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DOOM MAGNETIC!!! - CHAPTER FOUR:
THE ELECTRIC MOON
William Pauley III
A short history lesson:
The Great Texan War changed everything for everyone. Some of these changes were welcome, others were a complete pain in the ass to get used to. Little things like vacations, traveling, and airports became obsolete and impossible. There wasn’t any money in it after the states flew the planet. Airplanes weren’t equipped to survive in the atmospheric conditions of outer space and even if they were, no insurance policy would have ever agreed to cover a bullet filled with hundreds of people hurdling through a belt of asteroids. That’s why people who were really itching to get out and see other places had to go about it the do-it-yourself method, or at least they had to hire a guy to do it for them (which was completely illegal, by the way, but the law was hardly ever enforced. Hell, cops were the only ones authorized to convert a vehicle for space travel anyway, given their government ties and limitless funding). Even still, with space travel a possibility, not many people felt vacationing worth the risk, so airports almost immediately went out of business. Most people learned to love their home states, so much so that even if all fifty of the states were to reunite, 90 percent of the population would stay put and not travel across borders. But this could also be because of fear. Fear over rumors, the legends of what had become of the other states.
Nevada went back to its roots, back to the days of the old west—a change that probably wouldn’t be too hard to get used to for most people, given that almost everyone had an idea of what that kind of life entailed. Other places, like Texas, Arizona, and California, all became scorched wastelands. Some had even heard that out in Texas, just about everyone in the entire state (which, after the war and great fire, there weren’t many left living, no how) all lived piled up in one city and the rest of the land they use as a playground for giant fighting robots.
At least according to legend.
Something else the great war changed that most people had a problem adjusting to was the fact the Nevada now had no moon. It had all the sun it could stand, but no moon. The manner in which the state was moving in orbit, Nevada now had approximately three days of sunlight and three days of nighttime (this fluctuated from time to time, sometimes day or night would last as long as a week), however when it was nighttime, all it ever got was stars. The people of Nevada didn’t like this, not one bit, so they did what all strong-willed and strong-hearted people did when they felt slighted, they did something about it.
The Electric Moon was the solution they came up with. One thousand and thirteen watts of pure artificial light illuminating from a colossal glass orb that’d been hoisted up off the ground by four steel posts with steel grids interweaved within. It looked like a giant golf ball on a tee, just waiting to get whacked.
For the most part, the land around the Electric Moon remained unoccupied. There was no real reason to ever be that close to it, especially at night, when it was turned on and blazing. Its sheer brightness was enough to keep most trespassers away. Well, that was until…
“So, what do you think?” Maundin asks.
Lady Starman looks up at the Electric Moon, shading the artificial moonlight from her eyes with her hand.
“Is this our only option?” she asks. Maundin pulls off his Stetson and wipes the sweat from his brow. The heat radiating from the Electric Moon is almost impossible to stand.
“Electricity is scarce here in Nevada. Sorry. This is the best we got. Vegas is a close second, but you’d have to plug into to the whole goddamn city. I’m not even sure how you’d go about doin’ a thing like that.”
Lady continues staring up at the moon. “Okay, I think this’ll work.” She drops the sack she’s carrying on the dry, cracked desert ground and pulls out a large object. The purple television. The golden convex screen sparkles under the moonlight.
“The electric panel should be over there somewhere,” Maundin says, pointing at an area at the bottom of the structure where all the wires seem to be coming from. He and Lady walk over to it.
They easily spot the panel, as it’s very loudly painted with bright stripes of white and red with the warning ‘DANGER/¡PELIGRO!’ printed across it. Maundin flips open the panel and grabs ahold of the television cord. Just as he’s about to plug it in, Lady’s soft voice whispers.
“Wait…”
Maundin pulls back and looks Lady in the eye. “What’s wrong, darlin’?”
She’s biting at her thumbnail. “I…ah, I just wanted to…” She leans over and kisses Maundin on the lips, slow and soft. Maundin doesn’t resist.
She pulls away.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I just wanted to do that before…well, before this.”
Maundin smiles and his cheeks flush. “What’s gotten into you, girl? You’re actin’ like it’s the end of the world or something. It’ll be alright. You’ll see.” He nods his head at her and pushes the prongs of the plug into the socket.
The television hums to life.
“I think it’s workin’,” he says, picking up the television and cradling it in his arms like a baby—a nineteen-inch, purple, sixty-pound baby.
