Constellation Games (12 page)

"No, it's been on and off for a couple minutes now. I figured it was the suit."

"I hear nothing that could be called a 'tone'," said Tetsuo.

"Oh, right," I said. "Phone-in-the-suit. It's
my
ringtone."

HOLD ON YOU GUYS, IT'S MY MOM

Hi. Yes, ma, I know.

Yes, I'm fine. I'm there. I took an earlier flight. I made it fine. In fact I'm standing on the moon right now. The moon itself. I am wearing a spacesuit. I'll send you a picture. No, I'm on the far side, so even if... you wouldn't be able...

No, it's fine. I just had to pay for the exit visa and the paperwork. I'm serious. They don't use money, it's like
Star Trek
. Not the reboot, I'm talking like
Next Generation
.

Yeah, ma, the thing is, I have savings. They're a Brazilian company. They never offered it, so there's no net loss. There's no COBRA. Will you stop worrying? I know what I'm doing.

So am I hearing the lightspeed lag, or are you pausing to let the guilt sink in? Ma, I'm not gonna take career advice from a professor of English literature. I made like multiple thousands of dollars last week, doing consulting. Probably not, but it was a victimless crime. And Jenny and I have our own game studio now. Jenny. You know Jenny. Yes. No. Because we're not. Great, now we're on that topic.

Can I call you back? Sometime when I'm not on the moon. Okay. Love you too. Bye.

"Well, that's that," I said, "the moon is ruined." Ashley was lying on her back, making a snow angel in the dust, wiping out other peoples' footprints.

"It is unruined," said Tetsuo. "That is what we wanted to show you. Allow me to demonstrate you some craters." Tetsuo galloped like a cheetah away from the mine shaft, across the lunar surface. I carefully hopped along after him.

"Craters?" I huffed. "You sent up an big-ass dust cloud when you were digging this shaft. It took over every cable news station for a week. You must have filled in every crater in a hundred mile radius."

"You should stop watching TV," said Tetsuo, climbing up a small ridge.

"Well, you got me there, but... oh."

Like I said, a hundred yards east of the landing site is the dig site, Luna negative space. A hundred yards west is a pristine lunar field. No footprints, no uniform blanket of dust, just a four-billion-year crop of craters. The moon I had always looked up at, the moon the first human had seen, the first mammal. The moon as it had been back in May, when I could have theoretically been the thirtieth or thirty-first person to walk on its surface.

"How did you—did you put down a sheet or something?"

"That would have been a very large sheet," said Tetsuo.

"Well, you built a space station, I figure you can build a big sheet."

"We can if we want," Tetsuo admitted, "but it was a lot simpler to scan the surface and restore it once the dust had settled. This is a replica."

"You resurfaced the whole thing?"

"Nobody wants to walk in an ocean of dust," said Tetsuo.

"Thank you." It was the only thing I could say.

"Go ahead," said Tetsuo. "The suppose is to guide tourists to this area, and restore the surface every four to six lunar years."

I walked down, trailing footprints behind me, leaving Tetsuo on the ridge. I was alone on the moon.

I stood next to a crater that came up to my shins. It was already a replica, so why not? I kicked the crater and it exploded in a cloud of dust. I laughed.

"I can still see you," said Tetsuo, a voice in my ear over radio.

Don't care.

This may sound ungrateful and stupid, but there's not very much to do on the moon. Even if you catalogued every crater and extracted the entire history of the moon from which crater overlapped which other crater, you'd just have a timeline of meteorite impacts. And there's no point in
you
doing this, because the Constellation has already catalogued the craters and is working on that timeline: Smoke has its lesser subminds crunch the numbers whenever they get bored.

Alternatives to crater classification: you could look at the Luna negative space some more, or you could go to the old moon base at the north pole and have the astronauts refuse to let you in, ya feckin' tourist. Or, you could leave the moon, walk through a port into Alien Ring and play some twenty-million-year-old video games. I chose the last option.

The ports back to Ring City are all behind super double airlocks in an underground bunker, so that someone doesn't fuck up and suck Gweilo Ring's atmosphere onto the moon. Going into this bunker was like taking an instant tour of the Rings. I gawked through airlocks at the huge crystal structures of Peregrini Ring, shimmering in the heat. The windswept ocean of Farang Ring, the flat grey desert of Gaijin Ring, the lightless liquid methane world of Inostrantsi Ring. (Who's writing the purple travelogue prose now, Blum?) It was like the world-selection screen from a
Bit Boy
game.

"What's up?" said Tetsuo, noticing me lagging behind staring through the airlocks. He and Ashley stood in front of a port that overlooked a forest of let's-call-them-trees with broad blue let's-call-them-leaves. "This one is our destination."

"These look like planets," I said. "I thought Ring City would look more like a space station."

"It is a space station," said Ashley, "but unlike you, we don't get to go back home."

"Beware of the gravity differential." The airlock didn't really open—Tetsuo and Ashley just crawled through it like it was made of jelly.

