Chapter 1 - Realities

Walking became sloshing in the grassy backyard saturated after a solid week of rain. The turds were soggy and hard to pick up. Some were eroded by the pummeling hail. Some were just runny little shit stains embedded in the turf.

Bending at the waist wasn't getting any easier for a 62-year-old man and staying bent to get as much feces as possible into a gloved hand simply added insult. By the time the turds dropped into the composite bag, they were mere shadows of their former selves.

"Why don't you use the scooper like everyone else?" queried the little girl. She was named Peach, an homage to her pink cheeks and goldish skin.

"The scooper doesn't work so well in puddles," answered her father, named Rick. "And haven't we had this conversation several times before?"

Peach furrowed her clean little brow and rested an index finger on her lower lip. "Oh, yeah. I forgot. Still learning." Her green eyes beamed a path to Rick's blues, locking onto them for a second or two, eliciting a smile from both father and daughter.

"It's ok, you're only ten," Rick said, then bent to grab a brown morsel he almost stepped on.

"Yup." She strutted in a circle with exaggerated steps to make splashes in the wet grass. Her hands were jammed into her pockets as she stomped hard, navigating around the poops. "Maybe we should change Larry's food."

Rick grinned. It still amused him that she named the dog Larry. "Larry's food is fine. Changing it won't make him poop any less." He dropped one last turd into his bag, twirled it and tied a knot to seal it. "And if he did, we'd have one less thing to obsess about."

Peach giggled and took one last hard jump into a puddle where the yard dipped. Water splashed high. She ran to Rick and the pair walked towards the door holding hands.

"What's tonight's lesson?" Peach asked.

"Small arms," he replied. "We'll watch the holo about the Berretta Fox One-Nine, then practice with it."

"Ok."

"It's a smaller gun, smaller than the Fox Twenty we tried last week. For those dainty hands of yours."

"Ok."

"Then we'll figure out food for when mom comes home."

"Ok."

"I thought maybe we'd dip into our secret stash of delicious, illegal beef."

"Ok."

Rick stopped. Peach stopped with him. "Ok?" he asked. "That's your response to everything?"

"I told you, I'm still learning."

He smiled like an idiot and said, "Ok."

***

The end of the storm was welcome but provided only a short break from the shared anxiety of the three-thousand or so residents of Sector 5, South Atlanticford. Week-long storms that featured monsoon rains, hail and winds of up to 60 miles per hour were no longer chat-worthy on the socials. Life moved indoors with little consternation during those times. Better to keep cool and dry so work and school could continue safely. Most homes remained intact unlike the Middle Plains where temporary housing was erected, then destroyed, then re-erected, then destroyed again. Or California, now covered with white, combat-grade tents anchored into bedrock to withstand the continent's harshest climate on a budget.

"Why don't you just leave the dog shit?" asked Laura between bites of her beef stew. "Doesn't it fertilize our crappy grass?"

"No, silly," replied Peach. "The poop is high in acid and bacteria. It turns the grass yellow and becomes a vessel for disease."

Rick paused eating as he and Laura exchanged a look. They both turned to Peach.

"Is that so?" asked Laura. Rick just stared at the little girl.

"Yup," replied Peach.

"Where did you learn about dog poop?" asked Rick.

Peach was busy navigating her bowl of stew.

"Never mind," Rick added.

She gobbled up the last of her meal and laid down her fork. "May I be excused?"

"Sure," replied Laura. "No more poop research though, ok?"

Peach smiled broadly. "No problem."

Rick and Laura watched her walk to her room. She left the door open as always. Rick turned to Peach's food bowl, which was empty. "Fast learner," he said to his wife.

"Faster than I expected," she replied. "I thought ten was a good age at the time."

"Me too. Hey, she does act like ten most of the time."

"Today, dog poop. Tomorrow, the world."

Rick reached across the table. Laura surrendered her hand. Her icy blond hair framed her high cheekbones, flawless skin and perfect, pink lips. They looked into each other's eyes. Laura said, "What would Jill have thought?"

Rick stared off towards a horizon beyond Laura, envisioning his first wife. "She never wanted kids. Especially not fake ones."

"Don't call her fake," Laura scolded.

"Sorry. You're right."

They sat immobile, holding hands, each staring into other spaces.

