Moon People: An Introduction

Amos was one of the colonists that chose to go without a last name--it was a way to represent the break with the millennia of civilization on earth. It was also a good way to further avoid any kind of pestering from the police--not that there was much police presence on the moon, moon people being so fiercely antigovernment and all.

So, avoiding the police:

Amos sold lunar tires in the lunar state of Franklin. So did John Birch Byerson. JB had been lowering prices like a madman. Amos didn't get how. Amos had made the switch to slaves, and JB hadn't. Amos had his brother Abraham raid a tire manufacturing plant over in Columbus (, Moon), and Birch still bought tires from Goodyear. Amos had been constructing ledgers for John Birch Byerson's Tirerama, based on dumpster-diving-retrieved documents (dumpster-driving services care of Abraham). Dumbass Birch didn't shred anything. Still--JB's tires were about twenty dollars less than Amos's, and freaking JBBT still pulled in more than Amos's Discount Tireyard, and at a profit! Amos slashed prices, and people stayed with JBBT. Amos had his marketing people do massive surveying; the data showed that people just "trusted" John Birch Byerson, for whatever reason. So Amos learned that JB was going on a hiking expedition outside of the oxygen dome over the last weekend in February, and Amos followed JB to the mountain range, and Amos walked up to JB, and JB said "Amos, what are you doing here?" and Amos slowly, but successfully, drove a screwdriver through JB's helmet.

This was the moon.

The [Advisory Neighborhood] Commissioner

Jennifer Parker stood at the intersection of Eastern and Rhode Island Avenues NE, looking out at the weird curving wall of snow that sat on top of Mount Rainier, MD. On account of the slightly-above freezing temperature beneath the crust, Ward 5 UnderDC didn't get snowy--just wet. But Maryland didn't have the phenomenon of a giant dish or crust or whatever it was above, so it got snow. The warmth of Ward 5 and all the UnderDC parts adjacent to Maryland or Virginia allowed parts of those states to not be snowy when the horrendous late 21st century storms fell--but snowy parts fell within eyesight of UnderDC, and so from any spot on the border of DC, you could see what Jennifer Parker saw: no snow, and then an elliptical wall of the white stuff.

But the wall of snow wasn't the thing that worried Jennifer Parker. It was the burst water main on Rhode Island Ave that was spewing brownish liquid. This particular water main had been broken for a little over a week, and she had yet to see any crews from the DC Water and Sewer Authority even check out the main break. She had called DCWASA the previous Monday, but had heard--on the occasions that her electricity had flickered on and she could get news--that roughly every member of nearly every city service crew available, WASA included, was doing a massive repair job on the stilt above Ward 3 of UnderDC and all of the infrastructural disruptions caused by the swaying of the stilt.

But nuts to the stilt, Jenny thought: she wanted to cause a ruckus about this water main. It made her angry. Once again, the people on that freaking crust got their stuff repaired, all while, by all indications, nearly nothing else in the city was working. She wanted to convene the Ward 5A Advisory Neighborhood Commission, of which she was a Commissioner, to have a meeting at the water main and call some press, but the other commissioners had too many problems in their own parts of the ward. So here was Jenny, waiting for a City Paper reporter to come by and report on her water main problem. But lo--the reporter was almost a full hour late now. Traveling around the city was crazy these days, what with potholes the size of cars going unfixed for years, exploding water mains everywhere, and the whole problem of the swaying stilt. But still--Jenny had been waiting for a long time. She wanted somebody to care about the damn water main.

At about the forty-five minutes of waiting mark, a ten-year old boy came riding up on a bike. He was, along with Jenny, the only person on the street. She watched the boy from down Rhode Island until he rode up to her and stopped. "Hey ma'am," the boy said, putting on his brakes, and putting his feet on the road. "What're you doing standing by that nasty water?"

Jenny smiled. "Trying to make a point."

"What kinda point?"

"That somebody should care about us. What's your name?"

"Christopher Arnold Washington Junior."

"That's a fun name, Christopher Arnold Washington Junior."

Chris smiled. "It is!"

"How old are you, Chris?"

