#7

The nights were spent in short stretches of gray, sickly, fitful sleep, alternating with longer stretches of shallow wheezing and struggling against the metal restraints around his wrists and ankles that kept him shackled to the bed. In both states, Floyd could feel Jules’ silent sobbing drifting in from the next room.
The days were spent in the training room, similarly shackled to the chair, his head forced back and pointed at the video screen as it scrolled through thousands of roughly identical aerial images of the moon. Despite his frenzied attempts to think of something else, and his constant growling to block out the droning narration (and weakly threaten the doctors and guard Sparrows), he had to begrudgingly admit that the training seemed to be working: he found it difficult to shake the images, and could feel himself sweeping lightly over the moon’s surface in his increasingly detailed dreams. The moon was mapping itself onto his brain, and it took special effort on his part not to let it completely force out his real thoughts and memories.
The doctors had given up trying to train Floyd and Jules together – they had spent most of their earliest sessions relaying messages to each other, Jules usually expressing his fear, Floyd answering back that he would protect him, that he would harm their captors in vividly violent ways, that he would reduce this place to rubble, that they would return to their father. Jules was taken away, and though Floyd had not seen him in many days, he could feel his presence everywhere, still calling out to him, letting him know, in Jules’ usual disjointed, panicked way, that he spent his days in a roughly identical training room, watching roughly identical images – and that furthermore, while he was not quite as scared as before, he now feared the moon.
Floyd slowly felt himself resisting less, accepting more, and though it frightened him he could not muster much energy to stop it. In addition to the meager slices of meat they fed him in the mornings and evenings, he was usually given a plate of vile-looking squishy red eggs, which he at first refused to eat – but the meat was not enough, and he was forced to eat the eggs just to beat back the now constant cringing hunger.
He was visited occasionally by a fat, grim-looking Rat who would eye him up and down, confer gruffly with the doctors, and then disappear; usually, though, there was a different Rat, a much younger one who would watch Floyd uncomfortably and apologetically, as if he was as confused and disgusted by this as Floyd was. But Floyd, in his increasingly lethargic state, could say nothing to them other than a few desultory barks that did not seem to threaten them at all. The fat Rat, he did notice with fleeting interest, radiated the same unpleasant smell as the eggs.

He felt others, as well – at least two other minds, too garbled to really make out, coming through the walls. Other creatures in other training rooms, undoubtedly. He could feel one that felt like a wall of hate and anger, with an undercurrent of fear, as much fear as Jules if not more. The other was more vague, a shadowy kind of fear, more accepting, almost curious. There were even more, Floyd could tell – faint whispers that faded in and out once in a while, though he could hear nothing in them. He tried calling out to them all, but never got any answers. In a sense he wanted to know they were all right, but mostly he needed to know they were there, that they were real, that others were trapped as he and Jules were. Even weakened by hunger and pain, he needed to know; it was the one thing that kept him alive.

One morning he was not taken to the training room as usual, but was seized roughly from his metal bed, led down a different corridor, and thrust into another room, this one larger than his usual training room. There were seven computer terminals arranged along one wall, with a metal chair in front of each. Three of the chairs were swiveled to face the door, and were occupied with motionless forms that stared at Floyd as he stood blinking away the harsh white light of the room.
One of the forms was Jules, who immediately began barking and howling in disbelief, clearly so relieved and thrilled to see his twin brother that he had no idea how to react. Dimly, Floyd realized that he had no idea how many days had passed – only that it was the longest time that he and his brother, who had spent their childhood nights curled against each other in the same bed, had ever been apart. Floyd growled comfortingly at him, urging him to quiet down, and Jules stopped struggling against the restraints around his arms and sat back, whimpering to himself and gazing up at Floyd in awe.
The other two forms were Rats – and they were, Floyd understood, the minds that he had been feeling in the air during his sleep. The vague mind belonged to a thin, sickly-looking Rat with huge black eyes, who twitched his head as he gazed at Floyd curiously. The other Rat was undoubtedly the angry, hateful mind, but this Rat did not look all that angry, but stared calmly back at Floyd, his eyes never wavering, his mouth frowning intensely, almost in a smirk. Unlike Floyd, Jules, and the thin Rat, this Rat did not look painfully hungry or give off an air of confusion and fear. He wore a bored look, as if he was free to leave at any time, but could not muster up the necessary energy and had not yet thought of anywhere more interesting to be.
Floyd eyed the restraints around both Rats’ wrists and ankles, feeling oddly amazed that the Rats in charge of this place would have captured and imprisoned their own kind.
Two low level Rats directed Floyd into one of the empty chairs and fastened his restraints. They shrank back into a corner of the room, allowing the fat Rat, Mr. Venables, to step forward. He eyed the four captives with disgust and disdain, his look changing to a kind of sick, greedy hunger as he briefly glanced at the three empty chairs.
“Your,” Mr. Venables started incongruously, as if he had been in the middle of a lengthy speech. He paused to consider what the next word should be. “Colleagues should be here eventually. Not many more days now. We wanted to give you a taste of the room first.” With no warning or explanation he seemed to suddenly lose interest in them, and started toward the door. “You may want to try getting used to it now.”

