Dashiell Gibson

The above picture may be of Dash.

Violet Gibson

Dashiell Gibson is the protagonist of the Moon Base Alpha book series. He is one of the lunarnauts (or "Moonies"), and he is a 12-year-old boy (13 in Waste of Space). In general, Dashiell does not like Moon Base Alpha, as the services such as food and rooms were terrible. He is friends with Kira Howard and mere acquaintances with Rodrigo Marquez, both children of other Moonies. He is intimately attracted to Zan.

## Space Case

In the first book, Space Case, Dash is in the bathroom when he overhears Ronald Holtz in chatting with Zan Perfonic, an alien. Dash thinks that Dr. Holtz is on the phone, as he cannot hear the other speaker, but that is not true.

When he wakes up the next day, the base is in chaos. Dr. Holtz is dead, and his corpse is being carried inside by Daphne Merritt and Garth Grisan. The Moon Base Commander, Nina Stack, announces that it was an accident, but Dash disagrees, believing that it is intentional murder, and gets so wrapped up in the idea that Nina forbids him to talk about it. Dash disobeys her, though.

A few hours later, a SpaceX Starship rocket containing supplies and astronauts lands, piloted by Katya King. Dash shows a new lunarnaut Kira Howard around, negotiating between carts of eggs and meat. When he finishes the tour and enters his residence, Zan Perfonic, posing as a temp security guard, claims that she also believes that Dr. Holtz's death wasn't accidental and asks Dash to help with detective work, starting with finding out the security tape of Dr. Holtz walking out onto the lunar surface.

When she questions him, Dash reveals to Kira that he believes Dr.Holtz was murdered. Kira promises not to tell anyone, as Nina would be furious, but on the condition that she would help him investigate. Dash tells Kira about the recording, and she promises to try to find it.

After dinner, Dash goes to Kira's residence, and watches the footage of Dr. Holtz walking out the air lock with Kira. He suddenly realizes that Dr. Holtz was using American Sign Language to say his last words before he died. He asks the computer what Dr. Holtz was saying, and it replies that he was signing 'This is a murder. Earth killed me. Find my phone. Tell my family I love them.' Dash and Kira try to figure out what he meant by 'Earth killed me', but with no success.

That night, Dash's mother writes her eulogy for Dr. Holtz's funeral while Dash and his father watch. They finish a game of Risk, and Dash is able to forget about Dr. Holtz's death for a few hours.

During Nina's speech at Dr. Holtz's funeral, Dash, Kira, and Roddy sneak away after realizing that Daphne is not with the other Lunarnauts. For a brief moment, Dash believes that Daphne is the killer, but they actually find her in one of the administrative offices, typing on a computer. However, Dash notes that she is acting like she is doing something wrong. when Daphne realizes that they saw her, she admits that she is a spy for Maximum Adventure. Daphne also confides in Dash and his partners that a drone has flown to a Solar Array when she didn't program it to.

Dash understands that this must mean that the Solar Array might be hiding Dr. Holtz's phone. Late at night, he leaves the moon base with Kira and bounds across the moon's surface to the Solar Array. Their suspicions are confirmed when they discover Dr. Holtz's phone in a Ziploc baggie. On their way back, though, the giant robot arm used for construction starts to attempt to squash Dash and Kira. Luckily for them, they are able to enter the air lock just in time, but the robot controller has already fled. Dash sets off the alarm, waking almost everybody in the base.

Dash and Kira try to explain their actions, showing the furious Nina Dr. Holtz's phone, but they realize that the phone was smashed during the robot arm's attack. Chang Kowalski takes the phone and attempts to salvage some data from the phone. He succeeds in recovering some of the data and invites Dash, Kira, Maxwell Howard, Nina Stack, Stephen Gibson, and Rose Harris to listen to the recording with him.

After hearing the recording, in which Dr. Holtz reveals that he is in contact with an alien, Nina asks if Chang can clean up the recording more, as it is in very bad shape. Chang asks the computer whether it can be done, but it mishears him. This leads Dash to realize that computers can make mistakes, and he suddenly figures out who was Dr. Holtz's murderer. Dash explains his detective work, and his mom looks at Dr. Holtz's sign language. She reveals that Dr. Holtz was saying 'Garth' instead of 'Earth', meaning Garth Grisan.

All of the people in the control room tear into the staging area, but Garth has already dismantled the air lock and has an oxygen tank on himself. He threatens to open the air lock, suffocating everyone, and Nina is forced to comply.

