LIFTOFF

The literally deafening roar of the massive engines rips through the air, getting to my ears at the exact second I block it out. The tremendous amount of switches, blinking lights, buttons, displays, levers, and gauges would be overwhelming, but I can feel proud being able to say I can understand what to do. After years of training, with billions of dollars in government assistance, with millions of people preparing for this moment for two decades, with billions of spectators watching my every move, and only myself to depend on, I am not allowed to fail or make even the slightest mistake. As the rocket lifts into the air ungracefully, tilting and turning every which way, exiting in a cloud of blue and white fire and pitch black smoke, I am under so much pressure I might break. I, completely alone, with no manner in which to communicate with Earth, and no way to get back, have to get to the moon and figure out how to settle on it. I have no time at all to do anything but what I'm supposed to do. The continuation of the human race is contingent on my preparation of the moon for colonization by billions of stranded, hysterical people with no place to live. Worst of all, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. My rocket twists in midair, finally achieving a smooth ascent into outer space while I hurriedly flick switches, press buttons, adjust dials and start my log.

“November 5th, 2513, Astronaut Genius Smarticle Einstein speaking. Mission Life has started at second 1216880040 from the end of Age One. The Smarticle is now heading to the sole satellite of the planet Earth to prepare it for settling by circa two billion Earthlings to accommodate stranded humans, as all Age Two repositories are full. Liftoff has gone as well as can be expected- some turbulence occurred, but it was successful. I am now entering Stage Two and I will soon be exiting Earth's atmo--”

A sharp jolt cuts me off as the outer shield engages and the hardest part of the Earth-bound stage begins. I mess with controls hurriedly and frantically, scolding myself for even thinking about getting distracted from the important part of the mission for even a single second. I grit my teeth as the rocket spins rapidly in midair, like a missile from the olden days heading for its target. I want to allow my mind to drift back to that time, when things were better and we were all oblivious to our destruction potential, when all was good with the world and today was only a distant possibility. I decide to distract myself later, because of something I have told myself over and over again- the only way to get back there is to focus on right now. I have no choice anyway, since I'm about to regurgitate yesterday's dinner and today's brunch. Deciding it would be too much work to clean the control panel, I instead spin around the other way and throw up all over the wall, watching for myself for the first time a phenomenon I had only read about in books: the individual parts of my puke clumping together in midair as gravity pulls it together. The specks of highly digested pieces of what used to be food move towards larger, the less digested brunch and clumps of corn. I want to vomit again, but at the same time I'm entranced and completely amazed. I then get to see more of my somewhat digested breakfast as more puke leaves my mouth violently. I expected to see this amazing display of with slightly different materials, but distractions happen at random, such as this one, which has once again diverted my attention from what's essential- I have to get out of Earth's atmosphere. The hardest part of the easiest part is almost over.
DEPARTURE

As the rocket rotates speedily and brunch threatens to make yet another appearance, I feel myself start to rise slightly into the air, my restraints holding me back. For the first time, I get to be somewhere with no gravity! My legs soon start rising into midair without my permission, and my hands slip from the controls when I rest them. I feel the jolting of the rocket suddenly cease. A glance out of a window reveals a clear view of outer space- a breathtakingly beautiful scene of colorful planets in continually diminishing sizes with a bright, lively Sun in the middle, and a quilt of shining specks of white and streaks of white and blue as a backdrop. My jaw drops open. This is nothing like we were taught in school! We learned outer space is a grotesque, dangerous place with death at every turn, yet this, this is amazing! I can't even begin to fathom why humanity decided to stay on Earth when the decision was made. Then I come to my senses. You don't live in space just for a pretty view, considering all of the other planets in the solar system are deadly. The problem is, Earth is just as deadly anyway. I don't want to remember why, but I unwillingly force myself to. The nightmare starts once again...