#6

Welk Barramay eyed the Bee cautiously. Business was slow, but not so slow that he was going to drop everything to ask a Bee what it needed. He milled around the Bee for a few seconds and looked it up and down, purely out of curiosity – he couldn’t recall any other Bees visiting the shop before, and he had rarely seen any up close. He was faintly fascinated by its stick-like legs that ended in just the slightest horizontal turn to indicate a foot. The bulbous, hairy striped body that seemed impossible to balance on those legs. An ill-fitting gray coat was slung over his body, but Welk knew that Bees rarely wore clothes in their colonies. This vague concession to the proprieties of a Mammal city was surprising, almost as much as the Bee’s presence. The Bee’s massive head bobbed, its blank hexed eyes pointed at the racks of sound discs. One set of thin, hair-lined appendages flicked listlessly through the racks. His other pair of arms was folded over the torso, visible through the open coat, the hand-like claws rubbing at each other.
Welk glanced around. There was one other customer in the shop, a Ferret. He sighed. It wouldn’t look right if he helped the Ferret and not the Bee. He doubted that the conversation would go very well, doubted that the Bee – whose people generally scorned Mammal money – would even buy anything. But Welk was no racist.
“Can I help you, uh . . . my friend?” Welk choked out this final part, realizing that he had no idea whether “sir” or “madam” were appropriate.
The Bee swung its head around. The giant colorless eyes stared at him – probably. It was difficult to tell. The Bee emitted a number of words from its tiny mouth tube. Welk had no idea what the Bee said. Somehow the words sounded interested, even polite, if somewhat distant. All of them had a different tone inflection, and all of them were “buzz”.
“My friend,” said a voice from behind the Bee, “he says he is just browsing.”
Welk jumped back, alarmed. Then he moved to the side and saw a very short Dog standing behind the Bee, his head barely reaching the sound disc racks. He was no bigger than a pup, but clearly an adult. Welk tried not to stare at the long scar along the Dog’s left cheek, or the patchy, torn fur that grew sporadically around it.
“Oh . . . oh,” Welk replied. He hadn’t seen the Dog before – probably hiding behind the Bee or one of the racks. He found himself unable to not stare at the scar, or more specifically, the grin next to it, the gleeful, bared-teeth snarl that arced up the Dog’s face. He shivered, suddenly feeling something pressing on the back of his head, the back of his brain, some sharp feeling that was not quite pain but not at all pleasant. But he could not move, or even react, he just stared at the Dog’s grin, his yellow eyes narrowing –
The pain snapped away from him, like a power cord disconnecting from a socket. Welk blinked. The Ferret he had seen earlier had appeared behind the Dog, and placed one calm hand on the Dog’s head, a gesture of subordination that Welk could not imagine the Dog accepting without a sudden flurry of teeth and claws and blood.
But the Dog just kept staring at Welk.
“Leave him alone,” said the Ferret. With a chill of surprise, Welk realized that the Ferret was probably Rogue, one of very few that Welk had ever seen. Like the Dog, he was obviously fully grown, but he carried himself with the same rowdy carelessness as the rich teenage Ferrets that came into the shop, that irresponsible quality that all Ferrets had before they were fed through their Business Academies. This one was still irresponsible; he had clearly never seen the inside of an Academy. He had, however, managed to teach himself a few Ferret qualities, or perhaps had unknowingly inherited them from his ancestors: his grin was pure Ferret. Not malicious like the Dog’s, but unpleasantly plastic. Welk felt a twinge of alarm, feeling the natural obsequiousness that he had been taught since birth to feel around Ferrets, mingled with shame and hatred.
