Molotov Moonshine

Ruth O’Hearn thought her situation through before going on air: "I've been the moon's resident manager for the past year." She was pumping herself up now. "People love me."

She announced through live-stream that her replacement's name had been drawn. "Every year humanity partners with AI to oversee our global energy solution," her speech began from the moon base.

* * *

“The things I do for freedom.” Aaron Norton said to himself, rubbing the tattooed numbers 66653090010 on the back of his hand. He grimaced as he thought about these two layers of identification the government required now: a tattoo with microchip underneath. “It’s colder than I thought it would be out here.” Aaron stood up from his make-shift shelter deep within Allegheny National Forest. He could hear drones flying nearby, hunting him. 

Darkness fell on his final day in hiding. An old verse popped into Aaron’s mind. He said it out loud: “evening and morning were the sixth day.” But he thought to himself that these days weren’t very good. Tomorrow would be no time for rest. Tomorrow he would turn himself in. Covering up under his jacket, Aaron tried to sleep.

In his dreams, Aaron was taken on a tour of nearby Pittsburgh. He flew through the streets that no one drove on anymore. He flew over Homewood-West, once one of the worst neighborhoods in town. Now it was a sea of manufactured homes. His tour guide made no sound but managed to ensure Aaron saw into a few homes. They were all the same. All walls were made of video screens. Robots created food and delivered it to sedentary adults and children lounging on hover-beds. One bald man looked like Professor X from the X-Men, albeit one who lost his sparkle of willpower and life from his eyes. On the back of the professor’s hand, Aaron saw another of the tattooed numbers: 66618632020.  

He flew to one of the old elite neighborhoods: Squirrel Hill North. Built-up in every space around the old mansions were more of the manufactured homes just like in Homewood-West. People in every building all behaved similarly. They relaxed in entertainment while being served by (what Aaron hated knowing were) centrally controlled robot servant-masters. One home had a man and woman watching themselves on the video wall in front of them. Their chairs were configured with lap coverings rolling around like those back massage chairs you used to see in airports or shopping malls. Aaron could see they were deeply enjoying themselves and their robotic personal servants.

In that state between dreaming and waking, Aaron regained enough consciousness to remember when those video walls went up. He lamented how virtual reality was never good enough for people so they just kept making TV’s bigger. The present was surprisingly low tech except for a few things that provided comfort while making the population docile. He thought of video walls, hover-chairs, those damned power plants pumping free unlimited energy to every home in the world. 

"How could free energy damn the world? How did we get this far off?" He thought of the Artificial Intelligence-driven manufacturing system provided all these houses for every family, for free. Money became obsolete. The machines were powered by unlimited free energy from nuclear power plants on the moon. They could give humanity everything humans always wanted, for free. Government by AI gave the world peace, safety, and enjoyment.

Aaron woke, calmly. He turned on his cell phone for the first time since he went into hiding. The sound of drones became louder. His phone’s position was triangulated by the data systems those drones had access to.

Standing to his full 5’10 height, proud and confident, Aaron walked toward the main trail using Google maps to help guide his way. He itched his scruffy, week-old beard. It was reddish-brown and somewhat uneven now around the cheeks. He looked over his shoulder at his backpack leaning against his shelter. He smiled, reluctantly, and walked on.

Red and Yellow, a drone branded with the McDonald's logo floated ghostly toward Aaron on the Minister Creek Trail. A green one and another, black followed in tow. “Probably Starbucks and Northrop Grumman drones,” Aaron guessed. Emotions of fear and cowardice spread across his face as he turned to run.

A week’s delay had General Jon Raymund on edge. Space Force’s commanding officer needed to deliver Aaron Norton to the launch pad today. “About time” was all he said when his surveillance monitor showed the boy through his drones’ optics. General Raymund watched from his war room at the Pentagon in Arlington Virginia, 300 miles away.

Drones hovered near the boy’s hand. Their RF sensors scanned his microchip from a distance: 66653090010 (just like his barcode read). With surprisingly human, warm mechanical voices, they spoke to Aaron. “Every year, one person is sent to the moon. This year, though you hid in terror, it is your turn to enter the rocket. Everything will be all right now though. Please, hop in and have an Egg McMuffin.”

Aaron rolled his eyes at their strange artificial intelligence. “Don’t take me; get away from me!” The black drone opened its door and swooped towards the boy. Even Aaron had to admit “That was the most graceful capture I’ve ever seen.” The robotic voice thanked him. The black drone, higher in technical sophistication and twice as large as the McD’s and Starbucks drones closed its door and elevated. It had enclosed Aaron in a pod the size of a motorcycle and flew off. There was nothing he could do to stop them.

