Chapter 3 The device

It was a disaster before it properly began.

Tasha woke up, took three steps across the room, and walked directly into my leg. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the particular stillness that meditation requires, which she destroyed completely by falling onto me, catching herself on my shoulder, and immediately began complaining about the fact that I was sitting like a statue.

"Not my fault you’re blind." I said.

"Who meditates anymore? And at this hour."

"It’s eight in the morning."

"Exactly!"

She stood up right, murmured something under her mouth and disappeared into the bathroom. I found two bowls. There were no cups in this place, which said something about whoever had stocked it, and poured the tea and set the table and waited. She came out with the heater already cranked up behind her, dressed in almost nothing. I pulled her chair. She looked at it. Then at me. She sat down.

"Thank you." she said, like it surprised her.

She spread a mini projection across the table, the building’s entrance, the floor layout, the movement patterns of three tracked signals rendered in light outside the structure of the building.

It was the tallest building on the Moon. Five stories high, which would have been unimpressive on Earth and here felt like arrogance carved into architecture. The surrounding buildings were spaced far apart from it, leaving it isolated at the center of an empty plaza as if nothing deserved to stand close. Its walls rose in smooth white composite panels, thick and windowless for most of their height, and above them sat a great glass dome, spherical and gleaming under the filtered lunar light. The roof looked almost delicate. The building beneath it was built like a fortress.

"If you zoom out you’ll find three tracked people. You’ll find us in green. The other one is the target. Obviously in red. Grandisfield." She paused for a moment.

My eyes opened wide open at the name she had given me. "He's one of the founding families. What are we going to do with him exactly?"

"Today we won’t touch him. We get inside, find his room, and take what’s in the vault. The association wants to know what he’s been building before we move on him. You understand the difference between reconnaissance and action?" She said, moving her hand in a circular motion.

"I’ve been known to show restraint." I said.

She looked at me like she didn’t believe that for a second.

She tapped the projection and it rotated slowly. "Go through the main gates. You’re on the list as Patrik Belicer. Give them the ID at the gate and find room 203. I’ll meet you there."

"I thought we were going in together." I said, holding the bowl of tea with one hand.

"I have something to deal with first. I’ll come through the back entrance."

She slid the ID across the table. Smiled forcibly and slouched slightly. "Let’s do our first mission."

"Let’s get on with it," I said, turning my head away so she wouldn’t see that I wasn’t smiling back.

10:30am. Meeting center.

I walked toward the building with music in one ear. Not for pleasure. Simply to give the quieter parts of my mind something to occupy them, because without it they had a tendency to ask questions I hadn't prepared answers for yet. The music helped. Not much. But enough.

The music helped. Not much. But enough.

The tower rose from the center of the district plaza, and nothing on the Moon should have been that tall. Every other structure crouched low beneath its dome, practical and compressed, built for efficiency rather than beauty. But this tower stood apart, surrounded by open stone and polished walkways, five stories of pale composite rising toward the glass sphere above. The dome roof reflected the artificial sky in fractured light. From a distance it almost looked holy. And up close expensive.

People entered in formal clothing, moving through the wide front steps beneath banners bearing the insignia of the founding families.

To the right of the plaza stood a smaller building. Through its wide glass corridor I could see children moving in slow synchronized circles while white-coated monitors observed from behind glass. No talking. No playing. Just small bodies walking in careful measured steps, over and over, while someone with a clipboard made notes. A sign above the entrance read: First Daycare — Lunar Adaptation Program. The advertisements called it preparation for the future. Everyone on the Moon knew it was preparation for Mars. The Moon was not the destination. It was an experiment. I stood there longer than I meant to before walking to the gate.

The guard held out his hand without looking at me. I gave him the ID. He scanned it, returned it, and said, "Have a good meeting, Mr. Belicer." I turned toward the entrance. Then the man behind me screamed.

"No — please, no! I only wanted to get to the party!"

I glanced back. The line moved forward as if nothing had happened. No one reacted, no head turned, no conversation paused. That, more than anything, unsettled me. I turned and kept walking.

Inside, the lower hall glittered with crystal lighting refracting pale gold across polished stone floors. But beyond it, past the inner corridor, the hall opened into something else entirely. The glass dome above the upper room was dark, lit only from beneath, and at its center, raised on a low platform and covered in white fabric, stood something. Just its shape visible. Nobody spoke above a murmur up there. The entire room felt like the inside of a held breath. I took a canapé from a passing tray, held it without eating it.