"Ten. How old are you?"

Jenny laughed. "Forty, honey. Where do you live?"

"Myrtle Avenue. Where do you live?"

"Oh, just a tiny bit away from here. Newton Street. I, uh." She considered whether she should tell the boy that she was from the ANC, and decided not to; what ten year-old cares about the ANC? she asked herself. "I'm just waiting for a news reporter to come write about this water main breaking."

"Oh, I don't know if any reporter's gonna come to that."

"And why not?"

"'cause it's boring!" the boy said, grinning widely, rolling his eyes and spinning his head around as he said "boring." Right as Chris said that, a heavily-bearded thirtysomething fellow, also riding a bike, came into view. Jenny peered at the moving figure, and then he was in front of her and little Chris.

"Oh hey," the man said, doing the same brake-and-stand thing that Chris did before. "I am so sorry. I'm the City Paper reporter. Name's Jeff." He held out his sweaty hand for Jenny to shake. "Got a heck of a water main problem here."

"Indeed," Jenny said, tentatively shaking Jeff's hand. "What took so long? You're, like, almost an hour late."

"I know, I know," Jeff said. "But, uh, there was something weird about Newt Gingrich running away from some conference and going into space. We don't usually cover that kinda stuff, but then there was this like crazy three-day riot maybe 'cause of that or something and a stand-off at the hotel where the conference was, and a bunch of young corn-fed conservative kids just blew up half of Woodley Park on top of the crust. Like just this morning. I had to go cover it, but I came over as quickly as I could."

Jenny stood, her eyebrows furrowed, arms crossed, processing what the young guy just said. "Hrm," she said. "So who's this Newt Gingrich and why's all that more important than my water main?"

Excerpts from Newt's speech at the 2087 CPAC

Note: Power was down across the Atlantic seaboard, and all CPAC speakers had to use a megaphone. The regular recording equipment was shut off, seeing as it was a drain on the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel's generators. The speech, or parts of it, were copied down by conference participants; the excerpts below are edited from several different notes.

My sadness is deep tonight, fellow revolutionaries. Our so-called President's inability to deal with our increasingly literally powerless society means that many of my dearest friends, including George Will's Undying Electronic Presence, the third robotic incarnation of John Boehner produced this year, and the "Repeal the Fourteenth Amendment" cyborg dance team--they can't be with us tonight. But I, revolutionaries, am with you, until the stars take me.

Note: Starting around 2040, members of both parties began referring to the opposite-partied occupant of the White House as the "so-called President." Some commentators bemoaned this as yet another symbol of ever-degrading partisan strife. Democrats claimed the practice started with Republicans; Republicans claimed the practice dated back to the George W. Bush years, and was first voiced by Democrats; the Patriocrats claimed that the term was encoded, in secret dissolving ink, in a combination of laws including but not limited to the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Social Security Act, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986; the fringiest of the fringe Patriotcrats and a few of their armed followers claimed the "so-called President" concept was found in the 22' by 22' cube containing all the world's gold, such that said cube containing all the world's gold had/has inscribed on it an edict from William McKinley himself mandating that no one holding the position of President of the United States shall actually be elected, and shall actually be chosen by a committee comprised of the de Rothschilds, the Morgans, Mark Hanna and his descendants, and the Comptroller of the Currency.

Should we bemoan our problems? Should we bemoan the fact that Interstate 95 has a gaping hole above the Delaware Memorial Bridge? Should we wail that we don't have working trains, that half of our airports aren't equipped to control air traffic? Maybe. And maybe liberals should admit that years of the government having any hand in infrastructure didn't work. Oh, they whine: how are you supposed to maintain or build any new infrastructure when you basically refuse to raise taxes for the better part of a century? My revolutionaries, I say: that is a dumb question. It's them talking about old solutions to new problems. More taxes to make government work? If Charles Krauthammerpod had the charge to get over here, he'd sum it all up in a word. "Nonsense." Maybe "Absurd."