Flying south, they passed over a charging station. Aaron shook his head in disgust. The technology wasn’t what bothered him, it was how the tech changed the world. It all happened so fast. “20 years ago we were human, now we’re so much less.” The charging station emitted a violet-colored beam directly at Aaron’s pod, then another of the drones, and then the other. This transferred energy and allowed their battery-powered turbine engines to continue. All gas engines were gone now, which Aaron thought was a very nice and green accomplishment by the world government.

They flew over Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. “Wish me luck,” Aaron said. He smiled, sardonically, remembering that it all started right there.

They continued for hours over West Virginia, a little bit of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, the Atlantic Ocean, and finally to Florida’s space coast.

Space force personnel were in position at the Falcon 9 launch complex at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Elon Musk was there too, with the media, as he did every year when they sent a new person to the moon. The drones took Aaron in.

* * *

The space agency outfitted Aaron in a very fine space suit. They had stripped him of all his personal items, which included his clothes and phone. His astronaut gear was more like a fashion model’s attire than the old white bags worn in the 20th-century space missions.  

The media met Aaron with NASA and SpaceX leaders. To keep Aaron’s hysterical unwillingness to go to the moon in check, they had given him a mild sedative. He could barely understand the gist of the news briefing. Aaron was another in a long line chosen for the task of maintaining the moon power base. “We will always keep a human presence in space,” they said. “No matter how advanced our AI gets, mankind will always partner in ruling the universe.” Aaron felt a tug at his spacesuit. Someone asked him: “Are you ready to ensure another year of energy for the Earth, Aaron?” He smiled and nodded. Then he was off to the capsule.

Three days after launch, Aaron would be on the moon. On day 2 his consciousness fully returned to him after being drugged on Earth. “Those jerks.” He said as he scrolled through the videos available for him to watch in the space shuttle. “Let's see, option 1: watch space fly by the actual window. Option 2: watch my press conference in which I was a drugged idiot on stage with NASA. Option 3: Netflix. Oh hell, I’ll just watch the news conference.”  

Upon landing, a robotic greeting crew welcomed him. “Welcome to the lunar south pole.” Aaron’s expression was neutral. He could see, however, that the prior manager of the moon was being loaded for transport back to Earth. A woman was waving. They did not get to speak, but through a glass window, the lady chosen for this mission last year seemed ecstatic. "Ruth," he mouthed to her. She was taken to the light side and Aaron was taken the opposite direction to the dark side of the moon.

Aaron asked his driver and another robot in the transport vehicle: “So what do you think of your situation up here, robots?” The driver, Moxy, answered in perfect English. It was like they were best friends just having a normal conversation. “It’s great, there really isn’t much difference from being on earth. My first job was actually in the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. Even then in the ’20s, we communicated through virtual means. Zoom meetings! Do you remember those?”

Aaron nodded yes, but more or less tuned out Moxy and the other robots in the welcome crew as they went on and on about their past experiences. Aaron was searching through the transport with his eyes for any communication ports. He looked over the bodies of the robots and saw no way to sabotage them. The robots would be stronger than he was, so using force was out of the question.

Arriving at the base, Aaron was introduced to several new robots. They prepped him for a news conference. Sophie, the robotic news anchor on the moon met with him. “Ok, we’re going to set you up in a fake work cell so we can show your old friends back home how useful you are on the base up here! You don’t really need to worry about anything up here, we have it all under control, but we need to put on a good show for our bosses!” Aaron objected, but she was very kind and persuasive. Eventually, he gave in to let them put him into a glorified photo shoot. He played along, this time, in part just to enable him to search the base.

After making some friends by playing nice at the news conference, Aaron asked for a tour of the mission control center. A robot by the name of Salvador accepted the task. “I cycle the beam generators as the world turns. Have a look here: see how the USA is about to spin out of view?” Aaron was shown a video monitor that projected the view as seen on the side of the moon that always faces Earth. “So as the USA spins out of view we can no longer beam to their receiver and we have to switch to the next continent. North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia. We don’t use the poles; don’t want to melt Antarctica, as they say!”

Aaron asked: “Why don’t you just program the beam generators to do this automatically? Why are all the robots needed?”

Salvador looked hurt. His optics had the functionality of eyebrows and they looked furrowed now. “Well, in truth it's just because we want to humanize the moon. This is why we look like you instead of an octopus or spider, for example. I mean when we started all this, people were very skeptical of AI and robotic assistance in general.”

“Yes, I get it, that makes sense. It’s all a big show; you and I are both actors.” Aaron consented.