It had been two years since Jill died. The effects of the Moon plague lingered through the years. It wore down her immune system making her progressively weaker. One day, she never woke up, dying in bed as Rick slept next to her. The entire Commission, support staff, Regional Directors, Lunar Regional Directors and the governor of Atlanticford came to the funeral. All air and ground traffic surrounding Lawnside Cemetery was halted to accommodate the mourners. The spectacle was evidently worthy of news coverage as countless drones hovered over the gravesite during the final farewell.

Two years later, Rick still mourned her. Laura understood. She was grateful to have him in her life. Things could have gone so much worse when RevereWorks fell were it not for him.

Later in the evening, the man known as Chairman Rick found himself sitting alone in his living room. An old jazz album, Kind of Blue, sent familiar music into the darkness. It was one of Rick's go-to albums, more than a century old yet still capable of soothing his aching heart. At moments like these, he contemplated the good news and bad news aspects of life at age 62.

He had survived time travel and the battle that killed his partner Chen almost 30 years ago; the lunar adventure that he and Jill had pioneered, then escaped to rebuild their lives on Earth; the armed revolt against the tyranny and corruption that had roiled RevereWorks where he met Laura Royo; and obtaining the daughter that completed them.

But Earth's creeping destruction at the hands of generations of stupid humans gnawed at him. The heat and rain, the lethal storms and baking sun, each taking turns at stirring the toxic pot of environmental despair presented a formidable challenge for even the best of Earth's benefactors. Rick had passed the torch to his successor at the Planetary Commission and was supportive of her. Chairwoman Justine Wellington led the Commission with a precision and assertiveness that made some of her fellow commissioners uncomfortable mostly, Rick concluded, because none of them had any balls. She rose through the ranks at the side of his predecessor, the late chairman Phineas LaGrande, a towering figure whose leadership restored the Moon habitat to its former grandeur and redistributed RevereWorks' wealth to the sagging infrastructure both off-world and on Earth. LaGrande's death, like Jill's, left voids in the storied history of the Planetary Commission and in the hearts of their soulmates, Justine and Rick.

Laura crept into the living room, unable to sleep. Rick heard the rustling of her robe as it stirred the air. The room remained dark as she approached Rick's chair. He didn't lift his head to greet her, but he held out his hand. She took it and stood by him.

"It bothers me that she's learning about weapons," said Laura.

Rick nodded, still avoiding her gaze.

"She's only ten," she continued.

"Yet," Rick said in a near-whisper, "it's the world we live in."

"We're safe here, right?"

"I think so."

"You think so?"

Rick dismissed several cliches that immediately came to mind except one. "Never say never." He turned his head to look up at Laura. She knew he was right.

***

Old Philadelphia had seen better days. The Planetary Commission's headquarters, housed in the ancient federal courthouse, was starting looking beaten up. The surrounding neighborhood--businesses, restaurants and homes--stank of dead fish and sewage. Piles of wet trash dotted 6th, Race and Market Streets. No one would touch the mess until after the storm passed. Meanwhile, men and women covered in composite tarps taped around their bodies rooted through the mess. The occasional argument was almost always settled with guns.

Chairwoman Justine Wellington arrived at headquarters via air, bypassing the mess at ground level. Her AirMax 5X was a recent acquisition equipped with an ultra-modern, fully electric propulsion module designed for seamless access to the various electronic highways. She sprung for the heavier, projectile-resistant body and advanced instrumentation. At least two other commissioners reported pot shots taken at their vehicles by unknown assailants. Wellington figured that if she could survive being taken hostage and the violent rescue that ensued a couple of decades ago, she could survive anything. Still, there was no sense in taking a chance of being shot out of the sky. Thus, the necessity of a bullet-resistant air car and the shiny new PortaTrac Shadow that protected her, more or less, while she walked around in public.

Her mobile vibrated unabated from the moment she stepped into the AirMax. Her Moon people were calling, anxious and whining about who knows what. They called almost every morning for the past week. She vowed to answer when she was sitting down and sipping coffee in her office.

The AirMax was shepherded into its assigned space by the parking structure AI. As it jerked and shimmied back and forth and from side to side to seat itself into the space, Wellington looked at her mirror holo. Her buzzed hair was a natural, light gray, a trait inherited from her mother who started going gray in her 30s. The Make-Up Master did its usual flawless job on her pale face, which was conspicuously lacking wrinkles or other blemishes. That was the work of the World Day Spa she treated herself to the same week she bought the AirMax. Her perfect nose was, well, perfect. She felt a wave of warmth as she remembered Phineas complimenting her nose, among other physical traits. She missed him every day.