I took a canapé from the tray of a passing waitress, held it without eating it, and walked towards room 203. Which was, as it turned out, the women’s restroom.Tasha had sent me to the women's restroom. I stood there and considered whether this was a mistake or a test. Then I considered that with Tasha, those two things might be the same.

I stood outside it while women passed in and out, their expressions curious, until one of them stopped in front of me on her way out. "Isn't this an odd place to wait for a woman?" She said, very quietly.

"I’m waiting for my lady." I paused. "Are you Irish?"

"Yes. Was my accent too obvious?"

"Somewhat." I considered her. "Well. I’d better keep waiting. Hope you have a fine rest of your evening." She stopped smiling and pressed a small card into my hand and walked away. "Good day." She said, her straight hair waved behind her as she turned. On the card, in clean typeset print: call after 9pm— M.O.M. It followed with a phone number.

I almost laughed. Not because anything was funny. Because of the word mom, delivered to me by a stranger outside a women’s bathroom on the Moon. In a week that had already contained more strangeness than I had accumulated in the prior decade, struck me as the kind of detail that would be rejected as too much if you put it in a novel.

Minutes later Tasha appeared from the corridor, took my hand and said "let’s go, babe." in the fluent, effortless tone keeping her voice low.

I finally ate the canapé and in a moment I understood what the card was about. "A woman gave me this," I said quietly, close to her ear. "Told me to call at 9pm. M.O.M"

Tasha’s grip tightened on my hand. Barely. "Wait… They said they would give me the card."

"Well," I whispered, "you and I will have to discuss that later."

She nodded once.

The lower floor was crowded with the kind of people who made a room feel smaller simply by occupying it. Men who had never lived with the possibility that the world might deny them something. Tasha had looped her arm through mine, and guided me toward a group of older men near the center of the room as if we had always been together and had simply been separated for a moment.

"Hello!" She said, in a voice I had not yet heard from her. Warm, open, and faintly delighted. The men turned. Smile at the smiles of men who were pleased to be approached.

"Have we met before?" one of the five men asked, leaning forward.

"No, we haven’t. I am Lady Belicer, and this is my husband Patrick."

"I’ve heard that name somewhere before," said another.

Another looked directly at my left hand. "Have you lost your ring, Mr. Belicer?"

I glanced at Tasha fingers. She was wearing one. She had not thought to provide me with one. Before I could construct anything that resembled a reasonable response, Tasha turned to me with an expression of such precise, luminous fury that for a moment I genuinely could not tell whether it was performance.

"You forgot your ring again? How many times, Patrick. How many times must I ask one simple thing of you. Are you looking for someone new to impress tonight? Is that why you told me you might not come home?"

I recognized what she was building. I stepped into it. "My love, I simply forgot. I have a client meeting after this event—"

"UNBELIEVABLE! Go fuck whoever the hell you want." She hissed, reasing my arm and leaving me standing alone in the middle of the group with the dignity of a woman who had already decided we were all beneath her.

The men erupted. This, apparently, was the finest entertainment the evening had yet offered. "It’s alright, it’s alright." one said.

"Women, Mr. Belicer— they never quite understand us, do they?" said the other.

"She’ll be home when you get there, a simple apology and it’s done." The first one said, as something loosened in his spine. "Why not enjoy yourself in the meantime as she said?" the one who looked the youngest said chuckling.

I looked at them with a smile trying to make my peace with it.

"That all sounds wonderful, gentlemen. Tell me. What brings you to the event?"

"Don’t you know? We’re part of Mr. Gradisfield’s team," said the youngest of them.

We spoke for some time about the Ho2 transportation system and government logistics. Subjects that men could discuss indefinitely, they asked nothing of me. Not that any of those subjects intrigued me. I was just a face to talk to. Rich men like them love talking about themselves so thoroughly that they forget entirely to ask about you. My name alone gave them sufficient reason to include me. I was a surface to speak at. I have been doing worse things.

At 1pm the lights dropped without announcement. No music. No introduction. The room simply went quiet. Grandisfield entered from a side door with no guards beside him and no acknowledgement of the crowd, walking in a straight line toward the stage as though the people between him and it were a landscape rather than an audience. He was older than I had imagined, and he carried a slight elongation. He wasn't born here, but claimed regardless. Everyone stood as he passed.

He reached the stage, quickly read his notes once, and set them aside. Behind him, through the glass dome at the back of the hall, Earth hung in the dark with a pale blue, distant, and very small look. Grandisfield stood directly in front of it.

"Today," he said, in a voice that did not require the microphone, "is the day we reveal the device that will change how we continue life on the Moon. without causing further harm to our citizens."

