“Moon Quest (Choose Your Own Adventure, #167)”

“Two factors in my favor here.

1. This book is by ANSON Montgomery, not R.A. (raging alcoholic, I assume). Maybe Anson is more reasonable.

2. I’ve decided that if I die in a way that’s relatively cool, ON THE MOON, I’m counting it as a victory. Explosion, mutant, SEXplosion. These sorts of things count. Impaling myself on the original moon landing flag. You get it.

Here we go!

Oh my god, the second page is about lunar politics. This is like those fucking Star Wars prequels all over again! You know what I wouldn’t care about if I lived on the moon? “Lunar Politics.” You know what I don’t care about NOW? Lunar politics. All those moon senators are corrupt as hell anyway. And slightly irradiated.

Haha, and then it says you DO like the TV from Earth, and your parents like to mock basketball players who are hampered by stupid Earth gravity. Fools. They should come get some less gravity on the moon. Your Earth slam dunks pale in comparison to our lunar dunks.

Okay, enough with the explanation of mass v weight. We get it, Mr. Gorham, my high school science teacher.

Choice 1: This is a tough one.

One option is to work leading around a crew of diplomats. If Lethal Weapon movies have taught me anything, it’s that you can do whatever you want and then yell “Diplomatic Immunity” and not get in trouble. Until one sensible person is like, “Dude, I just watched you gun a bunch of people down. I don’t think you know the laws totally right, and I’m going to take my chances here.”

Option two is to go on a mission to the far side of the moon. Which is like 3,300 miles away, max. That’s across the U.S. and then some. It IS summer break on the moon, so a road trip feels like the right choice. I’m just praying, begging to not have to actually read a lot about this drive. Please, if there’s a (moon) god, let this be a part where the book says, “And then, after a long drive we don’t need to expand on, you were there.”

~

Wait, wait, wait. There are rumors about strange beings living on the other side of the moon? This hasn’t been explored EVER? And at this point, 100,000 people live on the moon? And nobody thought, hey, let’s check the other side?

~

What the fuck. I fell asleep, but just while I was WAITING TO LEAVE. I thought the sleepy part would be the travel, but I was just outside the bus, waiting to go. Why would you even put that in there? Why did I need to take a nap right then?

~

Hang out with a professor or learn to use exoskeletons and a bus with bug legs? C’mon. What the hell kind of choice is that?

~

And I end up alive, but nothing cool happened.

Damn it.

Well, Anson spared my life, but was it worth it? I mean, I was on the moon in a spider bus thing, but then I was back in the colony, and I went to bed and that was it.

And, unfortunately, I did not make it within my parameters of winning, lowball as they were.

You win this round, Montgomery II. You win this round.”