“Okay, now listen to me closely,” Lady says, waving her hand in front of Maundin’s face to grab his attention. “It’s very important that you abide by these rules, Maundin, or else I won’t know the exact results of the transmission and…” She pauses and looks away from him. “I’ll be forced to…”
She looks back at him, her eyes full of tears. “Just please do exactly as I say, alright?”
Maundin nods his head, not fully understanding the importance of what it is that’s about to happen to him. “Yeah, okay. Whatever you say.”
Lady takes a deep breath. “Okay. One—Don’t look away from the television screen once it is turned on. It doesn’t matter how difficult the images onscreen are to take, do not look away.”
“Okay, sure, no problems there,” he assures.
“Two—Don’t show your teeth or the inside of your mouth to the television screen once it’s been turned on. Keep your mouth pinned shut. This means you can’t wince, smile, cough, or sneeze. Breathe through your nose. If you open your mouth for even a fraction of a second during this transmission, then this will fail and all of this will have been for nothing. I cannot express just how important this is.”
Maundin begins to dig at the corner of his mouth with his tongue. “Okay, anything else?”
“Just one more thing,” she says. “Once the last image appears on the screen, the television will go to static. Listen to the white noise for a full minute before turning off the television. One full minute, no less. Count it out in your head. If you can make it through the full minute, then you’ve done it. After this you will feel much more content with your destiny as a Starman, I guarantee it.”
Maundin remains quiet, staring intensely into Lady’s eyes. Sweat pours down his face. “Reach into my pocket and pull out my bandana.”
Lady reaches into his pocket, pulls out the bandana, and begins to dab the sweat from his face. “No, tie it around my mouth,” he says. “Just in case. You got me nervous now.”
She nods and ties the bandana over his mouth. “Okay, now let’s do this. If we wait any longer, my arms are gonna give out,” he says.
She reaches over to turn on the television. Her hand on the dial, she speaks, “You were a good man.”
He looks at her with confused, glossy eyes. He begins to speak, but she interrupts him. “Eyes down.”
He looks at the television and can see his reflection in the golden screen. Sweat drips and streams down the glass.
She turns the dial.
The screen flickers and spits images, as if he’s sitting in an old theater watching as the first images of twelve different movies shoot across the screen in rapid succession, like subliminal messages in a fast-food commercial. Then the images come faster, and get increasingly more difficult to take in. His eyes begin to roll back in his head, but he fights it. Tears leak from the corners of his eyes.
Not even a full minute in and his body is already beginning to let go, give up. The muscles in his arm convulse and spasm. He digs his fingernails into the side of the television to keep from losing his grip. The veins in his throat swell and throb, the muscles in his chest, shoulders, and neck contract, stiffening his body like rigor mortis. The images continue to flicker across the screen, reflecting in the moisture of his eyeballs.
Lady turns away. She knows what’s coming and refuses to bear witness.
The light from the Electric Moon begins to flicker. The muscles in his arms are shaking even more wildly now, so much that he isn’t sure how much longer he’ll be able to hold on to the television. His eyes continue to roll back in his head and the more he fights it, the more they begin to burn. The tears streaming down his cheeks are now boiling and scalding his flesh. The skin on his face bubbles and pops, oozing hot blood and pus from every orifice. He’s breathing furiously now, with his bandana sucked into his mouth so tight that the outline of his teeth can be seen on the outside of it. With everything in him, he resists the urge to scream, because if he screams, the bandana may fall and expose his teeth and all will be lost. The bandana is now soaked in blood, small red streams flow out from underneath it, dripping and soaking into the dry, cracked earth at his feet.
He loses his grip on the television. It falls to the ground, and he follows closely behind. His collapsed body goes into seizure and he lays there flopping like a fish out of water until the images finally stop and the white noise finally appears, as promised, on the television screen. He gasps for breath behind the blood-soaked bandana, which is almost impossible. The desperate feeling of helplessness reminds him of a form of torture he had once seen in a movie, something called waterboarding, where a man is tied up and a towel is wrapped around his head, then water is poured over it, causing the victim to suffocate, drown. He’d always thought of it as one of the worst ways a man could ever be tortured, now he knows that isn’t true. What he had just experienced was probably the most pain a person can possibly endure without actually dying. Suffocation is the easy part.
He did it.
Lying there, with the smoke rolling off his body, he thought of flies diving into the blue light of a bug zapper. The one’s who survive something like that are the only one’s who can truly relate to how he’s feeling in this moment.
All that’s left to do now is wait:
One Mississippi…
Two Mississippi…
Three—
Paid subscribers! The next chapter of this story will be posted on May 30th! Stay tuned for M_____.
The Electric Moon
© William Pauley III, 2011
All rights reserved.
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