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I had a lot of fun with this writing prompt. I also think I'm getting better at sound editing. I attempted to create some trappings of real sci-fi with this one, and played around with short-term character development. I played with it like a dog plays with a mole; it didn't work out the way I wanted, but it was a fun exercise.
Also, it's in multiple parts which might be a bit daring for this size of a project.
I'm pretty pleased with this one.
Anyway, here's the text.
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“Todd! Todd!” Charlie’s voice was getting louder. “Todd, seriously, wake up!”
Todd lifted his head from its resting place on his folded arms and smacked his lips together. He felt drool that had run down his chin. He turned in his office chair to face his companion, wiping the drool off of his face with the edge of his sleeve. “Dude, what?” He looked back down at his sleeve, disgusted by his own secretions. “We gotta make the call” Charlie’s eyes were wide and panicked, the green tint in his irises seemed to be glowing by virtue of the desk lamp angled slightly behind him. “I don’t… who do we call, do we call all of them? Oh god, I’m so excited, I’m so… what if they… They won’t believe me, I’ve only been here a week!”
Todd blinked slowly at Charlie, who was chattering away to himself in a blind panic. “Charlie” Todd took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes while Todd continued to asking himself rhetorical questions that Todd was not awake enough to understand. “Charlie” he called again, putting his glasses on his face “what have we – Charlie, are you listening bud, what have we said about staring into the telescope for hours on end?”
Charlie looked up at Todd, a look of mingled disappointment and panic on his face “You don’t believe me. I knew it, I knew you wouldn’t believe me! I’ll just have to prove it myself”
Todd grabbed Charlie gently by the shoulders “Hey, Charlie, c’mon man, breathe” he took several deep breaths instructively “just breathe” he let the words slowly hiss out in a whisper. “Tell me what you saw.”
“They launched it!” Charlie’s voice was still shaky but eerily self-assured “They launched a missile at us.”
“Who launched a missile, Charlie?” Todd’s heart began thumping in his ears.
“The moon.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------- The phone rang in the president’s bedroom. He peeled his eyes open to look over at his alarm clock. 4:14 AM. President Josiah Sloane let out a long, ragged groan. “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat” he said into the receiver immediately after picking it up. “What could you want at this hour?”
“Sir” his chief of staff started on the other line “I uh; well” she paused “I don’t know how to—it’s the moon sir.” “What about the moon, Cindy?”
“Well, sir” she cleared her throat “it seems they’ve launched something which is headed towards us.”
President Sloane sat up in his bed and turned on the lamp on his bedside table. “’Us’, us, or just, the planet, us?”
“It’s impossible to tell at this exact moment, sir. I have the Decagon setting up a briefing.”
“You seem remarkably calm, Cindy” President Sloane said “I appreciate that.”
“That’s why you pay me the big bucks, Josiah.”
The president groaned “Do I have time for a shower?”
“You have time to kiss Peter goodbye and let him know you’ll be in the situation room. I’ll see you there.” Cindy hung up the phone.
Josiah heard Peter take the long, heavy breath of a person just waking up. “What’s going on, honey?” Peter asked. “What do they want?”
Josiah looked upon his husband with weary eyes. Maybe it would be best not to tell him. “It’s probably nothing, but I’ll be in the situation room for a while. Why don’t you try to go back to sleep?”
“Okay” Peter responded, apparently already on his way to falling back asleep. Josiah felt Peter’s hand grasp his just before he left the bed “Hey” he started, waiting for Josiah to respond.
“Yeah?”
“You don’t get a lot of sleep these days, honey. Make sure you rest when you can.”
Josiah leaned over and kissed his husband gently “I will, sweetie. I promise”. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The situation room had an eerie orange tint to it, illuminated as it was by holographic screens. Grids of light covered the large conference table, with little green labels denoting land masses, military bases, and missile defense sites. Dozens of blue “x”s lit up areas around the globe.
Cindy was hunched over the head of the table, staring at the holograms. The pensive look she had adopted sent lines through the scar on her left cheek and created shadows on her forehead. Cindy was a tall and fearsome woman that commanded respect simply by her presence. Though it had been thirty long years since she had served in the United Federation Marines, she still looked as if she could tear through anyone or anything with little more effort than it would take to say ‘oorah’.
