Daily Flash Fiction Challenge

Who knew the moon could be such a dangerous place? Josh was thirteen when he arrived to live with his biological mother. He’d never met her before. Margie, his mother’s surrogate on Earth, had been retired to wherever spider-machines retire to, leaving him a one-way ticket and 3.4 million in dollars; hardly enough to get by. Josh was number four for the flight. That is, his designation was four. He sat in the fourth seat, in the fourth row for the four hour journey, and was given four injections for his protection from harm.

When Josh arrived, his mother was missing. Not just missing as in not showing up to get him, but really missing! Josh didn’t know her, and to his knowledge had never actually met her since he was a petri-child. He was scurried off to her pod by some spider-looking robot not unlike Margie. He waited, for as long as a thirteen year old could be expected to do such a thing, and then left the pod to explore, which was not in the rules.
The complex was a maze of tunnels and pods with thousands of spiders scurrying about like ants, but very few people. Of course there weren’t many humans left after the crisis of 2150, and the remaining were left a little less than intelligent. Actually, stupid would be a better description. The spiders looked after most while the new generation, his generation, was bred to get things back on track. His mother was the exception. She was smart. Too smart for the machines, and exiled to the moon since she had trouble following the rules. Now she was missing, and Josh was the new leader of the human world, but with rules his mother apparently hadn’t followed . . . but could he?