CZM Book Club: Moonkids, by Abbey Mei Otis, Part 1

0:01 Cool Zone Media book Club book Club, book Club, book Club, book Club, book Club. Wonder how long I could do this book Club book No, I don't actually want to do it all that long. Hello, and welcome to Cool Zone Media book Club. The only book club where you don't have to do the reading is I do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and we are back to our usual business this week. I've got the first of two parts for you today of an absolutely brutal story by my friend and co conspirator, Abby may Otis.

0:40 This is from her twenty eighteen collection from Small Beer Press called Alien Virus Love Disaster. And this collection has all kinds of accolades like the Newcombe Institute Debut Literary Arts Award Shortlist and Philip K. Dick Award finalist, And it shows that Abby's writing is entrancing. Her writing, you might say, has more humanity than a lot of the humans I know. And I'm excited to read you this story called moon Kids. Why is it called moon Kids Because it's about some moon kids. It's also about coping with rejection and yearning and disability and being a waitress for tourists and just how brutal. It is acclimating to a new reality, and Moonkids so here it is moon Kids by Abby may Otis. Suso says, moon Kids find

1:32 their way to Sandpoint because they're drawn to the tides. They like to be around something else that's ruled by the poll of the moon. Colleen thought she came to Sandpoint because krabby Abbey's was hiring and soft. Sheldon seem like such a bad thing to eat for lunch every day, But she's willing to concede that maybe Suso has a point.

1:52 At any rate, there are a lot of moon Kids in town, which mostly Colleen likes, though every so often it makes her crazy. She's been here a year. She likes that Suso lets her weight tables instead of keeping her kitchen side. Plenty of other restaurants keep Moonkid's kitchen side on account of the odd asshole customer who makes a snide comment about Moonies putting him off his food.

2:14 Suso's into jumping on stuff like that. This is an equal opportunity place of employment, He'll say, And at this point, I'd like to give you equal opportunity to get the fuck out of my dining room. No denying it, though Moon kids they're kind of stubby on account of them growing up on the Moon. Your muscles learn differently in moon gravity. Your bones form light like a bird's used to not even be possible to make the transition. You touch down into earth bowl and collapse like fast melting candles.

2:47 Too many fractures for all the King's horses and all the King's men, Way way too many for Earth doctors to deal with. Earth doctors are known for not giving a shit now, though they've got ways around it. They've got operations and stuff. Every Moon kid's got incisions scars in the same places. Colleen likes that her friend Tesla works for SUSO too. Tesla got promoted to assistant manager a couple weeks ago because she's so bombed with the business side of things. Encouragement is good for Tesla. The people side of things she has more trouble with. The restaurant is hopping today, some obscure holiday, some excuse for money bags to wallow in a day at the shore.

3:30 Big well fed families sit around the tables and snork down crab bisk and get a total kick out of summoning waiter oh waiter. The air droops with fish smells and sweaty fervor of overtipping. Everyone likes reliving the golden consumer boom. Once in a while, Colleen sloops between tables like a freaking old school roller skatress. Shrimp poppers here, cod basket there. She can recommend the most expensive thing on the menu in a way that doesn't feel sleazy.

4:03 She takes orders without a pad. The food is groedy, but the money bags pay for service for the anachronistic privilege of getting served, and the tips are spinning out like cotton candy, and Colleen's feeling on top of the world. It's been a year since she last stumbled and spilled someone's calamari. A year since she overthought the business of walking an earth pull and smashed down and had to have two people haul her upright. A year since anyone watched her failing and tittered and edged away. Colleen, you look at her today and you'd say, now there's a moon girl who's coping. Mostly you'd be right, Tesla isn't doing as well. The customer rushed today. It means big tips, but also big noise, and they've got a soux chef out, sick,

4:53 and fifteen other things. And all Tesla wants is to get the purchase order in, but instead she's smudging the e paper with her her elbows, biting eight of her fingernails at once. Tesla feels people staring, even when they're not. She starts to twitch. She picks her lips until they bleed, and then people oggle the chick with blood down her mouth, and then she picks more frantically, and a feedback loop gears up. Stop Tesla's sweetheart, Hush moon Girl par excellence.

