The Moon Demands Blood

The moon demands blood. Or so the clerics said. 

Colonel Moritz repeated my flight instructions as I was strapped into the cockpit. His attendants completed a pre-flight inspection, before slipping the helmet over my head and, with a sharp hiss, I was isolated from the Earth’s atmosphere. 

I had a sudden thought that I may never breathe it again. I trembled in my seat as the Colonel finished and shook my hand. I realized I hadn’t been listening to anything he had been saying. The flight crew left, the reflective antimicrobial surface of their suits glinting in the morning light. 

The cockpit door slid shut and clunked closed. A nasal, bored voice came over the comm:

“10.”

The lottery had happened every year. 

“9.”

One person was selected to be shot to the moon to prevent it from falling into Earth.

“8.”

They found me hiding in a closet in the basement.

“7.”

I was told it was an honor to serve humanity. 

“6.”

They claimed the moon facility needed a human operator.

“5.”

Each person was supposed to serve a year, but none ever returned.

“4.”

What happened to them?

“3.”

What was going to happen to me?

“2.”

I gripped the armrest of the seat and closed my eyes.

“1.”

The cockpit shook violently as the rocket exploded behind me. I tried to remember what they had told me, to relax and that they had had 86 successful launches in just as many years.

The rocket rose, pressing me into my seat. A pressure in my chest grew as the rocket roared into the sky. The cockpit beeped around me as instruments flashed and whirred.

I kept my eyes tightly shut as if squeezing them closed would shut out the outside world and return me to Earth. 

The controller said something over the comm, but whatever it was didn’t register. The message repeated and I opened one eye to see the blue sky fade into black as the rocket roared into black. There was a shutter and I gripped the seat, my stomach swirling. 

It was just a booster dropping away. The rocket drifted for a few moments before the second stage fired and I slipped out of the atmosphere, hurtling into the black of space. 

The trip would take just 40 hours. They had made ‘dramatic improvements’ to the propulsion systems, guidance systems, and landing systems, they said. They still needed somebody up there to keep the thing from falling.

The computer took care of the flight. There was nothing for me to do. 

As Earth’s gravity grew weaker, I felt a twinge of panic. Weightlessness was supposed to be one of the best parts of the trip, but it only compounded the utter powerlessness I now felt. 

I stared out through the small black porthole and began to cry. 

They had provided enrichment activities for me for the journey. There was a library of literature, shows, games, and even pornography to keep me sated. The food was not too bad either. A buffet of reconstituted meals not far from what I had on Earth because of the shortages, and higher quality too.

The first hours after the panic subsided were almost relaxing. I began and stopped some books I had meaning to read, leaving a hundred bookmarks across the ship's library.

 I had decided to try my hand at drawing. By hour 15, I had drawn all of the food rations, every knob and button, and every panel of the ship. It was mostly rectangles.

I fell asleep somewhere in hour 16. When I woke, the ship had turned so that I could no longer see Earth from the rear portal. The moon, however, loomed vast and silver ahead. 

It was like a strange white pupil in the black eye of space. 

I thought I might draw it, but doing so would only make me think about it more. I instead flipped through the messages my friends and family had sent along. There was a heartfelt congratulations from my mothers and their cat. A confession of secret, long-held love (now useless) from an acquaintance, and a template holo-letter from a lawyer who informed me that all my worldly possessions had been repossessed or distributed to family as I will no longer need them. I was also legally declared dead. 

Just 25 hours ago I was alive. Not that I had done much with that life. The strangeness of legal-death settled on me like a stray cobweb. I flipped off the messages and sat in silence. The engines hadn’t fired much at all, just small navigational thrusters from time to time. 

I began to think I could hear my heart thudding away in my chest. I looked to the moon through the front porthole and it thumped faster.

I reread the instructions they had given me during the briefing. All I had to do was push a button and jets would fire and correct the moon’s orbit. Why on Earth (or maybe it was on Moon) did they need to send somebody up every year to do it?

The ship’s reverse thrusters fired once in a long continuous burst as we began to decelerate. 

The ship turned, coming in at an angle, aiming for a pair of green blinking lights on the horizon. The thrusters fired again and we rotated so that the nose of the craft pointed down toward the surface. The computer reminded me to take my seat and check the seals on my EVA suit, and I did so, dutifully. 

