Earth had not changed much since O'ryan last visited. His prior mental preoccupation with nostalgia vanished as soon as he set foot on the ground. Luna Prime was a small station by many standards of measure, but it did not feel dense. The population was matched with space to spare. On Earth, merely going from the nearby terminal to take a ride to his hotel had him feeling like a packed sardine. There were too many bodies, too many strange odors, O'ryan held a sense of validation at his sudden displeasure. He had given himself a reason to be here, a false reason to satisfy the curious. He arranged to give an educational panel on efficient designs at the annual North American astronautics convention held in Chicago. O'ryan did not engineer any design himself, but he knew them and why they were needed to be that way. It was the perfect sort of material that wannabe spacemen craved. On Earth the demands were different. For every one person that might attempt to ascertain his surroundings to his own benefit, there were four or five that did not or could not care less. There were too many inadequate and inefficient designs in city planning on Earth that offered up their shame for all to see. Any one of the starry eyed pretend astronauts that he was going to entertain would be able to come up with better and more efficient organizations than most of what he saw. The only thing anybody needed in order to come up with a better design, was to simply want to, that's how easy it would be. The reality was that conflict was superior to coordination in nearly all endeavors, out of power, or laziness, or sheer willingness to behave like animals and close oneself off from self responsibility. This was his usual take, and it was present for the entire trip, distracting him from the persistent worry that he let himself be hoodwinked by a UFO believer.
At his hotel, O'ryan attempted to prepare his material, but could not shake his imagination. How would they know where to find him? It wouldn't be difficult to follow someone, but he didn't bother checking. Is there really life in our backyard? Ever since the complete failure of finding anything on Mars, he had given up hope of finding anything in their own solar system. Could it really be true? A sense of giddiness mixed with his worry. The result was making him sick. He sat down, and decided to "wing it" for his presentation the following day. He drifted off to sleep again, which was easy given his body's highly disturbed sleep cycles and the allure of returning to higher gravity, which gave him a sense of comfort once he reached his sofa. He wondered as he slept. If there was really nothing out there but ice, rocks, gasses, and fire, would anybody care at all about space, about exploration? He didn't think so.
There was a crack. O'ryan could not remember his dream, though he knew that he had one. It had something to do with Jupiter again, but he wasn't on supplements any more. He couldn't think straight, regardless, his eyes were red and he was dead tired. There was a loud knock at the end of his dream that startled him bad, that was a first. He closed his eyes again. Then he heard the knock, again. He opened his eyes. The knocks were real. His body reacted before he did. His heart pounded in his chest as he looked over at the clock. 4AM. Nobody checks in at 4AM. He began to sweat. "This can't be real." He did not move, and only held his eyes open. He must have imagined the knock. He tried to push his finger through his hands, perhaps he was dreaming. But it did not work. Then he heard two knocks. He bolted from his bed, surprising himself, but did not know what to do nor say. He looked around, and decided he needed more clothes, and threw them on. He went to the door, but stopped. He checked the camera feed panel. There was a man in business attire outside. "It is real." O'ryans heart was sprinting for him. He felt lightheaded, but opened the door. The man had spiky brown hair and his suit was sleek and black, not quite what O'ryan expected. The man offered a congenial smile, and spoke.
"The man of the hour. I'm Davis, I believe the toad man warned you of this, I hope? Do you mind if I come in? I'll be brief, so you can get back to sleep."
O'ryan could only muster a minor nod as his narrative of reality slowly crumbled away. He opened the door to let Davis in, who spoke each sentence in rapid succession, while O'ryan gave only nods or one word replies, still sitting in the back of his mind, processing what was going on.
"Relax man, relax, let's sit near the window, I need a smoke. Big plans, O'ryan, big plans."
O'ryan gazed, half confused, half listening.
"Green Dawn of course," Davis said, lighting a cigarette. He then pulled a small container from his pocket, "Do you mind?"