When this passed, he noticed that the Ferret had some kind of grotesque hunch on his back: his brown coat, buttoned nearly to the neck, was bulging outward behind him unnaturally in every direction. On a second look, it looked too ridiculous to really be part of the Ferret’s body, but this was just one detail in an already completely baffling tableau, and he glanced helplessly between the Bee, the Dog, and the Ferret, unsure how he was supposed to react to any of this.
“Just having some fun,” said the Dog, tilting his yellow eyes up at the Ferret. “He knows I’m kidding. Don’t you, pal?” Without waiting from an answer from Welk, the Dog slipped out from under the Ferret’s hand and disappeared into the rows of racks.
The Bee had watched all of this blankly, his hard little hands impatiently tapping the plastic of the sound disc cases.
“Pardon us, sir,” said the Ferret, his words spilling out of him in the classically smooth, arrogant, condescending Ferret manner. Welk felt the twinge again, and his fists unconsciously clenched in anger. Then, with some amusement, he wondered: if all of this came naturally to Ferrets, what exactly were they taught in the Academies? “You had an employee here, did you not, by the name of Kyla Orflandore?”
“Yes,” Welk replied, startled.
“You have not seen her recently.”
“No . . . she . . . she was taken.”
“Taken?” the Ferret replied, more plastic spreading across his face. Welk realized that the Ferret already knew all of this, already knew everything he needed to know, and that he and his partners were just checking out the scene, and doing Welk to unnecessary courtesy of pretending he was useful.
“Sparrows. And, uh, a Rat. He asked her a few questions, then she left with them, without even telling me she was going. I didn’t hear any of it.”
The Ferret nodded. “What level?”
“I’m sorry?” Welk was not good at this kind of forced politeness. He was good at joking around with his regular customers, putting up with and/or kicking out rowdy teenage Ferrets, and sucking up to the Ferret owner of the shop.
“The Sparrows, Mr. Barramay,” the Ferret said coldly. They knew his name: this did not surprise Welk, in retrospect, but it alarmed him all the same. “The squadron. What level?”
What did the three of them want, Welk wondered.
The three of them . . .
“Green. Green,” Welk replied. Oh no, he thought.
“Hmm. Yes.” The Ferret grinned some more. “Thank you, Mr. Barramay. I trust we can return if we have further questions?” It was not a request. The Ferret turned and started back toward the entrance, the Bee immediately dropping the sound disc it clutched with a clatter, and following him. Welk watched the Ferret’s strangely bulbous back walking away, dimly noting the shreds down the side of his threadbare coat.
The Dog emerged from between some racks and followed them out into the Mall, shooting Welk one last hatefully grinning glance as he disappeared. Welk did not like the glance, and he did not like the brief sharp pain that seared through his skull, sending him crumpling into a rack, knocking a whole shelf of sound discs onto floor. He rubbed his head and grunted in pain, absently watching the random flurries of music and colored light that erupted from a few of the sound discs as they broke open.

