An Interstellar Bromance: Hammurabi and Juno on the Moon

The first thing I saw on the moon was not a monolith, or a crater. It wasn't even a star, or an astronaut.

The first thing I saw on the moon were two men in pink jumpsuits, bickering about what century it was.

"Look! A stele! We must be close!" The one with the strong accent declared, pointing at a boulder lying next to our ship. The other simply snorted dismissively and pointed at his phone. "It's 2018. That's probably just a rock."

"It's clearly a monolith like in 2001 -" the first man had already walked away from our ship, so the second followed him, still reading from his phone. "- which was released in 1968, so this is definitely an artifact of the past. You're just too skeptical to see it."

"I am not skeptical!" The second man replied defensively, "I'm just... practical!" He eyed me warily as we approached the boulder in question. "Who are you?"

I sighed and held out my hand. "Juno."

"Hammurabi." He shook my hand warily, glancing back at his companion who was staring at the sky, mouth slightly open. "...Are we on the moon?" He whispered to me excitedly.

"We are." I replied flatly, letting go of his hand. "But you already knew that." I paused for a moment, then added: "You're not very good actors." As if on cue, both men burst into laughter and fell to their knees clutching their sides - apparently they had been waiting for me to say exactly that all along.

The shorter of the two men looked up at me slyly once he'd recovered. "What about you? Are you an actor too?" He puffed out his chest and began to walk around in circles like he was addressing an audience - apparently he thought he was some sort of performer himself. Giving up after only a few seconds, he returned to his original position and leaned forward conspiratorially towards me. "We are actually actors," he confided to me in a stage whisper, "but we're also on a mission!" At this point, Hammurabi knocked him upside the head with his phone; it was clear that he didn't want me to know why they were really there on the moon - or perhaps it was just that he didn't want his friend to blabber any more secrets while they were supposed to be acting like tourists? Who knows? Either way, the little guy went quiet again and started fidgeting with his spacesuit where it covered his mouth until Hammurabi gave up trying to silence him and went back to talking about how old everything on Earth seemed these days as if it was something embarrassing instead of something amazing.

Finally getting bored with them (and with myself for being dragged along on this stupid skit), I decided that I should go outside and actually do what I'd been sent here for: find some information about this mysterious relic we had picked up that morning at Belize City Airport.