I just want to--

Note: At this moment the generators powering the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel ran out of fuel. Lights went off. CPACers started murmuring. Some stories tell that Newt yelled, "--talk about American Solutions!" Other reports claimed that Newt led the crowd in a chorus of "USA! USA!" Others said that Newt told CPACers that the "so-called President was turning a once great America into the United States of Atrophy." The record is contradictory. Within twenty-four hours, Newt had apparently moved his launch date up, and was in space.

Atlanta, the vast Midwest, Washington DC - Late February 2087

The pack of mules died. The WMATA Metro, rumored for nearly a century to eventually break down entirely, broke down entirely.

*     *     *

"Newt?" It was Old Friend calling.

Newt held the phone at a distance, and heard the tinny voice of his friend. It was gray outside. An airplane was smoking in a field out in the distance. Newt's house was powered by multiple generators, and was not affected by the wide-scale power outage.

"Newt?"

"Yeah," Newt said, his voice cracking, holding the phone out. He closed his eyes, swallowed, regained his composure, and held the phone to his ear, fiery and ready to talk like nothing was wrong with him. "I'm alive. How are you?"

"Oh, fine. I've been learning to live without electricity for years." There was an extended silence. "So have you heard any reasons why roughly nothing is working?"

"Pretty standard infrastructure problems, really. If only we had privatized it, we would have been okay."

Old Friend was quiet again. "Are you still going to space?"

"Private industry, my friend!" Newt yelled. Newt felt excitement again; his brain was clicking with policy ideas. He grabbed a nearby napkin and started searching around for a pen. He couldn't find one, and remembered he was having a conversation, so it was only civil to actually talk. "I mean, it's still going off. They're good at what they do, the Mellon company."

"Hrm," Old Friend said. "Have you heard what people are saying about you?"

"Ha!" Newt said. "The Intergalactic Culture War? I mean, those people are crazy, the ones that say I'm going to come back and announce that. Irresponsible. I'm a sensible guy, Old Friend. That's why you voted for me as Speaker."

"So true, Newt."

"And anyway: the Moon People have already announced it."

The Robots Whirred

George Will's Undying Electronic Presence raised his voice to a library shout, incensed as he was about his inability to pick up baseball transmissions--and then he himself went dead. Boehnerbot 2087^2 had just finished demonstrating, on the House floor, how big some bill was, when his eyes turned into tiny white dots in the center of darkness, like an old TV tube. Newt was riding the Peoplemover, wiping away tears, when the Peoplemover stopped. Snow fell on CrusDC, and the grating system didn't grate or heat--so CrusDC got an accumulation of snow, which was the cause of much laughter in UnderDC. The mules that pulled the one Red Line WMATA train kept pulling that train, though, unaffected as they were by the general US-wide computer shutdown.

After an hour, things started working again. But Newt cried for want of a solution to a problem he didn't understand.

Up to Now!

A new narrative post each day, even each week, is probably a lot to read. So as a way to help new readers make sense of what the hell is going on here, here's a quick summary of the events up to now:

Plot points:

• Newt Gingrich, old and yet still alive in the year 2087, is finally getting launched into space. He's going to use a private space flight company, in case you were wondering. Newt's always been pretty obsessed with space, so this is a logical step.
• Rumors circulate among the journalistic folks that Newt is going to use this trip as a means of (1) supporting the notion that life on the welfare-free moon colonies is successful and should be replicated in the United States, on Earth, and (2) claiming irrefutable evidence that a Christian God created all things. Of course, point (2) is not a controversial thing (if you're Christian, obviously you're going to support the idea that a Christian God created all things), but some journalists, circa 2087, are spreading the rumor that Newt will return from space to claim evidence of God and THEN declare an Intergalactic Culture War (whatever that is). You know how journalists are, with the rumors.
• In 2087, Washington DC gets so much snow that the city has been elevated by giant stilts. There is CrusDC, the top part, where Newt lives, and then UnderDC, where there's some sort of vague underclass (and it's hard to have a dystopian future without an underclass that literally lives under a city). There's a complex grating system whereupon when snow falls onto CrusDC, snow falls through slats, and gets heated and liquified. Accordingly, when it snows, UnderDC receives lots of nasty, hot rain.
• Oil has been found underneath the Potomac River, where the Potomac Oil Company drills--but without complaint from bougie folks, since they generally live on CrusDC.
• Newt has a financial stake in both the stilt/crust operation, and the oil operation.

