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Part III
15
Carnage
Mare Tranquillitatis, The Moon,
March 15 2047
“I must not disturb the crime scene!”
As he carefully stepped back from the corpse, repeating this sentence helped Robert to slightly diminish the deep fear that was fighting him for control of his body.
He wanted to run away. More than that he wanted to unsee what he had discovered here.
Robert’s mind was racing. As Robert backed away from the scene of the carnage, hundreds of unlikely and impossible scenarios flashed through his mind. Almost every single one of them with high potential of ending as badly for him as it apparently had for these two astronauts. As he slowly moved back, away from the scattered mutilated remains of the two astronauts and their landing pod, Robert tried to focus on the least preposterous hypothesis. He realized that whichever of the unlikely scenarios it would turn out to be, his chances of surviving would be pretty slim. Even if he should manage to make it back to Earth alive, the same powers that must have managed to keep these horrific facts quiet for almost 80 years would not risk him exposing them and what they had worked so hard to cover up.
If only he had listened to Pete. Robert had ignored all of his brother's hints that cautioned him against this endeavour of his. Cautioned him against what he might unearth. “Don’t go messing with no Clean Zone’s“ Pete had warned him, “you might actually find something that someone won’t like you to find!” Robert truly had not considered actually finding something that would contradict the historical records. Least of all did Robert expect to find something as terrifying and shocking as what he was now slowly backing away from. The legless corpse of one of the astronauts was still just metres away from him. The head only barely attached to the rest of the lifeless body. The suit’s helmet lay damaged a few metres away.
As Robert backed further away, it felt as if the dead eyes of the astronaut were staring right through him. Oh, why ever did he have to make this trip? All that he had really wanted to do was impress his mentor. Impress her with a dissertation like none she had ever seen. Could whoever or whatever did this unthinkable thing still be around today after 77 years? Was he himself in direct and imminent danger right now? Or was the true danger for him personally, located on Earth, waiting for him on his return?
It was both intriguing and disturbing how the combination of decades-long exposure to radiation and a lack of an atmosphere had preserved the scene of the carnage. The facial features of the two long-dead astronauts, with their relative youthfulness frozen in time. The second astronaut, his body clearly crushed by what used to be the upper part of the landing pod, showed four massive parallel wounds to his chest area that could not be ascribed to him being crushed like that. His face was visible through the damaged helmet and showed the preserved features of a handsome man not that much older than Robert's older brother Pete. For a brief moment, Robert allowed himself to realize that this for all appearances thirty-something man was actually the corpse of a one hundred and sixteen years old, at least if this is the real Edwin Eugene Aldrin.
While these discoveries exceeded the wildest dreams that Robert, as a forensic science graduate student might have had regarding his idea of doing on-site research on the moon, Robert understood he was in mortal danger. In danger, quite possibly in more ways than one. He really needed to do the research as to what happened here, that much was absolutely clear. Not so much, as he had originally set out, for his dissertation, all of that did not really matter right now. He needed to find out exactly what had happened here 77 years ago.
What could have created such damage to the lander? What weapon could have caused these terrible mutilations of the human remains? He also needed to form hypotheses about what happened on Earth after that. How had NASA managed to pass this mission off as a success back in nineteen sixty-nine? And how could this information not have been disclosed during the early years of the Copyright Wars?
None of the faction’s or alliances had had any ties to NASA or to the old North American governmental structures. In fact, disclosing the nasty secrets and conspiracies involving old governments and large companies had been a major propaganda tool for both the corporate alliances and many of the information-freedom and free-trade factions. As for the current post-war conurbation states? These definitely had had other things to worry about than keeping nasty old-day conspiracies secret. There had to have been such a major conspiracy to cover this up and to keep this covered up during the war. This conspiracy had to involve pre-war, wartime and even some of the emerging modern-day power structures. The idea was almost too prosperous to consider, yet there seemed to be no alternate hypothesis. How else could a tragedy like this have remained hidden?
Robert only just managed to keep his balance as his thoughts had distracted him from his surroundings and he had walked backwards against a half a metre high rock. He had to divide his attention between getting away from this place, back to his own lander, and figuring out where to expect the bigger danger. There may be reasons to hypothesize about the continued presence of something extremely dangerous here on the moon, a hypothesis that had Robert tremble with every step back, the consequences of this finding for what he might expect back on Earth were possibly even more disconcerting.
There had been many ancient pre-war conspiracy theories regarding the moon landing. Debunking these theories with on-site forensic research on the moon had in fact been Robert's bold idea for his dissertation. So many conspiracies had been disclosed during the war: the Fluoride Conspiracy, the Cholesterol Conspiracy, the Emission-rights Conspiracy, the Babylon Conspiracy, the Fractional Reserve Conspiracy and of course the conspiracy that started the war in the first place: the Quantum Conspiracy.
After the many waves of conspiracy disclosure during the war, nobody, including Robert expected any remaining old-day conspiracies could be left hidden. All data had been out in the open. Quantum Slicing had seen to that. No, Robert had in no way expected any trace of a real conspiracy, and certainly not one involving something as terrible as this.
