This page is for planning the story Moon Hammer. Collaborating authors are welcome!
The Story Idea[]
Moon Hammer is a science fiction ghost story. There is no "ghost" in the conventional sense of a "disembodied spirit". However, the story involves the reactions of people who believe in ghosts. A long-range goal of the story is to produce an audio script that would be similar to The War of the Worlds as presented by radio in 1938...hopefully an audio version of the Moon Hammer story can be ready by Halloween of 2009.
There is no conventional ghost in the Moon Hammer story, but there is a "ghost-like" character that comes back to haunt the people of Earth. Heinrich Kramer is famous for writing the Malleus Maleficarum, a book that codified the notion of a witch from the perspective of Kramer. "Malleus Maleficarum" can be translated into modern terms as "The Hammer Against Witches"...basically it provided a "how to" manual for accusing and convicting people of witchcraft. For its time, "Malleus Maleficarum" was popular literature with catchy themes including how women copulate with devils, how women exercise mind control over men, and how evil women can make "the Male Organ" appear to be "entirely removed and separate from the Body". The "Malleus Maleficarum" was repeatedly and widely published in Europe in the centuries after it was written.
The Moon Hammer story is appropriate for Halloween because of Kramer's zeal for fighting supernatural evil forces in the form of witches. The Moon Hammer story is a ghost story because "the spirit" of Heinrich Kramer, who died around 1505, is shown to be "haunting" the people of Earth in the year 2009. The Moon Hammer story is science fiction because it provides a "scientific" explanation for how "the spirit" of Heinrich Kramer is able to exist on the Moon in 2009.
Timeline of events[]
This is not the order of events in the Moon Hammer story, but rather a chronological sequence of events that is the backstory.
21,394,577 BCE - Aliens arrive on Earth[]
The Moon Hammer story is set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, which means that aliens from a distant star system first visited Earth long ago. In general the aliens do not interfere with the development of life on Earth and humans on Earth are not allowed to become aware of the existence of the aliens. Mostly the aliens just observe Earth, but on special occasions in the distant past they did take living organisms off of Earth and transport them to other worlds. This means that there is a large "Genesaunt" culture of Earth-derived life forms living off of Earth.
1430 CE - Heinrich Kramer born[]
Kramer was born into a world still suffering from the "Black Death". During this time there was an Interventionist (female) working in Europe to spread disease resistance genes in the human population by means of artificial insemination. At a young age, Heinrich Kramer witnessed his mother being artificially inseminated. The Interventionist noticed that she was observed by Heinrich, and so she used advanced technology to suppress Heinrich's memory of what he saw. This memory suppression included the use of nanites implanted in his brain to assure that Heinrich would never regain conscious access to memories of what he saw (his mother being artificially inseminated).
1480s - Kramer as a witch hunter[]
In 1480, an Observer notices that Kramer is a carrier of nanites, and removes the nanites from his brain. After removal of the nanites, Kramer began to recover his suppressed memories. In 1481, Kramer became the Prior of a convent and his experiences at the convent further stimulated his memory of his mother being artificially inseminated. Certain that women were engaging in illicit sexual practices and other evil, Kramer began participating in witch hunts. The "high point" of his witch hunting came in 1484 when his efforts (asking members of the community to name evil-doers) in Ravensburg led to eight women being convicted of witchcraft: the women were burned to death.
In 1485, Kramer tried to have another witch hunt in Innsbruck, but his interest in making unsubstantiated hysterical charges about the sexual behavior of the accused led the local authorities to shut down the witch hunt and ask Kramer to leave the area. At this time, Kramer began to write the Malleus Maleficarum. In 1486, the unpublished draft of the Malleus Maleficarum included a detailed account of how an Interventionist (in Kramers terms, a devil) could put men and women under a spell, remove "the male member" (what Kramer had actually seen was a syringe being used for the artificial insemination of his mother) and perform an un-natural sexual act. It was also common practice for interventionists to make use of nanorobotic helpers that could (see Isis) morph between animal and human shape as needed, for example, to help Interventionists gain access to people in their homes. Kramer also witnessed such a transformation, leading to his interest in the ability of witches to shape-shift between animal and human form, also described in the Malleus Maleficarum. An Interventionist learned of Kramer's book, edited it in order to remove specific incriminating details about Interventionist activities, and again modified Kramer's memories, returning memory-suppressing nanites to his brain. The Malleus Maleficarum was published, but Kramer again lost access to his memory of what had happened to his mother. He lost interest in witch hunts and returned to his main-stream efforts as Inquisitor, dealing with heretics.
1505 - Kramer taken to the Moon[]
By the 1500s there was an Interventionist actively supporting "protestant" movements such as that of the Hussites. Kramer became involved in exposing a secretive Hussite community, but an Observer noticed that he was again infected with nanites. According to a "two strikes and you are out" rule used by Observers, Kramer was removed from Earth and taken to the secret underground Observer base on the Moon. With his memory-suppressing nanites again removed, Kramer remembered his campaign against sexually deviant witches and was ready to continue his campaigns against witches and heretics. His desire to continue his crusade did not fit in with the rather permissive culture of the Observer base, so Kramer was exiled to a smaller base for religious fanatics.
1505 - 2009[]
At the lunar base where Kramer is sent, there is no self-sustaining human population. However, the human residents have long-since learned the secret of how to construct robotic bodies and transfer human minds into the artificial brains of robots. Thus, the mind of Kramer survives in a robotic body on the Moon. The residents of the exile base imagine that they are in Purgatory. They do not realize that they are on the Moon, but they are allowed to share in the Observer data stream from Earth, which includes television signals from Earth. During the past 500 years, Kramer has become increasingly upset by events on Earth such as the successes of Protestantism and the sexual revolution.
2009 LCROSS impacts[]
On October 9, one of the LCROSS impacts ruptures the structure of the "Purgatory base" on the Moon. The explosive decompression ejects several human and robotic bodies onto the surface. The bodies are briefly visible in high resolution images of the Moon's surface. With access to the surface, Kramer and the other robots in "Purgatory" finally realize that they are on the Moon.
Emergency lunar lander mission[]
At the time of the LCROSS impacts, the Chinese government had been developing a lunar lander. They change their plans for a lunar landing mission and land a rover near the location where the "bodies" were seen on the moon. The rover is captured and studied by Kramer and his fellow robots of "Purgatory".
Sermon from Purgatory[]
Kramer and his fellow robots of "Purgatory" realize that the Chinese rover is in radio contact with Earth and on Halloween they begin to use the communications equipment on the rover to send voice messages to Earth. The first message is essentially a "sermon" warning the people of Earth to clean up their act. This triggers various riots and attacks against "witches" on Earth.
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Continue to Chapter 1
Other pages: Characters • Glossary • the novel all on one page • Cover page • main talk page for the story
For authors (warning: plot details!): Meta page • Audio version (collaborators welcome)