The Lucky Stars Club

The Lucky Stars Club

A Short Story

By Maura Morgan

I held hands with my wife Rachel in the offstage darkness while the host, Kelly Davis, shared her monologue with millions of people watching Tell Me a Secret. I planned to speak publicly about Georgie and Duncan for the first time since my acquittal.

In the most high-profile court case in ten years since a former president was brought to trial, testimony from Rachel and me had been sealed because it was inflammatory and downright unbelievable. The judge removed reporters from the courtroom to avoid unnecessary publicity, speculation, and to prevent undue influence on the jury from outside media. The judge found my testimony unbelievable, but an underlying truth emerged, a truth found credible because Rachel vouched for me: I didn’t kill either of my friends.

Now that the trial was over, I was free to tell my story, and I alone would suffer the consequences of judgment in the court of public opinion. I wasn’t afraid because my story was true, and truth sets one free. Relaxed and confident; only the sweat in my armpits betrayed a hidden fear this wouldn’t go well.

“Please welcome Theo Walker,” she said. The stage attendant adjusted the microphone on my collar. My confidence fell as the muted clapping unsettled me. I wasn’t expecting a rousing round of applause—the mysteries surrounding my acquittal prejudiced the

public against me, but I thought they’d at least be mannered. I kissed Rachel and tasted the sweetness of strawberry-flavored gloss upon her lips, finding some courage in her unwavering belief in me. I picked up my plastic storage box and walked onto the set, where Kelly sat on a beige, faux leather sofa with a gold-trimmed, glass coffee table. She stood to greet me, we shook hands, and I

sat down, placing the box at my feet.

“Well,” Kelly sighed, maintaining the smile she’d worn since she went on stage. With my indifferent reception, this interview wouldn’t be easy for her. I hoped by the end of the show I was vindicated and opinions of me changed. Given the rampant skepticism and distrust in the world, I wasn’t sure. “Thanks for joining us, Theo.”

“I’m glad to be here,” I said. I meant it. Science had come a long way since its polarization with religion in the 2020s, but I wanted to open the world’s eyes even farther.

She summarized what she knew: Georgie, Duncan, and I went to the Mariana Trench on my yacht. Only Duncan and I came back. Three weeks later, Duncan, Rachel, and I went again, and only Rachel and I came back. I was promptly arrested when I returned to Honolulu after a global outcry claimed I murdered one, maybe two, of the wealthiest men in the world.

“Is all of this true?” Kelly asked.

“Yes, except for the accusation I murdered Georgie and Duncan.”

“And you’d like to set the record straight?”

“Yes.”

Georgie, Duncan, and I were the only members of The Lucky Stars Club. In its oldest incarnation, we were three fortunate kids. We grew up together. We played baseball and basketball together and brought home championships. The three amigos, musketeers, blind mice, whatever you wanted to call us. Our abilities in sports, education, and common sense were equal, so much so that we

were triplets from different mothers. We were inseparable.

The club dissolved by college because our interests diverged. Georgie was a romantic. He wrote novels and found success equal to James Patterson and J.K. Rowling. Duncan was practical. He founded shopthestars.com, the world’s biggest shopping website next to Amazon. I was a scientist and made my fortune as a defense contractor. I sold my discoveries to the highest bidder and only made promises to keep the technology secret from my competitors, not the world. These kept nations balanced and a lot of money in my pocket.

Kelly interrupted me with an out loud wonder at how it was possible for three kids from the same neighborhood to all become billionaires as though I would know. I was polite and made a joke our mothers all drank the same wine and had sex the same night.

In our late thirties, we reconnected at a tradeshow. Georgie was looking for inspiration, and Duncan was looking for products to revolutionize the consumer world. I was selling tech products and software to everyone.

Once more, we became inseparable. In the Lucky Stars Club’s newest incarnation, we were a few guys who explored places—mostly underwater.

We didn’t have to worry about a forty-hour work week. I was married to my high-school sweetheart, who had her own interests. Georgie was engaged, and Duncan was an avowed bachelor. We were free to live as we saw fit and took turns fishing, scuba-diving, and hanging out on our boats drinking the finest alcohol and beer. Other billionaires went to space. We decided to do the opposite.

“What do billionaires drink?” Kelly asked.

I ignored her, not wanting to diverge from my narrative.

Together, we developed our newest consumer invention and sought to test it on a boat trip to the Mariana Trench: a scuba diving suit. We secretly called it the underwater Iron Man suit. It used cutting-edge nanotechnology and allowed the wearer to descend to depths in the ocean previously inaccessible. We tested it incrementally, successfully, in my swimming pool. We made suits for all three of us to explore the ocean depths together and tested them in Hawaii. Then we moved up to ocean wrecks off

the coast of Florida. With its innovative breathing apparatus, pressure adjustments, and weight system, we walked on the ocean floor for hours. Literally hours, plus we didn’t need to worry about the bends when we returned to the surface. I could see its development linking living underwater to living on land. It was going to be big.

I wanted to go further with it and test it in the depths of Challenger Deep.

I removed a glove sample from my box and showed it to Kelly. The cameras zoomed in as I held it. She put her hand out to take the glove from me, but I stopped her with a simple explanation: proprietary technology.

“Is there anything worth seeing down there?” Kelly asked.

“Oh yes, if you can penetrate the darkness, which we did with a red nocturnal light. But these animals weren’t the most interesting thing we saw,” I said. I reached into my box and took out specimens of some of the fauna found thirty-six thousand feet below the surface: snailfish, cusk-eels, sea cucumbers, and amphipods I’d

carefully preserved in small jars. Kelly wrinkled her nose.

