. How about I talk about poop? Isn’t that what our food is grown in?”

  Mom pops the bag in the transport chute. There’s a whoosh and it’s gone. She turns and shakes her head, but I see the smile in her green eyes. “The waste is processed and sterilized through irradiation, honey. It’s just clean, organic matter that gets worked into the regolith soil.”

  “So whose clean poop was in the peas tonight? Because if it was Mr. Franco’s, I’m not eating peas ever again.”

  Moon Dawdler is sitting on the floor beside me, watching me with those red eyes. He blinks twice superfast. That’s our code, it’s him telling me he’s laughing. I wink back the same, but Mom catches it, and the Valkyrie comes out.

  “I told you, Dixie, I don’t like the secret communication between you two. It’s not healthy. The MedGen unit is a life-support system, it’s not meant to be your friend or secret confidant or pet. We’ve been over this.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Its AI is important, it keeps you safe, but treating it like a person is not healthy. And I’ve never liked that Mr. Z perso—”

  I let go of my hair. “You said I could choose!”

  Dad looks up, stares at Mom, but doesn’t say anything.

  Mom stops. “I did,” Mom says. “You’re right. I did.” She sighs. “I just wanted you to be happy, honey. But why couldn’t you have chosen a unit like DivaDoll? She was based on that Miss Universe winner that got a PhD in socioeconomics and—”

  “Because I liked Mr. Z. He made me laugh!”

  Moonie lays down, sides wisping quietly, tail flat against the floor. I know she hurt his feelings, and I hate it when she treats him like a machine. He is my friend. He’s my best friend. And he keeps me alive. What friend can top that?

  Mom sees I’m hurt, because my lip droops, and maybe there’s tears, maybe there’s not. I’m not telling. But I’m not trying to hurt Mom—her sitting by my side at the hospital all those days was hurt enough. But it really bothers her when I get sad, and now she’s wringing her hands. We’ve had this talk before. It never goes anywhere but bad.

  Yay! Dad saves the day. He opens a drawer in the desk, pulls out a small jewelry box. It’s got a red bow on it! My heart jumps. Mom jerks her head, but this time, she stays silent. Dad walks over to Mom, takes her hand, and she nods. They both kneel down beside me, and Dad holds out the box.

  “Happy birthday, Super-Duper Moongirl.”

  “But my birthday isn’t—”

  Dad opens the box and smiles bright as the sun. “If we wait until then, this model will become obsolete.”

  I squeal. “PowaPlayah 4! The new gold earring model!”

  Dad nods. “It’s got Rimshot—besides communication features, it zip links to any screen or player. Moon Dawdler has Rimshot capability too. That means he can project its holovids or games or play its tunes for you.”

  “Or play the audiobooks,” Mom says quick.

  “Yeah, that too,” Dad says quick.

  I take the box. I know everything about this model. Models wear this model! Oh, it’s not a clip-on. “But I don’t have pierced ears.”

  “It’s got an auto-piercer,” Dad says. “Nova injector, like the one in Moon Dawdler’s tongue. Won’t even hurt.”

  “But, Mom, you always said I have to be—”

  Mom smiles. She’s not a Valkyrie anymore. She’s just Mom. “We decided a twelve year old on the Moon is equivalent to a fourteen year old for an Earth girl.”

  I almost slip and say “Damn straight!” I’m so excited, but instead I stand and wrap my arms around both of them. “Thank you so, so much! I love it!”

  Moonie thumps his tail.

  A week goes by, and the next set of tourists have left. I was hoping another kid would come up, even a boy, but none in this batch. It’s so expensive, it’s really rare, but it’s dynamo when a girl comes up that’s close to my age. They always want to get z-vlogs with me and Moon Dawdler to zip on their Spacebook. Spikes their ratings. I don’t mind, spikes mine too, and the ads earn me bookoo digicoin.

  I’m so happy! My turn in the arboretum, and I’m alone at last! I take the path to the treadmill in the center, strap in, and it’s projection time as I run.

  “Moonie: Go fetch! Show me some jacked-up street cars and make them dance to your chant.”

  “You got it, Chick-chick-chickadee. You wantin’ discreet, or you wantin’ complete?”

  “Full meal deal! I want engines, I want sidepipes, I want a beat that will kick my seat!”

  “Alien drivers?”

  “With extra tentacles please! Supersize me!”

  Moonie’s eyes shimmer beams of light, and neon Chevys float in the air, with lowrider suspensions that make them hop and jump to the beat. It’s razor rap, and the alien drivers are snapping their tentacles to it while Moonie makes it up as he goes. He has holovids stored in his core, and he’s got every song and vid ever recorded in my earring, but I like the ones he makes up best, because they’re about us.

  As I trot on the tread, he gets into his chant, silver head swinging side to side with his urban beat.

  “The girl is super,

  she’s a super-duper,

  don’t tell me I’m crazy,

  say my memory is hazy!

  I can say that I knew her,

  before the spaceship flew her,

  and yo, that girl is famous,

  but she’ll never be the lamest

  never gonna be the tamest

  silver bow wow at her side

  BOW WOW!

  Lay it down one more time!

  BOW WOW!

  ’Cuz she’s the Moongirl,

  the radical tune girl,

  the girl with the sass

  gonna kick ’em in th—”

  “Hey! Hey! Can you turn that racket down? I’m trying to work here!”

  Moonie zips it. Down crash the cars. I kill the treadmill, unclip, turn and see red-faced Franco, fists on his hips, standing behind a big pile of tiger-stripe packs stacked on the exit path. When did he get here?

  “Can’t you go play with your dog outside or something?”

  This burns,
and for a moment, I forget the packs. “You know I can’t. Outside is dangerous. I can only go out with Mom or Dad.”

  He shrugs. “Hmmph. I didn’t know that. Makes sense, I guess. Well, you keep to your backyard and I’ll keep to mine. Just be a good neighbor and kill the audio, okay?”

  I want to let it go, but I can’t. “You’re blocking my exit.”

  “Huh? Oh. Well, when you’re ready to go, let me know. I’ll move them.”

  My heart pounds like the banging sound in an MRI. “Please, Mr. Franco. I need you to move them. Now.” He doesn’t know. He can’t know. And I can’t tell him why, but I need the exit clear.

  Right now.

  “Little girl, these things are heavy. When you’re ready to go, I’ll probably have half of them …”

  I’m so hot the room is melting. I want out of here. I need out of here. I smell the air. I see no smoke, but I smell it everywhere.

  Moon Dawdler is prepared. My emergency meds are in his tongue. I can hear the whine of the vial advance. In another second he’s going to turn and jab me. I hate the shot, it makes me dopey and ruins my day. “Moonie, heel! I’ll be okay if you can push them away.”

  Moonie barks. “Got your back, Jack.” He lowers his head and trots forward, extending my tubes as he gives the bags a push with his head. Moonie is heavy, he carries tanks of oxy and nitro as my safety backup. A pack topples as he shoves them forward. It bangs into a palm.

  Mr. Franco shoves back. “Hey! Stop that! You’ll damage the plants. They’re slated for Mars, you dipshit dog!”

  Moonie’s ears cock, listening for any change of orders. I give him none. I want out. Right now. I’m hearing glass shatter. All kinds of slow musical notes tinkling in my ears, tumbling end on end. This hasn’t happened since I was in the hospital. Triggers. This must be a trigger. A psychologist warned me about triggers. Triggers kill. No, guns kill. Or is it bullets? No. People kill. Bad people.