5:23 Bones too frail for all the muscle, mine, too frail for all the grief. After work, they go down to the boardwalk, working up salt air to swab with a deep, friar smell out of their nostrils. Tourists are sparse here. They're enthusiasm thinned by sparser raindrops. Tesla digs her nails into the sag of Colleen's upper arm, pushes her nose into Colleen's shoulder. Colleen imagines she smells like sweat, but doesn't pull away. Earth Pole is fickle, like a trickster gnome. Sometimes, even after months and months, it sneaks up behind you and punches you in your knees. A mother with a whole flock of kidlets s nodding behind her, passes the two of them. Every single head in the flock turns, eyes swell up with the witnessing of something other. Mama

6:17 swats their heads. They're lunarian, honey, you keep walking. You know what lunarians do. Colleen appreciates how Mom tries to keep her voice low, but she could polish up the explanation. Excuse me, ma'am, we're moon kids, she could say, don't let real lunarians catch you mixing us up. Lunarian fancy word reserve for the fancy few who claim residence up on the cheeseball. I haven't been lunarian for three years and seven months. Want to see my certificate of dismissal signed by the head of the exam board and the council chairman and the CEO himself. That one's probably a stamp with this piece of paper. We divest you your homeland where you were born. It doesn't want you anymore.

7:05 As the kid let's trot away, Tesla whimpers and Colleen nips two fingers on the rough of her elbow. Fuck them, Tess, you know she whispers, just keep saying it in your head. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them moon kids. Every now and then they treat themselves to a little rage, just like you, dear listener, can treat yourself to a little products and services that support this podcast or rage. Rage works too, and we're back. Tesla and Colleen, bestest friends.

7:53 Didn't meet on Luna, sat for the exams in the same hall, rode the same bust down to Earth, didn't lay eyes on each other until they were poured onto the asphalt with fifteen other fresh chucked moon kids, blinking in the alien sunlight. Bus seat patterns still printed on their thighs. With their heavy torsos and brittle spider limbs, Tesla was tallest. Colleen remembers arms startlingly long, in a look on her face like she was moving pebbles with her mind. They met, Their skin shivered, sixteen sterile years now stamped with hotness. How about you, Colleen spoke first, what's your plan? Oh, we have the same shirt. Tesla flapped her spider arms awkward. They all had the same standard issue shirt draped over their bodies like towels. Flung

8:47 on spilled drinks, but Colleen didn't catch the joke until Tesla had already begun to laugh. They hiked the beaten down Maryland countryside, figuring out step by step just how much jack shit years of moon education did for you. Tesla can solve fifth order partial differentials in her head, Colleen can recite a hundred pieces of pie like a bedtime story. But could either of them get hired as a sales clerk? You're not really the image we look for in retail. Variations of that line droned out, add an infinitum. Maybe if your legs weren't bowed, if you're spineddn't crook, if your body wasn't running down itself like hot wax, and your eyes didn't bore straight into the back of my skull. In so many hack hostels, clinging

9:35 to plugged in towns, they lay on cotton comforters crusted to a shine. They discovered wine and how it improved their impressions of the assholes they'd met that day. Yo, Chica, tell me Colleen polished her earth drawl? Is it really made at cheese man or rabbit? Tesla snorted and smeared the nanopaint she was dabbing on her cheeks. Man or rabbit, Man or rabbit. In the late night, Colleen listened to the tiny noise as Tesla made in her sleep, whimpers from a tongue and lips. Newborn. They never said anything about heading for the coast, never talked much about any direction at all, until one day they got off a bus and threw their heads back and inhaled weedy brine.

10:22 Salt fingered winds started thinning through the air. A jewelryman on Sandy Street clacked his tongue, booted them on their way with pale, bruising eyes. But in a few blocks they found the restaurant, flat roofed crabbies crusted with pre aged kitch. Suso picked a red mole on his neck and looked, calling up and down. You can do weekends.

10:46 Girl thought the question was rhetorical. Took her three minutes before she remembered to answer, yeah. Yes. In the gray mornings and clouded nights, they put on those loose clothes and go down to the beaches. They learn what it's like to regret little things. They track sand through sublet rooms and wake up with tooth sweaters and crud in their eye. This thing, Colleen wonders, does it count as a kind of living? Feels more like yankee free driftwood that waves a buried under sand. But what else could you call it? Today? Trespass joins them on the boardwalk, trespasses Tesla's younger brother with the ignoble honor of being the second and a family to flunk off the moon.

11:29 Trespasses kind of a bamp, he named himself. He shaves the crown of his head and paints his face in bright white segments. He insults people in loud, clinical terms. He carries his moon bulk like a bounty from a hunt, and swings his fist often enough that no one's fooled by the whisper squeak of his voice. And at moonrise he sits on the sand and sobs like a girl.

