You’ve always been beguiled by the moon. To you its ancient reflection is two men at a card table, one hunching over like Uriah Heep, the other’s hands high in the air. Had Uriah shot the other? Or was the other whooping because he was winning a card game? (It’s always titillated you that this reflection is upside down in the northern hemisphere – you can only see these men, your best friends, playing their dangerous game from Sydney.)
People have contemplated the moon, waxing and waning, for centuries. It’s always astounded humanity. And you.
But today, you’re even more astounded. Because at this moment you’re on the moon. A single woman, alone. It cost a fortune to get here – you sold your house, your car, paid with every cent in the bank, took loans – just so you could be alone up here. Fully alone. No one else is here – every other human being is on earth. How weird is that?
The NASA Virgin Tourist Company will leave you here for five lunar days. The temperatures soar beyond anything known on earth, even since the climate naysayers there destroyed winter, and the sun never sets in this locale. But you’re comfortable enough in this unwieldy suit. A small lunar module is where you sleep, it contains food and water, and the assembly spaceship will collect you at the end of your holiday. This is your Christmas holiday, actually. A present to yourself. (Not that you deserve one, but.) No relatives or friends giving you that look of pity.
There’s not much up here, but no matter. You just wanted, needed, total isolation.
If it wasn’t for the damn headaches – and your sin – you’d be in heaven.
You wander. You’re still becoming accustomed to the air’s lightness, your bounciness as you lope across the terrain, the boldly curving horizon.
Up here, in solitary, you are Master of the Universe. I’m free! you yell, but of course no sound is emitted. The moon is absolutely silent; it won’t allow noise. Your words resound only within your helmet.
Nonetheless such isolation is difficult to digest. Despite knowing you’ve been alone for a while, really. Even in your crowded hometown.
You close your eyes, think of your pills back in the module for your migraines, then move on, pondering the profundity of what you’re doing.
What is there to do? You take photos of the memorabilia that’s been left by the Russians – all those Soviet flags – and Buzz Aldrin’s footprint, and the Fallen Astronaut memorial planted by Apollo 15. You can compare craters and volcanic maria – the basalt plains – and highlands. So you walk, springing more than stepping, feeling a bit like a kid at Disneyland.
You leap some more, stare at a vacuum of pitch-black sky, at the millions of blazing stars blazing at you. Up here you’re safe from the rabble of humanity. Except you can see it from a jagged ridge you ruggedly climb – the Earth, 300,000 kilometres away, a tranquil planet veiled in a multicoloured swirling mist. There are the continents, outlined like on an atlas or in a travel guide – but you know Earth isn’t at all as the moon displays it. It is definitely not a peaceful holiday destination. Don’t get sucked in, you say to any extra-terrestials listening.
Your module is stationed at Tranquility Base on the smooth, flat plains of the Sea of Serenity – such a calming name – on the near side of the moon. Serenity, where man first walked in the cosmos. You hope you’re following in Armstrong’s path; perhaps Laika, the first dog in space, trotted here.
Your daughter loved dogs.
The graphite rock surface is fickle, the air, or whatever it’s called, appears dusty; you know from the limited guidebook and briefing the Tourist Company provided that the highlands where you’re based are the lighter-coloured terrains – they’re higher than the maria. It’s difficult to see beyond because of the dust – are you brave enough to crawl into a shallow crater? Climb a volcano? Live here forever?
You’re wandering, mulling over the websites you watched, the couple of lectures the Company provided, when something begins to shudder. Is it your spacesuit? Panic hits until you realise the breathing apparatus is working perfectly and you have plenty of oxygen. But the quivering persists, lightish but definite…Ah – it’s coming from outside your suit. It’s a quake, a moonquake, hitting you on your first day! You squat against a rock as the dust thickens and small meteorite-like stones sail in the raspy wind. Some hit your visor but it remains intact, though the helmet’s echoes are making you dizzy, affecting your concentration, your confidence.
Aggravating that dull ache between your temples.
Hugging your knees you bury your head in your padded arms for a while, but the wind and dust endure and expand; your body is tossed gently back and forward, pelted by the stones but protected by your layers of suit. Maybe it’s time to head back to Serenity. You inhale deeply, then look up.
And there she is. Standing a few metres away in a ball of cosmic light. Wrapped in her favourite emerald and ruby Christmas dress, her skirt gusting around her thin thighs, the tiny meteorites battering her bare legs. She’s waving at you…and smiling!
You leap up as fast as the cumbersome suit allows, your heart pounding with disbelief and hope, but your oxygen ebbs.
‘Theia!’ you call, but no sound issues from your helmet, and even if it did the moon would erase it. ‘Baby, baby!’ you scream again and again and bound towards your daughter, but she’s laughing; she runs, disappears into the gale, the flying particles obscuring her as she bounces smaller and smaller into the darkness. You keep crying out, but finally trip in the moonquake, and lie taking deep breaths, confused, close to a seizure, or heart attack, until finally you fall asleep, or run out of oxygen, or die.
When you wake you’re on your back. Stars blink at you. The moon air has normalised and appears serene with its minimum dust level; the quake is over. You still have oxygen. What happened?
As real as that image was you will dismiss it. Breathing hard, you clumsily rise to your knees – it’s time to sleep, properly, in the module. The trek back is not far but takes forever. Inside you heave off the ungainly space gear, chew on some dried fruit, and waft into your sleeping bag. Gently floating with little gravity is strangely relaxing so you accept it and talk yourself out of having seen your dead daughter. Fight the knife twisting in your chest, cutting ever deeper into your forehead. It must have been fatigue. Or a problem with the oxygen pipe.