We came into synchronous orbit with a landing station that shot a harpoon-like anchor at the craft. It latched on with a shuddering thud, and the craft was drawn into an opening on the surface. 

As we slipped inside, I felt my heart pound heavily in my chest. The seat rotated so that the front portal was below me and I could only stare at a wall where had been hung a poster saying, “Welcome to the Moon. Thank you for your service!”

The poster had a cat in a spacesuit who looked unreasonably happy. 

The ship came to a halt with a shutter. Something clunked and whirred outside. There was a hiss as a seal was broken and the chair slowly began to lift toward the exit hatch. 

A small, green man stood before me, dressed in a white lab coat, clipboard in hand. He had two fingers and a thumb, a smooth round head exactly like a green cantaloupe, and his eyes were large and completely black. 

His small, thin mouth turned up slightly at the corners. The smile was shocking on his face. I don’t know why but I assumed this creature was a man. It may have been the toupee he wore. 

“Hello,” said the green man, “I am Dr. Xth.”

He didn’t say anything more.

He smiled.

“Hello,” I said.

He continued to smile.

I blinked.

He smiled. 

“Hello,” I said again.

He pointed to a button on my wrist and I pressed it. My voice emerged from the suit’s comm. 

“Hello.”

“That’s better. I trust the trip was alright?”

“Yes, it was fine.”

“Good, good. We’re always trying to improve.” He smiled again.

“That’s nice,” I said, unsure of what I was supposed to say.

“Yes, it is!” He took my hand and began leading me down a gangplank away from the craft and out of the cavernous landing chamber. We passed through an airlock and he indicated that I could remove my helmet. I did so with some hesitation.

We emerged from the airlock into a corridor with curved walls and lights overhead.

“Is this where I’ll be stopping the moon from falling into Earth?” I asked.

“What?” Dr. Xth seemed startled, then he said with a smile, “No, that is the lie we tell the Earthlings. It’s rather convenient, don’t you think? An easy way to get our people back.”

“Our people?”

The green man nodded and said, “Yes, of course! You’ll remember soon enough once you get acclimated.”

My skin flushed and I felt very dizzy. I stopped and leaned against the curved wall of the corridor.

“Don’t worry,” said Dr. Xth, “it’s common for the implanted memories to crowd out the originals. Dr. Fklpo will have you fixed right up.”

“You mean I am one of you?”

“Yes, well, sort of. Physically you are human, but mentally you are an Xthrixiplaticoridian.”

“Mmm.”

It seemed my human body decided then was a great time to vomit. I was very glad I had removed the helmet.

“Another common side effect,” said the doctor with gentle reassurance.

I sat on a soft bench in an operating gown somewhere in the medical wing of the moon complex. Dr. Fklpo was a green woman (at least her wig made it seem so). She had examined me and then called in another green doctor who also examined me. 

They looked at my tongue, inside my nose, felt down my spine, and checked my reflexes before collecting my spit in a cup. They reacted like a tired audience at the end of an open mic night to my rectal probe joke.

They discussed something with each other in low, heated tones before calling in a third. This green person wore no wig or toupee and was dressed in a form-fitting silver jumpsuit with a flared collar.

They introduced themselves as Blx and then looked intently at me for a few minutes before them and the other two left the room. 

A vague and terrible feeling whirled around my guts, tearing at them like an angry cat. 

I wanted to run, but where to? I was on the moon. 

Dr. Xth and the others returned a few hours or minutes later — it was harder and harder to know what time it was. Each had a grim look on their face. 

“I’m afraid there has been a mistake,” said Dr. Xth.

“Oh?” I said trying my best to seem at ease.

“You aren’t Xthrixiplaticoridian.”

I smiled, not knowing what else to do. 

They did not smile back.

“It appears that our agent that we intended to recall died some months before the launch and the lottery picked you instead.”

“Aren’t I lucky?”

“Yes, but it also means you can’t stay here.”

A flood of relief followed by a thud of dread. “You’re sending me back?”

“No, you can’t go back either. It would risk exposure.”

“So, what am I to do?”

“Dr. Fklpo would like to vivisect you, but I made the case that it might be best to keep you as a kind of breeding stock should humanity come to some disaster.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“However,” said Blx in their strident voice, “I propose a third option. You can instead join my organization and serve the Xthrixiplaticoridian Empire.”

I didn’t hesitate. Why should I have? What other choice was there?

“Deal. What’s the organization?”

“Sanitation.”