I pushed through the airlock behind them and stepped into the picture. Out of lunar gravity into something four times as strong. Off of the moon and onto a thick blue leaf the size of a city block, the consistency of anti-lawsuit playground foam. Into a forest that was also a city.

"Holy shit," I said.

"Welcome to Macintosh," said Tetsuo with pride.

Trees with trunks the size of office buildings. Above us, a few trees shooting up for miles; trees so tall they nearly reached the central cylinder that ran through Ring City like a skewer through a sliced pineapple. Below us, whole smaller forests of trees with darker leaves, growing between the larger trees. Whole smaller forests growing between each of those trees,
ad infuckingitim
. A fractal forest.

"You
built
this?" I said.

"We didn't build the trees," said Ashley.

"They're called
cma
," said Tetsuo. "A tree is an Earth creature. A paleontologist should disallow her translator such liberties." He and Ashley were stripping off their spacesuits and stretching—this place was home for them.

"It's odd that you never saw this before," said Ashley. "On the Earth Internet I watched a brief documentary film about Alien Ring."

"So did I," I said. "But the cameras were down there, in the forest. I thought it was a park."

This was around noon, Austin time, but in this wedge of Alien Ring it was early morning. On the far side, curving into the sky, city lights twinkled in the night like stars. Directly above my head, the central cylinder, glowing red like a sun where it faced us, showing darkness to the night side of the ring.

"You can keep wearing your suit," Ashley told me, "or we can make you a breathing mask."

Once she said that I felt uncomfortable wearing a spacesuit in a forest. "There's no oxygen here?"

"There is oxygen," said Ashley, "but there's also nitrous oxide."

I chose the mask. We had it made at a repetroire station, and then I tagged along behind Tetsuo and Ashley as we went to ground transportation: skyway cars, ziplines, ports that jumped us from the day side to the night side and back again, and good old fashioned buckets with ropes and pulleys for descending into the forest.

"Curic said you know all about the Ip Shkoy Aliens?" I asked Tetsuo.

"Oh, I know a little," said Tetsuo modest-style.

"You know she gave me an Ip Shkoy computer? Simulates Hi-Def False Daylight? It's pretty cool."

"My expertise is in social relations," said Tetsuo, "but I've been crashing course on popular culture for your visit. Between you and I, we'll be able to do some truly hard-core research."

"Do you speak Pey Shkoy?"

"Well enough to seduce," said Tetsuo, and twisted some vowels into balloon animals. "That means 'you have beautiful hindarms.' Too bad the civilization is extinct, or I would be making some serious time with the ladies."

"Ladies other than me," said Ashley.

Whatever part of my mask kept the nitrous out, didn't keep out the smell. It was a smell like ozone and cloves, and as we went down into the darkness of the forest it picked up spices that don't have names, the leaves decaying on the ground and the living things underneath. I could tell it was a stronger version of the way Ashley and Tetsuo smelled.

Finally Tetsuo and Ashley stopped in front of a metal garage door, which Tetsuo lifted up to expose an honest-to-G-d hole carved in the side of the tree.

"Here we are," said Tetsuo.

"Oh, shit," I said. "I left my bag in Human Ring."

"That's a good place for it," said Ashley. "You won't want to stay here."

"Or maybe I left it on the moon."

"I've created a historical representation of an Ip Shkoy dwelling from the period under study," said Tetsuo. "It is perfect on average." He lifted himself up onto his hindarms, walked into the hole in the tree and I followed. Ashley crawled in behind us.

"Why are you going bipedal?" asked Ashley. "You look silly." Tetsuo's over seven feet tall and his head was bumping the ceiling.

"Domestic bipedalism was fairly common among the Ip Shkoy," said Tetsuo. "Anyway, the human goes bipedal."

"Ip Shkoy were shorter," said Ashley, and didn't stand up.

"This has everything necessary for research," said Tetsuo, as if he were trying to sell me the place. Dim reddish light sifted in through the door, the window, and a balcony that looked out into the tree's hollow interior. "You'll find the False Daylight computer, as well as a number of competitive hardware and media typical of the period."

"Do you live here?"

"This is Tetsuo's toy," sniffed Ashley in the actress' resampled voice. "I won't live in a historical replica."

"But you do!" said Tetsuo in English. "This Ring is a recreation of a techno-primitive past that did not exist! Just as with the human Disney and his eponymous Land!"

"Yes," said Ashley, "a
fantasy
of the past, with proper toilets and no horrible Ip Shkoy food. That's fine with me."

"You must cease enhating replicas!" said Tetsuo. "There are no un-replicas! Your precious fossils are replicas!"

"
I'm
not a replica," said Ashley.

"You're a replica of your parents."

"A synthesis, fucktainer!" [?? -AB]

Tetsuo snarled at Ashley and continued the argument in Purchtrin. The two growled at each other and then he nipped her with thick chewing ridges and Ashley pulled the smaller Tetsuo down on top of her with her powerful tail.