11:55 He comes up behind them as they lean on the railing and claps a hand on each one's shoulder. Ladies, how does it shake? Colleen laughs and shoves him away, but Tesla doesn't move at all. She has her chin on her palm and her elbow propped on the boardwalk railing as she slides her elbow out so that her whole upper body sinks lower. She purses her lips and stares out at the ocean. The moon is out in the sky this afternoon, soft as an exhalation on a cold window. None of them ever look up at the sky, but they can all feel it, feel the finger it brushes along the backs of their necks. Trespass whistles a seagull trill, O, big sister, you still sweating, Guy McAdams.

12:39 Guy McAdams is a riot shield of an earth born dude who slides his body through two small waves with two big flash. Guy McAdams wears a state of the art repelling suit when the water is seventy two degrees. But that's perfectly Tesla, who's always liked falling in love with shiny outsides. Her crushes rail like silence storms and then dissipates so fast that Colleen doesn't even argue anymore, just stocks up canned goods and tries to ride them out. Trespass, though can't resist a few digs. Guy McAdams. That dude's a human pap smear. If Guy McAdams was a snow cone flavor, he'd be strawberries. And shit Trespass if you couldn't tell his hell bent on milking every last drop out of his teenaged years. Dude, I spent sixteen years

13:28 in front of a screen, he tells anyone who listens. Sixteen years. I got force fed science like one of those faux grod ducks, and now I'm free failing those exams. I swear, best thing that ever happened to me. What Trespass won't tell you is that a score was zero points six points away from being a passing grade one corrected formula one fewer stray pen mark, and he could have made it, could have gotten the gold confetti and a hand drawn banner over his pod door. Welcome scholar of the Lunarian Research Academy, pillar of our scientific society, jewel of our education system. Mom and Daddy's Golden Boy, Welcome, Welcome.

14:11 What Trespass won't tell you is that, for the first three weeks after he came down to Earth, he sat on a bathroom floor in Colleen's apartment and shivered, turned the shower head on and off and on. Tesla's curled up inside her funk and not coming out to play. So Trespass turns to Colleen instead. Here there's a new girl turned up out of Station sixty five. I think I heard she went around to Susos looking for work.

14:39 Colleen snorts, a seal could get work with Suso. She stretches her arms out and pokes Tesla's shoulder. Two middle aged women mince past and gawk out of the corners of their eyes, their lips pursed. A little bouquets of well, isn't that unfortunate? Trespass rounds on them. When are you looking at colostomy bags? Yeah, I thought so. We get the fuck away, But we dear listeners here at cool Zone Media of course love and cherish our listeners who are colostomy bags, and hope the best for you. Also, here's ads and we're back. Here's the deal. The earth isn't fit for much anymore. Everyone's given up growth cold turkey, which means they seize on development like an ex smoker chewing pencils. The moon helps out with that. Luna. Her

15:42 airtight city is full with scuttling hordes of washed out researchers working like spastic cogs in the breakthrough machine, hacking away at the mystery forest while they wait for the real trees to grow back, except no one's yet figured out a way to get people to work so hard they don't have time to screw. Even the mondo geeks get the pole in the hole every now and then.

16:06 Plenty of those poindecks or fetuses end up down the shoots where they belong. But sometimes someone gets a b in their bonnet about being parental having a family, so you end up with moonkids. You can keep your moonkid, super fun pet that it is until it turns sixteen. Then they give out tests. The ones who pass get fitted into the machine a nerd delicious parent and child cog set how adorable. The ones who don't, who choke during the multiple choice or blank out during the neural net scan, or just maybe admit during the oral exam that there's a part of them that's uncertain that wonders they're out. The population board picks you up by the scruff of your neck and drop kicks you the two hundred thousand mile ride down to Earth. The Moon doesn't

16:54 give a shit where you go after that. You sucked the Moon's tit for sixteen years and had the gall to turn out stupid. The Moon never even looks back. Moon kids are lucky enough to get screwed two ways inferior to the lunarians because of cold, hard calculation. And no one knows better than lunarians that numbers don't lie inferior to Earth people, because well, just look at them, limbs so breakable, veins popping out, fat pulling their torsos and thighs. The real lunarians when they come to Earth, they got on this high horse of Sure, I'm ugly, but I invented those cosmeds. You're sucking down your interfaces, your gen modding. Where do you think that comes from? Huh?