It was just a normal day. Nothing more and nothing less than a perfectly normal day. That's how it started, at least. I was just thirteen at the time, not completely innocent anymore, but not quite experienced yet. I stepped outside to see the bright green grass, the dark brown trunk of my apple tree, the light blue sky sprinkled with puffy white clouds, the yellow Sun, huge, yet only the size of a quarter in the sky, and to smell the crisp clean air, free of pollution and trash. It all changed immediately. Right in front of me, the grass turned brown, the sky gray, the clouds stark black, the Sun orange and gigantic, and the air a translucent light green. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. How did paradise become this in five seconds? A few seconds later, I saw the cause. I looked up at the Sun, ten times as big as usual. It looked green through the air and was barely visible through the dark clouds, but it was there. I couldn't conceive what the source of all life on Earth must have been doing to us. It fried all plant life in five seconds. It turned the air green, the skies gray, and the clouds completely black. It destroyed paradise.

I soon found out the air turned green, the skies gray, and the clouds black from a pollutant outbreak caused by the explosion of a container filled with them, which, in turn, was caused by overheating by the Sun. The Earth had been pushed out of orbit by the gravitational force of Jupiter, which scientists believed had been increased by the solidification of various gases. The Earth was saved from becoming a floating pile of ashes by a mammoth propulsion system created just for the purpose. The Sun seemed to expand exponentially in size because of a simple illusion. It was all too much for me to process at that age, so I've ignored it until now.

Over the course of the next 37 years, I went to a college in a protected underground facility, where I eventually learned, in sixteen years, how to be a full-fledged astronaut so I could get a chance to be on Mission Life, a government program trying to find a new place for humanity to survive, not on our deadly planet. Unfortunately, until now, funding could not be apportioned. Now that it has been, it's been too long for most of my former classmates. They've forgotten everything. Luckily and unluckily for me, I stayed in school, alone, I graduated, three times, alone, and now, I get to go on the most important space voyage in human history... alone. There's not a single person on the face of my planet that can replace me, and there's no spacecraft on it that can replace this old, battered patchwork of 25th century technology which can barely hold on anyway. If I can't ready the Moon for settling, I can't go back, or I'll be tortured to death for my failure, literally. Even if I can make the Moon a tropical paradise, build a resort hotel, and fill the maria with an ocean, I might not even make it back to Earth, much less get hundreds of psychotics on a spaceship and keep them on it for a month until we can get to the Moon, then do it all over again thousands of times, while maintaining society on the Moon, all almost single-handedly, since the only people that can help me are preoccupied with keeping society alive and keeping the Earth in the right position so we won't all become ashes. That pretty much sums it all up.

In twenty-nine uneventful days, I reach the Moon, going into orbit around it until I can find a spot to land. I'd like to land in one of the maria, but it's hard to see if there are any because I entered orbit above the dark side of the Moon. All I see is darkness. I orbit for a couple hours more, but I don't want to waste fuel continually correcting so I won't crash into the surface and die. I will probably crash and die anyway, but it's better if I know it's coming. When I muster up the courage to push the button pointing down on the control panel, I leave orbit and too quickly descend to the surface. I try to stop, but I can't. I press every button on the control panel, but I simply can't go up! I can't even stop! I can't even move to any side! There's no atmosphere and no friction to stop me! I see the end coming faster, faster, faster! Then, my vision goes black.
LANDING

I open my eyes, trying to get everything around me in focus. I'm still half asleep and it's hard to see anything. I remember putting on my spacesuit a couple hours ago, and an intake of fresh oxygen confirms it. A small cover over the window on the front was knocked into place by the impact. I pull it up, and I see my rocket, with a lot more paint missing than last time, but still in one piece. The Sun's light is barely peeking over the horizon, and the gray-blue-orange marble of the Earth hovers high in the sky. I look to my left and see two flags: a flag I remember from grade-school history class, the American flag, faded considerably, and a white flag, still in crisp condition. I look to my right and stare, unbelieving. I see green aliens, reaching out their “hands” to help me up, and huge skyscrapers with bright lights inside. Smaller buildings surround them, divided by shiny “roads”, with hovercraft floating above them. The roads are just linear passages with raised edges where some hovercraft are charging or something. More floating vehicles surround the city, undoubtedly some kind of police force. Green, red, blue, orange, yellow, purple, pink and brown aliens without clothes walk on the glass sidewalk, entering and exiting stores constantly. Clouds float in the sky, grass surrounds the city, and the Sun, bright yellow, not orange, floats high in the sky, providing light. I gape in disbelief. How did this happen?! My eyes start to dry and I blink. Immediately, it's all gone. I slap myself a couple times for being such a cretin, which doesn't hurt through the suit. I immediately get up and start walking in a random direction, without any idea what I'm doing, where I'm going, or what I'll find.
EXPLORATION

