Moon People, Part III: Starting a Panic All Over the Place

 Ah, Moon People, I've missed you.

Tiger's Voyage makes me angry to read because the characters are just so awful, but Moon People has no characters and its incoherence is actually pretty endearing.

Last time, our intrepid hero David Braymer, local high school teacher and former UFO expert, received a phone call from NASA about the mysterious meteor heading towards Earth. Also, he set up a date with Cheral, local restaurant owner and Sexy Lamp of the book, so that's nice.

The New Job

We start off with Bud Walker, head of operations at NASA, asking David if he still does astronomy. You know, I'm not sure why the head of operations is conducting a basic job inquiry rather than anyone involved with HR or recruiting.

Yes I am, David answered. This is about the meteor isn't it? Yes, Bud replied, I here your the best at what you do. David smiled and said, well I don't know about being the best. But I do teach astronomy in high school and I have been into astrology for about 20 years.

David's qualifications: teaches high school-level astronomy, believes in astrology.

Regardless of how you feel about astrology as a science, it has literally nothing to do with how to solve the problem of a meteor heading toward Earth. Astrology relates to celestial bodies' effects on humans, and as such wouldn't be anything NASA is interested in.

Also, there's the whole "astrology is an unverified pseudoscience" thing, but I digress.

So yeah, completely irrelevant. Unless Courtney is trying to say that it's relevant because the meteor is coming from the constellation Scorpio? And Scorpio is a zodiac sign? Even though it's a zodiac sign solely because it's a constellation, and its relevance to astrology comes from that rather than the other way around? I have no idea.

Bud lets David know that their head astronomer Herbert Lawson got into a car accident recently. They're alright, but there are a couple of empty positions that need to be filled rather urgently given the meteor and "something else" that NASA just became aware of. Wait, I thought they were already trying to hire David, and that he kept having to turn them down? Whatever.

David protests, saying that he already has a job as a high school teacher. Bud counters with an offer of a high salary, as well as making sure the school can hire a replacement. David stops arguing suspiciously easily and says that it depends on what this additional information is.

Now, that would be the normal place to end the conversation, but this is Dale M. Courtney, dammit, so the conversation spins its wheels on an issue that really shouldn't be an issue in the first place. Also, here's part of their conversation that I'm using as proof of how incomprehensible all of this is.

David answered, well I don't know. I guess it all depends on one thing. Then Bud said, what's that? What was that something else you were talking about a minute ago, when you were talking about the meteor? You said there was something else. I can't tell you until you take the job, Bud replied. Then David said, can I have a little time to think about it first? Bud answered, Yes, you have until 5 o'clock today. David said, wow that's not much time. Yes I know, Bud said, we can't help it, the meteor isn't giving us much choice. Please all I ask is for you to think about it and give me a call later today. Ok sir I'll do that David answered. I'll give you a call either way Mr. Walker and then David said have a good day sir. Then David hung up and went back to class.

I...I can't make this up.

And as much as it pains me to admit, I can actually see what Courtney is going for in this scene. The writing is almost complete gibberish, but the characters and plot are all so generic that you can still have an idea of what's happening. David is the reluctant hero getting roped into saving the world. That's his entire character.

David starts teaching class. Apparently astronomy books have pages dedicated to constellations, as opposed to the many other things that are actually astronomy, like celestial bodies, math, physics, extraterrestrial geography, etc. Dumb. But he also says that he's going to set up his fancy new telescope, which transmits the image onto what is basically a large computer monitor on the wall.

He switches it on, and adjusts it to Scorpio.

The hole class made a wow sound and then they all said about the same time" cool".

Amazing. Misplaced quotation marks and all.

They could see the meteor very clear as if it were night time, also everyone shouted out there it is, wow! Look at that picture. David said that's pretty good high definition. It's so clear. The whole class at the same time said yeah!

These are the most excited high school kids I've ever seen in my life. Have you ever tried to get a teenager excited about something? It's impossible.

Courtney reminds us for the fourth or fifth time that the meteor is coming from the tail section of Scorpio.

One of the students asks how the picture is so clear since it's in the middle of the day. Apparently, the image is transmitted from a satellite telescope. Wait, that's how a normal person would describe it.

This is one of the latest telescopes out David said, when you use it in the daytime it mixes with our Hubble 7 satellite telescope in space.

So there's that.

Wait, is he actually saying that the telescope mixes daytime with the "nighttime" that's...I dunno, stored in the satellite or something? Because that's what it looks like. And it makes absolutely no sense.

David notices something interesting about the meteor:

Wait a minute that's not coming from Lambda Scorpio off the stinger that's coming from An teres region but that's over 135 million light years away, there's no way that could get here in one hundred and seventy eight days.

Not that Courtney ever actually explains what any of this means, but I'll give it a shot. Lambda Scorpio is the second-brightest star in the constellation and is located on the "tail" of the scorpion. Antares is another star in Scorpio, but it's in the "body" section.

Courtney seems to be saying that since Antares is farther away than Lambda Scorpio, it makes no sense for the meteor to get there so quickly. But, uh. Lambda Scorprio is 570 light years away. If it's coming from there, it still makes no sense for it to arrive in 178 days. Also, assuming that this is the closest they can detect the meteor, why couldn't it have come from Antares? It just would have been coming towards them for a lot longer until they could detect it.

Luckily, David has a solution:

I wonder who did the calculations on that? Boy they do need help! Wait a minute. I should be able to calculate the speed thanks to my new telescope called Zeus.

He, uh, named his telescope? Why?

Then David said, Zeus can you locate and lock in on the meteor that is moving told us at a high rate of speed in the constellation of Scorpio?

Just in case you forgot it was coming from Scorpio.

