The Moonborn: or, Moby-Dick on the Moon Read online

  The Moonborn

  or,

  Moby-Dick, on the Moon

  a novel by D. F. Lovett

  Copyright © 2016 by D. F. Lovett

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Printing, 2016

  The following is a work of fiction.

  Art thou pale for weariness

  Of climbing Heaven, and gazing on the earth,

  Wandering companionless

  Among the stars that have a different birth,—

  And ever changing, like a joyless eye

  That finds no object worth its constancy?

  —Percy Bysshe Shelley

  I am a Lunatic.

  —Adam Moonborn

  Table of Contents

  Canto One: Loomings

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Canto Two: Enter Moonborn

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Discussion Questions on the Text Thus Far

  Canto Three: The Ozymandias

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Discussion Questions on the Text Thus Far

  Canto Four: The Seas

  One

  Two: or, “Lunar Days and Nights”

  Three

  Four: or, “The Honor and Glory of Killing Robots”

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Discussion Questions on the Text Thus Far

  Canto Five: The West

  One

  Two: or, “A Funny Way of Day and Night”

  Three

  Four

  Five: or, “When the Lunatic Took Control of the Asylum” by Jennifer Curtis

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Discussion Questions on the Story Thus Far

  Canto Six: A Squeeze of the Hand

  One: or, “Killing Robots, Historically Regarded”

  Two

  Three: or, “Killing Robots, Historically Regarded, Continued”

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven: or, “A Brief Explanation of the Other Lunar Colonies”

  Eight

  Nine: or, “The Robot as a Friend”

  Ten

  Eleven, or “Fast Bots and Loose Bots”

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Canto Seven: The Far and the Dark

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four: or, “The Terror of the Clouds”

  Five

  Six

  Seven: or, “Far and Dark”

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Discussion Questions on the Text Thus Far

  Canto Eight: The White

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Canto Nine: The Epilogue

  Afterword

  Canto One: Loomings

  One

  “Call yourself Ishmael,” they told me, when I landed on the Moon.

  Well, no one ever spoke those exact words, but that was the idea behind it.

  I knew I would be assigned a new identity. They had made that clear in the contract, when they told me that my duties would include the shedding of my previous life and existence. They had made it clear from the very beginning, from the first internal posting: Writers needed. No attachments. Willing to relocate for months or longer. Observant. Personable. Modest. Humble. Expect adventure, but not credit or fame.

  I fit those requirements, and so I applied. Which is how I ended up on the Moon.

  Two

  The starplane had been two-thirds empty, about seventy people in all. Like me, most of my fellow disembarking passengers seemed headed to the Moon for work but, unlike me, they appeared bored or annoyed at the prospect. Another routine trip to the Moon, their faces and postures conveyed. Bureaucrats and businessfolk, red tape and white collars. Aside from those who traveled for business, the shuttle had a handful of tourists, mostly retired couples.

  I had never left Earth, had hardly left the Euro-American Union. For me, this journey was anything but routine. Waves of internal giddiness and uncertain anxiety threatened to spill out of me: twenty-five years of life, barely old enough to vote or drive, but here I was, on the Moon. Here I was, in space. Here, above. Beyond. Walking slowly, taking it all in, my luggage waiting for me somewhere ahead. I had only been on an airplane twice before, and had only seen vids and photos of starplanes.

  We disembarked from the starplane into a metallic tube with no windows, no views. My fellow passengers moved past me, the few tourist families racing ahead to the leisure and pleasure awaiting them, and the rest of them with their eyes down, carried to whatever work lay ahead. I moved after them until the tube emptied into a large hallway. I paused to take it in as the others left me behind. The spaceport appeared as I’d seen it in photos: metallic brutalism, unfriendly designs with no view of the lunar sky.

  “You’re the ghost, aren’t you?” came a sharp, unfriendly voice from my left. I turned to see a man I knew by sight but had never met: Dunn Heinemann, Vice President of Lunar Operations for Gamelan Corporation. Older than me but relatively young, remarkably pale, unusually thin, with a perpetual look of irritation on his face.

  “What?” I could have said that I recognized him from my required reading, from the news, from the damage-control interviews he had become known for. Instead, I chose to say what?

  “You’re the ghostwriter. Spectral Wordsmiths sent you, right? Unless there’s another seven-foot bumpkin that just got off that plane and snuck past me.”

  “Bumpkin?”

  “You’re supposed to be good with words, right? You’re the ghostwriter?”