#5

Mr. Venables had already sunk the egg halfway into his mouth when the knock came. He made a noise through the egg, something between a hiss and a grunt, and the door unlatched and forced open. It was the first time the air in the dry, vacuum-like office had been stirred in over an hour.
“Mr. Venables.” It was the whiny voice of Mr. Credafore, a low level Rat under his command.
“Eating,” Mr. Venables snarled, after popping in rest of the squishy egg; some red flakes of egg spattered onto his desk blotter, and he eyed them greedily. He snorted with amusement, imagining the alarmed look of ineptitude on Mr. Credafore’s face. Mr. Credafore had undoubtedly been ordered to summon him, and had probably not relished or enjoyed the assignment. Mr. Credafore had probably not been briefed on what to do should Mr. Venables decline to move. He imagined what he himself must look like: the bulbous figure hunched over his desk, the heaping plate of slimy red eggs to one side, the tiny airless metal office with no decoration and no furniture except the chair and desk facing away from the door and the wall-mounted computer terminal.
“It’s Mr. Mercaster,” Mr. Credafore, clearly banking on this helping his cause. Mr. Venables thought he could even hear the little verminous Rat smirking.
Mr. Venables spun around and lurched his bulk out of his chair. He glared hard at Mr. Credafore, who shrank back appalled. Go on, say it, Mr. Venables thought. Go on and tell me my eyes are more bloodshot than normal, that I eat too many eggs. I dare you, you filth.
“What happened,” Mr. Venables demanded.
“Broke free from his reboot. The machine is damaged. Sparrows have him cornered but we can’t get him to calm down.”
“Take me there,” Mr. Venables replied, backing toward his desk, seizing another egg and pocketing it.
They snaked their way through the gleaming corridors and arrived at Mr. Mercaster’s reboot room. Mr. Credafore knocked twice on the thick bolted door and the frightened face of a guard Rat, his helmet clasped a little too tightly, appeared in the tiny window. The Rat disappeared, there was a fumbling and a scraping, and then the door was thrust open.
Mr. Venables pushed Mr. Credafore aside, entered, and surveyed the room. It was a mass of red feathers and a smashed, sparking reboot machine.
Mr. Mercaster growled in the corner, swinging some kind of hooked stick or pipe he had torn from the wall in an apparently desperate search for any weapon, no matter how crude.
Three Sparrows stood around him, in a standoff, waving shock wands but wary about getting too close.
The guard Rat cowered in another corner, near the door, and watched Mr. Venables helplessly.
The air stunk of shock wand static, recycled air, and burnt fur.
Mr. Mercaster’s steady growl grew louder when he saw Mr. Venables appear between two Sparrows.
“I want out,” he barked. “I want my boys!”
Mr. Venables looked over at the reboot machine. The headstraps were torn out and lying frayed on the floor. The chair had been pitched across the room, smashing some monitoring equipment. The reboot machine was still blaring: pictures of the Mercaster twins danced artfully across the screen. Mr. Venables found one of the earpieces and listened to it for a moment. “Floyd and Jules lived rich, full lives,” a calm voice informed the listener, over tasteful music. “Their loss has affected us all. The best way to honor their memory is to move on.”
“You should pay more attention to this,” Mr. Venables said calmly.
“Lies,” Mr. Mercaster growled.
“We are your friends. Your friends would never lie to you.”
Mr. Mercaster barked wordlessly at everyone in response, his voice cracking in frustration.
Mr. Credafore appeared by Mr. Venables’ ear.
“Should I get more Sparrows?” Mr. Credafore asked.
“No.”
“Should I get Mr. Talaree?”
“No!” Mr. Venables snapped. “I’m handling this.” He stepped forward through two Sparrows, and slowly approached Mr. Mercaster, who lifted up his crude weapon threateningly.
“The Sparrows will beat you to death if you hurt me,” Mr. Venables said pleasantly. “They will not think twice. Put it down.”
“No.”
“Put it down,” Mr. Venables, “and we can discuss this like adults. Like friends.”
“You are not my friend.”
“Put it down,” Mr. Venables went on. “Don’t you want to know the truth about your sons?”
Mr. Mercaster froze, as did the quivering tip of his weapon.
“You . . . you would never tell me.”
“This is your best chance,” Mr. Venables said. “You have been asking, and I’m willing to tell you. We will not hurt you – you are too important to us. Put it down.”
Mr. Mercaster glared deep into Mr. Venables’ eyes, ground his teeth angrily, then let the pipe clatter to the ground.
Mr. Venables immediately snapped his fingers, and one of the Sparrows swept silently and smoothly across the room and forced itself behind Mr. Mercaster, locking its wings around his arms. Mr. Mercaster, genuinely surprised by the Sparrow’s stunning and impressive speed, only thought to struggle half-heartedly after he had already been locked motionless against the Sparrow’s warm feathers.
“Your sons are dead,” Mr. Venables said.
Mr. Mercaster let out a quick, clipped, agonized howl – but with a hesitant tone, as if he still believed, or hoped, that Mr. Venables was lying.
“To you,” Mr. Venables went on.
“What?” Mr. Mercaster asked.
Mr. Venables reached into his pocket and produced the slimy, and slightly crushed, red egg. He held it out as he took a step closer to Mr. Mercaster, who was now attempting to thrash his way wildly out of the Sparrow’s grip.
“Listen to me, you tailwagging bastard,” Mr. Venables said, a joyless sickening grin splayed hastily across his face. His bloodshot eyes seemed to twinkle. “Your sons are dead to you. You will never see them again – no one will. They are too important to us. The sooner you finish your reboot, the sooner you will never think of them again, and the happier we will all be. You can start with this,” he added, reaching out to force the egg into Mr. Mercaster’s muzzle, but Mr. Mercaster snapped at him and he had to draw back, actually frightened for just a moment. He frowned and snapped his fingers again, and another Sparrow appeared next to the first, reached out its wings, seized Mr. Mercaster’s muzzle and forced it open.
“We’re just trying to help,” Mr. Venables said, jamming the egg inside.