Or another tiresome symptom of your illness. Your true reason for being here.
Later you search the net you can access and the Company’s printed guides – are hallucinations normal on the moon? A form of delirium tremens? Withdrawal from Earth’s atmosphere? Nothing can be found – just photos of smiling faces telling you to enjoy your trip.
You’d kill for a bottle of whisky. You mix a powdered orange juice with water, and heat a thermostabilized pizza in the food warmer. You can’t eat it though. Your stomach turns as you sniff it.
The next two days are uneventful. You’ve explored your local topography enough. On the third day you’ve calmed somewhat so decide it’s time to visit some lowlands. Touch with your cushioned fingers the basalt lava in a maria. The ache in your head has subsided – a good sign – and you’re certain those nightmares – visions – must have resulted from a hiccup in your air pipe, or the painkillers. Perhaps you’re taking too many.
You’re nowhere near the iciness of the extreme poles, so you lope across the plains to see Copernicus Crater, still on the near side. Can anyone see you from Earth? Are aliens watching? Along your route you see skeletons of old lunar rovers, depleted steel bones stuck into the ground. A celestial cemetery.
At Copernicus you peer beyond the edge of the crater – it’s thirty kilometres wide, its long sloping rampart descending to limitless plains – when a soft dustiness springs again, surrounding you in a silver and red swirl. Strange – perhaps it’s the moon’s Christmas lights, you muse. In any event, it’s warm, safe and serene in the spacesuit. You take some photos with the lunar camera, hoping the wind doesn’t turn wild; you want to appreciate this famous crater.
You’re concentrating on your camera, clumsily ensuring it’s working, when you’re hit hard across the back of your helmet. You fall, and knock the ground face-down with your visor, but the blow has harmed your already-harmed head – is there blood inside? Your neck feels liquidy, sticky – what the hell struck you? You leap up, almost flying your bounce is so high, but there’s nothing there. The crater’s maw looms. Fearing you’ll tumble over its edge you pull yourself backwards. Was it a flying rock, in this mild wind? The pain in your forehead is back, savage and merciless and spreading down your spine. There’s nothing you can do about a possible wound to your skull – you can’t remove the helmet outside – so you must return to Serenity.
As you try to steady your breath you’re struck so violently in the face that the visor’s glass shudders – will it break?
You didn’t see what hit you, just a red shadowed glance.
The peak behind you dips, the world bulges. You turn swiftly, giddily, and there is your husband, Vasco, and your daughter, observing you a few metres away. You slam shut your eyes and refuse to believe this, and when you look again they’ve vanished. You’re on the verge of collapse; in the rocks to your left is a pitch-dark formation. It could be a cave. You head towards it, breathing in spasms.
A small grotto it is; shining your torch you find remnants of steel space parts on the soot-like ground. You hold your enormous helmeted head in your hands, not knowing what to do; you must get back to the module and get help, get them to come for you, now. This is wrong – very wrong.
Or is it?
Your pain concerning Vasco and Theia shrieks like scratches on a blackboard. You don’t want to consider it but you must: it was a year ago when you killed them. In Earth time, probably this very day. You were driving home from the Christmas markets, you’d been drinking; not enough to be over the limit, but enough to take a short cut, hit a pole, smash the car. Resulting in the death of the two people you loved most in the universe. Yet not a scratch on you. And no punishment even. Just your own grief, your own soul, tearing you apart, aching for complete and utter solitude. And that solitude was supposed to be here.
The decision to fly to the moon was made when the migraines began. You never told a doctor or the Tourist Company, you had no intention of remaining on Earth on the anniversary of their death.
And you don’t want to share your illness with anyone – you couldn’t bear the expressions of pity drenched in blame.
Finally you glance upwards – and your heart hammers. You scream a silent scream. Theia and Vasco are back again.
Merry Christmas, Mummy, whispers Theia.
It’s difficult to see the ground, the rocks, the spurting hillocks as you flee, jerking and tripping like a fat clown. Visibility, always restricted in your prison of a helmet, is even worse as you desperately kick the dust into heavy spirals. You spin, searching for an escape. Suddenly you’re pitched headlong into the hardened lava of a mare. Your elbow smarts but you roll over quickly, twisting your head within the helmet, unable to see anything except the vast eternity above. Until you rise painfully to your knees, and flinch, falling onto your gloves.
Your family materialise again. Theia is scab-covered and torn; Vasco has what appears to be a broken pipe – perhaps the cut-off handbrake – in his side. Both are rotting, with skin shavings falling, but their eyes are round and hollow and staring at you accusingly.
You shriek, scramble to your feet, your breathing contorted. Where’s the module? You recognise nothing, all you see when the dust settles are shadowy ice-filled craters – oh no, you’re at one of the lunar poles. How did you get here? Aren’t the poles thousands of kilometres from your module? A frost invades your suit but the sun is more radiant now, your eyeballs are burning – could this be the Peak of Eternal Light? The only truly bright spot on the moon? Strangely the light glazes in the shape of a cross – or a Christmas tree. Madly you suck on the plastic water tube but it’s too icy, your head is thudding, your fingers frozen. The air you suck is narrow, foetid, and your chest is crumbling.
Theia gestures at you from under the cross. Although you can’t see her properly in the shimmer you know she’s beckoning. Your temples hammer, you’re gasping as you inhale, but suddenly you’re as weightless and gauzy as a feather. You follow her, floating now, into the peak, planning your next Christmas, just the three of you.
Photo by Alex Rosario on Unsplash