Character points:

• When Newt faces rejection these days, he gets very emotional. If he gets emotional in Washington DC, he travels back to the Atlanta, Georgia area, and rides the Peoplemover at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, which makes him happier.
• Newt has always had fans among both conservative and moderate Republicans. A moderate Republican, and former member of Congress who has given up his name and titles and goes only by the name "Old Friend," is Newt's best friend. Old Friend is upset about the state of the world, and is protective of Newt.

The Window of Opportunity Has Arrived

Newt published a book in 1984 called Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Future.

Circa 2010, Newt sold copies online for $34.45. You could, however, get a fairly pristine copy off of Amazon.com for $0.01, paying $3.99 shipping and handling. The book was, at some point pre-February 2010, sold at a Goodwill somewhere for $2.99. A certain circa 2010 purchaser of Window received a copy of Amazon with the Goodwill pricetag still attached.

If you clicked at that link with the book's title, you may have noticed the cover image. Yes: the title is written in a fabulous spacey typeface. Yes: Newt's byline is listed as "The Honorable Newt Gingrich, Chairman of the Congressional Space Caucus." Yes: the cover image is of a space shuttle, the planet earth, an eagle, and the American flag.

The book is published by Tor, a company that tends to publish science fiction books.

The most prominent blurb on the back is from the Gipper himself.

Enough cover matter: in Window of Opportunity, Newt tells us, the Americans of tomorrow (tomorrow from the perspective of 1984), what he could have brought us, space-wise, if we had just listened to him (ca. 1984).

And now an excerpt (pages 41-42, italics and caps not in original, but important for the "craziness" effect):

The NASA team proposed both a space shuttle and a space station to President Nixon, who, although distracted by Vietnam and budget fights, nonetheless supported one major program--the space shuttle--as a prudent investment in America's future.

The space shuttle allowed NASA and its major contractors to continue working on new programs and thus was a partial victory. However, the shuttle was a process-oriented, bureaucratic, technocratic program which lacked the romance and adventure that might have created a new generation of engineers AND SPACE ACTIVISTS.

...Imagine that business and industrial leaders had been far-sighted enough to understand that a space industry would spin off earth-based jobs using satellite antennas, new medicines, large surfaces, and zero-gravity alloys.

[...]

With a coherent understanding of the value of space, the President could have scheduled a national address the night man landed on the moon, and after the world watched that first "small step for man, one giant step for mankind," announced a massive new program to build A PERMANENT LUNAR COLONY TO EXPLOIT THE MOON'S RESOURCES FOR USE IN SPACE coupled with the concurrent development of a space shuttle and a series of permanent manned satellites to sustain that colony. Finally, TO USE THE GENIUS OF A PERMANENT AMERICAN FREE-MARKET SYSTEM, THE PRESIDENT COULD HAVE ANNOUNCED A SERIES OF TAX AND REGULATORY INCENTIVES TO TURN SPACE INTO A PROFITABLE ARENA FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT.

Washington DC, February 9, 2087 Part Two

But snow kept falling, and winds continued blowing, threatening the Potomac Oil Company's drilling, UnderDC, and CrusDC alike. It was February 9, 2087, and Newt had returned from Atlanta to oversee POC operations, launch a new campaign to fund education vouchers with petrodollars, and give a talk about his upcoming space trip at the American Enterprise Institute. But once he landed at the elevated Reagan National Airport, he got news of the upcoming blizzard, and had to cancel his plans. He took a cab, avoiding the Metro, as it was isolated to the Red Line and pulled by a mule these days.

