Buzz Aldrin: Secret Werewolf
Buzz Aldrin: Secret Werewolf
Part 1: Astronaut Werewolves
Robert Lupus, Director of NASA, stared at the three men before him. “What exactly are you telling me gentlemen?” he asked in a low growl.
The three men exchanged glances before the one he believed he had decided was Tim stepped forward. He had decided long ago that all of his employees - well, THESE types of employees, were all named either Tim, Bob, or Phil. It’s not like he was ever going to learn any other names, and the one woman in Admin who did all the work learned their names anyway. She was his favorite Tim.
“What I’m saying sir, is that it is impossible in these weather conditions to continue with the launch. We have to cancel.”
“Cancel? Gentlemen, this is unacceptable! We have already been delayed…” But now Bob was shaking his head.
“The winds are predicted to gust up to 100 miles an hour. The damage to the rocket would set us back months.”
Robert Lobo, Director of NASA, repressed a shudder. Months. He hated that word. Months reminded him of the moon, and what happened every full moon. “Fine. But update me immediately on any progress.” Feeling a headache coming on, he waved them out of his office.
In the elevator, the one called Tim (who was actually called Ibrahim) looked at Bob, (who was actually called Alex, and was a woman) and Phil (who was actually called Orin, and hated their name deeply, so mostly was addressed as Hey You). “So, that went better than expected.”
“I expected a lot more yelling.”
“I still stand by what I said. That man knows NOTHING about astrophysics.”
Being the top engineers and mechanics and physicists in their fields, Tim, Bob, and Phil were exactly right. But what they would never deduce is why.
Robert Lopo, Director of NASA, did indeed know nothing of astrophysics, or engineering, or mechanics. And that was because Robert Lupo, Director of NASA, was a secret werewolf. In fact, he was one of many werewolves at NASA. That was because NASA was not, in fact, founded as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but was in fact founded as a cover for the mission of a secret society of werewolves with one mission only: to destroy their ancient and greatest enemy, the moon.
The years it had taken to put together their secret undercover front at NASA had been painstakingly slow. The initial progress had been hopeful, but the years of delays had been dreadful, the biggest of which was that asshole Kennedy insisting they put a man on the moon. A man. Of course it had actually had to be a man, the research was nowhere near complete on how to send a brother werewolf to go bounce around on that pale cold fuck in the sky to get the White House off his back. The question of what would actually happen if you put a werewolf on the moon was, at that point, entirely rhetorical. But at last, victory was within their grasp.
Until their ancient and second-greatest enemy had got wind of it. And now one of them was calling him.
“Good morning fucko, beautiful day today, isn’t it?” Robert Lopez, Director of NASA, gritted his teeth. The chipper voice was coming through no technological device, but telepathically sent directly into his brain. “Enjoying the rain?”
While all of the witch mermaids had telepathy, supplied by their revolting worship of the tides, the High Priestess was by far the most powerful. And the most annoying. He longed to drown her but did not know how. (He also did not know her name, but did remember that it was neither Tim, Bob, nor Phil, but some sort of garbled hiss that sounded like a Frenchman trying to yell after a werewolf had ripped out quite a bit of his throat. She had spelled it for him once, signing her name in sand above high tide under FUCK YOU FURRY -💧︎♏︎❒︎♏︎■︎♋︎. Of course their script would be as ugly as them.)
“I know it was you lot that sent this storm, witch!” he rubbed his temples in frustration. Ever since that feral tribe of carnivorous mermaids had discovered that they could use their tide-powered magic to summon category 4 hurricanes in the warming waters, his life had been even more of a hell. GodDAMN climate change.
She plucked that thought from his head as easily as she sent her thoughts into his. If the tables were reversed, and HE could open up a telepathic communication channel whenever he felt like gloating, he would have spent the entirety of the Deep Water Horizon incident screaming the most annoying song in the world (Hey Mickey You So Fine) nonstop into her head. See how she liked it.
“Aw, sad? Maybe next time we’ll just hit Disneyland.”
Robert Lopez sprang to his feet. “First of all, it is Disney World. And second of all, if you touch the Magic Kingdom, I will launch a thousand DVDs of The Little Mermaid into your favorite coral reef.”
“That movie is TRASH.”
“IT IS A CLASSIC.”
“You are a CHILD.”
