When he looked up and stared at the supposed backdrop of the photograph with his own unaided eyes, he saw a photogenic sky scudding with dramatic grey clouds with a patch of blue here and there, and a spectacular headland and view beyond. Al could swear on a stack of Bibles that the background was exactly that — the pretty view, and open sky. But the photograph, when he brought his bewildered gaze back down to that, showed something quite different — disturbingly different. The headland that looked so deceptively pretty and peaceful was a blasted crater in the photograph, a blackened moonscape, where a chunk of the landscape appeared to have been bodily torn away by a giant clawed hand.
Where the hotel should have been.
Where the convention was.
Where Andie Mae was.
Photograph. Reality. Things did not match.
Al’s head was beginning to hurt again. He toggled the camera back off and let it drop back to where it dangled around his neck, turning to give the innocent landscape behind him one more long, hard look. It persisted in its illusion, as though someone had waved a Jedi hand in front of his face and told him, This is not the hotel you are looking for.
But the picture… the picture…
None of it made any sense. He shook his head hard, to try and clear it, with little success, and then gave up, heaving a deep sigh and beginning to trudge back to the coffee shop where he had waited for this whole thing to unfold and from where, he hoped, he could call another taxi to take him back home. Where he planned to collapse into bed and not get up for as long as he could help it.
“I need a vacation,” he muttered to himself, head down against the wind, and turned his back on the desolation that his mind would not let him see.
In the halls and party rooms of the California Resort, on its way to the Moon, the social scene was hotter than usual on any given convention Saturday night. Parties started early, and had more of an air of a New Year’s Eve celebration than just any Saturday night rave. Some of the parties run by folks more tech — savvy than others had even rigged countdown clocks, and one inventive group (who were getting a lot of traffic) had even promised to set up the equivalent of a Times Square disco ball which would drop at the moment the flying hotel arrived at the Moon.
A number of the party — throwers had been uneasy about just how much of a swing they could let their parties really go with, especially the adult — only ones where entrants were carded at the door by gatekeepers, with the very real possibility of literally running out of happy juice. Without actually telling anyone about the magic replicators, ConCom had allowed a hush — hush reassurance to percolate through to a select few prominent frontrunners from the party crowd that responsible parties would be kept supplied with requirements. Those who were particularly useful to the ConCom — in keeping con — goers amused, occupied and out of major harm’s way — were given hints that they would even maybe be given some extra special stuff, not on any menu or requisition list.
Xander (who really could not help himself) had already commanded a tankard of Romulan ale from the replicator secreted away in the Con Ops suite. He could not quite bring himself to unequivocally approve of the beverage which the replicator supplied in response to that request (there was no accounting for palate when it came to things like this, and no precedent) — but he did confess to someone that it tasted no worse than a particularly awful thing he had once been dared to drink that went by the description of “cranberry beer”, and opined that there would probably be plenty who would be willing to gag on the drink so long as they could add having tasted it at all to their resume.
ABDUCTICON MOON FLY — BY TONIGHT! read the headline of Libby’s latest newsletter, and it went to three reprints because every available copy was snatched as soon as it was produced and placed at the distribution points in the corridors to be picked up and collected. In it there was a largely hopeful list of ‘Thou Shalt Not’ items, or at the very least of ‘Please Don’t If You Can Help It’ suggestions. It reiterated that the hotel’s main doors would remain shut — but acknowledged that nobody could police every room in the hotel and pleaded with con — goers that if and when the urge came upon them to balance precariously on a railing so that someone could take a photo of them with a close — up of the Moon they should maybe go and lie down until the urge went away.
“We can’t stop them, you know,” Dave said, resigned. “You know they’re going to just do it, all of them — there is enough craziness out there tonight to run a crazy — engine a lot further than just around the Moon and back. I think they all started out as drunk, really, we all did, punch — drunk we all are, and anything they throw down the hatch on top of that isn’t really going to swing things back to the sane side of things.”
“What are they going to do with all the pictures?” Libby said. “They can’t think they can just post them on Facebook. They’d like as not get the Men in Black turning up on their doorsteps with vials of retcon memory wiping drugs at the ready.”
“At least they can’t just indiscriminately shoot and post right now,” Dave said. “There’s that. By the time everyone gets back into WiFi range and gets back their Internet and phone connections back…”
“There’s that,” Andie Mae murmured. “We have a population that is instinctively wired, and they’ve all been forced offline by the circumstances. We essentially have a crazy bunch of people deep into cold — turkey cyber withdrawal. It’s surprising that nothing truly outrageous has happened yet.”
“And anyway, with the pictures, people will just think Photoshop, or something of the sort,” one of the Green Room volunteers said.
“All of these people? They’re all going to tweak their pictures the exact same way, get the same damn thing?”
“There’s an app for that,” Xander murmured, and earned a sharp smack on the shoulder from Libby. “Ow. Okay, whatever. Look, with every lunatic out there… hey, that’s actually good, that’s literally true tonight, isn’t it? We’re all lunatics — moon — struck…”
“How much of that Romulan ale did you have?” Dave grumbled. “Every lunatic out there what?”
“Everyone will have a camera, a cellphone, something,” Xander said. “Live with it. Short of confiscating everyone’s electronics at the exit and deleting any incriminating pictures, we can’t… well, it isn’t our problem. It isn’t as though anyone will take anything we say about this seriously after we get back. It will all just serve to underline just how very very strange we all are.”
“Luke is going to lose it over liability,” Libby said, grinning. “People hanging out over tenth floor balconies…”
“Boss said nobody would come to any harm,” Andie Mae said firmly.
“They’re clairvoyant now?” Dave snapped. “How would they possibly know what could happen…”
“I actually think I have it figured out,” Xander said. “As of a little while ago, they all disappeared — but I tracked them down, or at least made Boss do it, and they’re strategically positioned at the four cardinal points. I have a feeling anyone who falls down will find themselves being wafted back up like on a cloud and deposited back on terra firma. Or on what passes for terra somewhat firma under the circumstances, anyway. For such values of terra firma that apply here and now which admittedly aren’t that much to write home about. Even if we could write home about it, which we…”
“All right, Xander,” Andie Mae said, with a swift cutting gesture of her hand. “What I would like to know, really, is what happens next. When are we going home? I mean, did they get what they came here for? And what if they have not? Are we going to be a kind of Flying Dutchman, whizzing back and forth between Moon and Earth, or whatever, until they’re — I don’t know — satisfied with something? With anything at all? I mean, we can put out only so many amusing newsletters before people start screaming for real answers…”