#4

Four long, slow years after the Thane Beartacare debacle, a sleek silver ship touched down on the moon, opened its rear hatch, and extended a long ramp, down which, after a moment, a squadron of Blue level Sparrows marched in their identical blue heat-shielding suits.
Sparrows have no use for or interest in ceremony. They made no speeches, did not slowly look around in awe at the deep red alien landscape stretching out in every direction. They had no audience – this landing was not being broadcast to the world. Each member of the squadron merely glanced at the controls on the wrist of its suit, acknowledged that it had not yet suddenly died from the heat, then looked up at the leader of the squadron, awaiting instructions. The leader nodded at two members of the team, who nodded back and trotted over toward Thane Beartacare’s pod and perfectly preserved, collapsed body, both of which were coated in thick layers of red dust. Mr. Beartacare’s arm was wedged under his body, still clawing at the heat that had pierced his underequipped suit and made it instantly impossible to breathe.
The body was carefully straightened out, carried back to the Sparrows’ ship and stored respectfully in the cargo hold, per instructions. Later it was returned home and buried at the foot of his memorial statue.
With Phase I of their mission complete, the Sparrows turned their attention to their next set of instructions. Large devices designed to examine the ground and atmosphere were unpacked; meters and dials and sensors were read and their readings noted down. The Sparrows worked quickly, never pausing to speak or look directly at each other, only stopping once in a while to tilt their heads at the leader and await further orders.
They, like all Sparrows everywhere, were so intent on their work that they only faintly heard the rattling, clicking noises that crept toward them from over a craggy ridge. One Sparrow was busying itself with a clumsy seismograph which it was attempting to fasten to the crumbling ground when it heard a sound that was slightly louder and more pronounced than the vague sounds before, and it paused, looked up, and turned around.
Standing on the ridge, eyeing the Sparrow curiously, was a seven foot tall dark green creature, standing upright on four thin pointy legs. It had an oval body covered in scales, and four long, thin arms that ended in sharp thorn-like things instead of hands. Its back was a domed shell; its head was just a small bulbous knob, with no discernable eyes, and two prickly pincers jutting out from the general area where there could have been a mouth.
It was making a soft rustling noise, its pincers vibrating calmly:
shimmershimmershimmershimmershimmershimmershimmer
The Sparrow tilted its head curiously.
Fierce sounds of snapping and clicking emanated from the creature’s body as over a dozen more sharp thorn-like limbs jutted out from underneath the shell, all of them much longer than its four main limbs, and most of them thrust themselves forward and sank easily through the Sparrow’s heat suit, feathers, flesh, and organs.
The Sparrow looked down with genuine surprise at the limbs carving it open, cawed once mournfully, then slumped, becoming just dead meat on skewers. The creature seemed to appreciate this, drawing the Sparrow toward it, tucking it effortlessly under one of its main arms, and disappeared back behind the ridge with a faint clicking that died away almost instantly.

