There was that buzzing again. I was in no mood to investigate. I was on a do-or-die mission and I was running out of time.
The buzzing again. I swatted somewhere around
my ears. I had to finish reworking the draft of a pilot for a new Visi-tainment
series and it was stalled out somewhere over Cape Canaveral. 
I read over what I just wrote. Not bad, not good. For a moment I allowed the self-critic in my head to start his usual whine about it being too static, too safe, but lately I’ve learned to dismiss this egotistical little know-it-all. Shut up, I told myself as gently as I could under the circumstances.
I looked out over into my back yard, down to the water’s edge, and across Indian River to the SpacePort, where I had a date with destiny. What made it all possible was this pilot script being optioned by the Visi-vision Crime & Punishment for their newest franchise: Moon Mayhem to be aired starting next summer. I had been working in the writing pool for the many C&P franchises, a nice living which made it possible to buy this Titusville, Florida retreat with the spectacular Central Florida view. So, OK. Titusville wasn’t the most trendy place to live in Central Florida, but it was on the east coast and had the advantage of being close to Technopolis where the C&P scripts went into production. It was also across the lagoon where the newest line of space shuttles to the Moon were launched.
I stared at the unfinished script, willing it to write itself, but the pesky buzz threatened my concentration. I batted it away in my mind, and started to rework a bit of dialogue one of the producers had complained about, but the buzzing wouldn’t stop. I typed right through the distraction.
I took a sip of hot chocolate, which was no longer hot, and realized the buzzing was actually my Visi-phone, which hadn’t rung for as long as I had been here in my new house. I answered it, but without much enthusiasm. I had a feeling it was the Crime & Punishment producers wanting to know how I was coming with the pilot script.
“Hello?” I asked tentatively. I heard nothing on the other end. Instead, a hologram appeared with a beautiful woman I half recognized as the old-time movie star Dottie Dewgoot, amazed she was still around. She was telling me about a revolutionary new anti-aging product from CABEL that has worked wonders on her (pause to wink suggestively at me) and would surely do the same for me and/or my significant other. To me, she looked not exactly young. Ever see Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard? More like that. But what did I know?
“Just in time for the Wintermas holidays,” she said, winking again at the camera. Was it a tic?
“The perfect gift. Tell them you love them with a gift of Agelessness.”
Heady stuff but I was in no mood for telemarketers, even old movie stars who still looked young. Instead of pressing a key on my Visi to learn more, as Dottie suggested, I shut down the holograph and turned instead to the afternoon’s edition of the New Galaxy Times.
I needed story lines about sabotage, mayhem, and murder to turn into C&P entertainment scripts. The more crime and mayhem the better. The only trouble was, the scripts had to be about crime and mayhem happening in space and on the Moon. Space travel was still a novelty and the bad guys hadn’t caught up with the new technology yet, or at least not enough to get noticed in the news, my usual source.
Squinting at the dim screen, I found a good article about new security measures for the Moon. It was to protect the first wave of visitors who were coming up for the Wintermas celebration. With a little imagination, like adding a spy among the visitors, I could probably turn it into an hour’s crime story. But that was only one script. I had nine more plots to find to make up the first Moon Mayhem season.
I needed to do more research for the budding script. I clicked down through a feature video about Wintermas sales of anti-aging treatments being at an all-time high, and found what I was looking for. There, under an ad for plots of land on the Moon, was a paragraph about Dr. Ted White. He was assisting the leader of Eagle’s Landing, Dr. Henry Hawks. It didn’t say doing what, exactly. More security, I supposed, but wherever Ted was, there was also an action plot hovering around him, waiting to be exploited by an enterprising young writer.
I might have known he’d end up on the Moon. He’d been everywhere else. Ted White was a professor of archeology, specializing in space ruins. He was also my uncle.
I put down the Visi-screen, annoyed by more incessant buzzing, which had by now turned into an even more annoying ringing. It was not the ringing of the Wintermas bells, I thought, as I brought myself back to where I was, in my snug room, watching the boats sailing up and down the Indian River, decked out in holiday lights. I finally answered my Visi-phone and the bells stopped ringing.
“I thought you were on the Moon,” I said when I picked up, knowing, of course, it was Uncle Ted.
“And how’s my favorite nephew?” he asked, not really wanting to know. “Too bad about that leg, Han.” The leg still gave me pain when the barometer got below a certain point or when Ted reminded me of that particular adventure in the Florida Everglades where I got too close to a hungry and mating alligator.
Ted blew right by the rest of the civilities. “It’s going to sound screwy, but that new project I have with Hawks on the Moon you just read about?”
How the hell did he know what I just read?
“It’s just a cover. They wanted the world to think I was on the Moon, immersed in experiments with Dr. Hawks. They have something else in mind for me, something quite unscientific and I need your help.” Of course he did.
A mental warning alarm went off, and I looked down protectively at my recently healed leg.
“Here we go again,” I said aloud, and resigned myself to still yet another hare-brained scheme where I am totally out of my depth and Ted is, too, only he hasn’t the good sense to know it. I have tried in the past to get out of these things, but Ted knows how to ignore “No,” especially when I, skilled actor that I am, says it. Saying no to Ted convincingly is apparently not in my repertoire.
“How would you like to spend Wintermas on the Moon?” asked Ted, not really asking it as a question. “You’ll get a great view of Santa making his rounds on Earth, a view no one has ever seen.”
Here’s me, a normally intelligent guy, reduced to a blithering idiot, answering, “Santa? As in Claus?” I didn’t bother telling him I was already booked on the next shuttle as a member of the Crime & Punishment crew. The show was going to have a tie-in with the space colony on the Moon, Eagle’s Landing, and it was going to be my ticket to fame and being able to actually afford this new house of mine.
Ted sounded lighter, almost jovial as he explained how Santa fitted into all this, and I, poor fool, was taken in. Maybe it would be as much fun as his voice suggested, so before he could get any further with what I knew would be a lengthy pitch, I found myself saying “Sure, great, why not. I’ll see you at the SpacePort,” already planning on how I’d turn this budding fiasco of Ted’s into another script for Moon Mayhem.
I looked out the window. It was beginning to rain and there was a glow coming from nearby Technopolis where Wintermas lights were making an aurora borealis-like display against the low cloud cover.
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