Hee hee. "Told"

(Zeus) Affirmative, "Located." Cool, the whole class said out loud again. You could see Zeus zoom in on the meteor.

Okay, so we have stage directions in place of dialogue again. Zeus is an AI program (?) inside of the telescope, so that explains why it's named. Easily excitable high schoolers again. AND a sentence that switches to second person narration for no reason.

I love it.

Zeus calculates the speed and size of the meteor, which is something that NASA definitely wouldn't be able to do better than a consumer-grade telescope. The meteor is moving at 182,000 kilometers an hour and accelerating by about 5000 km/h every hour. It's also about 10 kilometers across.

Hey, points for using the metric system for scientific measurements!

This gets another "wow" from the entire class, which is starting to seem like an eldritch hivemind at this point.

Zeus also says that it should enter the solar system in about 200 days, eliciting another "wow" from every single student at the same time.

Billy looks at David and yelled out, ask Zeus if the meteor is going to hit Earth. David thought about it for a moment and said maybe I shouldn't. The whole class yells out, why not? Billy tells David, hey professor we are all in this together. It's not that simple Billy.

Consistent verb tenses? Booooring.

Despite the fact that we're in the middle of a conversation, in the middle of David speaking, Courtney thought that it would be a good idea to put a chapter break here. Why? I have no idea. There's not even a good dramatic stinger to end on a cliffhanger--it literally cuts off David's explanation for not asking Zeus if everyone will die.

Luckily for you, Chapter 2 was really short, so you'll get to hear the rest of the conversation in Chapter 3.

The Unknown

Chapter 3

There's a lot of things that could be wrong and everyone would leave here and go start a panic all over the place.

"Start a panic all over the place" is maybe the funniest way to phrase that.

Billy said, Ah we won't tell anyone.

David is somehow convinced by this stellar argument and agrees to ask Zeus as long as everyone "here by pledge[s] to this class and to God that you will not tell anyone what we find out in this class about the meteor."

David and/or Courtney is apparently unaware of the fact that people (especially teenagers) lie about things.

Everyone agrees, of course, as they are all part of the hivemind, and David asks if the meteor will collide with Earth or any other planet. Zeus says that it's not in a collission path with any planet, but there's a 94% chance that it will hit the sun, which creates a very somber mood in the class.

Um. Why??? The sun is MASSIVE and, above all else, REALLY HOT. A 10km meteor hitting the Earth would be really bad news because the meteor wouldn't burn up from friction as it enters the atmosphere. The sun is 333,000 times more massive than the Earth. Also, it's very hot. Literally nothing would happen.

David reminds everyone that they all pinky promised not to tell anyone, and everyone agrees again not to say anything.

Then David said, ok I am going to trust you then. There's still a big chance that it won't hit anything. We know Doc, Billy answered. There's a six percent chance. We'll see you later professor. David grinned and said smarty pants, Ok, good bye.

Was...was that an attempt at a joke?

The students all file out of the room with a "doom look" on their faces. David calls Bud Walker back and says that he'll take the job. Bud says that he'll make arrangements for a substitute and let the gate know he's coming. Nothing about paperwork or anything.

Then David drives to NASA. Well, actually, he drives to the John F. Kennedy Space Center in New Smyrna Beach, but Courtney seems to think that this is the only place where NASA is located and just calls it NASA.

When David finally arrived at NASA, he had forgotten how big NASA has gotten in the past few years.

See, I empathize with wanting to beef up the space program. Not enough to write a whole book series about it, though.

Bud greets David and starts to give David a tour of the facilities. But David asks him about what he couldn't tell him over the phone earlier, and Bud says that the meteor has been changing direction a couple of times over the last couple of weeks since they started monitoring it.

David asks if it's some sort of spacecraft, but Bud says that they have no idea, and they're only aware of the change of direction. They also monitored it going from 64,000 miles an hour to double that in about ten minutes.

Aaand, back to imperial measurements.

Its also ten kilometers in diameter. David said, that's incredible.

But...but David already knew how big it is. What?

There are a couple of theories going around NASA about the change in direction--some people think that it bumped into something, but that doesn't explain how its velocity increased. Some others think it really is some kind of alien vessel.

Wait, sorry again, that's how a normal person would say it.

In addition, the other side of the coin is that it is some kind of alien spaceship.

That's not what the phrase "the other side of the coin" means.

David says that its collision course with the sun would actually make sense if it's an alien spaceship, since the easiest way to navigate through space and get to a particular solar system would be to aim directly at the star in the middle. I will grudgingly admit that this is actually a good point. It does not excuse the fact that Bud, head honcho at NASA, has apparently never even considered this.

David says that he already has some of the information that Bud shared because he saw it on his Zeus telescope, which makes Bud freak out because he just now realizes that anyone who owns a telescope can also see it. God, he's dumb.

They reach operations at that point, and Bud introduces David to his assistant, Mr. Kim Moon.

Is this the Moon where the title Moon People comes from? Well, no. See, I think Courtney couldn't think of a name, and just went, "This guy works at NASA! He has a name that's related to space! And the moon is in space!"

Bud tells Mr. Moon (no idea why everyone else is referred to by their first name, but not Mr. Moon) that David is now in charge of all operations related to the meteor. Jeez, and he hasn't even had his orientation yet.

Just like the last chapter, Courntey decides to end the chapter in the middle of Bud's dialogue for no reason. But we'll get into that conversation next time.

Closing Thoughts

Well, David's working for NASA now! Everyone also seems really eager to believe that this is an alien spaceship, and no one even bothers to theorize that the meteor may have been sling-shotted by a high-gravity planetoid or something. That would definitely explain the change in direction and change in speed.

Also, the least realistic high schoolers in fiction.

Next time: exposition. Lots.