She sent a weary glance at the defense secretary, who was similarly hunched over the opposite end of the table. “Havel” she asked lowly “how did we miss this?”
Havel looked back at her over his bifocals. Her silver hair had adopted the various colors projected by the holograms that littered the room. “Well” he scratched at the five o’clock shadow at his jawline “it’s possible they built it underground, so we couldn’t see it.”
“Wouldn’t that take an incredible amount of resources? The kind that we’re pretty sure they don’t have?” “Well,” Havel started “it doesn’t really mean much that we haven’t been able to find the resources on our scans or seen a lot of movement in our observations; it’s entirely possible that they have completely different technology than we do.”
“But” Cindy seemed suddenly frustrated “how did they get the tech to launch a rocket? We only see 20 settlements on the surface of the moon, all seem small and domestic. The comparison has been drawn between the moon’s tech and that of the earliest farmers”.
“The moon’s observable tech.” Havel corrected her. He felt like shrinking back into his char after the look Cindy gave him.
“Fine,” she said through partially gritted teeth. “So, what, they’re just trying to throw us off by pretending to be a simple agricultural society?”
“Well, that’s just it. We don’t know. For all we know this could be a bomb, it could be a manned shuttle, it could be many different things, we have to account for it all.”
The chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff walked in briskly. “Cindy, Havel” he reached out to shake their hands in turn, “what does it look like out there?”
“Hard to say, Bob.” Cindy sat abruptly in her assigned seat “and even harder to agree on” she looked askance at Havel.
Bob looked over to Havel at his right “Hav, why you making waves?”
“Waves? I” Havel sighed heavily “I’m just saying that maybe we shouldn’t just blow this thing out of the sky. We know nothing about the Lunarians, and we can’t say for sure whether this is a declaration of war.”
Other members of the cabinet began to filter in slowly as the conversation continued, “Be a bit late to figure out once it’s here, ain’t it?”
Cindy gestured towards Bob with a nod and an open hand. She looked at her watch and squinted “Well, we can talk about it more when the president gets here. Which I hope is soon.” A few light chuckles sounded around the room; the president was always late to the situation room.
Feeling ignored, Havel spoke up, “We cannot allow ourselves to be overcome with fear on this!” Havel began to raise his voice a little “Some things require a little patience!”
“Now, now” Josiah’s voice entered the room before he did. Cabinet members scrambled to stand “there’s no yelling in the situation room. Oh, sit down for god’s sake” he made a broad downward gesture with both hands. “Sorry I’m late, but it’s rude to discuss the fate of a planet without showering first.”
Silence took hold of the room as the president’s sarcasm missed its mark and proved unwelcome.
“Why so glum, kids, it’s not like the damn thing is gonna be here in the next hour, and I’m sure we can all, as reasonable adults, come to a solution quickly and painlessly”. The president smirked around the room, hoping that he had lightened the mood, at least slightly.
He had not.
---------------------------------------------------------- Charlie had not slept since he saw the object launch from the moon. His panic that night had not abated but settled into a steady anxiety that plagued his every moment. He was told that night that his panicked reaction was unjustified, and he should take a few days to regain his composure. He turned on the television to see the news hosts speaking over poor quality photos of the object zooming towards the earth.
“LUNAR LAUNCH LOOKOUT” was emblazoned on the bottom of the report graphic. Charlie shook his head and changed the channel. It was another news channel. The photo this time seemed to have been flipped horizontally, and was accompanied by the title “MANNED MOON METEOR?”
“Right then” Charlie turned the television off, “I’ll just go for a walk, then”. Charlie rummaged through his hamper until he found clothes that he could smell closely and not feel disgusted. He put them on and headed for the corner store. The past few days, he had been drinking to steady his nerves. While it wasn’t working per se, it was working to make him feel less… everything.
On the way to the corner store he passed by a newspaper stand all with the same front-page story. “ARE THEY COMING FOR US?” read the front of The Times. “TERROR ON TELLUS PRIME” read another. There were, of course, the various tabloids, the only notable headline of which was “I WAS IMPREGNATED BY THE MOON”, with a poorly manipulated image of a pregnant woman standing with a man whose head had been replaced by a graphic of the moon.