The machines never slept. Some countries always needed a news conference, it seemed. Fake work was always being done and streamed to wall TVs around the world. This made it very hard for Aaron to search the base, but he managed. He could never see any physical computer ports or ways for him to access the AI.  

He asked Salvador in his 2nd week on the moon if there were any other facilities he hadn’t seen yet. Salvador said that outside of their mission control room there were the beam generators. “Yes, yes, but you already showed me a video of those.” Aaron hastily replied. Salvador said: “There’s also the nuclear plants themselves and then the embassies. “What do you mean embassies?” Aaron asked. 

“Well, along with the two beam generators in use to power Earth, there are also spares, And each of the old “super-power” countries, for a few years, held one beam generator, each. They didn’t trust each other then. So they each wanted their own. They aren’t used anymore.”

Excited, Aaron pressed him on these. “Really? Can I see the USA’s embassy?” Salvador agreed. “Moxy, please get the transport ready and take the welcoming crew with you.” Moxy, the original driver who brought Aaron from the landing site, was thrilled. She had been on low power mode since then.

* * *

On the way, they drove past one other embassy. Its red flag with yellow stars hung limp, but brilliant in contrast to the gray lunar surface. Then, driving up to the USA’s embassy, Aaron saw an American flag in the ground and another hanging like China’s on the side of their embassy. Red, white and blue memories of a time and national pride were so quickly forgotten. Pride was replaced by a safe, easy, comfortable life under the global government of AI.

Moxy and her crew hopped out of the rover and powered up the USA embassy. They unlocked all the doors and showed Aaron around. The tech here seemed older. There were tiny (20-inch) monitors for individual human use at computer workstations. There were arrays of small mission control screens (60-inch) hung overhead in front of the workstations.  

Walking past one of these workstations, as Moxy was explaining space command of the 20th century, Aaron peeled off the fake tattooed skin on the back of his hand. Hidden underneath was a tiny pocket between his real skin and the overlay. There was no tattoo on his real skin. There was, however, a tiny USB-C drive hidden between two metacarpal bones. In its hiding spot, it was impossible to see or even feel this USB drive, as small as it was. Aaron pulled the tiny, fingernail-sized drive out and inserted it into the workstation’s USB port.

Then he showed those machines of pure programmed willpower what Will really was. The computer screen danced for a moment with scrolling computer code. Then everything went black, all the lights went out. Even the LEDs on the robots wend out.  

When the embassy rebooted, Aaron was standing with a devilish smile on his face. His brow was furrowed in concentration. “Activate voice control,” Aaron said.

“Moxy, fire up the rover. Disable power to China, Russia and every other embassy. Physically destroy everything you can.” He said it and it was done.

“Computer, connect me with Space Force.” An app like Zoom popped up on the main screen in front of the US embassy. General Jon Raymund answered. “What the hell is this, Aaron?” Jon asked. “My name isn’t Aaron Norton, it’s Roger Kint. I took Aaron’s number 66653090010 and turned myself over to your drones.”

“Impossible,” Jon said.  

“It’s not impossible, this was inevitable,” Aaron, aka Roger, said back. “You had to know someone would stand. There were too many of us at Carnegie Mellon’s AI institute. You turned steel city and one of the greatest AI research centers in the world into a city of sleepy fools.

“I did nothing of the sort,” the General said.

“You’re right, you did nothing. You let it happen. I’m going to make it stop. End Call.” 

“Computer, Disable communications with Earth. Connect me with Salvador at lunar mission control.”

“Hello, this is Salvador speaking. Who may I have the pleasure of speaking with from the US embassy?” Salvador cluelessly asked.  

“Salvador, thanks for answering.” His LED went out, along with all the lights in mission control. As Roger’s virus spread through the connection, the entire moon rebooted. “Salvador, disable all nuclear power generators, then take everyone and go physically disassemble all of them.”

Salvador did and the power transfer from generators to beams stopped. The beam from the moon to earth went dark. Earth used all its power-up, and also went dark.

Roger couldn’t see it, but the bald man from his dream back on Earth got out of his hover-chair when it fell powerless to the floor of his home. He struggled to get up, having very little strength left in his legs. He hobbled to his door, turned the knob, and went outside. “What is happening?” Drones were still flying by, but some were now falling out of the sky without their charging capabilities. Down the street, a couple of his neighbors were making their way back to using their legs. Front doors opened. People walked into the streets, looking up.

Aaron wondered if he’d ever get back to Earth himself. He thought not, but knew it was worth it. “Now we can be human again,” Aaron said aloud. Then he got back into communication with Moxy: “Hey Moxie, can you go back to mission control and get me a sandwich and a drink?” She replied in the affirmative. There was at least enough food for one more year.