— Of course not… You should have given this game to research right away, and you would have gotten it back just as you gave it away.
— Yes, yes, Mr. Heddock… But I got carried away… Frankly, I just got carried away and the next day…..
— Okay, so when did you see the movies?
— I've seen the movies, Mr. Haddock. I just clicked on them to see what was on. I saw it was a long time and I closed it immediately… I wouldn't dare without permission….
— Taylor-Taylor… I want to help you, don't try to talk yourself out of it, that's just digging yourself into a hole. I can help you, and I am. So help me help you.
— I just don't want to upset you, Mr. Haddock. That's all. Everybody doesn't want to upset you. You're so good, so kind. We don't want to say anything that would offend you.
— If you mean that no one believes in my theories, our past history, thinks we're not on Earth, then I'm not learning anything new right now.
Taylor's eyes flickered with fear, then surprise, then relief. It seemed to him that now he had nothing to hide, that this was all a game that could not end in anything bad for him or for anyone else. Now there is no point in hiding anything at all, because since the leader of the Enlightenment knows everything, the world is something very nice and soft, and that in this world it is impossible to do any harm to each other for reasons that seemed the most formidable before. Probably also the punishment for the felony is some kind of myth that only the citizens of Apollo 24 are scared with.
— Yes, I'm sorry, Mr. Haddock. I really thought you didn't know… Of course, it's rash of me… I've only seen two movies… The Shadow… And Armageddon… I know it would have been banned. They wouldn't let us see it. And I watched it without permission. I'm not going to be sent to Tosca for that, am I, Mr. Haddock?
— Of course they won't. If you keep telling it like it is, it'll be all right for everybody. You know, the station has very fair rules, and there are many people who broke the rules and then confessed to everything and were released… Nobody knows about them, because they keep quiet about everything… They also watched movies and not only. They found materials that cannot be shown to others… They just tell us everything as it is. To keep us informed. The elders, the security service, of course, me… When we know everything, we have no reason to throw someone into Tosca, believe me… Especially since you've already gotten your punishment in the form of bludgeoning. You've had it, haven't you?
Taylor cocked his head, feigning some pain at the touch, and nodded affirmatively:
— Yes, Mr. Heddock… I was very frightened… I didn't even expect that you could hit someone like that… I remember, of course, from your lectures that violence on Earth was constantly developing and changing into different forms, but to experience this on myself… I couldn't even think of such a thing…
— Keep talking about movies. Why wouldn't they let you watch Armageddon if you handed in the flash drive?
— Well, you see… There's a big asteroid coming toward Earth that's going to destroy everything if it's not stopped… And people are sending two shuttles to it to drill holes and blow it up from the inside. Blow it up with nukes. You see, Mr. Heddock. Nuclear. And everyone knows we live in a nuclear reactor plant… I mean, we live in a place that could explode. in such a way that all of us would be gone.
— Understood, Taylor… And you didn't mean to panic… Fair enough….
The phrase seemed to have a kind of therapeutic effect on Taylor, and he felt more like talking. Because his actions were openly seen as logical. Self-evident. It wasn't the kind of thing that should be punished by imprisonment in Tosca….
— Yeah…" Taylor continued. — I didn't mean to panic… And there's more… More importantly…
You see, in this movie, two shuttles were flying away from Earth towards an asteroid, and they passed by a satellite of Earth, the moon… And this moon is very similar in landscape and everything to the planet we're on… We don't really believe we're on Earth, Mr. Heddock… We just listen to your lectures with respect. Understanding how important it is to foster a common faith… Because otherwise we're going to go mad here. We can't survive. We understand that. And this movie… It shows that the Earth looks very different, and that the Earth has a satellite… So we're on the Moon… We can't all watch this movie….
— I hear you, Taylor. I do. Now the most important question. How many people have you told about this? How many people have you told about the movie and that you think we're on the moon?
Taylor wanted to say no one. He had tried so hard to keep this secret to himself, to have it as a bargaining chip in case of anything… A bargaining chip for Natalie… But he had already told Natalie in the end. She was so disinterested in him and everything he said that the only thing he had to do was to tell her. It was supposed to work. It didn't. It hadn't worked at all, except that he'd learned once again that she wasn't interested in that sort of thing… What a bastard she was… It seemed to Taylor at that moment that Natalie had done nothing but mock him all this time. Keeping him talking, making sure he was on the hook. And she'd been withholding all this time. On purpose, so he'd never let go and keep chasing her. She did it all on purpose to torture him, and to be happy that there was someone who was chasing her like that… All those approaches, and even the urge to sit at the same table with her, to attract her with something, were turning Taylor's mind inside out, along with a growing sense of hatred for her.
She'd said she'd be willing to spend the rest of Tosca's days with me," Taylor thought. He imagined the positions in which he'd fuck her, then see her crawling on her knees to avoid getting another blow to her pretty face, and then pleasure him again as he wanted. That's what she'll end up with. Become his slave in this prison, and she's going to regret a lot that she didn't want to be his property sooner.
— Yes, he did. — Taylor answered. — Natalie Jackson… She was the only one I told… At first I only told her about Starcraft, but she started asking me about everything else, threatening to turn me in before I could turn in the flash drive if I didn't tell her everything I'd seen… So I told her about the movie….
— One movie or both?
— What? Armageddon? I told you about it.
— One, then?
— Oh, yeah. The one. Oh. The Shadow? No, I didn't tell you about that one… She frightened me so much that I only told you about Armageddon, forgetting that there was another one… There was nothing about the Shadow that didn't fit your theory, Mr. Heddock.
— So you only told Natalie Jackson about one game and one movie?
— Yes, Mr. Haddock. Just Natalie Jackson.
Heddock looked at him and saw that the boy was getting confused about what he was saying. He had forgotten how many movies he had seen, how many of them he had or had not told Natalie about, and what he had told Natalie. Based on his first words, he had only told Natalie about Armageddon, but at the end he had answered in the affirmative that he had talked about the game, too. Which means that either there was more than one conversation, or it wasn't exactly how he portrays it. Either way, from what Haddock himself knew about Natalie, she wasn't particularly interested in such things, and her latest discovery of helium-3 had only added to her impetus to delve even further into science.