LoveStar by Andri Snaer Magnason

mountains, minus the church. He turned to the glass table and drew a line on it. Above the line he began to sketch a bird but was interrupted mid-wing.
    â€œThe author’s here,” announced his secretary. “He wants to show you the first chapter of the biography.”
    The author from the Mood Division walked in. He was a rather foppish young man with round glasses and a frayed tweed jacket.
    â€œMorning,” said the author, looking at him oddly. LoveStar was appearing a bit rough; he hadn’t slept for weeks and probably hadn’t eaten either; his skin was a size too big for him. Realizing that he was staring, the author turned to the window that faced the Oxnadalur valley.
    â€œFantastic view,” he said.
    â€œGood,” said LoveStar. “Look out the window. Not at me.”
    â€œI’ll begin, then,” the young man said and commenced reading.
    â€œLoveStar was born the day that man first set foot on the moon. His birth lasted nine hours. As his mother, Margret Petursdottir, a thirty-year-old assistant nurse from Siglufjord, groaned from the first contractions, the world watched the astronauts bounding like overgrown children across the lifeless gray landscape. Five hours later his mother had dilated seven centimeters and begun to whimper from the pain, while the midwife watched in suspense as the astronauts fiddled silently with their machines, which for some unaccountable reason would not start up again. Four hours later the machines were still down and they were busy doing something around the lunar module, talking little and then only in technical jargon. But when there were only fifty minutes’ worth of oxygen reserves left in the tanks, it became clear that they would not succeed in relaunching. The camera angle was adjusted and the astronauts cantered hand in hand toward the horizon. Their gait is unlikely to have illustrated their innermost feelings, but for some reason it was only possible to bound gaily on the moon. It took less than half an hour for them to disappear over the horizon. Their heads went down like three white suns. At precisely that moment, LoveStar’s cranium appeared. After the astronauts had vanished from the screen, there was nothing to see but the naked landscape. They were still in radio contact but said nothing more; nothing but their breathing could be heard. Some would perhaps have taken the opportunity to convey an important message to the world, but they simply breathed slower and slower until they could breathe no more. At that moment LoveStar filled his lungs with air for the first time and screamed with all his life and soul.
    â€œThe image remained on the screen for the next hour. Gray sand, black space, and silence. During the following days TV stations and the president tried to convince the world that it had merely been a hoax, a modern televisual equivalent of Orson Welles’s immortal War of the Worlds. Stanley Kubrick was persuaded to own up to the hoax. The film set was opened to the public. Here people could see tracks in the sand, the waxing earth painted on a black screen, and the rigid flag. ‘This is the glue that was used to stiffen the flag,’ said the female guides, allowing people a sniff.
    â€œSince special effects this realistic had never before been seen on screen, few were willing to fall for this. So Kubrick received a ten-million-dollar grant to make a sci-fi feature film, proving not only that the hoax had been child’s play, technically speaking, but that it could even be improved on. When the new movie premiered ten months later, people claimed they could see clear evidence of his signature style on the moon landing. Endless silence, heavy breathing, and a slow death.
    â€œWhen people asked whether either of the superpowers were aiming to win the real race to put a man on the moon, their spokesmen shrugged and asked why the human race should waste money landing on a barren gray rock