Newt returned home to his condo, put down his bags, and slumped himself in a comfy chair. "Oh well," he said, rubbing his hands through his hair. After leaning back into the chair, he looked down at his coffee table, where the new issue of the Spectator lay. Newt was on the front cover. He picked up the magazine and thumbed through until he hit the article about himself. The article's title, spread across two pages in a spacey-looking typeface, read: "I WANT AMERICANS TO KNOW THE SECRETS OF THE MOON PEOPLE." It continued:

Newt Gingrich is now going beyond the heights of Speakerdom, or behind the scenes Republican operator, at least in terms of vertical distance. In March 2087, Speaker Gingrich is going to the Moon. A devout advocate of private enterprise, he will sidestep NASA to travel with Mellon Interstellar Technologies of Pittsburgh, PA. But it's not just stars and dust that Newt's interested in. "I believe a trip to space will confirm not a few things that I have hypothesized in the last few decades," Newt said.

Still being Newt, even at 143 years of age, he pulled out a flipchart, on which he had previously written. The first of the charts said "MOON MEN" at the top. "We all know that there has been a lunar colony for the last decade," the Speaker continued, "and that it has thrived beyond anyone's initial guess. I've spoken, at least over the phone, with a lot of these folks, and I'm pretty sure that their flinty, self-reliant perseverance--their safety-net free society, in which you live and die by what you can make out of the lunar dust--is exactly the kind of character type that the United States needs to replicate to avoid becoming a failed civilization."

Newt lifted his eyes from the page and looked out a window. Snow, moving at maybe 70 miles per hour or so, obliterated all background. Newt kept reading.

Newt flipped to a new chart, reading "REDISCOVERING GOD IN SPACE." Ever the professor, he peered down his glasses while speaking. "Scholars, religious people, everymen and Founding Fathers have found God in all sorts and manners of actions. I have too. And I'm excited to see the Creator's hand in this mysterious satellite that gives us light at night and brings the tides."

Newt's apartment shook; it shook continuously and violently, like it was the plaything of an overgrown, sugar-addled toddler. After thirty seconds of angry vibration, Newt adjusted, calmed himself, and turned on the television. A wet-looking reporter stood in UnderDC next to the support of one of the stilts, yelling, "Whether through mere bad luck, incompetent construction, or who knows what, the stilt holding up Northwest Washington DC is teetering, shaking loose!" Newt widened his eyes and threw back his head in a single action, such was the reaction of a person facing simultaneous terror not just for one's safety, but reputation. "But! I consulted on that!" he yelled to no one. Newt fell to his knees, watching the shaking stilt on television, the shaking apartment, the blizzard outside. He clasped his hands in prayer and muttered quickly, "Lord, if there's any culpability on my part, I mean, I understand, I'm deeply, deeply sorry! It's not a joke! I get it! Me, the people living on top, the people underneath this thing, I mean we're all gonna suffer from whatever it is that I did to enrich--." And then the shaking stopped. The man on the television hooted. "The Army Corps of Engineers stepped up with their rapid response Stilt-Repair Aircraft! Washington DC is saved!"

Newt breathed and closed his eyes enough to recover his senses. That done, he looked out his window to verify that the snow was the only thing moving in his line of sight. That verified, he grabbed his bags again, clicked here and there on his phone, and readied himself for a weather-resistant bullet train trip to Atlanta. DC wasn't his home; it was just a place from which he ruled.

Washington DC, February 9, 2087 Part One

Snows came to Washington, DC, and they came intensely, year after year. In the beginning, the storms were greeted with joy and public gathering from the citizenry. Then the snows became more relentless, each winter bringing more feet of white powdery stuff, and more discomfort. The average snowfall in the winters 2020-2030 saw the steps to the Lincoln Monument covered; by the end of the winter of 2040, Lincoln himself was covered.

But DC always exhibited a lively citizenry that wasn't interested in being beaten down by whatever forces attacked it, whether those forces be the U.S. Congress, bizarre mayoralty, gentrification, or senseless violence. Ever-alarming, increasing yearly yields of snow were not going to stop the District. In 2040, the year of the biggest, most Arctic Circle-ish snow yet, the city's Go-Go scene and coterie of socially conscious rock groups held a giant, multi-stage, multi-day show--called "Make That Snow Go-Go"--that generated enough heat from enough people dancing that the snow and ice melted from the northernmost reaches of Georgia Ave, east to Capitol Heights, south down to the Wilson Bridge...and stopping a little bit west of Connecticut Avenue, for a bunch of Georgetownites complained about the noise.

