"So they call him Martin?" Wonderful was still rubbing his hands together like one of those greedy villains in vintage cartoons. "As in, dare I say, it? My Favorite Martin? Ooh, it's all too good. Too good!"
"So you really want to do this?" Goodman double-checked. Mister Wonderful merely sniffed and said,
"Of course we do. Of course! Why, this will be the show of the century. The Moon Man from Outer Space. How could it get any better?"
Thus the stage was set. The New Guy was completely unaware of the fact, but the cameras in his little hut were activated as a live studio audience was being primed for the premier by a long, exuberant introduction presented by Mister Wonderful and his Moon Goddess Dancers. There was music and fireworks and special guests, interrupted only by commercials for trucks and beer and birth control. At last the great moment arrived, and the lighting was turned up and two.point.something billion live viewers were able to see, for the first time ever, a regular looking guy, lying there snoozing on his couch in a dirty little room.
Mister Wonderful, however, was a professional, and didn't miss a beat. Proclaiming that the alien was no doubt worn out from his extensive inter-stellar journey, Wonderful immediately turned to a so-called expert in long distance space travel, a scientist with of course no practical experience whatever in the subject. While this professor droned on for a few minutes, the audience was left to gape at the figure draped over the sofa. Wonderful, off-camera now, was furiously jabbering into his mouthpiece at a producer in the booth. This person evidently informed him about the holographic projection capabilities installed by Fydia Sooth, for Wonderful abruptly reappeared, suavely interrupted his guest and resumed his video-hogging stance.
"And now," he intoned, "we are going to attempt to communicate with this creature. I myself will beam my own image into its very chamber, and from there conduct the first-time ever live globally broadcast interview with an alien being."
He snapped his fingers a few times, glanced warily to the side of the stage and then, when assured that his visage was indeed appearing on an inner wall of Moon Base Twelve, he cleared his throat and began, in a loud voice, to summon The New Guy to attention.
"Greetings, Alien Visitor," he declared. "All of Earth bids you welcome at this our time of great disturbance and peril."
The New Guy scrunched his eyes together and squirmed on the couch.
"Behold!" Mister Wonderful continued, "We appear to you via the magic of holographic imaging, a technology no doubt familiar to your own transcendent kind."
The New Guy turned again, and this time opened one eye, slightly. He focused on the sight of the wavering two-dimensional representation of the famous television personality.
"Hello. Hello," waved Mister Wonderful, also turning to his audience and signaling an intern to flash the APPLAUSE sign, at which the crowd reacted appropriately. The sudden burst of noise caused The New Guy to sit up and stare more closely at the wall.
"We ALL bring greetings," Wonderful said, gesturing at the cameramen to pan and display the folks to The New Guy. This made a further impression, and The New Guy stood and walked over to the wall. He reached out to touch what he saw and showed bewilderment when his hand passed right through it. He withdrew his hand and inspected his palm as if he expected to find some residue on it. Mister Wonderful was smiling his most beneficent smile.
"We come in peace," he said, adding, "and we hope you do too!"
The New Guy nodded, at which the studio erupted with excitement, but he must have meant something else by that gesture, for he turned around and walked back to the couch, where he lay down, and within moments was peacefully snoring again.
Chapter Nineteen
Later that day Mister Wonderful, in the privacy of his luxurious office suite, swore that someone was going to pay, and pay a heavy price, for this incredible fiasco. Nothing had gone right after The New Guy had seemingly switched himself off. Shouting, screaming, music, Moon Goddess Dancers, nothing had re-awakened him or caused even the slightest twitch. Fifteen more minutes Mister Wonderful endured, trying everything he could think of to revive the apparently comatose alien. The ratings weren't bad, his secretary assured him, but the social world had erupted in scorn and derision, most of which aimed directly at Mister Wonderful himself. The consensus was that the entire thing was a hoax from beginning to end. There was no such alien. There was no such Moon Base Twelve. In fact, the general public was quickly coming to believe that there was no Moon Base One or Two either. The whole thing was a fraud, a setup, a publicity stunt engineered by President Goodman and his media cronies. All of those alleged astronauts had probably been relaxing poolside by some mansion in Arizona all this time.
Meanwhile, no one on the Moon had bothered to watch the show at all. Fydia Sooth had been studying her mix tapes in a vain attempt to calculate which point in the music stream might have captured the attention of an alien population, but there was simply no way to tell. Maya Nguyen was catching up on some quality time with Galen Harbid, and Rayburn Willis was gently breaking up with Barley MacDunhill. They were all therefore surprised to be summoned to the conference room for an emergency call with General O'Nail.
The General was in a rare good humor. He'd only just returned from The White House, where he'd been in a meeting with the President. He told the three to expect a call any minute from the man himself.
"The President wants to talk to us?" Maya asked, amazed. She knew very well how much he despised them all.
"No, no, not the president," O'Nail laughed. "Mister Wonderful!"
"Do we have to?" Willis grunted.
