Joan Leotta is a writer and story performer. plays with words on page and stage. She performs tales of food, family, strong women on stages across the country and in Europe. Internationally published as an essayist, poet, short story writer, and novelist,  she’s a two-time Pushcart nominee, twice Best of the Net nominee, and a 2022 runner-up in Robert Frost Competition. Her essays, poems, CNF, and fiction appear in Impspired, Lothlorien, Ekphrastic Review, Verse Visual, Verse Virtual, Gargoyle, Silver Birch, Yellow Mama, Mystery Tribune, Synkroniciti, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Pure Slush, and others.  Her poetry chapbooks are Languid Lusciousness with Lemon, (Finishing Line) and  Feathers on Stone, (Main Street Rag).https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/feathers-on-stone-joan-leotta/

Free Chinese Dinner on the Moon

“Interplanetary News Alert: Galaxy’s Gourmet’s! New Chinese restaurant opening on Moon’s dark.”  Usually I keep the news on for background, but this item was especially interesting.  The report obliged me to listen to news about the Chinese settlement on the dark side of the moon before revealing the offer from the new restaurant. As part of my work at the Agency I knew such a restaurant was coming but hadn’t given it much thought before today.  However, that broadcast end note declaring free meals for the first thirty customers that very day, my day off was a deal I could not pass up.  The announcer then added, “Vehicle docking for small space transports only, at present.” No barrier for me. My bright red Scamorza 500,  can dock anywhere.

A quick face call to my sweetie, Dottie, and she zoomed over. Then the two of us headed for the moon, hoping to be among those who would eat free. We queued up at the fly-through window. “Chicken Five Ways” over fried rice was the special free meal. Each order also contained  fortune cookies, one per person, according to the sign that glittered in gold and silver, making its own artificial light, there on the dark side. The place was tiny and looked a bit crowded inside with workers who had come over from the new International Food Hall going up on the light side, and with their families (likely) in the outdoor “Mood Cater Seating and Play area” so we opted to eat in my Scamorza in the docking area. We turned out to be the last ones in line to be able to order the free dish of the day. I hardly noticed that the slim young Chinese man who handed me our dinner seemed vaguely familiar.

We tucked into our chicken. Dottie must have been very hungry because she devoured her food at lightspeed.  One cookie had rolled under the seat when we opened the bag.

“I claim the remaining cookie,” Dottie laughed she cracked open the remaining fortune cookie. “Still tasteless after two hundred years,” my sweetie joked as she tried to actually chew the cardboard-like confection. She let the white paper with the fortune on it flutter to the floor of the transport. I picked up her fortune and read it out loud: “Adventure is coming.”

“Well, now we have to try to find yours,” Dottie announced. “Maybe it will give us a clue about the nature of our adventure.”

We poked our hands around under the seats for a bit, then laughed and abandoned my cookie. It’s hard to move around in the small inside space of a Scamorza.

I heard a noise. A rat tat tat.  The restaurant still had a long line in the fly-through lane, but all we could really see through the windshield was a cloud of dust and rocks resembling a herd of earth’s dust storms galloping across the sky. Likely, the noise we had heard was  a cluster of moonrocks tapping on the passenger door of my Scamorza.

We used the restaurant’s lights to guide us back to the docking lot gate so we could check out of moon’s gravity zone and zip back home. I was afraid  the dust storm could clog the Scamorza’s engines and the rain of rock ding her lovely red finish.

As I was about to put our transport into overdrive,  when a Red-suited guard on a space moto, tapped on our window. “Everyone ok in there?”

I nodded. He then motioned for me to look at the sign he was holding. In several languages it demanded,  “We are collecting all of the fortunes given out today. Write your name on the back of your fortune paper, give us your contact information, and you might win another free meal.”

Dutifully,  I wrote my name and contact info on Dottie’s fortune and handed it over, quickly rolling the window back up to avoid a gust of dust heading our way. The officer looked puzzled and held up another sign: “Didn’t you get two?”

Why did they care? I wanted to leave before the dust got too heavy. I didn’t want to waste time looking for that cookie again. It would be easier to prevaricate, I thought: “No, just one. We shared the cookie. No complaints though, after all, it was with a free meal.”

He moved on to the next transport. I powered up Scamorza and punched in the coordinates for my house on earth. Before I could hit the acceleration button, a red transport, Dragon logo (High ranking police), pulled in behind us and a loudspeaker voice demanded, in English, to see our second fortune. I set my phone to megaphone level and replied, “Thought I didn’t get one, but if it’s that important, I’ll search and see if it is somewhere in the car.”

Turning to Dottie, I said, “Sweetie, check again under the seat for that other cookie.” She did, found it  and cracked it open: “Two by two, tomorrow for you” in English and then a rush of Chinese characters. I breathed out thanks that the dust storm was hiding our actions from the Dragon transport crew.

We had either accidentally or on purpose been given a message in our fortune cookie, something beyond the usual life advice. Something the Dragon security force did not want us to have. While the dust was still obscuring Dragon’s view of our activity. I pocketed the cookie and fortune. Then I waved, shouted through my app, and held the food bag, close to the window,  upside down and shook it. “Sorry, no second cookie.”  After a few minutes and some sharply spoken Mandarin audible through their megaphone, I heard the words I was hoping for.

“Release granted,“ shouted the voice form the transport—in six different languages.

I set Scamorza to hyper, and as soon as we were free from the Moon’s gravity, I called my assistant at the Agency, told him I was coming in and to prepare a docking spot for me in the super secure ring.

“Would you mind  a quick visit to my workplace, Dottie?”

Dottie was puzzled but shook her head in agreement.

As soon as we entered the Agency’s safety ring, Dottie and I docked and exited the Scamorza, clutching the paper. As we ran inside the fortified building, we looked up and saw the Dragon transport had followed us and was now, circling.  Wow! The Dragon ship’s canon released a blast of the hydrogen flame in our direction. I’d read reports on this weapon, It was  a potent new force that would have obliterated  Scamorza and us if the Agency safety ring had not repelled it.

Dottie waited in the “guest area” while I went into the office of the  head of encryption. That silly message, followed by a trail of Chinese characters was indeed what the Dragon crew had been seeking.  As soon as I read it, I’d  realized the take-away meal packer, the man who handed us our meal at the fly through, was Lo Lee, an agent in the encryption unit. Lee had often remarked on my Scamorza and how it was the only red one he’d ever seen. He had called  it “The Big Cheese.”

Evidently, when he noticed my vehicle in line, he hoped to be able to pass a message to me as I picked up my meal at the fly-through gate of the new restaurant. I don’t know who his contact was, but evidently he felt needed to pass it off to the first agent he saw.

That fortune cookie message alerted us to the Chinese plan to use the restaurant as HQ for a planned intergalactic attack on our bases on Moon, Mars, and Earth. Unfortunately, someone had likely spotted him carefully inserting a new message into one of the fortune cookies.

It’s been a week, and no one’s been able to locate Agent Lee to extract him. They found his contact in one of the dark moon’s craters, less than alive. I don’t think Lee was able to escape either. But Agent Lee will not be forgotten. He was one of the best. He knew the risks of his job, especially the risks of working undercover, and would have been the first to smile and say, of his plight, “That’s how the cookie crumbles.”