Small wonder I need a drink thought Charlie.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- The president stood on the deck overlooking the lawn of the Prime Residence, staring up at the sky. It had been 60 hours since the launch from the moon, and it was now certain that the craft would be landing in around 12 hours. They estimated that it would set down in the middle of the front lawn. Josiah sighed deeply, and closed his eyes, breathing in the fragrant night air.
Against the wishes of the cabinet, he had sent his husband and children to the bunker. Though it had been established that this craft did not have an observable payload, the president wanted to take the appropriate precautions with his family. He had always been a man of principles, and one of those principles was that every great man must face his problems head on. If he couldn’t be strong in the face of an unknown threat, how could he address his nation, no, the world, and tell them that things were going to be fine.
Of course, Cindy and the rest of the cabinet members had insisted that he have more bodyguards on him. Josiah wondered if they really thought that it would help. He took another deep breath and turned to walk into the Rhombus Office.
Hair. Make up. Mic test. Lighting test. The teleprompter flickered to life. He was unsure as to why, but everything seemed so small to him now, yet the smallest details caught his eye. There was scuff on the door to the Rhombus Office from where someone had bumped into it with a piece of equipment for the address. The teleprompter was having a small glitch in which the screen would twitch every few seconds.
“Can someone whack that thing, that flicker is gonna drive me nuts” the President said. Shortly after a hollow thump, followed by a “got it!” echoed in the quiet room.
This room was allergic to sound. Everyone in the room had sound ripped from them by the anxiety and instability of the situation. Josiah couldn’t even hear anyone breathe. The room looked plastic, set in a clear acrylic. The movements of the people in the room were barely perceptible, and he felt the weight of the effort it was taking everyone to remain so still. But who had asked them to be still?
“Jesus, people, who died? Did we outlaw sound?” he heard a few laughs around the room, and the palpable tension released, if only slightly.
“Mr. President, it’s time” said his communications director from the side of the teleprompter. Josiah nodded and gave a slight smile.
It was going to be alright. It had to be alright. That’s what he was about to tell everyone. The red light flickered, and he knew it was time to start.
“My fellow Tellerians, in about 12 hours’ time, a spacecraft launched from the moon will arrive on the front lawn of Federation Prime. I have met with the cabinet, discussed defensive options, and taken precautions to ensure that this country will continue to function, in the cast of my demise.” He began to choke up a little. He felt as if he was late to the party and was just now understanding that feeling which had condensed in the room earlier. He cleared his throat and continued “I hope to meet peacefully with Lunarians, and discuss this communication. As the largest, most successful country, I am aware that the rest of the world watches us with great anticipation. I ask that the countries of the world join ours in prayers that this meeting will be friendly, and that we can welcome our neighbors from moon warmly.” The president continued on, but not even he was interested in what he had to say.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Though he was a safe distance away, the president could still feel the heat from the thrusters as the craft eased its way down onto the landing pad created for it just hours before. He could hear some kind of whirring and clicking. There was a strange, almost musical quality about the tones that seemed to be leaking from the craft. Were they trying to communicate?
The president stood firm and tried not to look at the snipers hidden in various positions around the lawn of the Prime Residence. As he attempted to will the sweat back into his forehead, he began to breathe deeply, and tell himself, repeatedly, “This is all going to be okay. This is all going to be okay.”
The door to the craft hissed, and what appeared to be steam released with great force from the doorway. The musical tones were now louder, almost deafening. The president reminded himself that no matter what the creature that was coming down the ramp looked like, he had to remain stoic and unsurprised.
To his great shock, the being appeared almost Tellerian, save for its slightly displaced ears. It held a box, from which wafted a wonderful smell, the likes of which Josiah had never smelled before. It spoke in a language that Josiah did not understand and did not recognize. He was unsure what he had expected, but the language seemed almost like his own. It was speakable, he thought, with training.
The Lunarian placed a device in front of its mouth and repeated its message. After a few seconds the device brought the first message of Lunaria to Tellus Prime:
“Hey, did you order a pizza?”