Meet Me in the Moon Room by Ray Vukcevich Page A

With a great leap of joy, he bounded out of the bed of the truck. Tail wagging, trying to look everywhere at once, nose to the ground, nose in the air, he dragged me back to Mom and Ada. I convinced him to sit down in front of Mom. Taking advantage of the fact that she was tied up, he licked her face. I often wondered whether the dog knew this was Mom. He seemed to like this dowdy little person, but this person was always around these days, and it seemed to me his enthusiasm for her was somehow of a lower quality than the worship he had always had for Mom. Maybe he’d just gotten used to Jessica.
    “We want you to move to Toby,” Ada said.
    Toby’s ears stiffened at the sound of his name, and he looked up at Ada.
    Jessica was quiet for a moment. Then she made Mom’s soft grandmother mouth a hard line. “You want us to move into a dog?” She sounded incredulous.
    “You got it,” Ada said.
    “You want an entire civilization, billions of us, each with definite ideas and hopes and dreams, to just shuffle off to another world? You think that generations of tradition and deeply felt religion and philosophy can be tossed aside? You think we’ll move into a dog?”
    “I think she’s got it,” Ada said.
    “We won’t do it,” Jessica said. “And we won’t discuss it further.” She closed Mom’s mouth and squeezed Mom’s eyes tightly shut.
    “Hey! Wait a minute!” I yelled.
    “Never mind, Barry.” Ada grabbed Mom’s feet and gave me a sharp look.
    I got the message. I took Mom under the arms, and we tossed her over the side again. Toby just sat there for a moment like he couldn’t believe his eyes, then he jumped up and put his front paws up on the railing and watched Mom bounce.
    When we pulled her up this time and propped her against the bridge railing, I looked closely into her wild eyes, hoping, I guess, for a little momness. Not a chance. It was clear we’d finally pissed off her little friends. Big things were happening in Mom. Her face twisted into a horrible grimace, her cheeks puffed out and her eyes bulged. She suddenly spit a huge stream of green stuff at us. We jumped out of the way.
    “She’s mine.” The voice was deep and male, a truly scary demon voice. “You can’t have her.”
    “Ah, Jessica,” Ada said. She took off her cowgirl hat and used it to swat Mom on the side of the head. “We’ve seen those movies, too. If you’re not going to be serious, we’re going to throw you over again.”
    “You don’t know what you’ve done,” Jessica said in her usual Jessica voice. “There have been uprisings since we talked last. People have died. Listen to me, Ada. Barry. People have died. People every bit as real as you. Good people. How can you continue this?”
    “But you’re destroying our mother!” I said.
    “One person for the good of billions! And besides she wouldn’t be destroyed.”
    “This one person is our mother,” Ada said. “And that’s where you’re in trouble. We won’t quit. Mom would rather be dead than stupid. Let’s throw her over again, Barry.”
    “Wait!” Jessica said. “That’s not true. What you just said. You forget we’re inside here. We have access that you don’t have. We talk to Holly all the time. We’re not monsters. Holly is our Mother World.”
    “Then why do you keep her stupid?” Ada asked.
    “Not stupid.” Jessica sounded sincere, but I didn’t buy it. “Content. Holly is our mother, but she is also our child to be guided, much as you mold and guide your own world.”
    I could have told her a thing or two about how well we molded and guided our own world, but suddenly that seemed as if it might work against us. I kept my mouth shut.
    “Our solution is perfect,” Ada said. She put her hand between Toby’s ears and scratched. “What do dogs do but lay around all day anyway? You could keep him as fat and lazy and silly as you want.”
    “That will simply never happen,” Jessica said. “We will never be able to convince all