The short walk into headquarters followed by the effortless elevator ride took her to the floor where the commissioners' offices were located. She was staring at her mobile as she walked. She navigated to her office, then her desk, hardly looking up.

The Moon habitat, still called the Daedalus Dome as originally christened almost 50 years ago, took up more of her time than she'd bargained for. Yet, it was the singular lighthouse of hope for those fleeing Earth's accelerating degradation. A planned expansion to accommodate another million humans would open the gates to expats who, this time, wouldn't be just the rich and connected. It was in the works, but several years from breaking lunar ground.

"How's that gonna work?" queried Mayor Will Bradley when the plan was first distributed to stakeholders. "I mean, really?"

His holo image floated over the conference room table at the Commission the day the plans were introduced. His question was met by the silence of all twelve commissioners until Wellington finally spoke up. "With your help, that's how."

Now, a year later, Wellington and, she suspected, most of the commissioners, harbored significant doubts. The sheer vastness of the project--the money, the labor, energy and time--made it daunting. The light of reality frustrated Wellington who believed life on the Moon was the answer to humanity's survival. But as far as she could tell, she was the only one who believed it.

***

The beauty of the Earth and stars against the deep black universe was never lost on Will Bradley. Now more than three years into his stint as mayor of the Dome, he remembered like it was yesterday the moment he stepped off the transport at age 15, queasy and exhausted, then bouncing around under the Dome, learning the skills required to walk in one-sixth normal gravity. His ascendence to mayor was never part of the plan. It just happened, he mused, while denying the impact his role had in the rebuilding necessitated by the disastrous Dome breach of the 2060s. As local heroes went, Will Bradley was right up there.

Wrapped in the latest in lunar excursion wear--a ProTec radiation-resistant suit and helmet--he sat in one of the ancient, upholstered theater seats originally installed to create a place to view the heavens just outside the Dome. His steely eyes danced across the spectacle that never got old. It made him smile. It made him forget, for just a few minutes, all the people tugging at him. Even with the suit, he limited his outdoor stay to 10 minutes, tops. Those 10 minutes of complete silence, a muted mobile device and his back to the Dome reminded him of his teenaged self, the adolescent who survived the catastrophic Brentwood fire in his home state of California and the independence forced upon him after his entire family was killed.

"Approaching your 10-minute cutoff, Will," crooned the female AI voice in his helmet.

"Ok," he replied.

"Do you want to hear about your deferred notifications?"

His lips formed a tight little grimace. "Nah. Not yet."

"Ok, Will."

He'd learned to stop replying instantly to 95% of his messages. The other 5% were never nearly as important as they purported to be. Yet, he had to pay attention. He was the mayor.

"Sorry to bother you again, Will, but I thought I should tell you that one of the messages is marked Priority One."

Will rolled his eyes and grumbled, "Of course it is." With his notifications temporarily muted, he couldn't see who the sender was, but he assumed it was Roland, his able and anal deputy mayor. "I'll retrieve them all in a couple of minutes."

"Ok, Will."

He raised himself out of the worn, velveteen-upholstered chair and stood erect, turning his head 270 degrees. He always looked around when he was outside the Dome as though something might be different each time. He turned and faced the Dome, towering above him a hundred feet at its apex, then walked with the usual bounce towards the public airlock. Once inside, the sucking and whooshing sounds took over for exactly 11seconds. Then the inner door opened, and he walked into the distilled air breathed by the 6,000 Dome residents. He unlatched his helmet, removed it, took a deep breath and immediately felt the harsh smack of an awful smell.

"Jesus," he said out loud to no one. He scrunched his nose and squinted while pulling his mobile out of his suit. Standing just inside the public plaza, he held the screen up to his eyes to unlock the mobile and instantly saw the red blinking icon with the word PRIORITY in caps underneath. "Uh, boy. What the hell." He touched the icon and Roland's face appeared.

"Mayor, we have a situation," Roland said. He looked like he'd just witnessed an autopsy. "Call me back."

Bradley clicked the speed dial icon for Roland. He answered after one ring.

"Oh, there you are," Roland said. His face looked the same. "Where have you been?"

Bradley's deadpan reply: "Hiding."

"The sewage treatment plant is offline."

"Ah, that's what I smell."

"The shit chutes are backing up across the Dome."

"Oh my."

"The DEC is on it."

"How long's this been going on?"