When giant concerts couldn't be organized, DC-ites shamed public officials into shoveling like mad. There was no end to the citizens' ambitions to make their city livable. But alas, Congress demanded a permanent, privatized solution. The city tried to resist with peaceful protest, their one vote in the House of Representatives, and, eventually, Molotov Cocktails. But, as Newt noted to a journalist in the spring of 2041, "Nothing can stop the great freedom brought by privatization."

"Not even a citizenry dead opposed to your privatized solution?" the journalist asked.

"Nothing," Newt replied.

Newt was interviewed because word leaked that he was a consultant for one of the organizations that bid and eventually won the right to elevate the city on 500 foot stilts and manage everything that occurred above the stilts. The company installed a complex system of grating and heating systems below the grates, so that snow would fall through the "crust," or "CrusDC" as the elevated city came to be known, and melt, falling as hot rain to the people living below. Consequently, the undercity--UnderDC, as it came to be known--became a hot, wet, sunless Hell. Newt lived on the crust.

Oil was found deep beneath the Potomac River, and Newt's consulting firm also lobbied hard to make sure that drilling occurred there--which was convenient once the crust and stilts were erected, placing the people who wanted the drills far away from fiery eruptions, loud noises, and other unpleasant aspects of the Potomac Oil Company's operations.

Interview With Old Friend

Old Friend sat at his kitchen table, staring out at a snowy midwestern field, part of the land he had inherited from his father hundreds of years ago. The land moved in curves and crags, rolling in places, brutal and rock-strewn in the distance. Old Friend didn't farm much; the land didn't offer much in the way of fertility, having been salted in the Agriterror of the 2050s. But still--it was pretty, and Old Friend could appreciate things for their aesthetics.

The phone rang, and Old Friend picked it up, hoping, as he held the receiver, that he could get this interview out of the way. A male voice was on the other end.

"Hello? Congressman?" said the interviewer.

"Yes," Old Friend said. "I know it's a term of dignity in some quarters, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me that--Congressman." He said the title with a shutter.

"Oh," the interviewer said, sounding disappointed. "Well, is there a title you'd like?"

"I'm sick of titles and names. I gave them up a long time ago."

"Can I use that in the interview?"

"I don't mind," Old Friend said, gently as his usual tone was. "It's not a state secret."

"So what's the cause of the...disaffection? Do you mind if I term it that way?"

"Oh, disaffection's probably okay. I mean...a lot of life is poisoned, you come to realize. Did you ever learn about Bayard Rustin?"

"Who?"

Old Friend sighed. "Same as it ever was," he said with a faint laugh. "When he got old, he said this thing. He was this old activist, and he was clearly slowing down a bit, and he said something like, 'After awhile you just get tired.' Well, I just got tired of--I don't know. Politics? Being any sort of personality? It's hard to explain. I just shut off. So I mean, I go by Old Friend sometimes. To Newt--that's what you're after, right? Some quote about Newt?"

"Yessir."

"To Newt, he just calls me his Old Friend. Official title. Official name. And nickname." Old Friend laughed.

"Got it."

"So you want to ask me questions?"

"Surely. Uh." The young man made noises that sounded like fiddling with some device, maybe paper, maybe something else. He cleared his throat. "Okay, well, off the bat: how do you feel about Newt going to the moon?"

"I'm happy for him," Old Friend said with deep sincerity. "He's always been in love with space."

"You don't think you'll miss him?"

"Of course I'll miss him, but it's not forever." Old Friend sounded like he was smiling as he spoke. "It'll be good to get out of his system. And he'll come back, as energetic as ever. This'll make him work harder at getting everybody into space."

"You don't think he's got ulterior motives, do you?"

"Such as what?" Old Friend said sharply.

"Well--he's been claiming lately that there's definitive proof of God's existence up there; that God is in everything. But, like, not really in a mystical or like Spinozistic way. In more of one of those 'I'm pushing Christianity' ways. Like he's going to come back down from space and start making all sorts of wacky assertions about what he's seen, and how he saw this and that sign of a God, and that the Hundred Year Culture War he always talks about should now be an Intergalactic Culture War."