  “I’m the ghostwriter,” I said, finding my footing, finding something. None of this made sense. It was happening too fast. I knew Dunn Heinemann, and I knew who he worked for, but it had never occurred to me that someone of his prestige and significance would pick me up from the airport. “I’m the guy.”

  “Did you bring a tuxedo for the party?”

  “I don’t own a tuxedo.”

  “Okay, so that’s a priority,” he said. “After your new identity. They told you how this works, right? You work for me now. Welcome to the Moo
n.”

  Three

  They told me to pack lightly. Any clothing you own will seem irrelevant and bizarre on the Moon, Spectral Wordsmiths told me, after telling me that, yes, I would be leaving Earth and assuming the role as ghostwriter for an employer who had yet to be revealed.

  All the same, I expected that I would have to pick up my suitcase and the few belongings in it from a conveyor belt somewhere in the spaceport. That’s how it had worked at the two airports I’d ever been to. But I chose not to voice this as I followed Dunn Heinemann through the spaceport, our route diverging from those awe-faced tourists and blank-faced businesspeople and bureaucrats. He opened a door with an identification badge and moved through it without looking back, without even a follow me gesture. I followed him through white-walled hallways, no words between us. I considered various conversation attempts, including how long have you lived on the Moon and how’s the weather been, all of which I decided could only trigger further annoyance. That, and I knew the answer to how long he’d lived on the Moon, as it had been in the required reading assigned by Spectral Wordsmiths.

  I knew that you could see very little of the Moon itself from anywhere inside of Armstrong Spaceport, its primary function being the hub for transport between Earth and the Moon. Knowing this, it did not bother me to be getting a view of only hallways as we rushed to our destination.

  I had nearly found the courage to launch into some attempted banter—when were you last on Earth? —when our narrow hallway emptied into a vast hangar, crowded with vehicles. I identified most of them as Lunar Utility Vehicles, the preferred mode of transport for the unenclosed landscapes of the Moon. If you’ve never seen an LUV, they grind across the Moon’s surface with giant treads, their driver and passengers sitting in bubbles. A standard LUV holds six passengers, but Dunn Heinemann began walking toward one that looked larger than the standard.

  A man stood next to it, the only other person in this hangar, as far as I could tell. He immediately struck me as being old, grizzled, worn down. Too old to have been born up here. Another relocated Earthling.

  “Jordan, Ishmael,” Dunn Heinemann said. “Ishmael, this is Jordan. He’s part of the team.”

  “Hello,” I said, extending my hand for a handshake.

  Jordan nodded briefly and turned to the LUV, climbing up into the driver’s seat. Dunn Heinemann gestured for us to climb into the back, where two leather bench seats faced one another. We climbed over the side and the bubble closed over us. The leather interior of the LUV appeared worn, the bubble ceiling smeared, the paneling cracked. These things had been servicing the Moon for some time, and it showed.

  The large door at the far end of the hangar opened, and we drove out into what I knew must be the airlock. Still metallic brutalism all around us. Still no glimpse of sky. And then the first door closed behind us and the next one opened and I finally saw the surface of the Moon.

  Four

  The Moon is a principal character in this story, just as America was once a principal character in every story told within its borders, until it knew no borders. The difference is that no one knows the Moon but everyone has always known about it. It has hovered above us since we grunted and walked on all fours, lived in caves, worshipped the Sun and invented God and killed his children.

  The Moon might be a woman. It might be a man. It might be a rabbit or a giant or a dragon or a witch.

  It might be a child.

  People have tried to own the Moon since before I was born. They first owned it when there was only one America and its greatest president told his people they would beat Russia to the Moon.

  If the Moon is a child, then who are its parents? If the Moon is a ghost, then who was it when it lived?

  All of this changed, of course, when people began living on it. When people started giving birth on it. But the mystery did not disappear; it only grew. We thought we would know the Moon when we moved to it, when we conquered it, when we said we owned it, but we still do not know it and we still do not own it.

  Five

  Dunn Heinemann did not look up from his GamelGlass once during the first ten minutes of our journey across the Moon’s surface.

  I stared out and up from the LUV’s bubble, not seeing what I had expected, not feeling what I had anticipated.

  “Where are the stars?” I asked. “I heard they were beautiful up here.”

  “We are on the daylight side of the Moon,” he answered. “You can’t see the stars from this side of the Moon.”

  “Where is the Earth?”

  “Out of view. And don’t look at the Sun. It’ll blind you.”

  I felt as if I should be more awed than I was. I had come far enough from home that everything I’d ever known, all of Earth’s society, sat on another chunk of rock. Now I was somewhere else, a different rock, where I’d be for an unspecified amount of time. I was in a world I knew very little of, aside from my required reading, aside from one small step and the Seven Founding Families and the Three Bases.