#3

They took Floyd first, because he was stronger and faster – their preliminary observation had determined this.
Floyd slept nude, curled up in his bed with a thin blanket over him, twitching occasionally as he always did. Even in his sleep, Floyd could see things, sense things: his father sleeping on the other side of the apartment; transports rumbling across the desert hundreds of miles away; random Rats, total strangers, filling out paperwork on the other side of the planet.
And he sensed the Sparrows an instant before they reached his bed and an instant before he snapped his eyes open, saw their Green level wingbands in the dark, and lunged forward to bite one on the wing. Only after he and all the Sparrows heard the sickening, splintering crunch of the Sparrow’s bones under his teeth did he release his grip and allow the injured Sparrow to stumble backward, squawking suddenly in pain and surprise.
This gave the other Sparrows enough time to grab Floyd and force him onto the ground, one seizing each of his limbs. Floyd had never heard any Sparrow make any kind of noise and he only watched, fascinated, his eyes glowing through the dark, as the Sparrow chirped to itself, caressing its hurt wing with the other.
Floyd could now sense and even faintly hear his brother in the next room, shrilly whimpering in terror as another squadron of Sparrows threw him to the ground and waved shock wands in his face to force him to shut up. Floyd could feel his brother’s fear radiating out from the other room in neat concentric circles. Jules was figuratively clawing at the air, crying out in confusion, begging for mercy, searching outward for help, but a cloth had already been stuffed in his mouth to quiet him down, and the Sparrows were now vigorously zapping him with the shock wands, and Floyd could feel each helpless convulsion of his brother’s body.
“Jules!” Floyd barked angrily, and he growled and snapped as the head of the squadron cautiously approached, held out its shock wand, paused just long enough to let its dead eyes glance over Floyd’s struggling body, then brought the wand down, hard, with a crack across Floyd’s muzzle.
“Dad,” Floyd choked just before blacking out.
Mr. Mercaster had also been hit across the head, tied up, and thrown over an especially large Sparrow’s shoulder, all without him ever waking up.

When Floyd awoke, he glanced around and understood his immediate situation instantly: he was in a hard metal chair, restraints around his wrists and ankles; the fur on his temples had been shaved and electrodes had been attached. The wires led to a large machine on the other side of the small gray room; hundreds of little red lights on the machine were randomly blinking.
Jules was similarly restrained in a chair to his left, but was still asleep, his head snapping once in a while in response to some tortured dream. His eyelids fluttered.
A Rat in a long white coat with an unrecognizable crest on the breast was standing next to the blinking machine. He removed his glasses and nodded at Floyd pleasantly.
“Floyd Mercaster,” the Rat said. “If you’re feeling up to it, we’ll begin your training right away.”

#2

The first being to set foot on the moon was a Rat, Mr. Thane Beartacare, hand-picked by a discerning team of elite Ferret businesslords. Mr. Beartacare was the highest ranked student in his class and the son of a prominent middle-managing Slab Rat. He excelled during his two years of astroneering training in a secluded facility in the Hunted Lands, followed orders to the letter, and asked few questions. The day of his launch was a world-wide holiday and watched by every known sentient being for whom there are clear and accurate records.
Upon his landing, Mr. Beartacare stepped out of his shielded silver landing pod, smiled broadly at a camera mounted on its roof, and was about to deliver his carefully crafted Ferret-approved speech – outlining the Ferrets’ extensive plans for the moon and its intricate network of largely inaccessible caverns – but when he opened his mouth to speak, all that came out was a thin, painful wheeze. He grabbed at his throat and coughed violently. Even through his sculpted helmet dome, the billions of viewers could tell something had gone wrong – could tell he was in sickening pain – could gaze deeply into his frightened, confused eyes.
Mr. Beartacare slumped to his knees next to the pod, ruffling up a cloud of red moon dust that settled on his upper back, shoulders, and arms. The robot camera followed him as he fell, and focused on the top of his dome.
Mr. Beartacare coughed some more, reached weakly behind him for the pod he could now not reach, and then fell over onto his side, twitched once, and died.
A noticeably heavy silence fell over the planet as they watched this happen. No one moved or spoke for many minutes and when they finally did, it was to blankly ask the person next to them, “Did you see that?”
Hours later a hastily assembled press conference packed to the ceiling with important Ferrets explained to the media markets of the world, and their pantingly confused constituents, that every recording and reading they had taken of the moon since the dawn of the Outer World program decades before had been wrong – the moon was hot, it turned out. It was desperately, uninhabitably hot, enough to kill a poor heroic Rat instantly. Those responsible for not determining this were no longer with the Outer World project, except for a few that still were, and all of those people would be fired or arrested. The citizens of the world were assured that no such tragedies would ever befall the brave astroneers of the future, who would be equipped with yet-to-be-designed heat-shielding suits, and furthermore would all be Sparrows.
A massive statue of Mr. Thane Beartacare was built and placed in the barren wastelands surrounding his home city. A giant plaque bore the legend:

