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There were exactly two moons on the horizon. One was red and the other blue.
“Mama I’m cold and I wanna go inside.”
“Give it a minute Baby, it’s supposed to happen soon,” said Mrs. Acre.
Mama, Baby and the other tourists watched as the moons drew closer and closer, until their edges covered one another like a venn diagram. Then something magical happened; the two round globes both grew dark. Once the tourists had overcome their initial shock of the intersection, they noticed as a thin sheet of white began to form over the distant planets like a veil of thin muslin. The transformation had begun. The moons continued to become lighter and lighter still, till they were a piercingly shimmering shade of yellow. Finally came the moment they had all been waiting for. In that special split second, the moons became one. Out of their single outline radiated light. Long and elastic, the rays looked like fireworks decorating the sky of deep space.
“Mama, the rocks hurt my feet,” said Baby.
“I think it’s time for us to go,” said the dad, who was also known as Mr. Acre.
As if by the silent command of that self-proclaimed head of family, the herd of tourists headed back towards the hotel. Rigid and majestic, the outline of the bulbous hotel in the distance bestowed upon the travellers a mysterious power, the feeling of which was heightened by the affair they had just witnessed. If one was only to observe the hotel without seeing it’s surroundings, it might have been difficult to discern that this lodging was located in outer space. Built in 2030, the hotel was part of a grand chain of other such establishments erected on synthetic planets as vacation spots for human folk keen and crazy enough to experience an outer-world holiday.
The path towards the hotel was paved by rocks in the sand. This pathway had been forged for the purpose of allowing Earth people an increasingly convenient passage back to the hotel. As she put one foot in front of the other, Mrs. Acre noticed how each rock was smooth and placed in the shape of an endless, snaking trail. With the moons having completed their rare and momentary superimposition, dusk enveloped the fumbling figures like a heavy blanket.
In the distance the tourists saw the chauffeur. Due issues with understaffing, this gentleman had also been made responsible for the front door. He was wearing a suit that appeared as clean and crisp as it did uncomfortable. Despite his attire, he seemed oddly cheerful: his toothy grin radiated all the way to reach the approaching tourists.
When the tourists had nearly reached their destination, a woman escaped unexpectedly from one of its side doors. Mr. Acre watched incredulously as she looped around the parking lot and ran straight towards them. Some of the members of the majority recognised her as one of the employees at the hotel, specifically as the one who had conducted the primary round of introductions and handled the offering of the complementary (fizzy) drink. A bewildered look in her sizable brown eyes clearly transmitted the feeling of immense fear.
Running like a ferocious wild-animal having narrowly escaped its cage, the front-desk woman was quickly nearing the mass. An electric swirl of ill-omened air sent a shockwave that synapsed from tourist to tourist.
Still a little way off from the rest, the running woman began to shout.
“Dead! Dead! Dead!”
The certainty of the storm brewing in the horizon washed over the tourists like a tsunami.
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“Maman, please relax. I would just like to know, what do you mean that this man ‘just collapsed’?” asked the chauffeur.
“What I mean is that he was busy looking at the moon through the window when all of a sudden he just fell onto his back,” replied the front-desk lady. She had just recently calmed down enough to be able to express herself without hyperventilating.
“I’m quite sure it could’ve been a fit of epilepsy. My brother Ren has the condition and we are always prepared for such instances. The onset of the fits is usually quite random you see. Have you perhaps checked the pocket or wallet of the deceased for any identification of such a possibility? We keep a note on Ren to make sure he’s never caught in such a situation without an explanation” explained Mr. Acre. Mrs. Acre looked at Mr. Acre admiringly. The Acre baby was rocking consciously from one side of her tiny feet to the other, not causing a fuss because she was mature enough to understand the gravity of the unfolding situation.
“Well epilepsy or not, he’s dead,” announced the front-desk lady decisively. Her lip was obviously trembling and she was trying to hide it. The corpse currently laying in front of her was the first dead person she had ever seen.
“We should probably call the owner,” said one of the other tourists now gathered in a crowd around the fallen individual.
As the commotion began to grow increasingly disorganized, Mr. Acre considered how seeing the dead man had led him to contemplate the fragility of life. The poor deceased soul had just been sitting only a few tables away from him at breakfast, and was now gone forever. It had happened just like that. All that was left of this person, of this soul just like himself, was a carcass of decaying matter.
“Dying in space must be a hell of a way to go,” remarked Mr. Acre to himself.
The front-door lady was tasked with calling the owner. This became quite a project because the owner had apparently made a point of not wanting to be contacted unless there was an emergency. It was popularly agreed that the current circumstances most certainly constituted an emergency.
Upon being called, the owner was foreseeably annoyed.