“We found a portal to Atlantis.”

A sudden gasp and incoherent mumbling from the audience followed.

“A… portal?” Kelly asked. I could tell she was trying to hide her disbelief and laughter. “Come on, Theo, you’re joking.”

I didn’t break a smile. My lips and my demeanor remained flat.

“I kid you not,” I said. I removed large photographs from the box and held them up for the audience. In them, clearly discernible, was a round shape highlighted with what appeared to be brilliant sparks of light. Inside the portal, a mountain landscape, green and lush, alight with what appeared to be sunshine. “I recorded our entire

plunge into the depths. These are photographs taken from my body cam. They’ve been examined by experts and deemed authentic. They were presented as evidence at my trial.”

“Yes,” Kelly agreed, though I could tell she was still skeptical. “We have the entire video.” I looked up at the screens above us and saw the video in reverse as it played for the audience. The mumbling subsided, and quiet awe replaced it. People were thirsty for science, mystery, and answers, just as they had always been. Unlike the 2020s, the religious fervor and denial of factual things subsided in the 2030s.

With renewed space exploration, belief in science again surged, replacing religion as the highest belief system in the world. No more flat earth, no more anti-vaxing crap, no more going to the moon in the 1960s was a hoax. People now took vacations on the moon. Spas on the moon were destination vacations.

“And did you go through the portal?” She asked.

“Yes,” I said. “And yes, it was Atlantis.”

“Wasn’t Atlantis a civilization in the ancient Greek world?”

I nodded.

“It was, and it wasn’t. Atlantis is a planet three thousand light years away. We discovered that getting to Atlantis has always been done via the portal. During Atlantis’ tenure in the ancient Greek civilization, men posed no threat and were happy to trade and interact with everyone. The portal was quite large, so seafarers

wouldn’t fear going through it. The outer edges couldn’t be seen by those traveling through. When the Ancient Greeks began threatening a takeover of Atlantis, the elders mimicked a great earthquake and moved the portal, deciding to keep Atlantis hidden until such time as Earth’s technology equaled their own and was seen as a conflict deterrent.”

“What happened when you arrived?”

I dropped my head and tried to find the words in my brain that could be spoken without emotion, but I couldn’t.

“Georgie’s suit malfunctioned, and he was stranded. Duncan and I volunteered to come back with another suit. He said no, he wanted to stay. We reminded him of his fiancée, but he said his relationship was in the toilet; she only wanted him for his billions.”

“Were there people?”

“Yes,” I said, showing another photograph from my body camera to Kelly as it displayed above us. “The sentry at the portal—also the first woman we met, spoke Greek, or some form of it. Georgie, being the literate one in our group, had studied Greek and could

communicate with her on a base level. She marveled at Georgie, at the color of his skin and hair, and he fell in love with her. He was the romantic in our group. He rebounded hard.”

“Their skin is lavender?”

“I was told it’s because of the nature of their sun,” I said. “Duncan and I stayed and visited with the elders. We shared information about our respective societies. They analyzed our suits; we saw their environment.”

I reached into the box again, and this time, I showed a picture of me holding a small animal with doe eyes, floppy ears, cat-like legs, and long curly spikes colored red. These were their dogs, protectors of the home and the land. “As we were leaving, the elders told us they’d be closing the portal and moving within two cycles of their moon, about six weeks. We could stay if we wished, but they didn’t want to risk anyone else finding them. The elders decided the Atlanteans weren’t ready for people of our world.”

“They weren’t ready for us. Why not? Do they think we’re a threat to them?”

I laughed, reminding myself she was a television show host.

“No,” I replied. “They didn’t want some blustering dictator from this planet believing like the ancient Greeks.”

“So, Georgie stayed there,” Kelly said. “What happened to Duncan?”

“Three weeks later, Duncan decided to return. He was under investigation by the global authorities for fraud and other crimes. He was fed up with this world and believed he had an option, so he would take it. My wife Rachel and I took him to the diving site

in our boat. He jumped in, and he was gone.”

“And you? Did you think about going back?”

As I thought about the world of Atlantis, with its unspoiled beauty, the peace among its people, and the fellowship they shared with one another, I closed my eyes and pictured it yet again. It was Utopia. There were no fights for land, no squabbles for a seat on the subway, and personal weapons—knives and guns, were unheard of.

“I did,” I admitted, glancing offstage at Rachel. “I had my suit on. I watched Duncan jump into the water. But I turned around and saw my wife standing in the shadows, tears glimmering in her eyes from a safety light. She was going to let me go. She didn’t expect me to see her. And at that moment, I—” I stumbled on my confession. “I couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave.”

Kelly stood and waved Rachel onstage. For her, the audience clapped. I was happy they’d seen her as the story’s true hero.

Rachel sat beside me, and I clasped her hand tight. She put her other hand on top of mine. Kelly greeted Rachel and asked how she felt watching me prepare to leave.

“I was ready to let him go,” she said. “He’d told me everything, and I could see its impact on him. He’s a scientist at heart and always will be. He was torn that night. I could feel the invisible ropes tugging him in both directions. Duncan was waiting for him in

the water. I was watching, silently saying goodbye to him. But then he waved Duncan away, and I welcomed him into my arms.”

The audience unexpectedly erupted into wild applause. After they quieted, I made my final statement.

“I tried to have my cake and eat it too: I planned to make a suit for Rachel, and I told her so. Fate had other plans for us with the trial and all, but I didn’t regret my choice, because I realized we had an opportunity to discover so much more for and about ourselves here, on this planet.”

“We’ll be right back,” Kelly said directly into the camera.