But suddenly, Lars Sjoberg steps out of his room and chastises everyone for waking him up with all of the noise. This distracts Garth, and Nina, Chang, and Dash's dad all wrangle Garth to the floor to arrest him. Dash detaches himself from all of the commotion and meets Zan in the greenhouse and asks her which planet she is from, showing that Dash has realized that she is the alien that Dr. Holtz was communicating with.

## Spaced Out

In the second book, Spaced Out, Dash is teaching Zan Perfonic about aspects of human life in the rec room, specifically Star Wars. Zan cackles madly when she sees it, finding the effects ridiculous. Suddenly, Patton and Lily Sjoberg run into the rec room looking murderous. Both interrogate Dash on where Roddy Marquez is. Dash has no idea, but Patton and Lily don't believe him and start to chase him around the moon base. Luckily, Dash is able to fend them off by forcing Patton's head into the suction part of the space toilet.

Nina Stack confronts Dash about this in her residence and punishes him with no CommLink privileges. Dash reasons with her that the Sjobergs were the ones who started it, but Nina is suddenly distracted by a text. She forces Dash out of her room, and he soon drifts to sleep.

Early in the morning, Dash is woken by his sister Violet. When they go outside, everyone is in a panic. Nina is missing, and everyone is stampeding through the base, looking for her. Violet and the other young kids believe Nina is playing hide and seek, and aren't very worried. Violet talks about DeeDah, her new friend that lives in the bathroom, but everyone perceives this as a joke.

Dr. Balkinov suggests that there might be a crawl-space in the base that Nina is in, and Chang agrees to check the blueprints later. Chang and Dash's parents decide to check the text that Nina got the previous night. Chang orders everyone to do what they were doing, as it was what Nina would have wanted. Dash is upset that he still has to go to school, and gets away from math class to see his parents. Dash discovers that his parents and Chang Kowalski were able to see the text on Nina's watch. It was from a person named 'Charlie', who had sent two songs, each thought to be a code of some sort.

While measuring the gym, Roddy suggests that Nina is made of nanobots, so she was able to hide. Fed up with Roddy's tales, Dash, his younger sister Violet, and Kira Howard all leave the gym and sneak into Nina's residence. In there, they find a teddy bear and a small space cut into Nina's sleep pod, under her air mattress. They manage to get it open, and find a pile of valuable moon rocks. When they return, they tell Chang, who realizes that the two songs sent be 'Charlie' must be telling Nina to get fifty more stones from the lunar surface. He directs everyone on a lunar-surface look-around, only leaving the kids and Dr. Marquez.

This is clearly a mistake, as not only was Dr. Marquez unable to stop the Sjobergs when they raid the base greenhouse and ate Dr. Goldstein's precious fruits, but he does nothing when Patton Sjoberg assaults Dash, instead thinking that Patton is the victim. Fortunately, Zan is able to drive Patton away, transforming herself into a terrifying creature and projecting herself into Patton and Dash's minds.

When Dash recovers, he discovers from Cesar Marquez that along with the Sjoberg twins, Cesar broke many visors of the space helmets playing an illegal round of football at night. Dash realizes that Nina is out on the lunar surface wearing Lily's helmet, which has a fracture in its visor. This makes the situation much more urgent.

Dash tells Chang and the other adults over the radio of their helmet visors' possible fractures. Both Dash's mother and Daphne Merritt find that their helmet visors are cracked. Daphne is able to come to the base, but Dash's mother is too far away and temporarily stays in the operation pod for the future Moon Base Beta. Chang asks Dash and Kira to bring the repair kit over, as they are the only competent people left in the base.

However, due to the urgency of the situation, nobody thinks to check for any meteorites or space junk in the area. Because of this, on the way to Dash's mother, Dash and Kira are caught in a shower of space junk, one of which destroyed the lunar rover that they were riding in, and also tore Dash's space suit. This caused his air to leak out, and Dash barely made it to safety before his oxygen ran out. After Dash's mother's visor is fixed, and Dash's own space suit is patched up, everyone returns to the base.

Chang is furious that the Sjobergs ate all the fresh food, and plans to break into their room. However, Dash suggests that he go in instead, since he knows that Patton fears him. Using the threat of the 'space snake' over Patton, Dash finds that the Sjobergs are in cahoots with Maximum Adventure. After that, Dash realizes something else and with the help of Violet, discovers that Nina is in the Moon Base Alpha construction pod, which was underneath the base.

Chang and Dash go back onto the lunar surface and find Nina in the construction pod, but unconscious and in a very weak state. Thankfully, they are able to revive her, and get her back to the base.