I keep walking until I come across a crater. I look down at a display on the outside of my suit, which says the time and date is 8:52 a.m., December 7th, 2513. I direct my gaze back to the crater. I can't see the edge clearly because there's little light, but it looks as if it is only a couple meters wide. I tentatively poke the tip of my right foot into the shallow ground. I find it doesn't sink, so I tap it a little harder, then I kick it, the I walk right onto it and jump on it. Forgetting that I'm seven times lighter on the moon, I jump too high and right out of the crater, taking some gray sand-like stuff off the edge of it. After getting back into the crater and just stomping on it a couple times, I start digging, right in the center. In 2439, water was said to exist about three meters down near the equator because of broad underground passages extending from both polar ice caps to the Moon's equator. Assuming I didn't go too far off course, I should be less than a hundred kilometers from the southern pole, near a main passage in an area where water should be available less than one meter down. It is tiring work after the first quarter meter, when the layer of compressed dust ends. After my professional excavation technique becomes useless when I encounter extremely compressed dust, I go back to my craft and get a shovel, a large canister, an overly expensive filter that can supposedly filter out particles the size of bacteria, a few drops of iodine, and a virtualizer, a twenty-first century wonder which somehow, in a manner too amazingly technical to even utter, analyzes any object of any size any reasonable distance away (which means within the solar system) and its environment, saves it to a file which can be used to produce a 3-D holographic model of the object, or, with the aid of a 3-D printer, a real copy of it in its “native” surroundings, which can be of any size, which means every science classroom in the nation during the 25th century had a copy of every planet, dwarf planet, large moon, notable asteroid, comet, the Sun, and anything and everything even remotely important in our solar system. I'm only using it to take some samples back to Earth so that scientists can properly study some Moon dust. I would've thought they should be able to do that with the help of a virtualizer, but for whatever stupid reason, they can't. Subsequent to my at least million-kilometer walk back to the crater, I steal some dust from the Moon's surface, observing how it is white, probably the result of fading from the Sun. I stick my finger into the surface here, above the crater, and find I can go down a few centimeters before there's any resistance at all, but when I do the same in the crater, my digit only descends a single centimeter. I conclude the impact of what created the crater compressed the dirt. I then think back to about one month ago, and what phase the moon was in. I can remember it was in an early waxing gibbous phase, and it formed a twenty degree angle with the Earth and the Sun. I feel more at home when I know where I am. After my scientific thinking break, I continue expanding my gash in the Moon, until I eventually hear a small splashing sound when I try to remove more soil. Satisfied that I've reached water, I attach my filter to the wide, bowl-shaped opening of my canister, feel around on the ground until I find the water, and use my hands to awkwardly scoop some life out of the hole and into my canister, all through my puffy spacesuit. I look at the H2O in the low light and go to dump it out. It's blue! It might be poisonous! Then I take a closer look at it and realize it's actually the container that's blue. If only I wasn't so stupid. If only, if only....

Following a period of contemplating the immense possibility of an easier life if I had more common sense, I trudge back to my rocket, enter it, take off my suit, and use my virtualizer and onboard 3D printer to slowly, very, very, slowly duplicate my short supply of water over hours until I end up with ten canisters full of it. That problem is solved. The next problem is food. Taking into consideration that people, especially me, eat like pigs when we're on another planet and we're afraid food will run out, that the Sun is only around for half a month, that virtualizers are solar-powered, and that they have to be used for other purposes also, I have no idea how a civilization on this satellite will have enough food. Then, inspiration strikes.

