Jeramey Kraatz - The Moon Platoon

Benny hoped that he didn’t.

The room around them got quiet. Drue paused for only a moment before holding out his hand.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m a huge fan. I guess you already know who I am.”

“Benny Love,” Ricardo said, ignoring Drue. His penetrating eyes were the same dark brown as his crew cut. It felt to Benny as though their leader was sizing him up as he continued. “I saw your video. Nice moves out on those desert dunes. I’m eager to see how those translate into low-gravity speed runs on the lunar surface. And saving that boy took some real bravery. I’m proud to have you in my group.”

Ricardo thrust out a red-gloved hand with such speed and precision that Benny tensed up and almost jumped. He shook it, murmuring thanks.

Ricardo glanced at Drue. “You didn’t have a video, so we’ll have to see if you live up to all that big talk.”

Drue smiled, but Benny could see that he was gritting his teeth. He looked back at the rest of the room. All eyes were on them. Hot Dog had her hands clasped in front of her, a huge smile on her face as she stared at Ricardo.

“Attention,” Ricardo said, walking past Benny and stepping up on a raised platform in front of one of the animated mustangs. “As you probably already know, I’m Ricardo Rocha, the first member of Elijah’s Pit Crew. That makes me his right-hand man. Part apprentice, part assistant, part bodyguard.”

“And complete idiot,” Drue muttered, still smiling and clenching his jaw.

Ricardo continued. “While you’re on the Moon, you’re my responsibility, and anything you do reflects upon me as your leader. That means I expect nothing but the best from you for the next two weeks. Elijah expects nothing but the best. And I’m guessing you all want to impress him, right?”

The Mustangs erupted in shouts and cheers. Ricardo smiled.

“Good. Now, let’s get to know each other. Remember, these are your teammates – it’s in your best interest to get along with them and work together.”

One by one, they introduced themselves. Many were from places Benny had never imagined he’d ever see. Iyabo, the girl Drue had been talking to, came from Cameroon. A skinny, pale boy with dark eyes and hair was from Greece. Jasmine had originally been born in China before coming to America. Despite their home countries, almost everyone seemed to speak passable English. Benny got a few weird looks when he introduced himself as being from the Drylands, but he figured that was to be expected. Unless you lived in a border town or out in the desert, you didn’t exactly come across caravan members in your everyday life.

Ramona was the last to introduce herself. She didn’t say anything, only clicked her tongue and held up her left arm, which had a HoloTek strapped to it – an older model, not the one she’d been given when she checked in. As she tapped on the screen, purple numbers began to scroll across the room’s walls, replacing the Mustang logos.

01011010 01110101 01110000 00111111 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01010010 01100001 01101101 01101111 01101110 01100001 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101111 01101101 00100000 01010111 01100001 01101100 01100101 01111010 00101110 00100000 01011000 01000100

No one seemed sure what to make of this. Even Ricardo looked dumbfounded. Finally, Jasmine took a timid step forward.

“My binary is a little rusty,” she said, “But you’re … Ramona from … Wales?”

Ramona chuckled.

“Woot,” she said. “Much leet, Jazz.”

“OK,” Drue whispered to Benny. “Maybe you were right. Maybe she is speaking robot.”

A new series of numbers and what looked to Benny like gibberish strings of letters appeared. Jasmine’s eyes chased after the lines of code, her face scrunched in concentration. Finally, she laughed a little, apparently getting some joke that was lost on the others.

“Excuse me.” A woman’s voice filled the room as Pinky’s hologram walked out of the wall, causing a girl near her to scream. The screens scrambled, and were then replaced by the mustangs from before. “What exactly do you think you’re doing messing with my projection systems?”

“It’s OK, Pinky,” Ricardo said. “It looks like we’ve got quite a programmer on our team.”

Ramona let her reddish-blond curls fall back down into her face as she opened a can of fizzy drink, grinning at Pinky.

“Also,” Ricardo said, “hasn’t Max been on at you about popping up out of nowhere?”

“Humph.” Pinky casually walked through the open doorway, blinking out of existence when she was a few steps into the hall.

The skinny boy from Greece raised a hand. “So, Pinky seems cool and everything, but can I get a talking dog or something as my room butler instead?”

“Elijah’s pretty protective of the AI’s form,” Ricardo said.

“Why? It’s just a hologram, right? It could be anything.”

“Well …” Ricardo paused for a moment. “Pinky was Elijah’s personal assistant for years as a flesh-and-blood person. She was still here when I was an EW-SCABer. I got to meet her a few times.”

“So, what happened to her?” Hot Dog asked.

“She didn’t like it up here. She missed the ocean and the sunshine on Earth. Elijah was … upset when she said she was leaving. He kept himself busy in his quarters and made her spend her last week here with the newly designed artificial intelligence system. She basically uploaded her personality into it. I have to say, she’s pretty similar to the original.”

“I guess we know who the all-seeing eyes of the Taj are,” Benny whispered to Drue.

“Seriously. Remind me not to say anything bad about the computer lady.”

“OK, Mustangs,” Ricardo said, straightening his posture like a soldier about to march. “Enough talk. Who wants to see the rest of the Taj?”

Excitement surged through Benny so quickly that he didn’t even realise he was shouting until his voice was ringing out through the room. They were all yelling, ready to explore.

Ricardo led them through the halls, pointing out things of interest. A solid-gold replica of the first Space Runner encrusted with diamonds. Astroturf football fields out back, with goals floating three metres off the ground. A room made up entirely of grey rubber that Ricardo referred to simply as a “virtual gaming environment”. Even the kitchen was a technological wonder. Jasmine gasped when she saw the state-of-the-art lasers used to chop vegetables and flash-cook food.

With each new marvel, Benny’s understanding of what life could be like changed. He knew that wealthy people in the cities lived in a completely different way to those in the caravans – he’d had glimpses of this himself when he lived in an apartment as a kid – but the sort of luxury available at the Taj was mind-boggling. And as much as it filled him with excitement, he couldn’t believe that some people lived like this all the time. What would that even be like?

He wondered if, just maybe, he would like to stay at the Taj. What would his family’s life be like if they could all somehow live here?

“Why are we seeing all this without getting to do any of it?” Drue groaned. “That video-game room is new! Heck, I’d even be happy using one of those laser potato peelers right now. This is torture.”

Benny noticed Ricardo looking back at Drue with disdain.

“Drue, Dude,” Benny said, “you’re going to drive everyone else and yourself insane with your complaining. You wouldn’t last for five seconds in the Drylands.”

“I could tough it out.”

“Really? Because my caravan has taken on a few people who got forced out of a city before. They usually don’t last for long.”