“YOU ARE A FISH!” Robert Lopes barked, just as he noticed Favorite Tim was standing in his doorway, hand on the knob.
“Er…” he could hear the siren snicker, then sever the connection.
Favorite Tim sighed and slapped several folders on his desk. “When you’re finished with your daily affirmations, these need your signature by close of business.”
Robert Loup sat down and reached for his pen.
Part Two: Carnivorous Witch Mermaids
Serena, the High Priestess of the witch mermaids, rubbed her temples. Talking to werewolves always left her with a headache, like she’d spent too much time above water without eating a sailor. Or a werewolf. Not that she got many of those. They avoided water on principle, and the ocean entirely, with one exception. Back in the 80’s those idiots had thought they finally perfected a suit to send six of their own on that lunatic mission to destroy their beautiful moon. She hadn’t thought it would work. Mostly. She’d laughed about it but had still been biting her unnaturally long and sharp fingernails with her long and unnaturally sharp teeth when it took off. Only she had been wrong - it was the humans who were the idiots this time. She and her sisters had clapped with glee when the whole damn thing exploded after like, a minute, killing that one poor human they had dragged along with them instantly. What was her name? (Serena, like Robert, believed all humans to be named either Heather, Ashley, or Megan. She believed this one was a Megan.)
But explosions and falling thousands of feet into the Atlantic does not kill werewolves. They were delicious, even if their last words before being devoured by a tribe of witch mermaids had been, to a man, ‘you gotta be fucking kidding me.’ The sailors at least had the decency to scream.
Oh well, she thought, as she took another bit of the whatever it was the giant squid battled that the junior priestesses had dragged up for dinner. She chewed angrily as she thought of the barries the werewolves used, their stupid land, their stupid metal.
Interlude: Disney World
Robert Lupu, Director of NASA, had finally had a good idea. Well, he’d had an idea, which after destroying the moon, came to two. Which wasn’t a lot, but it was weird it had happened twice. “Boys,” he told the conference room filled with werewolves masquerading as NASA employees, ``I've got an idea.”
Werewolves, like mermaids, have telepathy. Robert Lupescu believed they did not, because he had never learned how to use it, and no one wanted to hurt his feelings by telling him. This meant that whenever they had meetings like this, everyone tried to keep a straight face while they telepathically bitched with each other, not unlike when you and your team (except for Kathy, who is a snitch) have a secret group chat during Zoom meetings.
“An idea. Fuck.”
“Cool, I always wanted to know how I was going to die before it happened.”
“Goddamn it. I was going to go to Disney World next month. I’m staying on site and everything!”
“Oh my god, Augustus, shut up about Disney.”
“Animal Kingdom is cool!”
“Tiberius, let him have his fun before Robert kills us all.”
“Oh come on Caligula, maybe it won’t be that bad. This is number two, maybe he’s getting better.”
“Claudius, if you believe that you’re dumber than him, and that is a long drop.”
“Nero shut up, he’s talking again.”
Robert Lupo was smiling, which did nothing for morale. “Before we can blow up the moon, all we need to do is…” he paused for dramatic effect, enjoying the look of hope in his brothers’ eyes.”
“He’s going to say go to Disney World!”
“SHUT UP.”
Robert Lupus smiled even wider as he threw his arms out as though flinging his idea into all their heads “KILL THE WITCH MERMAIDS!”
Silence.
“Can we go to Disney World this weekend instead?”
“Fuck it Galba, we’re going tonight.”
“I’m getting a churro.”
“I’m getting a dole whip.”
“I’m getting a churro AND a dole whip.”
“I’m getting a drink.”
Stealing a navy ship with enough bombs on it to take out a tribe of witch mermaids was much easier than going to the moon, Robert thought smugly as he breathed deeply of the sea air. They’d only had to eat a very few crew members. Maybe his first idea would have gone over better if he’d eaten Tim, Bob, and Phil. Nah, this was better.
It was even better when he started seeing witch mermaids through the binoculars he’d ripped off - well, through - a sailor’s neck. Except - what was that? Something else was coming out of the ocean. He starred in horror, the witch mermaids stared in horror, the werewolves stared in horror. The sailors had already seen this so they just stared, as a submarine surfaced between them.
Part Three: Still on Patrol
The United States Navy has never lost a submarine. That’s not to say they still have them all. As many of them have been blown up or sunk as you would expect. But if a submarine is supposed to be one place, and it is not, and it isn’t anywhere else either than anyone can find, they don’t call it lost, the same way you or I would call, like, car keys or phones or the person driving who won’t listen to the GPS. They are Still on Patrol.