Suddenly Robert felt himself losing his balance again and as he slowly fell to the ground, Robert realized that his instincts were not helping him. Robert had been slowly walking backward away from the crime scene keeping his eyes focused on the remains of the original moon lander. As Robert softly hit the dusty moon surface, while he realized the danger could just as well be behind him, a warm and moist feeling signaled that Robert had just lost all control over his bladder and Robert regretted not having spent the extra material on replicating the original in-suit relieve facilities.
“That's what I get for planning a moon-landing on a student budget!” Robert said aloud.
It had taken Robert months of time and many black-market purchased communication credits to secure the most critical part of his mission: The G-foil. G-foil was supposed to prove the moon landing was real. G-foil had been a well kept secret. While it was mentioned in the Apollo documentation, finding what G-foil actually was and how to replicate it had proven the biggest challenge of the mission. With G-foil everything fitted perfectly. Many of the old-time moon-landing skeptics used to bring up the problems with the Van Allen radiation belts. Well, guess what, G-foil had been the answer to that. Robert's trip to the moon in the replica Apollo Eleven had proven that just perfectly. The radiation levels inside of the pod had been lower than the background radiation on Earth. G-foil had proven to be incredibly effective and thus Robert had thought his thesis to have been proven. This scene, this carnage had been totally unexpected.
Oh, why didn't he listen to his brother Pete? Pete might have been a tough guy, the type of person with little interest in academic pursuits, but Pete immediately guessed the true reason behind Robert’ s mission. A reason that only now Robert was starting to admit to himself. The day Robert had first tried to tactfully ask his brother for a favor with his mission, Pete’s instant and tactless response had been: “so you’re trying to impress another one of those bone ass geek chicks?” Pete had been spot on. In a way he had, anyway.
His mission had been his way to impress his mentor. Ah dear Rachella. For one moment Robert allowed his mind to escape his predicament. Rachella was Robert’s mentor but apart from that Rachella had been the focus of Robert’s life for reasons other than his education. Not that Robert was in love with Rachella, he could not allow himself any such feelings for his mentor. A married woman of almost twice his age. Ever since that kiss, however, Robert’s life had been about impressing Rachella. They had both agreed that that kiss should never have happened. That they should simply both forget about it. Rachella was married. Happily married as she had repeatedly assured Robert. They had nothing whatsoever to offer each other and Rachella had left absolutely no doubt regarding the depths of her commitment to her husband and family.
Both Robert and Rachella had been totally caught by surprise by this one-time passionate kiss that seemed to have come out of nowhere. No, there could be nothing between them. Yet ever since that kiss, Robert's every waking moment had been filled with an unexplainable urge to try and impress her.
Taking his replica Apollo Eleven moon lander to the moon had been a bold and dangerous move that Robert knew very well he would never have made had he not been unexplainably obsessed with trying to impress her. It had turned out even more dangerous than he could ever have projected. The trip to the moon in a printed replica of eighty-year-old technology had been dangerous enough by itself. Nothing had prepared Robert for what he had found on the Apollo Eleven landing site.
Yes, contrary to what Robert's research had shown, there had indeed been a 'real' conspiracy surrounding the 1969 moon landing. All the conspiracy theorists though had been so far off the mark about what the nature of this conspiracy really was.
As Robert finally managed to gather enough courage to get up and walk towards his pod face forward, his mind refocused on the present. What had happened here? What or who could have created such terrible carnage? Whatever had murdered these astronauts in this gruesome way, whatever tore up their bodies and their equipment, was it gone? Was Robert himself in mortal danger at this moment? Or worse, would he be in mortal danger when he returned to Earth? In danger from whoever the conspirators were that had kept this carnage from the general public for almost 80 years. To what lengths would they go to protect this secret?
No! Robert thought. Virtually nobody back on Earth knew about Robert's forensics mission to the moon. His brother Pete knew and the members of Pete’s crew, but none of them was likely to speak to anyone else about Robert's mission. No, nobody would yet know about his mission. To Pete and his crew, his big mission was just a silly school science project. These men that on a daily basis maneuvred the dangerous debrisphere as it was now called, the place where the low-orbit satellites used to be that were destroyed to end the replicator war. To these men, surviving a trip to the moon through virtually debris free space was about as risky as a ride on a merry-go-round. No, none of these rough and really not that talkative crowd was likely to ever mention what to him was a big and dangerous mission even without what he had just seen.
These guys, lacking the solid education that Robert had, probably were ignorant even of the existence of the Van Allen belts, little did they realize that Robert risked his life on the thesis that he got G-foil replication just right. As long as these guys didn't know about what Robert had discovered, nobody on Earth would hear from them about his moon mission. So far Robert was safe from any conspirators. Once he got back, if he would manage to get back, Robert would simply need to keep absolutely quiet about his mission, let sleeping dogs lie. But knowledge was important now, whatever had killed these astronauts could still be here. Robert had come to the moon fully armed with a semi-professional forensics lab. He needed to work fast to gain an information position that he could work from. He needed to assess the dangers, both here on the Apollo Eleven landing site and back on Earth. He had to work quickly but methodically now. Every little bit of information could help improve Robert’s chances of survival. With sufficient data, he might devise a strategy that could both help him get back to Earth safely and stay under the radar of whoever was part of the conspiracy.
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