[Original Novel] Metal Fever 2: The Erasure of Asherah, Part 8

^{source
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7}

A series of mugshots scrolled by behind her as she spoke, with excerpts from their voting record and comment history stretching back decades that were used to secure their convictions. Underneath her in the portion of the broadcast set aside for real time audience commentary, I spotted “So-called global warming wrongly assumes that the Earth is a globe” followed by hundreds of people roasting the commenter responsible in a dozen different languages.

Out of curiosity I copied that user’s handle and searched it. I found nine years worth of vrlogs. Turned out to be a fairly attractive woman in her early thirties wearing a cap with “Flat Earth Truth” embroidered into it.

Mostly out of morbid curiosity, I clicked play on a video of her vacation to the first Lunar hab. “Those holographic windows on the so-called ‘space elevator’ and ‘interplanetary shuttle’ were really convincing, NASA” she sarcastically quipped, “but I know we never left Earth. This is all in Nevada somewhere and the windows are tinted to make the sand appear grey, and the sky black. You can’t fool me.”

In fact as I recall, they’ve got a dedicated dome up there set aside which simulates a desert on Earth. The staff make a point to ominously warn Flat Earther tourists to stay away from the fake airlock leading to it.

That way they exit into the dome thinking they’re being sneaky, feel vindicated, and don’t perish in the Lunar vacuum like the poor idiot whose widely publicized death (and resulting lawsuit by his family) caused that special dome to be built.

Suddenly it cut to a shot of her riding a pressurized tourist buggy out to one of the historical Apollo landing sites. “This shit is so fake. Wake up sheeple! How come we can see the stars, but there were no stars in the original photos of the moon landings?”

Over her shoulder I could see other tourists rolling their eyes and struggling to ignore her. The comments were evenly mixed between supporters and people ripping on her. It seemed to me like the ratio should be a lot more lopsided rather than 50/50.

I typed out my own comment. “The Earth may be flat but those titties ain’t. You’re stone cold retarded though and you don’t even know it. I think it may be contagious too, because you’re giving my dick special needs.”

I thought I’d had my fun, but I made the mistake of digging deeper into her uploads history. The earliest videos weren’t even flat earth conspiracy stuff, they were about her family. Then about her divorce.

I clicked on one, only to close it soon after because it was surprisingly difficult to watch a stranger sobbing, smeared makeup running down her pretty face. The picture became slightly more clear with each video I watched. In the ones after that she could be seen rocking slightly, grinding her teeth and various other visible signs that she’d become a tweaker.

Her children no longer appeared in any subsequent videos. I could guess why. Still, the divorce settlement must’ve been substantial as she seemingly still had the house in her newest videos and could afford fare to the Moon and back.

I’ve never been there and have no desire to. The two habs built so far are larger in terms of interior volume than the subsea habitat I came from, but that isn’t saying much. The newer of the two habs is much more liveable, but the first was more of an experimental, international venture. The interior of it is just a whole lot of bare concrete, exposed life support machinery and stressed out geologists.

Nobody lives there full time at the moment, although supposedly that’s the plan. Before prison, I remembered reading about a program to genetically engineer humans able to carry a fetus to term without defects despite the low Lunar gravity, along with a laundry list of other small adaptations to that environment. It’s been six years, I assume they’ve made some progress on that since then but I don’t really care to check.

I would sooner become a conshelfer than transplant my life to a barren, airless rock. I know I’m in the minority in feeling that way, but why do so many want to move further away from life, rather than closer to it?

Life, in the sense of biology. Of diverse, lush ecosystems. Living underwater moves you closer to the Earth, and surrounds you with beautiful living things. Moving further from the Earth, living the rest of your life in an artificial environment is a decision I’ll never understand. Then again, I am on my way to Shenzen.

I disengaged my interface upon hearing over the PA that boarding would soon commence. Everyone around me shifted in their seat, eyeing up everyone around them as if it would be a race. As if the order of boarding hadn’t been decided long in advance.

The fucking dolphin got to go first, to my consternation. It was such a tedious and elaborate ordeal to load his scooter dealie onto the plane that by the time the first set of human passengers were able to begin boarding, I was on the verge of nodding off.

Of course when I found my seat, I was right behind the damned thing. He was strapped in place facing towards the rear of the plane, leaving me little option but to stare him in the face. I couldn’t pretend not to notice him without it being obvious what I was doing, either.

As the rest of the passengers milled about, chatting and bickering, I gave the rolling dolphin carrier a closer look. Mostly because some of the water vapor was getting on my arms. Not that I really cared just then, but it seemed like something that would grow increasingly irritating over the next few hours.

“EEKKEKEEEEK-EK-EK” the marine mammal shrieked, promptly translated into Chinese, then into English after I dialed in that preference. “I can turn the front misters off if you like.” Suddenly flustered by the show of consideration given my uncharitable thoughts up to that point, I assured the streamlined mass of glistening grey flesh before me that it wasn’t a big deal.

“The plastic bag you’re zipped up into contains most of it” I explained. It actually did, about a centimeter worth of accumulated water sloshing gently at the very bottom where suction pumps recirculate it to the misters. But really, just not wanting her to think I was some sort of asshole. Or...him? I can never tell, and often catch myself assuming all dolphins are female just because of their shape.

“I’m not a separatist, if that’s what you’re thinking” it chirped, the synth English voice reading the translation sounding comically formal. I insisted I didn’t think anything in particular and don’t make a habit of assuming shit about strangers. Only partly true.

“I’m more afraid you’re going to spend the whole flight talking my ear off about the prophet Lilly” I muttered, and to my surprise the dolphin laughed. “I’m not a follower of his teachings, I must confess. The name I use with humans is Remble. Not my actual name, but that doesn’t translate to anything in English and it’s painful to the human eardrum.”

I reached out as if to shake its hand before realizing the foolishness of it. Instead I introduced myself and asked why I don’t meet many atheist dolphins. Remble hesitated before answering. “I never said I was an atheist.”

Of all the things I expected getting onto this plane, shooting the shit with a dolphin and enjoying myself to boot was pretty far down the list. Remble turned out to be male, his name taken from a cartoon he liked when very young.

When I asked how dolphins watch cartoons, he described a human conshelfer he was friends with making a point to wheel a little old fashioned television into the moon pool module of the subsea colony she lived in so Remble could surface, flop up on the rim and watch it.

The image of a child and a dolphin watching their favorite show together tickled me, and humanized Remble to the point where I began wondering whether the term “humanize” is appropriate any longer.

---

^{Stay Tuned for Part 9!}