Lunar Sig­nals – The Sto­ry Nils Tells Tourists
Mor­gan’s Road is a fab­ri­ca­tion. The ice is real. The man with the lunch­box is not.

From the Fab­u­lae Lunae series — The Luna­dyne Inci­dent, Thun­der Moon Tus­sle, and Mask of the Joy­ful Moon.

Thurs­day live on Torn MacAlester’s Space on X.

Sched­uled: Lunar Sig­nals — The Sto­ry Nils Tells Tourists / X (@i) on X

Torn MacAlester’s Space · Where live audio con­ver­sa­tions happen

Tonight’s Topic

The Sto­ry Nils Tells Tourists

Morgan’s Road is a fab­ri­ca­tion. Nils Carmike tells it in Alex’s Bar for drinks. Mil­ton John­son hates it. The tourists liked it. That is the entire eco­nom­ic mod­el, and it has been run­ning since pas­sen­ger land­ings start­ed pay­ing the tab.

Alex’s deal, struck in CME before the alarm cut the con­ver­sa­tion, is sim­ple: sto­ries after each land­ing, one drink per vis­it. Nils had sug­gest­ed Milt instead — first land­ing, actu­al his­to­ry. Alex’s answer is the one the bar still runs on. Milt puts peo­ple to sleep. Nils does not.

The sto­ry itself, col­lect­ed at the back of The Luna­dyne Inci­dent and Oth­er Sto­ries, is a prospec­tor named Nel­son, a stranger named Mor­gan, a lunch­box, a secret, and a track in the regolith that leads to ice. In the epi­logue, the author reveals the truth. The old man thanked the room for the drink and bound­ed out. The tourist tells Alex it was a load of crap. Alex calls it a roman­tic tale, then men­tions that Nils and Mil­ton found a huge ice deposit north of Con­rad in ’41. The bonus scene is a well-groomed Earth­er who did not come for a sto­ry. He want­ed to share one. He leaves a card with an address in Athens. Alex almost jokes about ask­ing Mor­gan. The man says that would be impossible.

Thun­der Moon Tus­sle opens with Milt still sore about it. Nils is still telling that sil­ly sto­ry of Milt dis­cov­er­ing ice, except Nils named the prospec­tor Mor­gan John­son on the spur of the moment because the crowd want­ed a prospector’s sto­ry. Milt can­not believe the lunch pail, or the part where you track the ice by fol­low­ing crawler tracks all over the sur­face. Nils shrugs. They like it. Alex wants fun rather than rea­son­able. Lat­er, Milt calls it sen­ti­men­tal non­sense. Nils says the Mor­gan sto­ries hon­or the old days — before Selene, before Luna­dyne — and they help him make ends meet when jobs are scarce.

In Mask of the Joy­ful Moon, Gen final­ly asks if it is true. Nils is direct. He cre­at­ed Mor­gan. Rough­ly based on Milt, who hat­ed it. He did not find ice deposits by chas­ing a lunch­box. The agency detect­ed them from Earth with radar before Yel­low­stone. They knew most­ly where to go for water. They did not know how much was there. The part about the tracks is true. Tracks last near­ly for­ev­er on the Moon. Apollo’s are still there. It is hard to hide where you have been.

That is a use­ful lie. The ice is real. The man who has the lunch­box is not. You can see whether the sto­ry is present from the tracks.

Questions for the Room

• If a fab­ri­ca­tion keeps the ice in cir­cu­la­tion as leg­end, what does that pro­tect — and what does it hide?
• Milt wants the sto­ry retired. Alex wants fun. Nils needs a drink. Whose ver­sion of the old days should tourists actu­al­ly get?
• Gen used Morgan’s Road to think about fol­low­ing tracks. Is a use­ful lie still a lie when the physics under­neath it is true?
• The Earth­er in the bonus scene did not want a sto­ry. He want­ed Nils. What kind of past walks into the bar ask­ing to share?

How to Join

Join the con­ver­sa­tion on Torn MacAlester’s Space on X. Check @Torn_MacAlester for the live link.

Fur­ther Reading

• The Luna­dyne Inci­dent and Oth­er Sto­ries — “Morgan’s Road”
• Thun­der Moon Tussle
• Mask of the Joy­ful Moon
• Relat­ed site posts: Nils Carmike (Revis­it­ed), Alex’s Bar, Char­ac­ter Spot­light – Nils Carmike

The Joy­ful Moon is still watching…
and the room is still open.

— Torn MacAlester
Still rid­ing the trails with Nils, Gen, and the whole Fab­u­lae Lunae crew
🚀🌕

Stories The sto­ries of Torn MacAlester are sci­ence fic­tion, where the sci­ence is well-ground­ed. I inten­tion­al­ly made any devi­a­tions for spec­u­la­tive pur­pos­es. To main­tain max­i­mum real­ism, I restrict the scope of these deviations. Read More

Articles I write arti­cles of sci­ence fact and sci­ence fic­tion. The arti­cles here span the knowl­edge of mod­ern sci­ence and the spec­u­la­tions of fic­tion. I try to caveat every­thing that is an assump­tion. You will find arti­cles about space­flight, the pos­si­bil­i­ties of alien con­tact, and descrip­tions of tech­nol­o­gy used in my stories. Read More

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