"Ariel, please excuse," said Tetsuo in English. He and Ashley leaped like displeased cats out the door and window respectively. I decided not to follow them, which turned out to be one of my genius ideas, because shortly thereafter distinctive sounds could be heard echoing through the local forest.

I was probably blushing or some shit, so I just poked around the historical recreation. It was so dark I had to use my phone as a flashlight. The building was one big room organized by activity, like a Japanese apartment. A humming tank of refrigerated water held lift-out racks of food packages. Near some long beanbag chairs I found a film projector that accepted tape canisters shaped like the infinity sign. Connected to the film projector was Tetsuo's Simulates Hi-Def False Daylight.

I twisted the capacitor to turn it on. It clicked but nothing happened. I fiddled with the film projector and it lit up one wall with a sickly pink light. Nothing appeared on the screen, but at least there was enough light in the room that I could look around.

The floor was covered with trapdoors concealing storage spaces. Inside one storage space, I found tape canisters for the projector and memory cylinders for the False Daylight. There were dozens of the buggers in little plastic cases. I dropped them in front of the projector beam, sprawled on one of the beanbag chairs, and sorted through the cases, trying to find a logo I recognized from my home experiments with my replica system.

The cases opened from the top and some of them had labels in lurid colors. Others had plain white stickers on them with Pey Shkoy glyphs handwritten in smudged marker. The tape canisters were movies. They had full-color and (possibly, depending on what exactly I was looking at) obscene labels, labels worn smooth in spots by the fiddling of small Alien fingers.

My replica False Daylight had arrived in pristine condition from a repetoire fabricator in Ring City's utility ring. This unit had surely come from the same fabricator at around the same time, but it was dirty, some of the abacus beads were missing, and the plastic on one corner was chipped.

I picked up the heavy projector and pointed it towards the kitchen. The refrigerator's water hookup looked old and rusty where it connected to the water main. There was dirt and... crumbs? in the corners.

This wasn't some Nixon-in-the-kitchen recreation. This used to be somebody's house. A month ago I'd invited Curic into my home and let her snoop around, looking in and under everything and asking questions. Two million years earlier an Alien had invited one of Curic's ancestors into his crappy dark inside-a-tree apartment. Curic's ancestor had scanned everything, just like Curic had for me, and the whole damn place had been stored in the Repertoire until Tetsuo Milk needed to bring the Ip Shkoy era to life.

I pictured a replica of my house made from Curic's notes and scans, in some future space station light-years away. Some poor confused fucker poking at my stack-o-Playstations.

"Hello, Ariel," said a scratchy oily voice from behind me.

"Aaah!" I hit my head on a dangling internal root and whirled to face Curic.

"Welcome to Ring City," said Curic. "You're very jumpy today."

"Curic!" I said. "Don't do that!"

"My name has changed," said Curic. "Please point the archaic multipurpose light emitter somewhere else; it's hurting my eyes."

I set the projector down. "Did you get married?" I said.

"Get your mind out of the gutter," said Curic. "An overlay that cares about such things has modified the romanization of Oyln. My name is now 'Huric'."

"Can I still call you Curic?" I said. "That's what I'm used to."

"You may," said Curic. "As far as I'm concerned, 'Curic' and 'Huric' are equally far away from [hoot, click]."

"Curic," I said, "I think Tetsuo and Ashley are having sex next door."

"If you say so," said Curic, and shuffled over to check out the refrigerated tank.

"They were having an argument and they left and now it's bonk bonk bonk. I know they're newlyweds, but is that normal?"

"Newly-weds?" said Curic. "I don't know what that word means, but Aliens use sex to maintain social cohesion, just as humans do."

"I do not use sex to maintain social cohesion."

"Then perhaps you are the abnormal one," said Curic. "How do you like his old-style dwelling? Very much a post-contact house. Many Farang influences here." Curic ran a hand over the projector I'd been holding.

"False daylight," she said, and shut it off.

"I need that to see."

"Sorry." She turned it back on.

Tetsuo and Ashley crawled back into the apartment. "Oh G-d!" said Tetsuo. "An anachronistic extraterrestrial in my painstakingly researched gaming-hovel!"

"He's talking about you," Curic told me. "I'm perfectly chronistic here."

"It's actually a joke," Tetsuo explained.

"Ariel," said Curic, "now that we are all here, I want to invite you to a party in Inostrantsi Ring. There are a lot of Inostrantsi who would like to meet a human."

"No," I said. "Give me a break. I just went to a space station and the moon and a huge forest. I walked through wormholes and I sat in a fucking Ewok bucket with a rope. I don't want to swim in liquid methane and get shown off to kelp plants right now. I'm exhausted. I want to sit down and play some Ip Shkoy games with someone who actually knows something about the Ip Shkoy."

"Yes!" said Tetsuo. "I win!"