“I want it cleaned up quickly and painlessly. I don’t want this incident to lead to any bad press. The fact that Hank was one of my close associates, and in fact the associated that figured out this lunar-intersection trip, really doesn’t help the matter,” the owner mumbled, as if trying hard not to be overhead. The front desk lady thought he had sounded off because the Earth-space connection was bad, but the fact was that he had been whispering to hide this conversation from his nosy wife.
The front-desk lady reported her findings to a jittering hodgepodge of tourists and staff. Out of everyone, the chef was the most outraged.
“Look fellas. I think I deserve to take over. I know most about true crime. All those novels and movies’ve made me an expert!” he bulldozed.
“But if this man just collapsed there really isn’t much to investigate is there? The situation must be the result of some sort of medical condition like Mr. Acre suggested,” piped Mrs.Acre.
There was a solid silence. The tourists wanted badly to believe the accident story, but something held them back. Their judgement was collectively screaming out for answers.
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As the agitation of the tourists and staff increased, a humanoid lady was sneaking about in one of the rooms on the first floor. She was wearing a blood red evening gown that fit tightly over her curvaceous figure. Opening up on the left of the gown was a long slit that exposed a hint of fresh flesh. This piece of pale purple, shaven skin glinted out as she snuck behind one of the curtains. From the vantage point provided by this slit, one could see a compact handgun attached to a garter.
The hair of this inexplicable lady flowed wonderfully over her virescent shoulders. For a transient ephemerality she stood abreast the open window and her entire being simmered irresistibly in the evening breeze. The curtains splayed out behind her.
Without looking back, she leaped out of the open window.
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“Looks like a poison bullet to me,” said the coroner, holding up a minuscule fragment of a tiny, hollow weapon.
“But how could something so small have penetrated all the way into his heart?” asked Mr.Acre.
Despite resistance from the hotel chef, the Space Police had been alerted. A single chief inspector, Mr. Bertie, and an experienced coroner, Mr. Pons, had been sent to investigate the case. It would have made sense for the hotel to have been evacuated, but the folk already staying there were now all far too curious to go back to their mundane lives. Besides, those who had been at the scene would still need to be investigated for potential involvement.
Entranced, Mr. Pons ignored both Mr. Acre and the gaze of the multitude of onlookers. With his rubber gloved fingers, he carefully lifted the weapon onto a device that resembled an electric scale.
They waited in silence.
Suddenly, yellow numbers popped up on the screen. The text was too small for most to see, but the coroner could easily make out the markings:
“UNIDENTIFIED,” it read.
“The machine won’t recognize the poison. It must not be anything that has yet been registered in the galaxies,” squawked Mr.Pons. The few hairs still left on his head shook in the wake of this puzzling announcement.
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The murderer entered her cave. It was a chilly and bleak little cave, into which not much light at all could enter. Around the fundus of the cave she spotted her people; they were busy having their evening meal. Behind the mass of life-forms she saw their proudest achievement: a huge painting of an intersecting moon. The image glowered out from the callous wall and enveloped the crevice with its magnificence.
The other humanoid beings were gathered around the cave painting as if it was a fire of some sort. To the murderer these creatures didn’t seem special and she had almost forgotten how she, like all the other green, red and blue humanoid beings around her, had originally arisen from a single synthetic cell. It had been the humans that had created them from the same matter as the rest of their planet.
Between themselves these cave creatures were known as the Planetists. Unbeknownst to the humans who had accidentally made them into being, their collective will was to become an autonomous people. The main goal of these accidental life-forms was recognition, and as a logical continuation, sovereignty.
Allowing tourists a special viewing of the lunar intersection had been too much. The sandwiching of these moons over one another was considered a pivotal and sacred moment among the Planetists. Something had had to be done about those meddling tourists trying to capture all of it on their stupid little cameras. None of them could ever really appreciate the importance of the event. Visual depictions of the lunar intersection should have been reserved for the stone-cold walls of this matrix of caves.
“Sister, do you come bearing good news?” asked a Brother (Planetists emphasized their unity by calling one another Sisters and Brothers).
“Yes and no. I have accomplished the mission, but I fear investigations are ensuing,”
“Investigations into us?”
“Not into us but into the event at large.”
“But I judge that we seem at least momentarily to be safe,” said the Planetist leader. He was bearing a majestic staff with a symbol of the lunar intersection attached to the top. His head-dress caught the light that fought its way into the cave and light up like a lightbulb.
“How do we guarantee they won’t come here?” interrupted a concerned mother. Her little one was burrowing into her side to hide.
“They won’t be able to recognise the material so it might not be soon. But we have done the right thing, for the one I killed was the one who brought the lunar intersection to the knowledge of those foreigners. Without him they might never have know. Murder or not, they will find us, and when they do we must be prepared,” answered the assassin.
“Prepared for what?”
“Prepared to fight,” she replied.
On walls overwhelming the colorful characters, the picture of the intersecting moons pulsated and dazzled, as if urging the Planetist to remain firm in their resolve.
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WAST WRTNG 