I shout “Ow!” at the wall. Because I have such a deficit in common sense, I experience pain when it tries to say something to me. I could just duplicate some livestock, using the same printer I used for the water! Of course, I'll need some animals. I find my amazing virtualizer and search through the different objects saved on it. Ultra HD TVs from the olden days, hovercraft, a vampire, some Barbies (which are dolls from the 20th and 21st century showing how overweight people used to be), shoes (who uses those anymore), popcorn, some dust specks, a severed foot, some fecal matter, a textbook, an AK-47, a green tooth, a lawn gnome, ah, a herd of cattle! I fiddle around with the printer, drag it into the void that is the cargo area, and in half an hour, I have a bunch of mooing primitives crashing into each other and ramming into the wall. I synthesize, with my devices, a large, sharp, serrated sword, a butcher knife, a table, an archaic heating thing I think is called a “stove”, a plate, some towels and cleaning materials, a bundle of American money, and a farmer from the ancient days (the 2030s). I hand him the money and the knife, and command him to “Make me dinner!”, even though it's only three in the morning. He looks at me weirdly, then he looks around him, shrugs, and mutters, “Is this what people do for money now?” I step out of the room and I soon hear some shrieks followed by thuds, then slicing, ending with a searing sound. In one hour, the farmer exits the cargo room with bloody clothes and a plateful of steak. He walks to my seat holding the plate like a waiter, very carefully places it on the counter near me, rolls my seat to it, and says in a hearty voice, “Chef Johnny vous présente le steak des âges, frais de la ferme de l'espace de plus proche!” I believe it's in French, a very old language I studied for about a semester in seventh grade before dropping out. He's saying something about Chef Johnny presenting to me the steak something something something, something of the something of space something something something. I know so much! After he makes me enough steak to last a year, cleans up his mess, packages my food, and thanks me giddily when I pull out another bundle of cash, I put on a simple mask with enough oxygen for about an hour, give him a fake mask without any oxygen and lead him to the exit. I shut the door to the spaceship, open the door to the outside, pretend to drop some of that money he loves, and as he rushes to grab it, I close the door, scraping off the skin on his right arm, get to the control panel, and leave him behind in a cloud of dust and fire. I don't make it very far, since I have nearly no reserve energy left and the Sun won't hurry in its ascent through the sky. After “safely” crash-landing and reminiscing on the homicide, I consider myself a humanitarian murderer: Johnny the Farmer only had to suffer third-degree burns, extreme pain when I exposed a third of a meter of bone on his right arm with the door, even more pain when the rocket's fire burned off the skin on his legs, and suffocation. I later review what I just thought to remove the “humanitarian” part. Anyhow, I have to get back to the last problem, shelter, the hardest to solve of them all. In approximately ten seconds, the flat land near my landing spot has been transformed into a small dome, which I make the size of a mansion with my virtualizer (which does much more than virtualize) in twenty seconds. So much work! In spite of that, I feel proud with what I made: a thousand-story abode for millions that took others a decade to design. It is completely covered on the outside by transparent solar panels, it contains an oxygen recycling system, and is already completely filled with that gas, it is impenetrable from anywhere, outside or inside, and it already contains everything necessary for comfortable life except food and water, which I take the next month sending up chutes (actually, machines do it for me), and sleeping at the same time. For a week more, I explore the highlands and more craters, calculate some formulas for the angle at which rays extend from the center of craters proportional to the size of that crater, and I experience (no, not just see, experience) a lunar eclipse, which is remarkably similar to the solar eclipse I experienced a couple decades ago. To make myself feel better by thinking scientifically, and since, last year, I set a maximum limit to how idiotic I can be each week, I figure out I was in the umbra of Earth's shadow. I feel so smart!

From then on, I successfully get about 90% of the stranded tellurians under my care to my tropical resort on the Moon (which gets horrible ratings), a percentage astonishing for an idiot like me. Everything goes right and we all live happily ever after.

Then the Moon explodes and we all die.

fin


Copyright © 2013 Cristian R.
No animals were harmed in the creation of this document.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.