Make the Moon Great Again

A little horror story for our times...

As the world goes to hell in a handcart, I thought we could do with some light relief. If you’re a MAGA fan, you might want to give this one a miss. Fran x

It’s their second day on the moon, and Buck slides into the buggy next to Tyler, as they begin their ascent of Mount Melania — one of many landmarks named after the president and his family. When they reach the summit, they will plant a Make the Moon Great Again flag, and the moon will officially become the fifty-first state of America. So much for the Outer Space Treaty and celestial bodies being ‘The province of all mankind,’ but Buck keeps his thoughts to himself. He doesn’t want to end up breaking rocks in a Florida swamp.

Soon, the development will begin. Soaring skyscrapers will cover the Apollo Basin and the residents, mainly tech bros, will enjoy the gilded opulence of Moon-a-Lago, the first interplanetary outpost of Mar-a-Lago (All being well, Mars-a-Lago will follow in 2040). Then there are the big, beautiful mines (probably the most beautiful mines ever) where a company owned by the president’s sons will extract rare earth minerals and ship them back to earth.

Looking around at the desolate landscape of rocks and craters, Buck finds the prospect depressing, and he is staring disconsolately at a boulder shaped like a banana when the buggy comes to a sudden halt.

‘What the hell?’

‘Look,’ Tyler is pointing towards the top of the mound. ‘Is that a flag?’

Buck follows his finger and sees a flag-like object embedded in a pile of rocks.

‘Looks that way.’ He squints, but the sun is so bright it’s hard to be sure.

‘Bloody Chinese,’ Tyler says. ‘I told them they’d get here first.’

Buck waits for mission-control to interject — surely, they know about this? – but the only sound is a faint buzzing in his right ear.

‘Hello?’

The buzzing gets louder. The radio has been playing up since they started to climb, and Buck feels a twinge of anxiety. Of the six flags left by previous missions, five are still upright. There is a Chinese flag too, placed by a robotic lander, but none is close to their current location and it’s hard to see how the Chinese could have placed another without someone at NASA noticing.

‘We seem to have lost contact with Earth again.’

Tyler shrugs. It’s not the first technical problem they’ve encountered, and it won’t be the last.

‘Maybe it blew there.’

He means the flag, although they both know there isn’t any wind on the moon. Tyler tries to restart the buggy, but the battery warning light is flashing ominously, and eventually he concedes defeat.

‘Looks like we’ll have to walk.’

Buck grabs the MMGA flag and the Stars and Stripes with a newly added star, and Tyler takes the camera. The boulders are as big as cars, and they lose sight of the rogue flag as they climb. Tyler overtakes him on the last stretch, no doubt keen to claim the glory for himself.

When he reaches the top, Buck’s heart is skittering like a trapped animal. The flag is bigger than it appeared from a distance, and judging by the colour, a mossy green, it isn’t Chinese or Russian. The president won’t like this. Only this morning FIFA awarded him the first Intergalactic Peace Prize, and now it appears someone has arrived before them.

‘What does it say?’

Tyler unfurls the flag while Buck holds the camera.

GO AWAY!

The words appear to be printed simultaneously in at least three languages. Buck is only fluent in English, Spanish, and Mandarin, but he also catches a glimpse of Cyrillic and what looks like Abjad, the Arabic alphabet.

‘Bloody Chinese,’ Tyler says again. ‘Although you’ve got to admit it’s clever. Probably some kind of AI.’

‘What if we remove it and don’t tell mission control?’ Buck suggests.

Perhaps the faulty comms are a blessing in disguise. If they replace this flag with theirs, no one on Earth will be any the wiser.

‘Good idea.’ Tyler grips the flag, but it’s firmly wedged in place. ‘You’ll have to help me.’

Buck is putting his back into it when he sees a figure approaching from the opposite side of the mound. It’s very tall, greenish, and judging by the number of arms it’s waving, not human.

‘Shit,’ Tyler spots at the same time. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘I think it’s an alien.’

‘What do we do?’

Their training hasn’t prepared them for this. There aren’t supposed to be aliens on the moon, although perhaps calling it an alien is unfair. They’re the aliens here, and they probably look as strange to it as it does to them. Buck takes a breath to calm himself.

‘Have you got anything you can give it, some kind of peace offering to show we don’t mean any harm?’

He’s thinking of the early explorers who presented the natives with gifts of beads and cloth. It’s a long shot, but it’s the best he can do.

‘I’ve got some Mar-a-Lago chocolate,’ Tyler says, ‘they asked me to film a promotional video for TikTok while we were here.’

Buck nods. ‘Let’s give it a go.’

The creature is only a few feet away, and Buck sees that what he thought were arms are in fact tentacles. It towers over them as Tyler proffers the chocolate.

‘We come in peace,’ Tyler says, and the creature, which has multiple eyes scattered around an enormous mouth, stops, and Tyler waves the candy hopefully. ‘It’s the collector’s edition, made with real gold.’

A tentacle shoots out and seizes the chocolate, and for a moment Buck thinks it will be okay. They’ll apologise to the creature and back quietly down the hill, and if the president isn’t happy, tough. He’s not about to get eaten for the sake of a publicity stunt.

‘There you go,’ Tyler says soothingly as the creature drops the chocolate, gold wrapper and all, into the dark void of its mouth. ‘Tasty, isn’t it?’

Tyler is still babbling when another tentacle fastens itself around his waist and lifts him into the air.

‘No!’ Buck screams as Tyler too vanishes.

He looks around desperately for a weapon and seizes the MMGA flag. The president’s face glowers back at him disapprovingly.

‘Next time, sir,’ he says as he thrusts the flagpole into one of the many creature’s eyes before turning to run. ‘You can do your dirty work yourself.’

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