"Well Newt's complicated, and I don't want to get into his motives for anything. And I'm not going to speculate or even touch why he's going up there beyond what I said. He's always wanted to go to space, and he's going. So that's that."

"What do you think about the thing he said the other day--about the self-reliant Moon People who provide the model about everything we should be as a nation?"

"I don't recall anything about Moon People."

"He said it. It's the cover story of the Spectator this week."

Old Friend let out a long, pained sigh. "This sounds to me like a hatchet job. I don't want to take part in this anymore."

"I just want to understand how this guy keeps on getting decent people to vouch for him. I mean what's there? What's worth defending?"

"He has a job. He's had ambitions and dreams that have been with him since he was a little boy. He's good to his friends. He's been loyal. I'm not going to hang him for things he does while he's working."

"Are you saying that you should separate his politics from his real life?"

"I'm saying--this interview is over."

A Man of the Peoplemover

Newt had gotten to a point some years ago where he realized that he was frequently talking to people without any sort of solicitation. He didn't know at what moment it started, the random, unsolicited talking. There were a lot of opinions as to the start date. The realization moment for Newt was about twelve years before. He was sitting at a cafeteria near the Old Executive Office Building, reading his Washington Times, when two young people sat down in the table adjacent to his, with a pile of sushi between them that looked to weigh at least a pound. One of the people was a man in a very sharply tailored suit, the other was a woman in an eye-popping blue peacoat, opaque black leggings, and brown leather boots. They seemed like professionals.

"...you know Treasury's just lost its mind on all this," the woman said. "But you know how it goes. I mean Bill, bless his heart, he tells me they're understaffed to the point that the Secretary's getting in a few minutes early to make coffee for everybody. The Treasury Secretary. His own intern. It's kind of sick."

"Shit, the President can't even hire a secretary, little s, anymore. The President of the United States is answering her own calls. She's all like, 'Yes, West Wing. Yes, the President is busy right now.' And hangs up. The President of the United States screens her own calls. Hell of a job."

Newt looked up from his newspaper and turned to the young folks. He smiled broadly. "Do you two work in the White House?" he asked. The two people looked at each other, and then Newt, and then each other, giving a "Is he talking to us?" look. Newt continued smiling, almost pliantly. "It sounds like you do. Great jobs for young people."

"Are you still asking a question?" the woman asked.

"Who are you?" the man asked.

"Yes, and Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House," Newt said, extending his hand. The younger people looked at each other again, still puzzled.

"Dude, you're like a hundred and forty years old," the woman said, a look of moderate horror on her face.

"I've seen a lot," Newt said, smiling proudly.

"You're like the decline and fall of the United States in one person," the man said.

This made Newt cry. Every now and then he'd encounter someone in DC who had this kind of reaction to his presence, and so Newt would leave the power center for awhile, and go back to Georgia. Usually, the mere thought of returning to Georgia would make Newt feel better, but this time, Newt cried from the point of the man's comment, on through the National Airport check-in and security gate, through the flight, to the arrival gate in Atlanta, and ending approximately at the Peoplemover at Hartsfield-Jackson. The Peoplemover tended to calm Newt better than most things; it felt like the future, even though it was nearly a century old. So Newt sat in the Peoplemover, his nose and eyelids red. The vehicle only had a few people in it, and Newt kept riding it beyond his destination. He rode the Peoplemover for hours, bewildered as to why he had been so upset. He hoped that by being in the Peoplemover for long enough, he might arrive at some sort of conclusion. But it didn't happen. So he got off, and made his way back to his house.

Once settled, he went to his bedroom, picked up the phone next to his bed, and called his Old Friend. They were political allies turned near-family. When Newt needed advice, or solace, he called his Old Friend.

"Hello?" said a gentle male voice.

"Old Friend? It's Newt."

"Newt? How are you, buddy?"

"Not so good." Newt recounted the conversation at the cafeteria, which caused Newt to cry again.

