Christopher WunderLee - The Loony - a novella of epic proportions

* * *

INTERROGATOR 1, colonel: And now part six of our on-going discussion THE STATE OF WELLNESS. Recently, Samuel asked us all our opinion on the mystery of uniped footprints in the jungles of the Congo. Today, we go back to 1969 and allow Albert, do you like Al? No. We allow Albert to share with us some of his thoughts.

(File footage of the Nagasaki inferno, a naked black child burning on the gallows, and an Austrian soldier entangled in the barbwire death camp of the Bulge)

INTERROGATOR 1: Of course, we will be respectful, mindful, and good listeners. We will give Albert the chance to explain to us what he finds so interesting about 1969. Remember, that was the year that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, the year of the hippie, and the summer of love.

(File footage of a young black and white woman with bared breasts and flowers in her hair dancing with a grizzly bearded boy as a psychedelic band zombies on the stage, Ken Kesey flashing the peace sign, soldiers walking through the jungle of Vietnam, and the lone figure of an astronaut, the earth mirrored in his visor as the stars and stripes flutters in the vacuous wind of space.)

INTERROGATOR 2, captain: (singing) doo, daa, dooo, daa, dooo, da, tot, a doot, between the moon and New York City, the best you can do, the best that you can do, is fall in love…

Out-of-room voice 1: Columbia, this is Houston reading you loud and clear, over. I guess you're about the only person around that doesn't have TV coverage of the scene.

Out-of-room voice 2: That's all right. I don't mind a bit.

Voice 1: They've got the flag up now.

Voice 2: Beautiful, just beautiful.

Out-of-room voice 3: We are men from the planet Earth, first set foot upon the moon, July 1969 AD.

LOCHNER: Despite the fact that it was the crook (he makes quote signs in the air) that oversaw the whole thing, as dirty as they come…

President RICHARD NIXON: Hello, I'm talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House. And this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made.

LOCHNER: er, captain doctor Albert Lochner, number 344 dash 858 dash 10910.

INTERROGATOR 2: It says they were dropped out a cargo plane at 40,000 feet and the splashdown was for television, along with the big parade and more Nixonite angst.

(File footage of capsule bobbing like a cork in ocean waves, the Red army marching in Moscow along side ICBMs and tanks, a map of the world turning bloody from Russia to London)

INTERROGATOR 3 (obviously military intelligence): The Queen Mother is a Bismarkian infidel, she's sold the House of Windsor to the Chinks, we're being bamboozled while you cannoodle with the enemy. It's all right here, the Song of Solomon, not a love poem, a prophecy…

INTERROGATER 1: We're giving Albert some time today, let's focus… Now Albert, you were talking about Richard Millhouse Nixon…

INTERROGATER 4: …an onslaught of Amazons, impaled male heads on spears, and bloody nipple acid spouts and a ceremony for the castration of mankind, there is a scheme afoot. They are invading government in hordes, whores of hordes, hordes of whores, and America doesn't even know the Zuluness of it, the secret network of vaginas, they have lips you know, you ever notice how every woman is a lesbian, they let their vaginal lips do the talking while our hard pricks remain silent, we won't know what happened.

LOCHNER: Quite a smoke screen.

(File footage of smoke wafting over an unknown city, people running from tear gas canisters and riot police)

Out-of-room-voice 4: He's a whistleblower, knows too much… the space race with the Ruskies, he's one of them. He was a technical advisor for V2Blitz Incorporated throughout the entire episode.

LOCHNER: Since I have an astrophysics background, I was intrigued, OK, but I'm no snitch, I sat in the backseat of that car for over two years, only escaped, or tried to escape, twice.

INTERROGATER 1: So Albert believes we never stepped foot on the moon. It's Albert's contention that the whole historical event was fabricated in Russia and Rainer National Park in Washington State.

LOCHNER: It was ideal, television was a new, malleable medium, we didn't have science fiction TV yet, so it was very easy to fool the general public.

INTERROGATER 1: According to Albert, we couldn't, technologically speaking, travel to the moon in 1969, we still aren't advanced enough.

LOCHNER: It was Kennedy's fault. That's why the killed him, he and those other three astronauts, and probably Bobby too.

INTERROGATER 1: He maintains that the entire Apollo Space Program was created…

LOCHNER: Caesar Kennedy and his damn promises and the cold war…

INTERROGATER 1: …fabricated for patriotism and that he was part of it.

LOCHNER: And then they continued, giving big bucks to the military-industrial complex, spend, spend, spend, gotta beat the Reds.

Out-of-room voice 2: This one right here?

Out-of-room voice 1: That’s it. You got it right there.

Out-of-room voice 3: Our flight collected 200 pounds of lunar surface samples.

Out-of-room voice 4: I got it. That’s 20 pounds of, that’s 20 pounds of rock.

INTERROGATOR 1: Throughout the late sixties and early seventies, we sent several men on several different missions to the moon.

Out-of-room voice 3: We were just bouncing around like two little kids and babbling back and forth, and we had a wonderful, exciting, emotional time.

Out-of-room voice 1: Oh, rats.

Out-of-room voice 3: There's so much overwhelming evidence… it has to be true. Conspiracies feed un-Americans.

Out-of-room voice 5: If you're asking me what the hard proof is besides the — the photographic record and the film records that we have, we also have a large number of samples that are viewed chemically very different than any rocks that you would find here on the earth.

INTERROGATOR 1: For Albert, the lunar landings are protean assertions his experience indicates are false, like having faith. He has difficulty with accepting that which he can’t prove. For example, the names of the missions: Apollo, Gemini, Mercury. Why did they choose pagan gods? That’s something we’ve talked about frequently.

INTERROGATOR 5 (CIA): There was a real Hebrew element to it.

LOCHNER: And what about the lactose intolerance of it all?

Out-of-room voice 2: There’s about three sources of light on the lunar surface. Like on earth, the sun is the strongest, the earth was there, and then there’s the reflecting pool surface of the Sea of Tranquility. That reflected light makes the moon visible, it steals it from the sun and passes it off as its own glow.

LOCHNER: And why are the stars shining in the heavens and not in the hells?

Out-of-room voice 2: The sky's pitch black because there are no stars, and only one sun, the one that god built for Adam and Eve way back when, when he first spoke.

INTERROGATOR 2: And Washingtonwood spun it like a great myth, and we all bought it ‘cause we’re gullible lizards, not men.

(File footage of komodo dragons, an alligator basking in the sun beside a river, claymation dinosaurs roam a volcanic world)

INTERROGATOR 1: Nineteen sixty-nine, Apollo 11 lands on the moon.

(Clip from “Jesus of Nazareth,” as actor Danny Wallace is crucified by Roman legionnaires, his chest pierced, his face ragged and bloody, he intones: “Father… father, why have you forsaken me?”)

INTERROGATOR 6 (NASA): And even if we had faked the whole yarn, we pulled it off, believe it or accept your excommunication from the dream. We’re not hosting any subversives, no fags or poets, or Wobblies, or atheists.

(Clip from “The Crucible” in which a group of women are hauled away by the chief inquisitor)

INTERROGATOR 1: But why does he know the truth and no one else? Is it possible that we’ve all been duped except for this one man?