The room went quiet. "We have stabilized the electromagnetic field at 2.0." he paused. "This means we can illuminate the entire city without cutting the gravity supply to the poor districts. Every level. Every sector. Equal gravity with thirty-five percent less electricity than we consume today." The applause gathered in a rush.

Grandisfield's left hand lowered to his side. His index finger pressed into his thumb with pressure. Yet his expression didn't change.

"The inequality we have accepted as a condition of life here," he said, "is not a condition. It was a choice. And choices can be unmade."

I was watching his movement when one of the men beside me leaned toward the other. He was speaking quietly. "You know his daughter was in the first daycare program? One of the originals." The other nodded. "That's why he's been doing gravity work for fifteen years after the Caelrics family vanished. The poor girl never returned to Earth weight."

The first man slurped his drink. "A rich organization offered him full retirement three years ago. Earth relocation. His whole family. Enough money that his grandchildren wouldn't need to work." A pause. "He turned it down."

"Why?"

The man shrugged. "Said he wasn't finished. And to be fair, how could his daughter handle Earth's gravity at this point?"

I looked at my watch.

Tasha appeared at my elbow. "Two more minutes into the speech. We move."

I suppose she’s right about that, I thought, watching Grandisfield still. Perhaps this man is simply very good at giving speeches.I told myself that. It was, at the time, a necessary thing to tell myself.

The applause rose and Tasha gave me the signal. I moved toward the emergency staircase. She was already ascending. I followed.

The speech drifted up from below us as we climbed. "We will start with Gladivea, and move to other nations. We have thought of walking programs so Lunars can adapt easily after a set period of time," he said, “It is time for the Divided Hands to reunite as one. The rich and the poor.”

His voice echoed through my head. "You said this man was evil."

"Everyone performs in front of a crowd," she replied, breathing heavily. "Behind closed doors, people show what they are."

I said nothing. She was not wrong. And yet…

His room had no guard posted outside it. This was the detail that should have stopped us. The absence of something expected is, in my experience, more dangerous than the presence of something feared. Tasha’s jaw tightened for a fraction of a second when she saw it. Then she opened the door and we went in regardless.

The moment we crossed the threshold, an AI system sealed the door and turned its scanner toward our faces. Tasha had the spray paint out before it completed its rotation. The lens went dark, the scan died mid-process, and no notification would leave this room until the meeting below concluded. I noted this with one part of my attention. With another part I noted the vents. They had sealed automatically when the door locked. This meant that the air we were presently breathing was the air that existed in this room and no other. Growing incrementally less useful with each minute we remained. I became conscious of my own breathing.

We crossed to the vault. Tasha worked the combination without hesitation. The door opened. She reached inside and stopped. Then she removed a single folded card from the top of everything else and held it out without reading it. I took it. On it, in clean handwriting: Thank you for coming. I glanced at Tasha. She was already looking at the vault contents. She reached in and removed the documents.

"What are those?" I asked, putting my fist over the desk.

"Documents the association instructed me to retrieve."

I raised my neck and head over her shoulder without touching them. Maps. infrastructure diagrams. Supply chain analyses. The oxygen shipments from Earth, their routing. Not the work of a man selling secrets to enemies. The work of a man who had been quietly painstakingly studying how to keep a world alive without needing anyone’s permission to do it.

From somewhere below us the speech was still drifting up through the building. His voice carried even through the floors.

The inequality we have accepted as a condition of life here is not a condition. It was a choice. I folded the documents and handed them to Tasha.

He sounded like someone who actually meant it. I didn't say that out loud. I didn't say anything. Tasha put the documents inside her jacket and I went back to watching the door.

"We wait for the exit signal. Two knocks on the outer wall, service corridor, and we’re gone before he comes up." Tasha said, still looking for something.

I pulled out the projection map and opened it above my palm. The three signals were still active. Two greens. One red.

The red one was moving.

"Tasha."

"I see it."

"He is coming!"

"The signal will come before he gets here."

I watched the red dot moving slowly towards our position. looked at the door. Then back at the dot again.

"Tasha the signal!"

Her eyes were on the vault.

Suddenly, I saw three other green dots appear on the map. They were getting closer. Near the door. I sharpened my ears to hear the knocks. The knocks didn't come. The door opened instead.

Tasha exhaled once. "Damn it."

The three green dots had vanished from the screen. No one was there to rescue us. I squeezed my eyes hard and opened them.

Grandisfield's voice entered the room ahead of him. Calm. The voice of a man who had known we were here before we arrived and had simply waited for the appropriate moment. "Come on out." A pause. "I won't bite." Another pause, followed by footsteps. "I've been waiting for you."