Arthur Plim first learned he owned the Moon at 8:17 on a Tuesday morning, which was inconvenient because he had just put toast in the toaster and Tuesday mornings were already full enough without acquiring a major astronomical body. The letter had arrived in a pale blue envelope that smelled faintly of printer toner, old thunderstorms, and expensive mistakes. It was addressed to him in gold ink, which Arthur mistrusted immediately, because in his experience nothing written in gold ink ever led to something sensible like a refund, an apology, or a coupon for soup.
He stood in his kitchen wearing one slipper, because the other had disappeared under mysterious circumstances involving the cat, although Arthur privately suspected the cat was merely taking credit for a wider conspiracy. The toaster gave off the smell of bread approaching a legal definition of charcoal. Arthur opened the envelope with the butter knife because he believed in proper tools only when he could remember where he had put them, and unfolded a document that was longer than the kitchen table and considerably more threatening.
The first line read, “Congratulations, Mr. Arthur Plim, rightful inheritor and current legal custodian of Lunar Asset 0001, commonly referred to by primitive civilizations as ‘the Moon.’” Arthur read this three times, partly because he believed repetition might turn nonsense into sense, and partly because the words “legal custodian” had the same effect on his stomach as expired seafood. Somewhere outside, a pigeon landed on his windowsill and looked at him with the solemn expression of a creature that had always suspected humans would eventually misplace the sky.
Arthur was not, by nature, an ambitious man. He worked in the warranty department of a company that made electric kettles with complicated emotional lives, and his greatest professional achievement had been identifying a loophole that allowed customers to return a kettle if it whistled in a judgmental tone. He had no desire to own property larger than a modest garden shed, and even that seemed like a lot of moss to supervise. The Moon, in his opinion, belonged where it was: far away, decorative, and someone else’s problem.
The second page of the document did not improve matters. It included a receipt listing “one Moon, slightly used,” followed by several columns of charges Arthur did not understand and one he understood much too well. The understandable one was labeled “Outstanding Maintenance Balance,” and the amount beside it was so large that Arthur’s eyes refused to process it and instead supplied the helpful phrase: too much, don’t look directly at it. At the bottom, in tiny print, was a note explaining that all inherited celestial bodies were accepted “as seen,” which Arthur felt was unfair because he had mostly seen the Moon from a bus stop.
His toast sprang from the toaster with a noise like a small clerical accident. Arthur ignored it, which was unusual because he believed toast had a narrow window of moral usefulness. He turned to the final page and saw a signature line bearing his name, written in handwriting that looked suspiciously like his but slightly more confident. Beneath it was a stamped notice: “Cooling-off period expired approximately 3.8 billion years ago.”
That was when the doorbell rang.
Arthur did not like doorbells. They implied that the world had formed an opinion and travelled to his house to express it. He shuffled to the front door, still holding the letter, and opened it to find a woman who was not entirely a woman, although she had clearly made an effort. She wore a grey business suit tailored for someone with too many joints, a hat that seemed to be orbiting her head rather than resting on it, and a name badge that read: MRS. VELLUM, INTERGALACTIC NOTARY, TIDAL DISPUTES DIVISION.
“Mr Plim,” she said, with the tired satisfaction of a person who had finally found the correct idiot. “I am here regarding your Moon.”
Arthur blinked at her. He had many questions, but his upbringing insisted that hospitality should come before panic, even when panic had the stronger case. “Would you like tea?”
Mrs Vellum peered past him into the hallway as though assessing whether the house had sufficient room for consequences. “No, thank you. Tea is a liquid, and liquids are now legally your responsibility during tidal hours.”
Arthur looked down at the letter, then up at the sky, then back at Mrs. Vellum. His burnt toast chose that moment to release a final curl of smoke from the kitchen, as if sending a distress signal to intelligent life elsewhere. Arthur cleared his throat and tried to sound like a man who had not just become personally answerable for oceans, lunatics, and whatever poets got up to in moonlight.
“I think,” he said carefully, “there may have been a mistake.”
Mrs Vellum smiled, and the smile was not unkind, which made it much worse. “Oh, there has definitely been a mistake, Mr Plim. The universe is mostly mistakes. This one, however, has been notarized.”