"Calm down, Newton. Calm. It's okay. People can be so rude. So mean. You don't have to pay attention."

Newt breathed a breath that approached a sigh, and then said, "You're right. I just...have you ever felt like you were a nuisance?"

"Remember when I tried convincing most of the House's Republicans to support gay rights?"

"Right, right." Newt laughed sadly. "But--I just. I've never really felt like I was imposing so much. I just kind of...I don't get it."

"You don't get what?"

"I...I've talked to so many people through the years. Am I just...annoying?"

"Well." Old Friend sounded pained. He was silent for a long time. "You are not annoying, certainly," he said abruptly. He got quiet again. "But you do have, uh...a tendency. You've got a tendency to just...talk to people. Without them...Newt, I'm sorry. Sometimes you just start talking. And I understand why you talk, because you've got passion. You see the dilemma, the world dilemma, the national problem, the civilization thing--you see it for what it is. But. And I'm not one of these people, but some people. They don't want to listen." More silence. "I mean, maybe. It's a theory they don't want to listen."

Newt nodded, and then realized Old Friend couldn't see the nodding. "Right," Newt said. He breathed through his nose in a way that suggested an attempted laugh, unsuccessful due to a lack of mirth. "You think that's why the people want me away from here? You think...you think that's why they want me in space?"

"Goodness no," Old Friend said. "Goodness no." The conversation went quiet for a few more seconds, and then Old Friend said that he would have to go. "We'll talk before you leave for the moon, ya hear?"

"Yeah," Newt said, a smile on his face, that smile translating to a slightly higher voice than before. "We will."

The phone clicked, and Newt looked out the window of his bedroom at an overcast late winter afternoon. The power went out in the room, and then came back on. Newt looked at a digital clock, flashing 12:00. And then he sat down on his bed and cried for the rest of the day.

1983...A Nixon Acolyte I Should Turn To Be

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Frank Luntz Tells Newt What Americans Really Want

Newt Gingrich, old and happy with his long-life pills, sat on a bench in Farragut Park an hour or so after night fell. He faced K Street, smiling gently at the professionals finished working stints of long hours, the men with their well-cut suits slightly frumpled and women in pencil skirts still looking fresh, all wandering out of buildings whose windows were increasingly blackening, all of these folks with the stunned faces of people who have been staring at computer screens and living under florescent lights for the last ten plus hours. Newt's eyes followed the lobbyists and lawyers as they walked to taxis and towncars and down to the Metro station. And then it happened--the Newt thing, the idea birthed; something popped into his head, and he felt for the inside of his suitjacket, reaching for his smartphone, clicking here and dragging there and, bloop, he started typing:

AMERICAN SPACE CAB OPPORTUNITY ACT OF 2087: Tax credits to white shoe law firms to send lawyers doing long-term work to space. The creative vanguard of this country goes to work and leaves work in darkness anyway, so working in space won't be that different. And the same people should have more experience with that greatest of horizons, the thing that shakes its fist, that beckons! at defeatist American impulses--SPACE. Specifics: Tax credit of $

"Newt."

Newt stopped typing and looked around himself, hurriedly, upset, almost offended. The figure was in front of Newt--it was Frank Luntz.

"You just...you just stopped it," Newt said, as Frank sat down on the bench. "You stopped the flow."

"My sincerest apologies, Newt," Frank said, sounding insincere. "I got the polling data you wanted, though."

Newt's eyes rolled back in his head as he tried dearly to recall what Frank was referring to. "I don't...I'm sorry, Frank. It takes awhile to sort through all this life sometimes," Newt said sadly.

"I know, old friend," Frank said, patting Newt's hand, which was lying flat on the gulf between the two old men on the bench. "But it's okay. I just--it turns out the numbers you wanted. They're there. America's ready for it."

Newt blinked a lot, and then with a tear, looked into Frank's eyes.

"You mean..." Newt began, a trace of his Southern drawl adding some wizened optimism to his voice.

"Yeah, old buddy," Frank said, opening up a manila folder on his lap. "America wants to send Newt Gingrich to the moon."