Jeramey Kraatz - The Moon Platoon

To his surprise, the video began to play not just on the HoloTek but on the wall across from him as well. His grandmother and two younger brothers sat inside their RV, threadbare curtains tacked up over the windows, dust motes floating in the shafts of light that poured through the many holes. Their faces were all smiles, blown up to huge proportions and illuminating Benny’s room.

“Hi, Benny!” all three of them said at once, waving. He wondered when they could have recorded this – maybe while he was out saying goodbye to the rest of the caravan.

“We wanted to leave you a surprise,” his grandmother said. “I hope you find this! Otherwise we messed up. Boys, tell your brother that you love him.”

Both his brothers rolled their eyes, putting up a fight for a few seconds.

“Just don’t forget about us,” Alejandro, the youngest, said.

“Sure, and bring us back some cool stuff.” Justin grinned.

“Oh, yeah, and we took your holospider out of your bag. If you want it back for your trip, tell us before you leave, OK?”

“And tell Elijah how cool I am. I’ll be old enough to apply next year!”

His brothers started to bicker over which of them deserved to go to the Moon before the other. Benny sat on the bed, his knees feeling wobbly. It made no sense, given the extreme luck he’d had in winning the EW-SCAB, but suddenly he kind of wished he were back on Earth.

Eventually, his grandmother turned the camera so that it focused only on her. She was all smiles, her darkly tanned flesh crinkling like raisin skin around her eyes.

“Your father would be so proud,” she said, tears threatening to fall at any moment. “You know that, right, Benicio?”

The video ended like that, with her frozen, staring into the camera, as if waiting for him to respond.

Benny set the HoloTek down and fished the last remaining item out of the bottom of his rucksack. A tarnished silver hood ornament in the abstract shape of a human. The figure appeared to be moving so quickly through the air that its body blurred, trailing behind it like wings or the tail of a comet. His father had pulled it off an old car he and Benny had found on a salvage trip one day when Benny was six or seven.

“See this?” his dad had asked. “This is like us. Always moving forward. We keep going, no matter what. We never give up.”

Benny brushed a piece of lint off the statue and put it on the nightstand beside his bed. It looked shabby in the high-tech room. Benny could relate.

He wasn’t surprised his brothers had taken the spider but left the hood ornament. The three of them might have spent a lot of their days pulling pranks on one another and fighting over toys or tech, but Justin and Alejandro both knew what that silver piece of metal meant to Benny. Each of them had mementos that the others knew were off-limits. Stuff from their father. Salvaged junk that meant the world to them. Now that their dad was gone, it was all they had of him other than their memories.

It hadn’t even been a year since he’d led a small team out into the Drylands in search of water. Only two people had returned. Benny’s father was not one of them. In the course of a day, the world as Benny knew it had ended.

Benny had already been filming for his EW-SCAB video when it happened – he had always planned to try for the scholarship. But he’d almost abandoned the application in the week following his father’s death. Part of this was because of sheer exhaustion. He spent all his time making sure his brothers were OK, talking to them or trying to distract them when tears cut streaks down their dust-covered cheeks. He tried to turn himself into a rock, stone-faced, promising them he’d never leave – another reason he almost gave up on the EW-SCAB. It was only at night that he let himself really think about his father, when he’d climb up to the top of the RV after everyone else was asleep and wonder how in the world they were going to survive without him. One night, he’d taken the hood ornament up to the roof and realised that his dad would have wanted him to apply. Of course he would have. He’d want Benny to keep fighting, keep trying for everything he yearned for in life. Always moving forward. Never giving up. And what Benny wanted more than anything was to help his family.

So he went for it. He poured every ounce of his heart into his application materials.

And somehow that had been enough to get him this far.

Now, with the hood ornament on his bedside table, he almost felt like his father had guided him there. And he knew that despite being away from his family right now, he’d be back soon. He’d take care of them. He’d be the kind of person his dad would have wanted him to be.

A soft electronic ping sounded all around Benny’s suite, and suddenly the frozen image of his family was gone from the screen.

Pinky’s voice filled the room.

“Message received from Ricardo Rocha. Would you like to view it now?”

“Uh …” Benny said, jumping to his feet. “Yes?”

The Pit Crew member appeared on the wall, his chin held high, arms crossed across the chest of his dark red space suit.

“Greetings, Mustangs,” he said in a deep, slightly accented voice. “It’s an honour to have you on my team. Please join me in the common room at the end of the hallway near the lifts.” He set his square jaw, eyes staring straight into Benny’s. “Now.”

Benny immediately started for the door. There was something commanding in Ricardo’s voice – maybe because as the first Crew member he was almost five years older than Benny – that left no room for hesitation. The other Mustangs must have felt the same way, because by the time Benny got to the common room, they were almost all there, making small talk and comparing HoloTek apps as 3D images of red horses galloped or reared back silently along the walls. He spotted Hot Dog using her HoloTek’s camera to see herself as she fixed her hair. Ramona, unsurprisingly, had her face close to a screen as she lounged in a chair against one wall. Jasmine was on the other side of the room, leaning against a corner with her hands in her pockets as she stared at the floor.

Drue was standing near the door, talking to a girl Benny hadn’t met yet. He watched as she rolled her eyes and walked away from him, flicking two long dark braids behind her. Drue crossed his arms and made a face at her as she left, then scanned the room until he saw Benny. His eyes lit up as he waved him over.

Benny stood still for a second. There were a lot of other people he hadn’t met yet, but there was something about how frantically Drue motioned to him that made him feel like Drue needed him by his side. And Benny had to admit, even though Drue was kind of full of himself, there was something exhilarating about his confidence and energy.

“Who was that?” Benny asked as he approached.

“Just some girl named Iyabo. No one interesting.”

Benny guessed this really meant that it was no one interested in talking to Drue.

“I’ve been scoping out these losers and I’m pretty sure we’re the team’s best hope of coming out on top if we’re pitted against the other groups,” Drue continued. “As long as you really do have the kind of ATV driving skills you say you do. That’ll come in handy if we do fight Moon buggy paintball wars or something.”

“There’s a big difference between being aware of your abilities and being full of yourself, Drue Bob Lincoln,” a voice came from behind them. “The C in EW-SCAB stands for courage, not cockiness.”

Benny turned to see Ricardo Rocha towering over them. He was at least two heads taller than everyone else in the room, and much broader, too. He looked like he could bench-press Benny if he wanted to.