  I looked into the expanse: there was no one, nothing. A harsher desert, an empty ocean. Mountains, craters, all of it white and gray and empty.

  And then, in the distance, a dome, looming on the horizon, straight ahead.

  Six

  “It’s time to tell you who you are,” Dunn Heinemann said, “and who I am, and whose story you will be telling.”

  “I know who you are,” I said. “You’re Dunn Heinemann. I did the reading.”

  “You won’t be calling me that anymore,” he said. “That’s not what the team calls me. To you, I’m now Starboy.”

  “Starboy,” I repeated.

  “Starboy,” Starboy said. “And you are Ishmael Richard Brandt, of Kennedy City of the EAU.”

  “I’m actually from Kennedy City,” I said. “So that will make it easier.”

  “I know.”

  “Is there more I need to know?”

  “A lot more.” He paused for a moment, leading me to wonder if I needed to guess what the more was that I needed to know, or if he’d be providing it. He reached under his leather bench seat and took out a suitcase.

  “Shit,” I said. “My suitcase. I forgot it.”

  “Was it important?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Some clothes and stuff. My recorder and reader are both in my satchel.”

  “We are fitting you for new clothes,” he said. “Although I hope you brought pen and paper in that carpet-bag you’re carrying. We vastly prefer to do things with pen and paper. Permanence, when you want it, and security.”

  “I didn’t bring pen and paper.”

  “We have some in this bag for you,” he said.

  “What else is in that bag?”

  “I’m about to show you.” He opened the leather suitcase toward him, not giving me any view of its contents. First, he handed me a laminated identification badge, complete with my photograph and the name Ishmael Richard Brandt, and the details: EAU Citizen; Temporary Lunar Employment Visa; Employer: Gamelan Corporation.

  “This is me,” I said.

  “That is you now. You answer to Ishmael or Brandt, but mostly I expect them to call you Ishmael.”

  He removed something and handed it to me. A book. A paperbook, an actual paperbook, the kind you never see anymore. Leather-bound, with actual pages. I remembered something I’d read about this place, that it was a world where paperbooks were fetishized, where people clung to that specific piece of the past.

  He handed it to me. I looked at the cover. Ran my fingers across it. I’m not sure if I had ever touched genuine leather before this moment. The leather binding, the design of it, the very fact that it had pages of paper all suggested antiquity, but the title screamed of recent things: The Best Loved Poems of the Lunar People. I touched the words on the cover, raised against the leather, red words against a brown background.

  “This is for me to read?”

  “For you to read, and to keep. Printed just a few months ago. Take a look at it.”


  We did not speak for a few more minutes as I reacted to this gift. I opened it and skimmed through the pages, feeling it, holding the book in my hands, looking through the words.

  I had never held a book made of paper before.

  Seven

  “Did you note the name of the editor of the book?” Starboy asked me, after I had paged through it and skimmed a number of the poems. Some I recognized. Most seemed from another era. Most involved the Moon, in one form or another.

  “The editor,” I said, skimming back toward the front.

  “It’s on the cover page.”

  I found the cover page. There I saw the title of the book once again, but something more. The name that Starboy wanted me to see. The editor of this work.

  “Adam Moonborn,” I read aloud.

  “Adam Moonborn,” he repeated. “Surely, you’re familiar with Captain Moonborn? I would assume you encountered his name repeatedly in the required reading given to you by Spectral?”

  “Of course,” I answered. “I know who Adam Moonborn is. The first man born on the Moon. One of the heirs to the Brandt fortune. The mayor of Gamelan Base, right?”

  “Did you suspect that it was his autobiography you’d been hired to ghostwrite?”

  “I suspected,” I answered. “Especially when I saw you.”

  And I had, but it had seemed like too much. It had overwhelmed me, frightened me. Adam Moonborn, dubbed “the First Moonling” by the press, was known for many, many things, most of which could be considered negative. Recklessness and listlessness, arrogance and obsession. The right mix of charisma, looks, and money to attain the things that no one needs, starplanes and fast cars and all the toys rich men destroy. A number of highly publicized personal tragedies and relentless agendas, including the repurposing of the word lunatic as a positive description of Moon-dwellers, a push for mass relocation to the Moon combined with a fervent lunar nativism, an obsessive protection of what he deemed the natural Lunar resources, several marriages and divorces, a failed stint at higher education on Earth, and a perpetual mourning of the parents and siblings he lost over twenty years ago.