17:39 Moon kids don't even get that. Moon kids get the illustrious task of trucking out slabs of beer battered CODs of shiny tourists who look at them like their furniture. Yes, ma'am, Thank you, ma'am. Would you like fries with that? At night? They get the pain of watching the moon rise the next morning. When Colleene gets to Crabby Abbey's, there's the new girl up front getting the tour from Suso. Wild long hair cascading down her back and apple cheeks that force her eyes into a squint. Her body jiggles quavers all the time, and Colleen bites her lip in sympathy.

18:17 She remembers how it was holding every muscle tense, earth pull like an anvil dropped on your shoulders. When New Girls sticks out her blue veined hand, though Colleen reconsiders there's a flash in the girl's eyes like spume from a motor boat. Aabitha, she introduces herself, glad to be here. Colleen is bemused. New Girl's voice is deeper than she expected, raspy.

18:43 Most moon kids their first year don't speak above a squeak. Abitha must be screaming to make herself heard. You don't need to do that, Colleen thinks, we get it here, we'll take care of you. I'm happy to have a job, Abitha says, but I don't want to be taken care of. It's important and to blend in. I get that. I'm going to work hard. Suso says, damn straight you are, and leads New Girl away. Before Colleen can figure out if her mind got red, She shakes herself and follows.

19:13 New Girl is harsh on the customers and harsher on herself when she makes mistakes. Colleen says over and over, it's okay, that's how you learn, and Abitha snaps, no patronizing, I'll do better. By the end of the night, she can recite the whole appetizer menu from memory, and when her shift ends, she pulls a fistful of tips from her apron The money bags think it's a hoot to pay with cash and kisses the bills. Check it. I'm rich.

19:40 It's only as the two of them exit into the evening that Colleen realizes Tesla never showed up for work. Abitha smokes behind the restaurant, cupping her hands around the sticcarette. I can't stay here for long, you know, hot brightness in her eyes as she looks at Colleen. I want to do something politics law. Back there, they never told who was making decisions for us. I want people to listen to me. The certainty in her voice is startling.

20:10 Politics law. Colleen tries not to laugh, but come on, who does that drunk anymore? The earth doesn't know law. The earth knows pleasure pouring out of the fountain, And as soon as you get close enough to dip your cup, you drink down enough to ignore the people who can't get a sip. Politicians are sad, gray people turned on by drudgery. Colleen tries to picture a new girl like that Aabitha slides her fingers over her forehead and flips her long hair away from her face, tosses the stikerette away.

20:42 Of course, I gotta stop looking like a gob of mud first. This job isn't so bad for that. I'm gonna get rich quick if they keep making me cover shifts for that other mooney. What's her name, Edison? What's wrong with her? Colleen knows she should defend Tesla. She bites her lip. She watches the dark strands of Abetha's hair settle around her shoulders, forces her eyes to move to the sidewalk, where the stickarette is dying like a star.

21:10 It's a new cycle. Colleen shrugs. Muna's waxing sometimes that she doesn't feel so good, you know, waxing. Huh. Abetha rolls her eyes skyward in consideration. Never thought of that. Bam chicka, bam bam. Party on the beach. Not a cool party obviously because it's moonkids, but party nonetheless, moonkids in bargain bin clothes that curtain, their heavy bodies, stick limbs, emerging, coated and nanopaint body snakes, glowing like so many anemies in the dark. Knight water on the outskirts, a few drunk bodykite dudes whose standards don't go much narrower than by pedal cooler. No, Moonkids didn't spend sixteen years getting edge for nothing. They spend their surplus smarts with abandon.

22:04 They build music machines that wail like electric bandsheese. They synthesize party pills that sing you up into the clouds. Colleen weaves through bodies, searching for Tesla. People call out to her, pat her shoulders. Hey, Collie, my girl, how goes it? I owe you one? You owe her one? I owe her three? Most any Mooncake who's gotten here in the last three years. They've cried on Colleen's shoulder.

22:30 They've knocked on her door at midnight and been let in. Colleen half smiles, slides out of their grasp. She likes watching people brayed together. Trespass lurches up, his round face painted half white, half black. He pushes a beer into her hand. Cold condensation shocks her palm, makes her smile. Thanks Tea seeing big sister. His nose scrunches and paint flakes onto his shirt. Not to night. She's in a dark phase, isn't she. Tesla lives her life too raw, thanks Colleen. It makes her easy to love and hard to protect. One time she sat on the beach for two straight days, let the tide wash in and over her, up to the neck, then out again, leaving her seaweeds strewn and quaking, then in, then out. Abitha has been

23:25 crowned queen of a circle of sand. Boys hold her hands and she swoops and bobs between them. Fuck this pole, she crows. I've got an appointment next week. Just wait, I'm gonna get my bones scraped straight. I'm gonna get this bulk shaved off. Someone hoots eh, like you got the credit for that. Abitha bends an ear to her shoulder so that all her hair flows to one side.

