{"id":"lunar-annex","title":"The Moon Is a Municipal Annex","kind":"Fiction","sources":[],"turns":[{"who":"joe","text":"Good evening, wherever your night has taken you. I'm Joe Malick, and this is Dead Air. The road is quiet, the coffee is unreasonable, and our first guest has brought a floor plan of the Moon. If you're driving, keep your eyes on the road. We will describe the floor plan.","section":"Opening","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"Doctor Adrian Vale has spent seventeen years studying what he calls off-world municipal infrastructure. His new report is titled The Annex Problem. Doctor, before we get into the paperwork, are you saying the Moon is a public building?","section":"Opening","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"An annex, Joe. That distinction is essential. A public building is expected to receive visitors. An annex can continue operating for decades without anyone being entirely certain which department occupies it. The Moon exhibits precisely that administrative character.","section":"Opening","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"Take us through the evidence. And let's begin with something a person could check, rather than a feeling about the Moon.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"Certainly. My first exhibit is the calendar. The Moon appears in a regular sequence, yet no member of the public remembers approving that sequence. My second exhibit is a box of forty-three complaints addressed to Lunar Maintenance. Every one was returned as undeliverable. Not one was marked department does not exist.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"Wouldn't the post office return a letter to any address it couldn't find?","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"Yes. That is the conventional explanation. I tested it. I addressed a letter to a department I invented, the Bureau of Damp Cutlery. That letter was also returned. It demonstrates the postal system's extraordinary commitment to equal treatment. I regard it as a control result, although an inconvenient one.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"So the letters don't distinguish your theory from the ordinary explanation.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"Not alone. That is why we have to examine the architecture. Consider the near side. We are shown the same facade. A visitor approaches a civic building through its public entrance, not through the loading dock. What do we never see from the pavement? The loading dock.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"We're talking about the far side of the Moon.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"Exactly. My proposed site plan places receiving there, along with records storage, a staff kitchenette, and the room where obsolete traffic lights are kept until a committee decides whether they can be thrown away. You cannot build an annex without such a room. I have tried.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"You have tried to build a municipal annex?","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"A scale model. The committee took nineteen months to approve disposal of a miniature broken kettle. By then it had become an exhibit and was protected from disposal. That experiment cost me my dining room.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"What would a loading dock on the Moon actually receive?","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"That is the central question. We speculate about minerals, military equipment, secret technology. I propose replacement chairs. Every department on Earth orders chairs. Few departments dispose of them. The missing chairs must go somewhere. The lunar surface, viewed at the appropriate scale, is remarkably chair-coloured.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"Doctor, grey is doing a great deal of work in that argument.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"I agree. Grey alone proves nothing. But grey combined with inaccessible receiving, unexplained storage capacity, and the appearance of a building that is always partly closed begins to form a pattern. I have marked those relationships in blue on the diagram.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"You have a second diagram under that one. What are the red arrows?","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"The route of an internal memo. It enters through receiving, passes through four offices, and returns to receiving without an answer. At that point it is described as having completed an orbit. Joe, I ask you to consider the language.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"I'm considering it. I'm also considering whether an office joke has become your cosmology. We'll take a break, and then we'll bring in people who have actually worked a loading dock.","section":"Interview","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"station","text":"Dead Air. Eleven thirty on a dial that may or may not have been inspected. Your receiver is working normally. That is not a guarantee about anything else.","section":"Station break","render_style":"radio-performance-2"},{"who":"station","text":"Support comes from Night Window Blinds. They close all the way. They open all the way. The salesman will not ask what you've seen. Night Window Blinds. A reasonable response to an unreasonable view.","section":"Station break","render_style":"radio-performance-2"},{"who":"joe","text":"We're back. Doctor Adrian Vale is here with The Annex Problem. Dennis in Omaha, you've been holding patiently. What do you have for us?","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"dennis","text":"Joe, first-time caller, long-time driver. I've delivered office chairs. They go to a warehouse outside Des Moines. I was there Tuesday. I don't want to damage the doctor's reputation, but I could probably take him there.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"Dennis, I welcome a site visit. May I ask whether you personally observed the chairs after unloading?","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"dennis","text":"No. I went to the vending machine. There was a note saying the machine had moved. The machine was still there, but the note was pretty definite about it.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"Did it dispense anything?","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"dennis","text":"A packet of crackers, and a receipt with tomorrow's date. I figured the clock was wrong. Then I checked my delivery sheet. The warehouse was listed as Annex Seven. I wasn't calling about that part, but now it seems like the sort of part I should mention.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"Annex Seven. Joe, please record that independently of my testimony. Dennis, were the dock doors numbered?","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"dennis","text":"One through six. Then receiving. I asked where seven was, and the man said you need an appointment. Very ordinary man. Very unusual answer to a question about a door.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"Let's keep the ordinary explanation in view. A warehouse can have an annex, and a locked door can require an appointment. Len, you're a dispatch clerk. Does any of this strike you as unusual?","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"len","text":"The chair part doesn't. The appointment part doesn't. What worries me is that the receiving door wasn't numbered. Every door has a number. If a number is missing, someone's paying rent on it separately.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"Separately from whom?","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"len","text":"That's above my pay grade. I work Thursdays. Officially. There is a second Thursday on the dispatch calendar, but it isn't a day anyone can request off. I have asked about it twice. Both requests came back dated Wednesday.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"Len, I brought you on to lower the temperature of this conversation.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"len","text":"I'm trying, Joe. I just don't think we should go blaming the Moon before we've audited Thursday.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"An excellent objection. My report has not accounted for duplicate weekdays. I will add a provisional appendix. Dennis, I would be grateful if you could photograph the receiving sign on your next visit.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"dennis","text":"I can do that. If the vending machine has actually moved by then, I'll photograph that too. But I'm not going through the appointment door. I've got a delivery schedule and a family.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"That's a sensible boundary. Mara, you're calling from the night shift. A quick final thought?","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"mara","text":"Just one. If the Moon has a staff kitchenette, does somebody clean the microwave? Because we rotate that job at work, and it's caused more lasting conflict than anything in the doctor's report.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"guest","text":"I have not considered the cleaning rota. It could explain the phases.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"We will leave that there, where it can do the least immediate damage.","section":"Callers","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"Doctor Vale, thank you. Dennis, drive safely. Len, I hope your next Thursday is the ordinary one. Tonight we have a theory, a floor plan, and several reasons to keep asking questions. We do not have evidence of a lunar municipal office. We do have a listener willing to look at a receiving sign, and sometimes that is where a radio program begins.","section":"Closing","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"},{"who":"joe","text":"I'm Joe Malick. This is Dead Air. Stay with us. After the station break: a woman who says the rest stop at mile marker eighty-six has been following her husband.","section":"Closing","render_style":"radio-expressive-1"}],"audio_seconds":449.75}