O'ryan nodded, following only conversational habits, prompting Davis to cut lines of cocaine on his coffee table.
"You'll be doing us a favor man, look, don't even worry about Luna Prime, you won't be needing that job anymore." Davis snorted a line.
"You do this for us and you can have any position you want. IF you still want to. You'll be swimming in so much money you can do whatever you like. Work, don't work, whatever." Davis pulled a business card out from his breast pocket and tossed it on the table. It was blank, with a date and an address. "That's all you need brother. Are you alright? I figured I woke you up. I try not to do this so late at night but I'm in a rush today. I have to find some other tech in case you chicken out."
O'ryan looked at the card. The news of the other tech brought him partly back to reality. "If this is real" he picked up the card "I'm all in…" Davis reached over and slapped him hard on the shoulder.
"My-man! Hell yeah. That's what I'm talking about." Davis fist pumped the air a few times. He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a pill bottle, emptying it in his mouth, "Fuck yeah, if I can pull this other tech too I'll be riding high tonight baby. I gotta say you didn't need much convincing, or explaining, or anything really. That's what I like about you O'ryan. There is a giant stack of papers telling me everything about you-" Davis snorted another line from the coffee table "-and if I bothered to read them, I might know anything at all about you, but I can tell that you know what you're after! And that's what counts."
"What will I find here?" O'ryan tapped the card.
"My boss and some other big wigs and our own techs. They'll explain everything." Davis leaned back, smoking. "Hey, I heard the Doctor herself tried to talk to you on Luna Prime. What do you think of her?"
"Dr. Mirati? I'm not sure,I didn't get much time with her." O'ryan said.
"First impressions." Davis said.
"Made me uncomfortable. I can't tell what she wants, or why she's so motivated to get whatever it is that she wants. The robot, too. I don't know. I don't like being deceived, or knowing how susceptible I am to it. I suppose I'd rather know than not know, but… yeah, uncomfortable is the word." Davis shook his head at O'ryan's words.
"Fucking bitch. Uncomfortable, yeah. Deceptive, yeah. You don't know the half of it." Davis tossed his cigarette out the window with more force than necessary, and lit another. "Hot though. Gotta give her that. Never meet your heroes, man. I can't enjoy her porn anymore ever since meeting her. Big fucking mistake, taking this job." Davis tossed his cigarette out the window again, and lit another, his hands moving on autopilot.
O'ryan widened his eyes and furrowed his brow, Davis put both his hands up like he was being arrested. "I'm cool, man, I'm cool. Just pissed. She-, well, fuck. I can't tell you. But you have the right instinct, I think. You can smell 'em. The bullshit. I'm surprised by how many people can't smell bullshit when it reeks so fucking bad and it's all over the place." Davis let a few seconds hang as he eyed another line of cocaine, but O'ryan could tell he was actually thinking.
"Between you and me." Davis said. "One of my managers can't smell bullshit either. He's responsible for half this fucking problem and most of my problems trying to help fix it." He snorted the line. "After this debacle is over you bet your ass I'm taking his place." Davis pointed a finger accusingly at O'ryan, crossed his legs, and leaned back "And you just helped me seal his fate."
O'ryan was finally getting around to processing everything that had just happened as part of factual reality when Davis stood up, looking at his watch.
"If you don't mind, I'd like to get out of here quickly if I can." He shot a glance at the card. "All the questions will be answered there, don't worry." He glanced at the lines of cocaine. "Help yourself."
"Uh, thanks?" O'ryan said, all his questions now coming to mind, but Davis was already shutting the door behind him. O'ryan sat in his room in quiet contemplation of the recent events. He had plenty of conflicting thoughts, but the underlying tone was quite clear, he's legit. Despite all the extremities, or perhaps because of them. Something distant yet familiar to O'ryan was teasing him with its presence. Snow. Christmas morning, perhaps? Some creature of giddiness that he was sure went extinct decades ago.