"Afraid so," the General said. "But don't worry. Tell him anything you want. You have official clearance from me. I'll back you a hundred and ten percent."
"One hundred would suffice," Fydia commented.
"Don't start with me," the General warned as Maya tried to shush Fydia from any further wisecracks.
"But what does he want from us?" Maya asked.
"Oh you'll see," said the General. "I'd tell you but I'd hate to spoil your fun," and with that he rang off.
They had only a few minutes of suspense, which they used in agreeing that Maya would do all the talking. Mister Wonderful prided himself on being a ladies' man so they felt he might be more susceptible to her "charms,” but Wonderful did not bring his flirtation game to the call.
"Captain!" he declared, revealing the General's hand behind his preparations, "you've got to do something about your alien."
"It's not MY alien," she began, but he cut her off.
"As far as I'm concerned, you're responsible as commanding officer up there."
"Actually," she started to say, "we're all equal here." but he wasn't listening.
"I understand from the General that the creature requires the immediate presence of a human in order to respond. That's why the hologram trick failed. Apparently it responds only to flesh or something like that."
"It needs an open and available brain," Maya agreed.
"So do it!" Wonderful demanded. "Send somebody in there. I'd do it myself except for the obvious logistical reasons! You've got people up there. Send somebody in."
Maya let him stop talking, and then wait a little longer until she felt she had his attention.
"We can't do it, sir," she told him. “It’s too dangerous. His mind-reading causes us physical harm. Surely the General told you ..."
"Damn the General! Damn the physical harm! We're talking first contact here! What could be more important?"
"The health of the crew," she countered.
"I don't give a damn about that!" he shouted. "Send someone inconsequential. Send one of those idiot builders. I've got a list of them right here. Let's see. Marco Velez. Galen Harbid. Michael Gelano. Useless, every single one! Send one of them. I don't care which."
At this, Fydia and Willis jumped up from their seats and barely managed to keep themselves from screaming at the mic. Instead they paced rapidly in circles around each other while Maya
took a deep breath, and then another, and then another.
"Mister Wonderful, sir," she said, as calmly as possible. "I believe you know where you can shove it."
"Why you stupid lesbo ..." he shouted but Maya turned off the speaker before they had to hear another syllable.
"You'll pay for this!" he was yelling. "You and all your kind. You'll pay and you'll pay and you'll never stop paying as long as that damn Moon revolves around MY PLANET! Do you hear me? Are you listening?"
They weren't. They were too busy laughing instead.
Chapter Twenty
There was no general staff meeting about the Mister Wonderful affair or the cancellation of his plans to revive the Loonie Show. Word got around. Word also got around about how, a few days later, the cameras in Moon Base Twelve revealed that The New Guy had gone missing. Maya and Willis reviewed the tapes and saw that he had simply vanished. One moment he was there, switched off and snoring on the couch, and the next moment he was gone. Fydia agreed to don her "big green woman" suit one more time, and with Galen's help removed the makeshift barrier and entered the place, only to confirm that he was indeed no longer there, not that there had been any doubt about that. They concluded that he must have originally arrived in a similar fashion - all at once and out of nowhere.
General O'Nail had mixed feelings about this news. On the one hand, the immediate concern about the creature's intentions were allayed, but on the other hand, it left open the unanswerable question of what it all meant, and what it might mean for the future. It was still unknown who or what had sent the probe, or for what reason, or what they might have learned or concluded, or what their plans now might be. Maya's opinion was that yes, you could worry about all that, but you didn't have to, especially since there was absolutely nothing you could do about it. The General said it was all very well for her to feel that way, but he had to answer to the President, who was nothing if not an incurable alarmist.
And so, back in the U.S.S.A., public opinion was professionally mixed and stirred to the tune of billions of dollars to be spent on "defense" against a purely theoretical, if not wholly imaginary, threat. Once this funding was herded through the proper channels and every last drop of pathos had been wrung out of the ET threat-concept, "Martin" was conveniently forgotten. Mister Wonderful also moved on and never mentioned the subject again on live TV. He did not forget, however, and whenever he had the opportunity to deny employment or any kind of compensation to any distant relative of any one of the moon crew, he did so, without anyone ever becoming aware of it. This revenge was meager, though, and he longed for the day when he could make a more dramatic gesture.
Moon Base Twelve itself was eventually dismantled, in favor of a newer and more sophisticated structure called Moon Base Thirteen. By that time, the Drillers had found enormous reserves of ice beneath the surface, enough to generate water and oxygen for generations of settlers, and the Builders, in conjunction with the Botanists, had developed a way to fuse moon rock with a kind of rubbery glue to form even more perfectly sealed enclosures than the original moon bases had been made with. This was an especially useful development, since there was a new generation of settlers in the works, and additional housing was going to be needed. No one up there was particularly concerned about an alien invasion of the Earth, which was no longer their home. They had unanimously decided to remain where they were.
Maya and Galen were the first to produce a moon-child, who was auspiciously born in the month of July. Martinique was a brilliant child, beautiful and sweet, with no dark side that anyone could ever see.
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