Dash comes to another realization and makes Shari Goldstein admit that she is "Charlie" in the greenhouse. Shari admits to it, but her intentions were clearly not evil, as she sobs when Dash tells her the reason Nina was grabbing moon rocks- To get funding for her ill mother's insurance.

After all of the day's commotion, Dash talks with Zan in the medbay, and accidentally thinks himself to Hapuna Beach in Hawaii.

## Waste of Space

In the third book, Waste of Space, Dash, and his father play catch on the lunar surface but have to return to Moon Base Alpha after they hear a scream through Nina's radio while she was scolding them. It turns out that Lars Sjoberg's utefisk has been laced with cyanide. After stabilizing Lars' condition, Nina orders Dash to help investigate and admits that the lacing was intentional.

Dash goes to bed for a few hours and then wakes up to head to school. Before they start, Dash discovers that all of the apple seeds in the greenhouse are missing, and apple seeds are used to make cyanide.

When Dash goes to tell Nina, he interrogates her and his dad when he is certain that they are hiding something. His dad confesses that their oxygen supply is slowly depleting. Dash's family, the Goldstein-Iwanyi family (Shari, Mfuzi, and Kamoze), the Brahmaputra-Marquez family (Ilina, Timothy, Cesar, Roddy, and Inez), and Kira and her father would leave the next day (since they are all families with children), and the rest of the lunarnauts would be leaving on the next rocket flight, abandoning Moon Base Alpha before they can restart it and fix the oxygen problem.

Soon after, Zan Perfonic reveals her true form to Dash, who is in awe. Then, Dash's mind is taxed even greater when he discovers that Zan and Violet have been in contact as well.

Later, Nina summons Dash to her room and blackmails him to search Chang Kowalski's room by threatening his family's positions on the next day's rocket. Between the window of the search and the meeting, Dash hears a list of suspects from Dr. Goldstein, who has a security camera in the greenhouse and tells him the people who came in but didn't eat anything. Suddenly, Dash is interrupted by a scream from the rec room.

Dash runs over and discovers the Sjoberg twins harassing his little sister Violet with Sonja Sjoberg looking on happily. He tries to defend Violet, but now the Sjobergs have a target on his back. Fortunately, Dash is armed and pies the Sjoberg twins in the face with bags of dried excrement. Both are mortified and run to the sinks to wash their faces. Sonja is enraged and tries to attack Dash, but Kira trips her and breaks her nose.

Dash finds a syringe hidden under Chang's desk with the help of Kira when Nina creates a diversion. Before he can escape, though, Chang enters the room. He cackles when he finds the planted syringe, amused by the silly attempt to frame him. When Dash and Kira exit the room, they enter the mess hall and are shocked into terror when everyone on the moon base surprises him by jumping out from behind the greenhouse.

Everyone arranges a birthday lunch, but it goes horribly when everyone starts to show symptoms of hypoxia, or oxygen deficiency. Everyone except Dash's mother and a few others suit up and leaves the base. Dash and Violet horse around, but when Dash is about to reveal the real poisoner, an unknown person ambushes Dash and tries to kill him, but Cesar Marquez saves them. Viktor Balnikov manhandles the attacker's visor and flips it up, revealing Lily Sjoberg's face.

Back in the now oxygen-filled base, Dash tells everyone that Lars Sjoberg poisoned himself to get away from the moon. This causes family feud. Lars pins the blame on Lily, who tries to throttle him. Because of this, Sonja rages at Lars for letting Lily take the fall, while Patton Sjoberg is amused by the tirade.

The day ends, and Dash sleeps while everyone packs for the next day's rocket launch. Before leaving, Dash goes into the restroom and has a conversation with Zan. Zan is tearful, and at first skirts, the question, but then admits that she has to leave forever. Dash is also dismayed, but before Zan leaves, she releases all of the information to save humanity into Dash's head.

Dash soon leaves the bathroom onto the rocket and is blasted away to Earth.

## Later Life

Soon, with the help of Chang Kowalski, Dash creates the Kowalski-Gibson Equation to help humanity. Dash studies under Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez in college and with the help of Violet, learns to think himself to any mind. He uses this and is able to transport himself to Boscanable to find Zan. Dash finds her in the end.

## Personality

Dash is a very tactful and inquisitive person. He is well-rounded and seems to be a well-behaved child. He is also very helpful and can empathize with other people. Dash also has a very fine mind, as he solved three mysteries in a few months and even had his brain complemented by Chang Kowalski, whose IQ is Einstein-Level.