"Maybe 12 hours. The shutdown wasn't detected until the chutes started backing up this morning. I started getting panic messages a half hour ago."

"Christ." The Director of Environmental Control, a jittery man named Logan, paid attention to details to an irritating degree. So, it surprised Bradley that a malfunction like this would get away from him. "What do you need from me?"

"Get on the horn and give the residents an update. They're bombarding us with queries."

Bradley looked across the plaza towards the main thoroughfare of the Dome and was surprised to see no one. Not that the walkway was a great draw after so many years with its drooping spider plants, hydroponic moss and well-worn regolith paving. But there was usually a baseline of people coming and going, doing errands, navigating their rickety carts or bouncing around in the lunar gravity.

"No one's out on the plaza or downtown," Bradley reported.

"Stand by," Roland said. He turned his head away from his console to something off camera.

Will looked further into the Dome habitat for signs of activity. He was tempted to put his helmet back on to breath his stored air instead of the malodorous Dome air.

"Oh, well, this sucks," Roland said, turning back to Bradley. "The DEC reports the atmosphere processor is only operating at 78-percent."

"What? Why?"

Their conversation was interrupted by the AI voice. "Excuse me, Mayor and Deputy Mayor. Director Logan is calling."

"Ok," replied Bradley. He and Roland simultaneously tapped the JOIN icon that appeared on their screens and the face of Rip Logan appeared. "Director Logan," Bradley said. "What's up?"

"The atmosphere processor is unhappy," replied Logan, whose cheekbones drew sharp lines on a face that screamed anxiety. "It's down to 78-percent."

"Why?" asked Bradley.

"Investigating."

"Is it getting worse?"

"Investigating."

"What's with the shit chutes?"

"Investigating."

"Are the two issues related?"

Logan looked off-camera for several seconds, then back at the mayor. "Um, I think so."

"Director Logan, give me something I can tell the population other than 'investigating'."

Logan blinked repeatedly. "We'll be back to normal shortly."

"What's shortly?"

"I dunno."

Bradley, who hadn't moved an inch since re-entering the Dome, began walking towards his parked cart. "Fix it," he barked. "Whatever it takes. Do you hear me?"

"Roger that, mayor." Logan's screen went to hash for a second and Roland's face re-appeared.

"I'm coming in," Bradley said. "Set up a holo-cast to the entire population. I'll be there in about 20."

***

Driving an updated cruiser with land and air capabilities, Jenna McNamara appreciated this particular perk of her job as Director of Lunar Enforcement. A veteran of the como wars, her ascendance from lieutenant was a no-brainer after her heroic mission in the 60's to free hostages and shut down the malfeasance based at the RevereWorks eastern compound in Atlanticford back on Earth. The resulting windfall of hidden funds hoarded by founder Austin Revere made so many things on the Moon possible including the plush new headquarters compound for Lunar Enforcement and her spanky new vehicle.

Cruising at 70-feet through the Dome, Mac was monitoring they many incoming messages to L911 about overflowing shit chutes and sewage leaks. Her screen was lit with orange dots marking each complaint. She counted 54 so far.

"Incoming message, Jenna," announced her AI voice, a syrupy British male in the tradition of the actor Monty Lewiston, her current crush.

"Thanks. Put it on the screen, please." The aerial view of the Dome thoroughfare was replaced by Roland Frank's face. "Deputy Mayor Frank, good afternoon."

"And to you, Director McNamara. Do you have anything new to report?"

Mac's eyes were on a small readout in the lower left corner of her screen. "I'm seeing 54 calls." She paused. "Oops, make that 165. It's definitely happening across the Dome, residential and commercial. Any word on a cause?"

"The DEC is on it," Roland replied. "Or, so he says."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing. He's so fidgety, I never know whether he actually has a clue."

Jenna chose not to reply.

"He reports the atmosphere processor is down to 78-percent, though."

"Hm. What's the red line?"

"I'm told 30-percent." Roland was distracted by an electronic chime. "Hang on." He answered another mobile and spoke briefly, then turned back to Mac. "OK, Dome maintenance guys are out at the major backups literally shoveling shit. The mayor is preparing a speech to the population basically telling them to back off using their shit chutes and storing their waste."

"Storing their waste?" asked Mac. "Seriously?"

Roland rolled his eyes. "I know."

"Do you think the mayor has a minute to chat?"

"I would try him after his speech. He's dictating like crazy to the AI as we speak."

"Copy that. I'm heading back to my quarters. I'll be in touch."

***