Which is fucking horrifying. Like, imagine being a sailor and your sub runs into an underwater volcano at the wrong time, or the ice was thicker than anyone thought, or you hear your captain say ‘oops.’ Is your comfort thought going to be ‘well just imagine the overtime! I’m still on patrol!’ No.
So when a submarine surfaced between a shipful of werewolves who were no longer pretending to be NASA, and a tribe of carnivorous mermaids who were not pretending at all to be witches, no one was particularly surprised to find that it was crewed almost entirely by the very much dead but very much still on duty WWII submariners who had never made it back. What did surprise them was when the hatch opened, the captain came out, and-
“HOLY SHIT THERE’S TWO OF THEM! DID YOU CLONE HIM?” shrieked Serena. The other mermaids were hissing amongst themselves, the werewolves were recoiling with shock, even the sailors who thought themselves past any more of the regular type of fear were bewildered. Because out of that submarine, came Robert Lopus, Director of NASA.
Everyone was surprised, that is, except Robert Lobo, Director of NASA. He strode to the edge of the railing, raised his hand in greeting, and growled out “Hello, brother.”
Not-Robert Lupo, Submarine Captain, raised his hand back. “Hello, twin.”
Part Four: The Moon
Robert and his twin stood on the docks, watching the sun set. “Do you really think it will work?”
His twin nodded. “Yes. You have had two ideas, but I have had many, and this is my best. We werewolves will be happy in the submarines under the sea, in the dark where the moon cannot reach us, and the mermaids will be happy to keep us there by bringing us all the fish we wish to eat. They are quite tasty. Have you ever had kampachi? It is from Japan, in the Pacific Ocean. I wish I could have come sooner. Do you have any idea how fucking hard it is to get a submarine through the Panama Canal?”
“Bobert, my brother -”
“Don’t call me that! I hate that name.”
“Mother did not have a lot of poetry in her soul,” he agreed. “But what shall I call you?”
“My name now is Captain Nemo.”
“Like the fish?” Robert was familiar with the movie, having been to Disney World many times.
“No! Not like the fish! Like the famous character from the Jules Verne novel, ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.’”
Robert thought he was probably not referring to the LIttle Mermaid song. He blinked. “That is the stupidest idea either of us has ever had.”
Captain Nemo was outraged, but Robert continued. “Why do you name yourself after an already fictional captain? If people hear of your exploits, they will think it is a story. Or they will think a fish has learned to drive a submarine” he mused.
No-longer-Captain Nemo had to agree. “Well, what do you think my name should be?”
In his third, and final idea, Robert said simply “Captain Ariel.”
The waves lapped softly beneath the pier for a while before Robert, former Director of NASA, turned to submarine Captain Ariel. “Where is the crew anyway?”
“Oh, I gave them shore leave,” Captain Ariel shrugged. “Sailors were due for a bit of shore leave.”
“Won’t they, er, stand out?”
“In Florida?”
Epilogue: One Year Later
The mermaid witches kept their word, bringing the werewolf submariners all the fish they could ever desire. And if it did not have the sweet succulence of terrified Panamanian canal workers, kampachi was delicious. More than fish, they brought gossip from the land. The unintentional zombie outbreak caused by the regrettable shore leave situation was starting to improve: someone at NASA had had the idea to launch rockets full of zombies to the moon.
The mermaids were not entirely pleased with this, but they were outvoted. It had come to light - er, metaphorically, that after a certain author had become litigious following some very polite corrections to a popular series of novels concerning their situation, the entire population of Earth’s vampires had decamped to the dark side of the moon. They found the zombies a delightful snack, if somewhat chewy. It was their beef jerky. The zombies were not given a vote.
Earth would have been more put out about this had the population had more room to think of things other than how not to get themselves sent to the Elon Musk Memorial Martian Penal Colony. The government had gotten quite serious about colonizing Mars and in the event of the tragedy of the first landing had resorted, in true American fashion, to prison labor. (The space x Martian voyage and landing had actually been a success, unfortunately, everyone on board had been instantly killed with the Tesla their leader had insisted upon bringing exploded five minutes after touchdown. We have a holiday commemorating it now.)
Peace reigns.