23:52 Her eyes are blade sharp. I've got ways. Just wait, I'm gonna get jewels set into my knee caps. I'm gonna get chimes in my ears, so when you go blah, all I hear is music. Girl wrenches herself away from the boys and collars one of the kite dudes. If this dude, she jabs his chest, If this dude can get body modded for fucking surfing, why would I ever sit around looking like an ugly lump. Fuck That kite dude looks bewitched. He is touching a moon girl, and somehow it's not disgusting. He traces a finger along Abetha's face, and she smirks and snaps her teeth at him. You know, on Luna, I was four inches taller. Now I'm squashed down.

24:40 She grabs kite dude's hand and runs it along the lumpy flesh below her armpit. All this, these are compressional folds. Colleen looks on with weird feelings, beating moth wings in her chest. She thinks she should calm Abitha down. She thinks she should inform her those body mods for money bags, not us. It doesn't do any good calling people ugly.

25:04 What does good is keeping your head down, making it from one day to the next. But she can't make herself step in. Watching a moon girl crow like that, some deep part of her gross honeywarm. It makes her think, maybe all these years she's been aiming at the wrong target. Maybe there are other kinds of hope. Winnabitha lurches forward and grabs Colleen's shoulders and hollers, how about you see be a movie star with me? Calling grins and blows kisses to pretend paparazzi. And then someone is yelling, here, she's here. All heads turned waterward. It's Tesla, bawling, pointing with both hands over the ocean. A half moon is rising.

25:51 Laughter simmers down. No one touches the volume, but the music fades to a background lub blub, oh, oh, hey, Luna, fancy seeing you here? What a small world. Colleen walks over and puts an armor on Tesla. Hey, honey, sh Tesla lean so that her tears fall on Colleen's shirt. One of the kite dudes starts singing Buffalo gowls, and Colleen hears Trespass growl buffalo, motherfucker, you want buffalo, buffalo fucking stampede. She turns in time to see Trespass haul out and clock a dude in the face, and then the brawl is on, and of course Trespass will win, though he will end it wheezing and choking on the sand.

26:38 Abitha has disappeared. Colleen scans the shore and finally catches a mini figure hiking up into the dunes, long hair trailing behind her. Back turned to the moon dun Dundum. That's where we're gonna leave it for today. Hazel, who helps with the scripts behind the scenes, says this about this story quote. I've read a lot of stories about people deciding whether or not they're going to get on the rocket ship to leave Earth to live on the Moon or Mars or generationship, but this is the first one I've read about people who are forced back onto Earth.

27:15 Abby takes that trope and really masterfully excises the bitter under belly exclusion, elitism, grief, refugee narrative. Even this story is so super smart, and I'm excited for you all to hear more about the Earth left behind next week. As for me, what do I want to say about it? I like when we do things that kind of flow with each other, Like I like that we read a story from decades ago about the rich people go live elsewhere and do all of the thinking for the people who stay behind and just kind of have fun with sports and have an under belly even under them. And so it's cool to see that idea, I don't know.

27:57 Decades later, I guess it's a trope, but I think of but more of an idea. What does this mean? You know? Science fiction is the fiction of ideas more than tropes, and so this idea can mean so many different things in different author's hands and different ways of thinking about it. I don't know. I like it. That's what I have to say about it. As for what I have to say about Abby may Otis, I'm gonna say her bio. Abby may Otis is a writer, a teaching artist, a storyteller, and a firestarter. Raised in the woods of North Carolina, she loves people and art forms on the margins. Her story collection Alien Virus Love Disaster from Small Beer Press was named one of the best science fiction books of the Year by The Washington Post

28:44 and was a finalist for the twenty eighteen Philip K. Dick Award. She studied creative writing at the Missionar Center for Writers, Oberlin College and the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Currently, she is making a living as an artist in residence at the University of Pennsylvania in West Philly, where her favorite days are spent walking her dogs in the woods.

29:04 Overstaining her welcoming coffee shops, chipping away at a novel, and dismantling the state. And I'm Margaret Kiljoy and you can find me nowhere, except I guess you can find me most places under my name Margarrett kill Joy. Anyway, until next week, take care of each other. Fuck Ice and do something you're bad at. Do art that you're no good at. That's your homework. Bye.

29:35 It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.