Christopher WunderLee - The Loony - a novella of epic proportions

The recruitment process was that simple: impressionable, agreeable, slightly perverse, perhaps a little eccentric, but all together, a patriotic chap with a small mouth and no Trotskyite political skeletons in his footlocker. Albert was shown out of the room by two underlings and taken to his new place of residence, now that he was part of the operation. He realized, of course, that he would be giving up certain liberties, certain rights, but he comforted himself with the idea that he was doing his patriotic duty. A few years of service would look good on his resume and he never thought he’d get this kind of opportunity right out of school, not in a million millennia. He was pleased with himself.

* * *

At the time, the National Aeronautical Space Administration wasn’t its own agency. It was part of the Department of Defense. NASA didn’t begin operations until late in ‘58, morphing from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and its major research laboratories-Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, and Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory. The new agency was given dominion over several military operations, including the space science group of the Naval Research Laboratory, the Army’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed by the California Institute of Technology, and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, where the captive ex-Nazi wiz Wernher von Braun and his team of engineers were developing rockets that would later appear to carry astronauts into space.

Back then, the space program was legit. The whole charade began because there was a promise made by an idealist who got scared after Korolev and his cosmonauts were doing so well, what with Sputnik 1 & 2, Uri Gagarin, and all those ships flying around up there (reports concluding that this all actually did happen). His advisors domino theorying outer space… all sorts of fearful innuendos of the Ruskies attacking from orbiting battleships as large as luxury cruise liners, perhaps turning the whole moon into a godless commie outpost with no private property rights, or setting up a space station right over Kansas and hurtling down filthy propaganda pamphlets and using telephoto lenses to take dirty pictures of good, wholesome American moms and daughters that they’d later give to the soldiers of the invading Red army like promises. So Jack, the good Catholic boy already obsessed with images and folklore of the final days, makes an oath in front of god and everybody that America’s going to send some modern day conquistador 250,000 miles in a Buick, park on the moon for a good while, and head on back again like he just ran up to the Dairy Twist for a hot buttered rum vanilla swirl and some fries. Now, they had to fulfill his promise, come hell or high water; they had to be lunar immigrants before the end of the decade. The money was there, the science just needed to catch up. The only problem was, they were ages behind. The Cold War was in full swing, there was a real need to out-do the other team. No one knew who had what really, what they planned to do with the big red button, all the silos, the Cubans, the Chinese, the Koreans, the damn Vietnamese.

So it was time to improvise…

* * *

There were as many false reports as there were actual sightings. The whole project began in the Southwestern desert, near Las Cruces, New Mexico, where the scientific research team collaborated with the former Nazi’s Peenemuende Missile Program. But some fiascoes about crash landings made it next to impossible to continue there and while von Braun and his team went deeper into the desert to design and test real rockets, the conceptual group was moved to Rainer National Park in Washington State. It was there, under the canopy of pristine conifers, that an unknown, top-secret proving ground was constructed, named Fort Harmony.

Albert arrived with the main contingent of scientists, engineers, and other technical staff as the base was just being completed. The various other contractors, artisans, subcontractors, consultants, subconsultants, advisors, and representatives were already present, being guided not by military commanders, but by the true generals of this particular operation, the people from the motion picture industry. By far, they made up the largest demographic at the new base, occupying five of the eight barracks, more than even the military at that time. The general of the generals was the man hand selected by the Principal of NASA’s Apollo Program, the director.

The director had very little experience, none of them really did — it was like being the parents of Fat Man & little boy. There was nothing to refer to; they were charting unheard of ground, perhaps impossible ground. Max Feling had done a few operations, you’ve probably seen a few, “They’re Among Us,” “Loose Lips Sink American Battle Ships,” and the classic “The Reds Don’t Want You to Love God.” His private sector experience was far more impressive, with productions for Coca-Cola, Woolworth’s, Parker Brothers, and Coors. He’d graduated from the prestigious Irvine School of Photography and Film, was recruited into the military directly afterwards, made several films for the US Army during the Korean conflict, and was later offered a position at the National Security Agency’s Department of Internal Communications, before moving on to private sector work. Feling’s work was considered perfect for the project; he had experience mocking up historical events (or possible events), had a documentary style, and was known to rely on his technical advisors. That was where Lochner came in, being trained in astrophysics and interstellar trigonometry — he could show the director how the rocket would plough through the open womb of space, how it would land on the moon, how the astronauts would walk, how things would behave in the lunar atmosphere, all the stuff needed for realism.

It was Feling, after all, who recommended that the program extenuate the phallic shape of rockets in the first prototypes, the very same vehicles that America would watch thrust like stallions into gravity’s skirt. The actors were all from the armed forces, just like Ronald Reagan, so they knew what they were doing. But this, and the actors’ appearance, made the slender tube with the ribbed head all the more appealing — it made sense to them all instantly that they should be strapped to an enormous penis and shot into space. It was almost as though we were constructing a dildo for the castrated earth, giving it a tool to finally impregnate the stars.

Feling’s initial drawings were green-lighted by the Public Information Sector just for that reason, it would appeal to all citizens on a subconscious, Freudian, perverse wavelength. The men would see the giant dick launch into the sky and seethe with pride, imagining themselves with such a rancorous vibrato, daring to just take what they wanted, pull those panties down and fire one off into the great unknown (of course, the homo-erotic aspects occurred to them all as well, but no one mentioned it, knowing no man wants to admit he fantasizes about being the wearer of those panties). The women would see it, hard, pulsating, bulging, forcing its way up, and grow unexpectantly moist, dark images of it penetrating them would fuel their desire, the astronaut’s robust frames, assured eyes, patriotic attitudes, would make them moan right there on their couches, releasing that orgasm of Americanism that has pushed them across continents for centuries, would now compel them to reach for the moon. These couch-high honeys, getting the odd look from mister, were the grand-daughters of the women that fucked men across the Continental Divide, got a little unpuritanically perverse in order to get lazy husbands to cross the Atlantic on kindling, rocked ancient Germanic tribesmen into migrating to the greener east and making war on Rome — they’d push the men into space simply with their collective spasm of pleasure, a great energy release emanating out of their homes, a bubble of positive energy sending the dick sky-high. And after the triumph, the beds across America would be shaking insatiably, headboards slapping against the wall all night, secretaries, teachers and nurses all showing up with bruises on the tops of their heads the next morning, the men showing up with broad, content smiles on their faces, whispering in restrooms about how the little miss went wild last night just after the moon was stepped on, pulling off her house dresses, ripping off his t-shirt and climbing on board like she was one of those nasty street-walkers going to ride him into infinity. The day after, once their mission was a success, the entire nation would be well fucked, at ease, confident, ready for the next big war…