YOU SHALL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN
THE MOON SHALL BE OURS
THE DREAM SHALL BE LIVED

Top secret records state that the Guided Moon project was begun on the same day as the statue’s dedication.
Even more top secret records reveal that the Guided Moon project is housed within the statue’s lead-lined pedestal.

#1

“I need to talk to one of my sons,” said the Dog.
“Sir,” said the Rat cautiously.
“You don’t understand—”
“I do understand,” said the Rat, falling back, with some relief, onto the soft, sweet cushiony pillow-like form of his extensive six weeks of personnel training. “I understand because I am your friend. You are confused – you are hurting – and you miss your sons.”
“Listen to me,” said the Dog. “Don’t give me your speeches. I’ve heard them all a hundred times. I am sick to death of it. You can’t do this to me! You can’t keep me here and you can’t keep me away from my boys!”
“Sir,” said the Rat, recalling the dark difficult days of week three of his training, when he learned to intensify his words, to sound just a little more forceful, to bare just a sliver of his teeth. “I am your friend. Would a friend lie to you?”
The Dog had buried his muzzle in his paws. His ears were flattened along his head. His voice came through his paws muffled, but still clearly a growl. “You are not my friend. You are a Slab lackey, trained to lie to me. Next you will ask me to go back to my room, to read my magazines, to wait patiently for my dinner of eggs. I am tired of it. Take me to my boys!” he suddenly barked.
The Rat, feeling suddenly self-conscious of his egg-stained teeth and his eyes, bloodshot from eating too many eggs, cleared his throat and rubbed his forehead uncomfortably. “Sir. I know you miss your boys. But you must understand that they are gone. Forever.”
“That is a lie,” the Dog whispered.
“They are gone,” the Rat repeated forcefully. “Forever. You have been given a room here, you are fed regularly, and our team of counselors is here to help you through your loss. But it begins, first, with you accepting that they are gone.”
“To hell with you,” replied the Dog, stomping past the Rat’s desk. Claxons and sirens went off as the sensors in the floor read the Dog’s footsteps and aerial DNA scanners read and processed the Dog’s identity, sending it to every security terminal throughout the building. Within seconds a Green level squadron of helmeted Sparrows clutching shock wands in their wings and golden panic whistles in their beaks emerged from hidden metal doors along the lobby walls, which suddenly opened with a simultaneous echoing “shoosh”.
The Rat squeezed his eyes shut in disappointment and fear. The Ferret had already appeared next to the Rat’s desk. The Ferret’s striped waistcoat was spotless and he was eyeing his gleaming pocketwatch.
“Mr. Venables,” said the Ferret in his most distracted, business-like voice, somehow booming over the sudden flurry of buzzing, snapping shock wands and the shrill tones of the whistles.
“Yes, Mr. Tallaree,” replied the Rat.
“Is there something wrong with Mr. Mercaster?”
Mr. Venables turned to look. Mr. Mercaster was crumbled in a sobbing, quivering heap, surrounded by the Sparrows, who were already dispersing, except for two or three stragglers who gave Mr. Mercaster a few final shocks, tilting their heads curiously at each of his twitches and moans.
“He’ll make it,” Mr. Venables said. “We’ll have him back to his room in another few minutes.” The Green level squadron disappeared and two Yellow level Sparrows appeared, picking Mr. Mercaster up and carting him back down the hallway.
“That’s good to hear,” Mr. Tallaree replied. “The Mercaster twins are our most prized acquisitions. The Guided Moon project might very well fail without them. To have their father influencing them or disturbing their work would be unacceptable. I want Mr. Mercaster’s room guarded at all times, I want his movement and behavior monitored, and I want all further outbursts from him to be reported to me immediately, do you understand?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Excellent,” said Mr. Tallaree, already sounding bored, and he wandered away toward the cubicles.